FAQ

SOS (Scythe of Seraph) is an esports organisation based in Switzerland and Germany that competes in local and international tournaments. As an esports organisation we help the teams with marketing, team-management, social-media, streaming, designs and many more things. To find out more about us go to the About us page.

To join SOS you can contact us via the contact form, which you find on the Contact page, or by writing to our Team-Manager, which you can either find on the Staff Page, or on the Contact page. Please tell us which game you play, if you already compete in tournaments or leagues and if you already have a team (if your game is a team game). We will then examine your application and have a talk with you if we think that you fit into our organisation and we are looking for new players in your game.

There are multiple layers of players in esports, in each game there are also other layers. We're gonna divide all layers here into three basic layers: amateur, semi-professional and professional players.

Amateur

To be an amateur player you first need to decide on a game you want to play. Probably this will be the one you're currently playing most. If your game is a team game, like League of Legends or CS:GO, you first want to find a team to participate in tournaments. You can find teams in Discord or on different websites. For Switzerland we suggest you go to the SESF Discord and ask in the "looking-for" channel if there are any teams looking for a player. If you can play your game competitively alone, like Hearthstone or Fortnite (Solo), you can skip the steps above.

You'll now search for yourself or your team for tournaments. Online-tournaments will be the best to start with, since they're mostly free and you don't have to go anywhere else. To inform yourself about Swiss tournaments and leagues we propose you go to Esports.ch, they inform about many swiss esport news and events. For international tournaments there are many pages for the individual games, where you can inform yourself and participate. Some of them organised by the Publisher themselves, like the Prime-League for League of Legends in DACH or the Fortnite tournaments by Epic Games.

After some online tournaments you might want to get to know your teammates in real life (if you don't already know them) and go with them to an offline event. If you all don't live to far apart from another you could go to a LAN-Party, where tournaments are held and you eat, play and sleep, mostly on-site for the whole weekend. There are many LAN-Parties all over the world. We suggest you to look for an overview of the local events and then decide where to go. (for Switzerland: https://lanport.ch/kalender)

Don't shy away to join an esports-organisation or to create your own organisation, it will help you to network and get to know the scene even more.

Semi-Professional

After playing for some time in the Amateur-environment you might get to know some people at offline-events or talked to over Discord or Teamspeak. Networking and representation is a valuable tool to make yourself stand out. Some esport-organisations might write you know if they think you have talent. Maybe you'll also search for a new team, because you think you're playing better than your team. In that case we suggest you make try-outs in other teams. It would also be good to bring everyone of your team to the same page and tell them that you want to part ways, so they can also make arrangements.

After some try-outs you got into a team! Yeah! Now what?
Depending on your level and the organisation you will get a contract. In this contract there should be benefits for you, like getting peripherals from the organisations sponsor, or getting a small salary (maybe for every game you play in a league). There might also be things targeting images of yourself, your streamed content, prize-money percentages and more. Be sure to look it over with your parents or your lawyer and also to see if some party gets more out of it than the other.

TLDR; You're a good player and get into an esports-organisation (or a sponsorship) that pays you.

Professional

From semi-professional to professional there is a huge gap. Not many players can live from playing their game competitively.

A professional player has mostly gone through all the other steps and many iterations of it. You'll need to make a real name in the scene of your game to get a contract with a big organisation that has the capacity to pay you a salary you can live with. There are some countries, like Switzerland, where it is really difficult to live of playing professionally, because the live-standards and prices are very high. Mostly you'll need to live in a country where you can live with a lower amount of money.

To get to be a professional player there is no path you can go through. There is much luck involved but also passion. You'll need to be a very good player, be marketable and be at the right place at the right time.

These tips here are gathered experience we got with our players and players from the European esports scene. If you think there is something error or something we could add, feel free to write us a mail to info@scytheofseraph.com.

As an esports player we divide here in two parts: Part-time players and professional players.

Part-time players

Part-time players mostly have another job or study to do. So their day-structure is defined by those tasks. Teams in this area normally have 2-3 trainings a week with a duration of 1-2 hours each. This doesn't include match days for leagues and tournaments.

Most of the time those players work or study during the day. Go home and prepare for their training they have in the evening, if there is one on the given weekday. Depending on the game the team splits the trainings in theoretical training in which the team looks at their recent matches and studies new strategies, and practical trainings where they play matches against other teams, called "Scrims".

Depending on the availability of the players the team plays their league matches during the week or on weekends.

So we come to a time consumption of 8 hours per week only with trainings and playing in one league. A player should also train without his team to get better in the game himself.

Professional players

Professional players get their day-structure organised by their esport-organisation or coach. So each team has a different schedule.

Many teams stand up around 11:00 and play about 7-8 hours a day within the team. In between having breaks to analyze their games. Some teams divide the day into physical training and gaming, so the players can have a healthy body to perform better. After the team-training the players train for themselves and try to work on their problems.

Teams like Team Liquid and LA Valiant train together in their office and live in different houses as they train. Some teams also have a gaming house where all players sleep, eat and train to save time, Team Liquid and similar teams have when their players have to go to their office. A drawback of a gaming house being privacy for the players.

With bigger organisations players also get psychological support and a physical trainer, which helps against burnout and issues like wrist-pain.

Since for every player there is a different schedule it's difficult to tell you a day of a pro player, but we hope you could get some insights into it.

A documentary that might be interesting for you would be: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=box4SFtGvA0

Esports in Switzerland is still small in comparison to other countries like Germany or the USA.

What we have in Switzerland is a passionate community, many offline events and good national esports media channels. The community has some thousand gamers that participate in national leagues, go to LAN parties, watch tournaments online, or many other things in the esports-scene. Players participate in leagues such as the SESL (Swiss Esports League) or the TCS Esports League. They also go to LAN-Parties such as the SwitzerLAN which has over 2000 players in one giant hall in Bern. We also go to smaller LAN-Parties such as the EEvent or the Lock and Load, which are also very cool events!

We fortunately also have some good news channels for the Swiss Esports scene, such as Esports.ch and RTS eSport. They inform about events and make good documentaries about the local scene.

The Swiss scene is growing and is picking momentum to get more well known and accepted.

Join it today by playing, watching or working in the scene! You can find out more about how to do that in our other questions.

Esports not only has jobs for players, there is a whole environment around those who are playing. Many things you can think of as a normal job is also applicable in esports. From event organiser to physical trainer there is everything.

Some jobs you might not directly think of when thinking about esports:

- Videographer, Video editor
- Psychologist
- Accountant
- Graphic designer

Those jobs are needed in the esports scene to make content, manage organisations or coach players. Sadly in Switzerland there is not enough money in the esport organisations for people to work full-time in those areas. Most of the organisations still do this as a hobby and don't get any profit of it and just want to support it and the players. This also applies to those jobs, like videographers that get paid for some projects but can't live of only working in the esports.

Most jobs in Switzerland are currently in event organisation, consulting and communication with companies such as MYI Entertainment, that organise the SwitzerLAN, the TCS Esports League and many other projects in Switzerland. The Swiss esports scene still has to grow to have more full-time jobs in this area. Many esports organisations are always looking for staff to help them, so if you want to get your first step into the esports life, be sure to write an esports organisation and ask them if they want someone of your field, maybe once a job sprouts out of it.