The growth of League of Legends has been a massive boon for Australia’s burgeoning esports scene, not just for the injection of players into competitive gaming but also the increased teams and organisations that have formed around it.
That growth continued yesterday in a massive way, with ASUS directly investing in their first gaming house anywhere in the world. And it’s located in Lidcombe, 20 kilometres west of Sydney.
It’s not the first house designed to help a group of gamers elevate their passion into a professional pursuit. It’s not the first house for a League of Legends team in Australia; Hellions gave Junglist a tour of their place in Olympic Park a few weeks ago.
But no group of gamers in Australia has moved into a house and received this level of corporate backing before. And no team in the world has had this amount of direct support from ASUS, according to their local representatives. It’s been officially branded the ASUS ROG Gaming House, with the tenants being the members of the Oceanic Pro League’s current leaders, Legacy Esports.
Each of the bedrooms is marked with a plaque indicating which member lives inside
The rent for the house is coming out of Legacy’s budget, with ASUS confirming to me (after some confusion) that they are contributing product and “a small amount of quarterly sponsorship assistance to cover household upkeep”. A change brought in by Riot themselves has also indirectly helped, with teams and players receiving their match fees as invoiced rather than in a lump sum at the end of each split.
Everything’s decked out to provide the most optimal practice environment. There’s a room with a couch and a backdrop specifically for streaming and broadcasting that can also be converted into a lounge area where the whole team can review matches (or watch a movie) together. The dining room was decked out with 10 PCs, banners and placards for the event, but once things are rearranged for a normal living environment there is ample space for eating, playing and elbow room for five players.
Most of those players have had to sacrifice friends and family to be in the house, however, with four members relocating from interstate. Their team manager Michael Carmody confirmed that there were clauses in their contracts that would facilitate what he neatly described as an “exit strategy”. If someone’s performance isn’t up to scratch, they’ll be shown the door, and that situation has been made fully aware to everyone going in.
I sat down and had a long chat with Carmody about how the house got established and the business behind getting a team house in Australia. You’ll see more of that interview later. But for now, I’ll leave you with his prediction: in a year’s time, more and more teams will move into their own team houses to catch up.
Comments
12 responses to “ASUS Opens Their First Gaming House In Suburban Sydney”
Next step: two rival teams in one house, with some kind of reality game show built around it.
I was thinking you move a Dota 2 team in there as well and let natural selection decide which game is better :p (though we all know it’s Dota2)
Would probably be better than all the other crap on TV to be honest.
Lidcombe already has fibre to the premises, I wonder if that impacted the choice of location?
I reckon that would have been one of the first things they looked at when selecting a location.
Err, Lidcombe is a suburb in Sydney. It’s west of the CBD but it’s still in Sydney.
“Redfern is 3km south of Sydney”
Banner advertising that it is in fact the juiciest burglary target on the street. Savvy.
“Most of these players have had to sacrifice friends and family to be in the house”. This ain’t a satanist cult mate, no human sacrifices required.
What do these guys do when they realize they need to go find a real job?
What syour experience? i skipped uni to be a progamer. NEXT!
To be fair the same could be said about a vast multitude of pro-sports out there. That generally doesn’t get mentioned though.
Quite a few of those pro-athletes who give up uni or other ‘work’ to become the best in their chosen sport also find it extremely difficult after their stint in the sport has ended to find gainful employment. There always the few that move into media, journalism or guest speaker circuit but to a lot there isn’t much out there these days.
At the very least you can say that e-sports puts less strain on the body, so less chance of medical complications later in life.
Asus Republic Of Gamers Gaming House? Sounds silly.
Gaming might be perceived as a recreational hobby that could get highly addictive for some, but to actually open up a gaming house takes this particular leisure pursuit to an entirely new level. It is interesting how a pastime could make you a successful person when you are particularly good at it.