to pretty much everything Kirby said, it's stuff I've often wondered about myself. And obviously everyone on TL is worried to death about OMG IF WE TALK ABOUT STARCRAFT DYING TOO LOUDLY IT WILL ACTUALLY HAPPEN so nobody there would ever bring it up.
The one part of the equation we don't really know is how team finances/sponsorships work. I'd be very curious to know how much teams get from stuff like sponsorships, and how that's dispersed to players (if at all), because obviously tournament winnings alone are worse than poverty for 99.99% of "professional" SC2 players (as far as I can tell, "professional" means you don't have another job, because the way it's thrown around for most people it sure as hell doesn't mean "capable of financially supporting myself playing SC2").
But yeah, if being a not-top-tier pro SC2 player is what we think it is - you (maybe) get free room + board in a team house, get flown out to tournaments sometimes, but other than that are playing SC2 full-time, maybe if you're lucky you're making $10k a year (even that's probably on the high side?) from streaming + tournaments for discretionary spending/future savings - it's kinda cool if it means you can spend all your time playing a game you love I guess, but there's still the rest of your life to think about and you're probably ****ing up your future earning potential BIG time doing things like
- putting off/skipping college
- having a huge resume gap that won't look very desirable to employers outside the gaming industry
- having less money = less mobility/flexibility in future, like to move to SF to find a tech job or something
Unless there's a part of the equation we're not aware of, it seems like a pretty bad deal. I'd definitely be interested in you starting that TL thread Kirby.