Nathan ‘StatiC’ Anderson is one of South Africa’s top StarCraft 2 players, who won the MSSA National Team Trials three years in a row.
Other achievements include finishing third in the Corsair Super 8 Starcraft II Battlegrounds Competition, placing fourth in the 2013 Do Gaming Championships, and winning many online cups and tournaments.
Anderson received his Protea colours and a full sponsorship to represent South Africa internationally in South Korea, Azerbaijan, and Romania.
MyGaming caught up with Anderson to learn more about him, how he supports himself, and what his gaming rig looks like.
Are you a full-time gamer, or do you have a day job?
I was competing full-time for about a year, but I have a day job now.
How many hours per day do you practice competitive gaming?
Now that I have a job, I practice around 2 hours a day during the week and more on weekends. When I was gaming full-time I practiced around 6 to 8 hours per day.
Is it possible to sustain yourself financially in South Africa as a full-time gamer?
It depends on what game you’re competing in. For StarCraft 2 and most other competitive games I’d say it is near impossible. We just don’t have enough tournaments here, and the latency is terrible. That’s why it’s so important to get the chance to compete internationally, where you can show people your potential and perhaps get an offer to stay in a gaming house overseas, which is what happened to Pandatank.
Which games do you like to play, apart from StarCraft 2?
Other games that I’ve played recently are Fallout 4, Heroes of the Storm, Life is Strange, and The Walking Dead.
Apart from gaming, what activities do you like?
Doing visual effects and animation was a hobby of mine, but now I do it professionally which I love. I also enjoy playing squash, playing the piano, and watching series.
Can you share details of your gaming rig?
- CPU – Intel i5-3470 @ 3.20GHz
- Graphics card – Nvidia GTX 660 3GB
- RAM – 16GB DDR3
- Keyboard and mouse – Corsair K70 RGB Mechanical Keyboard, Corsair M95 Performance MMO & RTS Laser Mouse, Corsair H1500 7.1 Headset.
- Screen – Old 4:3 Acer screen
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I would have loved to be a pro gamer – I’ve put in the time in my youth. My wife and I LAN almost every day – we’re doing Divinity at the moment, LANning LoL next weekend, did Diablo 3 to Paragon 555 in Jan this year. I’m currently doing the new NFS, playing Assassins Creed Black Flag again and still need to get to my Dragon Age 3 for the DLC I got with Origin Access. I see they are now introducing eSports as a school activity so maybe it can be a reality for my son in the next 15 years.
It is sad to see that you can have protea colours and yet not a badass sponsored rig. My PC at home is not the best but it is marginally better and still relevant to play everything at full HD. I do dream of 29″ gaming monitors, wireless 7.1 headsets, m2 drives, DDR4, etc.
If Corsair/Asus/Alienware etc. was sponsoring me I would make them a big list of “must have” components to ensure I play at my best.
I think the fact we South Africans play on average PCs with below average internet makes us to be more skilled because we need to compensate for performance and lag – running a game on 30fps with 700ms latency can really handicap you!