*By Jimmy Mondal*
Will “wiill” Sims, in-game leader of the NobleGG team that recently qualified for the NPL preseason, started gaming as a League of Legends player in 2012. But his League of Legends skills didn’t foreshadow his later esports success.
“I was never personally that good,” he told Cheddar Sports with a laugh, “so I ended up just trying the coaching route.”
Sims continued to coach and manage League of Legends, he says, until Riot Games started to franchise out and he realized his chances of getting in without the connections or accolades that some of his peers possessed were slim.
At this point, he was looking for a game that was “accessible and something that you could get into early.” He realized that getting to a game late makes it harder to gain access to its inner circle and advance.
That’s when he discovered PUBG, right as it was first announced.
Sims jumped into the competitive scene in February, eventually playing in amateur 2v2 tournaments with some semi-professionals who happened to be missing team members for a full-on four-player squad.
After gaining experience through the amateur circuit and proving himself to the semi-professional community, he started to make connections to members of the NobleGG squad. However, Sims didn’t have the experience of some of the other players.
Although PUBG was his first first-person shooter game, Sims was able to prove his value by using the analytical and leadership skills he picked up while coaching League of Legends ー like “how to apply strategies, how to make a team work together, how to make people mesh.”
When coming to PUBG, he said he asked himself: “What other avenue can I approach to make myself valuable to the team? What can I offer?
“And it came down to the intellectual side of the game ーbeing able to use strategies, being able to adapt and think on the fly and being able to adjust to the situation,” he said adding, “which is what battle royale’s all about.”
Sims qualified with his team for the upcoming National PUBG League. Preseason starts in mid-January.
These are the headlines you Need 2 Know for Monday, Feb. 4, 2019.
While the New England Patriots and Los Angeles Rams face off for the Super Bowl title, advertisers will be waging their own battles during Twitter's Brand Bowl 53. Ryan Oliver, senior director of brand strategy for the U.S. and Canada at Twitter ($TWTR), said the Brand Bowl is a celebration of the advertisers that are being talked about on Twitter.
Wine manufacturer Yellow Tail can’t buy a national ad during the Super Bowl ー but that won't stop the company from getting its “Tastes like Happy” campaign out to the public in spectacular fashion. To skirt the category exclusivity hold that Anheuser-Busch InBev ($BUD) has on the Big Game, Yellow Tail bought 81 local ads ー which cover about 90 percent of the nation.
Millions of people around the world are getting ready for the Super Bowl on Sunday. And while the day is all fun and games, there's still a serious discussion happening about player safety. Now, two leading sports brands have teamed up to design new, state-of-the-art equipment using 3D printing. Joe DeSimone, co-founder and CEO of Carbon, stopped by Cheddar with more on how technology is making football more safe, head to toe.
Luke Wilson is taking a short break from Hollywood. A commercial break. The "Rushmore" and "Old School" actor is starring in his first Super Bowl commercial, and he says the 30-second Colgate spot will probably get more views than any of his movies. "I think more people will see this than any movie I've ever been in for sure," Wilson told Cheddar on Friday.
Draftkings CEO Jason Robins told Cheddar that New Jersey residents alone could wager as much as $100 million on the Super Bowl, the first time sports betting will be legal there for the big game.
Although it has 3 million customers, home security company SimpliSafe isn’t a household name yet. It’s hoping that will change on Sunday after its first Super Bowl ad airs.“In a market where people are trying to lock you in a contract or harvest your data, we’re trying to keep you safe,” brand creative director Wade Devers told Cheddar. “There aren’t really a lot of places you can reach the number of people you can reach like the Super Bowl.”
These are the headlines you Need 2 Know for Friday, Feb. 1, 2019.
On Super Bowl Sunday, the Hallmark Channel will be home to the sixth annual Kitten Bowl, the annual matchup of cat-letes held to benefit the North Shore Animal League. Beth Stern, host of the Kitten Bowl and spokesperson for North Shore (and wife to Howard), brought a pair of 12-week Siamese kittens to Cheddar Thursday to help promote a new event this year: the first-ever Cat Bowl.
These are the headlines you Need 2 Know for Wednesday, Jan. 30, 2019.
