This is a bit about my back story and why I joined the GankStars guild, in a future post I’ll write my advice for finding and joining guilds.

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I’ve been a gamer almost all my life and started playing Vainglory in March of this year. I play about an hour a day and it’s an outlet for me to relax and stretch my mind in a different way from my day job.

Before VG I played Starcraft 2 and followed the pro scene for about a year before getting bored. As much as I love SC2 and am fascinated by the eSports community around it, I arrived late to that party. None of my friends are in the scene and it’s too late to have an impact.



About a month ago I became bored with Vainglory. I reached lvl 8 Simply Amazing by playing Solo Q and hit 650 wins. I still didn’t know anyone who played the game I was spending an hour a day on. I follow some streamers like Rumbly and BenTimm who helped me stick with it, but kept feeling like I needed a stronger connection to a group of people to share the journey and feed off of each others’ creativity. I knew that if I was going to keep participating in the growth of the VG community, I needed to join a guild where I could make real friends.

I set out on the VG forums and researched the NA Guilds in the pro scene. GankStars, for anyone who doesn’t know, are considered the current world champions. They took the crown from the former champs Invincible Armada in the Vainglory International Premier League hosted by OGN last month.

I applied to several guilds and connected with their members. By far, GankStars was the most welcoming to me. I’m grateful especially to Sphix, Selene, and MEXI, who were open and kind to me before they even knew me.

GankStars really has an active community of passionate players. Most of them have been playing since the very beginning of Vainglory (Nov. 2014) and the average ranking in the guild is lvl 9 Pinnacle of Awesome (1 lower than the max).

The leaders of GankStars, Pwnt, Iraqi, and FooJee, are also incredibly serious about eSports and their vision for the guild. Pwnt is in the bay area so we had the opportunity to grab coffee and I was genuinely impressed by his vision and dedication to the community.

The thing that’s most exciting to me about Vainglory and GankStars is being a part of the next generation of gaming. eSports is one of the newest and fastest growing industries right now. Some 205M people watched or participated in eSports in 2014–as much as the entire population of Brazil.

As the first massive mobile-based game, Vainglory has the opportunity to far surpass anything that’s out there today. Not only is mobile is the fastest growing technology category, but as of just 2014 US adults spend more time consuming media on their phone than on their desktops (51% vs 41%). Globally the number is even greater as mobile phones provide cheaper and easier access to the internet.

Right now, the opportunity for Vainglory and the opportunity for GankStars is almost limitless. I couldn’t be happier to play with the awesome people in the guild and to watch as Pwnt and the other leaders take a swing at becoming a force in the eSports industry and beyond.