BBC Supergamers Documentary Analysis

Documentaries represent many ideas, groups and versions of reality. Documentary conventions help us understand these ideas. In the documentary BBC Supergamers By Dan Howell In 2016 we are shown many ideas. An example is that there are many sacrifices people have to make to do something they love and become a professional gamer, Greensheep gave up his education to play games, Kasing gave up his family, moving to Berlin to pursue his gaming career and Impaler gave up having a relationship so he could focus on gaming. BBC Supergamers showed us many risks and sacrifices of being a professional gamer. BBC Supergamers represented many ideas of sacrifices and risks throughout the documentary.

In this documentary, we see that professional gamers

This quote tells us that Greensheep put all his focus onto playing games. At the time this documentary was made, he was still trying to deal with schoolwork and his love for gaming. Although gaming is what he loved to do, he must have felt it would have been good to complete school just in case this career didn’t go the way he had hoped. As with the other pro gamer, Matthew Taylor, he was also trying to deal with school and gaming at the same time. He also was trying to deal with the situation of being 3 years behind at school. This shows the idea of a sacrifices that professional gamers had to make in order to have a successful career in

The career could fall apart at any moment and the gamers will have to start from scratch. This can seem during an interview with Impaler, Impaler replied to Dan saying, “If we win the game we’re in, if we lose the game we’re out”. During a different interview, Impaler also said “you might win a tournament today, you might lose one tomorrow”. Greensheep also was talking about doing gaming against his parents wishes saying, “They weren’t very happy about me going into gaming.. they didn’t know where the money was coming. It’s not stable.” The first interview with Impaler showed that the professional gamers could spend so much of their time training for a competition and play games all day and all night yet they could still lose the game at a competition and have to start all over again, there is a fifty-fifty chance that they could win the game. The second Impaler interview told us that there is also a fifty-fifty chance of winning a competition every time. The gamers may win a competition then lose one the next day. There is never a 100% chance of them being undefeated, which adds to the idea of the career being risky as the gamers spend so much of their time and dedicate their lives to gaming and careers. The interview with Greensheep told us that even people outside of the gaming community still agree that the career is unstable. Greensheep’s parents did not agree or like the idea of him going into the career