OpTic NaDeSHoT: A Gamer's Story

        Would you ever think someone could make a career out of playing video games? Neither did Mat Haag, but over his five years of competing he went from making $13.50 an hour at McDonald's to making over $700,000 according to (NYtimes.com) a year for playing Call of Duty, but it wasn't always like this. Mr. Haag has worked hard to get where he is today. Let's start at the beginning: Mat started playing video games when he was about three years old. He didn't get into competitive gaming until he was six, when he tuned into a Halo 2 match on the USA Channel. Shortly after, he received an Xbox for his birthday and an internet router. 

     After the release of Call of Duty 4, Mat made the switch from participating in competitive Halo to Call of Duty. At this point in time, the competitive scene in Call of Duty was really small and LAN tournaments were uncommon, but Mat managed to convince his parents to attend MLG Anaheim in 2009, where he placed in a disappointing 4th-place finish. Shortly after the tournament, he made his now famous gamer-tag, NaDeSHoT.  Mat's competitive career would be inconsistent (with him constantly being on different teams) until 2012, with the release of Call of Duty: Black Ops 2, when he was drafted to the Optic Gaming Competitive Team, where he still plays to this day. 

    Though winning tournaments can bring about a great payout, Mat's main source of income is YouTube and live streaming. Starting in 2010, after he sold his laptop and saved up his money from McDonald's, Mat bought a computer and started his YouTube channel. "It takes patience," he recalled from his interview with The New York Times, "I didn't actually make much money." That was until early 2013 when his channel exploded with subscribers (it took only six months for his channel to reach from 200,000 subscribers to 700,000). Mat's channel currently stands at 1,584,893 subscribers. Now, with myself being a fan of NaDeSHoT, I'm happy to see how far he has come, and I look forward to seeing how far he'll go in the future. 

-Thomas Brown