Media Production Editor
As an athlete who is simply built different, senior Lachlan Brown masters in a field that exists in the virtual world of Tom Clancy’s Rainbow Six Siege. Formerly one of the highest paid amateurs (under 18) in Siege, Brown has signed with professional organizations in the past, such as Project Neo. He also won several tournaments in previous years with prize pools of thousands of dollars, “most recently and notably, Upsurge Premier League.”
Brown first got into the game several years ago when “A buddy told me, ‘You need to play this game, it’s really good.’ At the time I didn’t really have a PC; I was playing on a Mac. Once I got a PC, a couple months later, I got Siege and I played that for basically 12 hours a day every day for the next three months.”
The world of eSports can be very confusing from the outside, and Brown has wanted to be a part of it for a while. “I saw something on CCS (Cyberathlete Championship Series), a big amateur league, and found I can join a team here. I was always interested in eSports and I thought I might as well look at it and see if it’s a possibility, and we’re here now.” After leaving Project Neo, Brown became a “free agent. I’m doing a bit of coaching for some younger individuals and it’s looking promising.”
After playing at such competitive levels at a young age, Brown has lots of work to do for his role. “Because I’m an analyst and captain, I have to go and do some analysis over our team and see what we should bring into this match and what’s going to work best over our most recent performances.” Not only does Brown look at his team’s gameplay, he also “looks at the other team and see what they are weak on, and how we can capitalize on their weaknesses to help my team succeed.” Spending so much time working on perfecting his gameplay, Brown realizes his school life has taken a hit due to his dedication, since “having to put in 5 plus hours for Siege every night does mean I have much less time for school; in fact, almost none in some cases.”
Despite this, Brown looks forward to a career in eSports, a field very similar to sports such as football or soccer: “It’s just like a sport in most of the background behind it. You’ve got the organizations that have backers and so on and so forth. The only real difference is that it’s much less physical and much more mental.” After high school, Brown plans on joining an official team through his contacts with players in various North American teams. Going forward, Brown aspires to be “the best in the world. Nothing less.”
additional photos courtesy Sasha Ryu
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