"Direct Talk"

Our guest today is Tokido, a professional gamer.

Tokido is part of the world of esports,

competitive, multiplayer gaming.

One hundred million people around the globe compete in esports,

and the total viewing audience is 500 million.

Esports is also a billion-dollar-a-year business,

and is being considered for future inclusion in the Olympics.

Tokido is a leading esports competitor.

In 2017, he took home a title

at a premier international fighting game tournament.

But he has a surprising background.

In college he dreamed of becoming not a gamer,

but a biomaterials engineer.

So how did he end up as a pro gamer?

Tokido shares how he took a big bet on gaming.

Gaming with Passion

We play video games with absolute intensity.

We play with so much passion

that I think it's fair to call us "athletes."

2017. Las Vegas, USA.

The Evolution Championship Series

is the world's largest fighting game tournament.

This packed crowd is about to watch the finals

for the fighting game "Street Fighter V."

That's it! Tokido is the Evolution 2017 champion!

He's done it!

You guys know from my face, I am so happy now!

Everybody, give it up for Tokido.

Tokido took home 35,750 US dollars.

The atmosphere in there was the best.

As we built towards the climax, the voltage just kept ramping up.

I'll never forget that.

I think we had close to 10,000 people there.

They even broadcast it on ESPN.

And five million viewers were streaming online,

watching on their devices.

The biggest prize I ever won in a single tournament is 150,000 dollars.

Tokido's life revolves completely around gaming.

He practices eight hours a day.

What are these weights doing in his room?

After game time is over, he drinks a protein shake...

and does an intense hour of strength training.

This, too, is part of being a pro gamer.

In a competition, especially the finals or something like that,

there's so much tension.

You're just sitting there playing a video game,

but your heart is pounding.

Strength training is a good way

to prepare your body for those intense conditions.

Tokido also trains at a karate dojo.

Doing karate is great.

Karate is about your form, right?

You practice these forms, and then you use them in actual sparring.

That's the goal you work towards.

Alternating between actual fights and training,

you eliminate inefficiencies and improve precision.

It's exactly the same thing I do when I play a game.

Tokido was born in 1985.

His father was a lecturer at a medical school,

and his mother was a dentist.

In third grade, he changed schools,

and encountered bullying as the new kid.

My classmates acted like I didn't exist.

It was a really painful experience.

It's tough being the outsider as an elementary school kid.

The reason I got so deep into fighting games

is that I didn't have any friends to play with,

but one day I played a fighting game with my cousin.

And it was a lot of fun.

From then on, Tokido would come home from school

and immediately dive into gaming.

When I was playing games, I could forget about all the bad stuff.

In hindsight, I see that it was probably a way to escape reality.

As he got older, Tokido began frequenting arcades.

It was an era when video games were considered a bad influence.

Gamers like Tokido were looked down upon by society.

But he didn't neglect his studies,

and earned a spot at the University of Tokyo,

the toughest school in Japan to get into.

Playing games and studying are actually quite similar.

It takes time to learn and memorize things,

so that you can perform well

and ultimately get the answers right on the test.

In gaming, you practice day after day,

and then you show your stuff at the tournament.

One shot.

I think that's something games and school have in common.

Tokido was earning a reputation as an amateur gamer

while studying biomaterials engineering at the University of Tokyo.

His research publication won an international prize.

But after starting graduate school,

he wasn't accepted to the lab he wanted to join,

which brought him many sleepless nights.

Around that time, Umehara Daigo, a mentor to Tokido,

announced that he was becoming the first Japanese pro gamer.

Tokido wondered if he could do it too.

But was devoting his life to video games really a good idea?

Huh? I had never even imagined

you could make a living playing video games.

I hadn't even realized it was a possible career path until then.

Should he become a professional gamer?

Tokido sought out Daigo's advice.

Right off the bat, he said that I should just get a normal job.

Simple as that.

Then, right as we were leaving, he said,

"But you've only got one life to live."

Then Tokido spoke with his father, Hisashi,

now a medical school professor.

He was a strict, stern father.

I thought talking with him about it would be pointless.

But his response really surprised me.

He said, "Oh is that what was troubling you?

I think you should do it, go pro."

At one point, my dad had wanted to be a rock musician.

Something happened and he had to give it up, very reluctantly.

He thought that if I had a chance, then why not give it a shot?

I suspect that was his thinking.

Tokido quit graduate school.

In 2010, at the age of 25, he announced he was turning pro

and proceeded to go on a big winning streak.

Tokido had a signature style in this era.

Playing as a character called "Akuma,"

he would knock his opponents over with a leg sweep,

then attack from above.

It was an all-offense style that pinned down the opponent.

People gave me the nickname "Ice Age."

I really wasn't very tactical.

I just stuck with my set pattern and played the game my way.

By "Ice Age," they meant that my style was cold, it was boring.

But I didn't care at all, as long as I was winning.

Eventually, though, his opponents figured out his style,

and wins turned to losses.

I was losing a shocking amount.

Just getting crushed.

And I was so beaten down I couldn't play well.

The players I was training with were saying things to me like,

"The way you're playing is letting us down."

I felt pretty bad about that.

Tokido went back to the drawing board,

analyzing the technique of the world's best players,

including Daigo.

They had a lot of different tricks. I never noticed that before.

In the first few matches against someone,

you figure out what stuff they have,

and then you figure out what stuff you have that will work against them.

You bust out a new strategy.

Like, if I had potatoes, onions, and carrots,

the me back then would have made the most obvious thing.

A simple curry.

But the truly great players try out all sorts of possibilities.

They come up with recipes you would never expect.

That's part of their success.

Tokido stopped worrying about winning above all else.

If he was able to discover a new tactic,

then even a defeat became a success.

In 2017, this new approach took him to Evolution,

the world's biggest fighting game event.

In the final, Tokido was up against Punk,

a fierce American competitor who was favored to win.

What makes Punk so different from anyone else are his reflexes.

They're inhuman, superhuman.

He wants to be able to take advantage of those reflexes.

So my strategy was not to get in too close.

I would fight him by keeping some distance between the two of us.

At this tournament, Punk was 18 years old,

an up-and-coming star with a string of tournament wins.

Against an opponent like this,

Tokido knew it was crucial to take the initial rounds.

The final begins.

Tokido's character is in the blue.

Punk's is wearing pink.

Tokido's plan works. He takes the first set.

Punk seems dismayed. He almost can't believe he's losing.

Contrast that with Tokido,

who faced countless crushing losses on his way to this stage.

He looks calm and confident.

If he wins this round, he wins the championship.

Tokido unleashes a powerful move.

Flustered, Punk loses his focus for just a moment,

and lands right on the fireball.

That's it! Tokido is the Evolution 2017 champion!

The moment I won was just incredible.

Almost 10,000 people chanting my name.

"Tokido!"

Standing in the middle of a crowd that big,

hearing all those voices, I won't have many moments like that again.

Tokido!

Tokido has continued to compete successfully on the world stage.

He always tries to fire up the audience with his play.

It's something that he believes is vital.

I hope we can improve the status of gaming.

The generations that came before us didn't have it easy at all.

They had so much passion,

but even though they wanted to share that with the world

to awe people, to move people, the world wouldn't accept it.

And I'm sure that hurt a lot.

But we're now in an era where we can show to people proudly

that you're allowed to put all of your passion,

your whole heart into gaming.

So I believe that's something I have to do.

(Do you have any words to live by?)

"Every day, evolve."

I have to compete against players from all over the world,

and that competition is fierce.

In order to survive, I need to keep evolving, every day.

I want my opponents to say,

"Wow, you have that technique down too?!"

I want to surprise them.

That's part of my strategy.

And because I want to do that,

I have to keep practicing each and every day.

That's it.