How PUBG Mobile Changed My Life

There’s a different version of my life — one that seems much more likely — where I become a sailor in the Turkish military. That’s the path I was on for a long time, and it’s a very respectable one. A ton of my friends are still in marine school, but in my heart, I always knew it wasn’t for me.

At the same time, there weren’t a lot of options for careers for people where I’m from. When I was young I dreamed of maybe becoming a pilot, but that felt unrealistic. It would take many years and a lot of money and my family — honestly, we struggled a lot growing up. So my goal was always to figure out a way to help provide for them as soon as I could. Marine school seemed like a way to do that.

I grew up in a small town in Turkey about 1,000 kilometers outside of Istanbul. For most of my life, I was surrounded by mountains, not buildings. There wasn’t always stuff to do to occupy our time, so I developed two passions: eating (mostly adana kebap) and gaming.

Not many people have full PC setups where I’m from, so a lot of my social life revolved around internet cafes. I played PC games as much as I could, but there’s only so much time you can spend playing inside a cafe. One day one of my friends introduced me to PUBG Mobile and I was basically hooked right away. At first, we only played in sniper mode. It was really fun just messing around and being a deadeye. Once I saw that I was dominating a lot of rounds, I decided to start playing ranked matches. And pretty much from then on, it was all PUBG Mobile for me.

I started to prefer playing on my phone and spent less time playing PC games. I liked the challenge. On the phone, the screen is smaller, and there’s no keyboard. So the difference between success and failure can come down to millimeters of difference in where you place your finger.

When I was supposed to be thinking about ships and naval instruments, my mind was on the game. Not just PUBG Mobile but the community surrounding it. When I wasn’t playing, I was watching streams and learning more about how the professional ecosystem worked.

As I kept moving up the rankings, I started playing with really good players — the kind that were either pros or trying to become pros. And eventually, I grew more and more confident that I was at that level.

You can’t enter tournaments until you’re 16, so I streamed every event I could. I kept up to date on the meta and studied all the strategies and approaches the pros were using. If I couldn’t turn pro right away, I wanted to make sure that as soon as I turned 16, I was ready.

By then I’d built up a really good network in the competitive community. It turns out that’s really important in esports — and in life in general. My friend (more like a brother, to be honest) Deadline, helped me get a spot on his team.

I knew right away it was something I wanted to do. But it also meant moving to Istanbul — a place I’d never been — to live on my own for the first time. My family couldn’t understand it. They didn’t know anything about PUBG Mobile or how seriously people took it. I was just a teenager saying I wanted to move across the country to live in a house with strangers and play games on my phone — and maybe make a living doing it. It honestly did sound crazy.

I recognized the risk, but it didn’t outweigh the opportunity I saw to change my family’s circumstances. The PUBG Mobile fanbase stretched around the globe — I wasn’t the only person who felt so passionately about it. And if I reached my potential and made a name for myself in a pro scene, it wouldn’t just change my life but all of our lives. That more than anything motivated me to figure it out, even if my family couldn’t understand the vision.

After a lot of arguing my mom agreed to give me her I.D. to go to Istanbul (which is required for underage travel). It was definitely a shock to go from a place where there’s not a lot going on to one of the busiest cities in the world. I felt like I spent my first few months in Istanbul just feeling lost all the time. The way I coped was by really pouring everything I could into the game — developing my style and growing.

I’m a sneaky player. I pride myself on that — outthinking my opponent instead of just outgunning them. I mean, outgunning them is fun too. I’m always strategizing in-game, plotting out scenarios and how I’ll react. I’ve played so many matches that it’s hard to present a scenario where I don’t have some kind of muscle memory to deal with. But the main thing is that when I’m playing the game, it consumes me completely. I don’t get distracted or let my emotions outside of the game come into the equation. At any given moment, there’s the best possible decision you can make and I’m always working towards teaching myself to make that choice every single time.

When I signed with S2G, I could sense that we could do really big things. It was really cool playing for a big Turkish org comprised of Turkish players. Seeing how our styles meshed together, I knew we had a lot of potential.

Going into last year’s PMGC, nobody really expected that much from our team. But the beauty of LAN tournaments is that all things are equal. Everyone has the same ping, the same environment. So no, I’m not surprised we won last year’s championship in Jakarta. But I was surprised when I heard fans of other orgs chanting “S2G! S2G! S2G!” by the end of the tournament.

I will remember that moment forever.

But of all the memories I made from winning last year’s PMGC, the best one is being able to send some of my winnings back home. For us, this is life-changing money. And I go to sleep smiling every night knowing it’s only just the beginning.

This year, the PMGC Grand Final is in Istanbul and I’m excited to hear those “S2G” chants louder than ever. It’ll also be nice to invite my friends from other orgs to the place I call home. I just hope they aren’t expecting to leave with a trophy.