Two young Kiwis that won $75,000 each in the world's biggest Fortnite video game tournament say they know they are now role models - and that they're living proof that gaming can be a career.
Chris "CoverH" Hunt, 18, and Sam "Twizz" Pearson, 23 came last in the 'duos' section of the tournament in New York this week, but despite their finishing spot, still pocketed a considerable prize purse.
Even qualifying for the tournament was extremely difficult - they underwent a 10-week qualification process against millions of others from around the world and made it into the final 100 to fly to New York.
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The pair have said that they were surprised at the play style in the US, having only really practiced on Oceania-based game servers, and that they have learned a lot of new tactics which they will now put into their own games.
"We learned a lot from it," Chris says.
"We definitely gained a lot of experience and knowledge about the game.
"Being in New Zealand, or the Oceania region, makes it a lot harder to compete because we just have a much smaller player base, so the quality of practice just isn't as high as the other regions.
"It was a completely different game, pretty much."
The inaugural competition was held in New York.
It's fair to call themselves athletes, they say, because they practice just as hard and do everything they can to keep themselves at the top of their game as athletes in other (perhaps more traditional) sports.
"I'd say there's not much difference between the levels of work or hours that [players] put in - the determination," Sam says.
"We see kids as young as 13 or 14 being put up in these big events and there's nothing that you can really take away from these kids - they put in the hours, they put in the work.
"There's a lot of professionalism revolving around esports, and while the same level of athleticism might not be there, we're definitely athletes."
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Sam says he understands that other younger players probably look up to them now, and he embraces that.
"I want to be a role model, I want to be a positive one," he says.
"I want to show that there is a career out there and an opportunity for kids who do want to pursue this type of thing, but they need to understand what kind of work it takes, and how much you do need to commit to it."
Chris has been playing games for "so long now", but only started seriously playing competitively in the past two or three years.
"As soon as Fortnite came out, I've just been playing it every day and committing probably at least five hours a day," he says.
"Now it's more like seven-eight hours a day, maybe a bit more."
Sam says gaming for them, now, is not even really about entertainment.
"For us this is work," Sam says.
"There's a big difference between playing games you enjoy and playing the game that you play professionally, so for us this is definitely work - we be as professional as we can about it and we take it very seriously."
The pair say they won't have any downtime after their tournament - they'll be straight back to practicing as soon as possible.
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