Modern Day Spartan Petra Stoker

Modern Day Spartan

WORK HARD TO PLAY HARD

Professional esports player Petra Stoker

Petra Stoker is one of few female professional esports players in the Netherlands, and one of the world’s most successful Valorant-players. From her small room in Frysian Heerenveen, she dominates the Valorant playing fields together with her team. “When we lose, we perfect our gameplay, so it won’t happen again.”

By Ilona de Bok / Photography Martijn van der Sanden

Her eyes are focused on the screen and all that’s happening in the virtual world of Valorant, a first person shooter. The hand in view on the screen casually flicks between nunchucks, knives and all sorts of weaponry. Her real left hand looks glued to the keyboard, frantically pressing keys. Her right arm moves in short bursts to gage her playing field, all the while chatting amicably to her teammates scattered across the world.

Petra is one of the very few female professional esports players in the Netherlands. She is part of G2 Esports’ all female Valorant team, G2 Gozen. The 29-year old Frysian is pretty senior for the game scene, but she is not planning on retiring soon. She’s ranked number 28 in the top 100 of female players worldwide.

Her drive is incredible. Every day she and her teammates meet up from noon onwards to train, study theory, and analyze previous games and maps until they switch off the computer again some eight hours later. And then, just for fun, she goes online to stream, chat or play some more. Her life is centered around gaming and everything that comes with it. And she loves it.

Already competitive As a little kid, Petra and her twin sister would play the videogame Unreal with their dad, where they would kill monsters. “I would turn down the sound, otherwise it was too scary for me”, reminisces Petra. “I was already competitive then.” When they got Call of Duty 4, her approach became more serious. She joined a clan and went to LAN-parties to compete. Then all her (mostly male) Call of Duty friends started playing Counterstrike.

“I didn’t like the game at first because no one wanted to play me. I was just that bad”, sniggers Petra. “I was determined to get better, so I put the hours in. You need a certain amount of talent to get a good game sense. I meet loads of people who practise every day but don’t reach the top. Luckily I had that talent and I was able to hone it. I like getting better. I want to be the best.”

_I was determined to get better, so I put the hours in

Valorant

Valorant is a free online game, developed and published by Riot Games. Every team in the game consists of five agents who play on different maps. These maps represent different countries and cultures around the world. In a game two teams battle each other, one the attacker, the other the defender. The goal is to either detonate a bomb-like device called the Spike on a specified location or to make sure it can’t be detonated.

Counterstrike turned out to be the first game that put her on the track to becoming a professional esports player.

The quality of her team is in its determination. “All my teammates have played (semi) pro-sports. So have I. And it helps mentality-wise. You know if you want to become the best, you have to work for it. I remember our first tournament as a team. We thought we had a fair chance to win. We knew we were good. And then we lost. It hurt, but as professional athletes we already knew how to lose. When we do, we quickly analyze what went wrong and go to perfect our gameplay, so it won’t happen again.”

Dominated by men Being a woman in esports is not unique, but the professional gaming world is still dominated by men. There are thousands of professional esport players worldwide, playing in separate men’s and women’s leagues.

In some ways it’s an advantage to be a woman, in other ways it’s not. “There are less women playing the game, so getting to the top is easier. But on the other hand, men do earn much more than we do”, says Stoker. Looking at 2021, the best paid male gamer was NOtail, earning nearly 7,2 million dollar, while the best earning female athlete received little over 440 thousand.

Reaching the top and getting taken on in a professional team didn’t go as smoothly as expected. “I worked at an office and when I lost that job, I was asked to join a pro-team. I would earn 500 to 800 euros a month but thought I could do it, since I didn’t have a job and was still living at home”, remembers Petra.

_As professionals we already knew how to lose

She was part of her current team for a while when they were still playing Counterstrike. When she was dismissed from that team, she decided to start her own Counterstrike team.

“I got my ultimate revenge. We ended up playing in the finals of a big tournament against them. Because I knew their every move, we managed to beat them. Not long after I was asked back on the team. When I told my teammates, they said they would let me go only if I became the best player on the best team. And so I did.”