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It's just before 11:00am on a Thursday, and I'm standing in the kitchen of a share house in suburban Sydney.
It's surprisingly clean, considering that eight guys, most of them in their early 20s, live here.
Bryce Paule enters the kitchen, grumbling about the fact that it's his turn to do the dishes.
His housemate, Mitch, does the cooking for the house. Another housemate, Simon Papamarkos, heads to the fridge and — much to Bryce's disgust — has leftover lasagne for breakfast.
So far, it's what you might expect from a group of young guys living together.
But this is no regular share house. This is the home of the Chiefs, one of the oldest and most successful professional video gaming teams in Australia.
In a league of their own
The Chiefs are professional players of League of Legends: a five-on-five online battle game.
There are five members: Bryce Paule, Simon Papamarkos, Samuel Broadley, Brandon Holland and Quin Korebrits.
They also live with their coach Josh Carr-Hummerston, their manager Mitch Atherton, and the team's owner, Frank Li. And then there's the cat Lucy, an old stray who turned up on their doorstep and never left.
Sam, Simon and Brandon have been playing together since 2013, with Bryce joining in 2015 and Quin last year.
They get paid by Riot Games and The Chiefs Esports club, as well as receiving match fees and tournament winnings.
Each week, they travel to the headquarters of Riot Games Oceania in central Sydney to compete in the Oceanic Pro League (OPL), broadcast live online to thousands of viewers.
There are analysts who compare the teams and commentators who give a running commentary of the action.
The players, all of them male, wear jerseys covered with the logos of their sponsors.
"Professional video games are played on an insane level," Michael Hing, comedian and host of the OPL broadcasts, says.
"These people are training 50, 60 hours a week. They are watching video reviews and footage of their opponents."
As an example, Hing points to a character in the game — a champion called Thresh — who throws a hook that opponents try to dodge.
"Players will watch videos of their opponents dodge patterns and then memorise them," Hing explains.
"You need to know how your opponent is going to move so you can anticipate where they will be, and throw your hook to hit them."
More than just teammates
When I visit, the Chiefs are playing practice matches as part of their preparation for the OPL finals.
One by one, the teammates emerge from their bedrooms, and after sorting out who gets to put their load of washing on first, they sit down at a bank of five computers which dominates the back room of the house.
The rest of the day will be devoted to playing a series of practice games against other teams online, and exhaustively analysing their own performances.
According to Simon, it took a while for everyone to adjust to the pressures of living and working with their teammates — especially as Sam was the only team member who had lived out of home before.
"Never being able to get away from anyone and always having to confront issues immediately … we weren't very good at doing that initially," he says.
"We're a lot better at that now, so there's a lot less conflict."
Even though the team spends all day gaming in the same room, Bryce says they usually end up spending most of their spare time together too.
"There's no escape," he jokes.
"We all go the gym together, we eat together. It's funny, you want to have time alone, do something with your friends.
"But because we're not from Sydney, we are each other's friends. So if we all want to do something fun, then we go together anyway."
The Chiefs are one of the longest-running teams in the OPL, and for years they were the best team in Oceania.
"Before 2017, the Chiefs won everything," Hing says.
"They were one of the only teams to represent Oceania internationally, and they were thought of as unbeatable."
But the Chiefs have never achieved their most important goal — making it to the League of Legends World Championship. It's a huge event, held in packed stadiums and watched live online by millions of viewers.
"Every League of Legends player ever will want to play at worlds," Bryce says.
"Our whole careers, we've been chasing that and we've been minutely close — literally two games away from attending worlds. We've always fallen over face first just before the finish line."
Ups and downs
While the Chiefs used to dominate the Oceanic Pro League, Hing says that this year the competition is fiercer.
"Now all the other teams have professional coaches, they live in team houses, they go on international boot camps," he says.
"These are things that a year or two ago, the Chiefs were one of the only teams to be doing.
"I think that the Chiefs are still a huge chance to go to the grand final, win the grand final and go onto worlds. But the problem is that there's doubt for the first time."
The first weekend of the OPL finals go perfectly for the Chiefs — they beat both opponents, Sin Gaming and Legacy Esports, 3-0.
But they end up losing the grand final 3-1 to a team called the Dire Wolves.
Once again, the Chiefs have fallen short of their dream to make it to the League of Legends World Championship.
They're devastated by the loss, and still licking their wounds, when I speak to them in the days following the grand final.
"It's always pretty rough, early after the loss — you replay the games in your head, thinking about what you should have done better," Sam says.
"We've never had an off season this long," Bryce adds.
"I have all this time that I don't know what to do with!"
Simon is still working out whether he's going to say on with the Chiefs, or whether it's time to retire from his international gaming career.
"I think I'll look back a lot later in life and laugh at myself for getting so involved in a video game," he says.
"But I think I'll be proud of the amount I was able to accomplish, even if it didn't culminate in a traditional hero's journey where everything works out in the end."
Topics: games, games-industry, sydney-2000
First posted