Who made the Professional Players vs Veteran Players comic?

SrGrafo, the Reddit artist known for editable comics, who posted it on October 12, 2019.

How does the format work?

Two enormous figures loom over a small one — object-labeling for being outclassed by multiple tiers of people at once, with the small figure's opinion rendered irrelevant.

Why do SrGrafo's comics spread so fast?

He draws in a clean, simple style and publishes editable templates alongside the originals, actively encouraging remixing.

Professional Players vs. Veteran Players meaning, origin & examples

Q: What is the most famous version?

One labelling the giants as people with far more free time — children at home, streamers playing eight hours a day — and the small figure as someone squeezing in games after work. It took over 26,000 points.

Origin

The comic was drawn by SrGrafo, the Reddit artist whose work is designed from the outset to be edited by other people, and posted on October 12, 2019.

The composition shows two enormous seated figures looming over a small figure at their feet. In the original labelling, the giants are “professional players” and “veteran players,” and the small figure is the artist complaining about a game’s mechanics — the joke being that any criticism is instantly dwarfed by people vastly better at the game than you are.

What it means / how it’s used

The format is object-labeling for being outclassed twice over. Two superior parties overshadow a third, and the third’s perspective is rendered irrelevant by their mere presence.

Its distinctive feature is that there are two giants, not one. That matters: the joke is not simply “someone is better than me,” it is that there are multiple tiers above the speaker, each with its own claim to authority, and the speaker occupies none of them.

Common uses:

Gaming versions about skill and time investment.
Workplace versions about experience hierarchies.
Academic versions about levels of expertise.
Self-deprecating versions where the small figure is the poster.

The most-copied variation labelled the giants as people with far more free time — children still at home, streamers playing eight hours a day — and the small figure as someone squeezing in a few games after work. That post took more than 26,000 points and defined how most people read the format.

How it spread

As with SrGrafo’s other work, spread was fast because the artist publishes clean, editable templates alongside the originals and actively encourages remixing. Variations appeared across gaming subreddits within days and the format settled into steady use through late 2019 and 2020.

It belongs to a broader shift in how templates are made. Rather than being scavenged from film or television, an increasing share of modern formats are drawn deliberately by artists who intend them to be relabelled — which produces cleaner geometry and clearer roles than any found image can offer.

Notable examples & variations

The free-time hierarchy version, the format’s defining use.
Workplace and academic seniority applications.
Versions adding a third giant for another tier.
Redrawn versions in other art styles.
Inversions where the small figure turns out to be the strongest.

Legacy / cultural impact

The comic is one of SrGrafo’s most-used templates, alongside We Did It, We Time Traveled, and it fills a genuinely specific slot: the experience of having an opinion invalidated not by argument but by other people’s credentials.

That situation is permanent in any community organised around skill, which is why the format has stayed useful long after the gaming discourse that produced it moved on.