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Comment from Michael:

Alicia: There's a lot of good work here. You present a good amount of evidence and create a compelling narrative about the rise of eSports and the trials of its competitors. Your enthusiasm for this topic is clear in your writing, and I'm pleased to see you engage with it so thoroughly. There are still ways that this paper might be improved, most notably in small grammar and structural corrections. And while I like the solution you present, in many ways it seems like the solution is already in place, and in the case of scholarships, it is not always clear how these gifts of money will help prevent the injurious lifestyle you identify in the first part of the paper. That said, there is still much to be admired here, and your hard work shows. You should feel proud of the way your writing has improved this quarter.

 Comparing with HCP project, I felt a little disappointed about this paper because I made a big mistake in the final draft--solutions cannot solve the problems I described. 

 

Mengting Zhou

Michael Andreason

Writing 39C

March 10, 2017

 

Solutions of Saving eSports Athletes’ Burn-out and Short Career

Heo “Pawn” Won-seok, a Korean League of Legends professional play and pre-Worlds champion, has suffered from back injury for 2 years because of lack of working-out and long time training (Leaguepedia). Waist injury not only almost ruined his career year, but also leads him in the risk of paralysis. As one of the most popular eSports player in the world, Heo “Pawn” Won-seok did not enjoy too much happiness with the halo of worlds champion. Instead of achieving a higher career goal and win more titles and trophies, he had to choose to retire regretfully and said Good-bye to his favorite eSports stage. According to Ben Casselman, an eSports industry worker, “eSport can be defiend as a static, endurance sport which tests people’s executive functions through a virtual environment.” (Casselman) Contrast eSports with traditional sports, eSports are more static than dynamic, where eSports athletes only move their hand and waist in small ranges of motion while traditional sports players move their bodies a lot at high velocities and wide ranges. Differ from a power or explosive sport like football, soccer and basketball, eSports is closer to an endurance sport such as running. Casselman mentioned that the physical component to eSports is essentially a lot of small movements at the wrists, hands and sometimes shoulders, and players need to sit in front of the screen and focus on gaming for a long time. (Casselman) Players repeated movements over an extended period of time, which cause their waist and shoulder suffer from over fatigue under high pressure. eSports athletes face a much higher risk of burn-out and short career spans because of the lack of physical restraint on the amount an eSports athlete can practice and the constant changing of gameplay by game developers. In order to keep eSports industry develop and grow healthy and prevent the vicious circle of eSports athletes’ hard situation, big game companies like Riot Games, Blizzard released a series of policies to protect eSports professional athlete in order to prevent physical and mental issues. They also collaborated with colleges to encourage non-professional player to get more involved in eSports.

Figure1: common pain patterns

ESports, the billion dollar and rapidly growing industry, is redefining what competition and entertainment look like for the 21st century. Video games have become more and more complex in order to stimulate the consumer's need for cognitive stimulation - many have realized that the best "level" to beat is not a harder boss, but another human player. Competition in multi-player video games bred the idea that gamers competing against one another could be viewed as a sporting event.  By the turning of the 21st century, eSports had begun to blossom through games such as StarCraft and through organizations such as the Korean TV channel OnGameNetwork and the World Cyber Games. However, it was StarCraft 2 (which started the trend) and League of Legends that blew eSports out of the water from a niche hobby into a full blown industry at a global scale. Seo Yuri, a lecturer in the School of Marketing and International Business, Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand, states that this new breed of games were designed and built around competitive play and served as platforms that were challenging for the players and exciting for viewers. The game companies held big and professional tournaments in the traditional sports arena such as Staples Center, pouring up to $5 million money into prize pools, which attracted the interest of many sponsors to improve the tournament. The large amount of prize money inspired teams and players to train hard to compete (Seo). However, While the viewership of eSports has definitely caught up to traditional sports, with the League of Legends world championships beating out viewership for every major sporting event besides college football and the Super Bowl, the career spans of an eSports athletes are nowhere close to as healthy as a traditional sports athlete.

Figure1: League of Legends Worlds Final was held in the Staples Center

Physical exercise, mental/psychological coaching, and diet have become a standard in most professional eSports organization today, eSports athletes still practice much more than traditional athletes do. According to An “Balls” Van Le, a former player of Cloud 9(one of the best team NA), he said it is not uncommon for team players to practice between 12 and 14 hours per day, which leaving little time for a healthy meal and good night’s sleep. (Le) This lifestyle can even lead top-tier players to suffer serious injuries. Yan “Clearlove” Nuo, one of the most famous Chinese League of Legends player, said: “we only do three things every day—sleep, eat and play league of legends. Sometimes I am really tired of playing games because of the endless training.” (Nuo) Suitable situation can be necessary to even up eSports athletes’ intense focus and reduplicative actions needed for back to back, whole-day practicing and tournaments.

On top of a much more demanding daily and weekly schedule, eSports athletes do not get very much off time - the off season for eSports is extremely short, and there are always 3rd party tournaments called “Majors” hosted that players are pushed into playing in order to gain more exposure as well as earn more tournament money.  For example, League of Legends spring season starts at the middle of January and end at the end of April. Two weeks later, the postseason season starts. It lasts three month to allow teams to compete with each other, which is the only way that teams in different countries can get the limited entrance ticket to the Worlds final. The Worlds is held between September and November. Besides regular season, there are a lot of different Cup such as Mid-Season Cup and All-Stars. (Riot Games) Therefore, comparing with traditional sports, which usually have offseason, the professional eSports player rarely get time to take a rest.

A Physical injuries are also prevalent as well - although eSports athletes will not receive any brain concussions or broken ankles, minus a few odd accidents, bad posture and major repetitive movements on fragile parts of the body can easily lead to carpal tunnel and back problems.  Wrist injuries are one of the most common reasons an eSports athlete will end up having to retire. In 2014, Clinton “Fear” Loomis, one of the best DOTA 2 players in North America, underwent surgery to repair his tendonitis, which result from overtaxing the hand and forearm muscles.(Graham) The irregular diet routine and long training time lead professional eSports to get involved in a dangerous situation.

What’s more, the tiring regimen of an eSports athlete also takes a major toll on the player's personal and social development. eSports athletes often find themselves missing out on what most of their peers are going through.  Out of 100 players in the North American and European League Championship Series, only a few of them have ever went to college, and only one, Daerek Hart AKA Lemonnation, even holds a master degree of computer science in Utah University( Leaguepedia).  In Asia, there are still many professional gamers who have yet to even finish high school.  Player’s rarely have time to get out and date either - as mentioned previously, eSports athletes have almost no break time or off-season to spend with a significant other.  As former professional League of Legends player Peter (Yiliang) “Doublelift” Peng famously stated in an interview (not retired at the time of the interview), “almost every time a big pro player retires is because he gets a girlfriend and gets burned out from competing” - ironically, he retired a few months later for this exact reason. Marany eSports athletes do not finish high school, let alone college, and while gaming and STEM are correlated, most of them while bright, spend their time gaming rather than studying, leading to poor grades. If they do not manage to make it onto a professional team, many of them will also fail to develop healthy habits on their own. A famous games journalist Karissa Leanne said that many opportunities into trying to become an online livestreamer, getting donations and money for letting fans watch their gameplay - but that only works for a very select few. (Leanne) Only a few players who have many fans can survive in the competitive streaming industry, which caused the hard situation of most professional players’ retiring life. They spent their best teenage year on donating to eSports industry without thinking what they can do after retiring.

As eSports industry developed prosperously, game companies realized the importance of regulating eSports teams in tournament league and managing athletes market, in order to prevent the unhealth moving of eSports. Established in 2012, the Worlds eSports Association(WESA) is the first eSports regulation council to standardizes tournament regulations, player representation as well as revenue sharing for teams. (WESA) The mission of WESA is presenting on the its official website:

…Developing and implementing elements of regulation, player representation and fairness in sharing in the success of its undertakings, the World Esports Association will enable esports Teams and Players to operate under a transparent umbrella that provides its holders with stability, legal advice and protection from economic uncertainties. (WESA)

            With the start of WESA, more and more eSports team regulation councils and organizations were establishing around the world such as KeSPA(Korea), LSPL(China).  Councils and organizations like this are aiming to monitory Esports clubs’ management and players’ physical and mental health. They urge the manager of eSports club to monitory players’ health issues including Nutrition, Injury Management, General Health Practice & Prevention and Mindset. (WESA) According to Ryan, “With accessible and easily applicable information, the eSports community can break away from all of the negative stereotypes associated with gamers so that in the future when gamers are mentioned.” (Graham) In my opinion, organizations and councils in different area like WESA at least provide supports to eSports athlete’s health issues. They managed the player market to keep eSports industry developed maturely. Similar to traditional sports, which have council like FIFA for monitoring and regulating league and teams, protecting players’ interest, councils in eSports will play an more and more important role in the future.

The solutions are beginning to present themselves more and more as the gaming and eSports industry matures.  Riot Games and Blizzard both fund massive amounts of scholarship prizing into their college programs, helping both pros who seek to retire still find application to their skills to help pay for school, as well as aspiring professional eSports athletes justify juggling school and competing.  Over thirteen schools offer scholarships and recruit eSports athletes to compete for them, most notably our very own University of California, Irvine, and the Big Ten network recently got involved as well.  Many players are also able to find lucrative careers in the industry after retirement as well, whether it be acting as support staff for teams through coaching/management, getting into the gaming industry as game testers or community managers, or into the tech industry as marketing experts into the gaming space, one of the most notable being Stephen “Snoopeh” Ellis, who now heads Facebook’s growing endeavor into eSports (Leaguepedia). According to Nick Wingfield, the New York Times writer, “in September, Blizzard flew eight finalists from the College of Staten Island, University of Massachusetts-Amherst and other colleges to Seattle to compete for $5,000 in scholarship money in a tournament of Hearthstone, a virtual card game from the company.”(Wingfield) More surprisingly, Riot Games offered $6000 per person for UCI League of Legends school teams to encourage

Figure4: UCI eSports team (players and officers)

them chasing the eSports dream with giving up studying. The money that game companies are pouring into the college scene has persuaded many students to become much more serious about eSports. Kendrick Chen, a member of UCI school team, was very excited about his half-professional career: “I had a chance to tryout for Cloud 9 but my mother forced me to study. I am glad to be a Zotboy to continue my eSports dream.” (Chen) For many other game boys like Kendrick in high school, they may excited about the School eSports team and scholarship program—in some way they can chasing their eSports dream without giving up studying. In China, some colleges started to provide eSports degree for people engage in eSports can study in school and work for eSports at the same time. However, instead of teaching students how to play games, school which offer eSports degree is more like teaching students how to manage eSports team and eSports market regulation. This mode is a good choice for pro-players because they can get involved in eSports industry easier than other professional labor.

The future is becoming brighter every day for eSports, and hopefully the day will come where the career path for becoming an eSports athlete is just as lucrative and safe as traditional sports. As eSports industry growing larger, more and more issues and problems will come out. However, companies cannot just focus on squeezing the value of this big industry, they need to take care more about player’s interest.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Word Cited

Leaguepedia. http://lol.gamepedia.com/HotshotGG; http://lol.gamepedia.com/Pawn; http://lol.gamepedia.com/LemonNation; http://lol.gamepedia.com/Snoopeh

Riot Games. “Riot Games Partners With Coke Zero”. 2013. http://na.lolesports.com/articles/riot-gamesannounces-new-challenger-series-partnership-coke-zero.

Seo, Yuri. “Electronic sports: A new marketing landscape of the experience economy”. Journal of Marketing Management. On the Digital Playing Field: How We "Do Sport" With Networked Computer Games. GAMES AND CULTURE. 7 (5), p349-374.

Dinh, Andy. “Response to Marc. Twitlonger”. 2016. Available at: http://www.twitlonger.com/show/n_1sp1imb

Peng, Yiliang.  “[Interview] Doublelift You think you're better than me No you're not”. 2015. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5JtPWS1UadI

Leanne, Karissa. “Life After eSports: What Happens when an eSports Player Retires?” 2016. MMGAMES. http://www.mmogames.com/gamearticles/life-after-esports-what-happens-when-an-esports-player-retires

Wingfield, Nick. “E-Sports at College, With Stars and Scholarships” The New York Times Dec.9,2014. https://www.nytimes.com/2014/12/09/technology/esports-colleges-breeding-grounds-professional-gaming.html?_r=2

Graham, Roy, “How eSports Athlete Stay Health” July 12, 2016. https://iq.intel.com/how-esports-athletes-stay-healthy/

WESA. http://www.wesa.gg/

Casselman, Ben .“Healthcare in eSports – A definition for eSports” June 10, 2015. http://www.1-hp.org/2016/09/11/can-we-talk-about-healthcare-in-esports/

 

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