Comment:
I made several big problems in my first draft. One of them was what I mentioned in the Reflection introduction--ideas first then researches. During our conference, you kept pointing out to me that I need more evidences and explanations to support the arguments. And you gave me the suggestion of making more comparation between eSports athletes and traditional sports player, which gave me inspiration. And also, There was a lack of multimodal elements.
Mengting Zhou
Michael Andreason
Writing 39C (HCF project)
February 5, 2017
ESports: The Burn-out And Short Career
It’s 2010, and 20 year old George Georgallidis is becoming a rising star in North America, but his fans wouldn’t know him by that name - he goes by the alias “HotshotGG”, and is one of the most famous professional players of the online computer game League of Legends. By the end of 2012, he’s made hundreds of thousands of dollars in prize money and sponsorships, and numerous tournament championships - but on May 26th of 2013, he announces his retirement from professional play( Leaguepedia). eSports, the billion dollar and rapidly growing industry, is redefining what competition and entertainment look like for the 21st century. 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. On average, a traditional athlete's career starts after college, and lasts from 3.5-5.5 years depending on the sport - a duration that would be considered extremely long in eSports. According to Jeff Nelson, the sports reporter of RSVLTS, “the average playing career for an NFL players is 3.5 years, the average MLB career is 5.6 years, the average NBA career is 4.8 years, and the average NHL career is 5.5 years.” (Jeff Nelson). 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.
Video games have become more and more complex in order to stimulate the consumer's need for cognitivve 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. 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 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).
Traditional sports player usually has a regular and healthy diet and training routine. For example, a professional soccer player go to training field at 8 am every day and then do 2 hours daily training. Then they will do targeted training 1 hour based on the instruction by the coach. The overall training time of professional soccer players is around 3-5 hours per day (Melissa Malamut). Let’s compare this to eSports player. Most eSports professionals practice for about 8-12 hours a day. While 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. Yan “Clearlove” Nuo, a famous 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.”
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. 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). Back injury not only almost ruins his career year, but also leads him in the risk of paralysis. The irregular diet routine and long training time lead professional eSports to get involved in a dangerous situation.
The tiring regimen of an eSports athlete also takes a major toll on the player's personal and social development. While most traditional athletes experience a kingdom of popularity in high school, as well as the opportunity to attend college for competing, 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. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5JtPWS1UadI
Another huge factor in the burnout rate of eSports players is the fact that, unlike traditional sports, eSports games are extremely unstable in regards to gameplay. Imagine if every year, the rules of basketball changed - there were three hoops instead of one, and three pointers were now worth five. Plus, it was six on six now instead of five on five. Soccer, the most popular sports in the world, has not changed the rule obviously since 100 years ago(FIFA). eSports games are patched for gameplay and balance regularly, creating a new set of strategies and optimal gameplay choices each time. Many professionals have complained about this aspect, most notably a large debate between former professional player and Team SoloMid team owner Andy “Reginald” Dinh, and founder/CEO of Riot Games Brandon Beck. Andy said: “The community and the players want the true best teams to represent them in Worlds, but the chances of an upset due to lack of familiarity with the new patch are too high. I have played as a pro for 5 years and Marc and others may not understand how disruptive this is to the careers of players and to the integrity of Worlds gameplay. Huge patch disruptions in playoffs results in unsatisfying results and lower-quality gameplay.”( Andy Dinh) Part of eSports appeal is that gameplay does not stay stale, however, this creates a very large problem in regards to whether a player can maintain his or her competitive edge. It’s not enough to be good at the game, an eSports athlete must also be able to continuously adapt.
Lastly, one of the biggest issues is risk - what does it look like for the pros who don’t make it? Many 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. Many opt 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. In traditional sports, parents generally are encouraging of their child to at least participate in sports in high school and college, and it is relatively easy to identify if there is potential to go pro or not - but should they not make it, they have a degree to fall back on, or a nice looking extra-curricular on their college apps.
The solutions however, 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 pros 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). 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.
Word Cited
Leaguepedia. Available at: http://lol.gamepedia.com/HotshotGG; http://lol.gamepedia.com/Pawn; http://lol.gamepedia.com/LemonNation
Riot Games, 2013. Riot Games Partners With Coke Zero. Available at: http://na.lolesports.com/articles/riot-gamesannounces-new-challenger-series-partnership-coke-zero.
Seo, Y , 2013. Electronic sports: A new marketing landscape of the experience economy. Journal of Marketing Management. 29 (13/14), p1542-1560. [6] Witkowski, E. (2012). On the Digital Playing Field: How We "Do Sport" With Networked Computer Games. GAMES AND CULTURE. 7 (5), p349-374.
Malamut, M, 2013. Work Out Like: A Professional Soccer Player :The New England Revolution’s head fitness coach gives us tips on how to train like a pro. Boston. Available at : http://www.bostonmagazine.com/health/blog/2013/04/25/work-out-new-england-revolution/
FIFA, 2010. From 1863 to the Present Day. FIFA.COM. Available at : http://www.fifa.com/about-fifa/who-we-are/the-laws/
Dinh, A, 2016. Response to Marc. Twitlonger. Available at: http://www.twitlonger.com/show/n_1sp1imb
Peng, Y. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5JtPWS1UadI