With respect to burnout, traditional sports can only be practiced for so long each day, typically only a few hours, which due to being in the real physical world is going to include natural downtime like moving cones around, and people are also aware of injury risk. So when you're practicing football it might be intense for a bit at a time, for a few hours, and then you go sit in an ice bath or go home (and play yourself in FIFA heh).
eSports being basically an office job is not going to have that issue, people who are sitting in a chair for hours at a time look like they can be pushed harder until quite late in the night. That goes for both gamers and people doing normal office jobs, you're pooped out way before you look like you are. There's a psychological toll that is hard to see.
Having said that the main thrust of the article is economic. If people got paid more, they'd do it more. NFL players get paid experienced FAANG dev salaries at minimum, fantasy money at the top. There's good reasons to stay in the game as long as possible. If people were paid that kind of money to play games, they would stick around and the narrative would switch from young-and-fast to older-and-experienced.
I'd say that in most sports injury management is an important part of running a team or an athlete's career.
For instance in the NFL you see a few players get sidelined in every game, sometimes they are feeling better and are back in the game a few minutes later, but as you get to the end of the season the roster gets thinner and thinner.
A team that starts out strong at the beginning of the season can get badly battered by the end of the season and end up playing poorly overall and (particularly) losing in the playoffs. In every play they have to ask "is it worth getting hurt?" and if the play is unlikely to change the outcome of the game they are likely to "take a knee" or otherwise play to avoid injury instead of trying to win.
Indeed. I follow the fighting game community and the pattern there seems to be:
Young prodigy climbs the ranks by playing ruthless winning strategies > he wins everything there is to win > he sees that the prize money isn't all that > he deprioritizes winning at all costs and emphasizes more on the fun side of things and being an ambassador for the game
I can't believe it mentioned StarCraft without mentioning some well known players as sample points.
- Maru[0] (age 24) 2010-present
- DRG[1] (age 30) 2011-present (minus 2 years off for military service)
So arguably Maru could have another 6 years in him or more.
Interesting trivia: One reason StarCraft 1: BroodWar is more popular in S.Korea (despite it having janky motion even with the Remastered graphics) is because many took to the game during a major economic downturn. [Can't remember where I watched that reported, maybe a Netflix documentary.]
There's hope that Microsoft/ActivisionBlizzard may figure out how to monetize the free-to-play game to sustain & grow it.
For the longer careers I think you have to look into BW players. Off the top of my head Bisu might be the standout, starting in 2005 and still competing at a decently high level in ASL aged 32. Flash's career is slightly shorter, starting in 2007. He was very young so he's only 29 now, but he's still the best in the world. Even Stork (33) made a (less impressive) comeback recently and with Jaedong (32) in the last ASL, every member of TBLS can make it to ASL which is just astonishing.
The payouts in Starcraft and Starcraft 2 are pretty low at the moment. The only way most of the pro scene can sustain itself at the moment is through streaming and coaching revenue.
It's also why almost nobody is trying to break into the scene, and why you see the same players who have been competing for decades place well.
And yes, Serral and Reynor are exceptions to this.
Maru is a SCII player which might not be a thing in 6 years seeing the diminishing prize pools etc. Meanwhile Morten Andersen did 25 years in the NFL which isn’t going away anytime soon.
Beyond game longevity, each game can only support a tiny number of professionals and the games balance is often changed in response to overly dominant strategies. On top of this as you gain fame people will prepare to counter you specifically. Combined with injuries or other out of game issues and it’s extremely uncommon for people to be self sufficient for very long.
On a smaller (more grassroots-ish) scale, the Smash Melee scene has mang0 and Hungrybox, who've been playing since ~2007/2008ish (there are a few others in there, but at this point they're generally the oldest ones still competing at the top).
Also Dota, where a handful of still-active pros have been playing since Dota All Stars. Not to mention the larger number of content creators and streamers who are no longer playing in pro competitive leagues, but are still literally professional video game players.
There are also several AoE 2 players who are coming up on or have already passed their 10th anniversary of professional play.
Also looking at retirement age doesn't make a lot of sense, because a lot of gaming careers start younger than NFL careers.
The Capcom style fighting games definitely depend on speed, accuracy, prediction, and being unpredictable. What it lacks from RTS are the attention demands of many things happening in different places with a fog of war so that you have to keep the probable possibilities in your head with timings to counter them, and their proportionate responses to maximize gain or minimize loss.
I'd happily pay for more SC2 non-competitive in-game items like skins, announcers, etc, if only they'd make more. Even the ones that exist, I missed the window/requirements so can't even pay for them.
StarCraft/Brood War was the most fun I had playing 1v1 and FFA. It's hard to go back to the janky unit routing, small control groups, etc after being spoiled with SC2. The Remastered graphics update is nice but somehow loses some of the charm. It's more pleasant to watch now than the VGA graphics would be though. Was there ever a Brood War units/maps done in the SC2 engine?
My observation from my brief time of being a spectator in that world was the second tier or lower first tier players would train specifically to beat the strategies of the top players. I think the game generally is too hard to be all-around great against every other play style and strategy.
Most gaming trends don't last very long, especially now that every game company is trying to get into that space.
If you're a top player at one game but then that game stops doing tournaments, it is probably a hard decision whether to walk away or learn a new game.
Yes, a lot of motor skills might transfer over but a lot of knowledge is lost.
EG: League of Legends and DOTA 2 are similar games but different metas, different characters, some different mechanics entirely. It's enough of a gulf that you have to put in a lot of effort to cross over, especially at the high end.
I completely agree, but it was very interesting to watch a top professional of Starcraft2, "HeroMarine", take over as the top player of the newest Age of Empires.
I think a significant proportion of the top AoE4 players came from SC2. BeastyQT, MarineLord, DeMuslim...I think it is only TheViper who came from AoE2 (and, I believe, he also was an SC2 player...another one was Hera, who quit the game after one tournament).
But it is very similar with RTS, there is a huge crossover (although one factor here is that AoE4 isn't popular with a lot of the AoE2 crowd, another factor is that AoE4 has been a bit of a flop...pro games are getting terrible views so many are just choosing to stay on AoE2).
I think you have mixed up players - it was beastyqt who made the switch from Starcraft 2 to become the top AoE player. HeroMarine is still playing Starcraft 2 professionally at a very high level.
There is very little comparison between the micro aspects of SC2 and aoe. SC2 requires many more APM at the high end and microing individual units is much more important
That's pretty cool. I imagine a lot of the concepts are the same, just a lot of learning which units to use, when to use them, counter matchups, hotkeys and such.
But there's definitely a lot of parallels between the games.
It's a lot more basic than that. Everyone can steal game knowledge by just copying what other people do, but the ability of progamers to click quickly and accurately and efficiently divide their attention and context switch between multiple things is way harder to copy. If you've never seen the first person view of a Starcraft 1 progamer, you should watch this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JfAU2lw6BrQ#t=6m8s
It's the same with FPS games. Top players easily spot the tiniest movement, have really fast reflexes and are good at tracking. This transfers between FPS games.
For sure. I've been casually playing RTSs since starcraft 1 (1998ish) and love RTS to this day even though they've slowly waned in popularity as consoles took over. Most are very similar especially in fundamentals. Gather resources, build, expand, and push. They usually just have a different coat of paint of it. What rules supreme in all RTS are the APM (actions per minute).
I'm trying to follow the transition of Beastyqt from SC2 to AoE4, and they are very different games. I still don't understand AoE4 to well, but IIUC in AoE4 there are no nukes that destroy your whole army in an instant, so you must watch every single army continuously to avoid traps like in SC2.
Those are exceptions. Even the most dedicated devs cannot control the wider market or gamer interest. While they can build and cater to communities people will inevitably leave or age out.
And markets are getting crowded. Select older brands have some nostalgia factor propping them up too.
CSGO is getting wrecked by Valorant. It’s basically dead in the water in the US and will be out internationally soon too. CSGO is stuck in the past, can’t make obvious quality of life improvements, and Valorant is polished in a way that I’ve never seen so many women get into a competitive video game.
I don't know about steam but if you look at the twitch numbers (which probably correlate more with esport from a pro/money perspective) CSGO does look to be declining since its peak in 2020[0] (which I'd wager was due to some huge event or the pandemic) and is consistently less popular than Valorant.
Apr. 2020 was peak daily players, 857k, the exact month Valorant Beta was released. They're trending down to 563k as of the last 30 days, down 34% in just 2 years. Valorant is posting 1.5m and has only been trending upwards. Maybe "dead" is exaggerative but long term trend is clear with Riot's compared to Valve's stewardship.
The Call of Duty competetive scene is basically nonexistent and probably even beat by games such as Farming Simulator, which has more active esports teams.
Lack of game permanency is a big part of the problem for esports. Jonathan Wendel, the first example in the article, even mentions declining purses for Quake, Painkiller and Unreal. Not only did those specific titles fade competitively, but that style of FPS went quiet for a while and is only just starting to come back.
While chess, football, basketball, etc. Have rule variances and tweaks, they are stable.
The constant title churn will always be working against building the kind of competitive scenes in mainline sports because they are resetting the rules (and therefore skills), changing pools and generally creating a sort of institutional amnesia.
It's just like any CCG "pro" scene. The time investment isn't worth the rewards. My friends and I would play Magic: the Gathering competitively, hitting the qualifiers and feeder tournaments. We did ok. Cashed some tournaments between us. Won some state championships between us. None of us ever qualified for the Pro Tour however.
Because, I was a working software developer. I wasn't going to drop that job to make less for more overall effort. Another of us is an engineer. Same thing. His job paid more unless he could guarantee winning major tournaments consistently.
It's a young man's game, because it's a poor man's game.
And while NFL players have an average career around 3 or 4 years, they're clearing a few hundred thousand each of those years.
There's a lot of churn at the bottom end of NFL rosters. A lot of guys don't make it through their rookie contract. If you make it 3 years, you're likely play for about 6 or 7. If I remember correctly, I ran the numbers on this at one point. Essentially "average career" is a lot like "life expectancy", it's greatly affected by the sports equivalent of infant mortality. So, in sports, you have a lot of guys with decent careers to pull the average up. In eSports, the number of people with careers longer than a couple of years is rare.
> A lot of guys don't make it through their rookie contract.
My dad had a friend who was a Dallas Cowboy for... a few months. He spent all of summer training and the preseason partying and goofing off thinking he had it made for life. They ended up giving him the boot before the first regular season game. Somehow I have a feeling his "career" wasn't entirely uncommon.
By the time I met him, he was a children's exercise coach at a local rec center.
Guys who are drafted in the later rounds or undrafted free agents.
NFL rosters start at 90 during the training camp period. During the preseason (which is part of training camp), teams have to eventually cut down to the final 53 man roster and (now) 14 players will be selected to be on the practice squad after being cut.
So generally, there will be about 33 players who are not making the team in any fashion. Generally more because players will be signed and released during training camp as well. But yeah, teams sometimes just need bodies. They're not looking for the next NFL star, they're looking for someone with a certain minimum athletic ability to occupy a spot on the field. Warm bodies to fill camp slots.
They're like some of the most awkward calls. Because the teams are trying to sign a guy for a few weeks and the agent is trying to get his guy paid.
Considering the amount professional sports spends per player, yeah, it is.
The average cost of a Legacy deck is $4000. And that's a one-time expense. After that, the on-going costs: sleeves, entry fees, travel, etc aren't horrible.
But plenty of poor people play Magic. More poor people than affluent people. Plenty of people make poor financial decisions. Like buying boosters instead of singles to get cards for decks. Like trying to make playing Magic a career instead of anything else.
Wizard is about to transition to more of an online competitive scene. I don't know how its compared to other games, but there is good money on the table and the promise that "everyone could win a tournament for the big money" (I think that's not true. MTG is way to much dependent on RNG).
For like two years everyone is able to attend to events the client offers that can lead to an invitation to more events that eventually lead to tourniers where real money is on the table.
Magic's all time money leader is Paulo Vitor Damo da Rosa (PVDDR). He is a hall of fame player who has been playing professionally for 19 years. He's won just over a million dollars in that time frame.
That's the equivalent of making around $57k a year.
They're doubling the prize purse for the Pro Tour this year. So, at best, someone could make $2 million with the same results over the same time frame.
Red Bull Untapped had a prize purse of $200,000. That's $50,000 less than the old Pro Tour had. Not to mention, that's the entire purse.
If you won an offline qualifier and the finals, you would have won $30k.
For contrast, the NFL pays $75,000 to each player on the losing team in the Super Bowl. That's outside of their normal salary. That's money paid to the players by the league itself (from a pool of money collected from the member clubs). And playoff bonuses go all the way down. If you're a wild card team who loses in the wild card round, that's $37,500 per player.
Being the 7th seed and getting bounced in the first game of the NFL playoffs pays better than winning the entire Red Bull series.
And that's ignoring that the NFL playoff bonuses are pure extra.
There is not "real money" there. It's at best amateur league.
I think that in almost all cases trying to build an esports career (as a player, coach, analyst, or commentator) is a poor decision; the competition is unreal, the payoff is low, the overall landscape is unpredictable, burnout is absurdly common, and exit strategies are virtually non-existent. The only time I would encourage someone's esports aspirations is if they have a decent chance of establishing themselves and if they are so passionate that they can't see themselves doing anything else.
A lot of this applies to traditional sports too, in fact more so since nearly every high school has a sports program. It's very rare for a high school to have an esports team.
With starting a startup, some of the skills which you learn or demonstrate would be transferable I think. It depends on the type of startup for sure, but talking to prospective customers, design thinking for the product and getting the product to the market is something which is useful in many industries and something which companies will look for in a resume.
Can't say the same thing about esports since I am not familiar with the space.
Certainly some esports skills are transferable. There are (for instance): surface level things, low-level mechanics (e.g. CSing in MOBAs); larger strategies (e.g. team play, map movements, game sense); and meta-learning things, like how to learn games efficiently, take care of yourself, work with a team in the physical world, manage a career, etc.
Startup is relevant and marketable work experience. So usually accepted in other places in huge industry. Same skills doesn't necessarily carry from role to role inside a game or cross games. And spots for supporting personnel are less and have also other competition.
It isn't only money. With OWL, it is clear that players have left $100k+ salaries because of the mismanagement of some franchises. In LCS, you hear about teams playing other games in scrim time, it isn't serious. In OWL, the schedule was punishing and you could see that players on some teams weren't happy (and btw, what Seagull doesn't say...if you are a streamer, being in OWL is negative cost publicity...you are getting paid and you build a fanbase...the reason why people like him left was: Fuel is/was chaotically managed, and the league placed massive limitations on your time...now OWL competitive matches get less views than players they cut from their teams get when they stream, genius product management).
Games aren't cyclical. The money from some games has dried up, but the top competitive games are the same every year. And the money in those games is fairly good (LCS isn't the largest LoL league, average pay is close to half a mil). Consumers want to watch pros play the big games: LoL, CS:GO, DOTA2, etc.
But I think the gap between the 1st and 10th best player isn't as large as it is in some conventional sports (and the games are far less luck-based), so teams are quite happy to rinse players when they have a bad game and they don't tend to come back (it isn't related to age or even skill atrophy, it is related to the pressure to always win...you see the same thing in soccer where teams take short-term decisions for decades and get nowhere, regardless of how many resources they throw at it i.e. Manchester United).
Ironically, I think this has damaged the product. With OWL, they had an okay product but it was totally mismanaged at multiple levels. They tried to create franchises, but teams trade players furiously (so you had a London that was all Korean players, and which played in the Asia time zone during Covid). Most people watch to see their favourite player, the vast majority of the big names have retired or quit...so the teams will keep furiously trading, and no-one will watch because their favourite player isn't playing anymore (we will see what happens with OW2, but I doubt things improve...the product is just sterile). Esports leagues have a very skewed understanding of why people watch.
OWL raised over $100M and tried to blitz scale a sport into popular culture. In their hubris they made a long list of mistakes certainly including the ones you mention.
To me the dumbest thing they did was legally kill community tournaments that made Competitive overwatch a thing in the first place. If they had kept a strong T2 league it could’ve done much more then cultivate talent for the pro league, they could’ve iterated and experimented on formats with the clear winning ideas being used by OWL FOR FREE.
Bunch of dummies who probably cashed out fantastically on their individual comp.
The reason why the community tournaments were so popular was the authenticity. I think people remember some of those moments more than anything that happened in OWL because they were real.
And I could have forgiven it, if anyone made money...I don't think anyone has made money out of OWL. The fact they raised $100m was the first sign they were about to incinerate it all.
Maybe it can't ever recover but I think the game could have been more popular than LoL in the West. It had such a broad base of users (the only FPS-style game that had women) but they couldn't manage the game, couldn't manage the league, just total failure at every level (and they took years to develop OW2, which is basically a reskin of the original...embarrassing).
I loved Overwatch for a time and always thought it made for a poor esport in terms of watchability. Fast-paced MOBAs might work if your game is top down, but trying to follow 12 different heroes in a FPS popping a cluster of giant ult animations is impossible.
but trying to follow 12 different heroes in a FPS
popping a cluster of giant ult animations is impossible.
I (very casually) played a lot of FPS back in the day: Quake 1/2/3, Tribes 1/2, TF2, etc.
I watched some Overwatch matches on TV and found it... extremely hard to follow.
1. Watching other people play from a first-person perspective is rough. They need to figure out better camera angles or something. I don't know the exact answer there. Also needed, perhaps, replays of key moments? Even more so than traditional sports, esports is so "blink and you missed it"
2. I've never played Overwatch specifically, so I didn't know the maps at all. The broadcasts really need to address this somehow unless they only want to appeal to people that already know the maps. Give me some kind of.... map overlay so I know where the heck the action is happening, relative to the goals on the map.
3. The announcers were unlistenable. They just sounded like fans. "OH!!!!!! GAMERDUDE123 WITH THE KILL!!!!! OOOOOOHHHHH!!!!!" Broadcasting traditional sports is extremely hard, and esports doubly so, so I realize how difficult a task it is. But my god. Unlistenable.
This was a few years ao, maybe it's better now. But it was basically a nightmare to me.
I watched OW as well. I attended the first two championship matches as well.
1. I never had an issue keeping up. I would have loved more perspectives (the Twitch option had multiple ways to watch) and I think if they'd kept up with that, it would have been even better, but the default view was pretty solid.
2. Map/Objectives overviews were frequently done, especially in the early days. In fact, it was almost a joke "Of course we know how it's played!"
3. I'm sorry, but I can't believe you were watching the same streams. They were clear with the callouts of events happening and what was going on. For a game that is so fast-paced, they did an excellent job of keeping you aware of what was happening. Suggesting that was just "OOOHHH!!! Feed kill! OHHHH!" is not accurate in the slightest.
I think the issue might be this: " watched some Overwatch matches on TV "
I never watched the matches on TV. I always watched it via Twitch or YouTube. Maybe the TV matches were highly edited in some way that didn't translate well. I don't know. What I do know is that what you describe and what I saw were completely different.
Yeah, this was some... Overwatch league thing on the local sports channel on cable. I admit that I didn't spend a ton of time watching it. Just a few minutes here and there, whenever I saw it on.
It definitely sounds like it was quite different from what you were watching.
Maybe it was just me, I don't know. I will certainly say that broadcasting esports just seems insanely hard.
I think you bring fair criticisms but it's a tough thing to cater a broadcast to audiences that may not have any idea what the game is even about and also an audience that knows the game intimately.
Football (both american and european) and baseball show well I think because the game is on the surface simple. People are also usually exposed to it during school. The rules can get complex and rare rules (please do not do a balk) sometimes involve game downtime and the broadcast can use the opportunity to show replays and explain rules.
Video games have a harder time of this just due to the media. I know a lot about Overwatch, but when I watch LoL broadcasts they're similarly unwatchable, I have no idea what's going on.
Good points. Traditional sports have so many breaks in the action and these are the places where (good) commentators can explain what's going on, replays can be shown, etc.
I don't know how you could do with with something that is as non-stop as videogaming.
To really make things comprehensible you'd almost have to... give up the idea of a strictly "live" broadcast. Broadcast it on a short delay so there could be an opportunity for some exposition while the action is "paused."
It would be tough to find the right balance between hardcore-friendly and noob-friendly. But I'm sure it could be done. After all, traditional sports have found this balance.
I vote counter strike as the most watchable e-sport by far. You can explain 95% of the game to someone in 15 minutes. No special moves or hidden abilities. Shoot guns, plant/defuse bomb, that's it.
OTOH I think MOBA's are the absolute worst. Unless you know the game well, its takes waayyy to much to learn who is doing what and what they can do if needed.
> Games aren't cyclical. The money from some games has dried up, but the top competitive games are the same every year.
Zooming out, LoL was released in 2009; soccer was "released" maybe around 1848, not counting similar games throughout history [1]. I find it hard to believe that any of the listed games will remain dominant for very long relatively speaking, just by the fact that they are software products of the moment. People don't think of "soccer" as a product whatsoever; this changes the economics of going pro.
Sure but it's not like Soccer was the ONLY game invented 1800's, it's just the one we talk about because it was the best / survived the longest. There is probably a graveyard of ball related games that just didn't catch on. Additionally it's not like the first version of Soccer is how we play today - tons of iterations happening over time. I don't think it's totally fair to say none of the current esports games won't live a longer life - we just haven't had enough time yet to see which ones or if.
I do think the biggest issue of longevity is that these (e)sports are owned by private companies. You sorta hit at this about them being products. Companies can essentially can kill them when they want or if they stop making enough money. Maybe some sort of open source game yet to be developed owned by the community will be the first game to meet your Soccer like comparison.
> As they got older, the time they put into training didn’t justify the meager winnings and salaries they received in return.
Breaking news: as people get older they seek more high paying jobs.
Honestly, I think this article should have waited a few decades more before being written so there were proper stats, or at least stuck to discussing only games where there's been pros fore more than the measly two years that's apparently the bar for getting included.
Yep, if you are a famous player, it's easier to transition to streaming where you can decide your own hours and make even more money. Likewise, if you can continue winning and command a high salary you are also incentivized to keep playing rather than stream.
An NBA player, warming the bench on a poorest performing team, is still making 1 million dollars/year. The equivalent esports player is probably sharing a house with 4 other guys and eating ramen.
> The equivalent esports player is probably sharing a house with 4 other guys and eating ramen.
Riffing a bit on your point, as best as I can tell, they all pretty much live in team houses or compounds depending upon the country where the team is located — when in China, my relative's then-current team would have lived in dedicated athlete housing that was part of a larger indoor/outdoor multisport stadium complex (COVID changed that and they evacuated to Korea). In the US it's typical to have a large rented team house, often with amenities like a swimming pool.
They eat ramen too, but that's because they like it. Efforts are made with team cooks, but what are you going to do, especially given the fact that these are all young people. Balenciaga kicks and 99c bowls of instant noodles do make an odd combo...
Wow you're right, had heard this brand mentioned in music or pop culture but seeing it is making me feel really out of touch. I wouldn't wear these for free, let alone pay $1000. I guess i just don't understand fashion
Wouldn’t it make more sense to compare to professional basketball players who don’t play in the NBA? There are a lot of those, and they tend to get paid way less than $1m a year.
> The equivalent esports player is probably sharing a house with 4 other guys and eating ramen.
It’s been a while since I followed eSports (League of Legends in 2011-2014?), but all the US and EU players (after getting kicked in the butt by Asian teams who already did it like that) got people that made sure their players would have healthy lifestyles, eating properly, getting enough exercise etc.
If you are the lowest paid NBA player, you are still making more than the highest paid eSports player.
Johan Sundstein has made just over $7 million over 9 years. Or about $780k per year. No slouch, obviously. But that's under the average yearly salary for the NBA. If you are the best at your position in most sports, you're starting salary negotiations there.
This is almost kind of cheating as NBA is one of the highest paying leagues on a per player basis.
Choosing to chase after a bigger slice of a smaller pie is still a choice. Especially when you can get more pie by getting a smaller slice of a much bigger pie.
We don't compare salaries across companies along the lines of "percentage of total revenue". Getting 200k TC at FAANG is seen as better than getting 75K anywhere else even if that 75k may represent a higher percentage of that company's revenue.
I pretty firmly believe the majority of, say, Badminton pros who could have been pro in other more lucrative sports. In the same way you saw eg Magic Pro Tour players switching to poker.
I don't hold for a moment that the average pro gamer has the skills to transition to "traditional" sports.
So, like, at what level is a choice to grab the smaller pie, vs the choice to focus on a specific skill they do actually have over and above a desk job
First, I'd dispute your claim that majority of Badminton pros could go pro in other sports. Definitely some of them, being fast with good hand-eye coordination is going to get you places. But there's a limit.
If you can make it in NFL, NBA, MLB, etc, you do. And the true superstars often have the option of multiple sports. Patrick Mahomes was drafted for both the NFL and MLB. Lebron James got tryouts with a couple of teams. Bo Jackson had a professional football career and a professional baseball career concurrently.
Football, baseball, rugby, soccer, and basketball all "poach" from the others' sports because athletes gonna athlete.
But badminton is already a cousin to tennis. And if you can do well in tennis, you should do that. The only reason to be the best in badminton rather than the best in tennis is some weird obsession. You choose niches when you can't or don't want to compete in the general arena.
Second. It's not a choice between eSports and traditional sports.
It's a choice between eSports and almost anything else. The goal isn't to play something with sports in the title, the goal is to earn a living. And the best eSports player in the world is getting outearned by mid-level accountants. You could go to college for four years, spend under $40k, get an accounting degree, then go get a job at any accounting firm or in-house at any company, and be earning about $60k a year.
And if college isn't for you, you can become an electrician's apprentice. Earn about $40k a year while you learn how to be a fully licensed electrician. Then after 4 years, you get licensed and can double your money.
Ideally, you should choose the thing that can provide you a decent living while leveraging your skills and/or talents without overworking you.
But eSports doesn't provide a decent living on average. And it overworks everyone.
And that kind of ignores that ability and/or skill is only part of it. The people who are currently the best in areas where the money isn't there are only the best of the people who can be bothered to do it. The hypothetical best CounterStrike player possible probably does not even play the game. Because somewhere, early in the sieve, they did the math and realized the effort required to maintain their position was not worth the reward for doing so. And it could have been when they were the best Quake deathmatcher on their dorm floor. They realized they could continue playing or study for midterms. And they chose their midterms because that was going to secure the bag.
> First, I'd dispute your claim that majority of Badminton pros could go pro in other sports. Definitely some of them, being fast with good hand-eye coordination is going to get you places. But there's a limit.
I was picking a random low remuneration sport and suggesting they have a skillset that could have transferred to a different one. It was a broad example for "choosing between sports is a real conceptual thing that athletes who go pro have implicitly done, though they may not have ever considered the options because they were on a path".
> Second. It's not a choice between eSports and traditional sports.
The thread above me is literally acting as though it's a comparison between the two paths being offered. It obviously is not, they're wildly different skillsets.
All that said, obviously eSports is a terrible life choice rationally, unless you want to spend your "working" life doing a thing you love rather than earning maximal money per unit effort. I respect people who do that, as a rule.
You deliberately chose badminton, then made a pretty big claim about those players. Now it feels like you're trying to walk it back into something more vague. Choosing between sports is a thing. But there are tiers. Choosing between different low remuneration sports is a wash. The choice is between levels of remuneration. Which, looking back, is what you claimed. That any given badminton pro has a high chance of becoming an NFL player.
As an aside, professional badminton, specifically, is one of those things I think where you wake up some days and realize the very specific things in your life that had to happen to put you where you are. Not something you seek out deliberately.
And I'm not even saying they considered other non-sports options. I'm essentially calling it a stupid decision to not do so. These are people, at least in the eSports/CCG scene, who talk a lot about the expected values of things. And the expected value of a pro eSports/CCG pro career is not good.
And I never said anything about "earning maximal money per unit effort". I said provide a decent living while not overworking you. In eSports, you have to "earn maximal money per unit effort" just to make a living. I'm saying, they should choose a vocation where they can earn better money for less effort units.
> You deliberately chose badminton, then made a pretty big claim about those players.
I guess what I really meant is that maybe tennis pays better than squash or badminton, but uses very similar skillsets. I was not in anyway proposing they could play in the NFL specifically (hence saying "some other sport")
My claim was basically pro sports people are naturally talented at sports - and which sport they ended up playing pro was more likely to be circumstance than considered choice.
The rest is you just doubling down on "people should choose jobs not passions". Sure, if you like.
Then that's something different than what you said. Football, basketball, baseball, soccer, rugby, these are all "other sports". You said the majority of badminton professionals could do it.
I still doubt that. I even doubt that the majority of them could transfer to tennis.
Because there are levels to sports. And it's largely based on where the money is.
And I'm saying you shouldn't sacrifice yourself for your passions.
> Breaking news: as people get older they seek more high paying jobs.
I don't think it's fair, from at least two angles:
- these people work in a niche, and applying generic takes to very specific situations is hit or miss.
- people in similar niches don't follow the generic statement. For instance pro bowling players usually earn more from their side gig than from bowling. A decent amount of top athletes competing in sports belonging to the long tail fall into this category.
Valve made a documentary about pro DOTA 2 players a whopping 8 years ago (it doesn't seem that long ago at all). I bring it up because I remember at some point they mention that your reaction time drastically starts to decrease around the late 20's or so. I'd imagine that may also have something to do with it for fast-paced games at least.
Here's the documentary (it's kind of more of a commercial but it's still pretty good if you're interested in esports)
I think reaction time in games like Dota 2 doesn't actually matter as much. The gap between very good reactions and average to bad reactions is small enough that practiced patterns and better understanding of macro strategies can compensate for it.
After about a decade of data, I think the community/e-sports results in Dota generally show:
1. In some roles and metas, the split second mechanical difference does matter i.e. for carries or mid-lane playmakers under specific metas and specific matchups. Although some metas are less mechanically deep for certain roles -- I know part of the theory for Dendi's decline is that his mechanical skill was overkill when denies in midlane (very timing based mechanic) became less important compared to macrostrategy (meaning that he couldn't just 'out skill' opponents and win the game with an early lead).
2. But, the experience gains from being in competitions for a long time make the older players a great fit for coaching, captain, and support roles.
3. But another factor is less reaction time and more that the late 20s and early 30s players have spouses and more expansive lives beyond the game, so they simply cannot spend the 100+ hours a week perfectly tuning the midlane or hard carry meta where the fundamentals can change really fast. Also, for the most successful players (read: millionaires) they want to enjoy their wealth and do things outside the game.
>3. But another factor is less reaction time and more that the late 20s and early 30s players have spouses and more expansive lives beyond the game, so they simply cannot spend the 100+ hours a week perfectly tuning the midlane or hard carry meta where the fundamentals can change really fast. Also, for the most successful players (read: millionaires) they want to enjoy their wealth and do things outside the game.
I think this is the biggest factor in the same way most devs don't stay in the same job for 20 years (particularly the top ones!).
Additionally, most games change a lot over their lifespan; what made someone a top player in the early days doesn't necessarily continue to benefit them now, and mindset/skillset changes are not easy to make.
Poker is a great example of that: pros from 20 years ago might have experience, but if they're not up-to-date with the cutting edge of theory and solvers, their 'experience' will get them crushed.
Not really, one of the hardest skills to learn in DOTA is how to react, not how fast you should react. Often, not helping your team can benefit the team.
I'm immortal ranked Dota player, that spends 10 hours a week playing Dota. And has played DOTA since Warcraft 3. My reaction time is slow, because I think so much about each situations. And a slightly bad decision can lose the whole game.
When I see my team fighting, I take a short look, maybe think for as long as 2-3 seconds and make a decision about if I can contribute to the fight or if I will just be feeding.
DOTA is a lot more about strategy, positioning, how to pressure, farming patterns, vision/warding, when to use power spikes and be a team player. This is also why experienced players beat the crap out of younger players and probably also why younger players play something else than DOTA/MOBA.
> And a slightly bad decision can lose the whole game.
A slightly bad reaction time can lose an entire game. When you're looking at pro games - where real money is on the line - you want the player who has the same decision making ability as other highly ranked players but ALSO the ability to react really quickly. Failed to disjoint a projectile in time? International lost. Didn't pop your BKB in time? International lost. Didn't hex a puck or ember fast enough? International lost.
Like, sure, again... you can go really far in dota with poor reaction speed. I'm 30, for example. But when it comes down to creating a five man team to compete for money then very few teams are going to pick up older players on the chance that they might not react fast enough. Old man fear was called old man fear for a reason.
Also, this makes me really curious about what the age composition is for immortal top 100s for each region. How many are there over the age of 30?
It usually takes a long time to get given a good car in formula 1 though, so that can skew thing older. If you give a good driver a great car really really early you get LewisH and MaxV situations
Also if you get a good car in F1 and give good results you keep the car and it usually stays good or very competitive.
On other hand there is lot of value with experience and some patience, if you are mid-line team a experienced driver who can support the team and bring the car back in whole or even with some points race after race is not horrible investment.
Reaction time can be compensated with experience and game sense. Also at the very top getting used to pressure and having experienced it when playing the games that matter is big thing.
I've always wished we could somehow design a team sport/game that incorporates a wider spectrum of human abilities. Almost all sports/games are about alpha male characteristics: strength, power, speed, agility etc. Wouldn't it be good if we could have a team which included other important human qualities: empathy, slower cerebral thought processes, attention to detail etc.
The only "game" I can think of which is close is war.
Not sure why this article focuses on a long gone era in eSports vs. today's environment which is incomparable to 10 years ago.
Also, the writer makes constant comparisons to NFL, but different sports like gymnastics have even more extremely young, short and destructive carreers than eSports.
some influential people are aware of the dark sides of competitive gymnastics; also Anti-Doping is a formal thing now, too late for many males that fell for steroids
Sports today aren’t what they used to be. Michael Jordan famously used to put down the basketball and pick up the golf club for nearly the entire offseason. Larry Bird wasn’t particularly fit. Now, athletes are practicing year-round in realistically unobtainable physical shape.
Likewise, esports used to be a fun thing that friends would do for fun money back in the day. You wouldn’t put crazy time into it because you still had a day job and $1,000 winnings won’t pay rent for long. Now, these e-athletes are practicing 12+ hours a day. There’s no healthy way to play video games 12+ hours a day, no matter how much you’re getting paid.
Until we remove the monetary incentive such that these unrealistic hours aren’t put into children’s games, we’re going to continue to see these athletes self-destruct their lives with these ridiculous regimens.
MJ played basketball year round (along with other sports). He was one of the first players to put a 'for the love of the game' clause in his contracts [1]. When you saw MJ playing golf or baseball that was less about him taking time away from basketball, and more about being a ruthless competitor at pretty much anything.
Larry Bird may not have fit the athletic build, but he absolutely practiced year round. He was famously discipline about shooting daily, etc...
Players like the above were great because they loved the game. It was part of them, and in the case of Bird, his body paid the price. The advances that have been made (when to practice, when to rest, nutrition, etc...) let players play and practice year round with a structure that also lets them play longer careers.
At least for Korean eSports players (which there are quite a few), one of the hurdles is mandatory military service. Many times people leave the scene and just never get back into it, or at least not at the level they were previous to their military service.
I think I've also seen some talk about how even a few years of age can affect how fast your reflexes are, in terms of actions per minute, etc. But that more experienced players can do more with less APM.
Taking away or breaking up the best times of eSports players certainly isn't helping their career length.
Yeah, this is why all upset over athlete pay is wrong , especially for the NFL which has the worst pay, and highest injury rate, and shortest careers of all the major sports. Pro football players not uncommonly go broke, not because of spending, but because they are crippled, addled and unable to work after a short career (painkillers make it hard to work), and have huge medical bills.
One issue is that skills change every patch. Say a basketball pro can do 3 point shots really well, and base his entire career off that.
Whilst in esports, what you were good at, say farming creeps in Dota 2 or sniping in CSGO, could get nerfed to the ground in the next patch. Thus all your skills disappear.
This article is clueless for the following reasons:
- outdated takes
- talks about "esports" like it is a monolithic, Dota 2 and LoL are not fighting games and fighting games are not Classic Tetris, and Classic Tetris is not speedruns.
- Implicitly equating NFL to sports, NFL is one sports, and there is many others.
- Implicitly equating esports to games and hobbies where having kids and family must stop you from playing 8 hours a day to stay on shape. Like not all society does that? no one else has kids and a job?
I am familiar with Dota 2 and LoL, those 2 do pay well in term of salary, Dota 2 in addition to salary has really high prize pools. The salaries are mainly prompted up by sponsors, mainly betting websites sponsors.
There's too much talent being wasted by a lot of the "sports" being slight variations of the same core game mode (e.g. 5v5 shooters, MOBAs). Imagine Lebron James and Steph Curry playing in different leagues because one has a 4 point line and the other allows for more contact on drives.
I feel like esports have the potential to be enormous but won't reach that until standard formats are established. I'm thinking some FIFA, FIA, IOC, etc., -type group releasing spec sheets and FOSS client/server implementations that developers then port into their own engines. The idea being that the barrier to entry is so low that anyone can experience the game. It's not a coincidence that the most popular sport in the world is also the most accessible.
This is usually the part of the HN comment where I plug my startup that solves the exact problem, but sadly that's not the case today.
Physical sports are limited by physics and are certain ways because humans cannot fly or revive at a spawn point. Those are practical limitations and many rules are there to reduce injury.
Limiting eSports to committee-designed clean room games that only change every few years will take the whole fun of "everything is possible" out of it.
It's completely okay for gamers to play their favorite game. Just as people rather play football or cricket instead of baseball or rugby.
Even if you make a standard format, the audience will continue to watch what it's currently playing. The most amazing part of esports to me is that games are so accessible anyone can get into a game and try to be competitive, and that really gives you a sense of what the game is like to play and how hard it is to get good. Then you tune into esports out of curiosity to see how good people can actually get and your mind is blown.
On the other hand I will never know what it feels like to drive F1, so even though on the whole it's more impressive to drive a F1 car around the track, it will not amaze me as a StarCraft pro picking apart a Marine-Tank line, because I've tried to do that so many times I know exactly how hard it is.
So esports audiences mainly watch what they're playing, and it's better for it, and they won't be playing some standardized game.
there are a lot of "sports" out there that are variations of some common core mode. aussie rules is the largest and most lucrative sport belonging to the football family of sports that is only ever watched in australia. there's also union, league, gridiron, gaelic and subvariants of those. we don't need to unify all these rules just to appeal to a larger audience. i think we can all enjoy the different games in different contexts.
With YouTube and other streaming media, there is no need to be an 'official' e-gamer. Even ppl who suck at gaming are making huge income with streaming, such as ads and product placement, and no profit sharing, deadlines, or travel either.
Seems odd to have an article about age and Esports that mentions Tokido, aged 36, but not Daigo ‘The Beast’ Umehara, aged 40, who has been crushing Street Fighter variants for (almost) decades, including returning to dominance after a brief retirement to play mahjong. I just couldn’t miss an relevant opportunity to plug my favorite gamer - he is a blast to watch live and has loads of content on Youtube.
For those who don't know who that is but know even a little about the fighting game community, he's the guy behind EVO moment 37, the legendary perfect parry into super; https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JzS96auqau0
There are a bunch of analysis videos on youtube about how vast his game knowledge is and how quick and precise his reaction time is to perform this maneuver. Very similar to moment #37, just years later.
> Because there is virtually no physical bar to clear, pro gamers tend to be more fully developed at their game at a younger age compared to traditional sports.
That implies that overlong practice hours aren't improving the players. If the practice hours did improve them, they ought to be much better at 25 than at 20.
It could be that the practice hours are maintenance, but then we might imagine that the practice could be better designed.
(Some) timers can at least be learned, I can still instinctively time RA, MH, YA on Quake 3 tourney maps even after not playing seriously for about 20 years now. It was something you learned. Reaction speed not so much, I recall taking tests years back and I'd clock in around 110-120ms reliably. Now, 160-210. I'm still playing fast-paced FPS predominantly so I don't think this is something that's going to come back to me.
That said, I suspect age is less of a factor as physical condition and the long-term effects of moderate alcohol consumption.
I played Quake 3/Live competitively for a number of years. Keeping track of multiple item timers in your head is absolutely something that can be improved with practice. Naturally some people are just going to be better at it than others though, of course. There's obviously some selection bias if my sample group of 'people who can simultaneously time multiple items' is a subset of 'successful duel players', however I never met anyone who couldn't improve the skill by practice.
Different injuries. RSI beats traumatic brain injury, but it's still no fun.
The teams are investing in trainers (as in going to the gym) and the like, but the players often still have issues. It's also not helped by the fact that, based on my admittedly outside observations, few if any were all-star conventional athletes who had to decide between collegiate swimming or the like and eSports.
t. I have a relative who is a prominent pro in one of the big leagues.
I used to follow rainbow six siege esports fairly closely until about early 2019, every time I check in now I literally have almost no idea who anyone is. Especially after the caster Kixstar who'd been there from day 1 died far too young.
It was the same for me with League of Legends, once I stopped following closely, I slowly lost all interest as I neither understood the meta-game changes, the game changes, nor who all the people were.
Quote1: "Though 26 is a remarkably young age at which to retire in traditional sports, in esports it’s the norm"
Quote2:"This stands in stark contrast to traditional sports. The NBA’s average player age is 26, according to a 2021 survey and even in the super-demanding NFL, the average player retires between age 26 and 27, per the NFL Players Association."
I don't know Washington Post (& Jonathan Lee, the article's author), seems you kind of dropped the ball here.
I'm not sure that they did. They're holding up the NBA as a good stand-in for the average sport/league pair (I think they could've picked MLS, MLB, the English Premier League, Bundesliga or NHL and observed a similar result) saying that the mean age of active players there is the same as the mean esports age of retirement. So already we can see that it's a bit of a surprising outlier.
Then the point is driven home by comparing with (in their eyes) one of the most physically demanding sports/leagues - the NFL - where players apparently still retire a little later than esports people
It's maybe clumsily presented, but it does demonstrate how esports is a peculiar case that doesn't necessarily follow expectations.
I wonder how much of a factor it is how the sports are organized. The NBA has thirty teams with a lot of players each. Probably a single NBA team has more players than many games have professional e-athletes. That probably creates room for more players who aren't the best in the world and room for players who bring experience but are older. Maybe a better are other single player sports. Chess, tennis or golf come to mind.
Not to even talk of likes of football in Europe and some other countries. Were the competition is so deep even some players not at top layer could make some sort of living. Not all of them, but some.
One thing that article hinted at but didn’t really talk about is that many pro gamers also stream on the side and if they build up enough of an audience can actually make more money in “retirement” doing the (still demanding) but much more chill job of being a full time twitch streamer.
This makes for a natural career transition for esports players that doesn’t really exist in traditional sports.
Related to that I would look at the position of women in e-sports and streaming.
It's widely accepted that men are bigger and stronger than women; a woman couldn't be a quarterback in the NFL because of the danger of injuries.
In the case of e-Sports physical size and strength don't matter so much so you'd think women could advance further. Practically they don't so one is left wondering if this is because fewer women get started in e-Sports, they run into various problems that cause them to drop out, or maybe there are differences in performance like there are in regular sports.
Frequently though, when people are asking the question "Why don't women do X?" and you look closely at X, you start to ask the question "Why do men do X?" That is, X is demanding, doesn't pay that well, it doesn't look like a career you'd choose unless you got typecast into it.
(For instance I think of a certain camera store in Manhattan where all the employees wear the uniform of a certain religious-ethnic group. Are members of this group getting a good deal when they work at this camera store or is the camera store getting a good deal hiring members of this group? Or neither? Or both?)
Another factor is that both men and women can make money streaming without participating in e-Sports tournaments. Certainly some people are interested in watching people play games even if they aren't good at them
my son and I have thought about making a channel where we mock single-player games that we play but we figure it's a crowded market. This guy is 33 years old
has 9 million subscribers on Twitch and is ranked #9 by Wikipedia. She has participated in tournaments but I don't know if that really moves the needle in terms of following and revenue for somebody like that.
It's all about numbers. There are just fewer women in general who play competitive online games. There are a variety of reasons why, but the most obvious one is that the online multiplayer scene isn't particularly welcoming to women. Granted, EVERYONE is flamed in online multiplayer games, but women are regularly subjected to graphic and violent sexual comments. On top of that, there could be higher societal expectations placed on women that discourage women from "no-lifing" a game compared to men.
Tons of women play video games these days, but online multiplayer games are still quite a bit of a boy's club. It seems like a similar situation with engineering schools/jobs: it's dominated by awkward men and remains so due to a negative feedback loop.
What if awkward men are discriminated against in fields other than engineering?
I know a woman who works in HR at a large engineering adjacent organization and I'd say (in my experience dealing with her outside of work) she consistently makes mistakes in dealing with awkward people (such as attempting flattery and making people feel worse.) Since non-awkward people get to define what "empathy" means and because awkward people are defined deficient fundamentally, she and people in her profession systematically erase these mistakes. (We did what we were told to do in school, what is on the checklist, what the diversity plan says "empathy" is, ...)
She probably gets good performance reviews but she finds her job really stressful. It might be intrinsic that the job is stressful (it is dealing with other people's bullshit after all) but it might be that she's not really that good at it. She follows the checklists that other people give her, but nobody really asked her customers what they think.
It could be that professions like that could use a good dose of awkward people or at least people who can have real empathy for awkward people instead of a show of empathy that's directed at impressing somebody else.
I loved games as a kid, but can't stand them anymore. This goes for real sports like baseball, and for eSports like StarCraft or Counterstrike. I would far rather spend time building a business, learning construction, or hanging out with my family.
depends - if your team pays you a salary, then no. But if you never win, either the team can't get sponsorship (since noone will watch a team that doesn't win), or the team fires you (and get a better player).
Prize money is only one source of income, and i suspect not even the major one for most teams. It's sponsorships and ads.
I dont think it's a dumb question! These things are often shrouded in secrecy imho - and it makes it hard for young, new players to know whether it's a good path for them or not. There's nothing to compare it with! I favour transparency tbh.
a lot of esports teams work like a business - they hire workers who "produce" something and sell it for a profit. in this case, it's advertising.
This is why you see players wearing a jersey/tshirt that has tonnes of logos and such, and their player names will have advertising/branding on it (gfuel being the big one i see often).
The team pays a salary to the players, and takes the sponsorship money (and the difference, if any, is profit). The players generally also get a share of the prize money too - which is like an incentive bonus to perform well.
Makes sense, but I'm also surprised it's just sponsorship money. I pulled up a picture of Serral, arguably the greatest Starcraft II player of all time:
The only sponsors I see are Asus, Republic of Gamers (an Asus brand), and I think there's a Telia logo on his sleeve. Granted, SC2 isn't that popular, but that's all the sponsorship you need to pay salaries?
There is quite a bit of VC also. The people who think they are getting on it early and at some point it is big and viable business. Might or might not be true for them.
>Can you mark a living at esports if you’re not one of the best you’re doing well?
Esports is vague. But for Dota 2 and LoL you can make a living while being relatively unknown in the space. A good living actually, salaries are insane for those 2 esports.
>You have to win to earn money in esports right?
You have a salary, then if you win in Dota 2's case you take the whole prize money, in some other games you take some of it.
>It seems like the difference in professional athletics is you’ve got a somewhat predictable income at some point.
The info in the article seem to be outdated, any serious esports today give you a stable income. The salaries are actually competitive, team today have big sponsors, and the sponsors pay most of the players' salary, so it gets super competitive between teams to get certain players.
Before this was common, you've seem all-star teams more often, nowadays players have to balance between being in a team that has a shot of taking the world championship and being in the team that pay the most.
Must be noted that one of the biggest drivers of salaries being really high in esports is betting websites as sponsors.
ESports is just a small, weak industry in the scheme of it all. It does not make that much money and it’s not really growing in a stable manner. There’s not much evidence it’s the next big thing.
With game streaming as popular as it is, don’t these players post their esports career have an existing fan base to build a career by just streaming? Something very hard to do in traditional sports.
What's different between your link and the poster's link? This article doesn't seem to have a paywall w/ both links (just a small banner at the bottom of the screen)
eSports being basically an office job is not going to have that issue, people who are sitting in a chair for hours at a time look like they can be pushed harder until quite late in the night. That goes for both gamers and people doing normal office jobs, you're pooped out way before you look like you are. There's a psychological toll that is hard to see.
Having said that the main thrust of the article is economic. If people got paid more, they'd do it more. NFL players get paid experienced FAANG dev salaries at minimum, fantasy money at the top. There's good reasons to stay in the game as long as possible. If people were paid that kind of money to play games, they would stick around and the narrative would switch from young-and-fast to older-and-experienced.