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I had the opportunity to be around high-competitive esports in years 2005 - 2010 and I'm very glad this topic is coming up now. Back in the day, my observation

I had the opportunity to be around high-competitive esports in years 2005 - 2010 and I'm very glad this topic is coming up now. Back in the day, my observation was that only the best American and European players (Fatal1ty, Grubby, NIP team, to name few) understood how important it is to be also fit mentally and physically when competing in esports and they were the only once doing “something” for that. Back in the day, the Korean teams were mostly locked-down in their “Clan houses” and they had a defined time schedule which mostly consist of practicing the game. Today, this is completely different story. When I’m talking with people who are still in esports and read news articles about current teams, they mention to have personal fitness couches and mental couches and I think it’s necessary for success as you can see application of these practices being successful in other sports - Tennis, Golf, etc. It’s even more crucial for team-based games (LoL, CS, etc.) where team chemistry, health of team members and ability to time your focus on the particular events are all important aspects for the overall success. I even heard that there is a professional LoL team which has a “synergy” coach who is dealing with day-to-day problems of team members and help them to resolve conflicts between each other. It is incredibly hard to have consistent results on e-sports tournaments. Edit: Grammar + Wording

taurath 8y ago
The training schedule, despite the focus on overall health is absolutely /grueling/ though. 10 hours a day to develop muscle memory and decision making on a newly-meta champion, gun, or map. 6 days a week usually.
- inertiatic 8y ago
  If you're at that high a level, you got there because you loved the game. So it's not really gruelling, it's what you would do anyhow if you weren't being paid for it.
  - jimmy1 8y ago
    I think this takes away from the professionalism of these individuals. At a certain level, we are all doing things we want to be doing, otherwise we would be looking for ways to do other things. If you follow a lot of top eSports players in LoL challenger, for example, they all love the game, but you can tell the difference in professionalism even in their online personas towards the game. There's no doubt QTPie loves the game, but it's also no secret that the reason he isn't a top tier ADC anymore is because he doesn't want to deal with the grind and just wants to enjoy himself (and more power to him for it -- this isn't a character judgement, just pointing out the difference) Most probably love the game, but having been a semi-professional CS player myself in the past, it very much feels like "work" sometimes. > it's what you would do anyhow if you weren't being paid for it. Much different scrimming for fun or playing matches with your buddies/team mates/pub stomping versus practicing very detailed specifics or scenarios, or testing different team compositions and strategies over and over and over again.
    - Macross8299 8y ago
      My understanding is that pro counter-strike players also have to memorize and practice an obscene amount of nade throws these days just to be competitive since the physics are so predictable and things like flashbangs are so strong.
      - BigJono 8y ago
        Eh, I'd say that's pretty insignificant to a CS pro, in the same way learning what every hero/champ does in DotA/LoL seems daunting at first but is pretty trivial once you have 1,000+ hours in the game. You're just incrementally building on knowledge that you've accrued while playing normally. It's not like a pro has to sit down and do some huge exercise in rote memorisation for smokes and flashes every week. Maybe rarely when a new map gets added to the active pool.
  - taurath 8y ago
    Thats not true at all in my experience - programmers who love their work burn out all the time. I had a dream job in the gaming industry but after months of 65 hour weeks decided the tradeoffs aren't worth it. I loved that job, but the sacrifices necessary to do it were too much of a cost. There are a lot of people who would love to play a game for 10 hours a day. Playing and training are different things though.
    - dmix 8y ago
      I'm not seeing the connection between being a top tier professional in a sport and working as a programmer 65hrs at a gaming company? One involves a necessary dedication and persistence for high reward, while the other is a useless exercise in exploitation (as no programmer is productive 65hrs/week and would only be rewarded sufficiently high in a few situations, such as having stock/ownership).
      - bluGill 8y ago
        Try being a top tier professional in an obscure sport: racquetball for example. You need a large amount of dedication and effort and you will not get high rewards no matter how good you are.
      - taurath 8y ago
        I wasn't a programmer at the gaming company - more of a producer type. I went into programming after for less hours and more work/life flexibility. I'd never program for 65hrs/week, but it was very possible to do my production job that much - the problem is I didn't go on a date for half a year, and my work became the entire bit of my life.
    - imesh 8y ago
      I disagree. I wrestled at a DI level in college, it was grueling, it was incredibly hard, some days I hated it. But it wasn't the same kind of burn out that I feel from software development. I don't wake up excited for work the way I would wake up excited to train. It's just different. The harder you work the better you get in sport. You may work harder at software development and become a better developer but the gains you may get aren't so concrete, you don't win, you likely won't even get a raise.
  - rifung 8y ago
    > If you're at that high a level, you got there because you loved the game. So it's not really gruelling, it's what you would do anyhow if you weren't being paid for it. I don't think this is true. To reach the highest level you need more than passion: you need dedication and discipline. If you only practice when you feel like it then you're not going to practice as much as someone who has a set schedule they stick to no matter whether they're enjoying it or not. Not only that but practice or training is much different from playing and often not at all enjoyable. I would hope that all musicians love music, but practicing is usually very tiring and not fun. My current teacher always says that if you're practice feels completely painful and hopeless, you're probably doing it right. One of my friends trained with one of the top players in the world in her sport. When she wanted to take it easy because she was on her period, the coach, also female, said she should keep going. That dedication could be the difference between being #1 and #2.
  - keerthiko 8y ago
    A professional gamer has to deal with so many more things as a result of their daily interaction with the game than someone who just loves the game. If a big weekend tournament is coming up, you can't just "take sick leave" because you're running a 102 fever. If you are in a slump or having a rough time personally for a few weeks, you bleed fans and have shoutcasters questioning whether you have fallen from grace or are no longer the best of the best. If you are just not in the mood to practice because it's a nice day out, but if you have a tournament net week, you can't skip your session. It becomes so very different when it changes from something you love doing purely because it was fun, to becoming a job you get paid for, to becoming something where it's your job to be the best in the world at scoring points in.
    - chii 8y ago
      This is no different from being any other professional athlete. E-sports should drop the 'E' moniker, because the 'E' part is less significant than the 'sports' part. People think playing games is less taxing and less skillful than a 'real' athlete's work, but it's not. The same level applies, upto and including the revenue model.
- gowld 8y ago
  eSports at this level reminds me of the old circus/carnival freak shows, except the circus put naturally occuring freaks on display, whereas eSports participants transform themselves into freaks -- 60 hours a week of playing a videogame into its extreme corner cases, developing hyperspecific skills to an extreme level that have zero transferability or relevance outside the game.
  - skrebbel 8y ago
    You just described all pro sports
  - sureste 8y ago
    This sounds very narrow minded. What you are saying is no different than any other traditional sport. Take ice hockey goalies. In recent years they've become more athletic to the point that their bodies do things that non-goalies can't. How is that skill relevant or transferable outside of the game? Name a position in any sport and there will be close to zero relevance to the real world. Even chess, what I consider to be very early precursor of eSports, depends on a narrow set of skills that you can't easily abstract into real life situations.
    - rchaud 8y ago
      With hockey, or any other professional sport, it doesn't matter if the skills aren't transferable, as a good hockey player will be in demand for as long as hockey is around. There's a built in longevity to the game that there isn't in e-gaming. If you dedicate years to honing your Starcraft 2 skills, but consumer interest shifts to Overwatch or Destiny, can you retrain fast enough to compete at a similarly high level? In IRL sports, the rules of a specific game don't change. Neither does the size of the field, the goalposts, the ball itself. So as long as you're able to improve your physical/mental focus, you can improve your performance. That's not the case when multiple variables around the game itself are changing.
      - bri3d 8y ago
        When a new game comes out everyone else is also starting at zero. As long as there's churn and new games are able to gain popularity, this isn't a huge issue. Also, the skills are more transferable than they'd first appear - for example, several players have been competitive in more than one FPS game. Plus, streaming, analysis, coaching, and commentary are becoming quite lucrative.
- tomashertus 8y ago
  I think you have a good point, but today you have to add hours of analysis to that schedule as well. Back in my days, it was all about putting the hours into game. Today, the time is more diversified between analytics, exercise and of course majority still goes to training. I don’t think that people realize how much time is going into these games – professional today spends easily 14 hours a day on duties related to their esports careers (training, analysis, exercise, streaming, sponsorship duties).
jaxbot 8y ago
>It is incredibly hard to have consistent results on e-sports tournaments. The NYXL are a great example of this. Often undefeated in normal season stages but then choke when it actually matters. It doesn't help that their strategies and skillsets become very rigid, and any changes in opponent strategy or game rebalances can completely throw them off. https://www.theringer.com/2018/7/24/17606796/overwatch-league-blizzard-rule-change-dive-new-york-excelsior https://www.theringer.com/2018/7/24/17606796/overwatch-leagu...
beznet 8y ago
There was a 60 Minutes episode with Fatal1ty that I saw when I was in high school and it showed him playing sports and exercising to make sure his reactions were sharp. I was competing in Counter Strike when I saw this and started regularly running and doing my best to eat healthy based off that episode. It definitely helped I think, we got pretty far along the CAL ladder during those days. It's cool to see these teams taking physical fitness even more seriously, I think it will have positive reflections on E-Sports in the long run.
benatkin 8y ago
You hilariously misspelled coaches as couches. As in personal fitness couches. It would be great if that were a thing!
- pvg 8y ago
  The trick is to think of every couch as a personal fitness couch.
- tempestn 8y ago
  Particularly beneficial for console gaming.
- tenaciousDaniel 8y ago
  A few years back I bought the domain for 5ktocouch.com, now I wish I had done something with it.
BigJono 8y ago
I'd love to find out what it is that the truly consistent teams are doing that other teams aren't. For example Astralis (currently) or SK Telecom (LoL) or Fnatic (CS) a few years ago. Every now and then a team comes along that just seems to dominate consistently. I wonder if it comes down mostly to the skill of the individual players, or if the team culture/infrastructure plays a big part in it.

taurath 8y ago

The training schedule, despite the focus on overall health is absolutely /grueling/ though. 10 hours a day to develop muscle memory and decision making on a newly-meta champion, gun, or map. 6 days a week usually.

inertiatic 8y ago
If you're at that high a level, you got there because you loved the game. So it's not really gruelling, it's what you would do anyhow if you weren't being paid for it.
- jimmy1 8y ago
  I think this takes away from the professionalism of these individuals. At a certain level, we are all doing things we want to be doing, otherwise we would be looking for ways to do other things. If you follow a lot of top eSports players in LoL challenger, for example, they all love the game, but you can tell the difference in professionalism even in their online personas towards the game. There's no doubt QTPie loves the game, but it's also no secret that the reason he isn't a top tier ADC anymore is because he doesn't want to deal with the grind and just wants to enjoy himself (and more power to him for it -- this isn't a character judgement, just pointing out the difference) Most probably love the game, but having been a semi-professional CS player myself in the past, it very much feels like "work" sometimes. > it's what you would do anyhow if you weren't being paid for it. Much different scrimming for fun or playing matches with your buddies/team mates/pub stomping versus practicing very detailed specifics or scenarios, or testing different team compositions and strategies over and over and over again.
  - Macross8299 8y ago
    My understanding is that pro counter-strike players also have to memorize and practice an obscene amount of nade throws these days just to be competitive since the physics are so predictable and things like flashbangs are so strong.
    - BigJono 8y ago
      Eh, I'd say that's pretty insignificant to a CS pro, in the same way learning what every hero/champ does in DotA/LoL seems daunting at first but is pretty trivial once you have 1,000+ hours in the game. You're just incrementally building on knowledge that you've accrued while playing normally. It's not like a pro has to sit down and do some huge exercise in rote memorisation for smokes and flashes every week. Maybe rarely when a new map gets added to the active pool.
- taurath 8y ago
  Thats not true at all in my experience - programmers who love their work burn out all the time. I had a dream job in the gaming industry but after months of 65 hour weeks decided the tradeoffs aren't worth it. I loved that job, but the sacrifices necessary to do it were too much of a cost. There are a lot of people who would love to play a game for 10 hours a day. Playing and training are different things though.
  - dmix 8y ago
    I'm not seeing the connection between being a top tier professional in a sport and working as a programmer 65hrs at a gaming company? One involves a necessary dedication and persistence for high reward, while the other is a useless exercise in exploitation (as no programmer is productive 65hrs/week and would only be rewarded sufficiently high in a few situations, such as having stock/ownership).
    - bluGill 8y ago
      Try being a top tier professional in an obscure sport: racquetball for example. You need a large amount of dedication and effort and you will not get high rewards no matter how good you are.
    - taurath 8y ago
      I wasn't a programmer at the gaming company - more of a producer type. I went into programming after for less hours and more work/life flexibility. I'd never program for 65hrs/week, but it was very possible to do my production job that much - the problem is I didn't go on a date for half a year, and my work became the entire bit of my life.
  - imesh 8y ago
    I disagree. I wrestled at a DI level in college, it was grueling, it was incredibly hard, some days I hated it. But it wasn't the same kind of burn out that I feel from software development. I don't wake up excited for work the way I would wake up excited to train. It's just different. The harder you work the better you get in sport. You may work harder at software development and become a better developer but the gains you may get aren't so concrete, you don't win, you likely won't even get a raise.
- rifung 8y ago
  > If you're at that high a level, you got there because you loved the game. So it's not really gruelling, it's what you would do anyhow if you weren't being paid for it. I don't think this is true. To reach the highest level you need more than passion: you need dedication and discipline. If you only practice when you feel like it then you're not going to practice as much as someone who has a set schedule they stick to no matter whether they're enjoying it or not. Not only that but practice or training is much different from playing and often not at all enjoyable. I would hope that all musicians love music, but practicing is usually very tiring and not fun. My current teacher always says that if you're practice feels completely painful and hopeless, you're probably doing it right. One of my friends trained with one of the top players in the world in her sport. When she wanted to take it easy because she was on her period, the coach, also female, said she should keep going. That dedication could be the difference between being #1 and #2.
- keerthiko 8y ago
  A professional gamer has to deal with so many more things as a result of their daily interaction with the game than someone who just loves the game. If a big weekend tournament is coming up, you can't just "take sick leave" because you're running a 102 fever. If you are in a slump or having a rough time personally for a few weeks, you bleed fans and have shoutcasters questioning whether you have fallen from grace or are no longer the best of the best. If you are just not in the mood to practice because it's a nice day out, but if you have a tournament net week, you can't skip your session. It becomes so very different when it changes from something you love doing purely because it was fun, to becoming a job you get paid for, to becoming something where it's your job to be the best in the world at scoring points in.
  - chii 8y ago
    This is no different from being any other professional athlete. E-sports should drop the 'E' moniker, because the 'E' part is less significant than the 'sports' part. People think playing games is less taxing and less skillful than a 'real' athlete's work, but it's not. The same level applies, upto and including the revenue model.
gowld 8y ago
eSports at this level reminds me of the old circus/carnival freak shows, except the circus put naturally occuring freaks on display, whereas eSports participants transform themselves into freaks -- 60 hours a week of playing a videogame into its extreme corner cases, developing hyperspecific skills to an extreme level that have zero transferability or relevance outside the game.
- skrebbel 8y ago
  You just described all pro sports
- sureste 8y ago
  This sounds very narrow minded. What you are saying is no different than any other traditional sport. Take ice hockey goalies. In recent years they've become more athletic to the point that their bodies do things that non-goalies can't. How is that skill relevant or transferable outside of the game? Name a position in any sport and there will be close to zero relevance to the real world. Even chess, what I consider to be very early precursor of eSports, depends on a narrow set of skills that you can't easily abstract into real life situations.
  - rchaud 8y ago
    With hockey, or any other professional sport, it doesn't matter if the skills aren't transferable, as a good hockey player will be in demand for as long as hockey is around. There's a built in longevity to the game that there isn't in e-gaming. If you dedicate years to honing your Starcraft 2 skills, but consumer interest shifts to Overwatch or Destiny, can you retrain fast enough to compete at a similarly high level? In IRL sports, the rules of a specific game don't change. Neither does the size of the field, the goalposts, the ball itself. So as long as you're able to improve your physical/mental focus, you can improve your performance. That's not the case when multiple variables around the game itself are changing.
    - bri3d 8y ago
      When a new game comes out everyone else is also starting at zero. As long as there's churn and new games are able to gain popularity, this isn't a huge issue. Also, the skills are more transferable than they'd first appear - for example, several players have been competitive in more than one FPS game. Plus, streaming, analysis, coaching, and commentary are becoming quite lucrative.
tomashertus 8y ago
I think you have a good point, but today you have to add hours of analysis to that schedule as well. Back in my days, it was all about putting the hours into game. Today, the time is more diversified between analytics, exercise and of course majority still goes to training. I don’t think that people realize how much time is going into these games – professional today spends easily 14 hours a day on duties related to their esports careers (training, analysis, exercise, streaming, sponsorship duties).

jaxbot 8y ago

>It is incredibly hard to have consistent results on e-sports tournaments. The NYXL are a great example of this. Often undefeated in normal season stages but then choke when it actually matters. It doesn't help that their strategies and skillsets become very rigid, and any changes in opponent strategy or game rebalances can completely throw them off. https://www.theringer.com/2018/7/24/17606796/overwatch-league-blizzard-rule-change-dive-new-york-excelsior https://www.theringer.com/2018/7/24/17606796/overwatch-leagu...

beznet 8y ago

There was a 60 Minutes episode with Fatal1ty that I saw when I was in high school and it showed him playing sports and exercising to make sure his reactions were sharp. I was competing in Counter Strike when I saw this and started regularly running and doing my best to eat healthy based off that episode. It definitely helped I think, we got pretty far along the CAL ladder during those days. It's cool to see these teams taking physical fitness even more seriously, I think it will have positive reflections on E-Sports in the long run.

benatkin 8y ago

You hilariously misspelled coaches as couches. As in personal fitness couches. It would be great if that were a thing!

pvg 8y ago
The trick is to think of every couch as a personal fitness couch.
tempestn 8y ago
Particularly beneficial for console gaming.
tenaciousDaniel 8y ago
A few years back I bought the domain for 5ktocouch.com, now I wish I had done something with it.

BigJono 8y ago

I'd love to find out what it is that the truly consistent teams are doing that other teams aren't. For example Astralis (currently) or SK Telecom (LoL) or Fnatic (CS) a few years ago. Every now and then a team comes along that just seems to dominate consistently. I wonder if it comes down mostly to the skill of the individual players, or if the team culture/infrastructure plays a big part in it.