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Esports stars have shorter careers than NFL players

169 points by danso 5y ago

PeterStuer 5y ago
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.
- mistrial9 5y ago
  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
danso 5y ago
Paywall free link: https://washingtonpost.com/video-games/esports/2022/04/19/esports-age-retirement/?pwapi_token=eyJ0eXAiOiJKV1QiLCJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiJ9.eyJzdWJpZCI6IjE4ODU2NzczIiwicmVhc29uIjoiZ2lmdCIsIm5iZiI6MTY1MDg5NDE0MSwiaXNzIjoic3Vic2NyaXB0aW9ucyIsImV4cCI6MTY1MjEwMzc0MSwiaWF0IjoxNjUwODk0MTQxLCJqdGkiOiJhMGIwMzM5NC1hMjUxLTQwMDAtYWI1MC0zYzQ5NDE3YzU5ZDYiLCJ1cmwiOiJodHRwczovL3dhc2hpbmd0b25wb3N0LmNvbS92aWRlby1nYW1lcy9lc3BvcnRzLzIwMjIvMDQvMTkvZXNwb3J0cy1hZ2UtcmV0aXJlbWVudC8ifQ.9SfdoEQjTrxIBEWl5766SREDKQhR9T0kIBGYkBpWVXc&itid=gfta https://washingtonpost.com/video-games/esports/2022/04/19/es...
- m348e912 5y ago
  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)
h2odragon 5y ago
Fewer injuries tho, one would hope. "Space Invaders ruined my thumbs!"
- aerostable_slug 5y ago
  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.
  - melling 5y ago
    How does one avoid RSI? https://www.engadget.com/2015-04-27-hai-lam-league-of-legends-retirement.html https://www.engadget.com/2015-04-27-hai-lam-league-of-legend...
    - toast0 5y ago
      Good posture, properly fitted equipment, rest when you can, stretching and strength training regiments. Some amount of luck.
SiempreViernes 5y ago
> 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.
- nemothekid 5y ago
  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.
  - aerostable_slug 5y ago
    > 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...
    - throwaway48375 5y ago
      >Balenciaga kicks and 99c bowls of instant noodles do make an odd combo... I don't know anything about shoes, but I looked up Balenciaga and those have to be some of the ugliest shoes I have ever seen. https://www.balenciaga.com/en-us/defender-sneaker-green-685613W2RA63000.html https://www.balenciaga.com/en-us/defender-sneaker-green-6856...
bluefirebrand 5y ago
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.
- runnerup 5y ago
  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.
  - bluefirebrand 5y ago
    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.
    - gus_massa 5y ago
      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.
    - jmgao 5y ago
      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 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JfAU2lw6BrQ#t=6m8s
karmakaze 5y ago
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. [0] https://liquipedia.net/starcraft2/Maru https://liquipedia.net/starcraft2/Maru [1] https://liquipedia.net/starcraft2/DongRaeGu https://liquipedia.net/starcraft2/DongRaeGu
- Retric 5y ago
  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.
  - mrtweetyhack 5y ago
- kirrent 5y ago
  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.
bena 5y ago
The money just isn't there. 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. Because the money isn't there.
- dehrmann 5y ago
  > It's a young man's game, because it's a poor man's game. MTG? A poor man's game?! HAH! ...Unless you mean it's the reason he's poor.
  - bena 5y ago
    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.
    - entropie 5y ago
      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. https://mtg.fandom.com/wiki/Red_Bull_Untapped https://mtg.fandom.com/wiki/Red_Bull_Untapped
mhh__ 5y ago
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.
- Semaphor 5y ago
  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.
- entropie 5y ago
  I think rainbow six siege is pretty niche comparing to Valorant, Apex Legends or (more in asia) Staraft.
  - mhh__ 5y ago
    It's niche but still enough to have pretty big prize pools.
bombcar 5y ago
I wonder if the average ram interest in esports is also shorter.
duxup 5y ago
Can you mark a living at esports if you’re not one of the best you’re doing well? You have to win to earn money in esports right? It seems like the difference in professional athletics is you’ve got a somewhat predictable income at some point.
- chii 5y ago
  > You have to win to earn money in esports right? 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.
  - dehrmann 5y ago
    Dumb question: how do team salaries work? Who funds the team?
    - chii 5y ago
      > Dumb question 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.
      - dehrmann 5y ago
        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: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Serral#/media/File:Serral_2018.jpg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Serral#/media/File:Serral_2018... 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?
skippyboxedhero 5y ago
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.
- dmix 5y ago
  For non-gamers like me: OWL = Overwatch league LCS = League of legends championship series
- tmpz22 5y ago
  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. - former impassioned fan
ajmurmann 5y ago
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.
- Ekaros 5y ago
  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.
CollinEMac 5y ago
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) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UjZYMI1zB9s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UjZYMI1zB9s
- LewisVerstappen 5y ago
  > 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 The WaPo article seems to imply that is not true. Also, in Formula 1 reflexes, hand-eye coordination, reaction time, etc. are all extremely important. Despite that, a driver will typically be at their peak in their early-mid 30s.
  - justahuman74 5y ago
    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
    - Ekaros 5y ago
      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.
- Aerroon 5y ago
  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.
Fezzik 5y ago
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. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daigo_Umehara https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daigo_Umehara
- endominus 5y ago
  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 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JzS96auqau0 (And for more context behind that, which I love because they actually got Justin Wong, Chun Li's player, to comment on it, see https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4cNCa8PylLA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4cNCa8PylLA)
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  - Fezzik 5y ago
    He also did this a few weeks ago in an open tournament: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=YJ7UH8nbB3I https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=YJ7UH8nbB3I 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.
colonCapitalDee 5y ago
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.
- abalaji 5y ago
  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.
- danielmarkbruce 5y ago
  replace "an esports career" with "a startup" ?
  - akshatmittal108 5y ago
    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.
    - jrh206 5y ago
      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.
    - 5y ago
dmix 5y ago
The best thing that could happen for esports is if Warcraft 4 came out. It’s been 15 years. I don’t understand why they don’t want to make another billion off this franchise in that timeframe.
raghavtoshniwal 5y ago
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.
okwubodu 5y ago
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.
- princeb 5y ago
  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.
  - bigDinosaur 5y ago
    Australian Rules Football is a completely different game to the other major footballs (Soccer & American Football). It isn't a minor tweak.
- foepys 5y ago
  Standardized games would be the death of eSports. 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.
paulpauper 5y ago
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.
- entropie 5y ago
  Streaming and "professional esports" are very different. Sometimes there are overlapping parts. > Even ppl who suck at gaming are making huge income with streaming Who? Ppl who suck at gaming but have a big audience have other skills (e.g. they are entertaining).
paulpauper 5y ago
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.
danamit 5y ago
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.
wolverine876 5y ago
> 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.
- PartiallyTyped 5y ago
  Reaction speed matters a lot, and so does the capacity to track multiple timers in your head. These can't be trained for.
  - FooHentai 5y ago
    (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.
  - ajxs 5y ago
    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.
    - PartiallyTyped 5y ago
      From experience (League of Legends), a person needs to keep track of - the position of 2-4 players around the map - the timers of different camps (NPCs the players kill for buffs) - the locations of enemy wards (timed items that give vision) - short ability timers and (+ need to know them for all possible characters) - long ability timers ( many pro plays happen exactly as the timers are up )
jimbob45 5y ago
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.
- matwood 5y ago
  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. [1] https://brobible.com/sports/article/michael-jordan-bulls-contract-love-for-the-game/ https://brobible.com/sports/article/michael-jordan-bulls-con...
derekdahmer 5y ago
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.
- butler14 5y ago
  TV punditry is still a pretty common retirement plan for traditional sportspeople in the uk at least
lordnacho 5y ago
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.
- dfxm12 5y ago
  With respect to burnout, traditional sports can only be practiced for so long each day NCAA and players' unions also define how much a player can practice in those sports.
- PaulHoule 5y ago
  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.
- majani 5y ago
  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
genewitch 5y ago
some proportion of people were told there was no way to make money playing video games. That there's a, and i quote, "careers" in video | computer gaming. Isn't that enough? - genewitch
unnouinceput 5y ago
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.
- smcl 5y ago
  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.
flybrand 5y ago
So too did MMA fighters when that sport first emerged.
langsoul-com 5y ago
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.
oneoff786 5y ago
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.
silexia 5y ago
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.
PaulHoule 5y ago
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 https://virtualyoutuber.fandom.com/wiki/Kizuna_Ai https://virtualyoutuber.fandom.com/wiki/Kizuna_Ai 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 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AuronPlay https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AuronPlay and has 17.6 million subscribers on Twitch and is ranked #2 among Twitch streamers on Wikipedia. This 25 year old woman https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pokimane https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pokimane 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.
- ferrumfist 5y ago
  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.
mmcdermott 5y ago
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.
AlwaysRock 5y ago
It's a young sport and the game variances in it are huge. Training for one game does not translate to another. This isnt surprising.
cbanek 5y ago
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.

169 points by danso 5y ago

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.

mistrial9 5y ago
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

danso 5y ago

Paywall free link: https://washingtonpost.com/video-games/esports/2022/04/19/esports-age-retirement/?pwapi_token=eyJ0eXAiOiJKV1QiLCJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiJ9.eyJzdWJpZCI6IjE4ODU2NzczIiwicmVhc29uIjoiZ2lmdCIsIm5iZiI6MTY1MDg5NDE0MSwiaXNzIjoic3Vic2NyaXB0aW9ucyIsImV4cCI6MTY1MjEwMzc0MSwiaWF0IjoxNjUwODk0MTQxLCJqdGkiOiJhMGIwMzM5NC1hMjUxLTQwMDAtYWI1MC0zYzQ5NDE3YzU5ZDYiLCJ1cmwiOiJodHRwczovL3dhc2hpbmd0b25wb3N0LmNvbS92aWRlby1nYW1lcy9lc3BvcnRzLzIwMjIvMDQvMTkvZXNwb3J0cy1hZ2UtcmV0aXJlbWVudC8ifQ.9SfdoEQjTrxIBEWl5766SREDKQhR9T0kIBGYkBpWVXc&itid=gfta https://washingtonpost.com/video-games/esports/2022/04/19/es...

m348e912 5y ago
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)

h2odragon 5y ago

Fewer injuries tho, one would hope. "Space Invaders ruined my thumbs!"

aerostable_slug 5y ago
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.
- melling 5y ago
  How does one avoid RSI? https://www.engadget.com/2015-04-27-hai-lam-league-of-legends-retirement.html https://www.engadget.com/2015-04-27-hai-lam-league-of-legend...
  - toast0 5y ago
    Good posture, properly fitted equipment, rest when you can, stretching and strength training regiments. Some amount of luck.

SiempreViernes 5y ago

> 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.

nemothekid 5y ago
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.
- aerostable_slug 5y ago
  > 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...
  - throwaway48375 5y ago
    >Balenciaga kicks and 99c bowls of instant noodles do make an odd combo... I don't know anything about shoes, but I looked up Balenciaga and those have to be some of the ugliest shoes I have ever seen. https://www.balenciaga.com/en-us/defender-sneaker-green-685613W2RA63000.html https://www.balenciaga.com/en-us/defender-sneaker-green-6856...

bluefirebrand 5y ago

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.

runnerup 5y ago
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.
- bluefirebrand 5y ago
  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.
  - gus_massa 5y ago
    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.
  - jmgao 5y ago
    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 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JfAU2lw6BrQ#t=6m8s

karmakaze 5y ago

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. [0] https://liquipedia.net/starcraft2/Maru https://liquipedia.net/starcraft2/Maru [1] https://liquipedia.net/starcraft2/DongRaeGu https://liquipedia.net/starcraft2/DongRaeGu

Retric 5y ago
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.
- mrtweetyhack 5y ago
kirrent 5y ago
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.

bena 5y ago

The money just isn't there. 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. Because the money isn't there.

dehrmann 5y ago
> It's a young man's game, because it's a poor man's game. MTG? A poor man's game?! HAH! ...Unless you mean it's the reason he's poor.
- bena 5y ago
  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.
  - entropie 5y ago
    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. https://mtg.fandom.com/wiki/Red_Bull_Untapped https://mtg.fandom.com/wiki/Red_Bull_Untapped

mhh__ 5y ago

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.

Semaphor 5y ago
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.
entropie 5y ago
I think rainbow six siege is pretty niche comparing to Valorant, Apex Legends or (more in asia) Staraft.
- mhh__ 5y ago
  It's niche but still enough to have pretty big prize pools.

bombcar 5y ago

I wonder if the average ram interest in esports is also shorter.

duxup 5y ago

Can you mark a living at esports if you’re not one of the best you’re doing well? You have to win to earn money in esports right? It seems like the difference in professional athletics is you’ve got a somewhat predictable income at some point.

chii 5y ago
> You have to win to earn money in esports right? 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.
- dehrmann 5y ago
  Dumb question: how do team salaries work? Who funds the team?
  - chii 5y ago
    > Dumb question 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.
    - dehrmann 5y ago
      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: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Serral#/media/File:Serral_2018.jpg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Serral#/media/File:Serral_2018... 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?

skippyboxedhero 5y ago

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.

dmix 5y ago
For non-gamers like me: OWL = Overwatch league LCS = League of legends championship series
tmpz22 5y ago
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. - former impassioned fan

ajmurmann 5y ago

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.

Ekaros 5y ago
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.

CollinEMac 5y ago

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) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UjZYMI1zB9s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UjZYMI1zB9s

LewisVerstappen 5y ago
> 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 The WaPo article seems to imply that is not true. Also, in Formula 1 reflexes, hand-eye coordination, reaction time, etc. are all extremely important. Despite that, a driver will typically be at their peak in their early-mid 30s.
- justahuman74 5y ago
  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
  - Ekaros 5y ago
    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.
Aerroon 5y ago
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.

Fezzik 5y ago

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. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daigo_Umehara https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daigo_Umehara

endominus 5y ago
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 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JzS96auqau0 (And for more context behind that, which I love because they actually got Justin Wong, Chun Li's player, to comment on it, see https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4cNCa8PylLA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4cNCa8PylLA)
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- Fezzik 5y ago
  He also did this a few weeks ago in an open tournament: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=YJ7UH8nbB3I https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=YJ7UH8nbB3I 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.

colonCapitalDee 5y ago

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.

abalaji 5y ago
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.
danielmarkbruce 5y ago
replace "an esports career" with "a startup" ?
- akshatmittal108 5y ago
  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.
  - jrh206 5y ago
    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.
  - 5y ago

dmix 5y ago

The best thing that could happen for esports is if Warcraft 4 came out. It’s been 15 years. I don’t understand why they don’t want to make another billion off this franchise in that timeframe.

raghavtoshniwal 5y ago

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.

okwubodu 5y ago

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.

princeb 5y ago
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.
- bigDinosaur 5y ago
  Australian Rules Football is a completely different game to the other major footballs (Soccer & American Football). It isn't a minor tweak.
foepys 5y ago
Standardized games would be the death of eSports. 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.

paulpauper 5y ago

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.

entropie 5y ago
Streaming and "professional esports" are very different. Sometimes there are overlapping parts. > Even ppl who suck at gaming are making huge income with streaming Who? Ppl who suck at gaming but have a big audience have other skills (e.g. they are entertaining).

paulpauper 5y ago

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.

danamit 5y ago

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.

wolverine876 5y ago

> 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.

PartiallyTyped 5y ago
Reaction speed matters a lot, and so does the capacity to track multiple timers in your head. These can't be trained for.
- FooHentai 5y ago
  (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.
- ajxs 5y ago
  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.
  - PartiallyTyped 5y ago
    From experience (League of Legends), a person needs to keep track of - the position of 2-4 players around the map - the timers of different camps (NPCs the players kill for buffs) - the locations of enemy wards (timed items that give vision) - short ability timers and (+ need to know them for all possible characters) - long ability timers ( many pro plays happen exactly as the timers are up )

jimbob45 5y ago

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.

matwood 5y ago
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. [1] https://brobible.com/sports/article/michael-jordan-bulls-contract-love-for-the-game/ https://brobible.com/sports/article/michael-jordan-bulls-con...

derekdahmer 5y ago

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.

butler14 5y ago
TV punditry is still a pretty common retirement plan for traditional sportspeople in the uk at least

lordnacho 5y ago

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.

dfxm12 5y ago
With respect to burnout, traditional sports can only be practiced for so long each day NCAA and players' unions also define how much a player can practice in those sports.
PaulHoule 5y ago
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.
majani 5y ago
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

genewitch 5y ago

some proportion of people were told there was no way to make money playing video games. That there's a, and i quote, "careers" in video | computer gaming. Isn't that enough? - genewitch

unnouinceput 5y ago

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.

smcl 5y ago
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.

flybrand 5y ago

So too did MMA fighters when that sport first emerged.

langsoul-com 5y ago

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.

oneoff786 5y ago

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.

silexia 5y ago

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.

PaulHoule 5y ago

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 https://virtualyoutuber.fandom.com/wiki/Kizuna_Ai https://virtualyoutuber.fandom.com/wiki/Kizuna_Ai 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 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AuronPlay https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AuronPlay and has 17.6 million subscribers on Twitch and is ranked #2 among Twitch streamers on Wikipedia. This 25 year old woman https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pokimane https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pokimane 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.

ferrumfist 5y ago
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.

mmcdermott 5y ago

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.

AlwaysRock 5y ago

It's a young sport and the game variances in it are huge. Training for one game does not translate to another. This isnt surprising.

cbanek 5y ago

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.