Comment by tomashertus | Hacker News Reader

Comment by tomashertus | Hacker News Reader

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

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.

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 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.

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.

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.

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.

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).

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.

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.

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.

At a professional level, people plateau all the time. They're beaten by people who train less hard but have more talent or ability.

You can work harder and harder at a game but not end up better than someone with superhuman reaction times despite a lot of hard work. Also, the game changes due to patches and content updates - all that work you put in for a year understanding a mechanic might be for nothing at the drop of an update.

Trust me, no programmer loves their work in the same way a gamer loves gaming.

Even implying they do is blasphemous.

I don't know. Followed Carmack since I was a kid. Guy's an inspiration.

I’m all for gaming and you can see my posts defending it but I don’t know who you can say this with confidence.

People love different things. It’s how you get masters at different crafts. Some people love solving things and some love creating... programming is both of those.

Blasphemous is an interesting choice of words - I wouldn't be so certain or dogmatic.

> Trust me, no programmer loves their work in the same way a gamer loves gaming.

I can't, sorry. I'm pretty into playing games (though by no means a "gamer" in the sense that it controls my life, etc.) but I will often choose to program rather than play games in my free time.

Competitive endeavours will dominate your life if you have the personality for it, and those people competing on that level do.

You are a casual gamer, but in this context you are as much of a gamer as a random board game player is one compared to Magnus Carlsen.

When I was younger, I'd agree. Was for sure a vidiot but now I don't play much. But programming is more compelling now than playing in someone else's skinner box.

Watching something compile, link and pass all your test cases after you add a new feature is a pretty big dopamine rush in of itself.

> 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.

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.

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.

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.

You just described all pro sports

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.

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.

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.

Based on my observations, the skills are solely transferable in same genre of games. I've seen great FPS players switching to different titles. I have never seen a great FPS player doing well in RTS and opposite.

So how often do you see Baseball players end up pivoting to the NFL? RTS and FPS are essentially different sports.

I believe the initial argument is that "pivoting" of the players is inevitable, due to the relatively short shelf-life of a video game's popularity. Whereas a professional athlete in traditional sports can typically play one sport from childhood till retirement (be it 20, 30, 40, or 50), an e-sport professional may have to switch games after 3 years, and every 3 years, to remain relevant.

Tell that to the 1.6 pros still winning today. (Ok, before Astralis dominated everything).

There’s a streamer, Fitzyhere, who has gone from playing SC2 (RTS) at a competitive level, to becoming one of the best players in Overwatch (FPS).

So, it does happen, but you’re right in that the skills are not easily transferable. The only thing that is, is your dexterity.

There are many professional poker players who started as competitive Starcraft players, and even more who started at Magic: The Gathering

I don't know about "many"? The only famously successful one I can think of off the top of my head is Bertrand Grospellier. And I guess Benger got some publicity when he made the WSOP main event.

Is there a whole host of ex e-sports players making a professional living off poker? Or are these guys outliers?

But even if that's true, who cares? Overwatch is not going to be a popular ESports title forever, but the FPS genre overall is probably going to be a component of ESports for an extremely long time. If your skills are transferable within an entire genre, that's good enough.

The odds of someone waking up some day in a world where competitive FPS ESports have vanished is probably roughly comparable to the odds that someone wakes up in a world where competitive hockey has vanished -- that is to say, unlikely enough that's it doesn't seem to be worth worrying about.

I disagree. While the games might not change, the interface might.

The future might be AR/VR games. If you spent your whole life using keyboard and a mouse, you're gonna have to get used to the new interface.

I mostly agree with that, but there are a handful of Dota 2 pros that used to play Starcraft 1/2 or Warcraft 3 at high levels. Like someone else mentioned I believe there are a few pros that moved to Overwatch from another type of game.

I think the teamplay and drive many of those players have is transferable. You have to let the video game run your life, like any other sporting professional. The mouse movement, keyboard habits and reaction speed are also all mostly transferable. At the end of the day I think its mostly determination to switch and time.

>With hockey, or any other professional sport, it doesn't matter if the skills aren't transferable,

Well, if you're making the argument that these pro gamers are worse off because they spent a large portion of their lives for skills that aren't transferable and won't result in a long term career, then if you accept that sports skills aren't transferable as well, same argument would apply to athletes given average NFL career is like 3 years. You could say they are better off because they make a lot more money for that short period of time, but you would also have to consider the odds and expected value of "trying to go pro" given average genetics.

edit: meant to reply to parent

There's also the mental tax of transferring.

I was a pretty active competitive player in Street Fighter 4 in my local scene. I spent a lot of time learning intricate things about the game. I knew so many different situations that could happen in the game, and due to my experience I was able to come up with appropriate responses. Those are the things that can't be learned from a video tutorial or a written guide, because they are simply too minute. As an example, some of the longer combos can have their later hits miss if you start out too far from the opponent. But the fine line between close enough and too far is very hard to gauge.

Then Street Fighter 5 came out, and all that accumulated knowledge had to be thrown away. That was one of the reasons I gave up on competitive playing, couldn't really deal with going at it again only for all my knowledge to get invalidated later on once more.

I experienced the exact same thing, except I was competitive in Tekken.

I am not sure your argument holds.

Many "good" hockey players never make it to a pro league and end up sitting behind a computer somewhere. Even if they do make it pro most sports performers have a prime age where they start to lose their edge. I am not sure that when one thinks of something that is in high demand hockey goalies comes to mind.

It sounds like you know nothing about esports to be honest. Players change games pretty frequently. Seagull was TF2, now overwatch. Same with Harbleu.

Imaqtpie was dota, now league.

So yeah, they do adapt, and quickly.

The rules may not change frequently for IRL sports but style of play definitely changes and can have the same result.

Chris Carter was tied for the 6th most home runs in baseball from 2013-2016. If he was born 10 years earlier he would have been one of the highest paid players in the sport. Instead he was cut after the 2016 season, was only a part time player in 2017, and hasn't played in the majors since. He wasn't any worse as a baseball player, just the idea of what defined a "good baseball player" changed.

Similar things have also happened in other sports recently. Basketball has shifted to be faster paced and more about spreading to floor to shoot 3-pointers reducing the importance of traditional centers. Football has become more of a passing game reducing the importance of running backs and all but eliminating the position of fullback. I don't follow hockey, but I have heard that the enforcer role is on its way to disappearing from the game.

>There's a built in longevity to the game that there isn't in e-gaming.

Tetris came out 35 years ago and they're still holding world tournaments for it. Not to say that modern modern e-sports are the same as Tetris, but there doesn't seem to me any reason why LoL would be less likely to be around in 20 years than boxing.

Starcraft Broodwars is 20 years old and there are still professional tournaments being played in front of large live audiences (a large tournament recently ended and a new one is starting in about two weeks), and players are making a living out of streaming and playing these tournaments.

> 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.

This isnt even close to true. A, "good" hockey player is useless. The top 200 goalies in the world will have jobs. The top 25-50 will have well-paying jobs. The other hundreds or thousands of good goalies will never be paid to by a hockey player.

> 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.

Also untrue. Many sports change over the years as one progresses. They are regular rule changes in many sports. There are specific rules based on location. I think you should learn more about IRL sports if you are going to draw comparisons to e-sports.

There is a bit of transferability though.

ElkY is a former Starcraft pro who turned to poker with great success. He now plays Hearthstone. He used his skills as a Starcraft player to play online poker on many tables at once. Reaching the highest levels on PokerStar and joining the resident team.

And while there are hyperspecific skills, like any activity at such a high level of play, what differentiate e-sports from traditional sports is that things change fast, really fast. A video game lifespan is relatively short and between that are new content, patches, and new techniques. Adapting quickly is very important. And indeed, pro players are often young and don't stay on top for very long.

There was a pro Counter Strike player Griffin Benger ("What up now Swedes" guy) who became a professional poker player and was once the highest winning online player and has a total earnings of over $10m now.

I think there are a number of pro esports players who have become full time poker players. Interesting how that drive and dedication transfers to other things.

There's plenty of transferability; watch any of the top FPS streamers (like Shroud) and they're amazingly competitive at just about any shooter they pick up. Fundamentals like quick camera movement, communication, corner-taking, etc transfer across many games.

>eSports at this level reminds me of the old circus/carnival freak shows,

I don't think that's really a fair comparison. Most of the appeal of esports is just admiration for someone who's really good at something you enjoy doing.

If you played football or hockey competitively growing up, you have more appreciation of the sport than someone who never did and conversely, it's probably harder for someone who never played to really grasp the nuances or even understand the appeal beyond regional tribalism.

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).

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

The trick is to think of every couch as a personal fitness couch.

Particularly beneficial for console gaming.

A few years back I bought the domain for 5ktocouch.com, now I wish I had done something with it.

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.

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.

>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-leagu...

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