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Comment by rchaud | Hacker News Reader

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.

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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.

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.

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.

> 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'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.

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.

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