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.
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.
So, it does happen, but you’re right in that the skills are not easily transferable. The only thing that is, is your dexterity.
Is there a whole host of ex e-sports players making a professional living off poker? Or are these guys outliers?
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.
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 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.
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