i contend that what is required for physical sports is largely the same as for esports, with only a few differences. for both athletes and pro gamers, a lifetime of training has gone into mastery of their respective crafts. most olympians start training from a very young age. to be sure, that training is more rigorous than simply learning the skills required to play video games by playing video games, but i’m sure that most pro gamers have spent an extraordinary amount of time throughout their lives building up the skillset that makes them good at what they do.

learning a sense of timing, a sense of what is logical within game systems, both visual and aural senses of what is important and what isn’t—these are all crucial to being a pro gamer, and do not come easily. the gamers reading this may be thinking that they are skilled in those areas, and that it wasn’t a big deal to become skilled. but you only have to think about anytime you’ve tried to get a non-gamer to play something as simple as mario, and how difficult it was for that person even though it’s simple for you, to realize how much the time you’ve spent playing video games has honed your skill. many pro gamers would make us look like those novices. and while it may seem like because of the fact that the games being played at tournaments are usually fairly new, and therefore not that much time went into preparation for that tournament, pro gamers are using the language of gaming that they’ve learned over a lifetime in order to feel through the strategies and execution of a new game and learn it far quicker than a novice would.

while it may not be equally important for both olympians and pro gamers, physical condition is definitely more important than most people would think for the latter. being overweight, having poor circulation, respiration or an above average heartrate can cause headaches and eyestrain which are obviously detrimental. poor circulation can also cause cold extremities which reduces mobility of your fingers and can cripple an otherwise amazing player. all of these also affect your stamina, which is more important for longer games like starcraft, but still important nonetheless. i’m sure a pro gamer could tell you more about this but i’m definitely not intimately familiar with what it takes to perform at a tournament. regardless, it’s clear from what i’ve said that a gamer in good physical condition will have an edge over one who is not, especially in suboptimal environmental conditions.

physical execution is also extremely important in both cases. pro gamers spend large amounts of time just practicing physical mechanics. in fighting games, they need to have the muscle memory and timing to be able to execute a button press within a window of 1/60 of a second. and not just one button press, but a string of anywhere from 5-25 in a row. failing to press any of these at the correct time will give your opponent an opening he can use to gain advantage. in starcraft (a strategy game), one measurement of physical execution is APM (actions per minute). an action is anytime you click the mouse or press a keyboard key to take an action within the game. pros clock at around 200-250 APM. that’s between 3-5 per second. i’ve been playing games all my life and the highest i’ve seen my APM get is around 150, and it’s about 80 on average—nowhere near the level of a pro. those familiar with games may be thinking that the rules that cause games to be so execution-heavy are arbitrary, since it’s up to the developers of the game to create the rules. well, many olympic events aren’t exactly pure in this sense either. many of them have arbitrary rules which cause us to do things that we would never otherwise do.

both require intense concentration. becoming distracted for even a moment will allow your opponent to punish you. in fighting games you must always be judging the distance between you and your opponent and adjusting it accordingly. waver for even a split second, and a skilled player will take advantage. in strategy games like starcraft, you aren’t able to look at the entire game field at once. sometimes you have to be concentrating on multiple areas, but since you can only look at one area at a time it can be easy to forget about a squad of units that you sent to one corner of the map, or to gather resources in your new forward expansion. it takes an extreme amount of discipline to be able to focus at that level.

what may be most important for many olympic events and most esports is a strategic and calculating mind. this is also what i personally find most impressive about both. very important is the ability to “read the mind” of your opponent. this skill comes from extensive knowledge about the rules of whatever game you’re playing, and what is referred to as the “state of the game,” which i will talk more about later. in fighting games a huge amount of information and strategy goes into being able to read your opponent.

i’ll list some of the important terms players use to discuss this in fighting games. “priority” is what affects the outcome when two moves connect at the same time. for example, if one player jumpkicks and the other one does an uppercut, the game needs to be able to decide which move will connect. “frame data” is literally exactly how many frames each move or combo and each step of each combo take up. one frame, which can be 1/30 or 1/60 of a second depending on the game, can make the difference between winning and losing an encounter. a “hitbox” is an invisible area surrounding what appears to be your character, which the game engine uses to detect collisions between your character and the game world, and other characters. pros need to have extensive knowledge of all these things, as well as the special moves and combos of all the characters (some games have upwards of 40 characters to choose from), in order to be able to predict what their opponents might do next.

in strategy games, as one might imagine, the focus is less on memorization and more on the bigger picture. memorization is still involved, as players need to know all about the strengths, weaknesses and abilities of all the available units and buildings, but more important is being able to decide what to do and when to do it. at the outset of a game, there are dozens of basic strategies a player might choose from, based on what he thinks his opponent will do and also what map they’re playing on. as the game progresses, players will usually need to adjust their strategies many times according to what their opponents are doing. most strategy games have multiple “races” to choose from, which are basically different sets of units and buildings which have different strengths and weaknesses. as with fighting games, players need to know what works against each different race and adjust accordingly. these are not easy things to do. being a soldier is an admirable and respectable thing, but not every soldier has the strategic mind of a general. obviously i do not have the knowledge of real military conflicts to say whether the strategy used in games like starcraft is as difficult, but clearly it isn’t a commonplace ability.

the last major topic i’d like to talk about is what makes olympic events and pro gaming different. firstly, and most obviously, olympians are in perfect physical condition and must perform mind-blowingly difficult feats of strength and dexterity. i have a huge amount of respect for this. at the same time, it’s quite obvious that some events are much more difficult than others. i won’t give any specific examples because that really isn’t the focus of this post and i don’t really want to discuss it, but i know they are there. the ones i am more willing to get excited about mostly include games, where there are people facing off against each other, which you may have figured out when i said i find strategy to be the most impressive part of competition.

what sets esports apart from the olympics is something that i think is extremely important. the competitive playing of video games evolves drastically over time. i’m not only talking about new games coming out, although obviously that is part of it. new olympic events aren’t very common—i haven’t done any research, but i would expect that new tournament-ready video games are more frequent. and that is exactly what causes games to evolve so drastically. each game brings with it a new set of things to learn, and players can’t possibly learn even most of them by the time the first tournament comes around. players are constantly learning new ways to deal with situations, creating new strategies and soforth. this is what is referred to as the “state of the game”. i think this is what makes esports exciting–you never know what to expect. yes, there is still some evolution of olympic events but most of them have been around for so long that the rate of new exciting things has slowed to a crawl.

once again i’ve written way more than i expected to on the topic, and i need to step away to wrap my brain around it. i hope i have at least made this largely unknown topic a little more clear. i also hope that i hear some interesting opinions and counterpoints, including from the friend who inspired this. i may write another post depending on that.

google is beginning to dominate the market with free applications that can easily replace expensive ones. google can afford to do this, so why shouldn’t it? businessmen would have you believe it’s stifling the economy to give these (and other) things away (or sell them cheaper than they can). what’s stifling the economy is people complaining that one company can afford to give away (or sell for cheaper) products that have traditionally been expensive. why is this? because people are too comfortable with the way things are. they’re too lazy to imagine what else they could possibly be doing other than their current jobs.

if a job becomes obsolete due to technological advancement, there is no reason to try to “save” that job. it is obsolete. everybody has heard the guy talking about how pretty soon machines are going to be doing everything and that’s so terrible. well, people aren’t born to do manual labor. the less tedious nonsense people have to do, the more time they have available to do more important things.

people are clamoring about the automotive industry as well. it would have evolved past what it is now years ago if it wasn’t for the leaders of said industry stifling innovation because there wasn’t as much money to be made if cars didn’t run on gasoline.

wall street has suffered a huge blow due to investors thinking they can nudge the market around in whatever direction they like in order to make more money.

all these mistakes that have been made to further the ends of businessmen by growing companies too big just because they can (could), setting up extremely risky investment portfolios, giving out sub-prime mortgages, et cetera have culminated in suffering for everyone, even those who weren’t involved at all.

but why did those businessmen do all those things in the first place? well, that’s because we’re all trained to believe capitalism is the greatest possible economic system. well, capitalism only works if you actually meet the demands of the consumers. shoving things down people’s throats is only going to work for so long. screwing everyone else in order to further your own private interests will only work for so long. and now we’re beginning to see what happens when people do those things.

so to bring it all together, people need to open their minds to advancement. previous generations understood these things are necessary. now people have come to look at job obsolescence as something scary, instead of something liberating. we need a paradigm shift in order to progress as a civilization. how that can happen, i don’t know. i just hope i live to see it.