Into the Life of a Pro Gamer

Being a professional gamer is, in many ways, similar to being a professional athlete. As a reminder, to succeed in a video game at the professional level requires use of strategies that need to be adjusted on the fly. This type of analysis is called eSports analytics. “We formally define eSports analytics as: the process of using eSports related data, primarily behavioural telemetry but also other sources, to find meaningful patterns and trends in said data, and the communication of these patterns using visualization techniques to assist with decision‐making processes” (Schubert, 2016). In fact, “Today, most professional teams employ analysts to observe opponents and discover their tendencies and strategies, develop counter‐ strategies etc., similar to analysts working in physical sports” (Schubert, 2016). Analysts and coaching staff are a necessity in professional gaming, as they can analyze team-wide mistakes from a spectator’s perspective in an attempt to fix them, as well as scout the opponent’s team mistakes in an attempt to exploit them.

Figure 1: Statistics on the prize pool of several eSports tournaments (Breslau, 2014)

With the case of any competition, winning is the ultimate objective. In the case of eSports, nothing is different. As shown in Figure 1, the prize pool of eSports tournaments is increasing with every passing year. Winning is great for teams as they get money and sponsors, which gives more money. Money can be used it to keep or acquire better players, coaching staff, equipment, etc.

Professional gaming is a serious commitment and job. Pro gamers do have salaries and they can earn quite a bit off sponsors. In the case of League of Legends, the League Championship Series (LCS) is the name for its official competitive scene. “Under the 2013 LCS League Rules, players received a minimum salary of $12,500 from Riot for a ten-week season, with the opportunity to earn prize money in the playoffs. Players can also receive additional compensation from their teams for producing game-related content, merchandise sales, and streaming their screens to online audiences… Incorporating these various revenue sources, one team manager recently estimated that professional LoL players can make anywhere from $30,000 to well above $300,000 annually” (Fisher, 2014). Professional gamers are by no means less well-off than a middle class worker.

As mentioned above, professional gamers also have the opportunity to “stream” their screens to online audiences. Live-streaming means to transmit live audio and footage of yourself playing the game to an online audience. It allows “fans to follow tournaments and their favourite players online… Watching your favourite player talk you through their game is a unique attraction of eSports, says Aiken. ‘If you had Usain Bolt giving an analysis of his own race people would love that,’ he says” (Heaven, 2014). During live-streams, there is a chat box that allows for fan interaction during games. This allows for some of the best pro-to-fan interaction in all of sports. Live-streaming is insanely popular among fans and professional gamers too. “Many of these players have extremely high viewer bases, even while no professional tournament is currently running. For example, it is not unusual for some streamers of a game called League of Legends to have over 30,000 concurrent viewers at any one point in time” (Hope, 2014). Because of such high viewer counts, live-streaming can be a great way to make extra money because of ad-revenue. In this case, both the player and audience win, because the player makes money, and the audience gets free entertainment.

References

Breslau, R. (2014, April 2). Report: More than 70 million people watch eSports worldwide.

Fisher, S. D. (2014, January 30). The Rise of eSports League of Legends Article Series. Foster Pepper.

Heaven, D. (2014, August 16). Rise and rise of esports. New Scientist, 223(2982), 17.

Hope, A. (2014). The Evolution of the Electronic Sports Entertainment Industry and its Popularity.

Schubert, M., Drachen, A., & Mahlmann, T. (2016, February). Esports Analytics Through Encounter Detection. MIT Sloan Sports Analytics Conference.