[Code S] Grand Finals 2013 GSL Season 1 - Page 97

On March 13 2013 16:05 Daswollvieh wrote:


People like to think that "their" sport is super tough and unforgiving as if that "Korean cut-throat competition magic" would somehow rub off on themselves. Like proudly proclaiming to be a Rugby-fan because it´s the toughest sport in the world where people eat nails and shit shuriken, though you´re sitting on a coach watching it like any other sports fan. Lowering the age for success to new arbitrary depths is merely one way to make one´s sport tougher, similar to Korean vs foreigner or ESF vs Kespa arguments.
I think you´re completely right. Though people start declining physically from their mid-twenties on, I don´t believe it´s a governing factor in e-sports. Older players have to deal with motivation issues, career questions, family questions, the need to pay for yourself in the near future, the consequences of the "super-tough" training methods leading to burn-out, military service, the insecurity of not knowing where your life will lead you, thinking about family, alls the many responsibilites of grown-up life. All things that a sixteen year old "bonjwa" has never encountered and will not have to worry about for several years, where people watch him peak and then discard him as too old, when he starts getting confronted with life decisions in his twenties. Sure quick hands are good for Starcraft, but a clear mind is even better in such a cerebral sport.

A study was published a while ago that among German top-athletes, depression and other mental afflictions, occur way above the average. The high pressure of having to win, the risk of injury and the intense training are factors, but not the biggest one. The deciding factor is the financial insecurity that does concern most professional athletes, who don´t play a popular sport. E-sports is in a similar situation, where the career appears sustainable only for a couple of years, leaving you with basically nothing careerwise. And that is something a sixteen year old bonjwa is simply not confronted with, yet.

So being an athlete (esports or otherwise) in your teenage years/early twenties is a whole lot different from doing "the same" in your early thirties. I assume most "fans" themselves have not reached that age to appreciate the struggle.