Geeks everywhere want to know what it's like to be a pro gamer, harboring their own dreams of killing Zerg for a living. But the realities of pro gaming would dampen anyone’s drive to pursue such a career. The lifestyle of professional gamers might seem appealing, until you know what exactly that entails: a minimum of 10 hours a day playing a single game, every day, with no guarantee of making any money from it.
There’s a huge difference between being a casual gamer and a professional gamer. The life of an e-athlete is not cushy by any stretch of the imagination. In fact, it can be downright grueling. Lack of sleep, drug abuse, sexual harassment — there are a lot of messed up things about playing video games professionally that just come with the territory. Let’s take a deep dive into the dark lives of pro gamers, and put to bed this notion of gaming as a cushy dream job.
Unlike more traditional professional athletes, pro gamers must enjoy long careers, right? After all, it's not like it matters if their body deteriorates. They're mostly playing with their minds.
In reality, pro gamers have extremely short careers. The average pro gamer retires in their mid-20s, because their reflexes and dexterity have diminished so much by that point they can't keep up with the young'ns. As of 2014, League of Legends had 27 million players and only 40 made the North American pro team. So the likelihood of success is infinitesimal and, if you make it, you're out shortly thereafter. It's not exactly a long-term career plan.
Professional gamers eat, sleep, and breathe gaming. Almost literally. It's not uncommon for pro gamers to play 14 hours per day. In fact, that's on the low side. Many are playing as much as 18, and a South Korean gentleman who goes by the name of MarineKing admitted to playing around 20 hours a day.
Look, gaming's great, but 20 hours a day? That would be exhausting to do once. To do so regularly would probably kill most people. The training is so intense, some players posit that doing anything sociable, like getting a girlfriend, can actually dramatically decrease your skill level and earning potential.
There's Gambling That Makes Pete Rose Look Innocent
Gambling on e-sports is especially weird when you realize that many of the participants are teenagers, but there have been numerous cases of match-fixing as well. A Counter-Strike: Global Offensive match between two North American teams was thrown in 2014, and all bets were voided after the scandal was uncovered. Basically, members of one team secretly bet against themselves, then lost deliberately.
One Korean player even attempted suicide after his match-fixing scandal was uncovered. It's also fairly common for sharks to attempt bribe players to throw matches as well. It's just an all-around unhealthy situation.
ADHD medications like Adderall or Ritalin are commonly abused to increase focus in the pro gaming community, and a lot of players dabble in more obscure drugs as well. Propranolol, for example, is a beta-blocker that helps players remain calm by negating the effects of adrenaline.
Then there's the even crazier abuse of a drug that treats actualParkinson's disease called Selegiline, which improves mood and motivation. It would be bad enough if players were abusing jsut one of these drugs, but they often consume a combination of all of them as a cocktail, with a sh*tload of caffeine to top it off. It's a miracle there aren't more drug-related deaths, frankly.
Sexual Harassment Is The Industry Standard
Photo: PiMP.TV
As with so many industries, thanks to good ol' sexism, there are far fewer female professional gamers than male. And for those select few, sexual harassment just comes with the territory. During one match, a female Street Fighter X Tekken player was asked her bra size and told by her opponent that he wanted to watch her in the bathroom.
Afterward, that piece of walking garbage said, "Sexual harassment is part of a culture, and if you remove that from the fighting game community, it's not the fighting game community." Polls have him leading the 2020 American Presidential race.
Pro Gamers Are Often Crammed Into Over-Capacity Living Situations
One pro gamer recounts living in an apartment with over 10 people. There didn't even enough beds; some people were sleeping on the floor. The living room was bursting with 10 computers, and there was barely enough room anywhere in the apartment to sit down and eat. The bathroom must have looked like the aftermath of a Terran invasion of a Zerg encampment. The stuff of nightmares.
