Previously, when hearing about Playing E-Sports games, most parents objected and thought that this activity was useless, a waste of time, and had many harmful effects on health. However, you may not know that, more than 10 years ago, e-sports developed very strongly abroad and brought many benefits.

From Hobby to Career: How Playing E-Sports Is Changing Professional Gaming

What is esports? This is the acronym for Electronic Sport, meaning electronic sports. This discipline is competition between many players through a video game. During the match, players will compete against each other to find the winner.

These games are often operated mainly through electronic devices (PC, phone…), players will operate on devices such as mouse and keyboard.

The competition environment will be a virtual space. Game genres commonly used in Esports competitions are usually role-playing, combat, and highly strategic.

Famous top Esports such as League of Legends (LOL), Dota2, Counter-Strike: Global Offensive (CS: GO – shooting), Fifa Online 4 (FÕ – online soccer), PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds (PUBG – life and death arena) ), Crisis Action’s Battlegrounds (CABG – Assault)…

Esports development process

Early period (1972 – 1989)

The first video game competition was held on October 19, 1972, at Stanford University with the game Spacewar and the prize was a year of using Rolling Stone music magazine. In 1980, Atari organized the Space Invaders Championship, the first large-scale video game competition, attracting more than 10,000 participants across the United States.

• Spacewar is a space combat video game developed in 1962 by Steve Russell with his associates.
• Spacewar is a space combat video game developed in 1962 by Steve Russell with his associates.
• In the 1970s and 1980s, players and tournaments began to be sought after in famous newspapers such as Life and Time.

Online e-sports ascended the throne (1990 – 1999)

During the 1990s, many games benefited from increased Internet connectivity, especially PC video games. Video games used to compete in the 1994 tournament included NBA Jam and Virtua Racing.

The era of global tournaments (From 2000 onwards)

Esports development in Korea is said to have been influenced by the mass build-up of broadband internet following the 1997 Asian financial crisis.

Recently, Esports has experienced tremendous growth, along with a huge increase in both viewership and prize value. Although major tournaments were only held before the 21st century, the number and scope of tournaments have increased impressively, from about 10 tournaments in 2000 to about 260 tournaments in 2010.

E-sports at the 2021 Southeast Asian Games (SEA Games 31) will be held at the National Convention Center in Hanoi from May 13 – 22, 2022. The GAM Esports team overcame the competitors to win the gold medal for their country.

Benefits of playing e-sports

Reduce stress

Perhaps this is what attracts many people to e-sports to help deal with stress. Getting rid of stress and spending time participating in an activity you enjoy can be good for your health.

However, this does not mean gaming is a way to escape all your problems. Gaming is just like any other hobby like gardening, reading or golf.

If you enjoy gaming and it makes you happy then you shouldn’t feel ashamed about it. Playing games helps your mind completely focus on what you want or helps you escape everyday stress and worries.

Hand-eye coordination

Gaming is not the only sport that requires hand-eye coordination. Most sports require this such as table tennis, tennis, and badminton.

What makes esports unique is the asymmetrical hand-eye coordination required. Meaning gamers need to perform different actions with each hand at the same time. Think about how you play LoL or CS:​GO, the mouse and keyboard require two very different actions that must be perfectly coordinated.

German Professor Ingo Froböse’s research on e-sports athletes has found that the hand-eye coordination required far exceeds that required for table tennis. All hand-eye coordination must be in perfect sync with what is happening in front of the gamer’s eyes on the screen (this often happens at lightning speed).

Most gamers started gaming at a young age and have perfected the necessary hand-eye coordination, reaction time, and muscle memory over the years.

A study conducted in Italy published in Plos One found that surgeons who played video games improved their hand-eye coordination and precise muscle movements. This is essential for surgery.

Critical thinking

This is obvious for those of you who like to play e-sports or even recreational gaming. You don’t know the extent to which gaming can improve critical thinking or haven’t thought about it.

Gaming, especially e-sports, requires players to take in large amounts of information, process and analyze it, and then repeatedly make split-second decisions. Competitive gaming is like chess with speed in mind.

Playing the game requires you to think about what your opponent is thinking and even what your opponent is thinking you will do. Once you have received information, processed it, and analyzed it, you need to react in the way you think is most reasonable. Normally, this reaction needs to take place in a split second. In it, many decisions become the player’s instinct.

Solve problems

At its most basic level, gaming begins with a problem that needs to be solved. In e-sports, once the match starts, there is a problem and you need to solve it.

So, it can be said that playing games helps improve problem-solving ability because you continuously solve problems at an extremely fast speed. Typically in League of Legends, you make sure the enemy champion cannot defeat you. You can’t sit back and think about the next steps for a few minutes; you need to solve the problem immediately.