What Do We Know About Professional Gaming?

The article in hand looks into the empirical research done on professional gaming and pro-gamers in an attempt to get a clearer picture of the phenomenon. According to this review, there are three themes that are prevalent in the research into the topic. These themes are the socio-cultural appeal of gaming as a profession, socio-psychological elements of pro-gamers everyday lives, and the health and physiology of pro-gamers.

In these categories, we can see a clearer picture of the phenomena of professional gaming. Studied socio-cultural aspects include how professional gaming is seen in some countries. For example, in China and South Korea, the governments have an interest in pushing professional gaming. In there, it is seen as real sports, and the countries see, that it is good for their image. These societies put a high value on these pro-gamers. On the other hand, there is disdain for people wasting their time playing if it’s not playing professionally. In Korea PC Bangs, their internet cafés, are a place for people viewed very low in the society. Another socio-cultural aspect that has risen in these studies is the gendered nature of professional gaming. Men have dominated the industry, but with the increasing number of females becoming professionals, it is seen as an aspect to study more.

The socio-psychological aspects that have been studied vary a lot. Firstly, there have been studies done on how the careers of professional gamers start, go, and end. One of the theories used to look at professional gamers’ careers is the Chaos Theory of Careers. In essence, people from varying backgrounds become accidentally professional gamers, and they must be able to handle the stress of the profession and the reality of it being short-lived. This does have a positive aspect, as the chaotic nature of professional gaming allows individuals to forge their own paths. Secondly, studies have looked into the amount of labour and skill needed. For example, there is a study, that identifies three skills that are necessary to succeed as a professional gamer; having specific skills and knowledge relating to e-sports, possessing psychological abilities that help to mentally handle the training and competition, and having generally good habits in life to take care of themselves. The last two categories looked into the socio-psychological aspects of the player types and play styles, and the different team dynamics and how they affect the game results.

The last theme that emerged in this review is the professional gamers’ health and physiology. Negative effects on physiology include sleeping issues due to the long-time use of screens, and neck and back pain due to playing long with bad posture. There are also positive physiological effects on professional gamers, like good mental strength and better hand-eye coordination. The health is discussed in two parts: physical and mental. Studies seem to indicate that professional gamers take care of their physical health and that also has a positive effect on their performance while gaming. With mental health, it seems like more studies need to be done where professional gamers are separated from casual gamers. Still, there are studies that observe that due to high stress and amount of play, professional gamers have a higher chance than casual players to exhibit disordered gaming habits.

This review of the current research on the subject was done by Isha Bihari and Debashis Pattanaik. In their review, Bihari and Pattanaik used a systematic literature review as the research approach to get the most relevant texts on this particular phenomenon. These texts were chosen according to them fitting their chosen parameters; the samples are about professional gamers, the phenomena looked into is professional gaming, and the study types are empirical studies that are based on primary data. Both qualitative and quantitative research were included. Studies done on professional gamers not in the e-sports scene were not included in this review. The data was collected using keyword string research in databases, manually researching Google Scholar, and using Google Alerts for additional research articles.

Source: Bihari, I., Pattanaik, D. (2023) Professional Gaming and Pro-Gamers: What Do We Know So Far? A Systematic Review. Sage Journals. https://doi-org.libproxy.tuni.fi/10.1177/15554120231154058

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Janette Mäkinen

Achievement hunter, player of games, and collector of all things gaming.
On a battle of my time, gaming has definetely won. On most evenings, you can find me enjoing a good single player game, or playing some fps multiplayer with friends.

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