By Sylvia

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As technology goes through a burgeoning growth, its constant impact has affected our daily lives in various ways. In the gaming industry, the advance of technology has made the way for esports to flourish. For the past years, esports has become one of the most popular activities, especially among youngsters. Today, esports has become a lucrative economy with international tournaments happening all over the world attracting thousands of players and millions of viewers watching their favorite gamers competing for as much as millions of dollars prize money. In short, it can be said the world of esports has become as huge as an Olympic Games level don’t you agree?

What Is It About Esports?

For those who are a video or online game enthusiasts, there is no denying that most would agree gaming gives that mental stimulation and excitement when they are in that gaming mode but for esports players, that thrill is doubled. It all begins with a slight adrenaline rush until that competitiveness triggered into their bloodstream and the game is on! No…scratch that, it’s a virtual war-zone and prepare to be defeated! Fuihh…Intense indeed!

Before we go further into discussing esports, we can’t talk about it without mentioning how gaming, in general, stimulates the brain and creates positive impacts. So let’s take a look at some examples below:

1) Playing Video Games Is Good For Brain Health

There is a research conducted by the Max Planck Institute for Human Development and Charité University Medicine in Berlin where researchers discovered that the benefits of video gaming could be helpful in therapeutic interventions targeting.

Other medical benefits of playing games include the possibility of using gaming to help alleviate the symptoms of psychiatric problems such as the downturn of cognitive aging; dementia, Alzheimer’s disease, Parkinson’s disease, Huntington’s disease, ALS or other neurodegenerative diseases. Furthermore, the benefits of gaming could extend to decelerating the degenerative span of the brain in mature life and boost early life brain development.

2) Gaming Can Lead To A Bright Future

Another positive impact of gaming can be seen happening in one of the world’s most high-tech cities, Seoul, South Korea. Gaming has become a necessary routine for some of its communities. The principal of Ahyeon polytechnic high school, Bang Seung-ho took a radical action when he realized many students were bunking off because they had spent all night playing games. He opened a PC bang in the school. A PC bang is a type of LAN gaming center in South Korea, so for the Ahyeon polytechnic school, as long as students studied their school subjects in the morning, they are allowed to play games to their hearts’ content in the afternoon and evening.

“It was incredible to see how good their attitudes towards the classes became,” he says. “Once you embraced those kids, recognizing what they are good at, their mentality changed. They started studying as well.”

Before long, Bang realized the school was becoming a training ground for future professionals. So far, seven or eight of Bang’s students have turned professional.

3) Gaming Can Increase Brain Size And Promotes Connectivity

Video games have been known to help increase brain size and connectivity. A study stated that not only does regularly playing action video games increase the amount of grey matter in a person’s brain – the part responsible for muscle control and sensory perception skills such as seeing and hearing; memory function; and emotion, speech, decision formation – but it also promotes better connectivity in certain sub-regions of the brain associated with these functions. This study is conducted by the team led by researchers from the University of Electronic Science and Technology of China and Macquarie University in Sydney, where they used functional MRI (fMRI) scans to analyse the brains of 27 gamers who have achieved professional, or ‘expert’, levels of playing action video games (AVG), having won regional and national championships in League of Legends or DOTA2.

Back To Esports!

Now that you’ve got the idea how gaming stimulates the brain and creates positive impacts, for esports, the best video game players are not only lauded for their specific skills on a controller or mouse, but also for their steely minds, which are purportedly capable of withstanding the harsh judgment and pressure that seems to emanate from every angle of their lives. Speaking of mental toughness, did you know that those gamers who are in pursuit of becoming a professional esports player have to go through a tough training? Ten to twelve hours a day! Not just on playing video games, but lots of cardio exercises as well.

From the financial side, it can be quite tight initially as esports players only make money if they win. But all is not lost! According to Esportsearnings.com the regular salaries for esports players vary from team to team and player to player. In December 2015, Ember, a North American League of Legends team, was the first organization that publicly disclosed their players’ salaries. These salaries are based on factors such as skills, reputation, and social following.  For example, the professional gamer salary for Ember players ranges from $65,000 to $75,000, with extra bonuses that can reach up to $27,000.

To sum up, it is necessary to know that esports can benefit your health and being a platform to channel repetitive skill-based task, it can help improve brain connectivity and health while maintaining other balance in the different aspect of one’s daily life. And,

“Dollars are flowing in from traditional investment institutions, professional sports organizations and high profile individuals at an exciting pace – putting the industry’s widely-reported march to a $1 billion market cap easily within reach” – Forbes,

All in all, esports is certainly more than just a game!