>At Seoul Game Academy, a chain of schools in South Korea’s capital, 3,000 students aged nine and up (roughly 99% of them boys) hone their skills at nine games in hopes of becoming full time “e-sports” athletes.
That's just sad. The level of grind it takes to become pro is nuts. For every one professional player or streamer there's a countless number of people that have wasted their lives on this stuff.
The scale is such that to be good it's very often a case of mastering a zero-sum game. Rote repetition until it becomes [hand] muscle memory. The same shit, over and over, until your eyes bleed.
Aged nine and up? Just let the kids have fun. High-level e-Sports should be considered child abuse at that age.
Yes and no. Sports with young kids typically don't get too intense outside of the occasional psycho coach or parent. American football in particular of course does have a nasty CTE/TBI hazard by nature—which IMHO should render it off-limits to minors.
For collegiate sports—which is a meat grinder of hopes and dreams unto itself—most athletes figure out pretty quick whether they're making it in the big leagues or not. There's an expiry there just by virtue of the way the human body works. I suppose it's still possible to ruin your life trying, but least you come out of it with excellent physical fitness (brain injuries aside), and having not stared at a screen the entire time.
That's just sad. The level of grind it takes to become pro is nuts. For every one professional player or streamer there's a countless number of people that have wasted their lives on this stuff.
The scale is such that to be good it's very often a case of mastering a zero-sum game. Rote repetition until it becomes [hand] muscle memory. The same shit, over and over, until your eyes bleed.
Aged nine and up? Just let the kids have fun. High-level e-Sports should be considered child abuse at that age.