Professional Gaming: hard living, hard money

One of Friday’s discussions was about the question whether professional gaming was considered a real job. One of the arguments against professional gaming being a real job is the nearly objective statement that games are fun. But this is actually an argument in favor of professional gaming being a though job, not an easy one. Since a game is fun, a lot of people are intrinsically motivated and willing to spend time playing a specific game. This way the average skill level increases significantly. Imagine everyone putting the same motivation and enthusiastic hours into the practice of a mailman: succeeding through the application at the post office would be a lot harder. 

Silver (2012) showed the same example for poker players after the increased popularity of the game. As can be seen in the figure, the so-called water level determines the room for a professional player’s profit. Because gaming is fun, the average skill level (the water level) will is likely to be relatively high since there will be a lot of people practicing the game. In order to make money, gamers have to be way better than that high average. As the popularity and inside game knowledge on average make the water level of professional gamers rise and rise, marginal improvements in the game become especially important. That’s why other factors like physical and mental well-being come into play, or even mathematics to reason for logic of specific tactics. Just practicing a lot is insufficient since it is being done by many others already.

Similar to professional athletes, the range of age for a professional gamer is rather small (Wingfield, 2014). Especially in combination with the stress which is generated by the highly competitive environment, this creates an uncertainty for the player’s future. This is an insecure prospective in comparison with a traditional job, which mainly offers more financial security for a longer period of time. Besides, the income of professional gamers is highly correlated with their performance. Moreover, they also have to sacrifice other aspects of their life to spend time to gaming in order to stay at the highest level of play (Wingfield, 2014).

So the idea of professional gaming being easy money is a big pitfall for light-minded outsiders. If it was easy, millions of people were rich now. But the paradox here is clear; not everyone can be better than the (highly skilled) average!

Figure 1 Source: Silver, N. (2012). The signal and the noise: Why so many predictions fail-but some don't. Penguin, p. 257.

Silver, N. (2012). The signal and the noise: Why so many predictions fail-but some don't. Penguin Wingfield, N. (2014). In e-Sports, video gamers draw real crowds and big money. Retrieved September, 23, 2015.