MENUEsports Professionals and Video Game Addiction
By Jackie Shelton
Published on April 12, 2023
Published on April 12, 2023
"The Authority in Online Gambling"
The esports scene has exploded since the past few years, largely thanks to major league video games like Counter-Strike: Global Offensive, League of Legends, and Defense of the Ancients 2.
It’s a growing industry and it doesn’t look like it’s going to stop anytime soon.
Competitive video games are averaging almost a hundred thousand viewers per game, and when these video games host their Championship matches, it’s no surprise when the viewership goes into the tens of millions.
These competitive video gamers have received world-renown fame as well as superstar status in some countries, such as Korea and China. However, there’s one dark aspect of professional esports that a large number of people don’t address and that is video game addiction.
Today, we’ll be taking a look at video game addiction, what it can do to someone on the competitive scene, and how it can affect you as a bettor.
Video game addiction is, as stated by the World Health Organization, a mental health disorder in which the individuals compulsively wastes away hundreds of hours in a week on the console or computer playing video games. This not only interferes with their personal life, but with their own self-status also.
However, while many consider this to be a problem, the millennial generation does not see anything wrong with their well-being in this situation. In fact, from an unbiased standpoint, many can consider video game addiction to be a perception between the older generations and the newer ones.
However, there is such a thing called video game addiction. How you perceive it—whether it’s a disease or not—is your opinion.
Video game addiction can be labeled as a disease largely because of its addictive properties that are brought about without any outside factors. We could compare this to an addiction to smoking and drinking, which have various physical properties that make it addictive.
However, for video game addiction, the pure addiction of video games comes from your own self. The video games are only entertaining, but it’s rather the individual’s mind which perceives the game as addictive.
There are many to video games. Some of these are:
While this does seem concerning, it seems to be overlooked by the esports world. Why is this?
After all, professional video gamers spend dozens of hours a week practicing their craft, so they can be the best.
Video game addiction seems to a big deal when it comes to society’s point of view, but why does this not come up in professional esports, considering that the entire industry is based off of video games?
While you can consider the professional gamers as addicts themselves, there’s a reason why, in the esports world, they are considered more as superstars than poor souls who can’t control their game time.
It’s no lie that some professional video gamers can spend dozens of hours each day playing the game they call their profession.
However, for them, video game addiction, is not a deal. There’s many reasons as to why they can compose themselves from these games that supply their income.
Video game addiction means that you can’t stop playing no matter what you try. You’re essentially addicted to the game. However, for esport professionals, they’re not necessarily in love with the game. Most professionals play to get better and improve their skills for the competitive scene.
Most media outlets see professional esport gamers as addicted due to these individuals holding the same symptoms as those under video game addiction.
For instance, the top tier players spend up to fifteen hours on their computers before they take a break.
Some players are mostly isolated from community groups other than their teammates, and other players have been known to show extreme fatigue.
Most esports pros do not love their game. In fact, there have been a large number of players in the League of Legends scene who have come out, saying that the game is boring at times and that they only play it to improve or make their income.
Outside of their professional gaming life, most pros tend to find other hobbies such as working out, going out to eat, or spending a day with their friends. Due to the excessive practice hours that esport pros tend to face, they can largely be considered “addicted to video games.”
While it doesn’t usually affect a bettor, there can occasionally be an incident where a player will face health issues due to an actual case of video game addiction. This may be rare but when the situation happens, dire events usually unfold.
This could mean losing the star player of a team or losing out on large heaps of profits due to the top pro being put out of tournaments for either rehab or a break. While this may be a problem, what you truly want to focus on is actually quite the opposite—pros leaving the game because they’re bored.
More often that once, players have quit their respective games due to boredom or injury. Ninety percent of the time is out of boredom.
League of Legends has seen the departure of names like Dyrus and HotShotGG because they found the competitive scene repetitive each and every year, leading to their retirement into other aspects of the game.
HotShotGG is now a share-holder of his old team, Counter-Logic Gaming, and Dyrus is an entertainer on the streaming platform, Twitch, where he makes most of his income playing recreational League of Legends for fans.
That being said, what you truly want to fear is not the video game addiction itself for pro gamers, but rather the boredom which comes from years and years of playing the same video game over and over again.
Video game addiction is a true disease for those who play the game recreationally. It can have profound life-changing effects on the user but for video game professionals, video game addiction is nothing more than a name put on them by others.
Why is this? Simply put, they’re not addicted to their respective video games. In fact, they play the game to improve and make their monthly income. While they may spend up to fifteen hours playing the game, no one can say they are “truly” addicted.
This so-called phenomenon of video game addiction is almost obsolete for video game professionals. In fact, coming from an experienced esports bettor myself, I would say that video game addiction is something that will rarely affect your betting experience.
There have been a few cases where a player has been addicted to a video game to the point where they are put in rehab and bettors lose their money because of this.
