Investigating the human factors in esports performance

Abstract

Although its history dates to the beginning of the videogame era, in the recent years eSports has rapidly been maturing into a professional scene that has captured a large and growing audience: the 2017 world finals of one of the most successful pro gaming platforms reached a peak of 75.5 million unique viewers, compared to the NBA finals, which averaged 20 million spectators. Several studies already supported eSports as a legitimate form of sports. In this paper, we focus on identifying the human aspects of eSports and we discuss their relevance in competitive games. To this end, we discuss interviews with sports and eSports professionals, and we analyze the results of a survey distributed to athletes who are pursuing their career in traditional sports and in pro gaming.