What does being young have anything to do with skill in a video game? I ask this because in a lot of videos and discussion shows such as Summoning insight I notice they tend to use a player's age as a factor when determining how successful they might be, and how well they play etc.... Just wondering if anyone could give me some insight on why they do this.
I would personally say it doesn't really have anything to do with actual 'player skill', it's more down to what's going on in their life.
< 17; they should be focusing on school and not professional esports/League of Legends. Unfortunately, at the minute, esports simply isn't big enough (or at-least from the outlook of League of Legends), to be considered a job people can go into for a large amount of time; speaking in regards of multiple years or a career even.
≥ 17; esports is something that can be considered a job, and now is the perfect time to be focusing on it. Take, Rekkles for example, he was underage when people began speaking about him, and now he's 18 (I think), he's at good age for League of Legends esports as he could advance into the future as an even better player than he is today.
I would say (as a guess) ≥ 25 is probably the age people begin to stop, or at-least stop playing professional themselves, and I'd guess that's due to instability within esports. It's not guaranteed people will still be interested in League of Legends next year, for all we know, Riot might completely close it down and stop developing League of Legends, and this is what I believe puts a lot of people off continuing, as when you're in your mid-twenties, it's when you've gotta' find some security in something, and at the minute (to my dismay), esports cannot provide that job security many people are looking for. A few exceptions on this are people like Reginald, from TSM, he owns the entire team, so when he stepped down playing, he could still be involved with esports are a career due to having a team and company to stabilize him.
Obviously, this is just an opinion of what I think anyhow, age isn't really used in terms of 'skill' it's more.. Power-spikes? The younger the player is, the longer they have to develop into something even better. There's are probably a few exceptions into the examples I gave, but meh; hopefully this helped somewhat. :)
Well strictly about becoming a professional, it would have to do with child labor laws and the like. Professional e-sports athletes train for the game like working a full time job, and live and travel with their team. A younger person wouldn't be allowed to do such things in many countries.
With strict respect to skill level - it probably comes down to decision making. While a younger player may be extraordinary and make better decisions than anyone else, few would argue that he won't make even better decisions in 2 years. When you're competing professionally, odds are your competitors have the same natural talent you do, so the older player has just had more experience in general to make better decisions. Real Life decision making can impact your ability to make decisions in game - it's always a measure of risks and you'll only get better at that with age.
Which of course doesn't mean I (22) won't get totally stomped by a 10 year old at this game sometimes :p I'm not a pro though ;)
