Why do pro gamers retire so young?

Linna Excel·May 3, 2014·2 votes·7,517 views

I saw this touched upon in a GD thread but not really talked about. Why do pro-gamers have such a short career shelf-life of maybe 3-5 years? Boxers, running backs, and p0rn stars can at least make it to 30 years old.

For a lot of people, this would sound like a dream job. Something seems out of whack though. Has riot looked into this any? Letting your top talent walk away completely from the game after only a few years doesn't sound all that great for Esports.

To put things in perspective, LeBron James would have ended his career with the Cleveland Cavs, we'd never have the decision, and the heat wouldn't have won the NBA title. Also neither John Elway, payton manning, nor Brett Farve would have lasted long enough to win a superbowl.

13 Comments

Sir ArmaMalumMay 3, 20143 votes

Though I have not truly researched this, I'll throw out an educated guess. It's very difficult to establish a consistant well-paying career around pro-gaming right now. There are people that can do it, and do it well, don't get me wrong, but for League pros the high competitive atmosphere combined with the lack of a true actual occupational framework (protected annual income, baseline insurance, etc.) makes it very difficult to put their gaming career over other areas of school.

To compare them with say, American Football pros, Football pros get selected and reimbursed (scholarships, etc.) to finish college under the umbrella of their athletic career and they can work towards moving towards a professional career while developing an alternative route. All in all, American Football pros and other professional athletes have an established infrastructure, support system and career path laid out ahead of them that provides money, a back-up career plan, and addresses their needs as they develop across several years and the pros get increased responsibility for their own lives. League and to my knowledge all professional gamers do not have those benefits. They have a talent and skill developed through playing the game and while possibly winning tournaments for money, there is no current way to be able to make that into a reliable living without a lot of luck and a lot of travel time.

MakersFMay 3, 20142 votes

Good guess. Moreover esport means playing the same game over and over and over, 10-12 hours a day, no stop, for all you career. The fact that over LCS for example there isn't nothing else, means that if you made a good score there you can say "i reached as far as everyone could possibly get", it's not like sports were you have national leagues, and then world championship which are a huge thing every 4 years, and then continental championship, and so on. It's almost impossible to win all of them in just 3-5 years in normal sports, but in esports, you could possibly win all that in 1 year. The pressure, the unhealthy life style and what you point out about the future is probably what make them stop

Kitch26May 3, 20141 votes

For the record, the average NFL career span is 3 years. Its only the top >10% that maintain their careers into their 30s. Not sure about most other sports, but I would assume its the same.

Linna ExcelMay 3, 20141 votes

Kitch, it's true the average career in the NFL is low, but a lot of that is the new people who come in every year just aren't able to make the transition from colleges.

With the exception of a few football factories, it is extremely rare to have more than a small handful of people on the other team who will even have a chance at being pro. So it's not like you can pubstomp newbies play after play anymore.

ArtoriusIVMay 3, 20141 votes

The reason E-sport props retire earlier is because it is all about reaction time, and as you get older, your reaction time gets slower and slower. A perfect example of this is White-Ra the oldest starcraft pro still playing. He doesn't win too many tournaments, but he can still take a highly favored player out of the tournaments. He does this through his trademark "special tactics" and not through mechanically complex strategies. His reactions are visibly slower then the other pros and his mechanics are slightly behind.

The reason behind this is as you age you start to get slower, both mentally and physically. Now this might not be as quickly noticed in football or another sport when you have many parts of your body moving at the same time, but when it comes down to the push of a button, it becomes very apparent that this delay occurs.

Linna ExcelMay 3, 20142 votes

How much loss of reaction time is enough to push someone out? Can't you still be a contributor by having strong mechanics and knowledge?

ArtoriusIVMay 3, 20141 votes

I don't know how what the decay is like, but when you are looking at windows of less then half a second, the slightest delay can cost you. To see this try using two different mice with different DPI. You will realize that the difference in how long it takes to move the mouse makes some plays impossible.

And yes you can still compete with your knowledge, like I said, white-ra despite being in his forties still defeats favored opponents using odd tactics, but is not consistent, he doesn't do well. This is because his mechanics(micro and macro) suffer because of his slightly slower reaction times.

Linna ExcelMay 3, 20141 votes

So why not start a "seniors" pro tournament for players over a certain age? Limit how much they can play a week and guarantee them some money for their work.

They wouldn't have to burn themselves out 12 hours a day and it'd be like a side job they could keep doing. In return, the fans would get to see their favorites keep playing.

ArtoriusIVMay 3, 20141 votes

I don't know. I don't think they'd have to reduce their play time though, It's not hoe much they play that burns them out, it's just them getting older.

CerbearusMay 4, 20141 votes

Probably because e-Sports are harder than normal sports so aging affects them more than other athletes.

RhytoMay 5, 20141 votes

It's very difficult to stay entirely as a pro gamer one reason is that constant playing will impair your eyes (Note the fact Metoes wears those goggles to counter/delay his retirement)

In Osu! the well-renown player Cookiezi from South Korea has just retired and purposely using cheap bots while mods were watching him to get himself removed from the system. The purpose was because he has begun to suffer from an Eye infection as well as temporary blindless because of his feats in playing games.

RubitonabuildingMay 6, 20141 votes

I actually just saw something on I think it was Daily Planet, that said people's peak performance in video games is between the ages of 18-25 or something around there.

Linna ExcelMay 6, 20141 votes

Okay, if is getting older and losing reaction times is the main answer, what's the average age of people in D1 and Challenger? Who are the oldest D1/Challenger players out there?