By Chang-Shanmei
If your child is exceptionally good at online games and can even win esports competitions, should you worry about gaming disorder?
A friend who works at a game company once complained that she had been assigned to level up in a game for testing. She continued playing after work until three in the morning. The same activity that had attracted her to the industry was no longer leisure; it had become work.
My conclusion is that parents may need to consider whether the esports industry is sustainable and whether a competitor’s career is too short. They need not assume, however, that an esports player is necessarily more likely to develop gaming disorder. Treating a game as leisure and treating it as work are fundamentally different, much like the difference between enjoying basketball with friends and becoming a professional athlete.
Esports: A New Form of Competition Mediated by Machines
Esports has been widely discussed as a possible form of modern sport. People compete through computers, consoles, phones, and arcade machines. Part of the game is mediated by machines and software that define and enforce its rules.
The essence of esports is play, just as play lies at the heart of sport. Dutch historian Johan Huizinga described human beings as homo ludens, or playing humans. He argued that human history and culture developed on a foundation of play. Modern online games are not used only to learn rules or acquire knowledge. They also fill time, sustain friendships, create new forms of social interaction, and offer novelty and enjoyment.
Early athletic competitions emerged from religious rituals, while modern sports developed alongside capitalism and became commercialized, professionalized forms of entertainment. Whether people are playing or competing, everyone must take the rules seriously. Once the rules are broken, the shared meaning of the game can disappear immediately.
Five Differences Between Recreational Players and Esports Competitors
A history of esports identifies five basic differences between ordinary players and esports competitors. These differences resemble the boundary between recreation and employment. They may also help explain why professional play should not automatically be equated with gaming disorder.
1. Less Spontaneous Recreation
Why does the pleasure of voluntary play diminish once a talented gamer becomes a professional? Consider watching a film because you genuinely want to see it. You can immerse yourself and express your views freely. If the same film becomes a required assignment before you even watch it, much of its spontaneous enjoyment disappears. It moves from the side of recreation toward the side of work.
2. More Complex Preparation and Greater Dependence on Organizations
Becoming an esports competitor requires training comparable to that of an athlete, as well as talent. Becoming a star requires defeating many other highly skilled competitors.
In one study, 31 percent of players had completed middle school, 45.9 percent had completed high school, 18.9 percent were studying at a university or college, and 4.1 percent held a university degree. Average training time was 12.8 hours on weekdays and 12.6 hours on weekends. More than half trained over 13 hours a day, while only 12.7 percent trained fewer than 11 hours.
Esports can therefore be a demanding industry. Even when competitors earn high salaries, the work intensity is substantial. Some recreational players invest comparable time without pay and may spend heavily on in-game purchases. The crucial difference lies in the purpose of their play.
3. Stricter Rules
Online games usually offer players many ways to play, but competitions require clear and standardized rules to ensure fairness. Strategies favored by recreational players may not be permitted in a tournament. For the competitor, esports can resemble professional basketball or baseball: the entertainment is largely for the audience.
Once the rules are set, competitors must learn to win within those limits. Like professional athletes, they practice fundamentals, identify weaknesses, and improve through deliberate practice. This is the path by which expertise is developed. Playing with such discipline and purpose is different from compulsive, uncontrolled gaming.
4. More Obvious Instrumental Goals
In eighteenth-century Britain, horse racing, boxing, and cricket changed from rural pastimes into standardized activities that could generate regular income. Sport became a commodity: audiences paid to watch, athletes were paid to compete, and large wagers were placed.
When esports involves prizes, profit, and betting, its instrumental purpose becomes especially strong. The more instrumental it is, the more it resembles work rather than play for the competitor.
5. Features of Institutionalized Culture
Elite competitors can acquire an almost iconic status. They are expected to demonstrate admirable conduct, take part in highly ritualized activities, and attract devoted fans. These characteristics move an activity toward an institutionalized form of culture. However, digital games are replaced so rapidly that this status may be difficult to sustain.
Human Evolution Cannot Keep Pace with Technology
In a technological era where work and leisure overlap, many players devote hours comparable to full-time employment to online games without earning income. Some neglect sleep, food, and real-life responsibilities and may meet the criteria for gaming disorder.
Video games have removed the physical requirement that people be face-to-face to play. An avatar can enter the game while the player’s body remains in front of a screen. Through small finger movements and sustained visual attention, the player can experience the game as meaningful and immediate.
Yet the human brain evolves slowly. When a game is no longer played for its own sake and becomes strongly instrumental, it can quickly feel like work. If university entrance examinations ranked applicants by their game levels, many players would probably stop finding those games enjoyable. From another perspective, an entrance examination is itself a highly structured game: those who master its rules earn the first opportunity to choose universities and fields of study.
© Chang-Shanmei. All rights reserved.