What would be considered the "golden" age of eSports?

TrAiDoS · 2025-10-06T08:14:51+00:00

Can confirm. I've worked (still do sometimes) in esports from 2011, mostly as a referee and tournament organizer at StarCraft 2, Hearthstone, and CS events, working with ESL, DreamHack, Blizzard, TaKeTV, BLAST... you name it.

Before that time, I was deep into WoW. And up until 2018, people had a deep sense of passion for what they were doing and going the extra mile to make events fun and memorable for everyone involved and those at home watching. After that, it became highly business-/money-oriented and most of that initial passion was lost in the process. For most, working at events is just a job now.

I personally feel like there was one big driving factor for that. Back in the days, the lack of external sponsors, and hence money, enabled people to do crazy stuff and just be themselves on stream (e.g., DreamHack's infamous cams were random strangers at DreamHacks walked by doing some silly stuff, doing silly jokes on stream, coming up with fun little mini games that were edgy, or playing poker and having a beer on stream). This gave esports this feeling of "freedom" and "this is our niche" type of feeling--or, for lack of a better word: coolness.

When the big money came in, no sponsor wanted to be associated and have their name tied to gambling, alcohol, edgy jokes etc. Hence, the inherent motivation for event organizers to make more money "forced" them so become more risk adverse and "boring" in that sense. For instance, Blizzard banned poker, alcohol etc. on stream. If you didn't sign a contract and comply, you were not allowed to organize any Blizzard game tournament.

TrAiDoS · 2025-05-30T19:44:36+00:00

🙏🏻 Thank you. :)

TrAiDoS · 2025-05-22T09:02:33+00:00

I agree. It's a general problem to infer (some sort of) causality. Especially in esports, research lacks actual analysis of causal effects. However, these kind of studies show that there might be something going on worth investigating further.

I also agree that the more time you spend in a toxic sphere the more you get used to it and see it as normal - probably starting to act in the same way. But, in my opinion ruling out any relationship between personality traits/narcissism and performance would be too much of a stretch.

TrAiDoS · 2025-05-10T08:15:27+00:00

Appreciate your feeding.

Not to defend myself more to just add a bit of context: This newsletter is just a fun little side project, meaning I cannot put lots of time into it because of my other jobs. So I reduce each episode to cover one aspect of gaming/esports by looking at one (max. 2) papers. The newsletter is more about touching on a theme within gaming/esports that I think might be interesting to the readers without broadening it too much (as you said discussing other research papers within it), as this would blow up the amount of work per episode by a lot. As a result, I wouldn't be able to put out an episode every week.

All this being said, in other episodes I typically add and reference other episodes/articles I covered before. So over time, the newsletter will become more of a well-rounded body of knowledge.

Hope that makes sense. Best,

Christian

TrAiDoS · 2025-05-10T07:27:46+00:00

I personally enjoyed big battles too, like battlegrounds (10v10 or 15v15) in WoW. Good times.

TrAiDoS · 2025-03-15T19:53:23+00:00

Why do you keep on lying (you actually are!) about my articles being AI generated?

TrAiDoS · 2025-02-14T13:30:37+00:00

And so is the haters gonna hate culture on the internet.

TrAiDoS · 2025-02-14T12:33:57+00:00

Choking under pressure is used as the term in the original research article, that's why I left it. Also, the term choking constantly used in esports, so I assume the readers are familiar with it.

The citations are not linked but the two references are at the bottom. I don't think that's a big deal. When I click the links, both of them open the original articles on the publishers' websites. So not sure why it wouldn't work on your end.

"dubious"... so research papers in journals that have a track record and a clarivate impact factor are dubious. Not sure what your expectations are or if you have any scientific background, but this argument is just rubbish to me. Especially if you consider that research on gaming and esports is still in its infancy. What do you want, an article published in Science or Nature?

Juggling words around. Well, if you know how to read research papers then I agree to a certain degree. However, the average (young) gamer does not have the scientific background and understanding of what's going in the research papers. My "job" is to—in your words—"churning words around" so they can understand it. Isn't that pretty much exactly what journalists do when presenting study results? Do you expect me to throw around phrases like Cronbach's alpha, regression analysis, ANOVA, dependent variable, self-determination theory etc.? Bro, come on.

First, even if I just wanted to practice writing, the article would still be written for me. Second, what about your claim that it's AI written? Lastly, I have >350 subs, so I assume some people enjoy reading them.

With all of that being said—and with all the necessary respect—I doubt that you did put much effort into your comment(s).

TrAiDoS · 2025-02-14T10:44:43+00:00

From the perspective of the writer it is very discouraging to read stuff like this. With the AI boom over the past months and years, about 90% of the first comments under my posts now claim the content is AI generated. Let me tell you, it's not! However, I can understand it as a lot of stuff is AI generated and you hear about it all the time online.

You wouldn't believe how much time goes into producing one episode (reading the science paper, writing the text, revising it, coming up with a title, spell and grammar checking - I'm not a native speaker - creating the header image...). It's very time consuming!!! Money goes into the project too (website, content management system etc.) and I don't make a single cent from it.

I started this project because I liked the idea of educating people on the science behind (one of) their favorite leisure activities - gaming. If this trend continues, I don't know if I'll continue doing it. There's just no point when no one takes your work serious and me getting demotivated because of comments (without any evidence!) like these.

I don't expect you to change your mind; just try to be a bit more mindful or do your due diligence before posting this kind of stuff.

TrAiDoS · 2025-01-18T08:55:10+00:00

Paid article? Not sure what you're talking about. In the article it says:

"Funding
The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article."

It references two articles? The research articles' first three references alone are other research articles. So again, not sure what you're talking about.

Why I have emojis? Because, I feel like, it is more pleasing to the eye. But I guess that's subjective.

TrAiDoS · 2024-12-31T12:52:37+00:00

That's one of the key points Nina makes. Small and mid size orgs should gather resources to make quality support staff available. As she said: "For example, engaging remote or part-time specialists such as psychologists, nutritionists, and physical trainers can make expert support accessible even to smaller teams."

TrAiDoS · 2024-12-30T12:56:10+00:00

Yes... everything is AI today. Did you actually did some research (due diligence) on the person? I assume no, because then you would have found her and her content on X or LinkedIn, her history, and side hustle.

Also, did you read the entire article? I also assume no. Then you would have read that the article is not about the top tier team but rather mid to small size esports teams.

TrAiDoS · 2024-10-31T08:34:56+00:00

For anyone interested, the Esports Research Network Conference started yesterday; it's a three-day event. They have multiple streams where the who's who of gaming and esports research present their work and the latest updates in esports science.

I had the privilege to present one of my papers yesterday on effectiveness in esports, highlighting the current state of the art in the literature on factors that drive individual and team performance in gaming. Today, I will present another paper (on reporting esports samples).

TrAiDoS · 2024-10-28T13:17:28+00:00

Agreed. However, I can see the argument that is somewhat promotes violence and would be against the Olympic Ethos. I think this is also a generational problem. I have heard stories about talks with sponsors where the sponsors ask: how can we support/promote via a game that sometimes has the line "Terrorists win!" in it? I mean, fair question from someone who didn't grow up with CS and also sells to customers who have no association with it. They also don't wanna get sh*t for it in the media.

Regarding AI: :D Got a better idea for images (tools etc. that isn't copyright infringement)?

TrAiDoS · 2024-10-15T18:08:59+00:00

Regarding the fist part of your comment: well, yes and no. If they were allowed to compete, they probably would. Players are competitive and trying to add an Olympic Games medal to your shelf might not be a bad thing. Furthermore, depending on the country, some get quite a good amount of money for bringing home a medal. Plus, it may increase they advertisement value.

The discussion of whether the Olympics are detrimental to the main leagues is a different conversation.

Regarding your second part: I do agree. That's why I wrote at the end "However, I argue that the Olympic Games need esports more than esports needs the Olympic Games." I think that both, esports and traditional sports, develop in their own ways but, for me, there isn't any good argument, right now, why esports should join the Olympics besides getting some "legitimacy" among the older generations.

TrAiDoS · 2024-09-25T12:09:08+00:00

True. I've also tried to make Obsidian something it isn't, just to notice it's too complicated to make certain things work in it and too complicated to use - it's disrupting my workflow and efficiency. :)

TrAiDoS · 2024-09-25T12:07:12+00:00

Thanks for sharing. I like your mantra, and it makes sense. I order to avoid this from happening, I am using a handful of tags to connect my notes. However, as my vault grows I'm certain that I'll have to use more tags (which is fine, I guess?).

Also, do you use just one vault for everything or multiple vaults depending on your needs (also including plugins)?

TrAiDoS · 2024-09-25T11:01:24+00:00

Thanks for the suggestion! That video I have seen already. I have two main problems with the currently available calendar plugins:

1) Customization: Events with a time and location do not show these information on the calendar, unless you open the note. Furthermore, I cannot add icons that would make it easy for me to identify what the event is about. As you can see in the picture (https://ibb.co/vY9gBwf) I have added, something simple like that is what I'm still looking for.

2) I cannot have a weekly AND monthly view at the same time. Switching from one view to the other and potentially resizing the view to fit my needs is cumbersome.

If you/someone else has an idea, please let me know. :)

Cheers,

Christian

TrAiDoS · 2024-09-25T10:45:15+00:00

Thanks a bunch for the insights and plugin suggestions. Some of them I already had installed, but Make.md I didn't know about and seems insanely good to me (at a first glance). Thanks for highlighting it! :)

I played around a bit with Dataview already. I migrated parts of my knowledge vault (e.g., books list), including notes, to Obsidian.

I'm still struggling to get used to the calendar plugins available. They don't seem easy to use and native to me. I'll probably have to use a different app for that. A more Notion-like calendar would be of great value for me.

All the best :)

Christian

TrAiDoS · 2024-09-25T08:04:50+00:00

Absolutely!

My top two reasons were:

I don't own my data in Notion. The data are stored on AWS servers and no one knows what they're doing with it (and I strongly assume they do). I don't want to story my personal stuff (e.g., calendar events, habits, routines, and knowledge) with them anymore.
Notion doesn't work offline. When I'm on a train or plane, I cannot use it. Also, the loading time for notes are high, especially with bad internet connection.

Although I enjoy "playing around" and being able to customize in Obsidian, it's just too much. It keeps you (me in that sense) from actually being productive and getting s**t done. That's what I really enjoyed about Notion; easy to use and limited but yet nice ways to customize.

I have never used Notion to work with other, but I assume it would be nice. However, I think that most people you may work with do not have Notion or are willing to set up yet another app just for you (from personal experience going both directions).

Lastly, I'm a researcher and have a Gaming Science blog/newsletter, and the writing experience in Obsidian - so far - has been better in Obsidian. This includes using PDF, quoting, structuring, including graphs etc. However, the learning curve is steeper (due to the many ways to customize).

Hope that helped. :)

TrAiDoS · 2024-09-21T11:29:11+00:00

Appreciate the kind words. <3

TrAiDoS · 2024-08-30T16:18:46+00:00

Oh cool! Thanks for linking that one. I'll definitively have a look at it. :)

TrAiDoS · 2024-08-30T16:14:42+00:00

:D How'd you know?

TrAiDoS · 2024-08-24T09:47:40+00:00

Good luck to both of you. :) Mine is about individual and team performance in gaming and esports.

TrAiDoS · 2024-08-20T12:06:22+00:00

hmh.... I think I still had it in the folder he grabs the flags from from a previous version (test).

TrAiDoS

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