June 30, 2022

What does it take to be a professional gamer?

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Experts have revealed the ideal physique, diet, and age.

Being a professional gamer is not what you might expect. Most people when they picture a gamer would probably think of a lazy teenager, eating crisps while lolling about on a bean bag, or something along those lines. However, many gamers make a lot of money from simply playing games. Some of them even earn into the millions, like Johan ‘N0tail’ Sundstein, Jesse 'JerAx' Vainikka and Anatham 'ana' Pham.

Professional gamers need to be able to spend up to 15 hours a day looking at a monitor or screen. Research indicates that this puts them under similar stresses as athletes like marathon runners. Professional gamers must train and treat their job as seriously as an athlete does if they are to be successful. Johan ‘N0tail’ Sundstein has recently decide to take a break due the stress that pro-gaming has put on him.

OG's N0tail takes 'health break' from competitive Dota 2 (yahoo.com)

So, what exactly does it take to become a professional gamer?

Research indicates that firstly you need to be in peak physical condition. Which means you need to be doing regular weightlifting and cardio. Combined with a healthy diet, and good eyesight of course (best to wear blue light filter glasses). It also suggests that you need to be at the correct stage of your life, no more than your mid-twenties.

Not only that but any pro will also need to have the correct size hands! With hands either too big or too small you will not be able to use the controller and/or keyboards at maximum efficiency. The optimum hands sizes according to the experts are:

·       Tip to the base of index fingers - 7.6cm

·       Index fingertip to wrist crease - 18.1cm

·       Max finger span - 22.8cm

·       Palm breadth - 8.7cm

These however are only averages, and different games have shown to require different physical attributes. But when it comes to gamers’ hands it appears that size does matter, but it is not the only important factor.

Recently it has come to light that the male gamer can burn 420 calories over a two-hour gaming session, while female gamers can burn up to 472 calories! This puts into question the typical view of gamers and laziness and is roughly the equivalent of doing 1,000 sit ups! Although that level of fitness is not a requirement, the stress of a long session can be damaging if not in good physical condition. Therefore, it goes without saying that diet is also key. If you are a fast-food munching, chocolate bar gobbling, crisp crunching gamer, then professional gaming is probably not for you!

Age and eyesight are also major traits that professional gamers tend to display. Age can affect reaction speeds and eyesight. Eyesight is important for obvious reasons and even the slightest deficiency can be to the detriment of the pro-gamer.

Overall, it appears to be a very specific demographic who have the physical attributes to become a professional gamer in the highly competitive world of e-sports and online multiplayer competitions. But that doesn’t stop multitudes of hopefuls from turning up to tournaments all over the globe every year. Game audiences are growing even faster with live gaming streams becoming ever more popular. According to ‘Newzoo’, games and e-sports analytics experts, global e-sports awareness in 2019 reached 1.8 billion people. This was projected to rise to 2 billion in 2020, 530.4 million of which are in China.

This is big business and will continue to grow. The estimated value of the global e-sports industry in 2020 was £781.07 million ($947.1).

So, if you think you might have what it takes to become a pro-gamer it may very well be worth it! Top pro-gamers can make an estimated average of £907,170 ($1.1 million) a year! Just don’t expect a long career!

Find out more about games market data here: Newzoo| Games Market Data

#gamer #gamergirl #gamerboy #esports

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