Understanding complexity and dynamics in the career development of eSports athletes

Abstract

With the accelerated growth of the esports industry over the last few years, there has been a corresponding increase in the number of esports athletes. Yet there is limited research examining these athletes' professional career journeys. This study provides a novel investigation into their career development process. This qualitative study uses a sample of 35 esports athletes from 16 professional esports clubs in China. Findings from semi-structured interviews confirmed our proposition that traditional career theories may be inadequate to capture the complex and dynamic nature of the newly emerged careers within esports. The authors propose that Chaos Theory in Careers (CTC) provides principles that may more effectively describe and explain the nature and main characteristics of esports careers, compared to the more conventional linear or stage-based sports career theories. This study makes a significant theoretical contribution through developing esports career theory which is applicable to a contemporary setting and has practical implications to practitioners for esports talent identification, recruitment and development.

Individual and Collective Performance Deteriorate in a New Team: A Case Study of CS:GO Tournaments

“…Besides holding different game-play motivations than ordinary video game players, eSports professionals are more physically and psychologically competent. eSports players devote their time to training physical conditions [10] and endeavoring to equip themselves with high-level mental capacity and cognitive alertness to compete in matches [21,22,9,23,14]. Other than that, because of eSports' digital nature, players are also required to command technological proficiency to respond fast and accurately in the game [24,11,25].…”

“…Though the eSports industry has been believed to share similarities with traditional sports in terms of organizing, institutionalization, and competitive nature [21,26,27,10,11,28], playing eSports as a profession could be much more demanding than traditional sports. Given that the eSports industry is still young, new orders are emerging every day [9]. Players not only have to deal with the stress of being watched by a large audience [21,29], but also the stress to maintain the complex relationships between multiple stakeholders [9].…”

“…Various professional tournaments have found their place into the eSports industry [5], and this motivates many aspiring and young video game players to play games as a profession [6,7,8,9]. In response to this popularity, multiple disciplines have paid serious attention on eSports research.…”

A Multi-Directional Assessment Related to E-Sports as A New Game Experience Field and Socialising Tool

“…Career development in e-sports is a complex and dynamic system. Meng-Lewis et al (2020) stated in their study that traditional career theories may be insufficient to explain the complex and dynamic nature of careers that occur with e-sports. They have A Multi-Directional Assessment Related to E-Sports as A New Game Experience Field and Socialising Tool 984 made an important theoretical contribution by developing an e-sports career theory that is compatible with the contemporary environment and aimed at developing e-sports skills.…”

High-Security Image Encryption Based on a Novel Simple Fractional-Order Memristive Chaotic System with a Single Unstable Equilibrium Point

“…Since Lorenz established chaos theory in 1963, research on chaotic systems has had a considerable practical impact [1]. Chaos phenomena in nonlinear domical systems have been widely used in science, engineering, and applied mathematics over the last few decades [2].…”