I wish this didn’t have to be said or written. Really. But its obvious that we need to talk more about it and most definently take actions towards it.
Im talking about the streamer, the e-sporter, the talent in an e-sport show, the coach, well anyone connected to e-sports and gaming to be honest. First off, we are sitting down way too much. It is a part of the deal, i realise that and i respect that, but we truly have to do something about that. The other day i watched some casters from CS:GO standing up doing the commentary, and thats a simple solution, and gamers definently could stand up between rounds or waiting to respawn too. And secondly, there is alot of stress involved with e-sports. Positive competetive stress aswell as beeing a part of a broadcastteam and having deadlines, negative stress.
I dont know how many people i’ve seen on twitter and other social medias admitting that they have gotten healthissues. And surely these issues could be genetical and just randomly happening to the people, and since i hang around alot of e-sporters thats just why i see it. But im afraid that explanation doesnt really hold up. We are not taking enough care of ourselves. And its alot of different peoples fault. You cant say people dont have their own responsibility, but the organisations around them have too.
But even if i see these people admitting it, i also realise there are more people not admitting it, or still not knowing the fact that they are slowly sliding into bad health.
Any serious sport that has known issues, like kneeproblems or backproblems will take care of these problems from kids all the way up to adults. The organisations will follow national guidelines to make sure that these issues are minimized and that you strenghten the part of the body that might need it. You do stuff long before it actually happens. Even if you have these strategies where you really try to solve these issues, it will still be people that get those specific problems. But alot of them wont!
There is a huge increase of risk of dying when you are doing sedentary work. And even if the risk to die already are much higher if you spend 6,5hours per day at a desk, it increases with 2,5 times more if its more then 10 hours according to this Swedish study.
Still we are encouraging people that wants to do long streams or qualifiers that lasts all night. No questions asked.
I’m not saying everyone will just straight up die, but i do see a lot of people around me in the e-sportsworld that stress way too much, sits still way too long and takes way to bad care of themselves. Organisations should enforce physical exercise for people who work in the industry. We see that pro players are getting this – but that might just be because they are getting better results with it. And to be honest the same thing will happen with editors, producers, coaches, streamers and youtubers too.
What we need are personalities that normalizes being healthy, not the opposite, and i really hope that organisations around the world also takes this life threatening problem with a huge amount of seriousness and do what they can to make health a big question for the people working or playing under their flag.
