esports performance and aging
Stress and pressure are part and parcel of high performance competition and as players learn to adapt to these stimuli they also begin to develop skills. It is very rare for an athlete to go through his career and remain stagnant and still be successful. In traditional sports, athletes will often offset decreases in one area with growth in another, a type of compensatory adjustment. This is much more apparent in sports that require a high physical component. Player’s will adopt a less physically demanding role on the field as they have already developed the technical and strategic facets of the game. The shorter careers of esports athletes means that this is a much newer concept. The purpose of this article is to hopefully shed some light on the mechanisms behind technique in esports; usually referred to as ‘mechanics’ and how aging affects this.
The effects of aging in esports is a contentious topic. The most common understanding or belief is that as you age your reaction times and mechanics decrease thus affecting performance. Yes and no. Yes it is correct that reaction times drop off as you age. No, in that, the threshold for these decrements to have a significant impact on performance is much later than what we might think.
Most recently IG mid lane star, Song “Rookie” Eui-jin, was interviewed by Inven. He talked about the end to his season, not qualifying for worlds and his thoughts on being the elder statesman on his team. More interestingly he talked about his motivations for why he works so hard. He has both internal and external motivations for doing well and giving his all. Firstly, he knows he needs to work hard to stay ahead of the younger players. Secondly, he wants to help his teammates and not feel like they had to carry his weight (‘riding the bus’ as he puts it).
I want to keep changing myself. If I don’t, I’d get stuck and become stagnant water — Song “Rookie” Eui-ji
The two traits that set him apart and are certainly huge contributing factors towards his success are his approach to improvement as well as his consistent hard work. Both these traits are mentioned throughout the interview. He also cites his adaptability and desire to always have the mindset of change as being important to him. This attitude lends himself to being able to adapt to the ever changing nature of League of Legends as it is a game that forces its players to keep up with each new patch rolled out.
The above part of the interview that delves into the crux of this article revolves around his thoughts on age and how age can affect performance. He correctly states that ‘hands slow down as we age’, but let us delve into what that looks like and is that something that esports players should worry about?
As we age our body also goes through changes. Key performance factors such as Vo2 max, testosterone, lean muscle mass, bone density, maximal heart rate, muscle fibre volume and recruitment will decrease as we age. This is a much more noticeable change when we look at physically demanding sports when comparing athletes in their 20’s with athletes in their 30’s or 40’s but within the realm of esports the age spectrum is much closer.
Vo2 Max — Decrease of 10% per decade after 25 years (Kim et al., 2016).
Testosterone — total testosterone falls 1–1.6% per year, free and bioavailable falls 2–3% per year with total testosterone dropping after 40 years of age (Stanworth & Jones., 2008).
Lean muscle mass — Losses of 3–8% per decade after the age of 30 (Volpi et al., 2004).
Bone density — bone density formation and breakdown is in equilibrium between the ages of 25 and 50 (John Hopkins Medicine, n.d.).
Maximal heart rate — 208–0.7 x AGE (Decreasing MaxHR per year)(Tanaka et al., 2001).
Muscle fibre volume — muscle mass decreases around the age of 50 (∼1%/year from middle age)(Deschenes, 2004).
Muscle strength — declines from people aged <40 years to those >40 years between 16.6% and 40.9% (Keller & Engelhardt., 2013).
We have all seen the depiction of a doctor testing the reflex response of someone by tapping a rubber tipped hammer on the patellar tendon just underneath the kneecap. The little tap sends a signal that travels on a sensory receptor to a sensory neuron located in the spinal column. A motor neuron response is sent back to the muscle which then contracts your quadriceps and flexes the knee joint. The doctor is looking to test for any abnormalities in the response times. This is an automatic response, you are not in control of it.
Reactions are different from reflexes in that they are trainable and activity specific. The more you ‘grease the groove’ the faster and more efficiently the nerve impulses travel. Pianists will have extremely well developed coordination and efficient hand/finger movements. The same goes for a sprinter and their economy of movement and muscle firing patterns. This can be exemplified with the athlete training their response to the starting pistol as they explode from the blocks. These domain specific responses are both physical and cognitive. Elite level expertise enables quick reactions and fast responses.
The speed at which these signals travel through the nerves in the body change as you age. They slow down as age related degradation naturally occurs as well as with the decreasing number of nerve cells in the spine. The rate at which this occurs changes from person to person. There are genetic factors as well as environmental factors that come into play. As previously stated, the volume of practice will have an effect. Regular exercise, healthy diet and stress management play an important role in how the body effectively handles bodily movements.
Science of age related decreasing reflexes
A study by Woods et al. (2015) measured the differences in processing stages in relation to a Choice Reaction Task (CRT). The participants had to react, by clicking their mouse, to target letters with one button and distractor letters with the other button. The shapes appeared in both the left and right visual fields and differed in shape and colour as well as sequence probability. Having ascertained the simple reaction times (SRT) of each participant from an earlier test they concluded that the latency in the CRT was 20% mechanical reaction based with the 80% made up of processing times. A large chunk of ‘reactions’ was bottlenecked by the participant having to visually recognize the colour and shape of each target before pressing the correct corresponding mouse button.
Participants had lower latency when the targets were positioned closer to the proximal location of the mouse. This adds credence to the idea that visual field acuity as well as dexteral mechanical efficiency of the mouse are significant factors for faster times. Furthermore, the more complex the variables the more difficult and higher the latency for each process. When the test difficulty was reduced through removal of colour and shape of the distractor images the lower the latency. It is not just pure reactions but rather the intricacy and decision making that matters most.
Aging reduces motor reactions
The aforementioned studies highlight the effects of various mechanisms on Choice Reaction Tasks. The difficulty and perceived randomness of stimulus make it so that it is more difficult to get acclimatized to the rigors of the test. Participants must react purely to what they see in the order in which it is presented and respond in a medium that may or may not be comfortable for them (mouse). The reduced latency in CRT seems to be a combination of processing times in perceptions of visual stimuli, processing of the information and decision making and then the motor function response mechanisms (Thapar, Ratcliff, and McKoon (2003).
There is no scientific reason why a 25 year old should not be able to compete in high level esports. Decays in reaction time are minimal, and can be compensated for by increased game knowledge and expertise that comes with experience. Putting the owness on reaction time is shifting the focus from the actual reasoning behind the relatively young athlete age when compared to traditional sports. Organizations and teams need to focus on preventative health and providing these players with the level of care that they deserve. Video game-related injuries are not only extremely common, but being ignored and left untreated. Once this focus shifts and we start to see real attention being paid to the health of the players, career lengths are going to skyrocket, and we’re going to start to see what some of these players who would have otherwise been forced into early retirement are truly capable of.
— Dr. Lindsey ‘GamerDoc’ Migliore
Esports related research
The theory that domain specific cognitive decline can be circumvented by expertise is challenged in research by Thompson, Blair and Henrey (2014). In their study they state that age related cognitive motor decline in reaction times is directly correlated with advancing age beginning at 24 years of age. In the study their participants are made up of 3,305 Starcraft 2 players of various skill levels (Bronze-Silver-Gold-Plat-Diamond-Masters). Their conclusion was that age-related slowing of within-game, self-initiated response times begins at 24 years of age. The idea is that experience does not attenuate cognitive decline through ‘looking-doing’ latency.
In a statistical comparison using TI8 as their data set, the company STRATZ found that there were some correlations between age and performance. Artificial intelligence was paired with an algorithm to attribute an Individual Match Performance (IMP) score. The table (Fig 1) shows the IMP scores for each age (range: 18–29 yrs). While the data seems to suggest that performance dips with respect to age there is more nuance when we look at other variables. From a qualitative look at the data (Fig 2) we can see that age is a factor in role speciality. In Dota roles are designated by numbers. Number 1 is the most carry orientated role on the team and that descends down to the most supportive role, number 5. The trend was for older players to be in more supportive roles. Theoretically this may be down to their increased knowledge of the game and/or intangibles that they bring to the team (anchoring presence, leadership, focus on bigger picture).
(https://medium.com/stratz/the-effects-of-age-on-dota-2-performance-cdcf7fee664f)
Why esports is different from game to game csgo vs league, game specific
The needs requirements of the different esports vary from game to game. This can be affected by a number of reasons such as the life cycle of the game, age of player base as well as regional/infrastructure idiosyncrasies. The longer a title has been in the public domain the more developed the overall player bases understanding of how to play the game. This creates a much more standardized way of playing the game as overall knowledge of concepts are generally accepted. Game concepts as well as mechanical innovations are adopted by novice players thus increasing the average user skill.
Certain titles, such as CS:GO and Starcraft, have stood the test of time and both rely on different skill sets. CS:GO is known for being an esport that requires a great deal of coordination but moreover fast twitch reflexes for dueling. If the theory behind aging in esports being as dramatic as reported then being younger and having more youthful players would be a necessity. The team based strategy in CS:GO adds another level of complexity so much so that while individual skill is extremely important there are players entering their thirties that are still playing at a high level.
An analysis of CS:GO players was looked at by Analytical Gaming in 2018. They looked at age and its correlation with performance (using HLTV player ratings and K/D/A score). They stated that there were very few differences between players within the age range of 16–26 years with a drop off noted after 28 years. The discussion focused on the intangibles of certain experienced players as well as total time spent training in the game as being an important factor for predicting performance drop offs. CS:GO is an esport whereby it is common to travel on a tournament circuit so there are a lot of additional variables for performance. It would be plausible that older players are more accustomed to these rigors as well as providing support for their teammates during these times.
In Starcraft the ability to multitask is fundamental to its mastery. High APM (actions per minute) were always heralded as being paramount to success. Players would spam actions and focus much of their attention on increasing the upper ranges of this skill set. Of course being able to fit in more actions during a game is always a good thing, the winner was not always the person with the highest APM. Players found different ways of playing the game that utilized niche styles, good decision making, better multitasking or strategic deception.
In the study by Thompson, Blair and Henry (2014) they collected data from hundreds of Starcraft 2 players. This study is the most frequently cited example of evidence that aging has a negative effect on gamers. They examined hundreds of replay files from each person to measure their response time between new screen fixations and actions (looking doing latency). According to the study players have approximately 300 looking doing cycles during a typical game of Starcraft and the longer the looking doing latency the greater the time lost over the course of the whole game. They stated that the looking doing latency is not ameliorated by level of expertise, meaning that this decline is prevalent even as skill increases. Across the board once players age past 24 that their looking doing latency increases. This study is one of the most commonly brought up piece of research in the topic of aging in esports. There are a multitude of reasons why there were common trends across all skill realms such as meta specific game strategies, level of competition/player base size, competitiveness of sample size etc. I think a more interesting idea would be to look at the replay files on a singular player over the course of their professional career to see if there were age related declines. Age related declines might be nullified due to the constant and extreme level of competition at the highest level as well as ability to adapt to changing patches.
My thoughts on this study bring me to three junctures. Firstly the study looks at age as something that affects performance from the age of 24 years of age onwards. The exact reasons for this may lie less in chronological age and more in terms of one’s position in life. It is around this age that people will have finished college and/or be choosing a direction for themselves in life including work and social commitments. It has been shown that it is around this time that people will make their biggest life decisions. It is plausible that participants will have split commitments and have other priorities in life.
The next point is that there are examples of traditional sports athletes being highly effective in their later years through deliberate use of recovery modalities, training regimes, adaptability and awareness of their bodies. LeBron James, Christiano Ronaldo, Rodger Federer and Tom Brady are all great examples of athletes that remain at the top of their game even as they compete against competitors more than 20 years their junior.
Your age is just a number. It should never hinder you from accomplishing your goals — Rodger Federer
I’m like fine wine, I get better with age — LeBron James
I think I’ve really stepped outside the box in the way I try to train, eat, hydrate, the cognitive brain games I play on a daily or weekly basis to try to build up some durability within my body, within my brain, to be able to go out there and play at a high level at age 38. — Tom Brady (age 38…5 years ago!)
Age is just a number. It does not mean that at 34, 35, 36 you are at the end of your career— Ronaldo
State dependency and environmental factors
‘You don’t practice until we get it right, you practice until you can’t get it wrong’.
State Dependency
The term ‘grease the groove’ is a common phrase used in many areas of life. More notably it describes performing an action as frequently as possible in order to develop muscle memory so that subsequent actions will be actuated more efficiently. Consistent repetition wires the body and the brain to not only perform these actions well but also recognize situations and opportunities where they are applicable.
A unique facet of esports is that we not only have to deal with changes to the game but because of infrastructure restrictions we sometimes have to play with increased or different latency. This is an issue primarily due to the fact that players can be practicing on a higher latency compared to what they will be playing competitive matches on. This means that they are training inefficient muscle firing patterns while also creating a skewed perception of skill expression vs risk assessment. As competitive games usually carry more expectation and pressure it can make players trend towards playing safer as they might not have enough experiential success in specific situations or playing certain champions.
Needs Requirement
The dichotomy between what a player wants to be able to do as an individual in the game and what the team needs him to do can be jarring. Team based games are often a give and take whereby one team is leveraging an advantage in one position and giving up something on the other. Managing an individual’s preferred style of play with others on a team is the main priority of a coach. A team’s individual ability is almost always (outliers always remain) going to be superseded by a teams ability to perform complex coordinated players.
Depending on the needs of the team, and this is certainly dependent on the individual players skill and styles, we can see situations whereby players will have to undertake roles that are outside of their comfort zone and this forces you to play a specific way. Playing in a more rigid role with less freedom does the opposite to what one would see from SoloQ/ranked ladder practice. You are training yourself to work within the confines of the team’s needs. Outplays and creativity can be seen as unnecessary risk and selfish. This is a very binary scenario that we are using as our example but the needs of the team play such a huge role on the style, freedom and champion selection of a player that it is important to discuss.
Socio-Psychological reasons for lowered mechanics
Social pressures on players to perform and succeed increase with time, and while earning a small stipend as a 17 year old would be great, the scaling that comes with maturity in the industry does not match that of what their peers who pursue normal career paths do and as they reach the ages of 23 onwards they start to see peers from their cohort get married, get their first big promotion, make major milestones in life this creates a sense of frustration in the feeling of being stuck, which can be a very natural occurrence for players given the win-lose zero sum game nature of competition that makes these players more prone to burnout.
— Jensen ‘Jensen’ Goh
As we get older our priorities change, especially as we move from our late teens/early twenties onwards. The other hierarchical needs for self fulfillment (relationships, job security, health, personal growth/life experiences) understandably will factor more and more into our developing value system.
Because of how all encompassing the rigmarole of competing at the highest level can be, the majority of esports athletes have to sacrifice their time and experiential living to keep their edge. I remember in my first years working there was a saying for some coaches that ‘girlfriends ruin teams’. Times have changed a lot since then with players becoming much better at coping with the work life balance but it is also something that underlined the fact that focus averted is focus lost. Many athletes will prioritize their sport over family and friends in terms of sacrificing social engagements for team commitments.
We have to be willing to normalize players wanting to have more balanced lives complete with significant others, social circles, personal development as well as the autonomy to choose how they want to balance all these things. What they will need help with is developing the skills for this balance to be successful. Similarly, young adults in college have to learn how to do this but they have the safety net of not having to worry about losing their place after one poor assignment. The expectations we place on esports players should match the support we are willing to give them in order for them to develop for the long term. Real change takes time and patience. Quick fix solutions garner only quick fix results.
Age related compensation
https://gfycat.com/threadbareheavyclingfish
As we age and accrue more and more experience we develop a better ability to deal with future situations. We lived through these experiences and when they occur again or something thematically similar repeats itself we already know the emotions associated, stakes on the line and behaviors required. Our responses become faster and more easily extracted from our pool of experiences. This gives much less time spent parsing the situation and more time responding through action. This also helps us compile a more detailed working schema for anticipatory reactions. As we garner experience we are able to ‘predict’ what will happen in an environment that we have the most pool of experiential and factual information to pull from. In gaming terms, this extensively means that we are not reacting to the stimuli on the screen as something unplanned but rather something that was in the realms of possibility. As a result of this there would be significantly less need to rely on fine reactionary prowess. The elder statesmen of esports compensate for the age related decline in motor function reactions by ‘knowing’ what to do in many different situations.
The benefits of this are massive both in terms of ingame and out of game skill sets. Working with the assumption that a longer career correlates with a greater depth of experience we would see veteran players having a much greater aptitude dealing with the ebb and flow of how the games will play out. Their zone of comfort will be much wider than someone with less experience and all of this ties back into increasing experiences and expanding how you think and play.
I saw so many players at several nations. Many Korean players work too much and lose work and life balance. less sleep, don’t take relaxation with like family, friends, don’t do their hobby. So usually they get burn out easily. So many people pressure about age, like “old players cant play well” or they really don’t hire old player. Usually old players already got bad habit or hard to learn new patch or trend compared with young players
— Lee Ho-jong ‘Flame’
LeBron James has 18 seasons of basketball experience to lean on and yet he is not satisfied with keeping the status quo. He has reinvented his game to match the demands of today. The ‘secret’ to his success lies not in some physical gift but rather hard work and a desire to improve.
I’ve just never put a ceiling on my potential, James said.
This is something that he has echoed many times before. He is said to spend 1.5 million dollars on maintaining his health and fitness for basketball (https://www.the42.ie/lebron-james-fitness-4171853-Aug2018/). It is this mindset towards his performance and career longevity that has helped him remain at the top for so long. The body follows what the mind believes. Many of the stresses of elite performance can be much better managed with better practices in and out of the game. The body is only one aspect but the mind too must be cared for and nurtured. It also seems a common trend among top elite level performers that belief in ones self and belief in the idea that age is not the great filter.
You can’t surprise me on defense. I’ve seen it all. I’ve processed 261 games, I’ve played them all,” Brady said. “It’s an incredibly hard sport, but because the processes are right and are in place, for anyone with experience in their job, it’s not as hard as it used to be. There was a time when quarterbacking was really hard for me because you didn’t know what to do. Now I really know what to do, I don’t want to stop now. This is when it’s really enjoyable to go out.
— Tom Brady (NFL Quarterback)
In a recent interview with Korizon Faker discussed how he felt about being the veteran player on T1. When asked about his thoughts on his age having an effect on his mechanics he stated that ‘I believe that there’s almost no decline in my mechanics just because I have become older’. He added that the amount of time he spends sitting in his chair alludes to that his health might decline. He ends the discussion on the topic by saying that he will work hard and that the way for him to help break the prejudice is to keep winning.
As much as rookie talent is a reflection of the ever lasting progress, one should be careful not to denigrate the players of old; their values built the scene and their commitment despite dire circumstances (less or no salaries, harder working conditions) allowed what is now a multimillion dollar industry to reap the rewards.
Hence learning from them and allowing them to continue to succeed will lead to a more respectful view of the history of the game as well as a more respectful approach to the future of it.
— Maurice ‘Amazing’ Stückenschneider
Buying into the cognitive bias that age affects everyone equally and negatively feeds the idea that player careers are 1) on a timer 2) their skill can only decrease with age 3) this degradation is unpreventable 4) youth = skill. These ideas have been bounced around in esports for a long time. As players have aged the running commentary has been one of ‘he is winning despite his age’ or ‘talent vs experience’. This creates an echo chamber of suggestive speech that is very hard for older players to filter out. They will start to believe that this narrative is correct and their habits, actions and focus will follow suit. Instead of a poor performance being attributed to a bad day or luck is suddenly a precursor to esports geriatrics.
Sometimes our confirmation bias tells us that preventative care and looking after one’s health and wellbeing is a wasted venture. We see many players that place a premium on looking after themselves outside of the game so that they can play better and more comfortably inside the game. Our bias convinces us that just because some of these players are not elite players that it is not something beneficial for performance. Many top players developed their skills without knowledge of training and lifestyle management and they reached the professional echelon regardless. This can compound the idea that, just because it was not a factor before, that it would not have an effect later on.
The aforementioned groupthink fuels the idea that skill is a fixed quota that can only be affected by certain variables, most notably time spent playing the video game. The majority of these variables are external attributions on performance, meaning they are outside of our control and include; luck, sleep, hunger, draft, lack of energy, lack of focus, strategy and player perceptions. Many if not all of these variables, that impact performance, are well within our scope of control. It takes a lot less effort to externally attribute performance than it does to ask ourselves ‘what could we have done better?’.
As players gain more experience through their career they develop a greater understanding of how peak performance is accessed. This increasing pool of knowledge will increase one’s awareness that performance is not a static output but rather a combination of many different variables. Accepting that we can’t control everything while being accountable for what we can control is key. As mentioned earlier, more experienced players create more efficient strategies for controlling said variables. This greater sense of control increases consistency and a more stable confidence in estimating ability with respect to task. We start to do the things that increase more beneficial outcomes through experience based risk assessment while the younger players are still limit testing during their earlier years.
Conclusion
The performance demands on esports athletes is an ongoing discussion within the scene. In western culture longevity and balance are prioritized while in the asian esport sphere it is so competitive that there is no opportunity to take your foot off the gas. The reasons for this divergent viewpoint come down to not only cultural differences but also socio-economic and the size of the pool of players. Irrespective of these differences we have a duty of care to every player to teach them and equip them with the tools they need to be at their best. This includes physical and mental well being as well as emotional support.
There is no physiological or psychological age related reason why performance output for professional esports athletes should lower as they age. The effects of aging on the body and mind are well documented and discussed. Said effects are insignificant when properly addressed. We limit what we think we can do and we allow this idea to dictate what we will do because of lack of information or social preconceptions. It is this heavily accepted, but flawed, perception that age is the great filter that can not be overcome. As esports has developed over the years we have seen how players have been able to increase their career longevity by adapting and changing with the times. This combined with better access to health and wellness services will only help to extend them even further. It is my hope that coaches, players and the audience at large will, instead of using age as an excuse for performance, try to find ways to actively help players perform at their highest level again.
TL;DR
- No significant age related physiological declines in performance (fine motors control sports)
- No significant age related mental declines in performance (cognitive)
More likely factors
- Possible socio-psychological effects
- Environmental
- Risk assessment/performance compensation
- Motivational/life priorities
References
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