eSports as a Career Option?

E62: Covid Edition

A dark pink line. And its unfortunate light pink companion.
Two tell-tale lines. I’d stayed masked and taken as many precautions as possible last week while at the various public events I attended. But somewhere, after playing dodge for the past 2 years and 8 months, that little bug(ger) crept into my home and destroyed my defenses.

So welcome to E62: Covid edition.

What I learned from my own bout of Covid

It does not follow a logical pattern

It started with deep sleep. The cant-nudge-you-awake kind. I figured I was depleted - emotionally and physically - and just needed some rest. The chills and aches started that night. They only lasted a day, and I thought it must be the flu.

I started the work week thinking I was over the worst. I was able to make it through some much anticipated 1:1 calls and managed to sound coherent in breakout rooms in The Carbon Almanac Network meetings.

It is draining

Then suddenly, like having all the air whoosh out of a balloon, I deflated. Listless. Exhausted, after lifting a pencil.
My mother called to check in on me. My voice sounded like I’d swallowed a brillo pad. She was concerned. But I was not running a fever anymore.

I snuck into bed with my laptop.

And that has been the cycle each day. I wake with hope. Manage maybe one meeting. Get on camera and realize I neither look, sound, nor feel pretty. Cough like crazy (thought I’d pulled a muscle). And after each call — again — the WHOOSH. Not helped by the wooly feeling that accompanies a head filled with congestion.

I think I’m turning the corner. I’ve managed more hours of sitting up straight than I did yesterday. Let’s see what cycle we are in tomorrow.

I need steam, warm drinks, and a warm blanket

I haven’t had much of an appetite, particularly with a sore throat. So I found a few warm drinks that have helped:

• Tom-yum soup - the light chicken stock, the heat of the spices, a few vegetables

• Wonton soup - again the light chicken stock and just enough to chew on

• Ginger coffee - adding a 1/4 tsp of ginger powder and some honey as I make my coffee comforts my sore throat

Add to that a regular routine of steam inhalation and hot showers with the occasional Tylenol. And straight under the covers.

It got me wondering. What are your go-to remedies when you feel ill? Is there a family recipe that makes you feel better? If you have a kid going off to university in the next year or so, do they know their get-better regimen? Do they know what to have stocked at home?

Update Nov 24 - Crowd-sourced ideas - Thanks, everyone!

1. Rest - a universal recommendation. Christin added in a good supply of blankets, Audrey recommended hot-water bottles.

2. Soups, teas and nutritious food in general - Campbell’s chicken noodle soup (Scott); lamb shank soup (Banafsheh); teaspoon of Manuka honey dissolved in a mug of hot lemon-water (Bonnie)

3. Medications: an “expectorant” purchased at Healthy Planet that contains marshmallow root, English Ivy and elder fruit extract (Bonnie); using a prescribed puffer to keep the airways open

4. Interesting options: Saltwater gargles; inhalation; rubbing vicks on the soles of the feet and sleeping with socks; Wim Hof breathing to keep the airways open

Netflix (and chills)

And what is better company when you have the chills than Netflix?

Leo Ariel had DM’d last week: “check out this video game opening ceremony. your mind will be blown” with a link to the 2022 eSports Opening Ceremony in San Francisco. The opening ceremony had it all, and then some: choreo, holograms mixed with real-life artists like Jackson Wang, Lil Nas X, and Mr. Beast. Two Korean teams met in the finals: DRX vs T1.

Leo and I were trading comments, both amazed at the technology as well as the projected viewership for this event - via live and on streaming platforms across the globe, this was expected to draw 118 million viewers. Many were expected from Asia. That is more than the 99.8 million who watched the 2022 Superbowl.

Interestingly, a C-Drama (Chinese drama) “Falling into Your Life” had shown up on my Netflix feed just a week earlier. So I took the opportunity and binged all 31 episodes of this 2021 show about elite eSports teams. (I have no idea what the title has to do with eGames, in case you too are wondering). But in the middle of the boy ignores girl, girl rejects boy, boy looks after girl, yadda, yadda, yadda, I got my first introduction to the world of eSports. (Very gender-positive script around a young woman joining an eSport team).

eSports

I realized that eSports is now an industry, not merely a pastime.

It has moved from the outlier stage of Dungeons and Dragons, onto cluster and now into trend. I cannot miss the increasing frequency of eSports references popping up in my Future of Education/Future of Work discussions: universities offering eSports management degrees; students being offered eSports scholarships.

Along the way, the little conveniences of code and technology created (mainly by players) are spilling out into the real world:

• Office chairs with better lumbar support, special headsets, faster computer processors, and screens to deal with the heavy, responsive and intense graphics.

• The need to trade tactics as a team inspired social gaming platforms like Discord.

• A genre of music has been designed to keep you in the zone, butt in seat.

• New designers are incorporating concepts like joy-sticks for surgical devices, and in our cars.

• The need to trade in-game tokens and a place to store them is the start of crypto.

It’s time I paid more attention.

I discovered so much via that C-Drama. There is intense competition between China and Korea for dominance in this sport. The teams are nurtured, much like the K-Pop bands - players are scouted, auditioned and once on a team, have to train intensely as they would if they were gymnasts or rowers. Like athletes, they can suffer many stress injuries - physical and psychological.

There is big money involved. I noticed this when favourites T1 strode on with Nike, Samsung, and BMW logos on their team jerseys. Competitions are live-streamed to giant screens in movie theatres so that a global audience can participate. The prize money is very attractive too.

Unlike Laila, I am not a gamer mom. So this is all new exploration for me. But I feel I have to step up my game. I learned about the five League of Legends roles including Mid and Jungler and I feel like I’ve been given a tiny language key to a secret world.

Now I wish that instead of walking over to my kids and forcing them to “stop playing useless games” I’d instead learned to read those crazy triangles, arrows, and blocks on the controller. After all, that may be how some whippersnapper suddenly designs my wheelchair navigation 30 years from now.

But what does all this mean?

eSports as a Career?

This is probably why you clicked on this post, eh?

The industries that have grown up to support gamers have a growing need for talent, in front of and behind the controller.

Young players develop valuable skills, particularly if they play as a team.

• Communication skills - knowing when and how to ask for help

• Focus & Failure - in gaming, there may be different ways to overcome an obstacle. Gamers usually have a higher risk tolerance and practice critical thinking.

• Peripheral vision - the games require the players to have good to phenomenal attention to detail, so they can focus on the objective, but watch for signals and threats on the periphery of the screen.

What was clear to me in the show was the automatic aging out of older players on professional teams - this is clearly for the young (under 26). Like an elite college football player, there has to be a PlanB. But the toolkit, coding, vocabulary and other life skills absorbed while gaming can be redeployed in other parts of their life.

I am not advocating all young students become life-long gamers. And I think this is a good spot to put in a plug for Elaine Uskoski. She and her son published a book “Cyber Sober” discussing the risk of getting addicted to gaming.

So, eGames? Big. As an industry.
And interesting as the whole gamification concept is big in the edTech space.

I’m sure there are a number of gamers in Tribe Tilt. What other notable signs and signals should we be paying attention to?

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I would like to thank so many of you for reaching out after last week’s Climate collection edition. I received as many personal messages as comments here. More importantly, I saw so many new connections being created. “… contagious optimism” in action!

If this article was forwarded to you, please join us:

Among the many new members of Tribe Tilt joining our community, please welcome climate journalist and author of Ecoliterate Lisa, cultural history communicator Kirsten and Industrial Engineer & Indoor Agriculture Enthusiast Shubham Khoje.

You are joining a group of people - a community - who believe that we can make a difference to the people and places that are precious to us. We discuss raising future-ready leaders, climate, and the long view on the Future of Work.

Stay healthy. From there all else becomes possible.
If you are ill, sending you much energy and healing love.

See you next week
Karena