Esports is my primary area of focus in gaming as it stands. It is something that is very interesting to me, as I love the competition aspect to it, and I would love to try and make a career out of it one day.

An interesting thing brought up in “Player power: Networked careers in esports” by Emma Witkowski and James Manning is the idea of coaches in esports. Early on in esports, there was very little coaching (if any at all). As time has gone on and coaching has become more of a recognized thing, however, it is increasingly clear just how important they are. If left alone, the machinations of a group of teenagers with impaired social skills can be disastrous. Most of the coaches that are around now were former players at one point. It must also be noted, however, that a lot of esports players were (especially in North America) incredibly resistant to coaches. “This guy is just some washed up pro. Why do I have to listen to him?” Is an overriding sentiment, the spectre of which looms over the entire topic of coaching in esports.

It was not that Valve ruled no coaches are allowed, just that they weren’t allowed to talk in-game anymore. Instead, there was a number of timeouts for both teams added, and the coaches were relegated to only talking in these 4 30 second intervals per map. In some cases, as referenced in the article, a player from the team would get kicked and the coach would jump in as an in-game leader. Some teams designed themselves entirely around coaches being able to talk mid-round, and when that was taken away, certain teams were screwed over badly.

This also ties rather deep into one of the core issues facing many esports today, which is the fact that the games get patched and change heavily. In a MOBA, a champion that you fall in love with can become completely invalidated and unviable just from a few lines of code changing a number or two. This is one of the factors that lead to esports players having rather short career lengths, especially compared to that of traditional sports.  The example they use in CS:GO, such as small changes to bomb sites, can dramatically affect a players career. If you are an amazing sniper and then the sniper gets nerfed to to the point it is unviable; you could be screwed out of a job.

On one hand, I can see how its important to keep updating the game as it keeps it fresh for the more casual players, which brings in revenue and, supposedly, viewership. On the other hand, it can also be incredibly awkward to come back to a game after a few years of not playing it. I recently came back to Dota 2 for the first time since 2016, and the game has been terraformed into something that barely resembles the game I remember, and I’ve had to spend time learning a lot of it all over again.