Your turn to choose! Are they real athletes or not?
- Zeradow
- Dec 4, 2019
- 6 min read
Updated: Jan 2, 2020
It is still a shocking fact to many people that the mainstreaming of esports expanded the definition of sports and athletes. Just like the chess and Go being defined as actual sports years ago, esports was officially listed as a competitive sport in China on 13th May this year (Tencent Sports, 2019). Besides, the existing training methods of world-class esports athletes not only include in-game training, but also lots of reviews and physical training. But from my admittedly limited observation, not many people are aware of these changes. If my observation is true, esports athletes would face constant doubts about the decency and professionalism of their jobs.
So, are esports athletes being widely recognized as real athletes by the public? To answer this question, I decided to conduct a survey to learn people’s opinions. I used www.wjx.cn to create a nine-question survey. It was posted on my QQ Space, WeChat Moment, and Twitter page on 3rd December 2019. After 28 hours, I get 424 effective responses.
Before we get into the questions and results, a huge thank you to people who helped me complete this survey! Including my parents and friends who shared the questionnaire and everyone who fill it in! I didn’t expect we can get 424 people involved!
The specific questions are:
Single-answer questions:
1. May I have your age?
2. Would you consider yourself a person who cares about video games and esports?
3. What type of game would you usually choose to play?
Multiple-answer question:
4. What game(s) do you usually choose to watch esports matches?
Rating scale questions:
5. Esports athletes are required to have a certain level of professional skills.
6. When training, all esports athletes do is playing games.
7. Professional esports athletes are real athletes.
8. Esports athletes should be respected just like other athletes.
Single-answer question after reading a related statement:
9. After reading the above statement, you think……
Results and Analysis
Demographic of the participants
By analysing the IP addresses, we can find that the majority (89.39%) of the participants are from China. And more than half (53.54%) of all participants are from Fujian. As for the 45 people from other countries (10.61%), 36 of them are Chinese overseas students in Malaysia. So, we can conclude that the result of the survey has a better representation of Chinese people, especially Fujian locals.
1. May I have your age?
The result of the first question indicates that only 4.72% of the participants are juveniles. The majority (71.7%) of them are range from 18 to 45 years old, which are considered the youth according to the World Health Organization (Zhu, 2013). And the left 23.58% are middle-aged and elderly people.
2. Would you consider yourself a person who cares about video games and esports?
Only less than 20% of the participant are confident to claim that they care about esports, while others only care about games or show no interest in them both.
By having a cross-over analysis of their age and their answer to the second question, we can find that people aged from 18 to 30 are more likely to care about video games and esports. People below 17 care less about these topics, followed by people ranged from 30 to 45, and finally, people who are 46 and above.
3. What type of game would you usually choose to play?
By examine the result of question 3, we can know that most of the participants hardly play games or prefer easier games. And I would assume that the majority of the participants are not hard-core players of video games.
4. What game(s) do you usually choose to watch esports matches?
It is clear from the results that compared to people who play games, even fewer people watch esports matches.
By having a cross-over analysis of questions 3 and 4, we can find that the largest consumers of esports are people who play action games and strategy games. And people who hardly play games and prefer easier games take up about 85% of people who don’t watch esports matches. This means that if people don’t play games or hardly play games, they are less likely to watch esports and to understand esports athletes.
5. Esports athletes are required to have a certain level of professional skills.
It seems that about 77% of the participants agree that esports athletes are required to have a certain level of professional skills. Most people believe that professionalism exists in the career of esports athletes. But others still think esports athletes don’t have any professional skills or feel unsure about it.
6. When training, all esports athletes do is playing games.
The result of the question is quite interesting because the participants have no obvious preference for approval and disapproval. It is confirmed that the existing training contents of world-class esports athletes include lots of physical training, mental training, and lots of reviews of their played matches (Keh, 2019). So, people who are inclined to agree with this statement answers the inaccurate choices.
Another interesting fact is that by having a cross-over analysis between questions 2 and 6, we can find that many people who claim to care about esports still have limited knowledge about esports athletes. And it seems that on this question, people who only care about games have even worse performance than others who don’t even care about video games.
This result indicates that even for people who care about esports and watch esports matches, a large percentage of them don’t care about esports athletes’ professional lives. And a higher percentage of people who claim to care about games would judge the training contents of esports athletes more cursory than people don’t care about video games.
7. Professional esports athletes are real athletes.
More than half of the participants are inclined to agree that professional esports athletes are real athletes, and a lot of them stays neutral on this statement. By knowing the premise that about 61% of the participants are above 30 years old, I find it gratifying that many older people are educated about the official recognition of esports athletes.
By having a cross-over analysis between questions 2 and 6, we can also find that about 42% of people above 30 are inclined to agree, which reinforced my previous point. In addition, people aged between 18 to 30 are the most supportive of the recognition of esports athletes.
8. Esports athletes should be respected just like other athletes.
The trend of this result is even more obvious than the previous question. About 69% of the participants agree that esports athletes should be respected just like other athletes. We can assume that even though many people don’t consider esports athletes as real athletes, they are still willing to respect their career choices.
9.
After reading the above statement, you think……
By analysing the result of this question, we can find that a huge percentage (83.96%) of the participants believe that the recognition of esports athlete is an improvement. I assume that they are people who show no objection to these changes.
Of course, it is an inevitable fact that people above 30, especially people who are 56 and above, are more possible to have doubts about the wide recognition of esports athletes. They are less familiar with esports matches and esports athletes.
Conclusion and implication
After analysing the results of the survey, we can find that the result has a better representation of Chinese people, especially Fujian locals. And the majority of the participants are not hard-core players of video games. The final hidden premise is that they are mostly social media users, especially users of WeChat and QQ.
The results implicate that the largest consumers of esports are people who play action games and strategy games. And if people don’t play or hardly play video games, they are less likely to watch esports and to understand esports athletes. Despite about 61% of the participants are above 30 years old, lots of the participants believe that professionalism exists in the career of esports athletes.
An interesting fact is that many people who claim to care about esports still have limited knowledge about esports athletes. Not many really understand the existing training methods of esports athletes.
Though only 42% of people above 30 are inclined to agree that esports athletes are real athletes, it is nice to see some of them show respect and recognition toward esports athletes. In addition, people aged between 18 to 30 are the most supportive of the recognition of esports athletes.
It is undoubted that more people need to be educated about the topic of esports and esports athletes. But the current results are much better than I expected! Even though many participants don’t play games or watch esports matches, they would still respect esports athletes. And the majority of them show no objection to the recognition of esports athletes. To let more people understand esports athletes, more research needs to be done and esports lovers can also try to inform their friends and families. Let’s hope esports athletes can be widely recognized by the public in the near future!
Will e-sport athletes recognize as an athlete, maybe in the near future. Since e-sport athletes has change the definition that we know, a person who is physically trained in physical sports for years. One of the reason why people may not care about e-sport games is the fact that most e-sport mainly cater action and strategy games so does the audience as well while there is a whole other genre that have not been explored like music rhythm, racing which are as competitive as the action and strategy games. Additionally, like you have stated that the knowledge about e-sport is limited since the amount of news about e-sport is little and not much information about what kind of training that…