Over the past decade esports has been one of the fastest growing sports in modern history, garnering large audiences all over the globe amassing 84 million fans worldwide. Esports operates similarly to other sports with teams, rivalries, and crowds cheering on players during matches. It’s truly miraculous to see such large support for what is essentially professional video game players.
However what was thought to be a remarkable skill unique to this beloved sport has been proven to be false at the University of Waterloo’s Optometry and Vision research department. Kristine Dalton, head researcher at UWaterloo put professional esports players to the test, examining their optical abilities and comparing them to traditional sports players.
Ahmad Fareed Khan / Global News
Dalton’s results revealed traditional sport athletes were able to track small moving objects with greater accuracy than esport players. Dalton and her team used a dynamic visual acuity test to gauge the athletes abilities. Participants were “matched based on their level of static visual acuity and refractive error, distinguishing dynamic visual acuity as the varying factor on their test performance.” said Alan Yee, a PhD candidate in vision science.
The school put out a statement that the study’s findings would benefit athletic training centres that were in the process of implementing video game training programs to evaluate athletic performance. Training in a 3-D environment opposed to a 2-D one still presents many advantages, for developing acute visual skills, field of vision, and depth perception.
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Although esports takes a different set of skill opposed to traditional sports, fans are still tuning in by the millions to watch their favourite teams perform on the world stage for fame, notoriety, and big cash prizes.
If you plan on watching any esports events live, on tv, desktop, or mobile devices, The International 10 DOTA 2 championship is currently taking place in Stockholm, Sweden from the 7th till the 17th. Next month fans are awaiting BLAST Premier: Fall Finals for CS:GO in Copenhagen, Denmark. The competition runs from the 23rd to the 27th of November.