A record US$33.5 million is up for grabs, but professional e-sports players such as those competing in this week’s The International in Shanghai pay a physical price with deteriorating eyesight, digestive problems, and wrist and hand damage.
“It’s impossible — how can you get injuries when you play games?” Evgenii “Blizzy” Ri said, looking perplexed at the notion.
Then, the 24-year-old from Kyrgyzstan disclosed that a doctor urged him to take six months off to give his failing vision a badly needed rest.
Ri plays for Natus Vincere, or NAVI, and this week is competing in The International, a world championship said to have the biggest prize pool in the history of e-sports.
NAVI and 17 other teams are to play the multiplayer battle game Dota 2 in front of thousands of fans at a major indoor stadium, while hundreds of thousands more are to watch online.
If NAVI triumph on Sunday, Ri and his teammates would become instant millionaires — but success could come at a price.
“I didn’t worry before, but now I feel like my eyes are really ... I can’t see so much,” said Ri, who practices up to 12 hours a day. “Ten years I’ve been playing computers, so they are a bit... I’ve just got bad vision.”
Ri has been told to wear glasses, but he does not find them comfortable and said that his deteriorating eyesight does not hinder his performance because the screen is up close.
A doctor recommended simple eye exercises — moving them up and down, left and right — but he said that he does not do them.
“Actually he also told me not to play the computer for six months to get back my vision, but I didn’t listen,” Ri said. “I need to play.”
According to several players in Shanghai, the most common health complaint for pro gamers is carpal tunnel syndrome.
Not unique to gamers, it happens through repetitive hand and wrist motions, and is characterized by numbness, burning and tingling of the thumb, index, middle and ring fingers.
In severe cases, surgery is required.
Some gamers talked about wrist injuries so severe that they had to quit and lower back problems related to sitting for too long, day after day.
Many gamers have scant appreciation of how important it is to eat well, exercise and sit properly when playing, Virtus.pro general manager Roman Dvoryankin said.
“All the pro teams are trying to educate the players to take breaks, do some exercise, stretch properly,” he said. “It’s changing now, but what we face is that we get a player and realize that his digestive system is just not working properly and that they have stomach problems. We do it, but it can be hard to change their daily habits.”
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