eSports: Opportunities for Future Ergonomic Studies

Professional electronic sports (eSports) is an emerging professional and academic field. It presents a unique combination of an electronic/online world and traditional sports. Its activity is computer-mediated, but has all characteristics of traditional sports: training routine, tournaments agenda, high pressure from eSports fans base, relations with sponsors, and others. This unique position has raised concerns of the professionals regarding the quality of standards, professionalization and formalization of this activity field. The aim of this article is to fill the gap in ergonomics studies on eSports, in particular, to generalize the knowledge about this new professional area, and also to reflect on the prospects of future ergonomic studies in this field. How is this professional world and professional area developing? What problems and new demands arise from this? We used an exploratory and qualitative methodology in three main phases: (1) Exploratory interviews with eSports professionals in order to understand and define existing problems in this new area; (2) Academic literature review on the topic; (3) An ergonomic intervention at one of the first Brazilian eSports enterprises, located in Rio de Janeiro. Ergonomic Work Analysis was employed to help an eSports team’s owner to investigate the problems of his eSports team formation. As a result, we reveal the main problems of the Brazilian eSports market, present preliminary ergonomic intervention results and highlight paths for future research.