StarTalk Radio - #ICYMI - Esports, with NicoThePico

Episode Date: February 7, 2019

In case you missed this episode on the Playing with Science channel…. We dive into the expanding world of Esports as hosts Chuck Nice and Gary O’Reilly get the science behind the screen from Nicholas "NicoThePico" Korsgård, head coach of “League of Legends” pro team PostFinance Helix, and neuroscientist Heather Berlin, PhD. Subscribe to SiriusXM Podcasts+ on Apple Podcasts to listen to new episodes ad-free and a whole week early.

I'm Gary O'Reilly. And I'm Chuck Nice. And this is Playing With Science. Today we take a look at the rapidly expanding universe of eSports. Computer games, well, they've been around for decades, from Pong to Donkey Kong to Mario to League of Legends, and now Player One became Player One Billion and One. Absolutely.

And Gary just doesn't understand how it's seen as a sport, being that he's a former professional footballer, I'm sure, looking down on all those gamers that are virtually playing the game on the virtual pitch. Of course, I'm kidding. Of course, I'm only kidding. But to get a clearer view of gaming and all it takes to be tops in the field, we have Nico, the Pico, who is head coach of Swiss esports team PF Helix

and a player himself. And a player who is going to educate me as to the hows, whys, wheres, etc. So the other thing is, while Nico explains how, Dr. Heather Berlin, our very good friend, Dr. Heather Berlin, will explain the why and the what that is taking place in an esport brain. Yeah, yeah.

Joining us first, Nicolas Korsgaard, or, as you might know him, Nico the Pico. The Pico. Player and coach. As you said, head coach. I like that. It's head coach of Swiss Esports team, PF Helix. League of Legends.

Let's get me started with an education here. League of Legends, right? Most popular video game. Well, first let's say hi to... Are you saying hi to? Yeah. Hi, Nico. Hey, Nico.

All right, let me just get... Let's get myself... I'm going to do a brief bit of homework for myself here. Go ahead. League of Legends, most popular video game since 2012 with over 100 million monthly active players. Wow. I can say what I like, no one's going to care.

And let me tell you, I don't know if you know this, Gary, but the same way you have Premier League here on Saturday mornings, right? You have League of Legends on ESPN now. That's how big this thing is, man. It's a real sporting event that has televised coverage. I mean, the tournaments are set up globally, and they've got over 100 million viewers. So, Nico, welcome to Playing With Science.

Thank you. For those of you unable to see Nico, he is ridiculously young. And charmingly handsome. Yep, he's got all of the... He's got all the good stuff going. And he's a gamer on top of it. And he's head coach. And head coach.

And getting paid. You are getting paid, right, Nico? of course i am okay good for you yeah i felt like your dad for a minute there just like you're not just sitting around playing games are you yeah yeah you're getting paid right son straight to dad exactly so all right you're gonna have to backtrack and i appreciate your patience with me just when did esports become a competitive monster that it is? Okay, so 20 years ago, you had some games in some areas, especially in South Korea.

It was really starting with StarCraft. Had its 20 years anniversary now recently. I think it was this year or last year. That's really where it started and where people really saw and the big corporations saw that, hey, maybe there's something we can do with this. And people were starting to take it serious. You had big sponsors coming in. You had the

biggest telecom companies in South Korea coming in and sponsoring individual players and teams. You had the military going in and sponsoring teams so that when these players were picked up to go to the military, they could continue doing their esports life within the military. go to the military, they could continue doing their esports life within the military. And the rest of the world caught on and saw that you could actually enable games to be played more serious. So you could have a game that is both for the casual player, but it's also able to be on a professional level. Just like, for example, all of us have probably played chess at some point or another in our life but you also know that there's an entire different world of chess where there's people

having tournaments over over entire weeks and uh right you have the world champion magnus carlsen there's no reason and i i like to make a lot of correlations to that because that's something that people can fathom and they have some sort of relationship with right because it's not always easy to explain the game for example the game that i coach if if you have no idea the type of game it's extremely hard to try and understand so instead of trying to go ahead i was going to say it is very hard to understand and it is very difficult to follow i tried to watch a League of Legends tournament. Yes. And I have to tell you,

the commentators were speaking about it like I couldn't tell what they were talking about because there was so much going on on the screen. For the uninitiated, can you give us a speech breakdown of League of Legends because you know it is a it's a battle game and you know there's a lot of firepower going on on the screen but can you break it down for us what is what's what's League of Legends about okay so

it's a five player per team team game. You have two teams, and each team has one base, and you have different structures that protect your base. In order to win the game, you have to kill many structures, and then the final piece of the base, which is called the Nexus, whichever team kills this Nexus first, wins the game.

That's the simplest explanation I think. So, here you go. It's capture the flag. It's like a military exercise, capture the flag. So you said something military. And you mentioned South Korea. For people who don't know, South Korea has military conscription.

It's mandatory to do a military service. Two years. Yeah, two years. Not two weeks. It's not a camp. It's two years. And all of a sudden two weeks it's not not a camp right it's two years and all of a sudden how smart were they to go oh dude these kids are going to be primed for a certain element of what will be necessary for our defense right to bring that forward i can see why

the military jumps straight on top of this okay so it so it's a lot of fun. It's great. But how do you go from, oh, I'd quite like to have a look at this. I'm going to start playing it to being a top 10 player in the world, to being a head coach. What are the steps through that? Because it sounds like a hell of a lot of fun,

but it also sounds like a hell of a lot of work. Yes. Well, you were a football player yourself right yes so i would say it's the same i always make references to football and chess because that's things that people are familiar with like if you just play football and you just enjoy football playing football that doesn't mean that you can suddenly become a professional you actually need to put in hell of a lot of work. You need to actually be skilled or you need to be willing to put in the amount of time and effort and energy and sweat and tears and rearrange your life and cut out whatever time constraints you have so that

you can emphasize more time on football in order to actually go pro, right? And then if you're lucky, then maybe somebody finds you and you get a team opportunity and you get a chance to show yourself. And there's a lot of thin threads that you need to hit in order to make it in anything, I think. And it's the same in chess and it's the same in esports. Like to give an example of myself,

I was a player to begin with. I was among the top 200 in Europe in total, in all positions. And I was playing in a team and we were trying to qualify to what's below the highest league in Europe. We failed to qualify. So I started changing my vision into potentially becoming a coach because I was finishing my bachelor's degree. And I was like, either I start making money out of this or I have to get a regular job.

So to keep going for a bit, I actually sold my car to keep paying rent. And I was down to like maybe two more weeks before I had to actually get a job. And then I actually got picked up by an esports team in Berlin, which was called Origin. And I started my first head coach job there. And I just flew down. And that's three years ago. Wow.

Okay. I mean, I want to do this. We're going to build a perfect esport, e-gamer, whatever you want to call them. Okay. What is the correct terminology you could say esports athlete ah okay esports i want to build one from the ground upwards what's the first thing what do we need and what do we have when we're finished

okay so i think that uh in a team you have five different players. And just like in football, when you have different positions, you need different personalities, right? So there's some generalizations, but there's also differences in what you need because you obviously need some sort of captain and stuff like this. So that's personalized. But in general, you need someone who's able to hold very high level of focus because usually you can have best of five matches

and each game can last up until an hour and then you play the entire set in one go. So in tournament settings, you can have best of fives that go over five or six hours and you need to be able to hold your focus throughout the entire thing, right? Yeah. You need to be among the like, among the very best

in the entire region that you're playing in to even get to participate in a professional team. So you need to be extremely skilled at the game as well. And that just either requires very, very high talent or extreme levels of dedication and motivation and just effort in order to build yourself up, right? Okay, so I've got these big useless hands. Now I've got to make those work as a gamer, as an e-sports athlete. What kind of dexterity have I got to have? What kind of

mental agility have I got to possess? Apart from what you immediately went to, this dude's got to be so focused, it's unreal. I think that's first and foremost so how about the dexterity how about all of the strategy where how do i build what do we need we're building this winnow by the way we're building achilles the new esports athlete okay okay so that like i think the dexterity in your hands is maybe overlooked a bit, especially for my game, because my game is more strategically, has a more strategical depth, I think. But obviously you need to be able to click the buttons at a certain speed in order to just play the game

at a high level. So, but I think pretty much anybody can do that with just enough practice. So I don't think that's something that you would necessarily need to put points into when you're building somebody. So I would rather look at the physique

and the mentality of the player in order to build the perfect teammate that I would try to create at least. Can one person dump, just one person wipe the whole team out on their own? Or does it have to be a five-man, five-girl effort? Depends on the game.

In my game right now, it is extremely hard. It's like nearly impossible. It can happen. You have some players that are like famed, like Faker in South Korea, that just everybody in the entire world respects because he's just the most skilled player in the game but even he can't just 1v5 and and when he has to win through and with his team and he has to bring his team in on the place in order to make stuff happen

it's it's a very coherent and strategically uh like team forced game, I would say. So do you have to be a great player to be a good coach? Or is it like other sports? You know, in some sports, the coach never really played the game. You know, you have some sports where the person just knows the game so well that they don't even, you know, they haven't played the game. They're just able to just knows the game so well that they don't even you know they they haven't played the game they're just able to actually direct the game do you have to be a player in order to coach that's a very good question actually so i i think that uh there's many different opportunities you have as a coach you can be a coach that you were a player before

this happens in football it happens in any game or sport that I can think of. Or you can have somebody that's just really good working with people and have a really good understanding of the people that they're working with and are able to just bring the best out of the players that they have and sort of make the players teach themselves with each other. That's also an approach that is possible. In my case, I came from being a player and I was a very good player in three out of five roles. And I was able to lead while I was a player. I was a captain always. And I was able to sort of just transfer that naturally into being a coach. But I also think that it goes together with the sort of human approach that I have and the human understanding that I have and ability to make people work together. What's interesting, and I was reading just the other day,

there's a young player called F2Tex. He's a FIFA 19 player. He's 17 years of age. He's won maybe $100,000 in prize money already, which is great for for him he said when the new game comes out he spends 10 hours a day for maybe two months and then for after that couple of hours a day just to stay on top okay does that sound because that's kind of like if you wanted to be an elite athlete track and field you did the 10 000 hours thing people always quoted the 10 000 hours right does that sound about right to you for an athlete that wants to become elite? No, it doesn't at all. And for me, I don't really view FIFA at the same level as what we're doing. It's a completely different genre.

All right. A little video game snobbery happening right now. I like it. No, I like that. Yeah. No player at the highest level in League of Legends or in CSGO or in Dota or in Overwatch or these sort of games could play two hours a game and be the best in the world.

It just doesn't work. So what this guy that you're referring to does is he picks up the newest game and he becomes the best at it as fast as possible. And then he is just playing similar games so that the skills sort of transfers. But he's just more picking up new games to make quick cash or just to feel good.

It's not really the same as becoming an expert or mastering the sport that you're doing or mastering the field that you're doing. So I think it's very different things. Nico is breeding eSport ninjas. This guy, F2Tex, isn't got nowhere near nico's team am i right so okay the top 10 players in the world right is it faker you mentioned in korea would he have a very similar skill set to two three four five or would he have just something outrageous in one category?

So Faker is very outrageous. So there's like a hundred plus champions, different characters within the game right now. And you can only choose one per person, but he has shown throughout his entire career that he can literally play them all at the highest level. Like he goes versus the best players in the world and he asks them what their best champion is and then he plays their best champion versus them and beats them. Consistently.

So now, each one of the characters that you pick in the game, are you saying that they have a different skill set and you have to master the skill set that the character has in the game? Yes. Wow. Look at his face. Look at, because he's looking there, you look at his eye and he's like, yeah, dude, that's what I do. That's what I do. That's how I coach this stuff.

That's why I'm a Viking, damn it. By the way, that's not a character in the game. It should be. Go on, you were saying, Nico. There is a Viking in the game. Oh, is there a Viking in the game? I was just making a joke. He's called Olaf.

Olaf. Olaf. Okay, we're going to take a break. You're not going anywhere. We're not allowing you to. And while we're gone, we're going to take a break. You're not going anywhere. We're not allowing you to. Yeah, and while we're gone, we're going to go sack a village. No, I'm joking.

Go ahead. Please don't sack villages. Right, we're going to take that break. Nico the Pico will be with us. Olaf the Viking will be explored. And Faker from Korea sounds like the world's most dangerous chameleon. More of that when we get back.

I'm Nico Lupico, and this is Playing With Science. Welcome back to Playing With Science. I'm Gary O'Reilly. Who are you? I'm Chuck Nice. You sure? I'm actually Olaf the Viking, but... See? Yeah, for now.

That didn't take long for you to come with the truce there. Yeah. And this is our eSports special. And we as... Fascinating. Yes, fascinating. Fascinating stuff. As we've been educated,

Nico the Pico has told us they are esports athletes. Now, I wasn't sure about this being a sport per se, but the more we talk... The more we get into it. The more I'm sitting down going, I've got to challenge my own self here. I've got to think differently. And listeners out there who are saying,

Gary, how long has it taken you to get to this point? I'm with you. So, okay, during the little commercial break there, we sort of struck on the AI sort of issue. And you had a valid point, Chuck. You're always playing a computer. You're always. Like, if you're just practicing,

you're playing the computer. But Nico told us a really interesting story. He dropped something on us. Yeah. So, please. There's a young Danish player called Caps. Yes. Tell us about him. Nico, you take it from there. So please, there's a young Danish player called Caps. Yes. Tell us about him.

Nico, you take it from there. So I picked him up. I pretty much joined the best team in Europe at some point and became their head coach. I reshuffled the entire team. I only kept one player, and then I rebuilt the entire team. And I rebuilt it around this, at the time, 17-year-old Danish mid laner. I went to his parents, and I told them when he was 16, I want to bring this guy to Berlin for two years on a two-year-old Danish mid laner. I went to his parents and I told them when he was 16,

I want to bring this guy to Berlin for two years on a two-year contract. Can he stop school, please? Holy crap. Oh, I bet the parents loved you. Do you, listen, people listening, do you see how serious this is? Yeah. This kid is talking about, yo, I want your kid, your kid's so good at video gaming.

I want him to come to Berlin on a two-year contract and he's 16 years old. That's how serious this thing is. Go ahead, continue. Go ahead. Yes. And he is just incredibly talented mechanically. And mechanics is what we're talking about,

like using your mouse and keyboard and just your movements within the game. So you could probably do references to football as well, but I think people understand. But the way he would practice individually, he would find people who were using cheats in the game. Explain cheats. Just for me, explain cheats, please. Okay, sure. So the way that cheats work in our game is that you have an application or

your computer takes control over your character in the game and just makes him play perfectly so you never get hit by any skill shot you move perfectly in every direction and you shoot your spells at the exactly millisecond right time and you predict movements and everything so it's it's unfair and it gets removed right away as soon as the game realizes that someone is cheating they get removed in permaban then they're never allowed to play again and it's not allowed professionally at all so it's like very looked down upon but caps the crazy guy that he is he's like well if i can just practice versus this then i'm i'm gonna get really good as well so he actually did like he would actually do it and i would watch him and it would it would be incredible to watch because you're playing versus something that you cannot hit right and so he he would beat the

cheat yes wow so when you've got a young player and the ages is to a point irrelevant because you are now discussing someone with a high level of strategic intelligence. Yes. They are coming. If that's good and better than what anyone else has done, I need to learn from it. And the only way to learn from it is to get in and mix it up. Right. So when you find a player like that, how do you then elevate his or her game? Yeah.

So as they become even better. That's your head coach challenge. Sure. So I will tie this into the project that I'm doing here because I think it's really important to tell about. Well, before you go any further,

tell everybody where you are because you're not coming to us from your home in Norway. You're actually... Sure. I'm in the capital of Switzerland. I'm in Bern. And we are an esports team.

We're called the Esports Experiment or PostFinance Helix. PostFinance is one of the largest banks in Switzerland. So we are fully financed by one of the largest banks in Switzerland to do esports, to play League of Legends. And I'm here. They headhunted me from the north of Norway to come down and lead their team. Wow. That's where I am.

Look how serious this is. I can actually see parents now totally flipping the script. It's just like, Dad, I think I'm going to turn in for the night. No, you get down there and you get on that damn video game, son. You get on that video game and you continue to work until you get this right. It's like, wow.

I mean, you're financed by the largest bank in Switzerland. One of the largest banks in Switzerland. There's one or the largest bank in Switzerland. One of the largest. One of the largest banks in Switzerland. There's one or two large banks in Switzerland. There's quite a few large banks in Switzerland. And for those of you who can't see,

Nico DiPico is sitting in what looks like a training facility. I see screens, there are players behind you. So go ahead. Yeah, like we have a huge office in literally the center of Bern, like right next to the train station, which is like the main central building next to the old town in Bern.

It's fantastic. We have, I'm the head coach. We have a mental coach. We have a personal trainer. We have our own nutritionist who makes all the food. We have managers. There's many levels of degree within this team that is working. And to give you an idea, I wanted to just tell you how our basic day is because I think that might be interesting.

Yeah, please. For six out of seven days a week, we have regular workouts. We do one core muscle workout on one day and then cardio the next day. And we always do 90 minutes of cardio. So the day for the players starts at 9.30 in the morning. Then they do their gym, whether it's core muscle or whether it's cardio. After that, you go into lunch. And then we have mental training with our mental coach,

which is everything from meditation and breath work to to to mental coaching activities like as a team or individual or individual talks for like two three hours and then we do have team practice where we actually play the game which also goes on for three four hours or more on some days where we do up to six hours and then there's individual practice on top of that and And that is every single day. Wow. In addition, the players are,

whenever they do have off days, they are very much encouraged to play the game as much as possible and be active and actually help themselves become better players. Because the best players in the world,

they don't take off days. They literally don't. They are breeding esport ninjas. Yeah. They are. Exactly. Video games is not child's play.

It's basically... What's interesting... It's amazing. ...meditation and breathing. Because as little as I know, and it is little, let's not get carried away here, the adrenaline flow must be immense in terms of surges that come through.

And being able to control breathing, being able to control a flow state. We talk about elite athletes, basketball players, baseball, soccer players, whoever they might be, controlling their state of mind. You are employing people. No wonder you're able to get the best of the best

to come to work with you. You're getting people to educate your athletes, and we're going to call them athletes now, to bring that state of mind into play. Yeah, absolutely. Which, you know, no matter what you're playing, what sport you're playing, it's very important to have these skills that you're talking about.

I heard you tell a story about, well, actually, I didn't hear you. That's why I want you to tell it now. I read a quote from you where you were talking about a team that you took over that was crumbling from the inside, but you were able to do things to turn the team around. What were you referring to and how do you do that as a coach in esports? Yeah, so that was actually the team that I joined where I sold my car and I just left for Berlin. That was actually the team. And they had to kick their coach because it didn't work out. That was actually the team that I joined where I sold my car and I just left for Berlin. That was actually the team. Okay.

And they had to kick their coach because it didn't work out. And the players came from semifinals in the world championship, right? They came from semifinals in the world championship. They were two or three weeks into their season. And they were losing pretty much every match. And everything was just crumbling so they came from semi-finals at worlds and now they're losing in their european series like their european league and uh being able to handle losses is very difficult especially for for younger

players especially for immature players which most of them are because they they lived at their at their parents' place until they got a contract and then they were sent to Berlin, right? So they never actually have that life experience, right? So when I came in there, I was not only their head coach, but I was also their psychologist, their mom and their dad and like just helping people get their minds sorted and sort of helping people understand that we're all trying to achieve the same thing that if we're going to make this work like we all know that we're good players like that

you went to semifinals of the world so obviously you're great players so you guys just need to align yourself and get on the same page and learn to work together and then through practices and through setting goals and through having a lot of individual talks, I was alone at that time. I only had a manager above me, so I was sort of filling in everything I could. But we actually made it work. And we just changed up a lot and we changed up routines and just started eating healthier. And there's so many things that people don't consider that actually affect. consider that actually affect. And I like to make the reference to Magnus Carlsen in chess,

where he has his own nutritionist with him and his own personal trainer everywhere he goes in the world and make sure that he eats healthy and that he lives healthy and that he does his workout. And especially the cardio that increases the blood flow in your body and the oxygen pickup in your blood so that you're able to focus better. Like that's literally why we're doing workouts. Just to make our brains work better. And like nutrition and it's so damn important. What does it cost to run the Helix team per year? And how much do you make out of tournament wins? So the team makes 75% of whatever winnings that we do. And the 25% that is not to me and the players is reinvested into the team makes 75% of whatever winnings that we do. And the 25% that is not to me and the players

is reinvested into the team. I couldn't begin to guess the amount of money just this office costs because it's so central. And the building we are in is literally owned by the bank. And they're like, oh yeah, you guys can probably use this space. So if they had to rent it without going through the bank that we're like oh yeah you guys can probably use this space so so if they had to rent it without going through the bank that we're working with then yeah it would be crazy crazy

expensive and there's so many people how many teams are there at your level of understanding preparation organization and with a mission statement that you're actually completing on? How many teams out there, or is it just individuals who are out there doing their own thing, or are they all part of a network with a level that you're at? Yeah, I think if you're looking away from Asia, because I have no clue on China and Korea, but if you're looking away from that,

you may be looking at like 2030 with this level of infrastructure at the most. Wow, that's pretty wild. Hey, you know, we're running out of time here. So I want to get to a couple of questions. Please do. One is all this, a couple of things. One, you talk about focus.

You're dealing with basically kids who are going through puberty, you know, and you talk about focus, you're dealing with basically kids who are going through puberty, you know, and you talk about focus. I mean, how difficult is it? And do you ever lose a kid to burnout? And do you ever lose a kid to like, you know, why aren't you focused? I can't stop thinking about boobs. Like, you know, I mean, like, this is what you're dealing with you're dealing with kids i mean how do you how do you make that work yeah so that's a very good question and something that i've always done when i built my teams is try to balance personality and balance ages and i think that is incredibly important to make things work. So, for example, in the team where I took in Caps, he was 16 when I wrote the contract with him.

He was 17 when he came to Berlin. But I also matched him with people that were 24, 25. And made sure that the team as a whole had more maturity mixed with the lesser maturity. So that, obviously, he will get to pick up more from the bigger guys. with the lesser maturity, so that obviously he will get to pick up more from the bigger guys. But when these guys are in season, you have one off day a week at most,

and on that off day, you're very highly encouraged to play as much as you can. It's not like so many other things are going to be on their mind. And if there is, then they're not going to just be able to perform. So if you're not cut out for it, you're not cut out for it. And that's the same in football or anything.

Any sport. Wow, okay. Many are called, few are chosen. Very good answer. I got to ask one more question just before we run out of time. Here's the deal, man. Everybody who is listening right now wants to know this one question. How much money can I expect to make as a pro gamer okay so in europe you're you can probably look at

10 000 euros plus per month easily oh easily my goodness and in america you can double that easily with the current situation so there going on. So there are guys making $20,000 a month playing video games in America and that's kind of like a baseline for the good guys. For the best players, that is a baseline. And then you have extras with personal sponsorships.

You have people being Red Bull athletes, which is a bunch of them. You have a bunch of sponsorships and extras and extras and extras. So that's just the base salary level. Well, I got to tell you something right now, Nico. I have to go home and apologize to my son and allow him to kick me square in the ass. Because he came to me two years ago, and he was 11 at the time.

He was like, hey, Dad, I want to be a pro gamer. And I said, you get the hell out of my house. Well, 11, I wouldn't recommend it either. So if I can end with something, I always tell people, as long as you can keep good grades, as long as you can stay in good shape and behave accordingly, and at the same time you're able to become a very good player, then sure, maybe you can go for it. But if you're not able to maintain your life at the same time while you're doing this, don't go for it.

Because it's incredibly hard and it requires incredible amounts of time and it requires incredible amounts of luck. So don't give up the rest of your life to just try to become a professional gamer. Wow, look at this guy, man. How old are you, Nico? Can I join your team? You look like you're 19. Okay, you're 26. Okay, but you look like you're 19, I gotta say.

He does, he does. But it's great to hear such maturity coming out of this person. Yeah, I'm all for that. And yeah, success for the team. Where does esports go from where you are now i mean i mean i know the big soccer teams the big football teams in europe have their own esports teams and when they come on board you wonder what kind of direction it takes uh you're close to the ground

what's where's it headed yes i'm very glad you said that because I was going to mention Schalke. Yes, German Bundesliga team. Yes, Schalke has had an esports team for many years now. And they made a really good video, which I might be able to send you later. But pretty much what they say in the video is they have over 10 million fans in Germany. And these 10 million fans are mostly at an adult age. And these people are fans are mostly at an adult age. And these people are getting kids or already have kids or multiple kids. And these kids are not growing up

with football the same way that you did, right? Or that they did. So if they're going to keep the fan bases going into the future, they need to be on the medias that the current generation and the platform

that the current generation is actually going to see so that it's a natural transition for them to actually participate in esports. And Schalke is literally showing their esports player on the football matches before the matches and in the breaks and showing them on the big screens

and showing trailers and everything and trying to make hype around it. So they're really going all in on it. Okay. Wow. Isn't that... This is unbelievable, man. Nico in on it. Okay. Wow. Isn't it? This is unbelievable, man. Nico, thank you.

Yeah, man. I mean, I had skepticism and I'm pleased to say that you washed that away very easily. And although I still have a very small knowledge, I am much better for having spent

this time with you. So thank you so much. And what's your next big tournament? Well, it's going to be any week now. Like we're participating in pretty much anything that we can and everything that we can, but we just started up. We've only had intranet here in the office for like two weeks.

So we're just very much in the starting phase right now. All right. Well, good luck for you and your project. It sounds fabulous. Thank you. And I think they got the right person in place. Yeah, man. Yeah.

You seem like a great coach, man. So good luck to you, buddy. All right, Nico de Pico. Nico Korsgaard, thank you so much indeed. PF Helix, a team, if you haven't heard of them before, you have now. And I think we're all going to be interested in following. We're going to take a break. When we come back, Dr. Heather Berlin and a trip inside the mind of an e-sports athlete,

as I shall now be calling them. We're going to take that break. We'll see you shortly. Welcome back to Playing With Science and our eSports extravaganza. And, of course, we have with us neuroscientist Dr. Heather Berlin. If you're not familiar, cognitive neuroscientist and assistant professor of psychiatry at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai. Dr. Berlin, welcome back. Thanks. Thanks for having me here again. Oh, the pleasure's ours, always.

All right. Esports, or as Nico de Pico has educated us, esports athletes. Now, for me, with my very limited knowledge prior to speaking to Nico, For me, with my very limited knowledge prior to speaking to Nico, couch potato, basically his fingers and thumbs welded to a control box and that was it. And he's just blown that completely away and opened our minds to an ultra-professional attitude. But that's one side.

Not everybody is an elite esport athlete. So if we come back to the very basics of it, and with your good self, what areas of the brain are being engaged by a competitive professional esports gamer? So the same parts of the brain are going to be engaged when you're playing a game. It also depends on the game, right? So depending on which game you're going to have slightly different parts of the brain that are activated, it's not kind of a one size fits all. But let's say you have

an amateur and a professional both playing the same game. You're going to get the same parts of the brain that are activated. Usually involves a lot of focused attention or being able to shift attention very quickly from one thing to another, having really fast fine motor movement. So your motor cortex is going to be really active. Perhaps having some emotional suppression or regulation, because for example, if you're in a, I don't know, it's a combat game and you start getting really stressed out, like you're going to get shot at, you're not going to perform as well. So it's almost like people in the military being able to stay cool, calm, and collected in very intense situations and remain focused. So the parts of the brain involved in focus,

the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex, the insula we know is involved, are going to be active in both cases. But professional athletes might do things that can help even get them to be more effective in terms of the brain areas that are engaged when they're playing the game itself. Yeah. Here we go. How clever and dangerous are computer games when they purposefully build in this adrenaline and heart rate boosting elements and through visual and audio features?

Because, I mean, I've only played them many, many years ago and only very briefly, and it was very much like, woof, the heart rate's up, your adrenaline levels are high, you can feel it and sense it. So how do they do that? What does trigger off in the brain? And does that then come to a dangerous level very quickly? Yeah, so I mean, they're meant to simulate or to kind of trigger your emotional reactions. That's why they're so engaging. There's both rewarding aspect, like when you can win points or gold or whatever it is, or they take things away when you

lose points or lives or whatnot. But it's all meant to kind of engage you emotionally. And what we see, there's some studies where they actually just look at brain activation when they have people imagine, just simply imagine a neutral scenario or imagine an aggressive scenario. And simply imagining an aggressive scenario decreases activation in the orbital prefrontal cortex and in the very front part of the prefrontal cortex. So imagine that now, now you're actually viewing aggressive or let's say it's a combat game. It's actually decreasing activation in your prefrontal cortex. Now, how long the effects of that last is unknown. So maybe right after they play this aggressive game

for hours, they might actually go out and do something aggressive. So it is triggering, it's triggering our emotions. But I think that those professional players probably have developed the skill to not be as affected by those emotional cues within the game so they can stay, again, cool, calm, and collected and respond adaptively rather than letting the emotions trigger them.

Or when it's really stressful, you know, you're down to one life and then people start messing up because of the stress, they probably can modulate that a bit. So how receptive is the human brain to that sort of addictive reward scenario? Is it something that some people are able to naturally block or as you just highlighted the elite gamers are having have got there but through a process of hour after hour after hour so it's a very fast so so i see patients you know they have like internet gaming addiction or just simply internet addiction or internet gambling addiction they're all inter. We see that the same parts of the brain that are involved in addiction

to drugs are involved in these behavioral addictions like internet gaming. So you get dopamine activation, you get cravings, you get withdrawal symptoms, and it's the same neural circuitry that's involved. So now, for instance, let's just say you took like a gambler, a professional poker player. It's a very fine line between are they just a professional, they're doing it as a living, or is it an addiction, right? And usually when it becomes really detrimental to your life, when you keep doing it even though you're losing

or even though, let's say it's gaming, you're doing it at the cost of social life, at the cost of making money and having a job or whatever it may be. And you just can't stop yourself. So the point, the thing with an addiction is that despite the negative consequences, you still, you still need to do it. And you can see the same thing happen with drugs. Whereas these professionals, it's hard to say, I would probably say that a proportion of them, a percentage of them might have some addictive-like behaviors. But I assume if they're really skilled and really good and they're doing things outside of the game to train and they're exercising and they're having a social life and they're really seriously just looking at this like a job, maybe they're not activating that addictive network in the brain. They're able to suppress it somehow. And there's also people that just have more addictive personalities that are more likely to get addicted to gaming than others.

So, you know, with respect to that, there are kids that play video games for 12 hours a day. And a lot of it when you talk to them, it's because there's an online community and they establish relationships and it becomes the new playground. Now, when I was a kid, it was nothing to go out and play 12 hours at the park with my friends. And, you know, we're riding bikes and we're doing all this kind of stuff. So where is the line drawn between, hey, I just really want to spend time with my friends and do this thing I really love.

And, hey, I'm really want to spend time with my friends and do this thing I really love. And hey, I'm addicted to video games. Or, and also, are these video game companies, you know, putting these games in these forums so that they can, they know that psychologically we are social creatures and we want to, you establish friendships and so you want to be there and it's going to keep you there for 12 hours well first of all there there is we do know from um well there was actually a great documentary i forget the name of it but it was about um these dating apps but they talked to the people who create them and they literally admitted that yes we're using techniques that we know from psychology like um when you have reinforcement schedules that

are unpredictable, like things like that, where we're actually trying to get people sort of addicted to want to want to use it. They do manipulate these things accordingly. But the argument has been that, well, there are some positive aspects. You have these social interactions in these communities. But what we're lacking, what we're losing is when they show that the more time kids spend online, whether it's playing games or even in, you know, social kind of chat rooms or whatever you want to call them, they're actually losing their ability to interact with people face to face. They don't learn. They don't understand social cues. face-to-face. They don't learn, they don't understand social cues. They have much poorer communication skills when they're face-to-face with a real human being. So they might be getting

some aspects of like sort of social interaction online, but it's, there's something lacking. And they're not learning the skills that we've spent many years evolving to, you know, have face-to-face interactions, which could mean that when they go out in the real world, they're going to be at a disadvantage. And then once they have gone into there and found that disadvantage, they immediately recoil back into the comfort of the zone they've just come out of. And that's when you see these people, you know, there was some guy who went out and did this mass shooting, you know, these guys that were in these chat rooms about, I think they were like asexual. They weren't having sex.

I forget. The incels. The incels. Incels. Yeah. These guys are forced into celibacy because they can't get laid because they don't know how to talk to a girl. And then they take that anger and actually blame the girls with women and and their hate for women they expressed in these chat it's crazy it's crazy but they have these online communities

that are like these echo chambers that are just making the problem worse because the more time they're spending on that the less time they're going out and trying to actually develop the social skills to learn how to let's say pick up a girl so i mean that's at the extreme ends of things where you can see things like that happening, where you get, yeah, you're in a social community, but you're really actually not, you're lacking the skills to have real life interactions. So I think it's just another way in terms of gaming, it just sucks people and it keeps them there longer. I mean, that's what these developers want. I mean, it is very strategic the way, it's not by accident how they're developing these games.

Wow. It's interesting because what we're talking about here is a massively negative side of gaming. Yeah. And what we did with Nico the Pico, Nico Korsgaard, who was the head coach of the Swiss esports team, was understand from him how he demanded of his team balance. Yeah.

How they must be involved with meditation, mental strength, physical exercise, engagement. He said, we want you to have good grades. We want you to be involved. We want you to have an aspect and an understanding. Right. So it wasn't a very insular environment it was that they've but see however as i said many are chosen few are called when it comes to being chosen to be brought onto a team right for an esport so there's a lot of people out there

there's a hundred million a month playing league of legends alone right wow i think it's what that coach is doing it's really it's neuroprotective we would call it right so if you we we already know what the negative um things that i mean there's even been shown some studies show brain atrophy and you know so we know the negative impact so to counter that if you want these people to be like sort of elite athletes exercise meditation you know making sure they have time for social life that's going to be like sort of elite athletes, exercise, meditation, you know, making sure they have time for social life. That's going to be a neuroprotective factor to make sure that they're at the top of their game and they're not getting the negative impacts. It's almost kind of like counter countering the negative potential negative impacts. I mean, other studies

show that you do develop certain skills, like I said, attention and switching attention very quickly and fine motor skills. But it's at the cost of maybe some other things like sustained long-term attention um and and social skills developing them outside but if you can you can counter that by let's say you have a coach but most people don't have that right no so i think the professional athletes maybe are protected because they're they have these other regimes outside of when they're playing, whereas the average person does not. Well, listen, we're out of time. This is fascinating stuff. Yes, I got to go. I got a date with my virtual girlfriend. So he can't resist it, he cannot resist it. Dr. Heather Berlin, enlightening and a pleasure as always. Thank you so much for your insight and your time.

Thank you. Thank you. Chuck. Yeah. Game over. Yeah, that's it. That's it, baby. We actually, we beat this game.

We're at the final level and it's done. Yeah, I like it. We got all the coins. We got all the points. This is game over, baby. That's it. We're out of here. This was the best too.

We're champions. We're going out on top. That's it. We got to wait here. This was the best, too. We're champions. We're going out on top. That's it. We got to wait for the next incarnation of the game to come out. Madden 2025. That's how far ahead we are, baby. We are winners, okay? League of Champions. Here are your champions right here. We don't need a league. It's just the two of us. Duo of champions. How about that? Deal with it. Deal with it. Can I leave the basement now, Chief? out there. Deal with it. Deal with it. Can I leave the basement now, Chuck? As long as you brush those crumbs off that couch, young man.

Life's too short. Right, that's it. This has been Playing With Science. I've not been Chuck Nice. And I have not been Gary O'Reilly. We look forward to your company very, very soon. Hopefully you've enjoyed esports and the enlightenment of me to esports athletics.