The Battle Royale train will never end.
Hey, guess what sounds like the collapse of society? The sentence “Parents are hiring Fortnite tutors for their kids to build confidence and friendships“. Every time I see it, I laugh.
Don’t get me wrong; there’s definitely money in eSports. That said, this is like betting your children’s future on whether or not you can jump from a cliff and land in a kiddie pool unharmed.
eSports types spend hours a day playing a given game. It’s their livelihood; they can’t afford not to practice. And any given game has a much lower limit than, say, normal sports.
Yeah, a lot of people wash out of their NFL/NBA/MLB/etc. dreams because they can’t really make the cut. But at the end of the day, there are multiple teams for each of those sports, and they have a roster of anywhere from 14 to over 50, depending on sport in question and team resources.
But take, for example, the Overwatch league franchises (pretty much where the big money is at). That is (as of this writing) 12 teams, with an average of 10 players on each for a total of 120, give or take. Period.
What I’m really trying to say is that I hope most of these people aren’t betting on little Timmy becoming an eSports star. I don’t know what the future holds for eSports, though, so maybe I’m just being an asshole.
As for confidence and friendships from competitive gaming? I ain’t optimistic, but then again, I might just be an asshole raining on that parade.