INSIDER ESPORTS -- David Kim talks gaming and the need to keep a proper balance.

By: David “Tehkorean” Kim
The opinions expressed are mine alone, and your mothers'.


When video games were first introduced to people everywhere, many accepted it as a simple hobby that would give us hours of enjoyment. Now video games have become a billion dollar industry that rivals and even surpasses movie industry by couple billion dollars.

With all of this money being spent on video games, it’s not really a surprise that competitive gaming leagues and professional gamers would start popping up all over the world. This in turn creates gaming into a job – almost – and it takes away much of our time. Combine that with the millions of gamers who dream to play video games professionally and make money. Add it all up and we have billions and billions of time spent on playing nothing but video games.

Now I’m not here to shun down gaming on an amateur or professional level; I just like many of you want to be a professional gamer and play Counter Strike day after day and get paid for it as well. There’s also the fact that I play Counter Strike probably 3 to 4 hours a day.

However, I think that with that very same playing we lose a lot of what we could have done.

This isn’t a view of how you should just stop playing your favorite competitive eSport, but think of it as a different perspective on how if you do improve your very own social life and your health in general it will be much more beneficial in the future.

I think I’m going to start out with the word we as gamers all hate; exercise. Now we all probably sit on our butts on a nice comfy chair and do whatever business we do in front of our computer screens for probably a good 5 to 10 hours. You and I probably believe that’s perfectly fine, however in reality that’s definitely not the case.

Exercise in my opinion is key to becoming a great gamer, how do I know? Well if the body isn’t in good condition, than how in the world do you expect to play your game in great condition as well?

As you constantly exercise your body naturally becomes stronger both physically and mentally. With exercise your reflexes will be twice as fast because you’re not just day after day sitting on your computer screen and instead you’re increasing your body’s physical capability and it makes it much easier and faster for your brain to send signals that tell your eyes, arms, and hands to move quicker to pull off that amazing shot or clutch that your team might desperately need.

In a mental aspect good healthy exercise keeps your brain in constant good health and allows you to smartly predict or guess your opponent’s next move. If you’ve ever played the game Counter Strike many of you know how important and necessary your ingame smarts are needed in a match. There’s always the question of should I open this door, but that would make a noise, or should I go for the fake defuse or continue to defuse the bomb, do I kill the defuser and give my position away or try to take out the guys next to him first? All of these important situations require lighting fast decision making and relies on a heavy mental aspect.

Now for the fun section; your social life. Everybody believes that gamers are no life nerds who practically have no social life (see: me).

Now we all know that’s totally untrue as even Peawok – yes PEAWOK!!! – has a girlfriend; I believe her name is Amy. Now all jokes to my boss aside, when we play video games we tend to not go out as much or really hang out with friends because a lot of us do consider practicing with our team or trying to play another scrim much more important than being with our real life friends.

However, that’s exactly the problem we have, now when we practice with our teams or practice our individual aim or skill there are many times when we become stressed or frustrated or easily angered.

Usually people would most likely go out with their friends in their spare time to have some fun and let go of all that negative emotion, but instead we gamers usually just keep on playing and go through that exact same frustration over and over again. Unfortunately because of that exact same negative emotion incidents like these happen. I really believe that there’s a simple solution to all of this, just go out and have fun.

Now many of you are probably asking, “tehkorean can you like totally stop sounding like my mom right now?”

That’s the exact problem I’m not going to, because I am concerned about gamers who totally ruin their lives due to too much gaming and if they only got out more not only would they become better at playing their specific game but also just have a better life in general.

You can all hate me for this, but everything that I’ve pointed out in my column here is pure fact – true and through – and there isn’t much that you can argue with me about.

So please, I beg of you get off your butts and get out more. I’m not telling you to stop playing competitive video games – I actually encourage more gaming – but in between that spend at least 30 minutes doing something beneficial, like going for a 15 minute jog or getting a coffee with a friend. So yea get out there and do something healthy for a change.

P.S: I’m sure a lot of you hunch over your computer, now unless you want to be the hunchback on Notre Dame at the age of 50 than I suggest you stop that too.