Narratives of Career Pathways of Esports Athletes

Abstract: Competitive video gaming has become one of the fastest-growing sporting disciplines. Aspiring esporters face many challenges that can threaten their prospective career timespan, and lead to post-career difficulties. The objectives was to explore the career narratives of Swedish esports athletes. Three professional Counter-Strike: Global Offensive players were interviewed. Two of the participants were no longer active competitors yet still worked fulltime within the esports community. Narrative analysis was applied with the holistic-form structural analysis used. The analysis resulted in three types of narratives that are represented within the sink or swim typology: risk and gain, descent and gain, and slowly ascending. The findings revealed that all participants had, at times, disregarded important aspects of life, such as school, social relationships, and physical activity, to further their esporting careers. The esporters also indicated that they were, to an extent, cognizant of these inactions and sacrifices. The participants periodically used gaming to break away from stressors that took place in real-life, and they had all navigated through their careers unsupervised. Although the career pathways were unique to the individuals, it was possible to relate them to traditional sports career frameworks. Even though the three esporters endured many hardships throughout their careers, they were all happy as to how their lives developed and found their esporting careers to be meaningful life experiences.