Pod Insights StarTalk Podcast #ICYMI - Esports, with NicoThePico About this episode 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.
Transcript Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.
0:01 Gary O'Reilly? I'm Gary O'Reilly.
0:02 Chuck Nice? And I'm Chuck Nice.
0:03 Gary O'Reilly? And this is Playing with Science.
0:08 Gary O'Reilly? 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 Super Mario to League of Legends, and now Player One became Player One Billion and One.
0:22 Chuck Nice? 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.
0:57 Gary O'Reilly? 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 esports brain.
1:16 Chuck Nice? Yeah, yeah.
1:17 Gary O'Reilly? Joining us first, Nicholas Korsgaard, all, as you might know him, Nico 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 put this, let's just get me started with an education here. League of Legends, right? Most popular video game.
1:36 Chuck Nice? Well, first, let's say hi to, are you saying hi to?
1:39 Gary O'Reilly? Yeah.
1:39 Chuck Nice? Yeah.
1:39 Gary O'Reilly? Hi, Nico.
1:40 Chuck Nice? Hey, Nico.
1:41 Gary O'Reilly? All right, let me just get, let's get myself, I want to do a brief bit of homework for myself here.
1:45 Chuck Nice? Go ahead.
1:45 Gary O'Reilly? League of Legends, most popular video game since 2012 with over 100 million monthly active players.
1:52 Chuck Nice? Wow.
1:52 Gary O'Reilly? I can say what I like, no one's going to care.
1:55 Chuck Nice? 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 like, it's a real sporting event that has televised coverage.
2:15 Gary O'Reilly? I mean, the tournaments are set up globally, and they're, they've got over 100 million viewers. So Nico, welcome to Playing with Science.
2:26 Speaker 02 Thank you.
2:26 Gary O'Reilly? Uh, for those of you unable to see Nico, he is ridiculously young.
2:30 Chuck Nice? And charmingly handsome.
2:34 Gary O'Reilly? Yep, he's got all of the-
2:35 Chuck Nice? He's got all the good stuff going, and he's a gamer on top of it.
2:39 Gary O'Reilly? And he's head coach.
2:40 Chuck Nice? And head coach, and getting paid. You are getting paid, right Nico?
2:44 Speaker 02 Of course I am.
2:45 Chuck Nice? Okay, good, yeah. I felt like your dad for a minute there, just like, you're not just sitting around playing games, are ya?
2:50 Gary O'Reilly? Yeah.
2:51 Chuck Nice? Yeah, you're getting paid, right son?
2:52 Gary O'Reilly? Straight to dad mode.
2:53 Chuck Nice? Exactly.
2:54 Gary O'Reilly? So, alright, you're gonna have to backtrack, and I appreciate your patience with me. Just when did esports become a competitive monster that it is?
3:04 Speaker 02 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.
3:44 Speaker 02 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 is 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 entire weeks. And, right, you have the world champion Magnus Carlsen, who's Norwegian, and 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.
4:24 Chuck Nice? Right.
4:24 Speaker 02 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.
4:36 Chuck Nice? Go ahead. I was gonna say it is very hard to understand and it is very difficult to follow. I tried to watch a League of Legends tournament. Um, 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 can you give us a small little breakdown of League of Legends? Because, you know, it is a it's a battle game. And, uh, you know, there's a lot of firepower going on on the screen. Uh, but can you break it down for us? What is what's what's League of Legends about?
5:21 Speaker 02 OK, so it's a five player per 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.
5:42 Chuck Nice? Uh, so here you go. It's capture the flag. It's a it's a like a military exercise. Capture the flag.
5:49 Gary O'Reilly? So you said something military. And you mentioned South Korea. See, for people who don't who don't know, South Korea has military conscription. It's mandatory to do military service.
6:00 Speaker 02 Two years.
6:01 Gary O'Reilly? Yeah, two years.
6:02 Chuck Nice? Wow, yeah.
6:02 Gary O'Reilly? Not two weeks. It's not not a camp.
6:04 Chuck Nice? Right.
6:05 Gary O'Reilly? It's two years. And all of a sudden, how smart were they to go, oh, dude, these kids are gonna be primed for a certain element of what will be necessary for our defense.
6:16 Chuck Nice? Right.
6:17 Gary O'Reilly? To bring that forward. I can see why the military jumped straight on top of this. OK, 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 gonna start playing it", to being a top-ten 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.
6:43 Speaker 02 Yes, well, you were a football player yourself, right?
6:46 Gary O'Reilly? Yes.
6:47 Speaker 02 So, I would say it's the same. I always make references to football and chess, because it's things that people are familiar with. Like, if you just play football and you just enjoy playing football, that doesn't mean that you can suddenly become a professional. You actually need to put in a 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 like, there's a lot of thin threads
7:31 Speaker 02 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.
7:50 Speaker 02 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.
8:35 Gary O'Reilly? Wow, look at that. Okay, I mean, I wanna do this. We're gonna build a perfect esports e-gamer, whatever you want to call them. What is the correct terminology?
8:47 Speaker 02 You could say esports athlete.
8:49 Gary O'Reilly? Ah, okay, esports, I want to build one from the ground outputs.
8:53 Speaker 02 Sure.
8:54 Gary O'Reilly? What's the first thing, what do we need and what do we have when we're finished?
8:59 Speaker 02 Okay, so I think that in a team you have five different players.
9:03 Gary O'Reilly? Uh huh.
9:04 Speaker 02 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?
9:43 Gary O'Reilly? Yeah.
9:43 Speaker 02 You need to be 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?
10:06 Gary O'Reilly? Okay, so I've got these big useless hands. Now I've got to make those work as a gamer, as an esports 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.
10:34 Speaker 02 Okay. Okay.
10:37 Speaker 02 So that like, I think that 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.
11:19 Gary O'Reilly? Can one person dump, just one person wipe a whole team out on their own? Or does it have to be a five man, five girl effort?
11:30 Speaker 02 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 win. He has to win two and with his team, and he has to bring his team in on the plays in order to make stuff happen. It's a very coherent and strategically, like, team forced game, I would say.
12:05 Chuck Nice? 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, yeah, you have some, 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 actually direct the game. Do you have to be a player in order to coach?
12:33 Speaker 02 That's a very good question, actually. So I think that 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
13:14 Speaker 02 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.
13:25 Gary O'Reilly? What's interesting, and I was reading just the other day, there's a young player called F2 Tex. He's a FIFA 19 player. He's 17 years of age. He's won maybe a hundred thousand dollars in prize money already. Great for him. He said when a new game comes out, he spends 10 hours a day for maybe two months. And then after that, a couple of hours a day just to stay on top of that. 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. Does that sound about right to you for an athlete that wants to become elite?
14:04 Speaker 02 Uh, no, it doesn't at all. And for me, like, I don't really view FIFA at the same level as what we're doing. It's a completely different genre. I like, I don't- 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 CS:GO 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 gets, he becomes the best at it. As fast as possible and then he is just playing similar games so that the skill sort of transfers.
14:48 Speaker 02 But he's just more picking up new games to make quick cash or or just to feel good. It's not really the same as as uh 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.
15:02 Gary O'Reilly? Niko is breeding esports ninjas. This guy, F2 Tex, has got nowhere near Niko'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 2, 3, 4, 5? Or would he have just something outrageous in one category?
15:25 Speaker 02 So Faker is very outrageous. So there's like 100 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, 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.
15:51 Chuck Nice? 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?
15:59 Speaker 02 Yes.
15:59 Chuck Nice? Wow.
15:59 Speaker 02 So, so.
16:00 Gary O'Reilly? Look at his face. Look at, because he's looking, you look at his eye and he's like, yeah, dude, that's what I do.
16:06 Chuck Nice? Yeah, he's like, yeah.
16:06 Gary O'Reilly? That's what I do. That's how I coach this stuff.
16:08 Chuck Nice? That's why I'm a Viking, damn it. By the way, that's not a character in the game.
16:12 Gary O'Reilly? Should be. Go on, you were saying, Niko.
16:15 Speaker 02 There is a Viking in the game.
16:16 Chuck Nice? Oh, is there? Is there a Viking in the game? I was just making a joke.
16:19 Speaker 02 He's called Olaf.
16:20 Gary O'Reilly? Olaf?
16:21 Chuck Nice? Olaf.
16:21 Gary O'Reilly? Oh, okay. Well, we're gonna take a break. Um, you're not going anywhere. We're not allowing you to.
16:26 Chuck Nice? Yeah, and while we're gone, we're gonna go sack a village. No, I'm joking. Go ahead.
16:30 Gary O'Reilly? Please don't sack villages. Right, we're gonna take that break. Niko the Pico will be with us. Olaf the Viking will be explored. And Faker from Korea sounds like the world's most dangerous chameleon. Uh, more of that when we get back.
16:54 Speaker 02 I'm Nico de Pico and this is Playing with Science.
17:03 Gary O'Reilly? Welcome back to Playing with Science. I'm Gary O'Reilly, who are you?
17:05 Chuck Nice? I'm Chuck Nice. I'm actually all off the Viking, but yeah, for now.
17:09 Gary O'Reilly? That didn't take long for you to come with the truce there.
17:13 Gary O'Reilly? And this is our esports special and we have now been, yes, fascinating. I've been educated. Nico de 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.
17:31 Chuck Nice? The more we get into it.
17:32 Gary O'Reilly? The more I'm sitting down going, I've got to challenge my own self. 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, we sort of struck on the AI sort of issue. And you had a valid point, Chuck. You're always playing a computer.
17:53 Chuck Nice? Yeah, always. Like if you're just practicing, you're playing, you're playing the computer. But Nico told us a really interesting story.
18:00 Gary O'Reilly? He dropped something on us. Yeah. So please, can, there's a young Danish player called Caps.
18:05 Speaker 02 Yes.
18:06 Chuck Nice? Tell us about him.
18:06 Gary O'Reilly? You take it from there.
18:08 Speaker 02 So I picked him up. I pretty much joined the best team in Europe at some point and became the 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 midlaner. 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?
18:31 Gary O'Reilly? Holy crap.
18:32 Speaker 02 Oh, bet the parents loved you.
18:34 Chuck Nice? Do you, and listen, people listening, do you see how serious this is?
18:37 Gary O'Reilly? Yeah.
18:37 Chuck Nice? This kid is talking about, yo, I'm going to, 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.
18:49 Speaker 02 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.
19:12 Gary O'Reilly? Explain cheats, just for me, explain cheats, please, thank you.
19:16 Speaker 02 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 unfair and it gets removed right away as soon as the game realizes that someone is cheating. They get removed and permabanned and 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 gonna get really good as well.
19:59 Speaker 02 So he actually did, like he would actually do it. And I would watch him and it would be incredible to watch because you're playing versus something that you cannot hit. Right, and so he would beat the cheat? Yes. Wow.
20:13 Gary O'Reilly? So when you've got a young player, and the age is to a point irrelevant, because you are now discussing someone with a high level of strategic intelligence. That 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.
20:34 Speaker 02 Right.
20:34 Gary O'Reilly? And so when you find a player like that, how do you then elevate his or her game? So as they become even better, that's your head coach challenge.
20:44 Speaker 02 Sure. So I will tie this into the project that I'm doing here because I'm, I think it's really important to tell about.
20:51 Chuck Nice? Well, before you go any further, tell everybody where you are because you're not, you're not coming to us from your home in Norway. You're actually.
20:58 Speaker 02 Sure.
20:59 Chuck Nice? Where are you?
20:59 Speaker 02 I'm in, I'm in the capital of Switzerland. I'm in Bern and we are a 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 head hunted me from the north of Norway to come down and lead their team. That's where I am.
21:24 Chuck Nice? Look how serious this is. Like I can actually see parents now totally flipping the script. It's just like, Dad, I think I'm gonna 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. Yeah. You know, it's like, wow. I mean, you're, you're, so you're, you're financed by the largest bank in Switzerland and.
21:45 Speaker 02 One of the largest.
21:45 Chuck Nice? One of the largest banks. There's one or two, there's one or two large banks in Switzerland. There's quite a few, quite a few large banks in Switzerland. Um, and, and, and for those of you who can't see, Nico de Pico is sitting in what looks like a training facility. I see screens and there are players behind you and so go ahead.
22:06 Speaker 02 Yeah, like we have a huge office in, in literally the center of Bern, like right next to the train station, which is like the, the main central building here next to the old town in Bern. It's, 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. Like we have managers, like there's many levels of degree within this, within this team that is working. And, and to give you an idea, I wanted to just tell you how our basic day is because I think that might be interesting.
22:38 Chuck Nice? Yeah, please.
22:40 Speaker 02 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 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 that is every single day. Wow.
23:25 Speaker 02 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.
23:40 Gary O'Reilly? They are breeding esports ninjas.
23:42 Chuck Nice? Yeah, exactly. And video games is not child's play, is basically what.
23:47 Gary O'Reilly? What's interesting?
23:48 Chuck Nice? It's amazing.
23:48 Gary O'Reilly? 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.
24:14 Chuck Nice? Yeah.
24:15 Gary O'Reilly? 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.
24:29 Chuck Nice? Yeah, absolutely. Which, you know, no matter what you're playing, what sport you're playing, it's very important to have that, 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?
24:59 Speaker 02 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.
25:05 Gary O'Reilly? Okay.
25:05 Speaker 02 And, 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, two or three weeks into their season. And they were losing pretty much every match and everything was just crumbling. So they came from semifinals of Worlds and now they're losing in their European series, like their European league. And 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?
25:50 Speaker 02 So when I came in there, I was not only their head coach, but I was also their psychologist, their mom and, and their dad and like, 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 gonna make this work, like we all know that we're good players, like you went to semifinals of the Worlds, 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, 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
26:34 Speaker 02 and, and just started eating healthier and like there's so many things that people don't 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, he lives healthy and that he does his workout. And especially the cardio that increases the blood flow in your body and the oxygen pick up on 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.
27:10 Gary O'Reilly? What does it cost to run the Helix team per year? And how much do you make out of tournament wins?
27:19 Speaker 02 So the team makes seventy-five percent of whatever winnings that we do. And the twenty-five percent 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 working with, then it would be crazy, crazy expensive. And there's so many people.
27:53 Gary O'Reilly? 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?
28:14 Speaker 02 Yeah, I think if you're looking away from Asia, because I have no clue on China and Korea.
28:21 Gary O'Reilly? Sure.
28:22 Speaker 02 But if you're looking away from that, you may be looking at like twenty, thirty with this level of infrastructure at the most.
28:29 Chuck Nice? 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 that.
28:34 Gary O'Reilly? Please do, please do.
28:35 Chuck Nice? Uh, one is all this, two, two, 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. 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?
29:09 Speaker 02 Yeah, so that's a very good question and something that I.
29:14 Speaker 02 Something that I've always done when I've 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, right? 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. 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 gonna be on their mind.
29:59 Speaker 02 And if there is, then they're not gonna 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.
30:06 Chuck Nice? Any sport. Wow, okay. Many are called, few are chosen. Very good answer. I gotta ask one more question, just before we run out of time. Here's the deal, man. Everybody who's listening right now wants to know this one question. How much money can I expect to make as a pro gamer?
30:26 Speaker 02 Okay, so in Europe, you can probably look at 10,000 euros plus per month, easily.
30:35 Chuck Nice? Oh, my goodness!
30:37 Speaker 02 And in America, you can double that easily, with the current situation.
30:43 Chuck Nice? So, there are guys making $20,000 a month, playing video games in America? And that's kinda like a baseline, like for the good guys?
30:52 Speaker 02 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.
31:09 Chuck Nice? Well, I gotta 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 wanna be a pro gamer." And I said, "You get the hell out of my house."
31:36 Speaker 02 Yeah, well, 11, I wouldn't recommend it either. So if I can end with something,
31:40 Chuck Nice? Good.
31:40 Speaker 02 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.
32:03 Chuck Nice? Wow.
32:03 Speaker 02 So don't give up the rest of your life to just try to become a professional gamer.
32:06 Chuck Nice? Wow, look at this guy, man. How old are you, Niko?
32:09 Gary O'Reilly? Can I join your team?
32:10 Chuck Nice? You look like you're 19. Okay, you're 26, okay, but you look like you're 19, I gotta say.
32:14 Gary O'Reilly? He does, he does.
32:15 Chuck Nice? But it's great to hear such maturity coming out of this person.
32:19 Gary O'Reilly? Yeah, I'm all for that. And yeah, success for the team. Where does esports go from where you are now? 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. You're close to the ground. Where's it headed?
32:41 Speaker 02 Yes, I'm very glad you said that, because I was gonna mention Schalke.
32:44 Gary O'Reilly? Yes, German National Bundesliga team?
32:46 Speaker 02 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 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 gonna keep the fanbases going into the future, they need to be on the medias that the current generation and the platform that the current generation is actually gonna see, so that it's a natural transition for them to actually
33:27 Speaker 02 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.
33:42 Chuck Nice? Okay. Wow.
33:44 Gary O'Reilly? Isn't it?
33:45 Chuck Nice? This is unbelievable, man.
33:46 Gary O'Reilly? Niko, thank you.
33:46 Chuck Nice? Yeah, man.
33:47 Gary O'Reilly? I mean, I had skepticism, and I'm pleased to say that you washed that away very easily.
33:53 Chuck Nice? Mm-hmm.
33:54 Gary O'Reilly? 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?
34:05 Speaker 02 Well, it's gonna 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 internet here in the office for like two weeks. So we're just very much in the starting phase right now.
34:18 Gary O'Reilly? All right, well, good luck for you and your project. It sounds fabulous. And I think they got the right person in place.
34:22 Chuck Nice? Yeah, man, yeah, you seem like a great coach, man. So good luck to you, buddy.
34:27 Gary O'Reilly? All right, Nico de Pico, Nico Coors Guards, thank you so much indeed. Uh, PF Helix, a team, if you haven't heard of them before, you have now. And I think we're all gonna be interested in following. Um, we're gonna take a break. When we come back, Dr. Heather Berlin and a trip inside the mind of an esports athlete, as I shall now be calling them. Uh, we're gonna take that break. We'll see you shortly.
35:07 Gary O'Reilly? 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 ICANN School of Medicine at Mount Sinai. Uh, Dr. Berlin, welcome back. Thanks, thanks for having me here again. Oh, 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, couch potato, basically his fingers and thumbs welded to a control box and that was it.
35:51 Gary O'Reilly? 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 esports 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?
36:21 Speaker 03 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?
36:29 Gary O'Reilly? Yeah.
36:29 Speaker 03 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 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 movements. 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
37:12 Speaker 03 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.
37:38 Gary O'Reilly? Yeah.
37:41 Gary O'Reilly? 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, I've only very briefly, and it was very much like, woof, the heart rate's up, your drenning 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?
38:15 Speaker 03 Yeah, so I mean, they're they're meant to simulate or to kind of trigger your emotion emotional reactions. That's why they're so engaging.
38:23 Gary O'Reilly? Yeah.
38:24 Speaker 03 There's both rewarding aspect, like when you can win points or gold or whatever it is. Um, or they take up things away when you lose points or lives or whatnot. Um, 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. Um, it's actually decreasing activation in your prefrontal cortex.
39:05 Speaker 03 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.
39:14 Gary O'Reilly? Yeah.
39:14 Speaker 03 Um, 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.
39:38 Gary O'Reilly? Wow. So how receptive is the human brain to that sort of addictive reward scenario? Is it something uh 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.
39:56 Speaker 03 So it's a very, so so I I see patients, you know, they have like internet gaming addiction or just simply internet addiction or internet gambling addiction. They're all interrelated. We see that the same parts of the brain that are involved in addiction to drugs. Um, are involved in these behavioral addictions like internet gaming. So you get dopamine activation, you get cravings, you get withdrawal symptoms. Um, and it's the same neural neural circuitry that's involved. So now, for instance, let's just say you took like a gambler, professional poker player.
40:28 Gary O'Reilly? Yep.
40:29 Speaker 03 It's a very fine line between are is it are they just a professional, they're doing it as a living? Or is it an addiction, right? And when it becomes usually when it becomes really detrimental to your life, you know, when you keep doing it even though you're losing or even though, let's say it's gaming, you know, 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 a proportion of them, a percentage of them, might have some addictive like behaviors.
41:12 Speaker 03 But I 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 they're not activating that addictive network in the brain. They're able to stress it somehow. And there's also people that just have more addictive personalities that are more likely to get addicted to gaming than others.
41:33 Chuck Nice? So, you know, with respect to that, there are kids that played 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 addicted to video games? Or and and also are these video game companies, you know, putting these games in these forums? So that they can, they know that psychologically you, we are social creatures.
42:18 Chuck Nice? And we wanna you you establish friendships and so you want to be there and you it's going to keep you there for 12 hours.
42:26 Speaker 03 Well, first of all, there is, we do know from, well, there was actually a great documentary, I forget the name of it, but it was about 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 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
43:07 Speaker 03 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. 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. So...
43:49 Gary O'Reilly? 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. Yeah.
43:57 Speaker 03 And that's when you see these people, you know, there was some guy who was, went out and did this mass shooting, you know, these, these, these guys that were in these chat rooms about, I think they were like asexual, they weren't having sex, I forget.
44:11 Chuck Nice? The incels, the incels. Yeah, these are 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, or the women, and their hate for women they expressed in these chat rooms. It's crazy. It's crazy.
44:29 Speaker 03 Yeah, 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, I, 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.
45:06 Gary O'Reilly? Wow. So 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. Right. Was understand from him how he demanded of his team balance. Yeah. How they must be involved with meditation, mental strength, physical exercise, engagement. And 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
45:51 Gary O'Reilly? when it comes to being chosen to be brought onto a team. Right. For an esports. So there's a lot of people out there, and it was a hundred million a month, playing League of Legends alone. Right. Wow.
46:03 Speaker 03 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 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 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 impact.
46:37 Gary O'Reilly? Yeah.
46:37 Speaker 03 I mean, other studies show that you do develop certain skills. Like I said, attention and, 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 and social skills, developing them outside. But if you can counter that by, let's say you have a coach, but most people don't have that, right?
46:58 Gary O'Reilly? No.
46:59 Speaker 03 So I think the professional athletes maybe are protected because they have these other regimes outside of when they're playing, whereas the average person does not.
47:07 Chuck Nice? Does not. Well, listen, we're out of time. This is fascinating stuff.
47:10 Gary O'Reilly? Yes, as always.
47:11 Chuck Nice? But I gotta go. I got a date with my virtual girlfriend. So.
47:14 Gary O'Reilly? He can't resist it, can he?
47:16 Speaker 03 He cannot resist it.
47:17 Gary O'Reilly? Dr. Heather Berlin, enlightening and a pleasure as always. Thank you so much for your insight and your time.
47:25 Speaker 03 Thank you.
47:26 Gary O'Reilly? Thank you. Chuck?
47:28 Chuck Nice? Yeah.
47:28 Gary O'Reilly? Game over.
47:29 Chuck Nice? 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 gotta 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.
48:02 Gary O'Reilly? Can I leave the basement now, Chuck?
48:06 Chuck Nice? As long as you brush those crumbs off that couch, young man.
48:09 Gary O'Reilly? Oh, life's too short. Right, that's it. This has been Playing with Science. I've not been Chuck Nice.
48:15 Chuck Nice? And I have not been Gary O'Reilly.
48:17 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.
Previous Cosmic Queries – The End of The World, with Josh Clark Next Cosmic Queries – Space Exploration Page updated September 29, 2026 · transcript and summary are machine-generated
