Ukraine-Russian Conflict: The Impact On Esports Performance
The conflict between Russia and the Ukraine has been going on for over three years now, impacting millions of people on both sides in various ways. Esports players of both countries are no exception. So, it is worth asking how the conflict impact their performance?
• Ukraine and Russian esports players may be mentally affected by the war, hence impacting their performance.
• CS:GO player and reddit user data were analyzed.
• Both, Russian and Ukrainian players' performance increased since the start of the conflict by and 4.2-7.6% and 3.8-14.3 %, respectively.
• Ukrainian progamer performed better at offline events, while Russians did better at online tournaments.
• The researchers hypothesize that Ukrainians benefit from social support, while Russians fear, at some point, being excluded from esports competitions.
"Most of [the research on performance of the working population is done] in a peaceful or stable environment. However, a large share of the global population works in a country that is at war." [1]
Since 2022, this is the case for both, Ukraine and Russian people. Since then, millions of Ukrainians fled their home country. This led to a situation where those outside the Ukraine were not physically but mentally affected by the war. [2]
The analyzed how the performance of Ukrainian and Russian esports players changed since the beginning of the conflict. The researchers took Counter-Strike data from 2012 to July 2022 (HLTV player ratings), while also surveying CS players (on Reddit), asking them to assess their situation.
🎯 How Performance Changed Since 2022
"The results show [see figure 1 above] that the performance of Ukrainian players – in terms of their Kill-to-Death ratio – statistically significantly increased after the start of the war." [1]
In addition to the finding that Ukrainian players' performance increased, they put a number on it: the lowest they found was an increase of 3.8%. When only LAN matches were considered, the KDA ratio increased by a staggering 14.3%. Interestingly, older than average players underperformed since the start of the conflict.
"The performance of the highest quintile [most successful] players improved the most – on average, above 15 percentage points." [1]
Since NaVi is, overall, one of the most accomplished teams in CS since forever, the researchers, in a subsequent step, excluded them from the analysis to see if this had any major impact. And indeed, it did have. Although the performance of Ukrainian progamer still significantly increased, it didn't to the same extent as before. But what about the Russian players?
"Similar to the results for Ukrainian players, we find that the increase is higher for all professional players – irrespective of how good they are. We see that – except for players from the highest quantile – the increase for all players is around 5 percentage points." [1]
The highest increase the researchers could find was 7.6%, and 4.2% on LAN events. However, Russian players performed better when playing online tournaments.
But why do both groups of players, but especially Ukrainian esports athletes, perform better since 2022? The researchers "hypothesis that Ukrainian players benefit from the increased public support." [1] In addition, they state that Russian players may fear from being excluded at some point from esports competitions (similar to other sports) and hence, try their best to improve.
It would be interesting to hear from professional players of both countries on the topic. Anyway, thanks for reading, and I hope you all have a great week. Best,
Christian 🙂
