Have you played League of Legends or Dota 2 before? It will be hard to convey the mental/emotional exhaustion that most people feel from playing MOBAs at even a semi-competitive level. In my experience it's a lot different than playing FPS or other games.

I have a distinct memory of finishing a game of Dota 2 and realizing that it felt as though I'd just finished a 3 hour exam. I didn't feel happy that we'd won, just relieved. I don't think this will convince you, but perhaps consider being open to the possibility that it genuinely is as difficult as solving most programming problems that we face in our day-to-day work. In my mind, it's at least as difficult as "easy" leetcode problems.

I've played League of Legends for nearly 10 years.

Not to take anything away from Tyler1, because he really goes above and beyond, but it really doesn't take much mental focus or anything really to play it. Programming? It takes focus, you really have to think sometimes. But League? When I'm tired the game plays itself. It just feels like muscle memory.

It might take a bit more effort to play at a consistently high level. But I'm pretty sure it's mostly muscle memory for him too. There's very little actual thinking other than the big picture of what objectives to take and I'm sure when he's playing for 20+ hours he's just on autopilot for the majority of the time.

To put it into comparison with how little mental power it personally takes me, I like to watch a lot of Anime, that's Japanese animation with English subtitles. I can't watch Anime if I'm tired because keeping track of subtitles and what's on screen actually takes a substantial amount of mental power. But I can bash out 5 games of LoL back to back when I'm equally as tired.

Playing a game like LoL is like being in a battle or war.

Would you watch anime and shoot your gun with 'muscle memory' while fighting 5 ruthless, intelligent opponents?

A fight requires constant reevaluation of the situation and planning to win the game. If you play by "muscle memory" and win, you are playing against weak unthinking opponents or getting carried by your team.

If you played against good players, trust me you won't win thinking about anime and chilling. And it's very stressful because you're constantly on guard.

> Would you watch anime and shoot your gun with 'muscle memory' while fighting 5 ruthless, intelligent opponents?

Easy. At some point some actions are so engraved that you respond without even thinking. Example: blinking out on a slight enemy sight.

> A fight requires constant reevaluation of the situation and planning to win the game. If you play by "muscle memory" and win, you are playing against weak unthinking opponents or getting carried by your team.

> If you played against good players, trust me you won't win thinking about anime and chilling. And it's very stressful because you're constantly on guard.

You can use all those big words, but reality is completely different. I've watched amateur/pro Dota 2 since it's inception in 2011 and some pro Dota 1 before that. It is a team game, it is more about team cooperation and heroes you pick. Sure small things can overturn the game, but most of the time it is about bigger game than small actions.

> Playing a game like LoL is like being in a battle or war.

> Would you watch anime and shoot your gun with 'muscle memory' while fighting 5 ruthless, intelligent opponents?

No, I wouldn't, because those people can actually kill me. In comparison, losing in LoL causes me no direct bodily harm whatsover.

There's a difference between "playing the game" and playing the game. I can sit at a chess board and move pieces around and say that chess takes no focus because I chose not to focus

Is there thought? How do you know his skills are not due to a few hours (tens of hours, hundreds of hours) of intense training of a few basic rules, and the rest is just freeroaming like it is for every other player?

Because there are other players on the other side of the game. They will be at comparable levels of "intense training of a few basic rules" (due to ELO based matchmaking) and they will be trying as hard as they can to beat him.

You can't assume high-level players are trying as hard as they can in a proof that high level players are trying as hard as they can.

Your argument doesn't make any sense in the scenario I described.

Playing MOBAs all day is much easier than programming all day. It has bigger lows like exhausting 100 minute techie games or getting tilted by teammates, but it's still somehow easier. I think it's because you get a fresh start every game and a good game is refreshing in a way that finishing a problem isn't.

Sometimes grandmaster but frequently diamond player here that also built my own company where I frequently coded 12+ hours a day. I disagree with you completely. I was also significantly more exhausted from a long session of league then I was from a long session of developing one of my sites. You are always on for 30 minutes straight and near the end it’s almost non stop team fighting and positioning with micro decisions being made every few seconds versus coding where my mind will wander until I snap it back to focus.

You're an outlier, there's a reason why anybody can play games designed to hook at many people as possible and not everybody can program.

I mean, it's a game that most people choose to play voluntarily, right? It's designed to be fun at some level, or else nobody would ever play it.

Yeah I've played League for a bit. It really does get easier the more you play.

By the way, I've just read in the article that Tyler's been on Adderall since first grade, I guess that will help him stay focused.

wow, that explains so much, he usually plays it offlike its only the pre-workout bloodrush hes drinking

I would argue that is more due to stress than focus. Top players usually don't take laddering seriously (I.e. not stressed).

Also, if you're playing for that long you end up making a lot of mistakes even if you're a top player. I don't think it's comparable to programming.

> In my mind, it's at least as difficult as "easy" leetcode problems.

I have 3k hours in Dota 2. I know exactly what it is and how it works. It's really not. Not even close.

League is extremely fun and addicting. Its a huge dopamine kick. When I play, I stay hooked for hours on end and have to stop myself.

When I code, I'm mostly just thinking hard and not very happy. The best part is the "aha" moment, and the huge dopamine kick of solving the programming/debugging problem. It is also NOT addicting.

These are two completely different things. I'm not sure why you're so determined to compare the two. They are insanely different.

This comment shows a remarkable disregard for the level of skill required to compete at the highest level.

You don't encounter a lot of autopiloting at the highest level of competition. The people you compete against are trying as hard as they possibly can to beat you, and it takes a tremendous amount of focus and ingenuity to outplay them and win. You gloss over the details of that monumental task with reductive phrasing - but I think you're overlooking a lot.

I was at a party once, talking to a stranger about why I loved programming so much. They said: "Yeah, but at the end of the day, it's _just_ programming, right?". That's how this comment reads to me - "At the end of the day, it's just playing a game, right?"

There's a reason that some people compete at the highest level and some are in the fat part of the bell curve.

Your response is really not adequate to what I wrote above, you seem to be projecting some past experiences that you had with people not giving you credit on me and it feels like a very unfortunate and provocative stance.

If I wanted to respond in the same tone, I could say: "The guy is not a pro player, he doesn't compete at the highest level, he just grinds solo queue for 10 hours per day on Adderall. He got this way because he had a mixture of talent and addiction susceptibility. He got addicted to the dopamine hits that the free to play game was meticulously designed to deliver in a pattern that makes the player unable to stop even if he hates it and feels miserable."

But I will say this: I think you're misinterpreting my comment as scorn when in reality it's my perspective based on my experiences with coding and playing this game. I know both, so I believe that my opinion is valuable and I decided to share it.

> There's a reason that some people compete at the highest level and some are in the fat part of the bell curve.

It's the same as with any activity.

Time * dedication * (1 + natural talent)

> This comment shows a remarkable disregard for the level of skill required to compete at the highest level.

I've done both, I'm not disregarding amount of skill and dedication it takes. But it is completely different from programming.

Competetive gaming is akin to real sports, more about situation, luck and reaction rather than natural wits. All games are following patterns which you can learn just by spending time in game which adheres to limited set of rules defined by game logic.

I have 5?k hours in LoL around high plat / in previous season low diamond and I'd say that LoL while being different from competitive programming

is still exhausting if you want to play it with full focus for a few hours.

Of course there's difference between playing ARAMs for fun and tryharding on "relatively competent" ELO where you try to do not commit mistakes as hard as you can and games are not "fiestas" (lack of strategy, just fighting)

>You absolutely can autopilot through a game and still win.

Significant part of day2day programming can be pretty brainless/trivial too - yet another gluing json over http. Don't get me wrong, there are insanely exhausting projects too.

During programming you can take break whenever you want, go to kitchen, watch memes, hn, read news, blabla, meanwhile when you're in game, then you can't*.

How often do you engage your slow brain (from thinking fast and slow)?

I feel like it's like speed chess and not normal chess. You have no time to think till after the game, you just have to do and trust your gut.

The slow brain is what exhausts you.

There are slower and faster moments.

e.g after recalling/killing enemies/dying you have like 30sec to look around map and think what you as team want to do / achieve and how to do that

It depends on the stage of the game, but generally when enemies are around, then you may don't have time to think.

That's been my experience too. I never felt exhausted playing. Thinking about what to do better between games was more draining.

I've never played competitively, though I did get to about top 3000 in North America. Thanks for sharing!

I mean I'm not saying that I do not feel exhausted after playing

Matches where e.g we lose early game and have to come back somehow by avoiding commiting mistakes hard and somehow catching off somebody from enemy team could be exhausting cuz you're basically balacing on the edge for 30min :P

> e.g after recalling/killing enemies/dying you have like 30sec to look around map and think what you as team want to do / achieve and how to do that

30 seconds is infinite in games like that.

Nah, he's right. I play league. Coding all day is much less draining.

Except when you're drained you won't have the creativity to solve another programming task. But you will be able to queue up again. It also gets easier the more you play, because you're relying on the same skills that you build up with every match.

I haven't ever played a MOBA, but fixing bugs (which takes up a significant amount of developer time), seems to be about as rote as playing an RTS (which I have played, albeit almost 20 years ago).

I humbly disagree, and if you have not competed at the pro level in an RTS (Starcraft is another absurdly hard game that requires hundreds of actions a minute) then I believe your view is skewed. When I code all day there are tasks I can auto pilot. Rebase from gerrit, an amend, maybe hunting down answers on Stack Overflow. Sure, I get that coding != video games. But the skills Tyler has or someone who plays as a pro Star Craft player are Masters at a craft that takes way more than auto pilot. In many cases it is physically demanding too and I think you’re giving the wrong impression. It’s not a game at that point, it’s a profession, and an absurdly tough one at that. Machines can beat people at chess. Our AI had struggled for years to beat humans at Star Craft. I find that inspiring, and am in awe some people can push themselves so hard to be that good.

Playing a high level game of Starcraft or Dota is more exhausting to me then programming. With programming I have to think of some designs, spend some times with the tooling, setting things up, to all the busy work surrounding the core problem and so on. Sure there are moments when you really have to think very hard about what you do as well, but its not constant.

I can take easy breaks. Run some tests and so on.

When playing a game you have to be totally focused for longer periods and not just focus but also execute and handle the concept of being activity opposed. Its like if you were programming and the compiler was activity being evil.

At gunpoint, I'd rather code 12 hours a day than play LoL or CS:GO 12 hours a day. Because programming is less exhausting and my code doesn't insult my mother on VOIP. And I say that as a gamer and esports enthusiast.

I used to play League...then I found out everyone who played that game had slept with my mother.

There's a world of difference between playing league casually and competitively. No one at his level of play can autopilot through a game and still win.

That's not true. The skill disparity between the very top players (100-500), and the rest of the players in the top league is usually very large.

He IS a very top player (solo Challenger, top 200 in 4/5 roles in the game). There's not a chance in hell he's able to go on autopilot at that point, even in slightly lower rank games during his grinds where he has to try and win losing games with a team that's not good enough to help him do it. The only reason he's not playing as a salaried professional is that he's in a bad region to do so and makes more being a personality.

That is my point. You don't think he could autopilot and still win majority of his games while climbing from Diamond to Challenger?

> where he has to try and win losing games with a team that's not good enough to help him do it

This doesn't mean he can't autopilot. Attempting to solo carry a team of 5 is difficult even if you're completely dialed in.

The point of match-making is playing with people your same level. It doesn't matter what level tyler1 is, he'll be playing against people that will challenge and give him a hard time.

You're not matched against people less skilled than you where you can just "relax" and walk it in. When you reach your skill ceiling, you have to work hard just to remain there.

> When you reach your skill ceiling, you have to work hard just to remain there

Top players hit the ceiling of the MMR system before they hit their skill ceiling.

When you get to the very top of a ladder, matchmaking stops working correctly. Partly because the top few players are insanely good compared to everyone else and partly because there are literally not enough people online at any one time for an equal match to be made.