Normative Performance Profiles of College Aged Esport Athletes in a Pilot Study

This pilot study examines the physical and cognitive profiles of 46 college-aged adults, aged 18 to 32, who play Overwatch at varying competitive levels. Its central aim is to establish a holistic baseline for esport athletes by comparing grip strength, self-reported health across PROMIS-29 domains, and NIH Toolbox cognitive measures against U.S. population norms and between high-ranked and low-ranked players. The sample was small, convenience-based, and largely male and non-Hispanic white, with 13 high-rank and 33 low-rank participants classified by a binary scheme.

Across most measures, participants resembled general population benchmarks, and rank groups showed no meaningful differences in grip strength, health perception, or cognitive memory. The principal exception was reaction time: high-ranked players responded significantly faster on the most difficult Alienware Academy setting (p = 0.05). The authors interpret this as a possible marker of esport ability and suggest that task difficulty may be a key differentiator between competitive and recreational players.

The study's conclusions are explicitly tentative. Limitations include reliance on self-reported rankings, a heterogeneous participant pool, the small sample that necessitated a binary rank classification, and the difficulty of defining performance as a precisely measurable quantity. The findings are therefore best understood as an initial profile of recreational esport athletes rather than a definitive account of competitive players. The authors call for future research involving professional players and more refined performance metrics, and they disclose hardware support from Dell Technologies.