I play the game, so maybe I'm biased, but that's legitimately a huge accomplishment. Use whatever verb you want I suppose, but that's literally top 0.001% in a game renowned for being incredibly difficult/competitive.

I play esports myself and of course it's a great achievement. But the word "optimize" just triggers me when used in this context.

I see the value on this. As a very, very bad player, but with some knowledge, it´s a game that rewards heavily the ability to strategize, optimize builds for different, very quick situations, and shows dedication.

Unfortunately, I agree that it´s a poor thing to say in a presentation, as it requires people to actually know the game to understand why that would be good. People who don´t play might just think "what do I care that he's good at a game?"

That’s a big achievement to be honest, so who cares about the word they happened to use there. Takes a lot of focus and work to be that good at strategic games like League, Dota, or Starcraft.

Edit: Actually I think optimize is appropriate in that context too. To be that good, you have to min/max every game mechanic you can.

I agree that it requires an enormous amount of focus and work. At least for Starcraft, I don't think most pro's are great because of explicitly min/maxing things.

Rather they are great because they subconsciously pick up on minute details to learn from in every match they watch and play. Ask a top player why they did some maneuver, and you'll often get an answer like: "Because it's good". There really hasn't been that much system 2 thought put into it.

Being great at a video game is mostly about cultivating an instinct that always makes the right decisions.

For what it's worth, I was grandmaster in starcraft and made a decent salary coaching lower rank players during my highschool years, so I feel my opinion carries some weight at least :)

I don't see the problem.

This definitely originated from the Chris Sacca anecdote about Travis Kalanick being one of the top Wii Tennis players - it either came out in a start-up podcast or some shark tank episode.

Anecdotally watching and following top e-sports players (in Overwatch in particular) I would see high video game performance as at best a neutral indicator... those archetypes of people are typically very good at the one activity they do all day and very poor at taking care of themselves or sticking to things that don't immediately excite them.

Finally, for many video games are a coping mechanism and may be a better red flag indicator for past trauma, depression, etc.