“A big part of what we’re doing here today in the work with ESL Impact is to elevate and better understand women gamers and the performance elements and what it is that makes the women gamers so good at what they do.”
Upstairs just outside of DreamHack Stockholm's ESL Impact stage and Pro Alliance lounge is a room with setups designed for research purposes. There, Adam Toth is working with folks such as Logitech G PRO Series global brand manager Cary Lambert and professional players to further esports science. Esports.gg sat down with Toth for an interview about his work plus the impact of it on gaming gear and women in the competitive gaming space.
Interview with Adam Toth from the University of Limerick
In his interview with esports.gg, Toth said that he and his colleague run one of Europe's largest esports science research labs at Lero. This lab is part of the University of Limerick. Since his focus is on esports and gaming performance and health, he's working with Logitech G PRO Series.
"We do a number of different projects with Logitech," he explained. "Everything from biomechanics to neuroscience psychology. We've done a lot of work with them to better understand the performance-enhancing benefits of their products. So a perfect example of that is the Superlight — the 60 gram mouse that's now their best-selling mouse. The research that led to identifying 60 grams as an optimal weight for first-person shooter games came out of our lab."
ESL Impact at DreamHack Stockholm
He continued, explaining that his research at DreamHack Stockholm focuses on cognitive abilities in gaming. Gamers generally show better cognitive skills compared to the non-gaming population. However, as Lambert also mentioned in another interview with esports.gg, much of this research has historically only involved men as participants.
"A big part of what we're doing here today in the work with ESL Impact is to elevate and better understand women gamers and the performance elements and what it is that makes the women gamers so good at what they do," he said. "I think when we look at a lot of the gaming research that's out there to date in the scientific community — if you actually dig into those research papers and you look at the samples, they are vastly, predominantly male."
Therefore, Toth is at DreamHack Stockholm to explore if women gamers have these same cognitive advantages.
"And some of the early results of some of the research that we've done already, to date, suggests that there are actually some of those abilities where women are actually outperforming men, which is really cool," he added.
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The evolution of esports research
So far, the reception of DreamHack Stockholm and beyond has been unbelievably positive — with women pro players finding the research informative and beneficial in terms of understanding how and why they excel at their esports titles.
This reception reminded Toth of his first gaming event, PAX East in Boston, where he realized the impact of gaming on different communities. Then, the early days of his research back in 2016 involved just a small booth at Gamescom in Cologne. In contrast, this year’s Gamescom had a large booth with multiple tests and a team of 10 to 15 people. Toth's team collected data from 500 to 600 gamers. He told esports.gg that he's very proud to see how the research has grown and evolved over the years.
In terms of the future, Toth revealed that he looks forward to FlyQuest RED's upcoming visit to Lero in January 2025. There, the players will get a full day of testing and workshops.
"I think we owe a lot of thanks to Cary," he added. "She's been such a champion for women's esports and for the work that we're doing and promoting scientifically. It's been great working with Logitech and with her just to get back to research that's objective and trying to uncover the truth."
That's all for now. Stick around on esports.gg for more interviews, news, and updates.
