The IRL Athlete Method is built on a decade of academic work on esports, player cognition, and the physical side of competitive gaming, including first-author studies with qEEG and cognitive testing. Selected publications below.
A comparative study using qEEG, cognitive testing, and the BARD competency framework. Twenty elite esports athletes and twenty elite karate athletes, benchmarked against a reference dataset of 2,083 people. Esports players showed selective advantages in executive attentional control, perceptual decision speed, and multitasking, with distinct qEEG signatures at rest and during gameplay. With Szalóki, Kutyej, Várhegyi, Annár, Berta, Borbás, Csákvári, Bella, Kékesi, Hajdú, Ambrus, Bíró and Kalabiska. Abstract and PDF (SSRN) · DOI 10.2139/ssrn.5942925
With Felix Wachholcz, György Eigner, and Lili Kassay. The study examines how acute physical activity interacts with cognitive fatigue in esports players, measured on mechanical skill performance and frontal EEG markers. Findings will be shared here upon publication.
Doctoral research at ELTE, Faculty of Education and Psychology, on how physical training relates to in-game performance and how esports fits into education. Thesis summary (PDF, English)
Co-authored with Szabó, A. and Kassay, L. Research measuring esports performance alongside physical markers, the empirical core of the Train pillar of the IRL Athlete Method.
Industry analysis of how the pandemic reshaped competitive gaming, publishing, and events.
Who esports players are: demographics, habits, and group traits. ResearchGate
One of the first Hungarian academic overviews of the esports industry. MTA Repository · ResearchGate
Conference keynotes, federation and university advisory, and team performance audits for esports organisations. Contact: szabellaoliver@gmail.com · LinkedIn · SSRN author page