Founded in 2014 in Brittany, the Crazy Esport association has established itself as a player committed to the intersection of video games and health. Faced with a sector that is still struggling to structure support for its practitioners, Edern Plantier and his team have decided to move up a gear with two concrete initiatives: an interactive format inspired by the highway code and a manga, both designed with a collective of health professionals specializing in esports. He returns for BDM to the genesis of these projects and his vision of a more responsible esports.
Edern Plantier, President, Crazy Esport Association
Founding member of the Crazy Esport association created in 2014 and president since 2021, Edern Plantier works for responsible esports. Faced with the need for awareness, he launched santEsport, a collective of health experts dedicated to supporting players. Through innovative tools such as the “Code Santé Esport” or the mangaOVERHEATit puts video games at the service of prevention, education and performance.
We talk a lot about esports as a physically and mentally demanding discipline. However, health issues seem to be little taken into account. What is your view on this sensitive subject?
Things are changing, but still few players have access to health professionals to support them. Today, the largest professional structures work in collaboration with health professionals, especially with performance coaches, but in France, there are still too few local esports clubs to support as many practitioners as possible on a daily basis.
There is also a part of players who simply enjoy playing without worrying about the rest: they have a passion and don’t necessarily want to change their habits. However, to optimize their performance and become even better, this necessarily requires support and a lifestyle routine to adopt.
The Crazy Esport association has existed since 2014. What pushed you to launch this initiative dedicated to health, santEsport? What is the objective?
What pushed us to launch this initiative, santEsport, is the fact of having often been asked in Brittany to raise awareness among adolescents, via youth services or prevention organizations. We also realized that there are real needs and that young people do not always have good practices, sometimes with an erroneous vision of the professional world.
Our mission is clear: to raise awareness, inform and support players, their supervisors and the general public thanks to modern educational tools, accessible and adapted to each context, for esports structures, schools, general public events, youth or associative spaces.
Why did you choose to bring together a multidisciplinary group of experts to design practical tools for players?
For us, nothing is better than health experts who have already worked in the esports environment to supervise the practice and give advice. We wanted to move away from the usual framework of a simple PDF or booklet that players will not read.
Our goal is to provide positive awareness using modern tools.
This collaboration with our group of experts allows us to think further about the best way to bring things to practitioners. This allows for real exchanges so that everyone finds their place, feels valued and integrated into the project to give the best of everyone.
You are launching an “Esport Health Code”, which is inspired by the highway code. Can you explain to us what it consists of? Why did you opt for this format rather than a classic guide?
Young people will not necessarily consult a traditional guide. This is why we opted for the typical “highway code” format for our Esport Health Code.
The five themes of the Esport Health Code
This code is structured around two sessions of 25 questions with five themes addressed in each of them:
- Sleep
- Nutrition
- The vision
- The postures
- Physical and mental preparation
At the start, the player enters his nickname before starting the game. Whether he answers a question well or badly, an awareness text automatically appears below. Sometimes, even if the statement seems simple, you can have the right answer without knowing more: this text then allows you to raise awareness or strengthen your knowledge. And to stay in the “gaming” spirit, the score is displayed at the end with a medal (Platinum, Gold, Silver, Bronze or Starter).
We ensure that, regardless of the result, the participant ends up with a medal and always a positive message. This format is very intuitive and can be used by players directly, esports clubs, but also teachers in schools or youth service leaders.
You also launched a fundraising campaign for OVERHEAT!, a manga serving responsible esports. Can you tell us behind the scenes of this project?
This is the first project for which we brought together this collective of health professionals. We wanted to raise awareness so that players adopt a healthy and responsible practice of video gaming, but we needed to find a medium that really spoke to them (see images below).
Manga is a format very popular with young people and gamers. So we worked on different axes and health themes, then we imagined how to integrate all of this into a story.
Once the plot was developed, it was the mangaka who helped us the most by providing his vision and advice. The goal is for readers to be immersed in a captivating story and receive health advice without it being preachy and without them even realizing it.
​The current difficulty remains finding the funds to make it happen. Our association has already incurred costs and cannot, on its own, carry out the entire project. This is why we launched a fundraising campaign on Ulule.
In an ideal world, what do you think truly healthy and responsible video gaming would look like?
In an ideal world, as many people as possible should use suitable ergonomic equipment, adopt the right postures and warm up before each game.
EdernÂ’s recommendations:
Responsible practice requires reasonable daily play time, regular breaks to rest your eyes, or even the use of filters against blue light.
A healthy practice also involves a balanced diet, optimized sleep and mastery of concrete keys to better manage stress and emotions, in order to maintain an overall balance on a daily basis.
Edern Plantier
Président, Association Crazy Esport
How can the different players in the sector (structures, schools, families…) get involved concretely to achieve this?
We created santEsport so that our tools can be used by everyone: schools, clubs, players and families. The goal is also to help parents support or understand their child’s world to create a bridge between generations. The manga was also designed with this in mind, with a glossary at the beginning so that loved ones can decode gaming vocabulary.
To succeed, youth services and educational establishments must use these tools or call on professional structures. We, for example, organized a 4-day esports course for 16 young people in the town of Baden, in Morbihan (56), and it was a real success.
When supervised, video games are a fantastic tool for working on managing emotions, communication, or raising awareness about sleep and nutrition.
Finally, parent-child workshops are essential. At events, many families come to chat with us. To properly supervise the practice, we need structured esports clubs, like traditional sports clubs, but unfortunately, most associations do not yet have premises and are still not very present on the national territory.
