In my past columns I have often tried to draw parallels between esports and traditional sports. But when it comes to post-retirement activity the two could hardly be more different. Where a lot of ex-sportsmen go into TV punditry or coaching, almost zero do the same in esports. Why? Well for starters there is basically no such thing as coaching in esports. Similarly, TV punditry is very limited with only one or two high profile streaming companies.

But what you sometimes see in esports that you almost never see in football or rugby or whatever else is players swapping games altogether. Granted, this happens between rugby league and rugby union almost every season but these are usually players at their peak, going to a similar sport for a higher wage. In football, it is practically unheard of.

One former SK player is setting an important precedent, however. Olivier 'orly' Bellemans retired from WoW a few months ago to practice Starcraft in preparation for Starcraft 2. In the past we saw SC players swap to WC3 and from myriad FPS games to other FPS games (Painkiller being a perfect example). But this is a much greater change; genre to genre.

What makes Orly’s case even more interesting is that so far he is making a damn good job of it. Sorry to all those people who like to claim that WoW doesn’t need any skill, but the Belgian is already a top contender, albeit at a very early stage. With two Zotac cups already gone by, Orly finished 2nd and 1st respectively. He even beat seasoned RTS players like Dennis 'HasuObs' Schneider and Silviu 'Nightend' Lazar en route.

To be clear: it is still very, very early days in the SC2 story. But the fact that a player can successfully switch not only games, but also genres is a great sign for the future of esports and a testament to the versatility of WoW players. Whether or not Orly will be able to compete with the Koreans if/when they start taking the game seriously is another (excuse the pun) matter but surely the same goes for any Western player.

The advantages that Orly has are twofold. Firstly, his retirement from professional WoW meant that he could concentrate fully on preparing for SC2. This gave him an edge over the WC3 players who were expected to do well (and are doing fine, by the way) because they still had leagues to play in. Secondly, he is still just about young enough at 23 to learn a new game. The average retirement age for a pro gamer is somewhere around 25 but that is definitely a blurry kind of number and varies hugely from game-to-game and country-to-country.

Even so, 23 is probably at the late end of the scale, which could also mean another milestone. If Orly can keep up his early success it shows that esports doesn’t have to be a pastime for kids, which is something I never really believed anyway. So, well done, Olivier, for pushing back the boundaries of “common knowledge” in so many different ways.