Early professional gaming teams lived in shared houses. Most now train in dedicated facilities and go home afterwards, and the change followed a clear set of failures.
The house solved a real problem
Team practice requires everyone online at the same time, and early rosters were assembled from players in different cities and time zones.
Putting them under one roof made scheduled practice possible, removed commuting entirely, and let a coach observe communication directly.
It was also cheap. One lease covered accommodation, offices and a practice room, which mattered when organisations had little revenue.
Why the arrangement broke down
When the workplace is also the home, practice expands into every waking hour, because nothing marks the end of a session.
Players reported that they were never off duty and that disagreements from practice followed them to dinner and to bed.
Sleep suffered in particular, since the machine that pays the salary sits a few metres from the bed and the temptation to keep playing is constant.
Performance centres impose boundaries
A separate facility restores the ordinary structure of leaving for work and returning home, which is the simplest available protection against overwork.
It also allows the space to be built for the job: controlled lighting, proper chairs and desks, sound isolation for communication, and a stage-like room for simulating tournament conditions.
Support staff can then be based somewhere players actually are, which is difficult when the team is a house full of bedrooms.
Training content changed alongside the building
Volume-based practice gave way to structured sessions with review, because more hours stopped producing better results once fatigue became the limiting factor.
Physical conditioning and sleep management entered the schedule, not for their own sake but because reaction time and decision quality degrade measurably when either is neglected.
Reviewing recorded play with an analyst became more valuable per hour than additional practice matches, which shifted how the day is divided.
Where the older model survives
Newer regions and lower-tier teams still use shared housing, because the economics that made it attractive have not changed for them.
Some organisations use it temporarily during a bootcamp before a major event, accepting the intensity for a limited period.
The distinction is that it is now a deliberate short-term tool rather than the default way a professional roster lives.