HIGH POINT, N.C. -- In the fall of 2019, a new room opened at High Point University.

• High Point University opened the ESports Arena in fall 2019
• The school's ESports team represents the university by playing different video games against teams from other schools
• As video game popularity continues to rise, doctors say they're seeing a rise in younger patients exhibiting chronic hand pain

It's the ESports Arena, and sophomore Dylan Thompson says he loves "to be able to come in here regularly and practice and play."

Thompson is the general manager for the school's club ESports team.

They're not on the varsity level, but represent the school playing different video games against other universities. They practice and compete, just like any other team.

"When we run scrims, especially scrims, we'll go back and look at the footage, and we'll start picking apart like what we did wrong, what we could have been doing instead, and what we did great and to just reinforce good behavior," said Thompson.

This growth in video game popularity is something Dr. Derek Bernstein of Novant Health sees, and the orthopedic surgeon says he has more and more younger patients with chronic hand pain.

"It can be for the average person sometimes 50 movements a minute just playing video games, and if they're playing for hours and hours a day this gets up into the thousands, tens of thousands," Bernstein said.

But he adds that he doesn't consider gaming to be an inherently bad thing.

"When I was a kid I played video games, and definitely I think there are some real benefits to it in terms of dexterity and problem solving, reaction times. But like anything else I do think it needs to be moderated," said Bernstein.