eSports…? What is this? Well, I can tell you. It’s Internet Sports, or rather competitive video gaming. It isn’t something I made up, or something that is even new. It’s been around. Most people just haven’t noticed it yet. Korea did though – their booming PC Café’s plus the sales of Starcraft I (a PC video game) propelled eSports to a new level – television channels playing pro match ups and superstars being born.
Many Korean pro gamers make a living off of it, and even now American pro gamers are starting to make a substantial living off of their genre of choice (e.g. Justin Wong, pro fighting game player, and member of Team Evil Geniuses). However, some might still look at it at the end of the day say, “it’s just a video game.” Isn’t Poker just a card game? High-stakes Poker is a huge thing here in the US and is something started out as a game amongst friends. What makes it exciting is the introduction of money. The same goes for eSports for the most part. Evidence in that comes from the recent DoTA 2 tournament hosted by the creators, Valve, in which they put up $1,000,000 dollars to the winning team. That’s a nice chunk of change for playing a video game with some friends.
Some other things that really add to the excitement of eSports are the way they are presented and the energy that is shown by fans at the events. This is most evident when seeing the flux of streaming tournaments online at Justin.Tv. When seeing a main event series like Evolution for the Fighting Game scene, or the Major League Gaming series for Starcraft and Counter-Strike, you see commentators that actually view the games like a sport. They go play by play telling viewers what is happening and all the while pointing out flaws in a player’s strategy. Which as an actual player, this really helps, and as a new watcher of an eSport, this helps a person to gradually understand what is taking place roping you in more to the energy of it (a streaming tournament match in Marvel Vs. Capcom 3). This should sound familiar if you ever watched football, basketball, or any other arena based team sport.
With all this in mind, and all the steps that competitive gaming has taken forward since the days of competition strictly being at the arcade machines or with your friends in your living room, can it go fourth and become something worldwide as competitive poker, bowling, pool, soccer, and so forth has? Or is this something that is just another fad, just pushing too hard to be more when it’s ahead of its time? Let me know what you think!
Shawn Haywood
p.s. I think it's going mainstream! :-D
Shawn,
ReplyDeleteI find your article very enlightening. I am a member of the pinball, Atari video game ... "game room" generation. The knowledge of Esports is very interesting because I have a younger child who stays plastered to his Xbox 360 and who thinks a day of shopping involves Game Stop! To answer your question...yes I believe esports may evolve due to the limitless creative bounds afforded via the internet. Just view the listed sports for the Olympics games, some of these started as a dream in someone's basement or on someone's sidewalk as an enthusiast's game.
Shawn, this was pretty interesting to me as I am guilty of being a gamer girl myself! Hats off to the Koreans for finding a way to make fun profitable. I say if your going to fork out the money to play a game what's wrong with making a little cash back off of it? It could start as a hobby till your good & can start racking in the dough. The super stars of Poker started that way! As long as your not 35 years old living in your parent's garage with no income to pay your own bills, I say people should go for it! Hmmm...maybe I can get an extra job as a E-sportscaster.
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