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Introduction

Electronic sports, or E-sports, are organized video game competitions especially between professionals. Before we can make any argument about E-sports, we should first break down the previous definition. Electronic implies it is digital which implies synchronous  online or netwrok play, while sports signify a competition of sorts which combined encompass a wide variety of games that is not solely limited to sports genre games like FIFA 2014. To take it a step further, for it to be organized gaming there needs to be a community of interested individuals dedicated to this game. And as for the professionals? Merely a distinction between higher and lower levels of skill. So how does this relate to conventional sports?

 

There has been much debate on the subject of E-sports and conventional sports on the exact status that the E-sports holds. There are many that argue that E-sports have the same values and structure as conventional sports and as such should be considered sports. Where conventional sports are physical contests, E-sports are mental contests. They consist of the same formatting and structure such as seasonal circuits and divisions and they also abide by strict guidelines to ensure fair play. So why aren't E-sports considered sports? The problem with understanding E-sports lies in the location that E-sports takes place in. The digital realm. How can it be considered a sport if it's just a videogame? Simply put, it's not a sport. It's an Electronic sport. It may sound like picking at straws, but in this age of technology such a distinction becomes important. If E-sports by definition cannot be sports, then they must create their own category, their own community.

Sports

Sports in its most base form are physical competitions regulated by strict guidelines. By this definition alone, E-sports cannot be considered sports. While it is not to say that E-sportsmen do not partake in physical activity, they are actually very fit for the most part, their competitions and games are purely contests of mental and skill orientated play. As such, many do not believe that esports can be considered a sport, but their prevalence in today’s era of technology cannot be denied. Conventional researchers, such as Rensen, in the history of modern sports would agree by this standard. Sports were originally devised as shows of dominance embodying recreational and competitive activities, surpassing your limitations, and abides by a clearly defined code. The idea of survival of the fittest comes to mind here, yet rules were devised here as a show of civilized beings in spite of the carnage of early day sports which consisted of much violence and can be likened to "mock fights." Videogames offers "violence and carnage" but purely simulated, as a result goes against the origins of modern day sports.

 

The idea of "survival of the fittest" becomes a stretch when applied to E-sports, but the code of fair play embodied by the rules and guidelines are definitely present within E-sports. This field is not without its own share of controversy towards fair play on how both players and non-players such as commentators should conduct themselves. If a commentator for a sport is out of line, they are fired. Should one for an E-sport not also be fired? It’s these dynamics towards fairness and sportsmanship that continue to develop this community.

The birth of esports lies at the rise in technology. Firstly, esports would not be possible without the technology needed to create these games. Although electronic games have existed for many decades, they lack the graphics and controls necessary for large scale competitions prevalent in esports. Pacman, tetris, space invaders among other games existed, but were they interesting to watch? Was there any sort of competition aside from getting the high score? There was no direct player versus player. There was no excitement. The best rendition of the time was probably the first StarCraft and its sequel The Brood Wars. While the graphics weren't great by today's standards, they were good for it's time and allowed for innovative, tactical gameplay that attracted a niche set of viewers during its time. In terms of graphics, without the improved graphics, there wasn’t a good viewing experience to watch these games played. As the graphics improved, more people were willing to watch these games. This can be see in the comparison of graphics between the first StarCraft and StarCraft 2 as just one example in the improvement in graphics. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Gameplay between StarCraft 1 and StarCraft 2.

 

 

 

At the same time, as technology improved, viewing and streaming platforms such as twitch.tv became readily available which allowed an easy access to watch and follow esports. It became possible to follow major events, your favorite players, as well as upcoming players.

 

“Now, all of a sudden, not only is it free to stream, but you can actually generate revenue streaming. You could, at any hour of the day, even if there was no tournament, you could watch the best of the best … duking it out. The spectator sport began to grow because streaming was so huge.”

                                                                -Day [9], professional StarCraft shoutcaster

 

 

Broadcasting or "streaming" first began in 2007 in Justin.tv which featured many different categories of streaming. I got into it for a bit at 2012, where the videogaming category got moved over to it's own site domain, twitch.tv. I got caught up in the craze and had gotten the idea that there was a chance for me to make some money just for playing videogames. At the time, I was interested in League of Legends. I never broke 10 viewers, those viewers would be my friends anyways and not any fans that I somehow acquired through streaming. I was good but not good enough to warrant followers to my stream. I stopped streaming altogether because I didn't have the time to advertise myself and I still had to focus on my studies. For upcoming players, if you are proactive (I was a casual player at the time) and are decently ranked it becomes possible to acquire more viewers and at minimum of 500 concurrent viewers at a time, you can form a partnership with Twitch.tv and earn some money through advertising while playing the game. It just goes to show how easy it is to get into the system, all I had to do was register and download the program. The difficult part would be to attract enough viewers to make it big. But the potential oppurtunities that streaming platforms provided had a significant impact on the increase of interest on E-sports by enticing both users and viewers.

Growth of E-sports

Competitions

At the same time, the improved technology plays a role in both conventional sports coverage as well as in E-Sports. Although there are concerns raised by researcher Hebbel Seeger that E-sports are stealing audience and sponsorships from conventional sports teams, these are mostly unfounded as they comprise of almost two separate fanbases. The rise of events such as the World Cyber Games should not be seen as competition for the olympics, but is solely the growth of a well-founded E-sports community. It’s just that when modern sports came about there wasn’t another institution already in place like what esports is currently dealing with. What’s stopping me from watching the World Cup and then watching the North American League of Legends Championship Series?

 

"There is no suggestion here that an event such as the WCG means the obsolescence of what is popularly understood about the media and sport. Such a notion is ridiculous and would deny the effort and energy devoted to coverage of and participation in football, baseball, basketball and the like. Rather, the WCG and the activities of cyber-athletes signal the advent of a qualitatively distinct phenomenon: e-sport.This term has been coined and entered into (semi-)popular usage because competitive organized gaming represents both continuity and marked discontinuity with the established relationship between broadcast media and sport."

               -Brett Hutchins, researcher on media and growth of E-sports

 

 

Social media has played a role in facilitating access to these streams. Professional players with their own Facebook and Twitter can announce when they are streaming and any fans following them will get a notification. They can choose to watch or continue on with their lives, same as with conventional sports but without quite the same amount of coverage. It is as Hutchins claims, there really is no true overlap between viewership and is solely based on personal interest in both categories. The difference in coverage is based on the nature of these competitions. In conventional sports, they consist of mainly team games so broadcasts would consists only when the teams are playing or past events. There is a reliance on players and teams being present in a physical sense. For E-sports, teams can be assembled on the near instantaneous online and those specific games by your favorite player can then be streamed. Being online and digital, it is significantly easier to broadcast games. If you're looking for competitive games, most tournaments post their own video steams but the amount of streams may vary based on the seasonal circuit of the games.

 

 

At the 2013 Season 3 Worlds Finals for League of Legends hosted at the Staples Center in Los Angeles, all 10000 tickets were sold out within the hour. This location normally hosts about 15000 for basketball games. This reduced number was primarily for the the equipment required to set-up the venue and players on stage. At the same time, over 32 million viewers tuned in online at some point to watch the championships and there were at times 8.5 million fans watching at the same time. Comparing results to the 2013 NBA finals between Heats and Spurs achieved about 27 million viewers, E-Sports falls short in terms of concurrent viewers but should not deny the success of E-sports. In fact this highlights the distinction between these two industries. There is a global community interested in many of these games, while for conventional sports they are primarily limited to their respective countries barring international events.

League Of Legends Season 3 Worlds

Preconceptions

The everyday common view is represented by Journalist Dan Ackman presents the other side of the argument towards esports that many holds in regards to gaming.

 

"The World Cyber Games, owned by South Korea-based International Cyber Marketing Inc., aims to both exploit and expand the popularity of videogames and to be both the Olympics of cyber-sport and “a true world cultural festival.” But even at the highest level, and with all due respect to the fans in Korea, a gamer in full action is still a kid staring at a screen while twiddling his thumbs on a console or fingering a mouse. Just as videogames are essentially cartoons of the action they parody, cyber games, even at their highest level, are parodies at best of sporting competitions."

                                                                                                                  -Dan Ackman, Wall Street Journalist

 

He claims that it is a trivial, mundane affair and a mockery of everything they stand for. To him, the players don’t represent a high caliber of skill or mental resilience required to be playing these games at these levels. They are instead reduced to children practicing escapism from the real world, contributing nothing to society and culture. To most, video games will remain a waste of time or just a source of casual entertainment. Gaming becomes equated with antisocial, unproductive, and laziness. As an avid gamer myself, these sentiments are directed towards me regularly. Am I antisocial and unproductive because of videogames? What about laziness? I have to say no to all three accounts. But these conceptions towards gamers, denied me the oppurtunity to go professional and instead I pursue my education for a job that will contribute to society. Not saying that my current path is bad or filled with regrets, just a potential opportunity lost.

 

On the other hand, becoming a professional player in videogames is like becoming a professional player in any other sports. It takes dedication. If we were to log the same hours they spend refining their skills on their games to hours other athletes spend training, they would spend comparable hours training. Most U.S. professional gamers dedicate at least 8 hours to playing. But it’s not something anyone can do, same as in sports. Professional gamers adhere to strict schedules and time tables of training, both in their chosen game and physically. It also certainly helps the image they wish to promote. We should not undermine E-sports due to these pre-conceptions and stereotypes. We should not deny the time, effort, and dedication that these players put into playing this game. In the end, both sports and E-sports boils down to being a source of entertainment.

There is the idea that videogamers are unhealthy, do not contribute to society, and promote inactivity. Most people leave it at that without bothering to understand the new culture that has arisen as a result of esports and the rise in technology. The negative connotation of gaming and poor health is still being grouped together as result of the "extreme" incidents of over-playing videogames. Despite the fact that professional gamers actually stay in shape, although off-screen.  This coincides with testimonies from many professional players such as Mason Cobbs, a professional Halo player, on their daily schedules, "the professional gamers aren't a bunch of overweight kids living in their mom's basement. We like to live healthy lifestyles, and that's the message we like to portray." Despite maintaining a "work" schedule between 9-15 hours of practice, training, or tournaments, he would still find time to keep himself in shape. Even the average gamer maintains his health and social life while still playing video games in his spare time. This offsets the lack of physical activity associated within professional gaming, although the competition itself is non-physical. Instead of competing through physical prowess, professional gamers

 

compete in a myriad of mental skills, tactics, and reflexes. Their "practice and training" consist of honing these skills, tactics, and understanding of the games. This just further highlights that despite e-sports best attempts to make themselves resemble sports, they are still fundamentally different.

Stereotypical view of gamers

Legitimizing E-sports

There is much debate on the question of considering E-sports as a sport, but traditionally sports are physical contests. By this definition, I would have to agree, esports cannot be considered a sport. But does that mean, that everything esports has accomplished is meaningless? I would have to disagree, as it does occupy the same role as regular sports. A means of entertainment. Esports would at best be defined as a separate entity. There is no need to compete with regular sports for the status of being a “sport.” It occupies completely different domains and fan bases. There is little overlap aside from structure.

 

This can be seen in other countries like South Korea where esports is huge and there are fully dedicated television channels dedicated to it. Presently, even in America, there is a huge following of esports where tournament streams can have hundreds of thousands of viewers and that’s not even including the thousands that are willing to pay to attend the event live. Esports offers entertainment in a structure and popularity comparable to the level of sports. In South Korea, scholarships are even offered for professional gamers. America is following suit as Robert Morris University has begun to offer sports scholarships for League of Legends players, some valued at 19000 dollars. Seeing how this is the first college to offer scholarships for playing competitively in E-sports in the U.S, it may very well spark more cases throughout the U.S. That’s not to say that League of Legends competition did not exists at the collegiate level, there are certainly it’s own ladder and ranking system and does offer a route into the professional scene. But this scholarship being given like any other athletics scholarship, helps legitimize esports as a viable competition if not a sport.

 

 

Legitmizing E-sports is through improving acceptance of E-sports and professional gamers as a viable concept instead of being seen with derision and scorn. The idea of E-sports itself will persist, but gamers should not have to hide themselves away in fear like sports players. There are limitations that players have to realize; not everybody was cut out to be a professional soccer player and not everybody is cut out for professional StarCraft. But the average soccer player doesn't hide himself away like an average gamer. It may not be long before we have access to Virtual Reality and such a distinction in E-sports will prove to be useful. Virtual reality games would embody the idea of true mental-digital competition that would certainly fall under the jurisdiction of E-sports. My hope is that it would not take virtual reality technology to legitimize E-sports as it would me much too long considering everything that E-sports has accomplished thus far.

One of many television channels in South Korea airing E-sports

Terran Death Ball Versus Full-Court Press

 

        E-Sports       Versus         Sports

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
What characteristics define a sport and how does E-sports fit into this with the progression of technology?
 
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