Introduction to eSports

[iPickle]

ESports are the Future:

by Benjamin Kathwaroon


http://b-ten.com/esports-future/

There is a new competitor in the world of entertainment sports, one whom will, in the coming years grow to completely overshadow or at the very least rival the world of more traditional sports such as Baseball or Soccer. Baseball diamonds are the arenas of the past, and in the future, athletes will compete in an arena much more like that found in the LCS, which hosts the incredibly popular title from Riot Games, League of Legends.

This new chapter in the history of sports and competition is titled “ESports”. Already having grown into worldwide phenomena for those of us who actively use the web, esports are becoming a more and more mainstream form of competition and entertainment. It wouldn’t be surprising if within the next few years a mainstream culture around esports would emerge, with TV channels dedicated to it’s coverage, and while this may seem to be a stretch, I believe that it won’t be all that long until you even start seeing “Team Liquid” ESports jerseys in amongst the “Philadelphia Penguins” hockey ones.

When the word “ESports” is used, most people who have a basic knowledge of the term will more than likely think of games such as League of Legends, Dota 2, or perhaps the Starcraft series. What some people may not know, however, is that esports is a much broader term than being limited to Real Time Strategy (RTS) or Multiplayer Online Battle Arena (MOBA) games. For example, the third overall highest earning ESports athlete according to esportsearnings.com is Johnathan Wendel (aka Fatal1ty) who in just 2005 made over $230,000 from professionally playing the 2004 game Painkiller. ESports have only grown in popularity since then. ESports covers every type of game, though some may be more popular to play competitively, ESports leaves room for smaller cliques and fandoms to compete. To give one example, there’s a small community that competes playing a game I mentioned in my last article (linked here) called Spelunky. They see who can get to the later stages of the game and beat the bosses of those stages faster, or they make up challenges to see who can achieve it first. There may not be the same amount of publicity associated with these cliques, nor the same possible monetary rewards, but this flexibility is what I think gives ESports so much potential to flourish.

Now why am I so insistent that ESports will become a mainstream success? Well, aside from the simple fact that it is already a success among the online community, there is a lot that gives this kind of competitive entertainment an edge over traditional sports. The most blatant and in my opinion important one of these advantages is that it appeals to a new generation. Every group has that one person who loves sports, sure, but I would argue that for every one of those people, there are three others that play a game which is also played as an ESport, and would want to watch it. I argue that as fans of baseball or hockey grow fewer and fewer, fans of Starcraft and League of Legends will skyrocket to immense numbers. Esports caters to the future, caters the the newer generations, and the ones that will come after them. In Korea, this has all already happened. The Starcraft and Starcraft 2 communities in South Korea have already seeped into the mainstream, so much so that instead of watching hockey in a bar, it’s quite common for them to be showing a championship match of Starcraft instead. Korea is so obsessed with this game, in fact, that it has come to be considered the unofficial national sport.