Introduction to eSports

[iPickle]

Competitive Gaming & Economic Value
June 06, 2014

http://www.linkedin.com/today/post/article/20140606171535-29379103-competitive-gaming-economic-value

The average NFL football game, as of 2010, only provided 11 minutes of real action, and the average baseball game, as of 2014, only provided 14 minutes of real action. Both are popular sports, but the emerging trend among younger audiences is that they enjoy watching video games broadcast over the internet. Esports, a form of competitive online gaming, typically features live video game streams on Twitch TV. Competitive gaming feels like 80% action, 5% advertising, and 15% entertainment while watching the broadcasters analyze the gameplay.

Last year, according to information from a recent Washington Post article, internet users spent a whopping 2.4 billion hours watching Esport video game streams. While many may think gaming is dominated by males, there are plenty of popular female streamers that are household names to the gaming world.

I'm going to be writing regular articles about gaming, and its impact across several sectors of our lives. I will give a quick overview about gamers, and then discuss why there is economic value for gaming related activities.


Who is a Competitive Gamer?

An internet gamer is anyone who likes to play video games with other people. Competitive gaming is where gamers compete with one another in a formal Esport, or in a massive multiplayer online (MMO) game where people or gaming groups compete for ranking or virtual resources.


I run one of the longest lasting gaming groups in the country, and I established it in 1995. We play MMO's, which need to evolve better in an Esport, where we compete against other player groups for rankings. Over our 19 year history, we have consistently ranked at or near the top in North American rankings in competitive play MMO's. Our membership ranges from senior corporate executives to college kids, and they all have a passion for gaming. I have done community management and consulting for Ubisoft and Electronic Arts / Bioware remotely from my own home. In 2009, I was a panel speaker, sponsored by Trion, at the Austin Game Developers Conference.


Shared Action and Competition

No gamer wants to go out like this......crushed by mammoths!

The type of game really does not matter because the thrill of playing against other people is what it is all about. The bottom line is that the gamer is spending time with friends, enjoying all the comforts a living room can provide, and streaming game exploits for the world to see. There is a mass market and a mass audience willing to watch Esports, or other forms of competitive video game play. Check out slides 4 and 5 from SuperData's April 2014 report.


Recent games have either tied Twitchtv streaming capability into the game client as a standard feature, or they have made it easier for people to use external streaming tools, such as Xsplit, to produce videos. This ease of access has created an explosion in the number of streamers and people watching streamers in the last two to three years.


Gamer Economic Value
Gamers Earning How Much Money?

The online version Forbes published an article in April, 2014, highlighting some gamers earning $300,000 per year. Many other online games are not an official Esport, but the stars of those games can just as easily generate legions of faithful viewers. Tales of gamers earning thousands of dollars a month broadcasting from their rooms are becoming more and more common these days. Online game broadcasting is becoming so lucrative that some countries are evaluating methods to collect taxes from the revenues the gamers earn.

Everyone cannot be an internet mega star, but ordinary people can make surprising amounts of money just doing basic things with game broadcasting. There is even one guy, for my Georgia friends, around Atlanta that makes $62,000 just making game videos.


Creating a Skilled Workforce

The Community College Daily recently published an article that discussed how gaming is encouraging more people to go into software design tracks. Gaming, in short, is helping to build a knowledge economy, and a skilled workforce. Gamers tend to stay on the leading edge of technology trends such as:

Video editing and production
Social media platforms
Web design and graphics
Software development
Mobile application development
Network administration
Marketing and communications
Technology hardware and design
Productivity enhancing software

I don't know too many employers who have no need for at least one of those skills. You can't put gaming on your resume, but gaming can help to steer people into the knowledge economy we need in the future. Incorporating gaming into education and other learning experiences simply makes sense.


The Tournament Economy

Professional gaming tournaments tend to be held in the big cities, but semi-pro and playoff competitions are held all over the United States and Europe. Unlike major sports leagues, your town does not need to roll out sporting arenas that cost hundreds of millions of dollars and 20+ years to pay off bonds. A gaming tournament could be something as simple as this open area image above, or complex like the image at the start of the article.

If your town has a local college or other event hosting area, with a decent internet connection, it could probably work with state officials to build tournaments. Blizzard, the World of Warcraft producers, recently announced a partnership with The Electronic Sports Association (TeSPA) to expand Esports tournaments to colleges that have local gaming chapters. TeSPA has a pretty impressive list of corporate sponsors as well.

As Esports and competitive gaming goes mainstream, corporate sponsors such as Coca Cola, American Express, and others have come to the table to participate.


Esports Bars & Local Events

Local gaming events can also be organized around restaurants or bars that are willing to cater to a gaming audience. The gaming world calls it "Barcraft". Barcraft is a concept where bars or restaurants host actual gaming events, or help broadcast gaming league events taking place elsewhere.

In Europe there are Esports bars, such as Meltdown, that are expanding, and they have developed a franchise model to potentially expand their presence all over the globe.


Concluding Thoughts

The gaming scene is a vast, growing, market that will only continue to grow in the years ahead. It is also something that is not on the radar screen of many event organizers, economic development professionals, workforce planners, or other business and community leaders because it has only come of age over the last 5 years. The big cities are going to get the big tournaments, but smaller cities and other businesses can still benefit from hosting smaller gaming events in their community.

The last parting thought is that luring game development studios is very important, but the people consuming these games, like me, are creating and driving a market of our own as well. Georgia is working on Digital Economy Planning, and I am working to move the conversation forward so the Southeastern states in the USA can think about ways to get in on the action.


$CMGO