E-sports

E-sports (abbreviation for Electronic Sports) is the hybrid name given to video games that are played competitively, specifically a video game where a player can be deemed a "professional". E-sports can refer to team games or single-player "one versus one" games. It is debatable whether or not single-player games without direct competition are E-sports, for example, high scores on Donkey Kong. Games that are commonly considered an E-sport are games that can be performed in front of large audiences for a spectator experience similar to "normal" sports (football, baseball, etc). The four accepted genres that fit this criteria are First-Person Shooters, Real-Time Strategy games, Multiplayer Online Battle Arenas (MOBAs), and Fighting games.

Recently, American E-sports competitors were recognized as international athletes and became eligible for P-visas, the same type of visa given to Olympic athletes.

History

Competitive gaming has existed since the creation of video games that kept scores in the early 1970's, such as Donkey Kong. The goal with these early games was to get the highest score you could and then compare it with players from different regions. Before the internet, the regions that one could compete were limited, and records were kept simply as bragging rights between friends. During the 1990's with the onset of the internet, players could compete in their favorite game online to make it onto leaderboards or beat players who were well-known on forums or websites. But, there was still no formal structure behind competition.

The E-sports community in South Korea is highly successful and is worth detailing. In her tThe Korean model is effective because of the level of passion from the gamers and the gaming community. However because of the environment built around the community. Taylor cites the high-speed internet, a government focused on infrastructure, sponsors willing to pay, and PC bangs (high-speed internet cafés with hourly rates) as critical pieces to the strength and growth of the South Korean gaming model

E-sports as we know it today originated in 2000 with the first World Cyber Games (WCG) tournament WCG was an international video game competition sponsored by Samsung. Early events such as WCG and Major League Gaming (MLG) (founded in 2001) were extremely small, uncoordinated tournaments whose spectators were usually only the people who attended the event to play. The tournaments were usually held in the conference halls of a hotel. In some cases, large events might be able to afford a small convention center. Tournaments almost always happened over the course of a weekend (and still do) because the overwhelming majority of competitors and spectators are high school and college students.

For the first few years of E-sports, spectating was only available to people who traveled to an event to watch in-person. In 2006, however, MLG partnered with the USA Network to bring the entire 2006 Pro Gaming Circuit to network television. Tournament owners, however, realized that the majority of their market (males aged 18-25) did not watch network television, instead they watched online streams.

During the later half of the 2000's and especially into the 2010's, E-sports began to grow at exceptional rates. In 2014, it is currently estimated that 70 million people world wide watch E-sports This growth can almost directly be attributed to online streaming sites, such as TwitchTV. TwitchTV allowed for E-sports professional players to live stream their own gameplay to their fans. This is something that no other modern sport has the capability to do. Fans are able to connect with their favorite professional players on a much more personal level than any other professional athlete. Live streaming sites like TwitchTV also allow large tournament owners such as MLG, Blizzard Entertainment, Riot Games, eSports League, eSports Gaming Network, GSL, OneGameNet, and many more to partner with TwitchTV to centralize their broadcast without the overhead of creating their own streaming service. Today, Riot Games is at the forefront of this market with their daily broadcast for the League Championship Series (LCS). Their channel has over 400 million unique views and over six hundred thousand followers.

As we move later into the 21st century, some developers are now designing their games knowing that players might be competing in them. Specifically, this means that they

Examples

First-Person Shooters

First-Person Shooters were among the first games to make it into the large tournament scene. The first two prominent titles were Valve Software's Counter Strike and id Software's Quake.

Quake, released in 1996 with many subsequent releases, is an Arena Shooter played in a one vs one format on the PC. Players battle on small maps with a focus on power-ups and positioning. Quake was a popular game in the E-sports community because of the raw skill and hand-eye coordination needed to play the game at a professional level. Quake is still played today at E-sports competitions, most notably its recent rendition Quake Live makes an occasional appearance at the Intel Extreme Masters event.

Counter Strike was originally a mod of Half-Life distributed within a niche community. Eventually, the mod became so popular that Valve Software hired the creators of the mod to work for Valve full-time and create a feature release of the game. Counter Strike, unlike Quake, is played in a team format, specifically five versus five. The goal of the game is to either plant a bomb (as "Terrorists") or defend the two bomb plant sites (as "Counter-terrorists"). The game is played for a specific number of rounds where each round is won by either detonating/defusing the bomb or eliminating the entire enemy team. While individual skill is still a factor, Counter Strike is centralized on teamwork and communication. Each players screen can be spectated, allowing an audience to be brought directly into the action.

Other notable First-Person Shooters are Bungie/343i's Halo and Treyarch/Infinity Ward's Call of Duty both for the Xbox console. Both titles are most prominently played is a four vs four format.

Real-Time Strategy

Real-Time Strategy (RTS) games are commonly compared to a pianist playing chess. Two series of games have dominated the RTS scene: Warcraft and Starcraft (and Starcraft 2), both released by Blizzard Entertainment.

Multiplayer Online Battle Arena (MOBA)

Multiplayer Online Battle Arenas (MOBAs) originated as mods for RTS games.