Kevin Barriga
Professor Nancy Carlson Cargain
Freshman Composition 11000
December 10, 2019
Esport Ready
Esports, the world of competitive video gaming, a dream that most individuals would want to have, but is a definite challenge to get to the level of professional players. Believe me, this is not your average community where you can just pick up a controller and win tons of games as if there is nothing difficult about them. Whether you are a top player in the competitive level or a rookie starting to play, there is a huge learning curve for any game you wish to play with fighting games, card games and strategy games. These games set a foundation for esports testing your knowledge and analysis of a scenario and your reflexes and hand eye coordination in others. Even though sports requires a lot of physical and mental capabilities, it is not considered a sport by many, not even the dictionary considers it as a “sport”, in accordance to traditional terms. Many say that esports doesn’t even follow the traditional aspects of real sports and that an activity involving physical exertion and skill is determined by the community whether it’s a sport or not. With the emergence of esports, the idea that not only physical strength is important but also your mental capability becomes challenged. Esports are establishing the building blocks for a future where people could demonstrate their skills in a new way.
Esports does not only influence video game players, but rather an entire community that is involved in its uprising, which include communicators, event planners, streaming, and the large fanbase that makes up the audience during competitions. According to a report from Newzoo, “a market analytics company found out that, 380 million people worldwide will watch esports this year, including 165 million esports who are enthusiasts.” With the majority of enthusiasts originated from South Korea, China, and North America. As a result, esports revenue has reached around $906 million worldwide in 2018. So by the time 2019 comes around that number is expected to surpass $1 billion. This shows that esports has the capability to gain a lot of popularity, and with the increasing popularity the amount of profit that could be made would also increase. Esports players, similarly to traditional athletes, can earn a large amount of money. Tournaments can boast millions of dollars in prize money, which is typically split between the players of the winning team. That means the world’s best players, the ones with the highest skill level can easily earn seven figures of income per year. People can make a living off of esports not only teams but also event organizers who benefit from ticket sales for these competitions. Castors, people who voice over the professional games, are exactly like the announcers of a sports, analysts who analyze the mechanics and strategic decisions in a game, also make a living and have respectful career amongst the community. Showing that esports is not something that the professional players only make off of, but other careers and organization benefit greatly from it. There are so many aspects that esports has in common with traditional sports that it would be hard not to consider them as one.
In addition, esports are changing the traditional thoughts of sports, how physical conditions and mental stability contribute to the idea of a sport. What I mean by this is the amount of practice and dedication you would need to contribute to get an upper hand on your opponent, especially when all your opponents are the players of the highest caliber and level. Usually, people that are part of the esports community do not have time to take a break or maintain a social life outside their career because the amount of dedication it takes to surpass the competition, is similar to how traditional athletes dedicate their time and energy to their professional, sacrificing aspects of their social life. Actually there is one definite distinction between practice and the actual competition, that both esports players and professional athletes can understand. “How well you perform and results in practice don’t have any value beyond that day. And the fact that competitions matters brings with it all sorts of baggage related to expectations, focusing on results, comparing yourself with other athletes, and fear of failure. That’s why so many athletes practice much better than they compete.” Here are two important rules in sport. First, what you do in competitions, you must first do in practice. If you want to perform technically and tactically well in competitions, you have to ensure that you have perfected the technique first and understand your team’s tactics in practice as well. The same holds true for every other aspect of your competitive preparations, whether performing physical readiness or mental preparation you must get into a position where you are calm and prepared. As you can see the health of an athlete is very important when it comes to taking part in high level play no matter if it’s a esports player or a traditional sports athlete, you must be mentally prepared for the journey and outcome of any game.
The culture of esport has gained a lot of popularity from the past couple of years due to the games that are being played, to the top level players that compete in these games and even the audience itself, that shows their support for these competitors. All of these aspects builds up the community of esports filling it up with drama, rivialy and bonds. Just like the traditional sport’s community there are many similar aspects that these two types of cultures have in common. One of which is the drama that rises from the competitive scene. There is a esports player by the name of Leffen that is known to be a villain in the game widely known as Smash Bros from Nintendo. He was given the title “god slayer” of the smash community, that eliminated the legends of smash, including Mew2king and Hungrybox, and other skilled individuals to give himself the claim of the best in the world. There was one moment that he even got banned from tournaments in Sweden because of his toxic nature. Toxic being the equivalent of non sportsmanship in a traditional sports game, being disrespectful to the opponent’s team, their own, or the company of the game they have a career built upon. An athlete that has similarities to Leffen in traditional sports is Covington of the UFC. Covington devoured anything that had to do with fighting. He watched pro wrestling and idolized Ric Flair. He would playful fight with his sister, Candace. At age 5, he set a goal to become the best fighter in the world. These two people created a scene for the viewers to enjoy the criminals and their acts of injustice. They do this to build more interest and excitement for the audience and have then like or hate the players more. However, this does not make them terrible people, they do it as a way to please the audience that are watching and supporting them.
Although these are the many reasons why esports is a sport, we cannot deny the fact that there are some people out there that continue to argue and believe that esports is not considered a sport. The word sport is determined as “An activity involving physical exertion and skill in which an individual or team competes against another or others for entertainment.” This means that the game needs to involve physical exertion and skill as well as competition. There is no minimum requirement for level of physical exertion, nor skill. Therefore, although esports requires much less physical exertion than many other sports, they shouldn’t be categorized as something else entirely. The Olympics are considered to be the first form of competitive sports which will count as entertainment for a large audience. It is a tradition that has been continued to this day, and all the sports involved in it have physical difficulties and challenges as a requirement for any of the sports. Of course team effort sports such as football, soccer, and baseball, highly depend on teamwork and strategic plays, however it is always considered an additive to the sport with its primary focus being on the requirement of physical activity. As such physical activity has become a traditional requirement for any other sport to emerge and be considered as a competitive game with difficulty. Therefore, when you have people spending 12 hours per day playing the same game over and over again for training, and play the same game on stage against other teams as a competition, it can not be seen or be considered as a sport.
That is, since there has never been anything that could challenge that traditional meaning, till the emergence and growth of esports. As mentioned previously, the requirement for a sport has always been physical activity, however with esports it is strategic play, mechanics, and teamwork. Qualities that were considered an additive to a sport to make it more complex and engaging, but is the focus in esports. Going back to the definition of sports, it mentions skills amongst a player or team going against other to provide entertainment for an audience. Yes, physical exertion is mentioned but neither the amount or difficulty, but the fact that it mentioned skill implies that it can refer to teamwork, strategies, and mechanics, all the aspects of esports. That is why esports is called ”e-sports,” showing that it does in fact have separating factors about it from traditional sports, but is still in fact a sport. And it has already been clarified that esports provide a large amount of entertainment for people, with the most recent League of Legends World Championship having 1.7 million active viewers on streaming platform Twitch, average 500,000 viewers on YouTube, and a prize pool of $2.2 million. Therefore, just like there are sports that do not have strategies or teamwork, such as long jumps or javelin throws, esports is a sport that has those aspects, but not as large of an amount of physical exertion as those sports do.
Therefore, esports are in fact a sport, where highly skilled and talented players of a video game can play in a professional setting, where they are rewarded for their skills and can make a stable career off of, with the support of a worldwide audience. With traditional sport athletes and esport professionals having similar mentalities of the importance of winning or losing a game, and entertaining the audience that allows them to have a career doing what they love. The large communities between the two, with castors, analysts, with the players themselves and the organizations that create professional sports teams and companies that invest in these teams. Esports has become a large industry that many companies have seen as a perfect opportunity to make more profit by investing in it, especially with the popularity of esports only expected to increase in the following years. Similarly to how the NFL or NBA are the ground for companies to continuously throw advertisements, sponsorships, and investments into them. The esports industry is becoming such a ground for companies, and it will continue to grow, especially with Japan bringing esports to the Olympics in 2020. As popularity grows so does the interest of the mainstream and the popularity of the professional players themselves. To gain such popularity a player must be extremely skilled at the game of their choice, and the more skilled, the more popularity, and therefore the most paid annually. Professional video gaming was considered a jokable profession, just how being a Youtuber used to not be considered a job, but now both are valid career paths that a person could choose to take. The physical activity aspect of a sport, must not hide or cause people to overlook all the other important aspects of what makes up a sport, which esports harbors all of and has been built upon since the beginning, making esports the first modern iteration of a sport.
MLA Citations
https://www.theodysseyonline.com/what-defines-sport
https://www.huffpost.com/entry/practice-is-the-foundatio_b_9806606
https://www.espn.com/mma/story/_/id/27295062/how-colby-covington-became-ufc-biggest-villain
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