Monday, December 12, 2011

eSports

What is it?
Electronic Sports, or eSports, is the the competitive play of video games. They are played competitively at amateur, semi-professional and professional levels including in leagues and tournaments. These tournaments can either be local tournaments or world tournaments.

Types of games played

Real Time Strategy
 
RTS is a sub-genre of strategy games that do not progress in turns. The point of the game is for the players to position and maneuver units and structures under their control to secure areas of the map and destroy their opponents' assets. These games have a deep strategy, where there are many different ways to win. The simplest way in thinking about Real Time Strategy games is chess, without taking turns. The more well known and popular RTS games are Warcraft III, Starcraft, and Starcraft II.

RTS Games
Fighting


Fighting games are a genre of games where players control an on-screen character and engage in close combat with an opponent. The characters tend to be of equal power and fights matches consisting of several rounds. The characters need to be equal power to bring balance to the game, where no one character is over powered. Players must master techniques such as blocking, counter-attacking, and chaining together into sequences of attacks known as combos. The well known and popular fighting games are Street Fighter, Mortal Kombat, Tekken, and BlazBlue.

Street Fighter

First Person Shooter


First Person Shooters are games that center around the gameplay on gun and projectile based combat through first person perspective, the player controls and see through the eyes of the character they are controlling. When FPS is mentioned, the Call of Duty franchise comes to mind. But, it is kind of hard making it competitive, since a new game comes out yearly. Call of Duty also has less strategy than other FPS games, such as Counter Strike.
Counter Strike
Multiplayer Online Battle Arena (MOBA) Games


MOBA games are a subgenre of real time strategy games, characterized by their likeness to Defense of the Ancients. The MOBA genre, compared to traditional Real Time Strategy Games, remove the elements of base management, resource collection, and army building. The genre puts emphasis on team-play; players on each team can select and control one Hero, a powerful unit with various abilities and advantages to form a team's overall strategy. The objective of such games is for the player's team to destroy the opposing side's main structure with the help of periodically spawned computer-controlled units that march towards the enemy's main structure. The well known MOBA games are Defense of the Ancients, League of Legends, Heroes of Newerth, and DotA 2.
Defense of the Ancients: All Stars

Skill

Like any other sport, there is skill involved playing video games competitively. Good hand eye coordination is needed. Players need to to certain actions at certain times to win a game. When a player messes up at a certain moment, such as pointing at a wrong direction, it can cost them the game. Most, if not all, games require a quick reaction time. Shooting each other, like in Counter Strike, requires quick reaction times because in most cases, the person who pulls the trigger first wins. Sometimes, players train themselves by doing the same things over and over to get it into their muscle memory. This is common with fighting games, where you have to chain attacks together into combos. In Real Time Strategy Games, such as Starcraft, the action per minute, or APM, decides on who wins. APM is the average actions a player does during one minute. The following video explains it:

In the end, hard work and perseverance is what get players better at their game. Like any other sport, there is no shortcut in getting better.

Tournaments

There are tournaments occuring all around the year. Whether if it is a small, local tournament, tournmanets held over the internet, or world wide tournament, they are being held. There are too many local tournaments to list. The more well known big tournaments are listed below.

“The Evolution Championship Series (Evo for short) represents the largest and longest-running fighting game tournaments in the world. Evo events bring together the best of the best from around the world in a dazzling exhibition of skill and fun, as players and fans gather to honor the competitive spirit in an open format and determine a champion.
You’ll also find that our tournaments are about more than just winning. Evo events are open to anyone, feature many stations available for relaxed free play, and offer unique opportunities to meet people from different countries and different walks of life who share your passion. Established champions face off against unknown newcomers, and new rivals that might have only talked or fought online meet up and become old friends.”7
“Major League Gaming is the largest professional video game league in the world. MLG is the dominant media property exclusively targeting the approximately 40 million consumers in North America who have a passion for playing video games as a competitive social activity, while giving sponsoring brands access to this highly influential demographic. We represent the best professional gamers and give millions of aspiring players around the world an opportunity to compete, improve their skills, and socialize through our thriving online community and live Pro Circuit competitions.”8

“The World Cyber Games is the world’s first “Cyber Game Festival”, Designed to build a healthy cyber culture.The best gamers around the world gather into different cities to share the excitement and fun of the game tournaments.

To lead the development of the digital entertainment culture by promotion harmony of humankind through e-sports and its embodiment in the “Cyber Culture Festival.”

WCG is a comprehensive Digital Culture Festival, where language and cultural Festival barriers are stripped away, and international exchange and harmony are Promoted through extensive events including tournaments, conferences, exhibitions.”9
"DreamHack arranges a lot of Esport tournaments for all audiences ranging from casual and fun to real hard core attracting professional players. All major genres like Team FPS, Duel FPS, Racing, Fighting, Sports, Music and strategic games are featured. Most of the tournaments are open for everybody and often starts in the BYOC area then moves on to a tournament area. The final for the main games is played in front of thousand of people on the main stage or DreamArena Extreme.
Many of our partners, exhibitors and community friends arrange side tournaments with great prizes."10


Commentating, Streaming, and the Spectator Sport

Like in other sports, there are commentators. There is a commentator that does the play-by-play, giving a running commentary of what is happening currently in the game. They are valued for their articulateness and ability to describe the events of an often fast-moving game. This is valuable to new viewers who know little to nothing about the game, where the game can get very confusing. There are also color commentators, who are similar to the "regular sports" color commentator. They are valued for experience and insight into the game. These commentators are usually former players, since they will have more insight into the game.

Unlike other sports, competitive video game play is usually streamed over the internet. They are streamed on sites such as ustream, justin.tv, and own3d.tv. The streams are very popular. In the Evo 2011 World Finals, "held July 29 to 31 at Las Vegas, recorded more than 2 million unique viewers on its Ustream.tv feed, serving more than 1.9 million hours of video content. Viewers tuned in for an average of 55 minutes each."11

There were also many viewers for MLG:


These numbers show how popular video games are as a spectator sport. Also, these numbers only show the number of people watching on the internet. It does not take into account of the number of people who attend these events to watch professional gamers play these games.

These videos show how crazy spectators go during the games are played:




Starcraft and Korea

Starcraft is HUGE in South Korea. "There are professional StarCraft leagues, pro StarCraft players and televised matches on cable."1
One of the reasons why it is so popular is:
"Many Koreans easily become obsessed with activities or games that test their ability to think and react rapidly, and excelling in such activities for competition during youth is highly encouraged," says Nick Rumas, a South Korea-based filmmaker and writer. "This can range from math to science to Rubik's Cube, and while StarCraft generally is not a 'recommended' pursuit, it falls under a similar obsessive mindset."1
Also,
"The game's popularity in South Korea is due to, in part, good timing. When Blizzard launched StarCraft in the late 1990s South Korea was building up it's online infrastructure and creating the fastest internet in the world. Online cafes began sprouting up, and the cafes needed games. It's a matter of which came first — the chicken or the StarCraft — but the game ended up in more and more net cafes. The release of the game also coincided with the creation of South Korea's first pro gaming league in 1998. A couple of years after the game launched, pro-gamers began organizing into teams and big time sponsors like Samsung moved in."1
So, unlike here in the United States, people in South Korea usually played games in net cafes. As a resulat, gaming became more socially acceptable in South Korea than in the United States. Gamers in the United States are still viewed as fat man childs playing in their mother's basement.

The following video shows the life of professionals gamers in South Korea:




“You're wasting your life playing video games”

Many people have said that playing video games are a waste of time and you will never make any money just by playing video games. In actuality, there are many players who make a comfortable living just by playing video games, as shown in the following:
They make their money usually from streaming, winning tournaments, and sponsorships.

1. Ashcraft, Brian. "Why Is StarCraft So Popular In Korea?" Kotaku, the Gamer’s Guide. Kotaku, 24 July 2010. Web. 11 Dec. 2011. <http://kotaku.com/5595262/why-is-starcraft-so-popular-in-korea>.
2. Bacon, Derek. "E-sports: Gentlemen, Start Your Computers | The Economist." The Economist - World News, Politics, Economics, Business & Finance. The Economist, 10 Dec. 2011. Web. 11 Dec. 2011. <http://www.economist.com/node/21541162>.
3. Lawler, Ryan. "Super Bowl of ESports Proves More Popular than Cable — Online Video News." GigaOM. GigaOM, 6 Dec. 2011. Web. 11 Dec. 2011. <http://gigaom.com/video/mlg-pro-circuit-numbers/>.
4. Miller, Patrick. "2011: The Year of ESports | PCWorld." Reviews and News on Tech Products, Software and Downloads | PCWorld. PCworld, 29 Dec. 2010. Web. 11 Dec. 2011. <http://www.pcworld.com/article/214432/2011_the_year_of_esports.html>.
5. Plunkett, Luke. "Korea's Starcraft Scandal Worsens." Kotaku, the Gamer’s Guide. Kotaku, 17 May 2010. Web. 11 Dec. 2011. <http://kotaku.com/5540370/koreas-starcraft-scandal-worsens>.
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