Esports, short for electronic sports, is a form of competition using video games.[1] Esports often takes the form of organized, multiplayer video game competitions, particularly between professional players, individually or as teams. Although organized competitions have long been a part of video game culture, these were largely between amateurs until the late 2000s, when participation by professional gamers and spectatorship in these events through live streaming saw a large surge in popularity.[2][3] By the 2010s, esports was a significant factor in the video game industry, with many game developers actively designing and providing funding for tournaments and other events.
The most common video game genres associated with esports are multiplayer online battle arena (MOBA), first-person shooter (FPS), fighting, card, battle royale and real-time strategy (RTS) games. Popular esports franchises include League of Legends, Dota, Counter-Strike, Valorant, Overwatch, Street Fighter, Super Smash Bros. and StarCraft, among many others. Tournaments such as the League of Legends World Championship, Dota 2's International, the fighting game-specific Evolution Championship Series (EVO) and Intel Extreme Masters are among the most popular in esports. Many other competitions use a series of league play with sponsored teams, such as the Overwatch League. Although the legitimacy of esports as a true sporting competition remains in question, they have been featured alongside traditional sports in some multinational events in Asia, with the International Olympic Committee also having discussed their inclusion into future Olympic events.
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By the late 2010s, it was estimated that the total audience of esports would grow to 454 million viewers, with revenue increasing to more than US$1 billion, with China accounting for 35% of the global esports revenue in 2020.[4][5] The increasing availability of online streaming media platforms, particularly YouTube and Twitch, have become central to the growth and promotion of esports competitions.[3] Despite viewership being approximately 85% male and 15% female, with a majority of viewers between the ages of 18 and 34, female gamers have also played professionally.[6][7][8] The popularity and recognition of esports first took place in Asia, seeing significant growth in China and South Korea, with the latter having licensed professional players since 2000. Despite its large video game industry, esports in Japan is relatively underdeveloped, with this being largely attributed to its broad anti-gambling laws which prohibit paid professional gaming tournaments.[9][10] Outside of Asia, esports are also popular in Europe and the Americas, with both regional and international events taking place in those regions.
Contemporary esports has roots in competitive face-to-face arcade video game competitions. A forerunner of esports was held by Sega in 1974, the All Japan TV Game Championships, a nationwide arcade video game tournament in Japan.[12][13][14] The tournament was intended by Sega to promote the play and sales of video games in the country. There were local tournaments held in 300 locations across Japan, and then sixteen finalists from across the country competed in the final elimination rounds at Tokyo's Hotel Pacific. Prizes awarded included television sets (color and black-and-white), cassette tape recorders and transistor radios. According to Sega, the tournament "proved to be the biggest event ever" in the arcade game industry, and was attended by members from leading Japanese newspapers and leisure industry companies.[12] Sega stressed the importance of such tournaments to foster better business relationships between the maker-location-customer and create an atmosphere of competition on TV amusement games".[13][12] In 1977, Gremlin Industries (a year before being acquired by Sega) held a marketing stunt to promote their early arcade snake game Hustle in the United States, involving the "Gremlin Girls" who were a duo of professional female arcade players called Sabrina Osment and Lynn Reid.[15][16] The pair travelled across 19 American cities, where players could challenge them in best-of-three matches for a chance to win money. The duo were challenged by a total of 1,300 players, only about seven of whom managed to beat them.[16]
The golden age of arcade video games was heralded by Taito's Space Invaders in 1978, which popularized the use of a persistent high score for all players. Several video games in the next several years followed suit, adding other means of tracking high scores such with high score tables that included the players' initials in games like Asteroids in 1979. High score-chasing became a popular activity and a means of competition.[17] The Space Invaders Championship held by Atari in 1980 was the earliest large scale video game competition, attracting more than 10,000 participants across the United States, establishing competitive gaming as a mainstream hobby.[18] It was won by Rebecca Heineman.[19] Walter Day, owner of an arcade in Iowa, had taken it upon himself to travel across the United States to record the high scores on various games in 1980, and on his return, founded Twin Galaxies, a high score record-keeping organization.[20] The organization went on to help promote video games and publicize its records through publications such as the Guinness Book of World Records, and in 1983 it created the U.S. National Video Game Team. The team was involved in competitions, such as running the Video Game Masters Tournament for Guinness World Records[21][22] and sponsoring the North American Video Game Challenge tournament.[23] A multicity tour in 1983, the "Electronic Circus", was used to feature these players in live challenges before audiences, and draw more people to video games.[17] These video game players and tournaments were featured in well-circulated newspapers and popular magazines including Life and Time and became minor celebrities at the time, such as Billy Mitchell.[24][25] Besides establishing the competitive nature of games, these types of promotional events all formed the nature of the marketing and promotion that formed the basis of modern esports.[17]
Televised esports events aired during this period included the American show Starcade which ran from 1982 to 1984 airing a total of 133 episodes, on which contestants would attempt to beat each other's high scores on an arcade game.[28] A video game tournament was included as part of TV show That's Incredible!,[29] and tournaments were also featured as part of the plot of various films, including 1982's Tron.[30] In the UK, the BBC game show First Class included competitive video game rounds featuring the contemporary arcade games, such as Hyper Sports, 720 and Paperboy.[31][32] In the United States, the Amusement Players Association held its first U.S. National Video Game Team competition in January 1987, where Vs. Super Mario Bros. was popular among competitive arcade players.[33]
The 1988 game Netrek was an Internet game for up to 16 players, written almost entirely in cross-platform open-source software. Netrek was the third Internet game, the first Internet game to use metaservers to locate open game servers, and the first to have persistent user information. In 1993 it was credited by Wired Magazine as "the first online sports game".[34]
The fighting game Street Fighter II (1991) popularized the concept of direct, tournament-level competition between two players.[35] Previously, video games most often relied on high scores to determine the best player, but this changed with Street Fighter II, where players would instead challenge each other directly, "face-to-face," to determine the best player,[35] paving the way for the competitive multiplayer and deathmatch modes found in modern action games.[36] The popularity of fighting games such as Street Fighter and Marvel vs. Capcom in the 1990s led to the foundation of the international Evolution Championship Series (EVO) esports tournament in 1996.
Large esports tournaments in the 1990s include the 1990 Nintendo World Championships, which toured across the United States, and held its finals at Universal Studios Hollywood in California. Nintendo held a 2nd World Championships in 1994 for the Super Nintendo Entertainment System called the Nintendo PowerFest '94. There were 132 finalists that played in the finals in San Diego, California. Mike Iarossi took home 1st prize. Blockbuster Video also ran their own World Game Championships in the early 1990s, co-hosted by GamePro magazine. Citizens from the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, Australia, and Chile were eligible to compete. Games from the 1994 championships included NBA Jam and Virtua Racing.[37]
Television shows featuring esports during this period included the British shows GamesMaster and Bad Influence! the Australian game show A*mazing, where in one round contestants competed in a video game face off, and the Canadian game show Video & Arcade Top 10.
In the 1990s, many games benefited from increasing internet connectivity, especially PC games. Inspired by the fighting games Street Fighter II, Fatal Fury and Art of Fighting, id Software's John Romero established competitive multiplayer in online games with Doom's deathmatch mode in 1993.[38] Tournaments established in the late 1990s include the Cyberathlete Professional League (CPL), QuakeCon, and the Professional Gamers League. PC games played at the CPL included the Counter-Strike series, Quake series, StarCraft, and Warcraft.
The growth of esports in South Korea is thought to have been influenced by the mass building of broadband Internet networks following the 1997 Asian financial crisis.[39] It is also thought that the high unemployment rate at the time caused many people to look for things to do while out of work.[40] Instrumental to this growth of esports in South Korea was the prevalence of the Komany-style internet café/LAN gaming center, known as a PC bang. The Korean e-Sports Association, an arm of the Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism, was founded in 2000 to promote and regulate esports in the country.[41] Minister of Culture, Sports, and Tourism Park Jie-won coined the term "Esports" at the founding ceremony of the 21st Century Professional Game Association (currently Korean e-Sports Association) in 2000.[42] 2ff7e9595c
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