Chapter 1

What Are Esports?

IN THIS CHAPTER

Defining esports

Understanding the difference between gaming and playing esports

Exploring who plays and at what levels

Identifying where esports happen

The first event that could claim to be an esports competition was organized by Stewart Brand at Stanford University on October 19, 1972 (https://www.rollingstone.com/culture/culture-news/stewart-brand-recalls-first-spacewar-video-game-tournament-187669/). The game being played was a science fiction spaceship combat game called Spacewar. The Stanford AI Lab was one of only a few places in the world that could have held such a competition at the time. None of the gamers played with their own machines or peripherals; such things would have been unheard of then. The Spacewar game consisted of little more than white pixels on a black screen.

That Spacewar event would barely fit any of the criteria that the industry or fans apply to esports now. It bears a passing resemblance to a fighting-game LAN (local area network) tournament in which consoles or computers are set up on a private network within a venue so that competitors can play matches, but at today's esports events, the competitors still bring their own peripherals at the very least, and the games are played on commercially available machines, whether those are Xbox or PlayStation consoles or PCs. But at the core of it all, that moment at Stanford was, in the most technical of senses, an esports competition.

In this chapter, you find out what the term esports refers to and explore what it takes for a game to be considered an esport. Along the way, you encounter some of the language surrounding esports and get a general sense of the history of what many call the biggest sport some people have never heard of.

Defining Esports

Esports is the competitive play of video games. Quick read, right? End of chapter! Now you know!

If only the answer could be so simple. It's not so simple, however. The one aspect that has remained true since the origin of what people call esports is that it involves, and always will involve, players competing against each other in a video game. This aspect was true of Spacewar; it was true of the era of competitions to reach the highest possible score with games like Pac-Man or Donkey Kong; and it remains true today for Overwatch League and the League of Legends World Championship, more commonly referred to as "Worlds" by players and fans.

Defining esports as competitive video gameplay no longer works, however. Nearly every video game that exists - including games like Minecraft that were not initially designed to be competitive - has players who elevate a more casual game to an ultra-competitive level. Also, not every game is an esport. Following are the five key criteria that determine whether a game truly qualifies as an esport. An esport has

• Regular publisher support and updates
• A massive fan base with the desire to watch competition
• A clear ranking or ladder system so that players know where they stand relative to other players

  THE IMPORTANCE OF HIGH SCORES IN VIDEO GAME HISTORY: THE KING OF KONG

  
  

  To the current generation of gamers, it might seem crazy that people once dedicated their lives to having the highest possible score on a one-player arcade video game. That culture, however, is the one that spawned the esports world we know today. If you'd like to learn more about those crazy days of record keeping and the use of officials and pregame hardware inspection, check out the 2007 documentary The King of Kong: A Fistful of Quarters. Written and directed by Seth Gordon, the movie is the real-life story of the competition between Steve Weibe and Billy Mitchell to secure the world record high score in Donkey Kong. In addition to providing an interesting overview of esports before the Internet, the movie is highly entertaining in the same spirit as reality television competition shows are. The feud between Weibe and Mitchell is reminiscent of professional wrestling, complete with hype interviews and accusations of cheating and foul play.

• Frequent competitions from reputable tournament organizers
• Longevity as a reliable, quality game

Before I elaborate on these criteria in the upcoming sections, note that all these rules have exceptions. The most obvious one is the fighting game Super Smash Bros. Melee. Released for the GameCube in November 2001, Melee has been out of print for a decade and the GameCube console hasn't been manufactured since 2007. Nintendo has since released its popular Super Smash Bros. Ultimate game for the Nintendo Switch, but even without support from Nintendo, Smash Melee still sees regular competition. It is, however, a true rarity in that sense, and it is the only major esports game in the current landscape to go through such a long period without updates or development changes.

Regular publisher support

Prior to the mid-2000s, the marketing model for video games was relatively simple. A company would release a game and, depending on the level of interest from fans, it might patch errors. Less often, the company offered expansion package content either by download or through the purchase of another game disc. Most often, though, the company chose to create a sequel or follow-up or to let a game run its course. You see the more traditional spirit of creating a follow-up in sports-based games like the EA Madden NFL franchise or 2K's NBA or WWE games. Each year, a new version of those games is released with updated rosters and some new features, but for the most part, the games themselves haven't changed dramatically from the previous year.

Popular esports titles break this mold. For some examples, look at the five esports games based on prize pools in the first half of 2019, according to Esports Observer: Fortnite, CS:GO, Dota 2, League of Legends, and Overwatch (https://esportsobserver.com/top10-prize-pools-h1-2019/). Take a look at the dates of release and the most recent update for each of those games as of February 2020 (as you read this, I offer a personal guarantee that each game will have been updated again).

Although League of Legends is ten years old, as of the writing of this chapter, it had been updated with fresh content just weeks before. This frequent updating is one of the most important parts of esports because the constant updates allow the games to evolve but also allow for tweaking and balancing so that if a competitor finds an unexpected loophole or exploit, the company can quickly identify and correct it. Games without this level of support also decay quickly because the meta - or the current best practices - for the game grows stale and competition becomes highly predictable.

Also, all the titles listed in Table 1-1 have major tournaments that are administered by their publishers. Overwatch even has its own professional league with franchised teams, as you can read more about in Chapter 4. These events, known as first-party tournaments, are critical to the success of each game.

TABLE 1-1 Original Release Date and Date of Last Update for Major Esports Titles

Game

Release Date

Most Recent Update as of February 20, 2020

Fortnite

July 21, 2017

February 20, 2020

CS:GO

August 21, 2012

February 11, 2020

Dota 2

July 7, 2013

February 11, 2020

League of Legends

October 27, 2009

February 19, 2020

Overwatch

May 24, 2016

February 12, 2020

A large fan base

Two major metrics determine how popular a game is: how many people play it and how many people watch other people play it. With the current status of Twitch.tv as far and away the largest live-streaming service in the world, you can easily see a snapshot of how games are doing with regard to those metrics. Table 1-2 presents the same five games listed in Table 1-1 in the previous section to show who is playing and watching as of October 2019.

TABLE 1-2 Twitch Streamers and Viewers for the Five Most Popular Esports*

Game

Average Number Streaming the Game

Average Number of Viewers

Fortnite

6,429

196,905

CS:GO

1,310

52,862

Dota 2

612

32,784

League of Legends

2902

217,359

Overwatch

974

16,924

*...