EPT
Yes, It is the future. The world is now a land where it is commonplace for people to carry around radio communication devices small enough to fit inside the nook of your ear, but transmit the sound of your voice hundreds of miles through thin air. Men and women each own their own personalized motorwagon, a carriage that is pulled by the force of 200 horses, yet requires none to operate. Many people own mechanical notebooks small enough to fit inside a handbasket, but can contain an entire library of books, and a virtually unlimited amount of blank pages to fill in on your own. Most would call this magic, however the accepted term is "technology”.
On a seemingly unrelated note, the concept of competition has been around for as long as there have been two men and only one buffalo. Survival is a natural instinct and, as Charles Darwin would say, completely out of context of course, "survival of the fittest." But how are we supposed know who really is the fittest? Sure, a simple solution is to start killing one another and see who ends up on top, but where's the fun unless the loser has to live with the humiliation of being the physically inept? Thankfully mere millennia before slaves and/or aliens were forced to construct the pyramids, man created the perfect balance between testosterone, adrenaline, muscle and awesome: Sports.
So what does it all mean? Sports? Technology? Surely technology, the brainchild of science, and testosterone’s sworn enemy, could have little or nothing to do with sports, except the deliverance of such via cable television. Yet I would argue that they share a much closer bond than Buck, the Varsity quarterback, would tell you. But who would, but a fool, conclude such a preposterous statement? The walls of the Roman Coliseum would surely come crashing down, ESPN unquestionably taken off the air, Sports Illustrated undoubtedly un-illustrated, if one were to say that the left-brain man is as sure an athlete as the left-hook man (boxing reference). But an athlete competing in what? you might ask.
For thousands of years man proved his worth by throwing an inflated pigskin (or the like) to his fellow man on a plane of dirt. Then in 1958 a man replaced the dirt with an oscilloscope and the skin with a glowing green dot. What was at first only an attempt to liven up boring science exhibits was actually a revolution in disguise, and the disguise was lamely named “table for two”. However it still took more than two decades for someone to realize the potential of this so-called “video-game”, but only shortly after that would unsportsmanlike conduct spawn because of video games.
E-sports. “E-sports?” you might ask, and by doing so provoke a response from a tall skinny man with far too much acne for his age, “electronic sports, abbreviated as ‘e-sports’, is used as a general term to describe the play of video games competitively!” This man, obviously being the physical manifestation of Wikipedia, repulses you slightly so you don’t listen and decide to drive off in your Volkswagen Bug and go and get milkshakes instead.
E-sports sounds like something the writer of Tron (don’t sue me Disney®) was forced to come up with when the owner of the Yankees decided he wanted to back his next film. When introduced to the concept of E-sports, most shrug off the idea, especially when told that competitive video gaming is being evaluated to become an Olympic event. Video gaming doesn’t even require physical aptitude. Well, I say, neither does curling.
Before we continue, a disclosure must be disclosed. So long as we accept the word sport to mean “a physical activity that is meant to be played in such a manner that there is a high probability of injury” we will not move forward in this discussion. A short journey to the origin of words is in order. The word “sport” is actually a shortened version of Middle English word disport, meaning to divert or literally to carry away, dis- meaning away and -port meaning to carry. We could take the word to mean “a leisurely activity” or simply “a distraction”. The word “sport” only came to be defined as “something that is either football, basketball, baseball, or any variation of these” a few hundred years after the United States of America was invented. A “sport” is such a vague idea that attempting to define something as one has no creditable merit, therefore attempting to discredit something as such is equally as unmeritable.
Now, I know what you are thinking. Is unmeritable even a word? Microsoft will tell you no, but I say the man is only trying to keep me down. And the “Man” probably doesn’t even have wireless Internet in his house. And he definitely thinks he was the best baseball player on his little league team. But, I digress.
While watching E-sports on prime time television may seem as realistic as colonizing Jupiter, video games on television is a normality in places like Japan and South Korea. Blizzard's game Starcraft has become arguably the most popular E-sport in the world. Finding a game of Starcraft on Korean television is as easy as finding a football match on American television. Whole corporations revolve around the professional Gaming community. MLG, Major League Gaming, is a company that organizes competitions in the video game world for amateurs and professionals.
So then where are all the video game channels!? Why can I not turn on NBC on Tuesday nights and watch the Super Smash Brothers League Tournament? A simple answer would be that not everyone likes video games. One could not simply turn on the local Counter Strike tourney and eat dinner with their family. While this may be true, the truer answer requires a far greater dive into the world of E-sports and even straight to the game designers.
When you watch a sport on television, or even at a stadium, the entire field is in view. You can see all of the players, you can see both of the goals, you can even see the coaches and the cheerleaders. Sports are designed to be witnessed. The Olympic games were all designed specifically to be viewed in a stadium. You can buy a ticket to see soccer, football, baseball and basketball game. And no matter where you are in the stadium, you are able to enjoy the spectacle. That's the idea at least.
However video games are not such a spectacle. Video games are designed to be viewed through one computer monitor or television screen. Most of the time an entirely different console and monitor is necessary if someone else wishes to accompany you. Very few genres even have the ability to be viewed by an audience, and even fewer games in those genres support some kind of live-viewing functionality. Even the games that do sometimes require someone else to control your viewing experience. Starcraft requires a "caster" to control the camera and interact with the units in the game for the viewer to fully understand what is going on. This caster must be "invited" into the game by the players or whomever is in charge of the tournament. Even then, it is difficult to really assess what is going on all the time without thorough knowledge of the game being played. It is almost impossible to tell who is winning the match at any given time. While this makes the game particularly exciting for some, others seem to find it difficult to enjoy watching this way.
Games like Super Smash Brothers Brawl and player versus player match-ups in World of Warcraft are some of the few games that are considered easy to watch. Like popular American sports, you are able to tune into the match at anytime and be fully aware of the three important pieces of information: What game is being played, who is playing and who is winning. Brawl takes place in a small arena, most of the time the size of the screen if not then only slightly larger, so when looking at the screen you are able to see the players, and the "field" and also the "goals" which are represented in this game by the players' health bars.
Even in more accepted genres in E-sports, like first person shooters (FPS), it is still very difficult for the viewer. While it may be easy to see what game is being player and who is winning, the players are often spread far apart throughout huge intricate levels so unless the viewer was to follow one player through a whole match, there in no real single point of interest. Viewing the entire map is often unhelpful to viewers because the maps can be so large that watching a game this way would be like trying to watch a soccer game from an airplane window. TV stations like ESPN have found a way around this by showing short clips of the best moments of MLG matches in top 10 type shows, but this is a poor replacement because it gets rid of the Monday-Night-Football feeling. You don't break out the barbecue and invite your high-school buddies over to watch 10 minutes of footage from 20 different games that all happened last week.
So who do we blame? The video game designers for not making video games watchable enough? TV corporations for not dedicating channels specifically to video games? Viewers for not being interested enough? All of the above? I suppose the last answer is the most correct, but i believe that E-Sports are just not quite ready for the position of America's favorite pastime. The truth is that it's going to take time for video games to evolve past their childish stigmas. It might take a whole other generation, but without a doubt video games will reach their full potential in the entertainment industry, perhaps with the true merger of television and internet. Whenever the time may be, it is surely not now. Video games are just not in a state to be "sports" at the moment. The audience isn't there, the games are not prepared and the money men just don't have faith, yet.
In the next 15 years i believe we will begin see a change in the American E-sports world. As long as new producers see the potential, game studios will start producing games specifically as E-sports. Companies like Valve have already made a leap in at least understanding this concept. Valve released Counterstrike, at first a community modification of their game Half-Life, as a fully supported release. Counterstrike is now the #1 online action game in the world according to Gamasutra magazine, and is the largest FPS E-sport in the world. Valve also recently released Team Fortress 2, a sequel to another community mod, and is quickly rising as an accepted E-sport with a spot on MLG's website. Blizzard is also attempting to at least make some kind of leap forward in the E-sports world, making Starcraft II as E-sports friendly as they believe is possible, no matter how much as the community disagrees.
As this generation of gamers grows up past our Grand Theft Auto stigmas, video games will, without a doubt, become accepted as men's natural way of releasing anger, protecting their territory and looking badass. Humans are growing and evolving all the time. When it was once manly to hit another man on the head with a rock, now it is to hit a man with your shoulder pads and helmet. It is only a matter of time before it will be manly to virtually hit a man on the head with a rock, while wearing shoulder pads and a helmet, at level 80.
