The Evolution of eSports (Dissertation Summary)

eSportwhale

Norway2 Posts

October 03 2015 10:45 GMT

Greetings!
I have recently finished my master thesis which regarded the past and the future of eSports, and was named 'The Evolution of eSports: An analysis of its origin and a look at its prospective future growth as enhanced by Information Technology Management tools'. While writing it I found similar posts at the Team Liquid forum (which I loved), and I thought I could do the same as a thanks. I am therefore making this post to share some of my findings, as it might be interesting for you fellow eSport maniacs.

The whole dissertation is over 300 pages, and I will therefore not copy paste the whole thing. If you were interested to read the dissertation as a whole, please use the following link: Dissertation file link (figshare) The dissertation lacks some validity, but it has some great points that gives some indications of patterns in the field of eSports. I am sharing this to you to share the overall hype around the growth of eSports, but please note that everything is licened as CC-BY (Read more here).

If you have any feedback, questions or comments, please contact me! Other than that, hope you enjoy the read! (I'm sorry for all the links, but it has to be this way or else this post would be miles long!

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As the last years have shown a massive growth within the field of electronic sports (eSports), several questions emerge, such as how much is it growing, and will it continue to grow? I strove to answer this in my thesis, and found it hard to answer these questions fully as the topic is so broad. What I then did was to focus on eSport events, and tried to find out when did eSport events originate, and if there were any success patterns in the various events that have been held. This made me ask various questions, which further made a foundation of the very dissertation:

x Was the event part of a series or a league of some sort?
x Where was the event located?
x How many participants was there?
x How many finalist was there?
x How many countries participated?
x Was the event international or global?
x How many viewed the event live or through streaming services?
x What was the prize pool for the event?
x What games were played at the event?
x What genre was the games played at the event?
x Was the game single or multiplayer?
x How long was the event?

It is these questions I will further try to summarize in this post. I will do this by first introducing the 444 events I used in my thesis, and then showing various findings in my research.

ESport events
To fulfill my thesis I decided to collect data from 444 important events in the field of eSports. These events was mainly decided in the size of audience or prize pool, but also extraordinary events is concluded. The excel file that includes the 444 major events in eSport history can be found in the following link: Excel file for the eSport events (this file is juicy) (This document has to be downloaded or viewed in google sheets to be open correct).

The collection of this data was gathered from various secondary data (which I owe a great thanks to), which included esportearnings.com, HLTV, MLG, as well as some posts used on this very forum. Please see this document to get a full list of which sources were used to gather the data: Link to secondary sources used in my thesis

These events was all important for eSports as we know it today. However, I tried to further break it down, and I ended up with a list on 83 events which can be seen as the major milestones in the history of eSports (This is however up for discussion), this can be viewed in the following link: Link to the 83 milestones of eSport history

Analysis and findings
I did various analysis of the data I collected from the 444 events, which gave me valuable information. This information is further shown in the subsequent points (note that some points are at 0 due lack of data):

Most frequent game/game series played in the eSport tournaments:

Graph showing the most popular Game genres used in eSport events:

Graph showing how many events included single-player games, team-based games or both:

Graph showing where the eSport events is normally held:

Pie chart showing the most important series/tournaments throughout the time of eSports:

Graph showing the average prize pool from 1980-2014 in eSport events (all numbers in American $):

Graph showing the Total prize pool from 1980-2014:

Graph showing live audience at eSport events from 1997 - 2014:

Graph showing average participating countries per event (1980-2014):

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Future of eSports: Trends in eSport events
To understand the future of eSports, I did a number of trend analysis to get a glimpse of what eSports can be. This is firstly done by looking at the trends that I've previously shown, and then lastly summarizing some growth numbers in audience and prize pool. These findings can be seen in the subsequent figures and graphs (The higher the R2, the more "realistic" the model is):

Single or multiplayer events based upon data from 2009-2019

Single or multiplayer events based upon data from 1980-2019

Participants total and average 1980-2019

Participant countries average 1980-2019

Prizepool average 1997-2014

Prize pool average 2009-2019

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Future of eSports: Growth
This leaves the future growth of eSports, and some essential numbers for the future. Based upon the events I used, this is the results I found:

Growth of eSports: Live Audience

Growth of eSports: Streaming Audience

Growth of eSports: Prize pool

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Thank you for reading!
That is all for now! I hope you like it, and find it somewhat interesting or usefull! If you want more, please check out the full dissertation or my secondary link posted earlier — You should check out the secondary sources anyway as it is they who collected most of the data and made my analysis possible! I might update more findings if the post gets posetive feedback, we will see. Anyway, thank you users of Teamliquid.net for previous great posts, and lets keep the hype around the growth of eSports alive!

Sincerely,
Your eSport Whale

Ovid

United Kingdom948 Posts

October 03 2015 11:28 GMT

Correct me if I'm wrong but shouldn't it be "It is further divided by five years" than "It is further dived on the five years" also "Excluding Sky proleague" and "participant countries" rather than "participant counteries"

All interesting stuff though. Did you think about going more in-depth on starcrafts viewing growth or decline? Fuzic.nl has so much data on that since 2013 that you could use it to support your other growth examples?

eSportwhale

Norway2 Posts

October 03 2015 11:45 GMT

On October 03 2015 20:28 Ovid wrote:
Correct me if I'm wrong but shouldn't it be "It is further divided by five years" than "It is further dived on the five years" also "Excluding Sky proleague" and "participant countries" rather than "participant counteries"

All interesting stuff though. Did you think about going more in-depth on starcrafts viewing growth or decline? Fuzic.nl has so much data on that since 2013 that you could use it to support your other growth examples?

Oh yes, you are correct. In all honesty I've read myself blind on my thesis, and I'm afraid that there might be some written faults like you pointed out (English is additionally not my first language, so I must appologies for the written mistakes).

I actually posted my findings now too see if anyone were interested to analyse deeper, or knew someone who had more data. However, while I wrote the thesis the data I used were primarly used to get a indication, so I could make a Decision Support System to further enhance the growth seen in the field of eSports (this might not been very clear earlier) - which therefore caused some lack in the validity.

(Edited the mistakes you mentioned + some model erros I found, thanks!)

Beatrys

4 Posts

October 01 2016 21:29 GMT

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Beatrys

4 Posts

October 05 2016 13:25 GMT

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BisuDagger

Bisutopia19322 Posts

October 05 2016 14:13 GMT

This looks awesome, but can't read any of the graphs without colorblind mode

. I'm having a coworker read this to me later lol.

Serimek

France2274 Posts

October 05 2016 16:00 GMT

Very interesting. Thank you for sharing.

Dingodile

4139 Posts

October 05 2016 16:18 GMT

On October 05 2016 23:13 BisuDagger wrote:
This looks awesome, but can't read any of the graphs without colorblind mode

. I'm having a coworker read this to me later lol.

There are blue, orange and grey lines. I guess you have grey/blue problems? poor minerals and blue flame hellions.

BisuDagger

Bisutopia19322 Posts

October 05 2016 18:43 GMT

On October 06 2016 01:18 Dingodile wrote:

Show nested quote +

There are blue, orange and grey lines. I guess you have grey/blue problems? poor minerals and blue flame hellions.

FPS, Puzzle, and Dancing Sim are all the same color. I didn't know Dancing Sim was most popular!
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creatspirit

Germany8 Posts

October 05 2016 19:11 GMT

#10

On October 06 2016 01:18 Dingodile wrote:
Show nested quote +

There are blue, orange and grey lines. I guess you have grey/blue problems? poor minerals and blue flame hellions.

FPS, Puzzle, and Dancing Sim are all the same color. I didn't know Dancing Sim was most popular!
[image loading]

In this particular graph you can just use the order of the legend there.
First ist FPS, second RTS third MOBA and so on.

miaryan

Malaysia1 Post

February 03 2018 07:20 GMT

#11

This my dissertation introduction- Please help me to proofread

As per the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC), an act is said to be an act of sexual harassment when there are any sexual advances which are unwelcome for favors that are sexual in nature or any other physical or verbal conduct takes places that are sexual in nature ("An Overview of Sexual Harassment", 2016).

There are two types’ sexual harassments that take place in an education environment (a) quid pro quo when the academic decision regarding a student is dependent upon the submission of the student to a conduct that is sexual in nature; (b) hostile environment this occurs when there is conduct that is unwelcomed of sexual nature which creates a threatening, abusive, intimidating environment of learning or is persuasive, persistent and severe to the extent that the ability to benefit or participate becomes affected. It is however not always necessary, though is more prevalent, that it is only someone with authority and power which engages in a behavior that is harassing. It can be peers or a student harassing a supervisor as well (Kingsbury, 2016).

The case of sexual harassment are the most litigated and most prevalent in various educational institutions, and there is a lot that is being done by the institutions that such activities are prevented ("An Overview of Sexual Harassment", 2016).

In a landmark case of Bethel School District v. Fraser, A Minor, et al. 478 U.S. 675 (1986) wherein a nominating speech by a student in a school general assembly describing a candidate with sexual metaphors which were strong. The issue that was raised was whether this speech was protected under the First Amendment. The court opined that there may be the determination by the schools that some modes of expressions are not appropriate, and sanctions may be applicable to the speech. The court held that there needs to be a balance between the freedom that was undoubted regarding advocacy of controversial and unpopular issues in classrooms and schools against the countervailing interest of the society in teaching the appropriate social behavior and its boundaries. There was an outweighing of the lewd and vulgar speech from the First Amendment right of the student (Bethel School District v. Fraser, A Minor, et al., 1986).

If there is the student to student sexual harassment and there is the failure on the part of the school to take appropriate action, then the school shall be held liable for it. In the case of Davis v. Monroe County Board of Education (119 S.Ct. 1661) Sandra Day O. Connor while writing for majority opined that under Law Title IX will be liable under federal law. In this case a fifth-grade girl LaShonda Davis of Macon, GA was groped at regularly be her classmate. She told her teachers, but they did not pay heed to her, slowly her grades in class fell, and she became suicidal. Later the boy confessed and moved district after the parents had filed a criminal complaint against him. They also took a out a sexual harassment/sex discrimination case against the school as well (Davis v. Monroe County Board of Education, 1999).

Early efforts to control a potentially harassing situation are very important. Behavior believed to be sexual harassment should be reported immediately, especially if it is recurring. The University must know about incidents of sexual harassment in order to stop them and to prevent future incidents. Administrators and others in a supervisory role must take sexual harassment seriously. All members of the University community should avoid behavior or conduct toward another member which could be interpreted as sexual harassment. Potential offenders should understand that sexual harassment is a serious matter that can have serious consequences.

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