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The Armchair Athleticism critical series is an opinion-base article series regarding the issues and sociocultural deficiencies of the E-Sports and StarCraft scene. All articles are perceptive-base and revolving around my own experiences and understanding of the subculture.
+ Show Spoiler [summary introduction] +The Solo Trail – Unbeaten - Posted on October 20th, 2012Short version of credentials: - Manager of 5 progaming teams (50+ professional players)
- Writer for 11 E-sports websites (5 team sites + 4 organizations: 150+ docs/articles)
- Organizer or Contributor of 11 community events (74,000 viewers/attendants)
- Some video-editing for one or two organizations, nothing big, just twitch.tv highlight-editing, presentational writing, etc.
Why are you starting your own space? I was listening to the suggestions of several friends and I finally started this space after I hit a dead-end in my endeavours in E-Sports. I’m at a point where I am not really affiliated with anyone and now’s a better time than ever to do some opinion topics. Doing my own content meant I would be alone and would work around my own initiative, drive and interest. However, it also meant that I may do something that requires more work than I thought and I would be on my own. It meant that the community reception can be more direct and harsh towards me personally and my views as I would not be backed by some credible organization as when I was writer for some. In the end, this series that took me about a month of writing, editing, verification and re-writing will really be everything I’ve learned, observed and felt throughout my time. I started out with three pieces and ended up going to ten. All of them delve into inspecting the five perspectives of the scene: teams, tournaments, players, spectators and contributors. Ultimately, it aims to really take a strong look into the many issues that inhibit the StarCraft community and E-Sports culture.
E-Sports is not a Sport - Posted on January 8th, 2013
Whenever I read other editorials from other writers, I always check to see one thing: Are they going to compare their idea and issues with E-Sports to the success of professional national mainstream athletic sports? In some cases, they do, in others; they’ve come to approach E-Sports more as a spectacle or something similar as WWF or UFC. It’s more of an event than an actual sport. Overall, I feel that comparing E-Sports to professional mainstream sports can be a poor perspective that ultimately narrows potential and shapes it to be something it cannot feasibly become (but may be something even more).
In some parts, E-Sports is just like Sports. Forbes and Dustin Browder took the words right out of my mouth:
“These guys are athletes. There’s physical and mental conditioning to it. These guys are, in many cases, playing 12 hours a day to prepare for these matches, or even just constantly. These guys are training as hard as a regular athlete would to train for these things. They have to have the dedication and enthusiasm for it, and there’s a lot of coaching that goes on as well. A lot of these guys have coaches and are parts of teams. They create a culture of support around them so they can learn to master the game. What good are you if you can’t practice against somebody who’s great? So these guys create teams of people where they’re all really good, they practice against each other constantly, and they compete against other teams.
This allows them to create this sport atmosphere where they work as hard as any regular athlete, and try as hard. They have to have the psychology and mental endurance. You see these guys when they lose a match; they are crushed, just like an Olympic hopeful would be crushed if he didn’t make it. They’ve got to have the endurance to overcome that and say, “Yeah, I lost the biggest match of my career, but I’m not done. I’m going to come back and overcome this,” and sometimes they do. It’s just absolutely amazing the trials, tribulations, and challenges these guys face every day.”
(Dustin Browder interviewed by John Gaudiosi, Forbes, 2013)
In truth, the game(s) and the competitors who dedicate their lives to entertain us, the spectators, are athletes. Perhaps not physically from head-to-toe but their dedication, work and practice ethics, and approach to the game is comparable to that of sports. They are participants of a very competitive game and play for their careers, to remain an emphasized competitor ahead of the strategic curve. These acknowledgements lead me to understand the subculture of E-Sports on a three-level system (granted, this is a simplified model where we ignore a lot of involved parties, especially on the business end):
Click to enlarge
The three levels are nearly all dependent on the community and drive. Both the games and progamers are on the core circle of Competitive Gaming: competitive gaming being without the spectators or much of a news media following. Essentially, it’s just the game, the players and the small community who were active or involved in the organizing of competitions. As we step further out into the second-level, we start introducing the large following of communities such as Team Liquid, the sub-reddits as well as large-scale events to connect further these online communities into a gaming expo-like setting.
This is E-Sports. E-Sports is a spectacle to dress and curtain the core game and competition. The atmosphere is what is the most appealing for events such as IGN’s Pro League, North-American Star League finals and Major League Gaming which helps add flair and life to something that occurs within computer systems. The roaring fans and the enthusiastic and excited commentators are areas that help emphasize and improve the excitement of what goes in the game. These elements are found within mainstream sports and are why we title competitive gaming as E-Sports.
E-sports Population Activity is an overview of how popular, active and worthwhile is E-Sports for these companies. It takes into account of the core of the game, its active teams and progamers, leagues and events as well as growth of community websites. I titled EPA as a global measurement to help identify just how popular and strong this subcultures growth is. For some games such as Tribes: Ascend and Street Fighter x Tekken, their EPA has been greatly reduced despite numerous attempts at trying to improve it (this could be for a variety of issues). Team Fortress 2, also a popular competitive game, is not as popularly viewed as Counter-Strike for other reasons. Their EPA is low and thus perhaps why companies aim to not acknowledge, improve or work towards changing that (because it isn’t realistically feasible for the company’s resources to devote towards or maybe because the company sees other more profitable ways to take advantage of their video-game product).
We call competitive gaming “E-Sports” because it summarizes and eases outsiders into the idea of e-athletes. Even if someone had no idea what playing video-games at a competitive level was or what it entailed, these tournament events are gaming expositions that help show the appeal of watching someone do something better than you (better technique, strategy, approach, etc). The importance of the atmosphere mimicking that of Football stadiums or Hockey rinks is the ultimate goal and titling E-Sports as a sport helps push the idea further (sports is a subject nearly everyone can identify, understand and easily associate the interest of it).
So why isn’t E-Sports a sport? You have the athletes and you have the mimicked atmosphere (just on a smaller scale). What prevents it from being that of sports? Because the game changes. The core game mechanics improve, change, and are biased towards one side or another. In StarCraft, you have three asymmetrical races that have their pros and cons, in ARTS games such as Dota, you have a multitude of heros that interact with one another differently. For FPS games, a variety of guns also means countless approaches towards taking down your opponent. These varied factors help keep the game fresh, new and entertaining. It displays unlimited possibilities that surpass that of sports on a basic ruled level.
Because video-game(s) can change so much, be improved and become visually stunning, the possibilities to innovate it makes it better than mainstream sports. The way these games are accessed and the tools used to better spectate each match and provide insightful information for viewers and commentators alike surpass that of mainstream sports.
However, the level of understanding for E-Sport games requires a little bit more. When I wrote my article “What Makes an E-Sport”, I noted the importance of being able to demonstrate skill and add thrill for the spectator within a game:
“It must be thrilling to watch. Despite the limitations of development in the past, games such as StarCraft: Brood War, Counter-Strike: 1.6, Quake 3 and DotA were still exciting to watch. Excitement is key to an E-Sport and that excitement must be both innate as well as injected from the viewer’s perspective. Some games are less challenged by this first point than others. Fighting games for example are much easier to showcase and spectacular to watch than first-person shooters.”
The reality is that E-Sports will always be a “you’re either in or you’re out” sort of pond and because most current adults have grown being out of video-games or not as competitively involved with it, most are definitely out. However, as the digital age encompasses more generations and old values start to shrink, the accessibility and acceptance of video-games and potentially E-Sports is bound to expand.
One area we did ignore in this piece is the relationship of sports with the NFL in comparison to that of Blizzard, RIOT and Valve who need to prioritize both the growth of this subculture as well as maintain their dedication to what really sells and adds value to these products. Because E-Sports relies on the products of gaming development companies, not all changes could be interpreted as needed or beneficial for the scene. It’s a difficult thing for gaming companies who aim to really maintain their devotion to E-Sports, but also towards their varying fans. This was discussed a bit in my article "The Overabundance of Tournaments & Branching Problems" but could definitely be further looked into.
To summarize, E-Sports is not necessarily sports, but is an accurate term to help the general public understand what E-Sports composes of. I designated it to be more like the WWF and UFC because of how new these competitions are as well as the fact that it aims to both entertain and compete. Video-games are entertainment and E-Sports also needs to be entertaining to maintain its niche audience interest. How this interest be reinvented can only be told as more investments flow into the idea and as more game development companies become involved or determined to sell their game as an E-Sport.
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This informed series of written pieces could not have been achieved without the help and opinions of my peers and friends. Below are the people I wish to thank for their insight, accuracy/consistency check or expert opinion on the numerous topics: thank you
- Alex Shieferdecker (Team Liquid Progaming Team Content Manager - tree.hugger)
- Brad Carney (Lefty)
- Chris Chan (Founder of ChanManV Production)
- Eric Grady (Cyber-Sports Network's Director of Events - Usurp)
- Flo Yao (Quantic Gaming’s Progamer - Flo)
- Jacqueline Geller (eSports Network Coordinator of Blizzard)
- John Clark (Cyber-Sports Network Executive Director of Operations)
- Josh Dentrinos (FXOpen’s Director - Boss)
- Marc McEntegart (Team Liquid Writer - SirJolt)
- Matt Weber (Team Liquid Director of Operations - Heyoka)
- Payam Toghyan (ROOT Gaming Progamer - TT1)
- Shawn Simon (Team Liquid Progamer - Sheth)
- Steven Bonnell II (Progamer/Entertainer - Destiny)
- Thomas Shifrer (ESFI World Senior Journalist)
If you'd like more information about the series (more pieces about different aspects of the scene will be released periodically), to contact me privately or to generously give me some siteviews on my website, you can follow the following link:
You can also follow me on Twitter where I tweet public news and information about the scene including roster changes, controversy and/or overall E-Sports news: @TorteDeLini
Thank you very much and I appreciate all feedback or corrections (editing many grammar errors: Ryuhou)aS)
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I like the point about the nature of the game being inherently more fluid than traditional sports, that is something I definitely had not considered before. I cannot count the times I have been explaining games to an outside observer in a (soon to be failed) bid to get them into SC2 or some one has tried to explain LoL or DOTA to me, I have seen them tune out as I am explaining the different strategies and approach.
Even for an avid consumer of SC2 like myself I find LoL and DOTA difficult to watch at a competitive level simply because of the number of heroes and permutations available in skills, runes, and spells.
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Great post as always Torte, even though the title is actually provocative it's again really well constructed and argumented, love your articles
10/10 would read again 
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On January 09 2013 05:35 GregMandel wrote:Great post as always Torte, even though the title is actually provocative it's again really well constructed and argumented, love your articles 10/10 would read again
hehehe
Yes, I intentionally made it provocative to attract new readers and invoke good discussions :B
I also wanted to push DustinBrowder's button :B
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Great writeup. Love your points in here!
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GRAND OLD AMERICA16375 Posts
I find it interesting that You placed in the picture quake, Dota 2 and SC2. Hinting at author's view of LoL not being esports  ?
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On January 09 2013 05:41 amazingxkcd wrote:I find it interesting that You placed in the picture quake, Dota 2 and SC2. Hinting at author's view of LoL not being esports ?
FPS
ARTS
RTS
I put Riot in companies of E-Sports in the EPA
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So why isn’t E-Sports a sport? You have the athletes, you have the mimicked atmosphere (just on a smaller scale), what prevents it from being that of sports? Because the game changes. The core game mechanics improve, change, and are bias towards one side or another. In StarCraft, you have three asymmetrical races that have their pros and cons, in ARTS games such as Dota, you have a multitude of heros that interact with one another differently. For FPS games, a variety of guns also means countless approaches towards taking down your opponent. These varied factors help keep the game fresh, new and entertaining. It displays unlimited possibilities that surpass that of sports on a basic ruled level.
Can you elaborate on this? Are you saying that the variety of the game and the flexible nature of the software (updates) leads to variations that are not present in traditional sports?
TBH I think the argument is not even worth having, since we can have the exact same discussion about traditional sports. The discussion is interesting though since it makes people think more about the game and competitive scene.
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"Because video-game(s) can change so much, be improved and become visually stunning, the possibilities to innovate it makes it better than mainstream sports."
is more of an opinion than fact. maybe you think it makes it better than mainstream sports. But that's not by definition so. Besides, there are arguments to be made that the mainstream sports are made better because you see the athlete performing certain task or showcasing certain skill himself, without any kind of peripheral (keyboard/mouse). When you see someone do a 100m sprint, you can appreciate the winner's effort. Where's starcraft is still somewhat of a faceless sport. Yeah you see guys in booths playing the game, but you aren't watching them play (as in looking at their fingers on the mouse/keyboard), you're watching the in-game screen which is not as appealing as watching the actual physical performance of an athlete.
Either way, I still like starcraft and all other competitive games. But I don't think one form of "sport" is better than the other.
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I'm going to bypass all the really obvious reasons why e-sports aren't sports and hit on the one that nobody seems to want to admit.
Sports are not subject to cheese. In a sport there are only strategies. If a strategy could be thought of as unsportsmanlike, it is simply forbidden by the rules. All you have left at that point is a competition based on skill. But in a game like SC2, there are many scenarios where one player can be thought of as immediately at a disadvantage for reasons ultimately unrelated to their skill or preparation. "Juking your opponent with slick meta-mindgames" might be an impressive sounding euphemism for claiming a cheap win at any cost, but it doesn't change the essential nature of the act.
Not that the offending player is to blame for that act. He's just playing the game. But it precludes the game from being a sport. No longer a raw contest of skill, the exercise becomes a guessing game, regardless of how educated those guesses might be.
Think of it this way. In American Football, there is an emphasis on strategy, of trying to predict the moves of the opposite team and acting accordingly. That's fine. But have you seen the video of the team that suddenly stopped playing right after kickoff, walked around slowly acting confused, and then suddenly ran past their opponents into the end zone for some cheap and undeserved points? That's a cheese. And it simply doesn't have a place in any sport where something is on the line.
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Nothing much to add to this discussion, but I would just like to say that this is awesome stuff you're doing, and I enjoy reading each one. Keep it up !
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Traditional sports don't generally get "phased out". Each e-Sport will have a lifespan in terms of money-making viability for those involved. I've never considered eSports to be on par with traditional sports for this very reason. A traditional sport will have its rules modified sometimes, but it never loses its identity or suddenly get replaced by something of the same "genre". Football (soccer) will never be replaced by football 2.0, but every year we will get a new FIFA game, not to mention the Euro and World Cup editions.
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I have to disagree with this argument because traditional sports do in fact change. When you look at minor changes in recent years such as the addition of replay reviews to football or more major changes like with hockey changing rules to increase scoring and speed up the pace of the game, it's clear that even athletic sports evolve and change over time.
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On January 09 2013 05:50 lolmlg wrote:
I'm going to bypass all the really obvious reasons why e-sports aren't sports and hit on the one that nobody seems to want to admit.
Sports are not subject to cheese. In a sport there are only strategies. If a strategy could be thought of as unsportsmanlike, it is simply forbidden by the rules. All you have left at that point is a competition based on skill. But in a game like SC2, there are many scenarios where one player can be thought of as immediately at a disadvantage for reasons ultimately unrelated to their skill or preparation. "Juking your opponent with slick meta-mindgames" might be an impressive sounding euphemism for claiming a cheap win at any cost, but it doesn't change the essential nature of the act.
Not that the offending player is to blame for that act. He's just playing the game. But it precludes the game from being a sport. No longer a raw contest of skill, the exercise becomes a guessing game, regardless of how educated those guesses might be.
Think of it this way. In American Football, there is an emphasis on strategy, of trying to predict the moves of the opposite team and acting accordingly. That's fine. But have you seen the video of the team that suddenly stopped playing right after kickoff, walked around slowly acting confused, and then suddenly ran past their opponents into the end zone for some cheap and undeserved points? That's a cheese. And it simply doesn't have a place in any sport where something is on the line.
I really disagree with you here. In my opinion, sports are subject to cheese. You cite American Football as an example. I think this is a great example against your point, since in football there are all sorts of trick plays: for instance, in a play where the ball is direct-snapped to the running back, the quarterback may fake a fumble, acting confused as if he does not know where the ball went. There are plays like this in baseball as well, where an infielder will pretend that they don't have the ball, while hiding it in the glove. When the base runner steps off the bag, they tag them. Of course, baseball and football are sports if anything is, so if they have "cheese," sports can have "cheese."
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On January 09 2013 05:50 lolmlg wrote:
I'm going to bypass all the really obvious reasons why e-sports aren't sports and hit on the one that nobody seems to want to admit.
Sports are not subject to cheese. In a sport there are only strategies. If a strategy could be thought of as unsportsmanlike, it is simply forbidden by the rules. All you have left at that point is a competition based on skill. But in a game like SC2, there are many scenarios where one player can be thought of as immediately at a disadvantage for reasons ultimately unrelated to their skill or preparation. "Juking your opponent with slick meta-mindgames" might be an impressive sounding euphemism for claiming a cheap win at any cost, but it doesn't change the essential nature of the act.
Not that the offending player is to blame for that act. He's just playing the game. But it precludes the game from being a sport. No longer a raw contest of skill, the exercise becomes a guessing game, regardless of how educated those guesses might be.
Think of it this way. In American Football, there is an emphasis on strategy, of trying to predict the moves of the opposite team and acting accordingly. That's fine. But have you seen the video of the team that suddenly stopped playing right after kickoff, walked around slowly acting confused, and then suddenly ran past their opponents into the end zone for some cheap and undeserved points? That's a cheese. And it simply doesn't have a place in any sport where something is on the line.
American Football has cheese. Ever heard of gimick plays?
Besside, what is unsportsmanlike about a sox pool or a proxy two rax/gate? If you can't defend you don't deserve to win.
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On January 09 2013 05:50 lolmlg wrote:
I'm going to bypass all the really obvious reasons why e-sports aren't sports and hit on the one that nobody seems to want to admit.
Sports are not subject to cheese. In a sport there are only strategies. If a strategy could be thought of as unsportsmanlike, it is simply forbidden by the rules. All you have left at that point is a competition based on skill. But in a game like SC2, there are many scenarios where one player can be thought of as immediately at a disadvantage for reasons ultimately unrelated to their skill or preparation. "Juking your opponent with slick meta-mindgames" might be an impressive sounding euphemism for claiming a cheap win at any cost, but it doesn't change the essential nature of the act.
Not that the offending player is to blame for that act. He's just playing the game. But it precludes the game from being a sport. No longer a raw contest of skill, the exercise becomes a guessing game, regardless of how educated those guesses might be.
Think of it this way. In American Football, there is an emphasis on strategy, of trying to predict the moves of the opposite team and acting accordingly. That's fine. But have you seen the video of the team that suddenly stopped playing right after kickoff, walked around slowly acting confused, and then suddenly ran past their opponents into the end zone for some cheap and undeserved points? That's a cheese. And it simply doesn't have a place in any sport where something is on the line.
You start by thinking cheesy play isn't fair, but cheesy play is an actual strategy.
I don't like being cheesed but if someone 6 pools another person then why would you not give him the win ? There's just no reason for that and your point just isn't valid at all to me.
I mean, you play by the rules, when I watch european football ( like, the real foot getting in contact with a real ball ya know :-p ) there's always players faking injuries, that would be cheesy play, and every spectator just disregards the guy because everyone knows it's made up, but you rarely ever see someone getting punished for that, because just like in starcraft, they're abusing the limits of the game, but they're still in their right
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Starcraft, LoL and DotA are constantly changing. But will that always be the case? SC:BW didn't have many changes, but the maps did have to change to keep the game fresh. Would SC:BW with no map changes be similar to a sport? Could SC2 be considered a sport once Blizzard is done balancing? Will our reliance on map changes to keep the game fresh stop us from reaching the same level as football or basketball?
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A Very interesting read. I liked a lot of the points you made.
One thing I would argue against you is you make it seem that mainstream sports don't ever change, and e-sports is constantly changing. While this feels like it could be true, it's really not.
My example is the offense in the NFL (or just professional AMERICAN[for you foreigners ;p] football), and how it's changed over the years. Starting with the fact that there used to be no passing plays in football, it literally was all rushing...then it changed into a little bit of passing with the emphasis on running, then it changed into a good medium where you use running to open up passing game, then it changed into teams using passing more and more, and now you have teams with spread offenses, only running 1 out of every 4 plays (just to keep defenses honest).
The truth is, every now and then a new player (or more often a coach) comes along who has a different scheme, that completely changes the way American Football is played. This I feel is very comparable to how a different player in e-sports (particularly sc:bw and sc2) comes along and makes new plays that were previously unheard of, and completely changes the game (such as MC and his all-ins, Jaedong with his muta's in sc:bw, or even Taeja with his massive orbital builds)
That being said, i truly enjoyed your article. I'd give it 9/10 (taking a point of for 1 or 2 slight grammatical errors, i know it's stupid but, if you're going to be writing an article grammar should be 100% spot on perfect. This is why there's editors)
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EPT![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/kwkQa.png)
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