A History of Esports

chobopeon

United States7342 Posts

March 26 2012 22:41 GMT

On June 20 2012 11:34 chobopeon wrote:

So I gotta say sorry. I stopped this because I thought it could do much better than just a non-spotlighted post on TL. I do love TL and all but it seemed like it had a lot of potential. I talked to people about putting it on other sites (big, mainstream sites like Gamespot) but nothing has come of that yet. Maybe I'll still do that in the future.

For now, I'm going to keep posting everything here. I've already posted 6 new chapters and I'll keep them coming in the near future. Let me know what you think.

God I hope this doesn't crash that page. Apologies if it does, it has barely been tested.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f8rRLqdYV-8

+ Show Spoiler [An intro] +

Last month, I was peeing in the urinal next to Artosis when we locked eyes and began to speak to one another. All good stories begin like that. Dan acknowledged me by way of saying “Chobopeon! This guy is like the third or forth best journalist in esports!”

Ouch. I used to be cool, right? People used to retweet me, no big deal.

However, after leaving MLG, I fell off the face of the earth. Well, in recent weeks I’ve found my way back to the pale blue dot and back to esports. I’ve been working on The Executives with Jason Lake from Complexity and Odee from Dignitas. Now, I’m getting ready to put out my own content.

“The Chobopeon Show” will premiere this Monday at 7pm Eastern (Midnight CET) with “A History of Esports Part 1”. The episode is an hour long. I’ll release the entire text of the show with the new episode.

For those of you who know radio shows like This American Life and Radiolab, you’ll recognize the big influence those shows are on this new project. For those of you used to Live of 3 and State of the Game, this will be something new for esports. I think you’ll like it.

So, new show on Twitch this Monday. If you can’t make it live, it’s the kind of show you can watch any time. However, if we have enough live viewers, we may take Skype calls and tweets (@chobopeon, duh) for those of you who like talking about esports history.

All in all, this is over 60,000 words dedicated to esports. If you see a mistake or anything you'd like changed, please let me know. I'd love for more relevant images and videos to be added.

If you'd like to translate or repost the thing, please ask first. The text may not fully match the spoken portion because the text is being continuously updated.

All feedback is welcome. Thanks for checking it out.

Every episode will have the text released prior to the stream. You can listen, you can read or you can do both.

Part 1, 1950s-1980s
VOD: Here

“Everybody saw us, kids pointed, cars honked, girls waved. We were gods.”
- Walter Day, creator of the U.S. National Video Game Team in 1983, touring the nation.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JQXiuK-dn7k

+ Show Spoiler [Soundtrack] +

Chris Zabriskie - Wonder Cycle
Chris Zabriskie - I Am A Man Who Will Fight For Your Honor
Macaw - Five Minutes at the Rainforest Cafe
Night Owl - Broke For Free
Ghostly Dust Machine - Ode To A Baby Snowstorm
Plaistow - Cube
Chris Zabriskie - Divider

Introduction

Why do people play video games? Why do they play games competitively, pushing themselves deeper and deeper into a virtual world?

There isn’t one answer. Reasons vary greatly from person to person and you’d have to decode the fibers that make up the individual to know his or her every motivation.

Who knows what leads people to dedicate themselves to mastery of a form like this? This is a form dismissed by millions as a waste of time, enjoyed by millions more still and deeply delved into by only a select few.

Why would a person focus their energy on pushing themselves and their games beyond prescribed limits? Why would hundreds of thousands of fans sit with eyes wide, following the every move of the champion, the one who has dedicated 10,000 hours to be the best?

Let’s start from the top.

Philosopher Bernard Suits gave us the definition of play.

“Playing a game is a voluntary attempt to overcome unnecessary obstacles.”

Why do we do it?

“Games make us happy because they are hard work that we choose for ourselves and it turns out that almost nothing makes us happier than good, hard work,” wrote games researcher Jane McGonigal.

“The opposite of play isn't work, it's depression,” wrote psychologist Brian Sutton-Smith.

“When we're playing a good game, we're actively moving ourselves toward the positive end of the emotional spectrum,” wrote Jane McGonigal in her book Reality is Broken. “We are intensely engaged, and this puts us in precisely the right frame of mind and physical condition to generate all kinds of positive emotions and experiences. All of the neurological systems that underlie happiness -- our attention systems, our reward center, our motivation systems, our emotion and memory centers -- are fully activated by gameplay. This extreme emotional activation is the primary reason why today's most successful computer and video games are so addictive and mood-boosting. When we're in a concentrated state of optimistic engagement, it suddenly becomes more biologically possible for us to think positive thoughts, to make social connections, and to build personal strength. We are actively conditioning our minds and bodies to be happier.”

In esports, as in most areas of the enormous video game industry, the social connections we have created are strengthening and expanding. More than a game, more than a sport and even more than an industry, esports is building a global community of enormous scale and intensity.

“Many of my friends would say, ‘it’s just a game, John, quit it.’ Being here today, people from all over the world being together and sharing this moment is something that politics or money can’t do. It’s a miracle,” said Jun Kyu Park in a speech delivered to a crowd of tens of thousands at the StarCraft 2 Code S finals at BlizzCon 2011.

What starts as simple fun grows and grows until you take the leap from player to competitor to contender to champion to god, through which thousands live vicariously, worship and curse.

What starts as a small group of friends becomes a global community. Despite the stereotypes of the impersonal internet and of the alienated gamer playing alone, the entire world is circled by close friends who play games and build relationships that will last a lifetime.

What starts as a small hobby becomes an international business. Wide-eyed entrepreneurs push millions of dollars this way and that, big-mouthed bullshit artists pedal phony promises on every continent, heroes and villains in suits and ties watch as the industry traverses booms and busts, starts and stops, comings and goings.

What starts as a something small becomes an opportunity for something more. The young kid feeling directionless sees the chance to inject color into his life and tries his hand at professional gaming. The young man who has spent years of his youth in the glow of the computer monitor sees his future in the globe trotting, keyboard smashing, blink-and-you-miss-it world of esports.

How does it begin?

You and the kid next door press start on your favorite game and play for hours, two friends working and figuring every piece of the puzzle out. You introduce it to all the kids at school, start playing against each other and soon you’re fighting to figure out your friend, what makes him or her tick. You spend the day thinking of ways to outsmart, outplay, outdo your friend, your opponent.

When you don’t win, you feel it. When you do win, the rush of blood to your head pays you back tenfold. You’re hooked. Egos are fed as scores climb higher. Every success you have, every kill you make quantifies and proves that you’re moving forward, getting better. Another win, another rush that you might expect to find on the playing field. Now, you find it in the gamer as well.

Viewers see the most talented players in the world mold the games to their will like an artist and are inspired. In competition, gaming presents the ultimate level playing field. For the newbie sporting the same tools and weapons as the professionals, it’s easy to feel intimately connected to the even the greatest minds of our sports.

Great competitors seem to catalyze our awareness of how glorious it is to touch and perceive, think and solve, move through space toward goals and solutions. Granted, what great competitors can do with their bodies and minds are things that the rest of us can only dream of. But these dreams are important — they make up for a lot, wrote David Foster Wallace.

A world-class gamer does this.

Emil Christensen (Heaton) was a 17-year-old Swedish sharpshooter at the turn of the century, a global star in Counter-Strike whose tremendous natural talent and inexplicable ability to bend the game to his will marked a new plateau in Counter-Strike. For a time, he was the face and the screaming voice of the one of most dominant franchises ever. He was also just a kid, happily playing, travelling the world, winning tournaments and building an industry before he was old enough to drink at many competitions.

Ma Jae Yoon (Savior) was a Korean StarCraft champion. Fittingly, he was a messiah for his fans, a man who stubbornly changed the way his game was played at just 19 years old. He won multiple championships with such command, such power that, for many of those who saw him play, Savior still sits alone on the highest plateau. Shortly following his peak, Ma Jae Yoon fell from grace and was soon convicted of throwing matches for money and banned from the game for life.

These are the famed few who have reached the top of their worlds using mental and physical dexterity to push beyond what was thought possible.

The greatest competitors don’t simply win, their victories are a revelation. They blaze new paths and inspire in all the realization that our potential has not been met, not yet. We have not hit a solid wall, we can still move forward. We will still move forward.

Anyway, these games are fun.

+
The Beginning (1950s)

Change comes rapidly now. When looking deep into the past, we can speak in terms of millenniums or centuries. As we near the present, we work in decades. Now, we talk in years, months, weeks, days and hours. We distinguish between individual minutes and seconds and beyond to a degree that no one ever has before.

If the world is growing smaller, perhaps the day is growing longer.

New ideas are being born and made real more rapidly than at any other point during history. Technology is progressing at such a speed that it can look something like a blur. The advent of computers and the internet were both a consequence of and a catalyst for this quickening of the pace.

The more things change, the more they stay the same. We seem to be finding myriads of new and better ways to satisfy our age old needs. How will dinner get to my table? Will water flow where it ought to? Will I be getting laid? If all of the above go well for you tonight, chances are that modern technology had a part to play somewhere.

Then perhaps it should be of no surprise that we also use our new arsenal of ideas to satisfy another long-held disposition of ours: we are bent to compete.

Computers, increasingly powerful and dynamic, are but the latest theater of war for the human mind. Video games seem like the perfect arena in which to compete and the speed with which we began competing on the medium reflects that.

At the very least, competitive gaming can trace its near progenitors back to pinball, slot machines and novelty games in the arcades. Think of a pistol game which you might now see at an old amusement park. Coin operated games predate video games and were big business long before pixels and power ups were involved.

With a bit more ambition, we can also bring games such as chess into the conversation about competitive gaming’s roots. After all, in the early 1950s, chess became one of the first interactive games programmed onto a “regular” computer of the time as opposed to a machine dedicated entirely to playing chess which dates back to the early 1920s. Major computer scientists of the time such as Alan Turing and Claude Shannon believed that having a computer beat a human at chess would signal a milestone in computing, the ultimate goal being artificial intelligence.

Following were games such as Nim (a math-heavy parlor game developed in Britain on the aptly named NIMROD computer in 1951) and OXO (that’s Tic-Tac-Toe or Noughts and Crosses, written in Cambridge in 1952).

They impressed. Nim was called “the electric brain”. Although the games were functional (albeit the player only competes against the computer, i.e. the designers) and fun, their popularity was limited by the fact that they could not be played except on their enormous, unwieldy machines of origin. These games were to be found in no homes, only universities, labs and select technical work spaces.

Nim and OXO were created as a means to an end. Nim, because of its math-heavy play, was used to illustrate the NIMROD’s mathematical prowess and practical applications. OXO conveyed the power of the first computer (EDSAC) to use RAM (“memory which users could read, add or remove information from,” wrote Tristan Donovan in Replay).

Both games were viewed at the time as mostly unimportant in and of themselves, only tools of research and then conveyance of their machine’s power.

In 1958, American physicist William Higinbotham developed Tennis for Two, a simple two-player tennis game. Unlike its predecessors, Tennis for Two was created specifically to entertain, to cure the boredom of visitors to the Brookhaven National Laboratory, a nuclear research facility in Long Island, New York where Higinbotham worked. Higinbotham died regretting that he’d be remembered for his invention of a game rather than for his work in the nuclear nonproliferation movement.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6PG2mdU_i8k

Unlike the much later Pong, Tennis for Two used a side perspective instead of a top-down one. It had a net and was able to recognize the velocity-decreasing effect that net had when the ball hit it. The lights of the ball, net and court pulsed an eerie bright white, characteristic of the game’s display monitor dubbed the oscilloscope, a tool which observes signal voltages and was normally used to maintain electronics and assist in laboratory work.

Tennis for Two, a milestone in that it allowed direct competition between two players, faded forgotten into the background for decades. The game was played only twice in its original run, on two consecutive Visitor’s Days at the lab to cure the lucky tourist’s boredom. On those days, it was reported that hundreds of curious would-be gamers lined up for a chance to hit the ball back and forth, back and forth.

In 1960, computers began to speed forward. Simultaneously, they became more powerful, smaller, able to store more data, do it more efficiently and display it all more clearly than ever before.

The world spun into the 1960s unaware that in the early years of the decade, the computing universe would be caught in the considerable gravity of a particularly dense star in the middle of the screen on their PDP-1 computers.

Caught in the gravity with them were two spaceships at war, fighting to the death along with the enthralled players who controlled them.

+
Spacewar! (1962)

In 1962, the first shooter burst into existence.

Spacewar! was created at MIT by a team of four (led by Steve Russell, one of the great patriarchs of video games) from the Tech Model Railroad Club (TMRC), one of the earliest hot spots of hacker culture.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rmvb4Hktv7U

Here’s how Steward Brand of Rolling Stone described the game in 1972: “Rudimentary Spacewar consists of two humans, two sets of control buttons or joysticks, one TV-like display and one computer. Two spaceships are displayed in motion on the screen, controllable for thrust, yaw, pitch and the firing of torpedoes. Whenever a spaceship and torpedo meet, they disappear in an attractive explosion.”

The 1up.com staff summed the game’s significance up in this way: “A far cry from Pong's primitive take on ping-pong, Spacewar was complex and detailed, and had much more in common with Asteroids and even Descent than with Pong. Granted, it was a monochromatic space adventure with stark graphics and no sound -- a mere shadow of the detailed 3D worlds of contemporary first-person shooters -- but it introduced concepts which guide the game developers and fans alike even 40 years later. For such an early foray into interactive gaming, it was an amazing feat.”

The game featured an accurate star map in the background, a “realistic physics model governed by gravity and inertia,” wrote the 1up team, and responsive units which made the player’s tactical decisions and quick reflexes truly important.

The game was a considerable technical achievement.

Also impressive were its cultural firsts. Spacewar was an active collaboration, continuously being updated and improved by anyone with the will and know how to do so. It was the world’s first open source game.

Eventually, it was included as a diagnostic in every PDP-1 computer, a relatively prolific machine about the size of a car. Spacewar, which pioneered deathmatch gameplay (a term not coined until the 90s with Doom) as well as free-for-alls (FFA) and team play as the game expanded, was found in front of the smiling faces of hundreds and thousands of players, mainly students, computer scientists, technicians and gamers of similarly specialized occupations.

In labs across the country, such as Standford’s Artificial Intelligence Laboratory in 1972, Spacewar competitions were organized. The Spacewar Olympics, a mixed competition (including five player FFAs, 2v2s and 1v1s) was chronicled in Rolling Stone. There were no particularly grand prizes here, only pride and pizza, besting your rival and beer. Oh, and a year’s subscription to Rolling Stone in its heyday. Not bad.

These gamers, mostly brilliant computer heads unknowingly leading the way toward modernity, were doing something as old as games themselves: bonding over competition, not to mention profound innovation.

Reporting on the International Spacewar Olympics Brand continued in Rolling Stone, "Reliably, at any time moment (i.e. non-business hours) in North America hundreds of computer technicians are effectively out of their bodies, locked in life or death space combat computer projected onto cathode ray tube display screens, for hours at a time, ruining their eyes, numbing their fingers in frenzied mashing of control buttons, joyously slaying their friend and wasting their employers valuable computer time."

Continued the article: “The hackers are the technicians of this science - ‘It's a term of derision and also the ultimate compliment.’ They are the ones who translate human demands into code that the machines can understand and act on. They are legion. Fanatics with a potent new toy. A mobile new-found elite, with its own apparat, language and character, its own legends and humor. Those magnificent men with their flying machines, scouting a leading edge of technology which has an odd softness to it; outlaw country, where rules are not decree or routine so much as the starker demands of what's possible.”

Although computers remained the domain of government, academics and industry for most of Spacewar’s natural lifespan, the game became exceedingly popular wherever it went. Spacewar spread to other academic research centers within weeks. Other schools began to put their own twists on the game such as score keeping, anchored invisibility, team games and much more. Meanwhile, MIT kept updating their baby as well.

The game appeared in a college coffee shop for .25 cents per play under the name Galaxy Game and then elsewhere as Computer Space. It was the first coin-operated video game thus beginning the story which would lead to the arcade explosion in the coming decades. These games were well received by those familiar with computers but were deemed too complicated for the general public. It showed up on the internet precursor ARPAnet. The first makeshift joysticks were constructed for this game at MIT according to The Dot Eaters, a video game historical website.

Spacewar is one of, if not the single most important video game of all time. It was not the first video game but it was the first which began to resemble its progeny in significant ways. The gameplay, visuals, innovative conceptualization, a multiplayer experience with depth and replayability, open culture and every bit in between marks this as a milestone in video games, esports, technology and science. Big picture or small, Spacewar is monumentally significant.

As soon as the opportunity to compete was there, gamers played deep into the night. The game was intermittently banned at various university research centers and major companies such as IBM before inevitably being allowed reentry. Things were dull without it. Complaints from workers pushed management to allow play. Official work was not being done while the game was played but minds were at work nonetheless.

+
Ralph Baer, The Father of Video Games (1972)

In May 1972, the first home video game console was released: The Magnavox Odyssey. Ralph Baer, called “the father of video games” by IGN, designed the console by starting from a solid idea he had had as early as 1951 while working with televisions. He realized that user interactivity with the machine was possible, desirable and marketable.

The Odyssey sold approximately 330,000 units before it was discontinued in 1975, an end generally credited to somewhat poor and confusing marketing of the system and its capabilities as well as prohibitively high prices. However, the Odyssey continued to make money for Magnavox as it won court cases and settlements against major companies such as Nintendo, Mattell, Activision and, most famously, Atari for their creation of Pong.

Baer with his Pong before Pong

David Winter at Pong-Story.com explains: “After founding Atari on 27th June 1972, [Nolan] Bushnell [the President of Atari] and Alan Alcorn (his first employee) designed the famous prototype of their PONG arcade machine. Once finished a couple months later, it was placed on trial in a local bar called Andy Capp's Cavern in Sunnyvale [California]. Later in 1974, the arcade video game business having flourished, Magnavox filed a lawsuit for patent infringement against Seeburg, Bally-Midway and Atari. Although Bushnell insisted that he didn't copy the Ping-Pong (Tennis) game of the Odyssey, Federal District Court judge John F. Grady was not convinced that Bushnell had designed PONG before attending the [public] Odyssey demonstration [much earlier].”

The Odyssey’s ping pong game led directly to the release of Pong, one of the most influential and famous games of all time.

+
Pong (1972)

Computer Space was the world’s first commercially sold coin-operated video game. Galaxy Game, offering essentially the same experience, was never commercially sold, appearing only at Stanford University. Computer Space played a version of the massively influential Spacewar but was deemed a failure by its designer, Nolan Bushnell, because “it was a little too complicated for the guy with the beer in the bar.”

In 1972, Bushnell created Atari. The company’s first project was ostensibly a warm up project to get programmer Alan Alcorn used to working with video games. It was profoundly simple. Two paddles (divided into subsections allowing a player to change the ball’s angle of return), a ball (whose speed increased with every rally) and an inconsequential line symbolizing but not acting as a net were all the parts required to create the world’s first blockbuster video game: Pong.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pDrRnJOCKZc

Pong’s success was immediate. At a local bar, the first machine malfunctioned a week and a half after it was installed due to an overflow of quarters. Pong spread throughout the country as a pay-to-play machine. Magnavox’s Ralph Baer took Atari to court for essentially cloning his game. Baer won a settlement but all sources point to the payout (a one time licensing fee of $700,000 according to Replay by Tristan Donovan) being minuscule in the face of Atari’s dramatic growth into a multibillion dollar business shortly thereafter. On top of that, the settlement stipulated that Atari then held exclusive rights to the game. Bushnell had completed a coup.

Pong’s popularity exploded. As it swept the nation in bars and other public spaces, Atari machines accounted for only a fraction of all Pong machines (various sources report between 10% and 30%). For want of skilled labor, Atari could not keep up with growing demand or stop competitors from releasing clones. They found themselves raiding local unemployment offices and hiring everyone in sight, paying unskilled laborers almost minimum wage. Upper management and the rank and file alike became notorious for the company’s disorganized atmosphere complete with drug use, constant parties and theft.
Many companies, most notably Apple and Nintendo, would in the future simply make clones of the game and take a piece of the fast growing video game pie for themselves over the next decade. After Atari’s success, Magnavox fought vigorously in court against many of the companies producing knock-offs. The Odyssey had its best year ever as Pong’s success spread.

As Atari seemed incapable of producing enough machines to fulfill demand and had no interest in numerous lengthy and less than certain legal battles, Bushnell and Atari instead created a new market.

“We tried to be fast and out-innovate the competition,” said Bushnell in The Ultimate History of Video Games.

The console version, Home Pong, was built and distributed in 1975. Marketed and priced brilliantly, it is essentially wholly responsible for the home console market that survives and thrives to this day. While it took the Magnavox Odyssey years to sell 100,000 units, Home Pong sold 150,000 units in a single season according to The Ultimate History of Video Games.

Pong is almost solely responsible for introducing America to video games, to the idea of playing and directly competing via games on a screen. It is an incredibly simple game, very probably ripped right from Magnavox’s Tennis game released only months prior, but Bushnell’s prowess allowed his creation, his company and his empire to succeed where others had failed.

Arcades and consoles alike can trace their ancestry right back to Pong. Truth be told, the entire video game industry owes the ugly little box called Home Pong a debt of gratitude. The simple but infectious game was where it all took off. It was the beginning of an era.

+
Atari’s Prolific Peak (1972)

Pong (released in 1972) spawned an industry. “By September 1974, 100,000 coin-operated video games were in operation around the US, raking in $250 million a year,” wrote Tristan Donovan in Replay.

Meanwhile, Atari, which would become the fastest growing company in American history up to that point, attempted to move beyond it to other games. Although they continued to pump out Pong clones like the rest of the industry, Atari also created a maze game called Gotcha (which inspired Pac-Man), a racing game called Trak 10 and numerous other unsung games which often invented genres and were then unceremoniously forgotten by the public at large for a time.

As the video game industry grew, competition within the industry intensified. Competition within games followed shortly thereafter.

In 1974, an Atari subsidiary dubbed Kee Games produced Tank. It was simple: a player controlled a tank and fought his opponent while avoiding walls and mines. The visuals were unadorned, the gameplay was clean and quick. It was a hit.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3OsBUzYBJgU

The last game Bushnell would create at Atari was called Breakout, a single player remix of Pong: twist one paddle 90 degrees to the bottom of the screen, replace the other with a wall of colorful bricks and let the ball break out of the wall. Voilà: another hit.

Steve Jobs, an employee at Atari who was already hard at work developing the Apple II with Steve Wozniak by this point, played an integral role by bringing Wozniak in to attempt to minimize the cost of the hardware for the new game.

As the medium moved forward, ground breaking ideas were passing nearly unnoticed by the world.

+
The First Person Shooter (1974)

MIT’s Tech Model Railroad Club was home to 1962’s landmark video game Spacewar! on the PDP-1 computer. This game is but one important step in the tradition of home computing.

While arcade manufacturers dealt with the often cutthroat market reality, those in academia had the liberty to imagine and develop freely without actively worrying about the bottom line.

The 70s saw a number of experiments in computer gaming, some of no consequence and some advancing the medium permanently.

Text simulations such as Eliza (a 1966 game that simulated a conversation with a psychiatrist), Adventure (a 1976 text based adventure game) and, famously, Zork (a 1977 fantasy adventure) advanced ‘natural language’, the computer’s ability to use and communicate in language understandable by the layman.

In 1974, the first steps were taken toward first-person shooters (FPS). The FPS is a genre that has come to represent some of the most financially, critically and competitively successful titles of all time.

The advent of the genre came with two 1974 titles: Maze War and Spasim.
Maze War allowed one or multiple players (represented by floating eyes and connected via Ethernet) to travel through a large maze and attempt to find and kill opponents.
Spasim (short for space simulation) was a 32-player flight simulator played over the PLATO Network at several American universities.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7chDIySXK2Q

These games represent pioneering efforts in video games as well as computer networking. Both were chiefly academic rather than commercial pursuits. Young interns wrote Maze War at NASA’s Ames Research Center. Spasim was written at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign.

Maze War creator Steve Colley described the development of his game:

“In 1973 I was trying to do simple 3D displays on the Imlac PDS-1. The first one I did was a simple rotating cube in which the hidden lines of the wireframe cube were removed. The complexity was in doing the sines and cosines on a slow machine with no multiply or divide.

“A little later I had the idea of doing a maze where you were actually in the maze. To keep it simple, it had an array of 16X16 bits to define the maze. I worked out how to display the halls of the maze with perspective (apparently unchanged to today), and it worked quite fast so you could quickly move around in the maze. There was no way to display an overview of the maze, and you were to simply explore the maze and ‘solve’ it. I had several different maze designs, and it was surprising how quickly you could learn them.

“Maze was popular at first but quickly became boring. Then someone (Howard or Greg) had the idea to put people in the maze. To do this would take more than one Imlac, which at that time were not networked together. So we connected two Imlacs using the serial ports to transmit locations back and forth. This worked great, and soon the idea for shooting each other came along, and the first person shooter was born.”

Kristin Reed at VideoGamesDaily.com wrote this about the two trailblazing games:

“Although their wireframe graphics and slow frame rates make them look extremely primitive even by early videogame [sic] standards, they nevertheless provided a few lucky students with a glimpse into an entertainment future that would engross millions.”

Although the genre’s immediate impact in the gaming industry was limited (NASA did find uses for it), the 1980s saw adoption and experimentation with the idea. It would take almost 20 years for the genre to explode in the 1990s.

+
The Fighter (1976)

In 1976, the fighting game genre began to emerge.

Heavyweight Champ, a black and white arcade title by Sega, is widely credited as the first side-scrolling fighter.

Spanner Spencer at EuroGamer.net wrote this about the game:

“SEGA, at the time, seemed to concentrate more on developing imaginative control systems rather than gameplay (something which has certainly worked for Nintendo recently, it must be said). The black and white boxing game employed two ‘boxing glove’ controllers (one each for the two players) which moved up and down for high and low punches, with an inward movement for striking. While the controllers were a decent enough gimmick, the actual on-screen match wasn't much more than an unresponsive cross between a Punch & Judy performance and a pixellated episode of the Black & White Minstrel Show.”

From here, there was little cause to immediately celebrate in the genre but a few swings and misses. Eventually, the early 1980s would see the growth and evolution of a genre which would rise to primacy in the early 90s.

+
Consoles (1976)

In 1976, Coleco released the Telstar console and sold over $100 million worth of units according to The Ultimate History of Video Games. Fourteen different models of the Telstar were manufactured, each coming with its own set of games, all of which were knock offs of prior hits such as Pong and Tank. Pong itself warranted almost two dozen variants.

In August 1976, the oft forgotten Fairfield Channel F was released. The Channel F was the first console that used game cartridges thus allowing gamers access to a much wider variety of games on a single console, an innovation that would leave an indelible mark on the industry. All the major players in the industry aimed to match the achievement in the next generation of releases.

This point marks a period of some stagnation in the video game industry. Coin-operated profits were falling and interest in home consoles (or “TV games”) seemed to slow. Steve Jobs, soon to be a much bigger player, left Atari to start Apple. The stock market and the American economy slowed in a big way. The future of the industry and of the medium itself was unsure. Would video games last?

Atari was sold to Warner Communications for $28 million while keeping Bushnell and the rest of the team on board. In 1977, the company was developing the Atari Video Computer System (the VCS, retroactively named the Atari 2600). Electronics company RCA released Studio II and Magnavox’s Odyssey 2 hit the market in September. Bally and Allied Leisure announced their own entries into the race.

In October, the VCS hit the American public. With it, the gaming joystick hit home consoles and the idea of varying difficulty levels made its debut. Despite these innovations, sales were lackluster around the entire industry during that holiday season. Over the course of the next year, Bushnell repeatedly clashed with and was then dismissed by Warner leadership.

+
Space Invaders (1978)

Over the next few years, however, the VCS became increasingly popular and would become a multibillion-dollar business for Atari. One key catalyst for the system’s success was the game Space Invaders.

Space Invaders began as a 1978 arcade game in Japan. The strange but true story goes like this: although the game caught on slowly, by the time Space Invaders truly became huge in Japan (with over 100,000 machines in operation), the government mint had to increase coin production because of a national shortage credited in large part to the arcade phenomenon.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=437Ld_rKM2s

It was the first blockbuster to originate in Japan, a country which would eventually and for some time take a leading role in the video game explosion. When the game came to America, it enjoyed more success.

Space Invaders is a no-win, single player game. Its gameplay and graphics are simple. In many ways, it differs deeply from the major esports titles of today. But in the golden age of arcades (the first half of the 1980s), this set the stage for the competitive gaming of the era. The personal struggles for high scores, which would be chronicled by organizations like Twin Galaxies and shown to the world in movies such as King of Kong, began with this game.

This is a title that inspired countless remakes, sequels and knock-offs. Gaming royalty such as Shigeru Miyamoto, the man behind icons such as Mario, Donkey Kong, Zelda, Star Fox and more, credit Space Invaders with first interesting him in video games.
“Space Invaders played the biggest role in revitalizing the coin-operated business,” wrote Steve Kent in the Ultimate History of Video Games.

It also marked the start of the meteoric rise of arcade games.

The years 1978 (the year Space Invaders was released), 1979 (Asteroids, Galaxian) and 1980 (Pac-Man, Defender, Rally-X) saw the arcade business blossom into a multibillion-dollar industry.

+
Rise of Online Gaming (1970s, 1980s)

As the arcades, hand held games and home consoles caught fire and the gaze of the public in the 1970s, the computer - the machine on which video games were born - advanced steadily if quietly.

The internet, the raison d’etre of modern competitive gaming, has been a computer gaming mainstay for decades.

The roots of the internet extend back into the Cold War world of the 1950s. After the USSR launched Sputnik, the United States responded in several major ways. In addition to the launching of the space race, the Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA, later renamed DARPA after adding Defense to the name), an arm of the US military, worked with MIT to network computers in the interest of national defense. This was ARPAnet.

In the 1960s, the PLATO network (Programmed Logic for Automated Teaching Operations) was launched to aid educators. By the 1970s, games such as the FPS Spasim were using the network for its own purposes.

The game MUD (Multi User Dungeon) came into the world in 1978 in Essex University in England. From the original game, an eponymous genre emerged.

As defined by Wikipedia, a MUD game “is a multiplayer real-time virtual world described primarily in text. MUDs combine elements of role-playing games, hack and slash, player versus player, interactive fiction and online chat.”

The game was connected by the school to ARPAnet in 1980, marking a milestone in online gaming and paving the way for massively multiplayer online role-playing games or MMORPGs.

1977 saw the release of the Apple II, the Commodore PET and the TRS-80. These three products kick started the era of personal computing, ending the previous era in which computers were found almost exclusively in academia, industry or government. As the public adopted personal computing with some zeal, they immediately agreed upon at least one use for the new machine in their homes: gaming.

With the personal computer arriving in homes in droves, the domain of game creation was expanded hugely. No longer was the world of video game creation the exclusive domain of elite schools such as MIT or of private industry. Game design took place in living rooms and basements now. Clever computer-heads were designing games for the Apple II in their rooms instead of doing their high school geometry homework. With will and wit, regular people could become virtual gods, creating great works whose influence can be strongly felt today.

As Tristan Donovan wrote in Replay, “Few of them had any idea they were building an industry.”

While a great number started with relatively modest means and profound business naivete, many of these passionate designers would become legends in the video game world. Of course, some would become quite rich while they were at it.

The 1980s would see the internet and its games advance further down the road toward modernity.

Maze War, the FPS created at NASA’s Ames Research Center, was advancing peer-to-peer gaming.

Bulletin Board System (BBS) gaming was on the rise in 1984. Seminal games such as Trade Wars 2002 allowed players from around the world to dial up and log in to the host for a limited number of turns in order to advance themselves toward goals, whether that be galactic dominance or slaying a dragon.

PCWorld.com named Trade Wars 2002 the number ten best PC game of all time, saying, “For a surprising number of people, Trade Wars 2002 is the greatest PC game they’ve never heard of.”

The magazine continues on to trace a direct lineage to MMO darling EVE Online, saying that it is a modern 3D version of Trade Wars.

Also in 1984, the MAD game (Multi Access Dungeon, in fact a MUD itself) was accessible to anyone with a connection to BITNET, a cooperative network formed by Yale University and the City University of New York in the USA.

In 1984, Time Magazine named the personal computer the “Machine of the Year”, replacing the man of the year and marking the ascent of the PC.

It would not be until the 1990s that the public finally adopted online gaming wholeheartedly. This took place thanks to games such as Doom, Quake and Neverwinter Nights.

The games from the 70s and 80s that preceded those legendary titles are often forgotten but the visionaries who created them laid the foundation for some of the most important technological advancements of our era both inside games and out.

+
The Golden Age of Arcades (1980s)

With the release of several key blockbusters, a “Golden Age” of arcade gaming was in full swing at the beginning of the 1980s.

Arcades were opening by the hundreds and thousands throughout the United States as well as in Europe and Japan. They became places of congregation for youth and sources of growing profit for those in the game business. Arcades were more visible than ever in pop culture, even scoring a Billboard hit with “Pac-Man Fever” by Buckner & Garcia that sold over 1 million records.

Tens of thousands of arcades existed in America as the golden age kicked off. According to Play Meter Magazine, over a million machines were operating within the country.

Often dimly lit but for the bright screens and the glowing machines, arcades in the golden age of the 1980s were the electric and neon colored Forum Magnums for the modern adolescent Americans of the day, centers of their teenage lives and everything that came with it: socializing, truancy, a watchful eye from the police, young friendship, community, animosity and, yes, competition.

As arcades and gaming became more popular, the thrill of playing in front of crowds lit a fire under competitors. The race to high scores on a variety of games heated up while game developers and manufacturers took notice.

In 1981, Atari sponsored several major tournaments. In October, a national record for Asteroids was set in Manhattan (118,740 according to vidgame.info) at a sanctioned competition.

Later that month, Atari's ill-conceived Coin-Op $50,000 World Championship in Chicago drew a lackluster 250 competitors (some sources report even lower numbers) when over 10,000 were expected. The poor planning and thoughtless expectation of profit was one of the clearest signs of a bloated company leading the video game industry, the blind leading the blind.

Rumor has it that Atari’s prize checks bounced. It would not be the last time that happened in competitive gaming.

Despite the dud championship event, attempts to kick start competitive gaming continued.

In 1981, Iowan arcade owner Walter Day began his Twin Galaxies scoreboard and became the de facto scorekeeper, rule setter and enforcer for American competitive gaming during the era. With the help of game developers, Day’s fame rose and within a few months of opening up, he was receiving over 50 calls per day about high score claims. By 1983 and 1984, Day was organizing teams, competitions and recording high scores for the Guinness Book of World Records

“The public and media were fascinated by video games,” said Walter Day as quoted in Replay. “The media, in particular, was amazed by players who could actually beat the games. It was this perception of ‘man versus machine’ that made many news stories so intriguing to the public.”

Twin Galaxies became the authority on and the face of competitive gaming in the 1980s. On November 7, 1982, LIFE Magazine took an iconic photo of the best video game players in the world standing atop their games of choice. The photo was taken on a street outside of the Twin Galaxies arcade in Ottumwa, Iowa, the self-proclaimed video game capital of the world. Walter Day is quoted as having said, “Having the video game capital here among the hogs has a certain charm.” The picture has come to be seen as the most important video game photo of the era and one of the most important of all time.

The gamers and games included in the photo are Sam Blackburn (Eagle), Jeff Brandt (Donkey Kong, Jr.), Michael Buck (Carnival), Leo Daniels (Tempest), Eric Ginner (Moon Patrol), Ben Gold (Stargate), Jeff Landin (Jungle King), Mike Lepkosky (Ms. Pac-Man), Billy Mitchell (Centipede), Doug Nelson (Pac-Man), Darren Olsen (Centipede), Mark Robichek (Tutankham), Steve Sanders (Donkey Kong), Ned Troid (Defender), Todd Walker (Joust) and Joel West (Bezerk).

Walter Day assisted the American television show That’s Incredible! in organizing the 1983 North American Video Game Challenge, one of the first and certainly the most well-known gaming championship at the time. The competition’s format was a strange approach to a strange problem. Five unrelated single-player games were played, scores were “normalized” and compared. The 1983 television event featured the players running in between games and toward a finish line. The program has since become immortalized in video game history.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zO3ctKcI8Kg

In 1983, the U.S. National Video Game Team and the Video Game Masters Tournament were created by Twin Galaxies which was “financially hurting and in need of a PR home run” according to Day. The goal was producing and tracking world records for the Guinness Book of World Records. In a 44’ bus complete with some of the most popular arcade machines on the planet, a set of mattresses stuck wherever they would fit (one of several cost-saving measures taken by the team) and a single driver (that would be Walter Day who described the long bus ride as a “strenuous ordeal”), the American all-star team set out from the crowd gathered to bid them farewell to tour the nation, promoting themselves and their games.

“The idea was alluring,” wrote Day. “Imagine the commotion that would ensue when a professional team of video game players rode into town! We were, essentially, video game drifters, taking Ottumwa’s ‘Dodge City of Video Games’ concept on the road to challenge any players foolish enough to risk their quarters on a game with us.
“Yes, I was excited to be the first person in the world to be the captain of his own professional video game team and tour across the country. A professional video game team would, I hoped, be the draw that would get us all signed to TV contracts – or at least bring in sponsorship monies from the manufacturers.”

The bus broke down early and often. No one on the bus got enough sleep. The team received a crash course by fire in dealing with the media, many representatives of which were curious enough to cover several tour stops.

“Driving across Ohio in daylight, with our U.S. National Video Game Team emblems flapping, was a great high,” wrote Day. “Everybody saw us, kids pointed, cars honked, girls waved. We were gods.”

The bus would eventually die. The replacement car followed it to the grave after a frantically driven 8,000 miles and an unceremonious death in the Arizona desert. Hospital visits and run-ins with the law followed but so too did visits with Sega and with Nintendo of America who consulted with players on the team concerning their games. The team continued playing and promoting up and down the west coast of America.

The team took all comers. According to Walter Day, his kids never lost.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R2SnbcUy2zw

As would become a common theme in competitive gaming even into the present, those involved with the tour have been called hustlers as much as gamers. When one reads about the sleepless nights, the burnt out engines and the exhausted and triumphant group appearing on national television a number of times, it’s easy to see why.

With video games gaining more and more popularity, the group of gamer champions was featured in passing in magazines and television shows, gaining exposure and fame beyond what any of the young men (the oldest being 20 at the time of the photo) had previously achieved.

The clash of egos and personalities that would ensue over the next forty years between individuals in and around this group has been the subject of much curiosity, most notably culminating in two well-received but sometimes controversial documentaries in 2007: “King of Kong: A Fistful of Quarters” and “Chasing Ghosts: Beyond the Arcade.”

Despite the significant amount of media attention focused around the group of top arcade gamers, making something close to a living off of video games remained a dream for most involved. It was largely a young man’s adventure: alcohol, groupies, games and attention were in abundant supply for the young group. Money was not.

“The fact is everyone wanted to do it for a living,” said Billy Mitchell in the 2008 Frag documentary, “and the truth is nobody did.”

Tournaments and competitions were ephemeral at best. Even as media personalities discussed and marveled at this new phenomenon of professional video game playing, it would be hard to argue that it actually existed.

At this point, professional gaming was a ghost much talked about but never seen.

+

Part 2, 1980s-1995

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vJoNAIVqTyE
+
Battlezone (1980)

1980 saw the release of Battlezone by Atari, a tank warfare game. If Maze Wars and Spasim invented the first-person shooter genre, Battlezone is what brought it to the attention of the American public.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ctr54kopo8I

1up.com summed it up, writing, “While [Atari Programmer and Battlezone Designer Ed] Rotberg probably can't be credited with creating the [FPS] idea, it was his tank game which set the standard. Battlezone was a case of the right game at the right time: an innovative step forward in game design offered to a public hungry for something new and sophisticated. Early games were in a lot of ways a learning process for gamers as much as for the designers who made them; as arcade-goers mastered basic gameplay concepts, they graduated to more intricate forms of action.”

In introducing admittedly basic 3D FPS gameplay, Battlezone set the stage for the mammoth genre that produced blockbuster after blockbuster in the 1990s and 2000s and would become the premiere esports genre in the Western world for much of that time.

One of the most talked-about anecdotes surrounding the popular game started when retired American generals contacted Atari about creating a version of the game to help train soldiers. The game’s designer, Ed Rotberg, was profoundly displeased with the attention he received from the military.

“You’ve got to remember what things were like in the late 1970s, and where those of us who were in the business came from - our cultural background,” he said in The Ultimate History of Video Games. “Those of us who found our way to video games … it was sort of a counter-culture thing. We didn’t want anything to do with the military.”

Nonetheless, Military Battlezone, a much more realistic and complex version of the game, was created much to the consternation of Rotberg.

The FPS was gaining the attention and the money of the video game playing world and, whether it liked it or not, beyond.

+
Hello, Nintendo (1981)

In 1981, a small Japanese games company struggled to establish a foothold in the American market. After several failures, their American salesmen were on the brink of bankruptcy. With funds extremely low, Nintendo brought Donkey Kong to America.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uVy5aqX2g1Q

The game, the first creation of Shigeru Miyamoto, would go on to sell 67,000 units according to Eddie Adlum of RePlay Magazine. It became a cultural phenomenon in the United States. “Do the Donkey Kong” by Buckner & Garcia, of “Pac-Mac Fever” fame, hit #103 on the Billboard charts.

The game’s success was huge and its legacy is immense.

It is the first appearance of Donkey Kong and Mario, two of the most iconic video game characters of all time. It was the launching pad for Nintendo of America, a company which would be a major player and then come to dominate American and global video games in several years. It began the game design career of Shigeru Miyamoto, a man who reigns as arguably the most important and respected designer of all time.

After a string of misses, the major hit Donkey Kong laid the foundation for the originality, playfulness and overall aesthetic that would come to define Nintendo’s games. Later, Donkey Kong would also significantly help the cause of Nintendo’s first home console, the release of which ranks high on a list of the most important moments in video game history.

Like many of the hit games at the time, it became a major focus of competitive gamers striving to earn a high score and a world record. The struggle to claim supremacy continues today: recent record-breaking performances were chronicled in the 2007 documentary “King of Kong: A Fistful of Quarters.”

Billy Mitchell (born 1965) is a golden age legend. Mitchell’s gaming accomplishments include the first perfect game of Pac-Man, high scores in games such as Donkey Kong Jr., BurgerTime and Centipede and being dubbed the greatest arcade gamer of all time and the greatest gamer of the century by major media outlets and, most often, by himself. Mitchell, a Massachusetts native, held the world record for Donkey Kong with a score of 874,300 for over two decades.

His showy blend of arrogance, confidence and ultra-competitive behavior has made him a celebrity and, often, a villain in the competitive gaming world and beyond. He is almost certainly the first of his kind, a man who attracted wider attention not just for his gaming but for being a self-aggrandizing player, a self-promotional workhorse and an intelligently self-forged commodity in and of himself.

Billy Mitchell was one of two main characters featured in King of Kong. Steve Wiebe, the other featured competitor in the film and a major rival of Mitchell’s, would finally break Mitchell’s record by almost 200,000 with a score of 1,049,100 in 2007.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xMJZ-_bJKdI

The popularity of the Wiebe/Mitchell rivalry has survived despite both players’ scores being surpassed by New Yorker Hank Chien.

The personal dynamic between Wiebe and Mitchell is so engaging and dramatic that Seth Gordon, the director of King of Kong, said, in an interview with TheFilmlot.com, that the “archetypes of Darth Vader and Luke Skywalker are very present … It’s unbelievable. Billy is such a good gamer that when he’s finished beating the games, he moves on to play games with people.”

This rivalry has helped renew and sustain interest in competitive gaming for classic arcade games through multiple decades.

+
The bust (1984)

The greatest hit of the golden age of video games was 1981’s Ms. Pac-Man, a sped up version of the original game (Pac-Man) with extra mazes, smarter ghosts and a female protagonist. It became one of the best selling games in arcade history and one of the biggest challenges for those gamers who wanted to compete.

Billy Mitchell’s 1985 high score of 230,020 was not broken for 11 years. Abdner Ashman set the latest record in 2006 at 933,580 according to Twin Galaxies.

Starting in 1982, the arcade business began to stagnate and then decline. Once more, interest in video games seemed to tail off.

The home console business was becoming crowded. Activision was formed when several designers at Atari left over compensation and credit issues, problems that were all too common in the growing industry. When Activision began to create games for Atari’s VCS, the ensuing court action and Activision victory led to the legitimization of third party publishing and can claim partial credit (but only partial, as first party publishers did more than their fair share) for the eventual flood of the market with games of notoriously poor quality.

Activision themselves were unqualified successes, quickly becoming the fastest growing company in U.S. history. Poetically, Activision took that crown from their former bosses and rivals at Atari.

In fact, as the market flooded and sales slowed, some of the most critically successful games of the era were released. However, they seemed to be the exception to a growing trend. In response to the rapid growth of the video game industry over recent years, developers rushed to release as many products as possible to exploit the new source of profit.
Many games were objectively terrible ideas from the start.

“Purina created a game titled Chase the Chuck Wagon, a video-game version of a television commercial for Chuck Wagon dog food,” wrote Steve Kent in The Ultimate History of Video Games. That is not exactly inspirational stuff.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6w1UqNfKl1U
Chase the Chuck Wagon looks fun from here.

“There were too many people with too many arcades and too many games that they owed too much money on,” said Walter Day in the Frag documentary, “and everything went down the tubes in what was known as the 1984 bust.”

Companies vastly overestimated sales and manufactured more units than they could sell.

“Atari manufactured 12 million copies of Pac-Man [for the Atari 2600 console] even though the company’s research showed that less than 10 million people actually owned and used its 2600s,” continued Kent.

The floodwaters rose as a dozen different consoles were released on the market at the time. Legendarily dismal games on the Atari 2600 soured gamers on new releases and squandered capital. Of particular note is E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial, a colossal creative and commercial failure, celebrated even today as a singularly magnificent bust.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6HFwFh-rhxE

The bloated industry had delusions of grandeur. Once the impending disaster was identified, grossly large licensing payments were made to bring arcade hits to home consoles ostensibly to save the day. Instead, millions of dollars in huge licensing were but another nail in the industry’s coffin.

Hundreds of millions of dollars and thousands of jobs were lost by individual companies as consumers simply stopped buying. Bankruptcies hit, companies were sold and the American video game industry was hamstrung and forever altered.
The industry that had enjoyed a meteoric rise to success was now deep in a crater of its own devastating design.

+
Rise of Nintendo (1983-1990)

The American game industry suffered greatly in the middle of the 1980s. Headlines were dire, commonly cited as reading one form of “Video Games are Dead” or another. American arcades emptied and the console market suffered a deluge of bad products while prices spiraled downward. Although the rest of the world did not suffer a market collapse as significant as in the US, the Americans’ leading position in the industry meant that the ripples were felt across the globe.

The collapse meant the end of an era. American dominance in the industry, the prominence of arcades and several big name companies and products became relics of the past.

Still, reports of the industry’s demise were greatly exaggerated. Europe, Canada and, most importantly, Japan carried on into the next era.

The Apple II, the IBM PC and the Commodore 64 were notable players during this time. All three were personal computers and, it was assumed, pictures of the future of the industry. Arcades and consoles were given up for dead by many.

It was Nintendo, a little known toy company from Japan that had moved into the arcade market, that would become the next great torch bearer in the industry.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P9oDkQyzqkU
Now you're playing with power.

The Nintendo Famicom (Family Computer) debuted in Japan in 1983. According to The Ultimate History of Video Games, the console sold well in its native country. Three million units were shipped in 18 months.

By late 1985, it had been renamed the Nintendo Entertainment System. It entered the American market in New York and immediately became successful enough to justify continued effort on Nintendo’s part to conquer America. Those efforts culminated in the 1986 explosion for the system on the back of a heavyweight marketing and sales campaign as well as a strong company identity. Three million units were sold that year and, according to The Ultimate History of Video Games, sales doubled in the next year. Nintendo and its system have been widely credited with “restarting” video games in the United States.

Nintendo games and characters such as Mario, Donkey Kong, Punch Out and Duck Hunt have come to define this era of gaming, an era which reaches into today. Memories of playing these games, particularly Super Mario Bros. and Duck Hunt with my sisters, all of us young and mesmerized by the television in our basement, are among some of the earliest memories I have.

1987 saw The Legend of Zelda, Mike Tyson’s Punch Out, Metroid and Castlevania released, some of the most successful and influential games and franchises of the era.

In 1990, the Nintendo World Championships were held in Hollywood, California.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QXC20eO8QiU
Woo! Yeah, woo! Yeah, thank you.

This is an event in which the ostentation and flamboyant flair for dramatics (it was inspired by the children’s movie The Wizard) may leave the viewer speechless. A few favorite touches from the event include the emcee with his earnestly permed hair, his inexplicable Oscar-worthy tuxedo, his jumping and yelling on stage (“woo!”), the bad jokes, the often directionless and boundless hype, the awesomely poor acting on the part of the clueless commentator and the unbelievably bright, loud and histrionic early-90s aura that permeated the entire thing. This was a time when the volume was often stuck on high. This was an event aimed at children, an aim and aura that gaming (and competitive gaming) would not be able to shake for years despite the aging and maturation of the playing audience.

Specialized versions of Super Mario Brothers, Rad Racer, and Tetris were played at the event. Echoing earlier events, scores were “normalized” as follows: (Super Mario Bros.) + (Rad Racer x 10) + (Tetris x 25) equaled the final score.
Prizes ranged from $250 for an age group winner to the much heftier top prizes: a $10,000 U.S. Savings Bond, a convertible and a 40’’ TV.

Several comparable competitions were held in the first half of the 90s including two more major Nintendo tournaments that received some media attention.

As the turn of the decade neared, Nintendo stood atop a renewed video game industry with around 90% of the market. The question on the minds of everyone from investors to competitors to Nintendo executives was simple: would it last?

+
Real Time Strategy (1981-1989)

The 1980s saw the creation and refinement of a number of genres important to esports. One of the most significant competitive genres of all time has been real time strategy (RTS).

"Eastern Front was widely lauded in the press. It is considered to be one of the first computer wargames that could compete with paper-and-pencil games in terms of depth of play."

Before RTS games, the ancestry of the genre can be traced back to war games. In particular, Eastern Front (1941) was a 1981 title on Atari 8-bit systems. Prior to this game, turn based war games were the rule with little to no exception.
With Eastern Front, combatants (playing either Germany or Russia) made their military decisions at separate times but had them play out on screen simultaneously, thus simulating real time strategy play as well as the technology of the time could muster.

The first true proto-RTS game was spotted in the wild in 1982 on the Intellivision console. Designer Don Daglow, widely acknowledged as one of the most important game designers of all time, and Mattel (now the world’s most profitable toy company) created and published Utopia thus laying the foundations for a genre which remains robust and successful to this day and has been at the forefront of competitive gaming since the 1990s.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LQKYG9lMlYE

In Utopia, players owned one of two islands and aimed to please their citizens by planting crops, building houses and funding rebel activity on their opponent’s island. Over the course of your ‘term of office’, the player had to choose his or her course wisely and quickly in order to outwit and outscore an opponent.

Throughout the decade, the genre crawled forward. Titles such as Stonkers (1983) attempted to bring real time war to home computers. Stonkers itself was plagued with slow gameplay and all too common software errors but nevertheless won some praise for its interesting concepts.

The Ancient Art of War (1984) was a considerably more successful take on the genre. It focused on the tactics of a small, ancient battle as players tried to adjust army composition and formations in order to claim victory.

Herzog Zwei (1989) was the first game to meet most of the tenets of the modern RTS genre. In Herzog Zwei, you control a single fighter jet. Through it, you purchase units and issue basic commands as you wage real time war against your opponent. As your tanks, jets and missiles are launched at your enemy, its easy to recognize the game as a living and breathing precursor to the modern RTS (and ARTS) genre.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3EO53h7nWEU

Herzog Zwei is remembered as one of the best multiplayer Sega Genesis titles of all time.

It would take one more landmark game in 1992 before the RTS genre fully arrived at its present form.

+
Sports games (1988-1996)

Sports games have been around almost since the beginning of video games altogether. 1958’s Tennis for Two was the first of many attempts to get the excitement of sport captured in the virtual world.

By the 1980s, celebrity athletes and coaches were regularly approached to attach their names to games. Mike Tyson’s Punch Out, Pat Riley’s Basketball, Arnold Palmer Golf and Joe Montana Football were but a few of the many celebrity endorsed games appearing on the landscape during the decade.

The most important new appearance in the sports genre was John Madden Football in 1988 on the Apple II.

Just prior to that release, 1987’s Earl Weaver Baseball by Electronic Arts (EA) was a relatively realistic baseball simulation released to a warm reception from critics and gamers alike. It set the stage for the growth of EA Sports, the most successful brand in sports games by far.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8EbPghLpK6c

EA followed up with John Madden Football in 1988, a game in which realism was stressed to an extent never before seen. Madden (a Hall of Fame American football coach with the Oakland Raiders in the 70s and a prolific football analyst after that) threatened to withdraw his name several times when EA suggested anything at all that veered toward the unrealistic such as seven men on a team rather than eleven.

As a result of that strict adherence to reality rather than fantasy, that strict faith to the game of American football rather than to practical hardware issues, the game’s initial development was slow and the first product suffered technical woes for Madden’s vision.

“We were trying to model NFL football on a computer with less horsepower than your watch,” said Joe Ybarra, an EA producer, to Patrick Hruby at ESPN in 2009.

The investment would, of course, pay off a thousandfold. Just a few short years down the road, the franchise became a huge hit on the Sega Genesis, laying the foundation for Electronic Art’s rise to the top of the industry and for Madden’s primacy as well.

The Madden franchise is considered the grand daddy of the entire sports simulation genre. Over the course of almost three decades, Madden has come to define the sports sim genre and can rightly be called, at the very least, an inspiration for almost all of the great sports franchises today. Becoming increasingly popular and more profitable, the franchise can claim major credit for the sped up mainstreaming of video games in the US during the 1990s.

Over twenty plus years, Madden has evolved from a simple three button game of football to a game that requires a full time work ethic to compete at the top tier.

EA won major breakthrough successes on the Sega Genesis (and, to a lesser extent, the Super Nintendo) with Madden and a line of similarly realistic franchises. Tristan Donovan called the Genesis version of the game “a defining moment in sports games.”

Sales from Madden and other sports games (and other, relatively mature titles) helped Sega even the playing field in its increasingly heated competition with an arrogant Nintendo during the early 1990s. The resulting industry boom marked the end of an era of uncertainty about gaming’s future. As bottom lines became larger and larger, the industry’s numerous past booms and busts were put in the rear view mirror and have stayed there ever since. Since 2000, gaming has been bigger than Hollywood.

According to ESPN, EA’s 1990 market capitalization was about $60 million. In 1993, it was $2 billion.

“More crucially, video games were suddenly cool,” wrote Patrick Hruby at ESPN, “the province of older teens and college kids, young men who loved competition and talking smack. Escaping the geek world, gaming set course for the center of the pop culture sun.”

1996 marked EA Sport’s transition to 3D thanks to the release of powerful 32-bit consoles such as the Sony Playstation and Sega Saturn. The move to 3D, along with advances in gameplay, software and hardware meant that by the mid to late 90s, the game was easily recognizable as a modern Madden title.

Eventually, EA Sports games would become the top competitive sports titles of all time.

+
Karate Champ to Street Fighter (1984-1990s)

Although the 70s saw the advent of fighting games with 1976’s Heavyweight Champ, it was not until the 1980s that the games began to resemble the fighting genre of today. Karate Champ, a 1984 arcade title, began the march toward the modern fighting genre.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9oqq1ijzQhI

Spanner Spencer at EuroGamer.net wrote, “the colourful and highly accessible coin-op karate simulator rocked the arcades graphically, imaginatively and literally. The brilliant control system, wonderfully responsive gameplay and encyclopaedic list of martial arts moves set an immediate and lofty benchmark for the tournament games that would follow, and still holds its own in the one-on-one arena to this day.”

B. at ProgressiveBoink.com described his experiences, writing, “Karate Champ began its life as a one-player contest versus a computer opponent. Player WHITE and Player RED faced off in a martial arts dojo under the supervision of a tournament judge. The two ‘Ryu and Ken’ trendsetters battled back and forth until a blow connected. Sometimes you'd haul off and hit a super fire convoy back spinning magical dream kick and crush the guy's face with your big toe and the judge would scream out ‘half point!’ This is where I learned to curse.”

From there, the genre grew. Fighters and beat-em-ups became one of the most reliably profitable genres in the business, an attractive option to everyone in development and design. So, as one might predict, a vast number of fighters were produced and varied from inconsequential nothings to industry changing.

Street Fighter, the originator of the most influential fighting series of all time, arrived in the arcades in 1987. Although the rise of the fighting genre still lay ahead, this is the game that directly defined what the genre would become. Colorful characters, fantastic abilities with special hidden moves, blocks, challenges, pressure sensitivity and more originated here.
While the game was received with mixed reviews, Capcom excitedly pushed for a sequel.

The fighting genre’s ascension marked a broad move toward more mature subject material for games, a move that would see video games become one more battleground in the American culture wars of the 90s. On the other hand, the maturation of content would aid in the accelerated mainstreaming of games during the same period. If they ever were, video games were not just for kids anymore.

Street Fighter 2, the most important fighting game of the era and the most lucrative arcade game in a decade, arrived in 1991.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hDPYRCMgEJ0

A game that has sold over ten million copies at home and tens of thousands of arcade machines all over the world (‘60,000’ according to Replay by Tristan Donovan), Street Fighter 2 in the early 90s rejuvenated arcades that had atrophied since the golden age in the 80s.

The “combo system” allowing for the combination of several standard and special moves has its origins in this game and would become a feature in the genre henceforth. The breadth and diversity of the attacks gave the player a larger arsenal than they’d previously had. The player was making more decisions than ever before as they fought an increasingly tactical battle with each punch and kick, jump and crouch, advance and retreat. The foundations of a truly competitive game were forged with Street Fighter 2 in the newly crowded arcades and in living rooms on the Super NES.

The early classic Street Fighter 2 arcade scene would gather a full head of steam as a competitive game. It would become an era in which machines were found not simply in dedicated private arcades but in grocery stores, liquor stores, laundromats, your local pizzeria, gas stations, restaurants and many public areas in between.

In the beginning, local arcades were isolated and competition was generally limited to a small group of regulars. That would soon change as competitors migrated from arcade to arcade in search of games.

Zaid Tabani’s documentary series “RUN IT BACK: The Road to SoCal Regionals” opens with an anecdote describing the growth of the scene.

“One day, there were two people who walked into the arcade [where I played] and they just got on the Street Fighter 2 machines and they destroyed us,” said James Chen, now a top commentator and a player with deep roots in the genre and scene. “Everything we knew about the game changed all of a sudden. One of the tactics that was just getting popular at the time was jump attack, walk up and throw. A lot of people considered that cheap so people didn’t do it.

James Chen, photo: neoempire.com

“When we played these guys, they’d just jump attack, walk up and sweep. Every time they did that, we’d stand up to counter-throw and get swept. Every single time, almost by reflex, by reaction. We couldn’t control it even though we told our hand not to stand up, we’d just do it and get swept every time.

“All of us at that local arcade were just confused because these two random guys just came in and destroyed us. After they finished beating us, they actually came and said to my brother and I that we were two of the better players they’d faced because we actually realized something was going on. They handed us a couple of fliers and told us about a tournament at a comic book store called ‘World’s Finest’ and said they wanted as many good players there as possible.

“It turned out that the two guys who walked into the arcade was a guy named Tony Tsui and Tomo Ohira. They were actually going around recruiting people for World’s Finest. They basically showed us that we sucked at the game. What we saw at World’s Finest was on a whole different level. It was one of the most amazing experiences ever because it showed us that Street Fighter was being played at a level far beyond anything we knew existed.”

The two men that James Chen encountered that day were some of the most important American players of the 90s. Additionally, World’s Finest was the most competitive tournament of the era. Suffice to say, Chen caught quite a break when he met Tony and Tomo.

Tony Tsui was a top tier tournament player.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jSCXm9ef1K4

Tomo Ohira has been called ‘the first legend’ of Street Fighter, the Mozart of the game, a player whose historic tournament winning streaks are still revered today. From 1991 to 1994, Ohira reigned on-screen and off as the king of Street Fighter in America. His unparalleled physical reactions, his mental agility and his indefatigable dedication put him atop his game until he retired at the ripe old age of 17 to chase girls and, eventually, an education.

Mike Watson, a contemporary and rival of Ohira’s, has written much on Ohira’s dominance.

“His Ryu was beyond anyone,” wrote Watson in 2006. “I would destroy anyone else in this game and he would still beat me 70-30. Seriously, out of all the best Street Fighter players ever, Tomo was by far ahead of everyone at any time. By far.”
One great question mark in Tomo’s brief career was Japan. Although Ohira utterly dominated many American tournaments, his interaction with Japanese players was severely limited by the lack of online play and the lack of a modern worldwide tournament infrastructure, one that enables players to jet-set around the globe in search of the world’s best.

The second great question mark in Tomo’s career is put to everyone who brings up Ohira’s legend. Was he really as good as they say? After all, you will not find a full recording of an Ohira match. Ohira did not compete in Japan, did not play against modern greats such as Daigo. Ohira played in a time without online play, before modern esports. Was the level of competition lower?

It is important to take into account the distorting effect that time and nostalgia can have on memory. That said, one must to some extent defer to the other top players of the time, many of whom have played and succeeded into the modern era, such as Mike Watson, Kuni Funada and Jeff Schaefer. Although they differed slightly on where exactly to place Ohira in the grand scheme (Funada, one of the few players in that era with experience on both sides of the Pacific, thought there were several players in Japan who could compete on Ohira’s level), none of them do anything but reassure us that Ohira was the best player in America by a significant margin and a top candidate for best in the world.

Jeff Schaefer, one of the best players in Southern California during the early 90s, described his introduction to Ohira in a 2009 YouTube vlog.

After establishing himself as the dominant force in Orange County, California, Schaefer began to hear of a little kid from Los Angeles County named Tomo who was “just a steam roller, just a machine.”

“Some people I knew arranged a meeting with him,” said Schaefer. “He got dropped off at some arcade. Just this little hundred pound Japanese kid walks in, must have been fourteen years old. I’m sitting there, we’re playing old school Street Fighter 2 and this kid just took me to the cleaners. He just annihilated me. I’d never seen anything like it, I didn’t even think it was possible.”

At this point in the video, Schaefer is shaking his head. Even two decades later, the memory is still vivid and incredible to him.

“If Tomo played, he’s going to win,” said Schaefer. “The kid was way better than me, way better than anyone else. He was the best.”

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C3H2valp4p8

In another moment, Schaefer takes a stab at an obvious question which has been asked again and again: was Tomo better than today’s top player, the man they call “the beast”, Daigo Umehara?

“I’ve played Daigo,” said Schaefer, who has famously beaten Daigo with a perfect round. “Daigo is good. Daigo is no Tomo.”

In any enduring competitive game, comparing players across eras is a tempting but tricky task full of maybes and could-be’s. Although we cannot transport today’s great Street Fighter players back in time to play Ohira at his peak, it is always a fun argument to have.

What is not up for argument is that Ohira’s legendary play still holds significant weight and Ohira’s legendary wins still send an amazed grin across the faces of those who witnessed them.

In celebrating Street Fighter 2’s twentieth anniversary, the 1UP.com staff described their collective discovery of the now classic game.

“... We were stunned. There may have been only a dozen on-screen characters (and you couldn't even control four of them!), but each was huge, unique, and blessed with an embarrassment of animation. The breadth of the fighters' movements was matched by the diversity of their moves and the depth of the possible strategies. Mike Haggar and friends could punch, kick, jump, swing a mean steel pipe, and sacrifice a chunk of health to perform a secret move; the World Warriors could deliver punches and kicks in three different levels of strength apiece, and each of those varied further, contextually, according to the fighters' current stance and motion. Special moves weren't a dangerous desperation move but rather an integral part of each fighter's repertoire. Street Fighter II may have been a game about dirty brawls and solving disputes through force, but it courted intimate knowledge of each character's move sets and rewarded tactical play. It required thought and smarts -- hardly what you'd expect to see in a game where you could punch a dude in the stomach so hard he'd puke. And that was before we discovered combos.”

For a time, Street Fighter 2 and its iterations dominated the competitive arcade scene. It is still played competitively today.
The hustler ethic last seen prominently in the 80s reemerged once again as tireless top tier players travelled from tournament to tournament, arcade to arcade in search of the next victory, the next prize.

Relatively competitive scenes emerged independently in New York City (at arcades such as Chinatown Fair), Southern California and Northern California, sparking a national arms race. In particular, the California scene was the site of an increasingly heated intrastate rivalry, one that survives until this day.

The Street Fighter scene of the 90s is remembered by players such as Alex Valle as one of fierce competition, an all-out experience fueled in no small part by the lack of easy access online gaming and thus the cost - mental, physical and financial - that it took to play at a high level. Old school players describe a competitive environment in the 90s where the investment required to be great was exponentially higher than today and where the reward was greater still.

“Fuck yeah, I miss the 90s,” said Valle in “Run it Back.”

“I don’t know how to explain it but when we played, we played it with everything we had,” said Jimmy Nguyen, Chief Operating Officer of LevelUp Gaming, in the Run it Back documentary. “It was like the last thing on earth to do. Now, it’s like there’s so much to play and people choose what to play, they split their time. It’s just the focus isn’t completely there when it comes to dedicating your skill and time to it.”

Tomo Ohira, the ‘first legend of Street Fighter’, was not above mocking a tournament opponent standing just inches away. Top tier players regularly shunned anyone deemed lower than them, relegating the lesser players to the ‘little boy machines’ while greats occupied the ‘big boy machines’. Trash talk was and is a part of the soundtrack of the game. The Street Fighter 2 competitive culture was brash, hot blooded and deeper than almost anyone truly grasped.

The next significant game in the genre was Acclaim’s Mortal Kombat, released in October 1992. Arcades, already reanimated by the new wave of games led by Street Fighter, took to Mortal Kombat immediately, making it the most popular game since Street Fighter while never replacing Street Fighter’s competitive scene.

Mortal Kombat’s relatively high quality, violent and unique visuals set the game apart. The game used “digitized footage of real-life actors … [to] acheive a high level of detail,” said artist John Tobias in Replay. Of course, the famously bloody fatalities used to end fights were one of the game’s biggest selling points as well as a lightning rod for controversy, furthering hostility toward games in an environment where US Democratic Senator (and Vice Presidential candidate in 2000) Joe Lieberman said publicly that he wished for an outright ban on violent video games.

3D games such as Virtua Fighter, Tekken and Marvel vs. Capcom pushed the genre forward technically as the 90s went on but could not match the high intensity competitive culture of Street Fighter 2 in the first half of the decade. As arcades eventually went the way of the dinosaurs, home consoles became increasingly prolific. The competitive fighting scene’s heart rate slowed greatly as the new millennium approached.

+
Dune 2 and the modern RTS (1992)

By the 1990s, PCs had a long and distinguished history in gaming. Commodores (VIC-20s and 64s) and Apple IIs sported enormous libraries of games.

Additionally, an entire generation of programmers was raised on the Apple II during the 80s. They would come to prominence at the turn of the decade and produce some of the most successful games of the 90s and beyond, helping further build up PCs as gaming machines.

The real time strategy (RTS) genre as we know it today was sired in 1992 with the release of Westwood Studios’ Dune II: The Building of a Dynasty. The term RTS came into use with this game thanks to Dune 2’s designer Brett Sperry.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tppjzT-su0Q

After two decades of evolution, many core characteristics of the modern RTS can be traced directly to Dune 2.

Dune 2’s visuals set the standard for the genre. The minimap, the command box and the playing screen are all implemented here in ways that are mimicked twenty years later in games such as StarCraft 2. Units built by gathered resources - spices, in Dune's case - were pioneered here. This is the first title which adheres to the now genre-defining model: "Harvest, build, destroy". In fact, a myriad of now taken-for-granted features first saw the light of day in the sands of Dune: Tech trees, army asymmetry, mouse-operated game play and total war 'till elimination all originated here.

The game is undeniably slow even when compared to its immediate successors. As later games such as Warcraft and Command & Conquer would reveal, a game that makes speed a core part of play is a game where creativity is more often showcased. When a player has to solve more problems, make more decisions and do it all more quickly, the good are soon separated from the great. The skill ceiling is higher and gaps emerge, better players beat inferior opponents more often and, when the solutions are varied, a competitive game is able to sustain itself for longer periods of time.

By far, the single biggest difference between Dune 2 and its successors was Dune’s lack of multiplayer. The entire genre would soon be defined by its multiplayer modes, eventually rising to become the most important competitive genre on the planet for at least some time. Whereas single player games presented finite albeit fun challenges for gamers, facing off against fellow humans meant a potentially infinite battle of wits that would change the face of gaming forever.

If Westwood Studios had known in 1992, the same year Dune 2 was released, that online gaming would soon rise and change video games forever, perhaps they would have waited just a few months.

Instead, the glory of modern online gaming belongs in large part to the storied id Software thanks to their successful stable of games from 1992 and on.

+
The internet (1990s)

Through the 1980s, getting online generally meant connecting to specific networks with expensive fees and limited services. The networks were isolated from one another and, due in no small part to the prohibitively high cost of bandwidth, networks could barely begin to provide a significant number of gamers with the experiences they sought.

The developers behind ARPAnet, the internet precursor designed by the United States military, had long held ambitions to unify global communications networks. From its 1960s inception and through the 1980s, the network grew as communication standards became uniform. Academia, industry and finally the public were given access to the network.

Formerly isolated networks from around the world were soon connected and growing. By the early 90s, the foundations for the modern internet sat ready to hold the weight of one of the most significant inventions of all time.

For our purposes, the 90s are important for many reasons but none are more obvious than the mainstreaming of online gaming. It is but a part of that phenomenon which has helped shrink the world to the size of a pea.

+
Wolfenstein 3D and Doom (1992-1995)

First-Person Shooters rose to prominence on the PC in 1992 with the release of Wolfenstein 3D. Created by id Software (whose history has been thoroughly explored and skillfully written about in Masters of Doom by David Kushner), Wolfenstein transported the player into the body of a bloodied commando shooting through a fortress filled with Nazis and their attack dogs.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C00n4rDUMNo

It was the first time most consumers had seen this kind of world brought to life. It was certainly the first time they’d seen it from this unique perspective. Players were shocked and fixated. Released as shareware (one part of the game was free while the complete product cost money), it became the most popular game online by far, attracting mountains of praise from every corner of the happily electrified gaming universe.

As would become id Software’s modus operandi, the game attracted vast positive and negative attention simultaneously. The smooth, unmatched gameplay and the cutting edge graphics excited PC owners. The Nazi imagery and casual violence against dogs and humans alike attracted hostility in North America and Europe including an outright ban in Germany that was lifted only recently.

The next game by the outfit would be one of the most important, highly praised and influential games of all time.

Released in December 1993 as shareware (a third of the game was available for free), Doom marks the beginning of modern online gaming. Thanks in part to the astronomical success of the game, the id Software founders were quickly ascending from wild success stories to absolute rock stars with their consistent production of hits in the 90s.

The game is known for blazing a number of new trails.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mhkEomP5h0g

The innovative 3D graphics represented new technological heights. The graphics helped Doom look like no other game ever had. Doom was both darker and brighter than any other game had ever been. The ability to skillfully shift back and forth was a major breakthrough.

The technology built by John Carmack gave the team a newly developed power over the all-important artist’s tool that is light. The game looked more realistic, meaner and more inviting for the millions of players looking to explore a hellish landscape. The gameplay was faster and smoother. The unrestrained violence, intensity and shock value was higher than ever before.

Most importantly, the game was playable over networks. At first limited to local networks (LANs) and direct connections over modems, it was DWANGO (Dial-up Wide-Area Network Game Operation) that provided online matchmaking to a growing army of Doom lovers starting in 1994.

The gore went to new extremes and antagonized powerful cultural enemies in America and abroad. In 1999, Doom and Duke Nukem (a contemporary FPS that roughly and gladly pushed cultural boundaries) along with several movies were blamed by vocal critics for the Columbine High School massacre in which two heavily armed students murdered one teacher and 12 other students.

According to freedomforum.org, “The lawsuit was filed by the family of slain teacher Dave Sanders and on behalf of other Columbine victims.” The judge threw out the lawsuit and warned that any other decision would have a chilling effect on free speech.

It is hard to overstate the impact that Doom had on modern gaming.

Doom made huge technological advances with the 3D engine.

The bloody visuals from artists pushed boundaries with horror and fear. The soundtrack included intense industrial music and animal screams.

Online deathmatches, invented here, revealed an entirely new dimension to gaming.

As one of the most celebrated games of all time, it was launched as shareware.

Perhaps most important, the gameplay brought the FPS genre to a new plateau.

Doom took the road less travelled time and time again. Astoundingly, the bold choices seemed to pay off nearly every time.

Gaming centers opened up offering pay-to-play machines featuring Doom and promoting tournaments for the best of the best. Texas, home to id Software, was well on its way to becoming a mecca of competitive gaming as venues such as Austin Virtual Gaming offered tournaments that players and even designers (most notably John Romero) competed in. It was at AVG where Romero would suffer his first defeat in Doom.

Doom also saw the birth of demos or replays, a tool that allows players to record gameplay and share it with fellow fans.

A European fan could now watch an American play a game from six months ago as though the match was taking place live. The fan could dissect the strategy and get into the mind of the player in a way that was not previously possible. Demos would become a staple and near-requirement of the competitive gaming world.

The advent of demos saw the birth of the speed run scene. In speed runs, players compete by trying to finish single player levels as quickly as possible. Although speed runs are played on all manner of modern games, the single player nature of it is a call back to the old high score competitions of arcades.

Doom demos recorded player movements, making it easy to send watchable proof of your run to a competitor in a small file.
Speed runs have spread to countless single player games (from Mario 64 to Half-Life). It remains an active competitive niche even two decades later.

Demos and replays also opened up the world of skill movies (also known by a number of other names including “frag movies” and “highlight films”) that would explode in popularity over the next half decade as they helped promote players, teams, competitions and games in general.

Finally, demos resulted in the advent of machinima, cinematic productions most often containing a narrative. Although these sorts of movies often have little or nothing to do with competitive gaming, they do aid in promoting the games themselves as the films have become a popular medium over a decade and a half. Frag movies often take machinma ideas and use them to great effect.

The two leading personalities at id Software were John Carmack, the lead programmer of Doom, and John Romero, the lead designer. Due to their previous successes (Commander Keen, Catacomb 3-D and then Wolfenstein 3D among other games), Doom (one of the most highly anticipated and well received titles of the era) and their subsequent dramatic victories and failures, the two Johns remain icons in the gaming world.

Please, go read Masters of Doom by David Kushner when you are done with this history.

Fans and professionals alike revere the games the two Johns created together, telling the stories of their lives and careers as though they were passing a scared legendarium from generation to generation, gamer to gamer.

John Romero, complete with metal rock star hair and ego, is said to have coined the now ubiquitous term ‘deathmatch’ while developing the multiplayer mode for Doom. The name set the tone for the gruesome game itself as well as the deathmatch genre of FPS gaming for years and years to come.

One of id Software’s most important contributions to the industry was their tendency toward openness with their software. Wolfenstein 3D, a minor wonder at the time, was one of the first games to ever license its software to other developers. The licensing strategy was a serious financial boon for id and pushed the FPS genre forward on the back of id’s progress. Although the practice of selling a developer’s technology (the game engine specifically) in this manner was once taboo, even frowned upon, it is now the norm in the gaming industry.

Allowing the licensing of software opened up new ways to do business for the industry. Quake’s engine (from id Software’s 1996 hit) was used in celebrated games such as Half-Life.

Doom continued forward along this path toward revolutionary openness.

Before Doom, the idea of user modification of software (modding) was a minor and, ultimately, greatly limited experience. To an extent never before seen, Doom allowed users access to many of the same tools that id programmers used in creating the game. This granted users the power to create modifications (mods) such as new maps, weapons, characters and more that would, by their very nature, extend the lifespan, expand the depth and broaden the appeal of the game.

Allowing serious modding was a huge step in gaming and in competitive gaming, one that has echoed through the decades. From this decision and the thousands of dedicated fans who took up the challenge, you can directly trace a line to some of the most important competitive games of all time. Counter-Strike (which evolved from a Quake mod called Action Quake 2) , Team Fortress Classic (originally a successful 1996 Quake mod titled simply Team Fortress) and many other modifications for Half-Life (a 1998 FPS built on the licensed Quake engine and considered by many to be one of the greatest games of all time) allowed that game to remain near the top of the industry and competitive gaming industry for over a decade.

In other genres, significant franchises such as StarCraft, Warcraft and many more have thrived in no small part due to their fan base’s creative abilities for over a decade. When fans are able to control their game, stagnation can be staved off for years with clever mods written by bright modders keeping a game fresh, fun, relevant and well played.

“I look back at Quake as the golden age of game modding,” said John Carmack in 2011, “before the standards rose so high that it required almost a full time commitment to do something relevant. I am very proud that many of today’s industry greats trace their start back to working with Quake.”

Major game publishers all over the world are packed to the brim with developers who got their start modding Quake.
Once again, the American military came calling to license the Doom technology in order to train soldiers. Unlike previous notable incidents, id signed off on the military’s proposals with no known qualms.

id Software became a multi-multimillion dollar entity with a profit margin that most media outlets described in hallowed tones and sometimes compared favorably to heavyweights such as Microsoft. id’s fan base grew and the competition intensified in and out of the game.

As Street Fighter 2 took head to head competition in the arcades to new heights, Doom and Doom 2 (with the inclusion of DWANGO at $8.95 per month and then the greater rise of the net shortly thereafter) took competitive gaming to the internet, to the country and to the entire world.

The first major Doom 2 tournament was held at Microsoft’s “Judgement Day ‘95” a Halloween event held first and foremost to promote Windows as a major gaming platform. It had undeniable star power: Jay Leno entertained and Bill Gates played coy with a shotgun to promote the new Windows’ version of Doom.

Dennis Fong (Thresh), an 18 year old born in Hong Kong who had spent half his life in the United States, was one of twenty top gamers as decided by international qualifiers flown in to compete in front of some of the most powerful and well known men in the industry.

Thresh recalled the day’s events with GotFrag.com in 2005.

“Deathmatch '95 was probably the biggest gaming tournament ever up to that point in gaming history. The tournament coincided with the launch of Microsoft Game Studios and was held at Microsoft HQ in Redmond, WA. As you can imagine, Microsoft doesn't do anything small, so the event was a huge extravaganza, with the competition being one of the highlights of the launch party.

“By virtue of having already played most of the top players around the country and beaten them, I was considered one of the favorites to win the tournament. Another player who went by the handle ‘Merlock’ was considered the other favorite. Due to a random draw, we ended up facing each other in the semi-finals. I ended up beating him something like 10-5. Merlock got so upset he slammed the keyboard and threw his chair off-stage. It was quite the scene, particularly since LAN tournaments weren't all that common back then.”

For his efforts in victory, Thresh’s prize was state of the art hardware. In a five-year gaming career, Thresh became one of the first modern esports stars, successfully competing in franchises such as Doom, Quake and (much less successfully) StarCraft. In a 1999 profile piece, the Washington Post asserted that Thresh had “earned $250,000 in prize money, endorsement fees and book royalties.”

“More than any other single person, he [Thresh] put a face on the gamer community,” wrote King and Borland in Dungeons and Dreamers, “at a time when a curious world was trying to figure out just what this strange new activity was all about. He helped reassure some of those outsiders that gaming might be a reasonable pursuit, that starting into the computer screen and trying one’s best to kill one’s opponent as quickly and as often as possible didn’t necessarily create a homicidal maniac.”

Thresh’s star would continue to rise in the competitive gaming world and then in the tech world at large as he later founded successful companies in Xfire, GX Media and more.

Deathmatch ‘95 and many subsequent competitions illustrated finally that deathmatches weren’t simply a distraction or a sideshow. Instead they were the beginnings of a sport that demanded center stage and full attention.

+
A History of Esports Part 3, Quake and the rise of the RTS

+
Quake (1996)

The next major game from id Software was 1996’s Quake.

Competitive Quake is at first glance deathly simple much like its predecessors. Two opponents are in a small arena littered with a dozen weapons, a few types of armor and all the possibilities in the world. There’s nothing to do but kill the other man and, in ten minutes, the highest kill count wins.

The duel begins with a booming voice commanding you to ‘Fight!’. Next, the simplicity slams into you at 100 miles per hour.
Immediately, a powerful weapon is sitting in front of the competitors and they sprint to it.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZhzXKMqZBBc

The entire atmosphere in Quake is frantic from the colors to the music to, of course, the speed. Every step, even at a mind-numbing sprint, will resonate through the game. Players work to achieve ideal positioning as they fight a tactical and strategic battle, all the while shooting for perfect aim through the fire and lightning raining down upon them.

Quake takes a minute to learn and an instant to enjoy watching. It is deceptively deep. Each weapon requires different tactics. Each arena allows for a multitude of styles and each player is allowed creative freedom.

The physical side of the game complements the manic mind game. The game is an endless pursuit of perfection in aiming the weapons of Quake’s arsenal. The two sides of the game, the mental and physical intertwine unpredictably. They form one of the most enduring esports in the world.

Quake would launch a franchise that is not only still fiercely loved but also played religiously by a loyal group of gamers in competitions even in 2012.

Quake is a title that was famously difficult for id Software to create, complete with several delays and an increasingly hostile work environment. After sustained conflict with head programmer John Carmack, John Romero was fired shortly after the game’s 1996 release.

The list of real-life Quake casualties is notorious.

The list of virtual Quake casualties is endless. Every day, hundreds of thousands would play the new game with up to 16 competitors to a single server, up from 4 per server for Doom.

The game received towering reviews noting the stunning combat gameplay and the monumental technical achievement the game represented. For all of the love showered on id’s knack for single player experience, Quake’s multiplayer experience was revered head and shoulders above all else.

“In 1996 there wasn’t much of an internet,” Level designer Tom Willits told 1up.com. “Doom was a peer-to-peer system and a pain in the ass. Quake was the first true PC server/client architecture system. People told us we were crazy. They said, why would anyone run a Quake server on their machine to allow people they don’t know to play a game?”

Immediately, the already substantial online gaming community gave birth to the competitive community. News sites spawned quickly, teams and clans were formed, matches were organized, wins and losses were doled out as competitors played tirelessly into the dawn of modern esports.

Although entering a server was initially a tedious manual task, Quake eventually gave rise to server browsers in the form of QuakeSpy that would eventually become GameSpy.

The term cyberathlete was coined around this time.

Thresh was sponsored by Microsoft in 1996. Ambitious minds and active imaginations spawned grandiose ideas of a cybersports Super Bowl.

The first QuakeCon took place in August 1996. In a Best Western in Garland, Texas, a group of young men filled up the hotel’s ballroom with massive gaming machines. Ready to play at the highest level they could, the group decided to invite the famous creators of the game to a deathmatch.

They wrote the challenge on a loose piece of paper and a dozen guys signed their names. They drove to the id Software offices with what read like a declaration of war.

“The ops of #quake cordially invite the guys at id to a MAN BEATING,” read the note, according to Dungeons and Dreamers.
The #quake community from IRC organized what became the first QuakeCon and reached out to id to raise the event to the next level. Carmack and company made the trip to the event. The online community first heard the specifics of id’s arrival via “Redwood’s Quake Page”, a popular Quake community site. When the community heard, they came to Texas from all over the United States and even attracted a few dedicated gamers from Canada.

The event reached up to 60 people by Friday, a much more crowded and competitive con than anyone was expecting. It grew from there. The room was filled with shouts and curses back and forth and players killed and died on screen. It was filled with community. The id guys arrived, played, entertained and supported the gamers in front of them. Id brought gear for prizes and, when the electricity charge was much higher than anyone expected, John Carmack wrote the group a check to cover the difference.

John Carmack's famous red ride parked outside of QuakeCon '96

Meanwhile, players took to online leagues immediately as the competitive community burned brighter and brighter with each day.

In a 2005 interview with GotFrag.com, Sujoy Roy, an early professional Quake player, said, “Today [in 2005] online and tournament gaming is very organised and it's hard to get a shot at the top players. Back in 1996 it was more like the Wild West. Every player with some kind of reputation was out to protect it the hard way, by spending time on servers and getting their name to the top of the scoreboard.”

“The internet gaming aspect [of Quake] was almost an accident,” said John Carmack in a 2011 note on BethBlog.com. “I had moved from Doom’s peer-to-peer networking to client/server primarily to allow late game entry, and UDP was supported because I was still doing a lot of the development on NEXTSEP unix workstations. The idea of playing over the internet was always there, but I didn’t think it would be practical for many people due to the long latencies and variable performance of typical connections. When it turned out that people were doing it despite the low quality, it gave me the incentive to develop the alternative QuakeWorld executable with the various latency reduction mechanisms.”

QuakeWorld was id Software’s own mod dedicated to improving competitive play. Whereas multiplayer Quake was designed with low latency environments in mind (LANs), QuakeWorld was optimized for internet play with superior netcoding and a world-wide ranking system fueling the competitive fervor. It was an important step forward in a community where the vast majority of competition was taking place online.

More and more leagues started up, most notably and successfully at the time, ClanRing. Founded by a group of energetic but inexperienced amateurs, ClanRing grew from the chaotic scene into one of the most important institutions in competitive gaming of that time. ClanRing was the center of the online Quake world for a time.

“We were all getting our feet wet for the first time,” said Will Bryan of ClanRing to MuppetClan.com, “and we knew there would be a few problems here and there as we learned to swim.”

The occasionally disorganized organization grew and learned from early missteps. Missed matches, latency issues, punctuality, server existence and then stability were hallmark problems of 90s competitive gaming. There was no easy button to compete, no automated matchmakers. These players put in work to compete.

In an era when players’ internet connections varied from T1 to 28.8k modems (a range of 1.5mb/s to 28.8kb/s), it was impossible to ignore the consequential issues.

“Connections are the cruel nemesis of our Quaking existence,” said the player Rigormortis of the successful Impulse 9 team in an interview on MuppetClan.com. Rigormortis went on to describe major ClanRing tournaments in 1997 where his team’s latency regularly varied from 80ms to 7,000ms ping, a wildly unstable range.

Nevertheless, a vibrant community was emerging as the technology struggled to keep up with the demand to compete.
Ignored girlfriends, “Quake-widows”, were half-joked about at minor and major events alike. The word ‘sport’ was used effusively to describe the competitive nature of the game as well as a hopeful future. Excited fans sincerely, loudly wondered how long it would take for the Olympics to notice them.

QuakeNet, now the largest Internet Relay Chat (IRC) server around, was founded in 1997, providing a focal point for a growing community in need of cohesion.

The 1997 Electronic Entertainment Expo (E3) featured the zenith of Thresh’s competitive gaming star. The event’s Red Annihilation tournament would land him a prize to be remembered. John Carmack’s red Ferrari 328 GTS was parked smack in the middle of the tournament floor waiting for a winner.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cAmNtOfpR8Q

From thousands of online competitors, 16 had made the cut to play at E3 including some of the biggest names in Quake. WhiteWolf, Cross, Pookie, Reptile, Unholy, Sho2, B2, Kenn, Tony Nusall, Gollum, Kiljoy, rom1, froggy and Ultra.p all showed up to play but eventually fell short. The finalists were Tom Kizmey (Entropy) and Dennis Fong (Thresh).
Thresh dominated Entropy in the finals by a score of 13-1, claiming the royal red car and the lasting fame that came with it. Additionally, GotFrag.com reports that Thresh won a $10,000 Haunted House Doom tournament at that same event, adding further to his bank account and his legend.

Angel Munoz, the founder of the Cyberathlete Professional League (CPL), later stated on GotFrag.com, “When John Carmack announced he was giving away his Ferrari as a prize for the winner of Red Annihilation, the concept for CPL was born.”

ClanRing, the premiere competitive Quake community that had organized Red Annihilation, primarily played host to major team games (4v4). The American Thresh’s Death Row team (with B2, Unholy and Spear) won the year’s major tournament in California over another top American team, Unforgiven (consisting of Gollum, Batch, Thorn and Graphik).

QuakeCon grew in 1997 as well, offering an organized tournament for the first time. ‘RiX’ won the tournament and took home $3,000 in hardware. It would still be two years until id Software became directly involved and the event began to resemble the behemoth that QuakeCon is today but an estimated 650 attendees were proof positive that the convention was moving forward.

By the mid-1990s, the competitive gaming community had firmly established itself online.

Doom and Quake are two of the most important esports titles of all time, both contributing invaluable firsts to a growing scene and community as well as catalyzing competitive gaming forward toward uncharted territory, directly in front of the mainstream spotlight. The world was taking notice.

“Quake may be the most influential game of all time,” wrote Ryan Winterhalter at 1up.com. “Not the best game, not the most innovative, but the most influential. Without it, the industry would be a very different place today.
“It gave rise to many of aspects of modern gaming that we take for granted. Its developers, modders, and even the very code of the game itself are ubiquitous in the industry today. Id Software's 1996 FPS gave rise to 3D gaming, client/server online play, the most prolific mod scene in history, multiplayer clans, server browsers, esports, mouse-look as the PC control standard, Valve and dozens of other companies, and even 1UP's sister website, GameSpy. Without Quake, it's unlikely another game that featured the same suite of innovations would have come along. We would have had to wait for each of those things one at a time.”

Soon, with a wildly different sort of video game, computer chair generals around the world would play and compete in the real time strategy (RTS) genre, destined to fill arenas around the world in a way that no other genre has ever matched.

+
Warcraft and the 90s RTS boom (1994)

Dune II: The Building of a Dynasty was the presciently titled 1992 game for DOS that set a number of important standards for the RTS genre. However, one fateful omission would cut the game’s lifespan short. The game lacked a multiplayer option, a mode of play that would soon become the raison d'etre for some of the greatest RTS games of all time.

By 1994, the next great game in the genre had come along. It was brighter, faster and gave gamers the ever-important option to face off against human opponents from around the world in full-scale war.

Warcraft: Orcs & Humans was Blizzard Entertainment’s first entry into the genre. It took the now-classic RTS foundation that Dune 2 had built and dragged it toward the future. The increased speed was the greatest gameplay departure in a title which otherwise borrowed heavily from its predecessor.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Uq92eCdNQM

Following Warcraft, 1995’s Command & Conquer was the next milestone RTS title to hit the market. Westwood Studios, the creators of Dune 2, built a new game and set aside many of the key points pioneered by Dune 2. The now genre-standard user interface of Dune 2 was altered, user control of the army and important game design choices were changed. The simultaneously confusing and fascinating mechanic of profound army asymmetry (i.e. different factions possessing different weapons and units with which to fight) was brought to new heights. This brought the game new depth.
Brett Sperry, a game designer and the man who coined the term RTS, described C&C to Gamespot.com as a clean start on the idea of real time strategy.

"Command & Conquer was the net result of the Dune 2 wish list," said Sperry. "It was time to build the ultimate RTS."

By 1995, online gaming was already a substantial and growing phenomenon. Doom and Doom 2 were at the forefront of the movement, serving as the backbone of the young online competitive gaming community.

In much the same way that an energetic group of fans organized leagues, news sites and teams for the FPS genre, Command & Conquer was the game in which the RTS genre began to permanently establish a serious community on the internet. Gaming networks such as Kali provided an unmatched competitive environment, an exciting setting where players could grab games at any time, contend with opponents the world over and track their stats through it all. Competitions began in earnest with C&C and a new community was born.

Kali was released in 1995, a successor to a program called iDOOM which Kali co-creator Scott Coleman had written in order to play Doom over the internet. Within a short period, Kali became one of the more important institutions in online RTS gaming. It would stay that way for several years, eventually developing a community rivalry with the official Blizzard online service dubbed Battle.net.

Case’s Ladder was, for a time, the premiere competitive platform for Warcraft. Although its set-up was exceedingly simple (players reported matches via e-mail), its success was significant. It can be partly credited for Blizzard’s decision to include an integrated ladder system in StarCraft.

In December of 1995, Warcraft 2: Tides of Darkness was released. This was, without a doubt, the most important competitive strategy title to date.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lzDrA0h3_ZE

“It was popular in school,” said Blid, the 28 year old administrator for War2.ru, the largest surviving Warcraft 2 community on the net. “Not only did I have friends who I'd play over modem late at night, but I'd even hear about people I didn't know well but who played the game. And we'd arrange a time for one person to set his game to 'receive call' and the other to dial him up on the modem.”

Having begun just a few years prior, the proliferation of online gaming signaled a new era in esports. This would be an increasingly democratic movement in which anyone with access to the increasingly popular and affordable personal computer (and eventually consoles) could participate.

From a growing number of points on the planet, a person could create or modify a game, compete in a tournament and become a recognized champion, a celebrated competitor in a vigorous niche.

"The biggest difference between Warcraft 1 and 2 was the multiplayer," Blid continued. "Compared to the sequel, not many people played Warcraft [1] multiplayer and it didn't have the same capabilities online. I think with Warcraft 2, a lot of people first started playing with modem-play.”

From the Warcraft 2 competitive community, it is easy to trace a direct line to the communities of StarCraft, Warcraft 3 and StarCraft 2, three of the most popular and important competitive titles of all time.

Kali, the Windows network emulator, solidified its place as the home of top competitive RTS. Players such as Guillaume Patry (Grrrr...) and Christopher Page (Pillars), gamers who would go on to become trailblazing professional StarCraft players in Korea, earned their competitive start playing Warcraft 2 on Kali. Complete with cliques, characters, creativity, a serious competitive streak and close knit groups of friends that would help build an industry, Kali was home to a genre on the rise.

While Warcraft 1 and Command & Conquer were titles with relatively short-lived competitive lifespans, Warcraft 2 was at or near the top of the genre for almost three years.

As is the mark of the greatest strategy games, Warcraft 2 is a living and breathing entity with countless twisting paths for a player to take.

The most important RTS games of all time are famous for their ability to fight off the affects of age, to defy stagnation and continue to bring to the foreground new tricks, tactics, strategies and moves that will keep a player thinking hard for years. The greatest competitive games of all time allow for and demand players always move forward.

Call it perpetual motion, the continued evolution that provides fans and players with endless possibilities. Like almost no game before it, Warcraft 2 delivered.

+
The CPL and Fatal1ty (1997-2004)

Say what you will about the man -- and there is so very much that has been said -- but, undeniably, Angel Munoz is an enormous figure in competitive gaming’s history. A polarizing man for reasons both professional and personal, Munoz is a pioneer in the industry.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dPHg-eJ7o-c

A Dallas stockbroker who grew up in Puerto Rico, Munoz walked away from investment banking in 1995 and set about building “the first ever organized and full sponsored video gaming tournament,” wrote Michael Kane in Game Boys.

Munoz founded the Cyberathlete Professional League in January 1997 after bearing witness to 90s LAN parties and tournaments. Munoz decided to pursue what he saw as the vast untapped commercial potential of competitive gaming.
The CPL’s first event (dubbed “The FRAG” for Foremost Roundup of Advanced Gamers) attracted 300 people in a small room with a low ceiling and a dirty rug. The event’s location has been unfavorably compared to a parking garage.

Still, The FRAG was deemed a success in the only contexts that mattered. For the players, it was a worthwhile tournament and the beginning of a more serious competitive circuit. For Munoz, it was the beginning of a profitable enterprise. As Michael Kane writes in Game Boys, the CPL began as a “tidy in-the-black business model” - profitable from the start - and grew from there.

1998 saw the CPL take over the year’s QuakeCon event (the event was even dubbed “The CPL Event” according to GotFrag.com). Later that year, The FRAG 2 was held in Dallas. Boasting a $15,000 prize pool and most of the greatest Quake talent in the world (minus Thresh), the event helped to cement the CPL’s position within the newborn competitive gaming industry.

Angel Munoz’s goal for the CPL was to aggressively mainstream competitive gaming. For years, Munoz sought and secured major sponsors with an unrivaled success rate. Munoz won millions of dollars in sponsorships from major companies such as Intel and Nvidia during his tenure at CPL. His ultimate target was television, living rooms across the world and the dedicated eyes of millions of fans.

Few things would help accomplish that goal as effectively as a true gaming superstar.

The dream for many in esports and for Munoz in particular was to build stars bigger than Tomo Ohira. Tomo was a player who was famous in arcades worldwide, even appearing in passing in major gaming magazines. However, he never made a significant splash in the mainstream.

The dream was to build stars bigger than Billy Mitchell, a player whose medium had long since passed him by.
The dream was to build stars bigger than Thresh. Thresh was a player whose consistent success in and out of games still inspires fandom to this day. However, he was never set on becoming the Michael Jordan of competitive gaming, an icon determined to push both the game and the business to new heights.

Enter Fatal1ty.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3i5LLQBn9zs

Jonathan Wendel (Fatal1ty) began his competitive gaming career in 1999 when, after two months of single-minded training, the then 18 year old American famously used the last $500 in his bank account for a trip to Dallas, Texas to play Quake 3: Arena at a CPL tournament dubbed FRAG 3. It is a story that has been told over and over again.

“I told my dad I’m going to this tournament,” said Wendel in 2008’s Frag documentary. “I have $500 in the bank and I’m pushing all in. If I win any significant money, I’m going to keep doing it. If I don’t win any money, hey, I’m done.”

A third place finish at the tournament earned Wendel $4,000 and justification to continue toward a truly professional gaming career. His dad could only smile.

The high finish also garnered an invite to Sweden to compete against 12 of the best Quake 3 players in the world. Wendel’s dominant first place finish in Sweden included an 18-game winning streak and secured a $15,000 payday for the rising star.
Fatal1ty’s chief advantage in game was that he was the first player to properly practice. Often overlooked, practice ability is a valuable skill in and of itself no matter the endeavor. Being able to put in consistent and productive practice is something that often separates good from great in any discipline. Fatal1ty’s single minded-training in 1999 and then his subsequent sponsorship allowed him to practice in a way that few other players were able to during the era. He took advantage of the opportunity.

At the time, most Quake players (such as Blue, Makaveli and LakermaN) relied heavily on aim (not Fatal1ty’s strong suit) and intuition. That breed of player could hit thrilling acrobatic shots and arguably possessed more raw talent than Wendel.
On the other hand, Wendel built a well-rounded game on a disciplined and efficient practice routine. While other players would enter a match confident that their aim would carry them to victory (especially on maps such as tourney4 which tended to emphasize raw aim), Fatal1ty would play a different, higher game. The American outworked everyone else and, through his deliberately grown skill, he controlled the map, himself and the game better than any of his peers.
Fatal1ty’s gaming acumen was matched by his business savvy. Wendel proactively secured major sponsorship deals for himself. As would become increasingly clear over the length of his career, Fatal1ty was intent on building a brand entirely his own.

Two months after his win in Sweden, Wendel returned to Dallas for the 2000 CPL. Once again competing in Quake 3, Wendel won the event and the $40,000 first place prize (from a total pool of $100,000), earning the first of what would become several world championships.

In 2000, Wendel won around $100,000 in Quake 3 prize money alone at tournaments that included CPL and the World Cyber Games Challenge (WCGC), an Olympics-inspired competition that would grow into one of the more important institutions in the esports world as the WCG.

Fatal1ty’s career spanned several games. In 2001, Wendel captured his second CPL world championship in the deathmatch FPS Aliens vs. Predator 2, a game whose notorious imbalance helped cut its lifespan short. A new Ford Focus (painted green and black and covered with AvP insignia) was added to a $40,000 first place prize.

In 2002, Wendel captured yet another world championship at CPL Winter in Dallas. This time, the game was Unreal Tournament 2003, another deathmatch 1v1 FPS focused on competitive multiplayer by design in the style of QuakeWorld and, later, Quake 3: Arena. Wendel won $10,000 for his efforts.

Fatal1ty’s wins and the growing esports circuit captured the attention of the world in and outside of gaming many times. For mainstream media outlets in America such as Forbes, 60 Minutes, The New York Times and Time, this 20-something was leading a life worth talking about. Media stories about Wendel often treated the boy as a novelty, a youngin leading an interesting if foreign lifestyle that, for better or worse, often left the older journalists shaking their heads in amazement. Condescension, ignorance and laziness have littered mainstream journalists’ attempts at covering esports since the dawn of time. Coverage of Fatal1ty was not always terribly different.

In these pieces from the 2000s, Wendel was often referred to as “the most famous gamer in the world” by journalists at the expense of ignored esports industries in Asia and Europe.

As far as mainstream exposure is concerned, the height of Fatal1ty’s visibility can likely be pinpointed to March 13, 2003. This was the day that MTV’s documentary series True Life featured Wendel’s first place Unreal Tournament 2003 run at Winter CPL 2002 as part of an hour long episode focusing on gamers in general.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c3q2zR9j1js

“Overall, the most accomplished player is definitely Fatal1ty,” said esports journalist and tournament organizer Michal Blicharz (Carmac) in 2008. “Gamers like Fatal1ty who are very very successful, especially from a financial point of view, are really very good examples of what you can do if you are very talented and very motivated.”

Fatal1ty’s success was a symptom of a growing esport. That growth benefited those around him. In 2004, Chinese player RocketBoy defeated Wendel in a game of Doom 3 and earned $120,000, a record. RocketBoy won the 2004 Doom 3 CPL championship.

Gamers such as Fatal1ty were a major boon to Munoz’s vision of a video game league mimicking and rivaling the National Football League, far and away America’s most popular and profitable American sports institution.

However, even the luminous star of Fatal1ty couldn’t keep deathmatch games on top of the Western world forever. Soon, a new game would carry the torch forward.

+
Next installment due April 23

+ Show Spoiler [Thanks] +

Thanks to:

Team Liquid, easily one of the greatest gaming communities of all time.
Duncan Shields (Thorin), gave me my first paid esports job and hasn’t stopped helping me in enormous ways since.
Rod Breslau (Slasher), helped me out endlessly at MLG and beyond.
Marcus Graham (DjWheat), a true believer and a huge pillar of the community.
Masters of Doom by David Kushner, I love this book.
Extra Lives by Tom Bissel, a book which elevates writing about games.
Dungeons and Dreamrs by Brad King and John Borland, another good historical read.
Ken Burns for all his work, especially the film Baseball, a beautiful documentary.
Replay by Tristan Donovan, the most fun history book video games have.
The Ultimate History of Video Games by Steve Kent, an invaluable resource.
Frag, a documentary highlighting a bit of history of Western esports.
GotFrag, once upon a time a burning example of gaming journalism.
ESFI for independent esports journalism.
David Sirlin for the awesome resource that is Sirlin.net.
Richard Millington, whose 1990s history articles were a ton of fun and help.
Wikipedia, an absolute embarrassment of riches.
Game Boys by Michael Kane, an outsider’s perspective.
1up, a great resource.
Pong-story.com, telling the story of the first games
Every trailblazer chronicled in this book and the ones I left out.
Boxer, for being a gaming icon and a helpful author.
IGN, Rupert Murdoch’s almost benevolent contribution to the world!
Lincoln Ruchti, director of Chasing Ghosts: Beyond the Arcade
Seth Gordon, director of King of Kong: A Fistful of Quarters
Mike Pasley, director of Frag
Jon Boal, director of E-@thlete
Kelly Milkies for her help reaching out to the stars.
Ben Goldhaber (fishstix) for his help reaching out beyond.
Michael “Zlasher” Chan, encouraging and helpful as always.
Heyoka, for writing about the past.
Philip "Nazroth" Hübner, for the DotA help
Lari 'D.Devil' Syrota, for being an esports educator.
Brent, Ted and everyone working hard at ESFI.
Michael ‘Zechs’ Radford, providing serious help.
Anne Celestino for providing help with everything but most incredibly Halo and Counter-Strike.
Forrest Cambell for the sketch of Counter-Strike history provided to all for the love of it.
Adnan "Darthozzan" Dervisevic for the knowledge passed down.
MLG_JV for the substantial Smash history.
Chris Brown (AlphaZealot) for all his Smash help.
TTS for all his Pokemon help.
Brad King and John Borland, authors of "Dungeons and Dreamers"
+
This project is for everyone who has jammed a B button in frustration and for everyone who has cracked the X button in triumph. This is for the keyboard breakers, late night players and 5am insomniacs with just one more game to go, the 5pm workaholics with time for just one game and the masses who keep coming back by the millions. This is for the sober, studious, ambitious kids of all ages with dreams of being the best in the world at what they love. This is for the not-so-sober, the unwinding, the gamers of all ages who simply want to play.
If, as Chris Sullentop wrote in the New York Times, “Video games have created what must be the biggest generation gap since rock ’n’ roll” then this a rough map of my home by this grand canyon.
In the hope of explaining ourselves a little better by explaining our pastimes as best we can, I wrote this.
This is for the millions of fans who make competitive gaming what it is.
+

Chaves

Brazil315 Posts

March 26 2012 22:44 GMT

Holy sh1t ... Sorry but i ll wait for the movie.

+ Show Spoiler +

reading right now

SgtSater

United States59 Posts

March 26 2012 22:45 GMT

Looks great! Havn't been able to read everything yet, but I've always thought history is important. Glad to see someone else does as well. GL!

ZeroCartin

Costa Rica2390 Posts

March 26 2012 22:46 GMT

My GOD!

This is amzaing, going to take a while to read it all!

Eee

Sweden2712 Posts

March 26 2012 22:48 GMT

I hope this will truly be the history of eSports and not Starcraft, and there is retarded misconeption among the sc community that eSports = Starcraft. I hope this will have a lot of stuff about Halo 2 and CS 1.6!

Will read this just in a short while.

Betelgeuse

Canada210 Posts

March 26 2012 22:49 GMT

Wow awesome idea to put this all together! Can't wait for the rest of them.

jlake02

United States395 Posts

March 26 2012 22:53 GMT

Look forward to it! Definitely a series for the history books. GL Chobo!

s.a.y

Croatia3840 Posts

March 26 2012 22:56 GMT

SWEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEET!

cmen15

United States1519 Posts

March 26 2012 22:58 GMT

wow man this is awesome only got through half of it cause I have to go now. Just wanted to say thanks for putting in the time to write this up!! : )

brystmar

United States26 Posts

March 26 2012 23:01 GMT

#10

There are few things I wouldn't sacrifice for a fully-stocked 80s arcade in my basement

Soleone

Canada80 Posts

March 26 2012 23:02 GMT

#11

spotliiiiiight!

awesome, can't wait to go through all of this, just the read i needed to catch up

Jiddra

Sweden2685 Posts

March 26 2012 23:05 GMT

#12

Grubby, so young in that clip!

*sentimental nerd tears*

chobopeon

United States7342 Posts

March 26 2012 23:17 GMT

#13

apologies that the twitch cast didnt work out. have some sound issues to work out. no problem though, am uploading it entirely to youtube as we speak

edit: there we go, we're up on the youtubes.

-Debaser-

United States329 Posts

March 26 2012 23:25 GMT

#14

Boards of canada!

Weavel

Finland9220 Posts

March 26 2012 23:30 GMT

#15

Woah this has to be the longest post I've ever seen in TL. Too tired to read throught it right now. Bookmarked.

IPA

United States3206 Posts

March 26 2012 23:32 GMT

#16

Cool thread. For those who might be interested in the 80s arcade boom and high score competition, check out "King of Kongs" and "Chasing Ghosts" -- two documentaries that show the passion and eccentricity of master level gamers from the golden era of arcades.

jcroisdale

United States1543 Posts

March 26 2012 23:33 GMT

#17

You honestly put so much work into this, i feel ashamed that so many people will just pass over it.

Klipsys

United States1533 Posts

March 26 2012 23:33 GMT

#18

Simply Amazing. Good luck with the project!

jrkirby

United States1510 Posts

March 26 2012 23:34 GMT

#19

Why isn't this spotlighted yet?

Deleted User 135096

3624 Posts

March 26 2012 23:34 GMT

#20

Part 1: Excellent read! can't wait for the next installment.
Part 2: Again, another excellent read, but more importantly it gives me the "sickest nerdchills" in that it's setting up the explosion of the modern pro gaming scene to come really well. I am so stoked for Part 3!
Part 3: Lol Slasher in that video. XD Love reading these, and I think I understand why this isn't spotlighted now (when it's finished, yes?).

1 2 3 4 5 7 8 9 Next All

Please or register to reply.

A History of Esports

Completed

Ongoing

Upcoming