This article is about video game competitions. For simulated sports in video games, see Sports video game. For multiplayer games in general, see Multiplayer video game.
E-sports , short for electronic sports, is a form of competition using video games. E-sports often takes the form of organized, multiplayer video game competitions, particularly between professional players, played individually or as teams.
Multiplayer competitions were long a part of video game culture, but were largely between amateurs until the late 2000s when the advent of online streaming media platforms, particularly YouTube and Twitch, enabled a surge in participation by professional gamers and spectators.By the 2010s, e-sports was a major part of the video game industry, with many game developers designing for and funding for tournaments and other events.
E-sports first became popular in East Asia, particularly in China and South Korea (which first licensed professional players in 2000) but less so in Japan, whose broad anti-gambling laws prohibit professional gaming tournaments. E-sports are also popular in Europe and the Americas, which host regional and international events.
The most common video game genres associated with esports are multiplayer online battle arena (MOBA), first-person shooter (FPS), fighting games, card, battle royales, and real-time strategy (RTS) games. Popular esports franchises include League of Legends, Dota, Counter-Strike, Valorant, Overwatch, Street Fighter, Super Smash Bros. and StarCraft. Among the most popular tournaments are the League of Legends World Championship, Dota 2‘s International, the fighting game-specific Evolution Championship Series (EVO) and Intel Extreme Masters. Many other competitions use a series of league play with sponsored teams, such as the Overwatch League. Although the legitimacy of e-sports as a true sporting competition remains in question, they have been featured alongside traditional sports in some multinational events in Asia. The International Olympic Committee has discussed their inclusion in future Olympic events, starting with the Olympic Esports Games set to be held in 2027.
In the early 2010s, viewership was about 85% male and 15% female, with most viewers between the ages of 18 and 34.By the late 2010s, it was estimated that by 2020, the total audience of e-sports would grow to 454 million viewers, with revenue increasing to more than US$1 billion, with China accounting for 35% of the global e-sports revenue.
Global tournaments (2000–present)
The growth of e-sports in South Korea has been estimated to have been fueled by mass expansion of broadband Internet networks in the wake of the 1997 Asian financial crisis. It is also estimated to have been fueled by the high unemployment rate at the time, which caused most people to seek something to do when unemployed.[45] Central to this growth of e-sports in South Korea was the mass adoption of the Komany-style internet café/LAN gaming center, or PC bang. In 2000, the Korean e-Sports Association, a spin-off of the Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism, was created to promote and regulate South Korean e-sports. The name “E-sports” was coined by Minister of Culture, Sports, and Tourism Park Jie-won at the induction ceremony of the 21st Century Professional Game Association (now Korean e-Sports Association) in 2000.
Physical attendance at e-sports events and event size have grown with the development of online attendance. The Season 3 League of Legends World Championship of 2013 took place in a sold-out Staples Center.[The League of Legends World Championship in Seoul, South Korea, in 2014 drew over 40,000 attendees and included the band Imagine Dragons, and opening and closing ceremonies along with the competition.
The contemporary e-sports boom has also witnessed an increase in video games firms embracing the e-sports potential of their titles. Following decades of dismissing and at times stifling the e-sports phenomenon, Nintendo sponsored Wii Games Summer 2010. The tournament lasted for a month and attracted over 400,000 participants, the largest and most extensive tournament in the company’s history. In 2014, Nintendo hosted an invitational Super Smash Bros. for Wii U competitive tournament during the 2014 Electronic Entertainment Expo (E3) press conference that was streamed live on Twitch. Halo developers 343 Industries planned in 2014 to revive Halo as an e-sport through the production of the Halo Championship Series and a US$50,000 prize pool.[61] Both Blizzard Entertainment and Riot Games have collegiate outreach programs with their North American Collegiate Championship. Since 2013 colleges and universities in the United States like Robert Morris University Illinois and the University of Pikeville have awarded e-sports players varsity level athlete status and provide athletic scholarships.In 2017, Tespa, the collegiate e-sports arm of Blizzard Entertainment, initiated its new program to offer scholarships and prizes for collegiate e-sports clubs competing in its tournaments worth US$1 million. Colleges have started to award scholarships to students who qualify to play e-sports professionally for the institution. Colleges like Columbia College, Robert Morris University, and Indiana Institute of Technology have done so. In 2018, Harrisburg University of Science and Technology initiated a tuition scholarship program for e-sports players.
Growth and online video games (1990–1999)
The fighting game Street Fighter II (1991) popularized the concept of direct, tournament-level competition between two players.Previously, video games most often relied on high scores to determine the best player, but this changed with Street Fighter II, where players would instead challenge each other directly, “face-to-face”, to determine the best player,paving the way for the competitive multiplayer and deathmatch modes found in modern action games. The popularity of fighting games such as Street Fighter and Marvel vs. Capcom in the 1990s led to the foundation of the international Evolution Championship Series (EVO) esports tournament in 1996.
Large esports tournaments in the 1990s include the 1990 Nintendo World Championships, which toured across the United States, and held its finals at Universal Studios Hollywood in California. Nintendo held a 2nd World Championships in 1994 for the Super Nintendo Entertainment System called the Nintendo PowerFest ’94. There were 132 finalists that played in the finals in San Diego, California. Mike Iarossi took home 1st prize. Blockbuster Video also ran their own World Game Championships in the early 1990s, co-hosted by GamePro magazine. Citizens from the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, Australia, and Chile were eligible to compete. Games from the 1994 championships included NBA Jam and Virtua Racing.
In the 1990s, many games benefited from increasing internet connectivity, especially PC games. Inspired by the fighting games Street Fighter II, Fatal Fury and Art of Fighting, id Software‘s John Romero established competitive multiplayer in online games with Doom‘s deathmatch mode in 1993. Tournaments established in the late 1990s include the Cyberathlete Professional League (CPL), QuakeCon, and the Professional Gamers League. PC games played at the CPL included the Counter-Strike series, Quake series, StarCraft, and Warcraft.
Olympic Games
[…] e.g., “the third year of the eighteenth Olympiad when Ladas of Argos won the stadion“.They continued to be celebrated when Greece came under Roman rule in the 2nd century BC. […]
Shameera Shaikh
That’s really interesting! The fact that the Olympics continued even under Roman rule shows how important and influential they were in ancient culture.