E-sports

                After discussing about E sport in last class, I wanted to go over about it since I had a discussion about E-sport with my friends before; we were arguing about whether E-sport is a kind of sport or not.  Can we consider E-sports as a kind of sports? What will be the future of E-sport, and how should it progress?

Before we go over about E-sports, let’s define what sport is. According to the oxford dictionary, sport is an activity involving physical exertion and skill in which an individual or team competes against another or others for entertainment, and E-sports don’t really require physical exertion other than using mouse, keyboards, or controllers. In this kind of definition, we can’t really consider E-sport as Sport; however, E-sport is still a form of activity that individual or team competes against other people for entertainment, and there are people who are going for professional  gamers; also, more and more people are acknowledge to E-sports as well.

Just like Normal sports, E-Sports require players’ skills, and their time into practicing; E-sports also can display athleticism and fair play like normal sports. There are more tournaments on E-Sports around the world, and gaming is seen on a variety of channels in the United State. In some countries, like South Korea where E-sports are really spread, E-Sports are even regularly televised by dedicated TV channels; there are even worldwide tournaments between countries. There are many professional teams and players for E-sports, and companies sponsoring the teams. Although E-sports doesn’t require as much physical skills as normal sports does, I think we can consider E-sport as a form of sport since it shows the competition between teams or players for entertainment while having its economic  value.

Before we talk about the future of E-sports, let’s talk about the history of it; In June 1997, the Microsoft sponsored Red Annihilation Quake tournament at the E3 expo, and that’s how the first real E-sports competition started. After that, there were several events and tournaments were held until 2001, but those were small, ordinary events that weren’t important. In December 2001, the first actual World Cyber Games (WCG) have held; there were 430 players from 37 nations in 6 disciplines; it featured many games such as StarCraft, Quake 3, Counter-Strike, Quake 3, and FIFA 2001, and people started to get interest on E-sports.

Now, there are many tournaments are held for variety of E-sports; there were international Dota2 Competition, and Season 3 World Series in League of Legends. However, like StarCraft 1 and 2, even popular games will eventually collapse, and people will not play as much as they do. Teams like Liquid, Fnatic, and Dignitas having several teams for several games, don’t care about too much, but professional players will have no value when the game they focused goes under. Professional players are so insecure that they can lose everything so easily. Therefore, to improve the future of E-sports, there should be some kind of benefit after they retire; teams should give them other opportunities either to other games, or as coaches, so that people will think more positively for being professional gamers.

Also, to improve E-sports, we need to make people to change their views about E-sports; I know many people in the world are negative towards games and pro gamers. Especially parents don’t like their children to play games or be pro gamers since the job is unstable, and they think games are “bad” things compare to sports or education. Changing views of those people are the most necessary thing for E-sports to develop; pro gamers should be proud of their jobs, their environment should be changed, and there should be an advertisement that indicates that pro gamers aren’t idiots who waste their time on games.

I do understand why people think E-sport is silly; like I stated, pro gamer is an unstable job, and it doesn’t guarantee monthly salary. Also, people don’t think gamers are wasting time on games when they can use their time more efficiently on other things; however, now, E-sports is becoming a large entertainment. Many people are getting more attention to it, and people should acknowledge that E-sports is a kind of sports and have some of respect to it.

 

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