E-Sports
Before I get started I want to firstly do an introduction about myself; I am “HKM”, the one who
drew the really bad banner you see above. Secondly I am a 'nobody' in terms of the E-Sports scene
and what I am about to talk about is my personal feelings about E-sports in general and what it
should do to move forward as a whole, of course this will be all done in separate parts, as I am a
guest blogger here, so look out for them, as for my gaming history, I watch quite a bit of Starcraft 2,
play League of Legends, Guild Wars, Counter Strike, as well a load of other games I have history
with, so enjoy the read hopefully as much as I enjoyed writing this.
Part 1: What is E-Sports?
So some of you may be wondering what is 'E-sport'? While others have a vague idea or a good
knowledge of what e-sports is. I'm here to give my perception of what is e-sports as a whole.
What comes to mind when someone mentions e-sports, for the people who have heard of the
term before, is a large stage with two teams/players playing against each other for prize money.
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| What people think e-sports should mean. |
for baseball) and that it is only a small portion of e-sports as a whole, where gamers will strive
towards when they decide to 'go pro' in gaming, as most of the money lies here waiting to be won
in form of tournaments and others. This part of e-sports includes professional and semiprofessionals
as what they do in essence is they compete in tournaments and win prize money, the
difference is that professionals gain enough money, through sponsorship or others to make a living
while the semi-professionals gain money through sponsorship or others to help with the cost of
living, and may have a part-time job to supplement his income.
The question now is “If professionals are only a small portion of e-sports, then what is the other
portion?”, if some of you are sharp enough and understand my examples given then it should be
clear where the other portion of e-sports lies, but I will make clear where the other portion of esports
lies. The rest of e-sports lies in the amateur and 'non-competitive' side of e-sports. This is
fairly simple to break down, as the amateur side is basically those who are not making a living off
e-sports but are playing competitively at a decent level and are not making some form of money or
a small amount, while the 'non-competitive' are those who play for fun, or have no interest (or no
knowledge) in making money in e-sports.
The amateur side of gaming is a simpler side to e-sports, this is where a person/team competes
(semi-)regularly in tournaments (online or offline) where there is prize money on offer and is small
or no prize money altogether, the definition of small may vary from person to person but the idea
is that the money won and the frequency of the tournament(s) is not enough to make a
sustainable living even if they won it all the time. The player/team are not sponsored, and if they
are, and/or winning small tournament constantly they are in a grey area between an amateur and
a semi-pro.
To explain further the 'non-competitive' side, this includes the rest of the players playing the game
or are actively supporting the game. This is where, I believe, most of e-sports lies in terms of the
amount of players. I have noted two different 'non-competitive' sections here, each one is fairly
different from the other. For the section of players who play the game they are partaking in the
culture of e-sports as a whole, as long as this game is competitive and require two (or more)
players. E-sports at it's basic level all boils down to two players/team playing against each other in
a competitive game in order to see who is better, this means that two players playing against each
other in a game of Super Mario Kart in a bedroom somewhere in another part of the world, is
taking part in the culture of e-sports whether they know it or not.
amongst themselves and have no bearing on the football as a whole, they are still participating in
the culture of football, following its rules and scoring; This means that the next time you play a
game of Starcraft or Tekken that you are participating in the culture of e-sports whether you intend
to or not.
Now for the 'actively supporting' side of the game, this section is as important, if not more
important, than the professional side of e-sport. This section contains; watchers, sponsors, and
everyone else. The watchers are simply those who watch tournaments, streams, read blogs,
forums etc... that are related to e-sports, without these people e-sports would not exist as it does
today.
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| View from SC2 World Championship Series 2012 European Finals |
sponsors the more advertising/reach e-sports has, and the more reach means more fans, and so
forth. But it all begins with the fans. Sponsors are exactly what it says on the tin, they are the
companies who sponsors individual players or teams, by monetary or otherwise, this is simply a
mutually benefiting agreement as the player/team gains more money to go to tournaments paid
for by the sponsor and the sponsor gets advertising at the tournament. With everybody else this
means everyone who is actively supporting a person in e-sports or is a personality, be it family,
team manager, shoutcasters or a host, all of these people are part of e-sports.
This is my definition of e-sports as a whole, and what is inside of it. As you can see it contains
pretty much everything that is associated with a game, while some may be found in one level of a
game then another it is all still part of e-sports, it is very large, and hopefully its here to stay.
.....
So yeah, it's a bit long but it's a pretty good read and there is more to come, and you can follow this guy on twitter too!
https://twitter.com/wisH_HKM
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