Esports - Rising to fame or just a game?
Humans like competitions. Video games have been around since
the late 1950s. In fact, the very first
video game ever made was a multiplayer game of tennis played between two
people called Tennis for Two. Esports, also known as electronic sports is a form of competition using
video games. The history of Esports is quite a long one, the first ever
‘Esports’ tournament was held at the Stamford University in the year of 1972.
Students competed on the video game ‘Spacewar’ and the grand prize for the
winner was a year long subscription to the Rolling Stones magazine. As the
technology developed, more and more complex games were produced and the stakes
of these competitions were raised.
When the 1990s rolled over with the rise of the internet,
video game developers started experimenting with internet based multiplayer
games. This meant that you could now play with people all around the world
sitting in the comfort of your home. Lots of new genres of video games started
popping up, from first person shooters to roll playing games to MOBA
(Multiplayer online battle arena) games to racing games and countless others.
All these new innovations led to multiple tournaments being held with a lot of
interested viewers watching players of the highest echelons battling it out and
a lot of sponsors that were ready to capture all of the interested eyes. One of the first tournaments- the Red
Annihilation tournament of 1997 saw 2000 participants brawling in the game of
‘Quake’ for a chance to win the lead developer of Quake’s (John Cormack) bright
red Ferrari.
At the start of the 2000s, a lot of international
tournaments were launched such as the World Cyber Games, Electronic Sports
World Cup followed by the Major League Gaming (MLG) which is the current
largest Esports league today. At the same time, the world saw an advent of a
new game- Counter Strike. Counter Strike is a first person shooter game in
which players play the roles of terrorists and counter terrorists. The two
teams are tasked with the objective of defeating the other by the means of
either completing the map's objectives or eliminating all of the enemy
combatants. It was an instantaneous hit. The game had a considerably low skill
floor but a tremendously high skill ceiling. What this meant was that, the
average player could pick up the mechanics of the game very easily, but to
master the game was a different beast. The game had a lot of complex mechanics
like first shot accuracy, spray control, wallbanging, efficient use of utility,
line-ups, etc which could only be mastered with 1000s of hours of experience. The
first Counter Strike tournament was held in 2001 at Dallas, Texas by Cyberathlete
Professional League (CPL). The tournament offered a prize pool of a whopping
$150,000 and was won by the Swedish team ‘Ninjas in Pyjamas’. Since then, there
have been bi-annual tournaments every year for 20 years. 2020 saw the release
of Valorant- A free to play 5v5 first person shooter game that offered a more
competitive space with roles for every player. The first Esports tournament of
this video game is currently going on at the time of writing this blog. This
tournament is a pioneer in the world of Esports as it is the first completely
online tournament, where the players compete from their respective homes.
Previously, all Esport tournaments took place as LAN (Local area network)
events and were broadcasted for fans to see online.
Now coming to the topic, can Esports be considered as real sports? According to my opinion, Esports can be considered as real sports as, the dedication and discipline devoted to these games is as much as any other sport. The definition of a sport is- a form of competitive physical activity or game that aims to use, maintain or improve physical ability and skills while providing enjoyment to participants and in some cases, entertainment to spectators. Esports fulfils all these criteria, especially the part about providing enjoyment. As Esports are mostly sedentary, players must take care to balance their on-screen and off-screen time. It is well known that anything in excess is bad, and the same applies for Esports. Like playing too much of other sports can cause injuries, too much of training for Esports can be injurious to a person’s mental and physical state.
Hence, just as any other sport, Esports should be encouraged
and not shunned!
