All you need to know about E-sports
What is E-Sports?
E-sports or electronic sports is a
competitive sport played on-screen by professionals, and are awarded large sums
of money at winning the tournaments. This was initially perpetrated by amateurs
but later progressed to internationally recognized sports played by
professional players.
The potential competitors of a
particular game forming a league (sometimes solo player) plays against the
opposite league in an arena or stadium among millions of spectators-the fan
base. These are the same games we generally play at home, on our computers or
play stations sitting lousily on a couch. Whereas in e-sports these games are
played by professionally trained players, playing while sitting among millions
of fans who are cheering for them and desperately wishing their favorite player
to win. These sports events are packed with world class brands and sponsors
along high profile media coverage and publications. Eventually, bringing in
unavoidable attention and massive revenues.
How e-sports evolved?
E-sports was first played and
organized at Stanford University by the campus students in 1972. Spacewar was
the first game ever played at a higher competitive level. However, second on
the list is Space
Invaders Championship that had 10,000 fans as audience and acquired
media attention too. With the arrival of internet in 1990s, the global
connectivity bring gamers closer and contributed inevitable growth in video
gaming competitiveness. The tournament of the famous ‘Quake game’ was marked as
the first e-sport competition. As we embraced the new millennium it brought us
deeper into videogame tournaments, some of them are Major League Gaming (awarded
largest sum of money as prize to the winners till date), defense of the
Ancients (Dota), and League of Legends.
Monetization in gaming industry
presented e-sports to the viewers and stakeholders more lucratively. By the
year 2023 it is estimated to make business more than $1.5 billion.
Where can you watch e-sports tournaments?
- Online
The live streaming of e-sports
tournaments can be viewed at youtube and twitch, the two major streamers of
sports events worldwide. The easier streaming however plays an efficient role
in maintaining the interest of the fans across the globe. Counter-Strike Global
Offensive and Rocket League are on the list of the official channels with high
profile tournament coverage.
- Television
E-sports has also been on-aired on television
for past six years. Some of them are ESPNU, ESPN Deportes, DisneyXD and TBS. Lately,
in-person experience of the tournaments have been compromised for safety
purpose against coronavirus pandemic.
Who can play?
Anybody can be part of e-sports. The
players are nominated regardless of their, age, region and education. Basically
video gaming is part of teens life and usually e-sport players are young below
30. Young and enthusiastic players are seen with high achievement, energy and
success. Mostly the professionals prep themselves around 6-10 hours a day
before tournaments.
Popular teams and players
Team Liquid, Fnatic, OG, Evil
Geniuses, Faze Clan, Virtus, Newbee and Cloud 9 are the top e-sport teams that
had won number of tournaments. However team liquid is on the top with highest
amount of prize pool winner so far, they have won $36,026,710,19 in 1903
tournaments.
Lee
Sang-hyeok (aka Faker), Jian Zi-Hao’s (aka Uzi), Song Eui-Jin (aka Rookie),
Andreas Højsleth (aka Xyp9x), Nicolai Reedtz (aka dev1ce), Peter Rothmann
Rasmussen (aka dupreeh), Felix Kjellberg (aka Pewdiepie), Preston Arsement (aka
Preston) Lasse Aukusti Urpalainen (aka MATUMBAMAN), TylerBlevins (aka Ninja), Clement
Ivanov (aka Puppey) and many others are the top players in e-sport world.
Popular e-sports games
Although there are numerous video
games that are played globally in vast numbers some of them are League of Legends (LoL), Overwatch, Counter-Strike,
Defense of the Legends 2 (DOTA 2), Street
Fighter, Mortal Kombat, Fortnite, Super Smash Brothers, Call
of Duty (CoD), Madden NFL, and Starcraft. Starcraft is listed amongst one of the
classics still played today as it first came out in 1998.
Top tournaments and prize pool
The recent indicators for top e-sport tournaments of November 2020 by Statista along massive prize pool are
A booming industry
E-sports has earned a major name in
the business world as its market is higher than Hollywood. The gaming revenue
is simply gigantic and going higher with every passing year. The competitive
gaming is taking shape of highly profitable industry and generating each year
revenue that is more than $120 billion. Its audience and/or fan base is huge
then Major League Baseball.
Forbes, reported, ”E-sports is fast on
its way to becoming the most financially lucrative market on the planet”.
Nobody knew a past teenage leisure time activity would make its way to one of
the highly developed and rewarding market. It is expected to generate revenue
around $1.5 billion in 2023. As a matter of fact a number of recent studies
have shown that people are connected conveniently via virtual world in the
recent outbreak and video gaming has become increasingly integrated as part of
leisure activities. These findings illustrate video gaming is not only a
popular industry but also a promising business.
Can you make a career out of video gaming?
Video gaming is not merely game for
fun anymore, it has broad and money-spinning prospects now, and even an established
career is unquestionably possible. Being part of the gaming industry you could
opt for the role of game producer, designer, programmer, audio engineer or
video game artist.
Apart from these careers game tester
and game critic or a professional player are also some of the adorable
possibilities out of the career opportunities in e-sport industry.
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