Sports are a massive phenomena, to say the least, and esports definitely seems to want to try to become similar, but so far…I think it may be fair to say it’s struggling at that, outside of maybe some specific games and countries (…Is StarCraft still a thing in South Korea?).
Do you think that might eventually change, and if so what might contribute to it being alongside regular sports in terms of conversations & attention?
People organize physical sports spontaneously; in particular, children do. The adult activities we call “sports” are formal adaptations of improvised play activities: kick the ball, throw it in the hoop, hit the thing with a stick, wrestle the other guy, jump higher, run faster.
So-called “esports” are video games; activities that depend on being a customer of a software engineering organization. They don’t have the connection to an improvised play activity that physical sports do.
That’s a great point, not to mention how specific the skill set is to some of these games. Some games are so complicated that only the people who play them are able to perceive the value in them. Whereas anybody can watch a sport ball and understand basically what’s going on. And aware how good somebody is at it. With some video games it’s impossible to know what you’re even watching unless you’re actively participating in the game itself.
Exactly, I was at a League of Legends esport event in South Korea once without ever having played the game, and while there are Sports where the rules are so complicated that It’s hard to follow (rugby, baseball, etc.) you at least can see the athleticism, speed, power, etc. while I was looking at that screen there and had no idea what I should look at.
Needless to say that this was my first and last atempt to enjoy esports as a viewer.
But I have to add that I still enjoy watching people playing games, like Pewdiepie playing Minecraft but then I’m watching for the story they create, not the game itself.
No. eSports is currently a shrinking industry. It’s here to stay but it doesn’t show signs of overtaking.
Even if it starts to get big again, it’s better compared to competitive Chess or Pool or even Motorsports than conventional sports.
During the pandemic, when everything was shut down, sports were canceled. When asked what they missed most about watching sports a majority of men responded that they missed sharing the experience with their fathers and children.
I think that one reason for the popularity of sports, especially among men, is that it serves as a surrogate emotional bond for people that may have difficulty sharing their feelings … or maybe they just enjoyed the bonding experience.
If esports can provide a similar experience, then maybe it can be as popular, but there is more there than just the sport.
Esports are huge in some countries, Korea and China being notable examples. Certain games are large in some other countries, some have large followings among certain demographics as well.
I think we’re a long way from NaVi having the same support as Man U or PSG or the LA Lakers or something like that but we’ll see. It’s not like those teams started out with global attention either
What I think people don’t realize with eSports is that there’s a pretty high barrier to entry.
For football, or hockey, or baseball, a person can take an afternoon to understand it and enjoy it. And even without understanding the game, they can appreciate the skill because it’s obvious when someone does something impressive.
But think about how complicated League of Legends is. Or Overwatch. There’s a LOT going on on screen and it takes time to learn to filter out the noise. You first need to understand the game mechanics and the goals, then you have to have enough experience in the game to even be able to see what’s going on, and THEN it’s still not obvious when someone does something impressive. You need a thorough understanding of the meta to really know how good someone is doing.
That’s why eSports probably won’t be as popular as physical sports: because the barrier to entry as a casual viewer is much higher.
This is part of why counterstrike is one of the most successful ones. It’s the easiest to visually understand what’s happening on screen.
Exactly. Even if people don’t play the sport they have tried to run/jump/catch/throw something so have context into what is difficult or not. It’s basically universal. eSports that context is different for almost every game.
Maybe, but I think the kind of stuff that we have now which is all about pushing skins and other cosmetics on people means that those games will remain firmly in the category of trendy rather than timeless and that will mean that any given game probably won’t be very long lived. I was amazed at how quickly Overwatch 2 shot itself in the foot for instance. Original Overwatch was incredible and I could have played it for 20 years or more. I gave up on OW2 after a week or so and stopped thinking about it.
I would say no because even though you play sports when you were young as you got older, you tend to keep following the sports. In my case, I played some sports when I was young and I was pretty good but I didn’t keep up with it. I fell into the video game crowd but as I got older I quit playing video games as much and also quit keeping up with the video games in general. In my opinion die hard sports fans are always going to be such but gaming comes and goes as we age. Just the opinion of an old man such as myself. Take that with a big grain of ancient salt.
I guess it depends on the perspective. There are tons of sports out there. Only a small handful of them are massively popular. I mean, fortnite is probably more popular than something like professional badminton or canoeing.
While I would never say never I really doubt it will happen any time in the foreseeable future. It has been tried numerous times and it never catches on. If I had to guess why it is because mainly no game that it gets tried with is simple enough to comprehend in its entirety by merely watching it. To the average person watching someone play a modern video game is just nonsense.
The second problem is that traditional sports are not easily accessible to play in a structured team format for everyone. Good luck getting a group of 10-20 people together to play some sport. There is also the physical barrier of entry as well as actual equipment and space required.
In comparison it is far easier to load up a computer game yourself and play it. Why watch someone else do it when you can do it yourself?
I think there’s a VERY good possibility. There are a lot of kids with E-Sports and Streaming dreams in their heads. Nobody my age had dreams of E sports, because it wasn’t a thing. We all played them, but there was no online play, you only knew how good you were compared to your friends!
A lot of these kids are going to keep their passion growing as they age. Just like my generation grew up and recently brought D&D into the mainstream, I think these kids might be more accepting of E sports as they age.
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No, I think it has mostly peaked. It is only as popular as the game being played, and that always fluctuates as games get less exciting, get changed, or new ones come out. Also gamer nerds aren’t exactly cool or worth caring about outside of the game they’re really good at.
Yes, they are going to stay BIG, but as a show, like WWE Wrestling, never like real sports.
I’d say more competitive Chess or Pool since it’s still a real competition, just a non-athletic one, unlike WWE.
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“(eSports) is still a real competition unlike WWE”
eh… maybe in several millennia. “sport” aka physical activity that evolved from “playing” has probably been a thing since before people were people.
