Rising Giant of Esports and the Skill behind the professionals

[Courtesy of Joshua Lopez]

Esports, the new platform for gaming in the world of professional sport one that has been hard fought in approval but is unstoppable just like the gaming industry.

As mentioned, until recently the idea of gamers sitting behind machine being counted as athletes behind the name of a E “sport” is a recent event, however competition between professional gamers is something that has been done for years. With gaming companies behind pioneering games like Halo,COD, and others holding tournaments in which skilled players of both games facing off on consoles like Xbox and Playstation within their own games.

This high-level gaming counter to what people believe regarding it, also has a high skill platform like normal sports like rugby and football and shares a lot of the same traits when it comes to training. Like any sport repetition is key with naturally the more amount of practice someone does the better you will be, with professionals recommending up to 7-8 hours a day dedicated to practice. With popular streamers such as Ninja, and Tfue especially on the Fortnite side of things going live on gaming streamers like Twitch for sometimes over 8 or 9 hours a day.

I spoke to Jaime Bishop or "Tie" as his gamertag who gave his insight on the matter of Esports: https://soundcloud.com/tr-void-jumper/josh-1/s-UwggL9LcnyK [Courtesy of Joshua Lopez]

Until recently however these athletes had largely been confined to the gaming community, with a reluctance from mainstream powers to acknowledge the fact that the largely causal video games could be a professional career path for young people in a growing industry.

This bubble formed by the older generation who formed the opinion that video games were nothing that should be taken seriously was burst, however with the arrival of Fortnite one of the most well-known video games in the world this was starting to change. Fortnite and more importantly the Fortnite World Cup which happened in 2019, showed thischange in the wind when champion Kyle Giersdorf aged 16 won 3 million pounds after going through several rounds of knockout competition to eventually become world champion of Fortnite singles.

The moment propelled Esports into the mainstream and despite the media focusing on the amount of cash won by Giersdorf there was no doubt that the E-sport was gaining traction. Furthermore, this was not only reflected through the competition side but also the educational side as well, with many UK and US universities offering scholarships associated with Esports. Example of this is not hard to find Nottingham Trent University which now offers a degree in Esports production as well as Miami University with a similar Esports degree.

In terms of a specific framework Esports like some professional competitions it consists of amateur or professional gamers competing against others for a cash prize. The is done through multiple facets with as tournament rules could be team based/solo depending on the game as well as scoring points vs playing an objective like capture the flag. These events themselves are normally set up and funded by the games developers themselves as there is money to be gained of the promotion of the competition to make the game itself more popular.

Altogether there Is no doubt that the rise in video games is a sharp one with a Forbes article expressing that the video game industry is now valued above 200 billion in worth. And with the world of professional gaming growing and largely becoming more normalised in culture its only a matter of time before such sporting events such as the Olympics and international sporting stage.