Are eSports sports?

If you ask someone this question, their first approach to tackling it is very binary: yes or no. If someone intuitively thinks that it is or isn’t a sport, often even if you present the best arguments, they’ll just disagree. So rather than thinking about the question in that manner, let’s approach it from the following aspect; whether eSports will become what sport is today? Will it have the success that sport has had? Can it be a cultural phenomenon? I think so.

eSports is a discipline consisting of a variety of video games, designed to be played competitively. Some of the more popular games today are League of Legends (LoL), Counter-Strike: Global Offensive (CS:GO) and Dota 2 (Newzoo, n.d.). However there are also games whose popularity peaked in the past and are now in a decline, or not played at all, like the StarCraft series, Counter-Strike 1.6 (CS 1.6), Quake and even arcade games dating back to the late 70s; “Events originally took the form of High Score challenges… in 1980” reported Jarvis (2015). These games didn’t become eSports just because they were popular amongst casual players; all successful eSports games are intricately designed so that the best players can shine, even against the rest of the professional scene.

In the last couple of years, eSports has grown in popularity and even, to a small extent, entered the main stream. The biggest Dota 2 tournament of the year, ‘The International’ in 2014, was televised on ESPN and has been every year since. Turner Broadcasting System (TBS) organised 2 big CS:GO tournaments (ELEAGUE Seasons 1 and 2) and televised most big matches. It has been stated, anecdotally, that in a university talk, the President of TBS said: "It does better than anything else we would put in that time slot and it costs us almost nothing” (reddit inc. 2016). TBS is now working in co-operation with Valve, the creators of CS:GO and Dota 2, on making the 10th CS:GO Major, parts of which will also be televised on TBS. There is also a British TV Channel dedicated to eSports, owned by Sky plc and ITV plc: Ginx TV. As a result of the attention eSports has received, owners mainstream sports teams and celebrities have become involved in eSports, “Liquid sold controlling interest… [to] Golden State Warriors co-owner Peter Guber and Ted Leonsis,… [who own] the Washington Wizards, and the Washington Capitals” (Leslie 2017). Moreover, the owners of the Philadelphia 76ers, F.C. Copenhagen, F.C. Schalke 04 and Manchester City F.C., amongst others (Kent 2016), have to some extent invested in eSports too. Rick Fox and Shaquille O'Neal have also not been shy about investing in particular eSports organisations. There has also been involvement by mainstream organisations in other ways: Yahoo and ESPN have websites dedicated to eSports coverage and Amazon.com is affiliated with the biggest eSports broadcast platform, Twitch.tv. “We [Twitch] forecast that eSports will reach ~500 million fans worldwide by 2020, ahead of popular sports such as basketball”(McAlone 2016).

Despite its rising profile status, there are also a lot of problems on the business side of eSports. Right now, many different parties are in a tug of war for control over as big a part of the scene as possible (Lewis 2016). Different tournament organisers all want exclusivity over all tournaments in a particular game, as it promises more revenue for them, and would mean that they essentially control the game. While not outright stating it, there have been suspicions regarding companies paying team organisations to join associations involving players, team organisations and tournament organisers, where tournament organisers effectively created a majority, and could pass laws that suited them, but at the same publicly claim their organisation fights for players’ rights and that it involves all parties(World eSports Association 2016; Professional eSports Association 2017). There are also a lot of dubious things happening, since there is no single authority there to punish such behaviour. For example, there have been cases of team organisations holding onto players’ shares of prize money (Lewis 2015). However, there is barely a player council or any other authority to look out for mistreatment, with the closest thing being a Skype chat. Moreover, most players tend to choose big-salary contracts in teams where they have little influence, rather than negotiating deals where they have more bargaining power, perhaps for a smaller salary. This would lead to players being treated more fairly. This happens because eSports lacks player agents and eSports lawyers who can help a player make the right long-term financial decision and the right decisions to help the scene grow. Though there are sports lawyers out there, they often tend to not know much about eSports and can be of little help. Since a lot of the players are also young, they can be naïve and only think short term, about the money. Other examples of mistreatment of players by team organisations are ‘benching’ players (Wolf 2016); keeping them in the organisation, but not as players. This is done in order to get more money off of the player, by forcing teams that want the player to pay an expensive buy out, or getting the player to livestream under the brand of the organisation in order for the brand to get more exposure. For example, FaZe Clan recruited a new player, and rather than selling off their sixth player, they proceeded to keep him in the ‘backup’ position, where he was basically not being used (Bury 2016). What allows them to do this is players naively signing long term contracts with ridiculous buy-outs. In conclusion, tournament organisers, team organisations and players all want control and right now, tournament organisers and teams seem to be working together to rub players out of the picture, allowing particular teams and tournament organisers to split control over the scene.

Perhaps the worst aspect of this fight for control is the fact that all of the brands and logos the public sees are puppets, controlled by bigger companies. ESforce is a company which controls several team organisations (Rosen 2016), gambling websites and has influence over tournament organisers. It markets all of these under different brands so as to appear that they are all independent companies. Not only does this create a conflict of interest, which means ESForce can influence matches’ outcomes where two teams owned by the same organisation/person are playing against each other, but it shows how much control and influence such companies have over the scene already, and confirms that the aforementioned worries about exclusivity might be becoming a reality. To continue with my earlier point, although big organisations are investing in eSports, they often choose to rebrand teams; this means they get all the revenue sharing, but they don’t have to involve their name and reputation (F.C. København 2017), (Lewis 2017). Investing money in eSports is not a big deal for them, since eSports is relatively small compared to traditional sports, and thus their size. They are planting seeds just in case the plant grows, in which case they’ve struck gold; eSports is being used.

As much as it pains me to see this happen, it’s an inevitability that has plagued all other sports; NFL controls American football, the NBA more or less controls basketball and FIFA are as big an influence on football as the other two are on their respective sports. Therefore, perhaps it’s normal.

Business aside, there are other problems on the horizon which have to be overcome. Let’s talk about the elephant in the room; the stigma and biases the average person has about eSports. It’s something new and something that hasn’t been done before, therefore most people aren’t aware of it and don’t understand it. They just look at what’s on the surface, which is some guys playing a ‘kids’ game’. So they just flick to the next channel and are unlikely to give it much of a chance. Moreover, the unusual spectating method, compared to other shows on TV, can be a turn-off for some people and can be confusing to them, thus discouraging them from watching it. Despite how popular eSports grows, it will always be controversial, since it’s such a polarising topic; it’s just one of those things only the new generation will acknowledge. Moreover, a lot of countries’ governments have a very dismissive attitude towards video games and are very wary of the violence in some of those games, namely CS:GO. CS:GO is the most successful first person shooter eSport, and a widely popular game. Therefore politicians often blame terrorist attacks or shootings on first person shooters, and have even gone so far as to cancel their CS:GO ELEAGUE broadcasting deal with Turner Broadcast System (Biery 2016). In my personal opinion, they do this because it’s what the big demographic wants to hear; a lot of people have a negative opinion of video games. So why are video games not the cause? Let’s imagine you’re a violent person; you’re going to naturally tend towards shooting games. So a lot of people have it the wrong way round; the game doesn’t make people violent, violent people (who would be violent even if this game didn’t exist) choose to play the game. Secondly, if you blame the entertainment media that is video games for containing violence, shouldn’t you apply the same logic to movies? Some people would go as far so as to argue that politicians use video games as an escape from having to admit their country didn’t do enough to help this mentally ill person, that the country’s schools aren’t doing a good enough job of helping violent children. A lot of eSports analysts have expressed similar opinions on the topic, with Duncan Shields (2016) making a lot of the arguments I’ve expressed above. None the less, you can’t change the mentality a whole generation has, despite the arguments you present and how wrong they are. Therefore, this will be a set-back for some eSports.

To tackle the question, “Are eSports sports?” we first need to consider what a sport is. The Oxford Dictionary defines the word ‘sport’ as “An activity involving physical exertion and skill in which an individual or team competes against another or others for entertainment” (Oxford University Press, n.d.). The general public’s opinion, however, seems exaggerate the “physical exertion” aspect.
I think the dictionary definition of sport is vague and quite generalised. This is a very complex issue, and has different answers to different people (BBC, n.d.). I am not going to strictly define sports in two sentences, as most people would go about it, but give you, what I think are, the different aspects that make up a sport: firstly, tactics; the different ways of approaching the game, the aim that you set yourself and try to achieve throughout a match. This tests a player’s awareness in the game, and how they are able to adapt, change their approach or counter their opponent’s. Secondly, the skill factor, the muscle memory, the individual skill, the things you practice all day, the thing that separates stars from super-stars. Skill is what marks a moment and makes it special, and something everyone can appreciate to a certain extent. The final such characteristic is physicality; the physical aspect is very significant as it shows your willingness to keep fighting when you’re tired and to put your body on the line. The physicality is what unlocks our primal instincts and that is something we can all relate to and something that feels so natural to us, because we’re all human. When you are pushed to your physical limits, you react to situation differently.

The most mainstream and successful sports, like football, basketball and tennis, contain all three: tactics, skill and physicality. Let’s consider football as an example. Since football is a contact sport and very physically exhausting, the aspects of physicality, putting your body on the line, endurance and willingness are all present. The skill is also present; players practice the way they shoot and cross until they get as close to perfect as possible in their respective sport (Manfred 2013). These are things few players in the world are able to get close to perfecting and it’s the reason super-stars are able to dominate in their game. Football is also rich in tactics; how to arrange your players to counter the opposition (Talk Football, n.d.), utilise your players’ talent and give your stars enough space and attention (Robertson 2016), how to adapt when your opponent is tactically outplaying you, what to do when you’re losing, winning and drawing and much more.

Some sports, like weightlifting, running and athletics in general don’t involve in-depth tactics. There isn’t much of a plan when you go into a race, beyond run faster than everyone else. Yes, there is basic tactics, like how to speed up and accelerate, how exactly to inhale/exhale when weightlifting, etc. but you can’t counter another runner’s strategy, athletes don’t have the chance to adapt their tactics during a game to show that they fluently understand tactics; they have personal coaches fully responsible for that. Physicality is also not as emphasised as it is in other sports. Though this sounds ludicrous at first, there isn’t any contact in most of athletics. Yes, a long distance runner has to fight against his body, and dig deeper to find the extra he needs to cross the finish line, but the aspect of putting your body on the line isn’t there. Moreover, sports like tennis, for example, test endurance to a higher extent and over a longer period of time than athletics. Chess, which admittedly many people don’t consider a sport, only contains, in my opinion, tactics (Arb & Coppenbarger 2012) . There’s no muscle memory or skill involved with moving a piece on the board. However tactics are very emphasised, and the fact that players have to track so many pieces, and consider board control can be considered a skill, but I think it’s closer to tactics.

Now eSports; let’s start with the physical aspect. The lack of such is what alienates so many people from eSports and the, I think, main reason why it’s a controversial topic (Smith 2016). Because of the lack of physical extortion, a lot of people assume that all eSports players are unfit. While there certainly are some unfit players and there is little direct motive for them to be fit, a lot of players choose to stay fit. As De Guzman (2015) suggests, amongst others, there is a positive correlation between physical wellbeing and reaction time, accurate hand movement, retention of muscle memory amongst other physical features important to eSports players. Moreover, many eSports players used to play mainstream, physical sports but got injured, or had to quit for some other reason (Valve Corporation 2015) . Therefore, in my opinion, the myth that a large proportion of eSports players are unfit is false. In reality, the proportion of eSports players who lead a healthy lifestyle is similar, I’d say, to the general public. Considering eSports itself, and how the lack of physicality affects it, I’d say it takes out the, afore mentioned, factors of primal instincts, tiredness and how that affects your mentality and your decision making (The  PIP 2015). This is definitely a great disadvantage of eSports to mainstream sports, as it takes out part of the excitement and the storylines. Another consequence of the lack of physicality that can easily be missed is the fact that games have to go on for very long in order for players to get tired. Even then, the players are only tired mentally and need an hour or so and a good meal to reset and get back in game. This means that a lot of games can be stacked in one day, which makes for a very busy experience both to the viewers and everyone involved with making the show. An average counter-strike event is a few days long, and each day is generally over 9 hours long (Shields 2016). While I follow most CS:GO events from start to finish, a lot of my friends who follow CS:GO more casually have complained about that, understandably so. Moreover, that can result in a lot of events during the year, meaning teams have a limited period of time to go over their craft, and provide high quality performances in the biggest tournaments (Chiu 2016). If there was a physical aspect to eSports, none of these problems would exist.

The tactical aspect in eSports is much underrated, in my opinion. Tactics in eSports are much more in-depth than in real sports. In fact, now that I think of it, a positive effect that the lack of a physical aspect has on eSports is that a single line-up of players plays all the talkfoottime; in other words, substitutes are not needed, like in mainstream sports. This means that teams’ team play is much higher than in other sports (Shields 2016), as they keep the same line-up all the time, and always practice with those players, and therefore don’t have to constantly worry about making vague tactics in order to be able to integrate different players with different playstyles into a systems. This also allows for more in-depth counter-strategizing; in a sport where substitutes are a possibility, a player that is particularly weak against an opposing team is likely to be taken out. In eSports, you can observe where and how the weak-link plays, and exploit that player to the maximal potential, which adds a factor of skill. One of the best players at the time of writing this is Nicolai "device" Reedtz and he, famously, got an edge over rivalling AWPers (sniper rifle players) by observing heat maps and considering both his opponent’s and his own tendencies, and either changing up the spots he played to be more unpredictable, or exploiting the spots that his opponent played, "I watched demos of all the top AWPers and… I made a google docs with which moves I needed to try[.]…I used a program that shows an overview heat map and then shows my tendencies and I tried to become more diverse” - device. On another note, since all the players are on a server, and have headsets on, communication is much more detailed and frequent (Cloud9 2015) than, say, in football. Both of these contribute towards a much higher potential for team-play, tactics execution and, what we call, mid-round calls; observing the round and making changes on the fly based on how the opposing team is playing. While this is also done in football, in eSports the calls, and thus tactical alterations, are instantaneous and more detailed, making the tactics much more dynamic and interesting than in mainstream sports. Since everything is digital in eSports, there is a very high ceiling for the statistics that teams will be able to gather as more money and talent (programmers and statisticians in this case) come into eSports. Obviously, this allows for more in-depth tactics and counter-strategizing; however in the current moment in time mainstream sports have a wider range of statistics available due to the money and professionals involved with sports, which are lacking in eSports (Shields 2017). Another unique factor of eSports regarding tactics is something we call Meta. Meta is the evolution of the professional teams’ tendency of playing the game, most often influenced by an update of the game, but sometimes as a result of the creation of new teams, their playstyle, or a new team making a revelation as to how they play the game. To some extent this is also present in mainstream sports, think about how many teams played a ‘4-4-2’ formation 7 years ago compared to today, but not to any significant extent and hence why most people haven’t heard of the word. This is as a result of the fact that the rules rarely ever change; the most significant change in rules for football was a few years ago, when they redefined what is considered offside and what isn’t (Surlis 2016). As a final point, it is also easier for analysts and viewers to observe the tactics going on, as there are programs showing a map of the game and all the players, including what they do and what is happening.

The third aspect important to all sports, as outlined above, is the skill factor. This is something that can be emphasised in eSports to a larger extent than it can in mainstream sports, due to the lack of physical activity associated with eSports; a football player might practice for 3-5 hours few days a week, considering that days are lost since they have to rest due to having played a match on the previous day, or days where they have to rest in order to be fully physically prepared for an important game. In eSports, the norm amongst the top teams is about 5-6 hours of team practice, with it ranging widely based on the team’s form and whether they have an important upcoming tournament. However the best and most hard-working players in the world tend to dedicate a peak total of 14 hours of both team and individual practice daily (if they do have an important tournament), or about 9 hours daily, 6 days a week for fulltime eSports players (Stanton 2015). This is possible due to the fact that their body is not a limiting factor as to how much they can practice. This results in a much more developed muscle memory compared to a footballer, for example. Another way in which the lack of physical activity allows for extended practice is the unlikelihood of injuries. The extremely low number of injuries compared to normal sports, means that players are rarely out of action and even on the rare occasions that they are, it is mostly for less than 2 or 3 months. Moreover, sometimes when a player, in mainstream sports, returns from injury, they are not the same player. They might have lost the x-factor they used to possess prior to getting injured; something few people have been able to re-discover (Lee 2011). Moreover, sports are limited as to the ways in which skill can be manifested by the laws of physics; this is not the case with video games. eSports can be especially programmed so as to allow for a particular skill to be manifested in a specific way. Quake is a classic eSports game, not a very big game these days, and it’s a perfect example; an eSports personality and analyst, known as the ‘Esports historian’, has called it one of the most skilful eSports (Shields 2016), which is actually, he thinks, the reason for its unpopularity in the modern day; it’s very hard and the fact that new players have no chance of beating experienced players, and can get outplayed to a much higher extent than in traditional sports or other games, is a turn-off for a lot of people, which is quite unfortunate. To get back on track, the optimisation of games to allow the manifestation of skill is something that makes eSports superior to many other sports in terms of the skill ceiling one can reach.

Having discussed the bigger talking points about eSports, I will conclude with some things that might’ve fallen under the radar. Mainstream sports are widely available in schools, for kids to get into them, with it being a requirement for schools in the UK. To play football, all you need is a ball and some space, for example. With eSports, you need an internet connection and a computer. For developed countries, like the UK, that doesn’t seem like much, but there are countries where a good portion of the population doesn’t own computers. Moreover, as you start playing more seriously, and dedicating more time, you’ll find that you need special equipment, like accurate computer mice, for First Person Shooters, fast computers, etc. Due to this, a lot of talented people, who would be successful in eSports, don’t go down that path, and others don’t have the opportunity to continue playing even if they did discover it. In other cases, even if players have the opportunity, and turn out talented, they are discouraged, or forbidden, to pursue it (Sanders 2017) by their parents, since parents often don’t see a future in eSports for their kids. This happens in all sports, but to a lesser extent compared to eSports. All these facts lead to the conclusion that the game has likely not been played by the best players, as a lot of people who were talented enough quit playing the game for one of the reasons mentioned above. This seems like a bad thing, but it means that there is still room for people to raise the ceiling, while in other sports it will take decades to find a player as skilled as Michael Jordan or Diego Maradona. On another note, a negative aspect within established, and highly funded, sports is what I call the Big Salary Conundrum. During the early years of an eSports game, where prize pools are very small, and no one gets paid a consistent salary, it means players have to work a job and play eSports simultaneously (Vernom 2016). But we see in the aforementioned mainstream sports, players getting paid extremely high salaries; enough to discourage a lot of the players from dedicating 100% to improving in the sport, and may give them leeway to relax and do commercials, which was the reason Sir Alex Ferguson sold David Beckham (BBC 2013). Therefore, the best years of a competition/sport are those prior to the sport getting major investments, since at that point the sole reason players are motivated to play is their love for the competition or sport, as there isn’t much money and therefore greed is not a very big problem. Right now eSports is in the ideal place, where players are making enough money to dedicate themselves to it fulltime, but it’s not the case that teams or players are just doing it for the money. However, this is an inevitability that any successful sport must go through; just look at basketball, football and American football players’ salaries. As a sport gets more and more attention and thus funding more money come in, resulting in big salaries, and a lot of eSports are heading that way. Finally, I want to mention the aspect of human errors. Since in eSports a computer decides whether a gunshot hits or miss, there is no human error involved, like there would be in football, where a referee has to take into consideration a lot of factors and make a subjective decision regarding how to proceed. Now most people will claim this is something great. However I would argue most people would prefer a world in which decisions are made by humans (Ticher 2016). The casual viewer loves the storylines involved with sports. This is why they tune in to be big finals and the super bowls; because that’s where it all comes to a conclusion. In reality, it’s a match like all others. Therefore, removing this aspect of human error removes a lot of potential for storylines; imagine Barcelona playing Arsenal in the first leg of a round of 16 Champions League game, and Barcelona is dominating but has only scored one goal, due to a lot of great saves by Arsenal’s keeper, and close misses by Barcelona’s strikers. Then Arsenal scores a goal, but either the player was clearly offside or Arsenal received an undeserving penalty which they scored. Now the second leg is much more interesting, it begs the question, “Can Arsenal beat Barcelona, a much better team, when they have this handicap of one goal? How will it affect Barcelona and Arsenal mentally?”. This will grab a lot of viewers’ attention, solely because of the narratives involved with the game. Human error (by the referee) also increases the emotional attachment of the viewer, especially if they support one of the teams.

In summary, the only thing eSports ‘lacks’ compared to mainstream sports is physicality. Now, I put speech marks around the word lacks, because I don’t think that’s the right word. If eSports did have the physical aspect, then it’d just be another sport. Yes, physicality does take away the aspect of our primal, animal instincts, how we behave differently when we’re tired compared to how we behave when we’re calm and rested, the aspect of pushing yourself beyond your limits, but it brings so many other positives. As I have already explored in the paragraphs above, the fact that all the communication is happening through a microphone allows for a much more in-depth tactical aspect, the fact that you can’t get injured or tired allows player to practice way more than athletes can, thus meaning we can really see the difference between the best and the second best, the fact that game developers have the creative freedom to do anything with a game, and allow players do display their skill in many more ways than a lot of traditional sports. While there is a physical aspect in terms of eye-hand coordination and reflex speed, you don’t get physically tired, from running let’s say, you can’t physically interact with your opponents. However, the lack of a physical aspect in that sense doesn’t make eSports inferior, but different, it makes eSports much more tactical skilful than normal sports, while taking away the aspect of physicality. So, while the most established sports possess physicality, tactics and skill, eSports contains a lot more tactics, a lot more skill and no physicality. So if we were to have a scale, as opposed to a checklist, with these three categories and we were to compare eSports to sports, they’d come up even. It offers something new to the viewers, something we haven’t seen before, and that’s the reason why I think it’s going to be successful.

In conclusion, I think eSports, purely as a discipline, possesses a lot of qualities that are lacking in other sports and is therefore something unique, and something that should succeed in that aspect. However, what is worrying is the economic situation, the greed of some of the organisations and the lack of eSports attorneys, and eSports player agents. Moreover, the opinion of the general public is very negative. On a positive note however, both of these negatives can be overcome if eSports just keeps treading through these hard times; as the new generation displaces the current generation, the public opinion of eSports will change and as it grows economically, legitimacy will come. Its unique characteristics and many positives as a discipline will shine through and eSports will blossom.



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