By Samuel Pitts
Imagine a stadium filled by an audience of 21,000 people. What if the audience is so large, it even fills up entire the city blocks around the stadium, hundreds of thousands of people all coming to attend one event? What if this hugely popular event only happened once a year?
What event has this many fans and only happens once a year? The answer is not the Super Bowl. It’s not the NBA Finals, nor the World Series. It’s for a video game. It’s an e-sport (electronic sport) event for a popular video game called League of Legends. It’s sponsored by major companies around the globe and every League of Legends fan dreams of attending this event.
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| Stable Center during the League of Legends World Championship Finals in 2013 |
The Staples Center was filled with excitement and screaming fans as the new League of Legends World Champions raised the Summoner’s Cup in 2013. The stadium tickets were sold out and every seat was filled. The broadcast of the championship was also shown online around the globe, rendering a massive 32 million viewership with a peak of more than 8.5 million fans watching simultaneously. To put those numbers into perspective, the NBA Finals in 2013 had an average viewership of 17.7 million, while the World Series had an average viewership of 14.9 million. This means that the viewership of an e-sport event had nearly twice the viewership of either the NBA Finals or the World Series!
An e-sport is form of competition that is competed on electronic devices and systems, most notably video games. As a gamer myself, I’ve seen the e-sports community grow substantially over the past few years. What was once a community deemed with the stereotype of caucasian males living in his parent’s basement is now a flourishing environment with millions of fans from several countries around the world. It brings a whole new culture to society. And at the center of all e-sports is a global, young, and diverse community of many types of gamers; professional and casual, enthusiasts, collaborators, and competitive players all have a spirited passion for playing video games.
One article believes the system of e-sports as well as the input of gamers are intervened by human-computer interfaces. Let’s not forget that the gamer community was already large, but without the proper means of connecting to one another it increased at a slow and steady rate. As technology continues to grow and become more impactful on our daily lives, it allows people to have easier communication from far distances. Not only do video games bring such communication and connection with others, but it also enhances it. Professional players that travel to different countries often have to deal with some sort of “language barrier.” But with additional features that some video games provide, it provides assistance to pass through the language barrier.
World of Warcraft was once the most popular video game in the world, having a peak of over 12 millions subscribed players in 2010. Although not known for being competitive professionally, it was a catalyst to the rise of esports. But not all popular games last forever. Just like having a celebrity be in the news for their “five minutes of fame,” video games have their time in the spotlight as well, although it’s usually limited. World of Warcraft has since dropped over 4 million subscribed players and continues to drop. Gamers are constantly changing their predilection for video games, but that does not mean the community dies out. Instead, it continues to grow as new games are created and played casually and competitively. The Super Smash Brothers series, League of Legends, Counter Strike, Dota 2, Starcraft II, Overwatch, Vainglory, Call of Duty are only a few games that are played competitively with several independent organizations competing to be the best just like any other competition.
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| Graph of Subscribed World of Warcraft played since 2007 |
League of Legends has taken over the video game industry and is currently sitting at number one for the most popular video game played with over 100 million active users each month. League of Legends is what is known as Multiplayer Online Battle Arena (MOBA for short) in which 10 random players (around the same skill level) across the continent are put into a single match split into two teams of five. The end goal is to reach the enemy base and destroy the nexus, which is essentially a structure that represents the connection between the characters being played and the players. Once the nexus is destroyed, the connection is severed and the game ends. On top of the casual gameplay, The game also provides aesthetic features for a fee that allows users to customize the characters and their looks. The League of Legends community also uses its visionaries to often collab with musical performers, actors, and artists within the community to create marvelous works of art showing a true display of fan dedication. League of Legends is a constantly evolving game. There are regular bi-weekly updates for the game for balance changes and gameplay changes. It’s a game that continues to make itself feel new and I believe that is why the game only continues to grow worldwide. I’ve played this game for over five years now with over 2000 hours of gameplay; it’s fair to say that I have some credibility. It’s mind-boggling to think of the amount of growth and adaptation this game has had with the huge active user surge over the past five years.
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| The stage during the League of Legends World Championship Finals in 2013 |
The players spend several hours every single day practicing game mechanics, reaction time, hand-eye coordination, mental stability, etc. Professional gamers have to sacrifice a lot out of their lives to remain in the professional scene. Most professionals don’t have much of a social life outside of their respective game and almost all of them are not in relationships. Contrary to what may be the popular belief, they don’t have a social life nor relationship because they aren’t able to, but because they choose to. For a professional player, any time that is not spent practicing is time that other professionals are using perfect their mechanics and become more superior at the game. NFL player Chris Kluwe has previously stated that if physical athletes could train and practice all day, they would. He also stated how good communication within the team while playing the game is a major key to reach victory.
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| Chris Kluwe during an interview with Riot Games about e-sports |
And mentality is such a huge part of the industry. Just like how sport athletes have drama and pressure to perform on game day, the same effect takes place in the minds of the professional gamers as well. It’s also good to remember that social media and online forums are what little social lives these players have. That being said, they often have to deal with criticism and other harsh language that may not be said face to face, but because society acts differently when people are behind a glowing screen. E-sport organizations have begun to invest in sports and performance psychologists for players to keep a healthy, stable, productive, and competitive mindset.
The fans of e-sports have been constantly thanked by the video game companies for providing massive support for their games. And they should. It’s blatantly known in the e-sports community that the fans are the sole reason for the games progression to the status it has reached. Fans from both sports and e-sports celebrate their favorite teams and will cheer as loud as possible for their team to win. Both events are just as exciting either way. So is a fan of a football team sitting in the bleachers of a football stadium really different from a fan of competitive League of Legends sitting in a stadium?
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| E-sports and Sports fans cheering on their favorite teams. |
E-sports is a brand new phenomenon that will on continue to grow as time goes on. It comes with a plethora of possibilities that can influence the world as we see it. Now it’s up to us to accept this new culture as a society and continue to adapt as newer cultures appear down the road. Thanks for reading.
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