How Esports Helped Me Understand The Pro Sports Scene
With the unveiling of the “Esports” division of ESPN, I’ve decided to take a look at how the principles of competitive gaming brought me to appreciate the long-standing hype of traditional sports.
My family has “phases”, and we had quite a few well before the 2008 financial breakdown, when we could still be described as “middle class." We’d become fixated on something and kept going back for more until it wore us down: restaurants — the fancy Italian joint 10 minutes away, or the nearby Mexican restaurant where you’d spin a wheel to determine the kids’ meal price; or vacation spots — Disney World, four times in the span of a year, or the nearby Six Flags, when we all suddenly decided to get Season Passes. I’d like to think these little experiences were meant to enrich me and my brother in some way, or bring our family a little closer.
One of those “phases” was buying low-cost seats to watch the New Jersey Devils, a few times during one season in what I think was the fourth grade, the season after the team won the Stanley Cup. (For those of you keeping track, this was well before the switch to the gorgeous Prudential Center.) I had a bit of fun — hockey is a great spectator sport, especially for Americans, hitting a great balance between actual play time and commercial breaks, with a great pace (most of the time) that allows your attention span to relax and recover. Naturally, as a kid, I had a great time there.
The thing was, I never really “got it” after I left the stadium. I never quite understood the glitz and grit that came with being a professional athlete, much less did I become a loyal follower like the boys around me. I was a bitter child who felt that being paid a few million dollars a year to run a ball down the field, or slap a puck across ice, was meaningless, and that the money could probably go to building new schools or whatnot.
A bunch of different factors point at the reasons for this being centered around being a girl. Although I did recreational sports, I was never really encouraged to really “get into” the sports I played. I wasn’t in a sports-centric family or anything. My dad was, and remains, as much of a sports fan as any other guy, enough to create some player-centric banter; but, unlike with his nerdy traits, I didn’t pick that up in my childhood. I’m sure a lot of girls can probably share that aspect of the experience.
It’s worth noting, though, my brother wasn’t quite into that all either, and so I think that delving into nerd culture at a young age played a stronger factor in the long run. Sports is entertainment, and I already had mine in the family computer and Nintendo 64.
So for a good 18 years or so of my life, I’d remained blissfully detached from professional sports in most manners.
Then I found esports.
I was aware that professional gaming existed to some extent. The first time I’d heard of it was when I was younger, at some unknown age, when I found on a site somewhere that there would be an all-girls’ squad for Halo. I don’t remember which version of Halo, so I can’t tell you how old that news actually is, but as with any “girls-in-a-men’s-club” sort of achievement, all that news excited me. In high school, my friends also followed the Starcraft II scene a bit, though it was all behind paywalls at that point and I couldn’t be bothered to care.
Then I started playing Dota 2 in my freshman year of college, and that’s when the esports ball started rolling. This King-Of-The-Hill-type game, considered an Action Real-Time Strategy (ARTS), was an obsession for me, and in trying to be a better player, I got caught up in following the madness of the pro scene.
See, it’s hard to detach casual Dota 2 from its competitive scene, since each influences each other, to a degree. Players of all levels have to constantly keep track of the “metagame,” or the “meta,” meaning what the popular character or “Hero” picks are, how they utilize these heroes, what strategies are common, how to counter strategies and Heroes, item purchases, and a whole lot more. More interestingly, all of this is prone to change between occasional and inevitable gameplay updates, or “patches.”
It’s a relatively organic system in Dota 2 — think of it like learning how to study for a class. You fall into a system that works for you and helps you pass your tests or finish your projects. And then, the semester changes, and although many of the same things apply, you still need to shift your strategy to adapt for the new material.
Because of this ever-changing system, players have nearly no choice but to keep an eye on the competitive scene in order to see what picks are viable or not. After all, everyone’s playing the same game. (Of course, mileage does vary.)
So I began following sometime around early 2013. The most memorable esports event in the scene at the time was the formation of the team Alliance from their former squad, No Tidehunter. This team took advantage of the meta at the time, becoming infamous for their “ratting,” or hyper-focusing on the main objective of the game: “pushing” down the map as fast as possible, hitting the enemy’s buildings as hard as possible, and destroying the other base as brutally as possible.
The team easily earned their spot in The International 3, an annual tournament held by the company that works on Dota 2, Valve, for what’s usually the largest prize pool in esports of the year. That year was the first time they had a “crowd-funded prize pool,” meaing that fans could contribute money by buying certain items; with a base pool of $1.6 million, the stakes were high. The strategy made for extremely exciting gameplay, with a bad clicking decision for the enemy plus an excellent split-second play for Alliance combining to allow the team to cinch the prize.
And so, you can probably tell with the sort of commentary I just laid out, this was my first real step in understanding the hype behind professional sports in any capacity.
It seems obvious that understanding the game allows for respect of it.
Dota 2 is probably one of the more complicated real-time video games out there, all things taken into account. The base strategy behind the game is enough for players to sit and theorize and strategize, posting long explanations and guides in different parts of the community.
All five players on your team and your respective Heroes need to synergize, as well as synergize against the other team and Heroes, given some abilities and traits can balance, counter, or be weak against others. You need to predict where the other team’s players will go and whether you can coexist in that lane without taking too much heat. Certain Heroes can do better than others in the earliest stages of the game, and so the players controlling them need to figure out what abilities at that point can help their fellow players earn a sudden hitman-like kill, or a “gank,” that will earn the team benefits.
Understanding all of these things takes months, even years, for most players, and that’s before the technical and physical aspects of engaging in the gameplay. Plus, the patches affect the meta, and meta affects how the patches will be built.
Basically, there’s a lot of respect to be had for players that have mastered this game, which makes following players through competitions exciting.
This professionalism was something I never really understood with regular sports. Having done some competitive swimming, I could understand the difficulty, but it wasn’t quite as respected until each time the Summer Olympics and so I never grew that attachment. Soccer to me was kind of easy, though I was never really good at it. American football was just a mess to me.
Now, sitting down watching each of these games, it’s clearer how much work is put into these athletes’ careers. American football especially, while still an enigma given I still don’t really know how it works (and note: this is not an invitation to explain), has gained a good degree of my respect. There’s something to say about the carefully-selected mesh of players, the plays, and the physical prowess of each person on the field.
And while I still don’t fully understand how they choose where they set up each play — much like how outsiders to Dota 2 may not understand how the first kill of the game gives the most gold to the team in full — it’s still exciting to know that the team I happen to be rooting for at that moment has made it another 40 yards or so.
Beyond the field, there’s a lot more to be seen.
Technically, esports is still in its early days. We’re less than a decade past regional school tournaments for games that today have millions of viewers for a single match. That journey to success has taken a lot of work from a lot of different people, using bits and pieces from the “traditional” sports that are nearly infallible.
For these last few years, it goes without saying, there has been so much work put into bringing some form of legitimacy to all of these gamers, who have practiced for hours on end with friends and strangers-to-be-friends to be as good as they are. That work wouldn’t go anywhere without the support of various people in the community who bring their various skills to the table — from casting to tournament organization, from technical setup to publicity.
I personally see a bit of myself in these people: someone who has grown fond of the scene and wants to help lift it up in its formative age. There is just so much talent to be spoken for in esports.
And that brings up the question: if esports, which is still in its fledgling years, requires so much work and skill, then what do traditional sports, which brings in hundreds of millions of viewers and billions of dollars, require to sustain itself? An uncountable number of people, it seems, from league administration to janitors keeping an eye on the bleachers.
Moving past the hard work many of these people do, there are a lot of questions about the scene I have, answered or not. I do understand, a bit better, the early retirement age of many athletes, and thus how the high salaries they earn is necessary for many of them to move on past their career. I don’t understand why the NFL is considered a non-profit, yet I do understand that this leads to cheating disputes being settled in a legitimate court.
For sure, I do understand the passion a lot more. It’s all appreciation — for the game, for the players, for the strategy, for the work to be done. In traditional sports, it can be for the pride of the city; in esports, for the country or region, the “East versus West” mentality. It can be nostalgia for a game once loved, or for the shared adrenaline that comes with a good play.
Whatever brings people to their favorite sports, be it “electronic” or “traditional,” I know I’m still waiting for the day that the local wing joint can let me watch Alliance and the NJ Devils side-by-side.
