Five Excitements of Esports: Thoughts at IEM Katowice 2019
As a gamer, I’m not too much into Esports — competitive gaming walked by my personal playing experience, and I don’t really follow any particular team or game. Still, I have quite an experience in observing Counter-Strike: Global Offensive as an Esports discipline. I came very close to this game in my journalism career, to the point when I clearly understand the situation in the world ranking and multi-layered activities of a particular round.
At the beginning of March 2019, I visited Intel Extreme Masters CS:GO Major in Katowice, Poland — an Esports tournament of the highest level possible. That was my way to understand the very phenomenon of Esports even better, to feel the community directly, not through intermediation of the Internet. Here is a kind of report, five thoughts that visited me during that super exciting event.
This article is whirling around CS:GO but it’s not about this game. To check out my opinion on Counter-Strike: Global Offensive, I invite you to take a look at my Medium article “CS:GO — a game and Esports”.
1st excitement — Esports give players a new way of communications.
Multiplayer games open a place for us to meet each other in the virtual space. They allow us to become a bit different for a while, cut some aspects of our personalities and expand the influence of some other features and qualities. Multiplayer games have turned into a tool of online communication, and from some point of view, it is even better than various messengers and social networks. Games give us the freedom to express ourselves in a unique way.
Multiplayer games include Esports. Virtual competitions are special, they open additional possibilities.
First of all, Esports is an area of competing, naturally, and some people really need it. It’s another question, whether competitions are good for us. Sometimes it is better to move the desire to be competitive from the real world to some virtual dimension.
Also, some Esports games give a feeling of teamwork, very close communication with friends to achieve a common goal.
It’s not necessary to classify all the shades of internal Esports communications. After all, they depend mostly on games themselves, and often can’t be expressed — but can be felt easily.
2nd excitement — Esports is about perfection.
Making all of your actions perfect is a key to success in Esports. It takes time to understand the very show of Esports matches — you should try to do the same, to play this game. Rounds of CS:GO at tournaments of the high professional level may seem chaotic. But viewers with some personal experience see individual and team actions of players as an example of astonishing skills, as a result of thought-out training.
Intention to be perfect in Esports involves many aspects — not just playing again and again. It begins with picking your best game, with feeling your best role in it, with finding your teammates, with coordinating your life with your Esports practice. There is no perfect recipe on how to succeed in Esports — the process is so exciting, so full of joy and self-development. Even if you don’t plan to become a Major champion, you should find a kind of harmony inside of your game and around it. That’s a unique experience, unavailable in traditional gaming, where people don’t have so much motivation to play one particular title.
3rd excitement — Esports culture is a part of gaming culture, and still, it’s a separate, self-sufficient phenomenon.
There are traditional sports, where people try to reach some results in the physical dimension. There is traditional gaming, where people enjoy various adventures in virtual dimensions. Esports is somewhere in between, taking something from both.
It becomes harder nowadays to consider Esports as just a part of gaming. It is a kind of separate culture, where involved people don’t really care about a huge variety of available games on the market — they have a particular title to follow. And even more than this — they have a particular team to follow. Esports fans form groups of interests, pro-players become great influencers, Esports organizations create thoughts and emotions in minds of people (mostly young people).
Esports culture still depends a lot on its parenting gaming culture. Many Esports personalities try to mix these disciplines with traditional sports. Still, it becomes more and more obvious that Esports is moving on the path of self-sufficiency.
4th excitement — Esports in its current stage is just a start of the development. We don’t know where it will lead us.
Companies invest millions in Esports organizations and tournaments. New games appear, offering fresh types of competition. And still, you can’t call Esports a fully developed tradition. There are some obvious problems inside of this culture, and the most sensitive among them is the absence of a flawless game. Such shooters as CS:GO are full of violence, and we can’t nourish it in society. MOBAs are too specific for many people to understand the genre. Racing games are somehow boring to watch from outside the playing process.
These and other problematic features promise lots of excitement on the way of developing the Esports culture. It’s interesting to see how the community will grow, and how the business will adapt to this growth.
5th excitement — Esports give a chance to gather together
That’s probably the most exciting thing in such tournaments as Intel Extreme Masters — you appear in the crowd of like-minded people. I was a bit surprised to feel the positive attitude on the Arena, absence of aggression among Esports fans. And it’s a special feeling to cheer up for a good game and feel thousands of people around you with the same emotions. Then, you can come home and play the same game, practice and just have fun with friends (maybe with new friends).
Surprisingly, visiting Esports events is a much more exciting experience than just walking around among stands at a game conference. And it’s a much more positive experience than visiting football matches.
