Esports — Competition Reinvented for the Future
The first recorded esports competition took place in 1972 at Sanford University and featured the game Spacewar. The first prize was a year subscription to Rolling Stone magazine. It is a far cry from this to the situation today where raving fans fill stadiums and millions more watch globally to see their teams compete for prize pools worth millions of dollars.
The esports audience is greater than basketball or baseball and still growing. Riot Games have found that more than 100 million people worldwide regularly play League of Legends. That’s 1% of the global population!
Nowadays, there are a lot of similarities between esports and traditional sports. Competitors in each have rigorous training schedules and train for several hours a day, often for years, to incrementally increase the skills needed to play these games at a high competitive level. Pro players have teams of coaches, analysts and support staff including people like specialized doctors, nutritionists. Participants in team esports and team sports receive similar benefits of learning and developing sportsmanship, communication and teamwork.
Esports is still an emerging market and it is a very exciting time for everyone involved at all levels and in all sectors of the industry. Esports has the opportunity to improve the way we connect and compete with each other. Esports has three core attributes that are transforming human competition.
1) With esports, there is a level playing field. The rules and algorithms are built into the game and all players play according to exactly the same parameters, with no room for interpretation by officials or referees. Compare this to Soccer. In the World Cup 2018, at the time of writing there have been 7 penalties in 13 matches, all of which have been decided by humans and all to some extent disputable. Soccer and other sports are introducing technology to gradually reduce human error from affecting match outcomes, but they will never reach the way it is in esports until there is no human judication involved at all in decisions.
2) Almost everyone with an internet connection has access to esports. Tournaments and other esports related content are streamed online for free on Twitch and Youtube. In the last decade, the internet has changed the way people access share and create media content. Now, content providers can distribute streaming media directly to consumers, without the need for broadcast television. This shift to OTT (over-the-top)media consumption fits naturally with the esports model and has allowed esports popularity to grow at such a phenomenal rate.
3) Esports has the potential to become the most inclusive competitive environment ever. It is possible that esports games could be played without any barriers to entry. Potentially, players of all geo-location, gender, age etc can compete against each other, with the only determinant being their level of skill. While this ideal is not the reality yet, esports is an all inclusive community, where everyone is welcome and able to take part.
Who Controls the Future of Esports?
Game developers are an essential partner in the way esports will develop in the next decade. They create and program the games, rules, playing environment, artwork, characters, storyline, music — every aspect of each game is controlled by the developers including content distribution. Contrast this with traditional sports — no one owns the IP of soccer, baseball or basketball.
Esports has a strong community element. Esport and gaming communities are very engaged and involved in the direction their favorite games are developing. It is this push-pull interaction that is shaping the way esports is evolving. Because esports is still an emerging market, it is able to adapt very quickly in response to market changes and is changing fast.
Direct interaction between all participants is a key element behind the EIPlatform. By allowing direct interaction between developers, publishers, events, brands, advertisers, teams, players, streamers, content creators and the audience, EIPlatform will facilitate the evolution of the esports industry into the next decade.
To answer the question,
“Who Controls the Future of Esports?” — “We All Do!”
To find out more, please visit EIPlatform and see the Whitepaper.
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