eSports
Growing up my brother was a huge fan of Madden. I remember playing Madden on PlayStation 2 almost everyday with him. I never took it too seriously but to be honest it wasn’t a terrible game to play. When I think of video games, I think sport games are the top selling because new ones come out every single year. Previous research for my panel presentation, I learned sport games are the second most popular games right behind shooter games.
So just to recap some of the presentation from in class that really stood out to me was the visuals of video game improvements over the years. Each group member visually showed the visuals of playing different sporting games such as basketball, football, and hockey since the first game came out. It is crazy to just see in a four-minute video clip the transition between years. Sometimes it looked like there was absolutely no change between years but then entering the 2000s the games improved dramatically in the visual aids. Also, a huge improvement entering the 2010s all the way up to now almost 2018, the games are extremely realistic. It is easy to compare the visual aids with sporting games because they do come out every year and I think that is really interesting to see how technology is generally improving each year.
Since I am an accounting major I was interested in learning about how the older, previous year game, reflects in sales once the new current year game releases. As they explained in their presentation basically said once the new one comes out they typically don’t go back the older game. Which is sort of to be expected. I remember that as a kid playing Madden with my brother he would get the new game and try to sell the older one. One reason they gave was because of the visuals, they are much better, so they prefer the better quality. Another reason was the players and updated rosters. One member mentioned sometimes the newer released game sometimes switches up moves and it takes awhile to get use to, but they generally still prefer the newly released game. With that being said, the sales plummet for the previous year and that is pretty typical and to be expected.
Looking into the articles that relate back to the sporting and eSports topic, I thought was really interesting. In the one article written by Eric Van Allen, Why Street Fighters Endures: Community, about 16 paragraphs in he talks about the typical players of the game within eSports. “Mostly minorities, funny enough, but it makes sense because most us…when I was growing up, my mom took me to the laundromat, y’know, we’re poor, so there would be arcade cabinets there.” (Allen, paragraph 17) Then it just goes on saying that his story is extremely similar to the other players. Which I find really interesting that they all connect in that way. They all support each other because they understand each other’s upbringing. The article also goes on to talk about earnings and what the players will do with their earnings. Most of the them say they will go back and support their hometown gamers and help them grow.
I never heard about eSports really, never necessarily payed much attention to the conversation. But after learning about it with the readings and through this presentation, I think it’s a great thing. It is a way of connecting with people all over the world with people that share the same interest. The one article written by Simon Hattenstone talks about health and how playing video games like this can ruin ones’ health. To be honest I feel like there is always concerns in any profession one enters. As long as one is doing something they love, I think it is okay.
References
Allen, E. V. (2017, January 20). Why Street Fighter Endures: Community. Retrieved December 13, 2017, from https://waypoint.vice.com/en_us/article/788v7z/why-street-fighter-endures-community
Hattenstone, S. (2017, June 16). The rise of eSports: are addiction and corruption the price of its success? Retrieved December 13, 2017, from https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2017/jun/16/top-addiction-young-people-gaming-esports
