ESports — “A Feat Of Systems Integration”
The emergence of ESports has taken it to the mainstream and even to the competitive sporting world. How can playing video games now be considered a “sport” when you don’t break much sweat? It is competitive, though not so much peaceful when you are trying to shoot down an opponent during a live game. What it offers is the competitive spirit present in most team and individual sports and it does require skills as well, both mental and physical. Playing non-stop for hours does require stamina and focus, all in the name of competition. In fact it has gained acceptance with the debut of ESports in the 2019 South East Asian Games (SEA Games) which is a traditional sporting event.
Let’s look back much earlier, to how ESports has evolved. During the mid to late 90’s the game to play was Doom, Duke Nukem and other POV shooter games (many emerged after these games, like Call of Duty and Quake just to give an example). Multi-player online gaming was just getting started around this time when these games were released. The technology back then was the LAN, which were baseband networks that relied on RG58 coaxial cable that required BNC connectors and terminating resistors to close both ends of the “bus”, as the topology was called. It was slow and cumbersome until CAT 5 twisted pair cable became widely used. It was also ideal for multi-player gaming pre-Internet, when the local network was faster than using dial-up to connect to the Internet. Thus, there were frequent “LAN Party” setups where gamers meet at a location with their computers to play against one another. It improved in the 2000’s when Internet speeds reached broadband levels and allowed gamers to play from home without having to convene elsewhere.
The increase in Internet speeds and the use of broadband Internet service paved the way for a better online gaming experience. You can play other people from your PC or game console i.e. PS2, XBox, etc. Games like Microsoft’s Halo made online gaming even more popular and soon there were competitions just like with any video games before e.g. Doom. This time however, playing video games became more competitive and the developers took notice. Tournaments were held and top money prizes were at stake. The rise of social media led to gamers going online to stream live videos while they play. Now we have popular platforms like Twitch that allow gamers to chat and play while there is an audience watching them on the Internet. Gamers emerged as “heroes” that included fans who watch them play over the Internet. They were now considered professional “gamers” as ESports gained legitimacy.
ESports is really an amazing integration of technologies that has made it possible to get a large audience reach. According to Broadcast TECH magazine, ESports will draw in $1.65B by 2021 with a target audience of over 629 million people. That would make it perhaps the second most watched “sport” (if you would consider ESports a sport), after football (soccer). What has allowed it to reach a wide audience is the Internet, the platform on which ESports runs on top of. It has become popular in both Asia and North America, where there are now “ESports Arenas” where players can compete. Las Vegas has also opened its first major Esports arena starting in 2018.
You might probably be thinking that opening an ESports arena in Las Vegas is a great idea. It is a gaming hub that brings in people from across the US and all over the world who participate in tournaments at various casinos. ESports is just a new type of game, with the same competitive purpose of making money. There is much money to be made from the overall market this industry targets, so brands and developers that include TV broadcasters are in it for business. The HyperX ESports Arena was opened at The Luxor hotel and casino as a venue for tournaments for gamers of all types. The good thing about it is anyone can play, except for tournaments where there are qualifiers involved. ESports can also fill venues with fans, thus an arena is a proper way to call it. Esports just adds to the scene in Las Vegas, where it joins hockey and football among its top sports.
There are several technologies at work to make ESports at the HyperX Arena happen. We have PCs, displays (monitors), peripherals (keyboard/mouse), cameras, microphones, speakers, networking equipment and production software. Bringing all these together is a systems integration feat.
First and foremost is a fast broadband Internet connection. It is of course required because the games will be streamed on various platforms for viewers. It has been traditionally watched online with platforms like YouTube and Twitch, as well as on social media apps like Instagram and Snapchat. ESports actually is a great implementation of OTT because large studios with OB equipment have started covering it. So it is not just some vlogger on YouTube with a DSLR, it is a whole crew of cameras and studio producers and hosts covering these events for a large audience. ESPN does cover ESports events for its programming, so it has really been getting plenty of attention otherwise there would be no interest to broadcast them.
The HyperX Arena describes its amenities on its website as having:
“50-foot LED video wall, telescopic seating, PC and console gaming stations, and a network TV-quality production studio.”
Linking the PC and consoles together require a more stable and faster network connection using twisted pair Ethernet cabling. 10GbE and beyond are now the preferred physical media since they offer the fastest speed. Low latency becomes very important in ESports and any online game for that matter that the network architecture must be able to provide bandwidth and capacity to scale with the demands of gamers. A delay of even a second can prove costly to any gamer. There are also WiFi solutions that are more practical when laying out cables may be more costly and require more time. They may not have the bandwidth as wired connections though, but WiFi speeds are also continuously improving.
The important thing administrators will have to keep watch of, besides the network security, is bandwidth. These are IP based networks that require switches and routers to send packets across the network. With ESports production video, the quality is a minimum 1080p but there is a growing demand for 4K and higher resolution content as well. It must also be live for the audience to watch, so that requires dependability in networking equipment for the transmission of video over an IP network. As with the rest of the broadcasting industry, the use of IP networks is becoming a better way to transmit content if SDI is not available.
Vendors have come up with solutions to mixing video and gaming traffic together using a streamlined workflow for high performance scalability. Many production firms don’t host their own servers, so the content they produce from the live footage taken of the games are sent to cloud providers like Amazon. From the cloud the content is streamed over CDN (content delivery networks) that offer lower latency by distributing the content over various regions around the world. Live is not exactly by the minute, as there will always be delays from the studio as they push out the content. It will be faster with a CDN since the content has been pushed from the studio to the nearest region’s servers where the viewer is located. There are also systems that can directly send content to viewers in the audience without a cloud service needed.
As a result of the growth in Esports’ popularity, producers are demanding more flexible tools. When you have millions of viewers anticipating content, you can’t have downtime or delays. This is going to require community interaction, multi-channel streaming and real time graphics. ESports audiences tend to be more interactive with the players, like on Twitch where fans can cheer players using messages all done in real time. One problem with broadcasting games as they are being played, is converting the video’s frame rate from the gamer’s display to a format the producer can transmit. Now the video can just be captured with frame rate independent systems for faster transmission. This also allows producers to show instant replay footages just like in televised sports programs.
The venue in Las Vegas is just one of many examples. As this industry grows, there will be even more demand for services. Publishers are already exploring new game formats that use VR or AR features, allowing for more immersive gaming which adds more dramatic effects for audiences to watch. Networks will continue to evolve and develop around the ESports ecosystem as well. It looks like a “game changer” for sure.
