Work as you Play
By Albert Hermo
For most people work is often seen as laborious, hard, unpleasant periods of time. The old phrase of “work hard and play hard” is often synonymous for most, where working and playing are two separate things that are always differentiated. However, there are people who can make a perfect balance between working and playing, some of which are professional gamers. For these individuals the separation of work and play is blurred. Professional gaming has now become a multibillion dollar industry where major companies from all sectors of society can earn millions through endorsements and advertisements. We have now moved into a digital era where professional gaming has become a serious profession and is no longer just a useless hobby.
Esports has become a growing social phenomenon due to the advancement of technology with millions of fans and almost a billion dollars of revenue, all of which isn’t slowing down anytime soon. In fact the 2018 league of legends finals had around 100 million viewers tuned in to watch, a number many sports such as the NBA could only dream of having. But what is Esports? Esports is a term that refers to online competitive gaming, these are commonly thrown about in games such as Counter Strike, League of Legends, Dota and Overwatch. It has no longer become a useless pastime that most parents and adults used to call it, but now an industry that’s expected to grow to 1.4 billion by 2020, and reach over 380 million people worldwide.
Most would wonder where does this money come from and how is online gaming creating such a flow of money? The key is advertising. For professional gamers one of the most high profile forms of income are tournaments where they compete for prizes sometimes ranging in the millions. An example of this was the 2017 Dota 2 prize pool where teams of five could earn $24 million dollars for first place. While these prize pools are huge, most teams would not win first place and can’t exactly earn a living with that method. Therein lies advertising, many huge companies such as Mountain Dew, Samsung, Sony, etc; huge business use Esports as a marketing field where they sponsor players who then endorse and promote their products/brand. These gamers use sites such as Twitch to promote these products and help further spread their popularity. The best Esports players are often signed onto teams with these companies where they operate much like a professional sports player. In fact according to Forbes “The average starting North America League of Legends Championship Series (NA LCS) player salary is now over $320,000, with over 70% of the players performing on multi-year contracts”. A prime example is Sumail Hassan Syed aka “Suma1L”, who at the age of 17 has already earned over 2 million dollars as a professional gamer.
With such a large growing industry and many billion dollar companies operating within it, governments and universities have taken more steps towards esports. In South Korea, the government already has the Korean Esports Association (KeSPA) formed in the 2000’s as a branch under the Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism. Their primary purpose was to promote and regulate the esports industry and ensure fair play within tournaments and different companies. Recently with more growth within the industry, KeSPA has taken further steps in supporting its development. Governments aren’t the only ones taking Esports more seriously, in fact many universities around the world now offer scholarships towards Esports as part of their athletics programs. From Australia’s QUT to the US’s Robert Morris University of Illinois these scholarships help students further develop their skills within an academic space.
The reason why governments are investing more and more resources to this industry and why universities are offering more programs for gamers is because of the way technology has shifted how work now operates within a digital age. Technology is very abundant with 57% worldwide having access to the internet in 2019, this growth over time has made working within internet entertainment possible due to a large digital population. This gave rise to internet gaming icons such as Pewdiepie and as technology developed further and competitive games became more popular it gave rise to professional gamers. These new “workers” operated exclusively within the internet and although they originated from a relaxing hobby they have now reached a global scale and operate quite competitively. Similar to professional rugby or tennis players, these gamers have now entered a field where work and play are now intermixed, all thanks to the advancement of media technologies. It’s important that as we advance in technology, our original notions of what is “work and play” need to constantly adapt to our current age.
