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Sting Ray Gagnon

Professor Brody

ENG 301

10/10/2018

The Future of Kinesiology

The validity of Esports comes into question often, I agree with these articles in that,

Esports should be considered just as valid as a traditional sport. Rise and rise of eSports by

Douglas Heaven (Rise), and Professionalized consumption and identity transformations in the

field of eSports (Consumption) by Yuri Seo both argue for the validity of Esports within the field

of traditional sports. Rise focuses on ethos, it sets the scene of Esports for those who want their

hobbies to become more socially acceptable by the masses. Along with the desire to change the

stereotypes that is generally put upon them by traditional sports fans who are starkly against the

Esports becoming a ‘real’ sport. Whereas, Consumption focuses on logos by focusing explaining

the current rise in Esports for streaming platforms. Along with this, they also make a case for

those who current have a professional career within competitive circuits of Esports. Both articles

are after the same goal, but their target audiences and tactics are entirely different.

Rise’s target audience was for those who play video games often, and potentially in a

competitive sense. They want competitive gaming to become more socially acceptable. Heavens

wishes to remove the stereotype of gamers being anti-socials who just want to avoid physical

activity and people in general. To do this, he focuses on the emotional aspects of those who are

generally imagined having been in those typical scenarios. Imagine, waking up on the super bowl

to see your favorite football team play for the title but being told it's just a game and to get over

it, is an example given on how generally dismissed Esports competitions are. On the contrary,
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Consumption’s target audience is those who do not play competitive video games, and they wish

to inform them of the current statistics. They speak about who is watching these games, and who

is playing them, along with the streaming statistics present for top streaming sites and the

specific games on them. Seo did not wish to bring either side down or up, but only to draw from

similarities and tell of the viewership. This has led both authors to establish their credentials in

different ways.

Rise focused on pathos, they told the story of the plight of the nerds who wanted to be

validated after being put down by many. Rise tells multiple stories and scenarios to appeal to

your emotions, but a lot of those emotions they are targeting would only make sense to those

who have been mocked for playing or endorsing Esports. Sadly, they did not attempt to connect

that to being a traditional sports fan, but that was not who their aim was at, they only wished to

lick the wounds of Esports fans who had been in those scenarios.

While, Consumption focused on logos, they explained the current statistics of Esports,

and why people are watching them. The 2017 world finals for League of Legends (LoL) were

played in the same week as the World Series of baseball, however, LoL had significantly more

viewership than the World Series, 27 million to 23.5 million respectively. So, they explained

where the viewership came from and why eSports was able to become triumphant in that week of

sports, the availability of Esports competition on YouTube and Twitch.tv, along with other sites

allowed for an inclusive and readily available environment and medium to watch from. With the

rise of Twitch.tv and YouTube’s streaming service, eSports viewership and sponsorships have

been able to more than triple in funds over the last year, and the trajectory is to continue the same

path for the next few years. Team Liquid, based out of Santa Monica, had their revenue more

than quadruple in the last year from the acquisition of multiple eSports teams in many platforms.
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Both articles have similar opposition, but they approach it in completely different angles.

Their general opposition comes from two different sources, old school sports elitist and close

minded traditional fans. The old school sports elitist generally focuses on the gamer themselves,

rather than their craft, so they will avoid the actual target of conversation and simply compare an

Esports professional to a traditional sport professional but ignore their similarities. Such as,

Esports professionals practice for 12-16 hours every day, compared to a traditional athlete 6-10.

Along with the definition of a sport, “an activity involving physical exertion and skill in which

an individual or team competes against another or others for entertainment, which matches the

definition for both Esports and traditional sports.

The skilled movement in Esports comes from their awareness and ability to quickly and

accurately move their mouse, most professional players will have their actions per minute over

700, which would mean over 700 clicks or actions per minute (APM). Rise does not address this

topic whatsoever, whereas Consumption approaches it in non-biased light, they simply explain

the similarities and difference in their training and teamwork. Next was the close minded

traditional fans who tend to just ignore the facts and ideas of the other side. Rise attempts to

appeal to them with their own feelings but does not attempt to present them with any facts.

Consumption shows them the facts that they do not want to accept, while also giving them

comparisons to traditional sports’ statistics and schedules. In this way, they are not forcing their

opinion on the reader, but rather showing them the facts of both sides of the coin. Along with

this, the websites that these articles are found tell a similar story.

ScienceDirect, the website housing Consumption, presents a very clean and efficient

website. They have no big pop up articles that they want you to click, much of their homepage is

set up to help you find the articles that you are looking for. The website, along with the article,
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present no real bias but rather just the information that they can give you. On the other hand,

New Scientist does the opposite. Their website is cluttered with many articles that begging you

to click on them, many containing ‘clickbait’ titles to allure the potential reader. This follows suit

with the article Rise, they know what they want you to believe and see, so their bias is not

hidden.

Both Consumption and Rise are after the same goal, they want Esports to be considered

by more people to be a real career path, and to be frowned upon by less. However, on the track

on how well these sources will be for our website, I am divided. Rise relies too heavily on ethos,

it has a good sense of feeling, and is very convincing for those who are already on their side, but

they fall short on selling themselves to the other side. They fail to draw good comparisons to

traditional sports to themselves, nor do they have any statistics or quotes from people in their

respective fields. On the contrary, Consumption is a very good candidate for our website.

Consumption does a very good job on remaining unbiased and only stating factual material and

quotes from those in their respective field. Along with this, they have viewership statistics and

specific examples of when the trades collided and aided one another. Therefore, when the

validity of Esports is in question, Consumption is the perfect article for our website, where Rise

should not be incorporated.

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Work Cited –

Elsam, Sara. 9/11/2018. Team Liquid reports 465% growth YoY. The eSports Observer: SBJ

SBD.

https://esportsobserver.com/team-liquid-465-percent-growth/

Heaven, Douglas. 8/16/2014. Rise and rise epsports. New Scientist.

http://web.a.ebscohost.com.lib-

proxy.fullerton.edu/ehost/detail/detail?vid=0&sid=5850101f-8806-408e-bf1e-

ea234bdd287b%40sdc-v-

sessmgr02&bdata=JnNpdGU9ZWhvc3QtbGl2ZSZzY29wZT1zaXRl#AN=97498

033&db=ulh

Seo, Yuri. January 2016. Professionalized consumption and identity transformation in the field

of eSports. Journal of Business Research: ScienceDirect.

https://www-sciencedirect-com.lib-

proxy.fullerton.edu/science/article/pii/S0148296315003306