Dal Yong Jin (Editor) - Global Esports - Transformation of Cultural Perceptions of Competitive Gaming-Bloomsbury Academic (2021)

Global esports
Global esports
Transformation of Cultural Perceptions of

Competitive Gaming
Edited by
Dal Yong Jin
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Contents
Preface vii
1 Introduction: Esports Dal Yong Jin 1
Part 1 History, Institutionalization, and Legitimization
2 The Future of Esports Institutions: A Comparative Analysis of

“Late-Twentieth-Century Sports” and “Esports” Institutions
Rory K. Summerley 15
3 Sports versus Esports: A Comparison of Industry Size, Viewer

Friendliness, and Game Competitiveness William Campbell,
Amanda Goss, Kyle Trottier, and Mark Claypool 35
4 Esports: A Chinese Sport? Milan Ismangil and Anthony Fung 60
5 Historiography of Korean Esports: Perspectives on Spectatorship

Dal Yong Jin 77
Part 2 Money, Data Power, and Network
6 The Business Model Network of Esports: The Convergence of

Overwatch Tobias M. Scholz 99
7 Statistics, Spectatorship, and the “Attention Economy” of Esport

Ben Egliston 115
8 Counting Clicks: Esports, Neoliberalism, and the Affective Power of

Gameplay Metrics Tom Brock 132
9 Esports Transmedia Universes: The Case of Overwatch Raine Koskimaa,

Tanja Välisalo, Maria Ruotsalainen, and Veli-Matti Karhulahti 149
Part 3 Media and Esports
10 Orienting Esports: Locating the Perceptual and Cultural Work of

Shoutcasters Max M. Renner and Nicholas Taylor 169
vi Contents
11 Convergence of Music and Esports Yaewon Jin and Tae-Jin Yoon 184
12 Esports, Australianness, and Beating New Zealand: Portrayals of Esports

in Mainstream Australian News Media David Jian-Jia Cumming 202
13 The Emergence and Transformation of Global Esports: Comparative

Perspectives of Korean and Canadian Esports Scenes Dal Yong Jin 223
Part 4 Collegial Esports, Youth Culture, and Gender
14 Are Esports Only for “Youth”?: How Ageing and the Institutionalization
of Esports Blur the Generational Lines of Video Game Culture
Dan Padua 243
15 The Emergence of College Esports in North America Nyle Sky Kauweloa 262
16 Gaming on Campus: The Promotion of Esports in Chinese

Universities Paul Martin and Wei Song 281
17 A Balance between Competition and Community in Public Gaming

Spaces Ying-Ying Law 297
About the Contributors 315

Index 319
Preface
In the early twenty-first century, esports has become one of the most significant youth
cultures. As hundreds of thousands of people, in particular global youth in their teens
and twenties, enjoy esports as either amateur game players or fans, the esports industry
has transformed itself into one of the largest and most profitable cultural industries.
It was not long ago when video gaming, including early esports, was considered
as unwelcomed geek culture between the 1970s and the 1990s; however, with the
development of computers, high-speed internet, and mobile technology, as well as
the global economy, game culture has significantly grown and esports has especially
become a symbol of the convergence of culture, sport, media, and digital technology.
Esports has also become one of the most enjoyable and playful cultural segments in
recent years. Many game scholars, college students who examine esports as part of
game studies, game designers, and media, both traditional and new media, are all
highly interested in the current status of esports.
The growth of esports can be witnessed in several areas in our contemporary society.
To begin with, esports has already been related to new media and digital technologies,
including cable channels, internet TV, online streaming services (e.g., Twitch), and
social media (e.g., YouTube and Facebook). Several network channels have also
jumped onto this esports bandwagon. In college, many students play digital games on
and off campus, and many universities have established game teams, game arenas, and
game departments. Several mega corporations, in particular, telecommunication and
digital game companies, have founded professional teams to compete with each other,
while advertising companies utilize esports as a new venue for their business. Notably,
several game scholars have continued to pay attention to esports, which is exciting and
engaging.
Most of all, there are hundreds of thousands of esports fans around the globe, as
esports has become a global sensation that attracts thousands of spectators to live
events held at esports arenas and other venues. Global youth, ranging from mid-teens
to mid-twenties, have participated in esports activities. Digital games and esports have
shown a unique growth trend as well. Unlike other professional sports like soccer
and baseball, esports can gain in popularity during economic recession as well. For
example, people increasingly turned to digital games and esports during the first half
of 2020 under Covid-19, which means that people played games and watched esports
on new media with stay-at-home mandates issued around the globe.
Consequently, game scholars, policy makers, and game designers are keen about
the future directions of esports.
Regardless of the rapid growth of esports and its huge impacts on our contemporary
society, academic discourses show a lack of empirical studies and theoretical
viii Preface
breakthroughs. This edited volume examines the recent surge of esports in the global
scene to fill the gap. I believed that at this time it is crucial to document the history
of esports and discuss the backgrounds of the growth of esports. In particular, after
conducting interviews with college students who played games, as semi-professional
players or amateur players for several different time periods for my own research, I
was certain that students were eager to learn about esports as part of their academic
interests. Due to the involvements of several different actors and elements, as well as
varied approaches, I thought that it was prudent to edit the volume instead of creating
a monograph. I hope that this edited volume offers new perspectives by identifying
the major platforms relevant to learn esports, from broadcasting to smartphones, and
therefore, esports’ implications in global youth culture. This book will shed light on the
current debates on the growth of global esports culture.
There are several people whom I would like to thank. Most of all, this project is made
possible due to supports by Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC)
Insight Grant of the Canadian government, which supported my field research,
conference presentations, and training graduate students. I also want to thank Katie
Gallof, the senior acquisitions editor of Bloomsbury, who professionally and timely
helped me develop the project. She especially emphasized the importance of history
based on proposal reviews, and therefore, we discussed and decided to include one
journal article (Chapter 4 in this edited volume) published by me in the International
Journal of Communication in 2020. Finally, I wanted to share my excitement with those
who play, watch, and enjoy digital games as part of their daily cultures and activities as
they are people who make this project real.
Dal Yong Jin
Simon Fraser University
1
Introduction
Esports
Dal Yong Jin
Esports is everywhere. From college campuses and big cities around the globe to
media, both traditional and new media, esports has expanded its popularity and
influenced people’s cultural activities. As digital games themselves become one of
the largest cultural industries in terms of export, number of users, and employees,
esports has been a global phenomenon. Esports, referring to an electronically
mediated sport and the leagues in which players compete through networked games
and related activities (Jin, 2010), has existed since the early 1970s—as a form of
competitive digital gaming—when some American students gathered at computer
labs to do battle among the stars. These students “piloted ships through a speck-
filled void, shooting missiles and dancing against gravity in one of the world’s first
video games, Spacewar,” which was played on the Programmed Data Processor-1
created by a group of students at MIT (Li, 2016, 1). Of course, after the emergence
of several esports leagues, such as the Professional Gamers League (PGL) founded
around 1997 and the Cyberathlete Professional League (CPL) formed in the United
States in 1997 (Taylor, 2012), contemporary esports arguably started in Korea as it
began to develop its esports league in the field of online gaming in 1998 as StarCraft
became popular in the country.
About twenty years after the emergence of esports in Korea, esports has already
become one of the most significant cultures for global youth and business models
for many venture capitals and mega media giants. In Korea, esports has continued
as a major sports event and symbol of ICT (information and communication
technology)-driven digital economy. Reflecting the popularity of esports in Korea,
Tyler Erzberger—an esports reporter—on ESPN tweeted a very interesting story
titled “The Elite 4 of South Korea,” and he included Bong Joon-ho (the director
of Parasite who won four Oscar awards in February 2020), Son Heung-min (a
soccer player who plays in the UK), BTS (a seven-member K-pop boy band), and
Lee Sang-hyeok, better known by his in-game name Faker (a Korean professional
League of Legends player) (https://twitter.com/FionnOnFire/status/122668398
7151740930) as four elites in contemporary Korean society. The inclusion of a
2 Global Esports
professional game player is not surprising at all due to the high acceptance of
esports as a major cultural norm.
Since the early twenty-first century, esports has rapidly become globally popular, and
many esports leagues have emerged (Hutchins, 2008). Due to the soaring popularity,
several universities in the United States (e.g., Ohio State University, the University
of North Texas, and the University of California at Irvine), Canada, France, Turkey,
China, and Korea have established esports-related academic programs, esports arenas
in campus, and esports clubs. Esports games in various campuses are not unusual as
many students play digital games for fun, recognition, and money. Several big cities
around the world, including Los Angeles and Philadelphia in the United States, Seoul
in Korea, and Beijing in China, have constructed esports arenas for digital game
competitions (Bloom, 2019). The increased attention toward the activity in the twenty-
first century has signaled that “the gaming industry is adopting more flexible avenues of
public event consumption with the goal of generating higher profit margins” (Borowy
and Jin, 2013, 2254). In particular, in the late 2010s, as “competition has always been a
central part of video games” (Li, 2016, 2), many global youth enjoy global competition
primarily with online gaming, followed by mobile gaming. The phenomenal growth
of esports and related gaming activities and cultures around the globe over the past
two decades clearly indicates the characteristics of social and cultural understanding
of esports.
More importantly, network broadcasters and cable channels, which previously did
not broadcast esports, have jumped on the esports bandwagon. For example, once it
launched its own esports vertical on ESPN.COM in January 2016, ESPN has continued
to develop esports programs. As one of the most recent media involvements, the
Overwatch League has been broadcasted on ESPN; however, in March 2019 the
semifinals and grand finals on ABC were the league’s network television debuts, which
is unprecedented. According to Nielsen, the Overwatch League grand finals, aired
on ABC on March 24, managed to pull in 367,000 viewers. This seemed like a small
viewership compared to the other sporting events broadcasted on the network.
Considering this was the League’s network debut, however, the numbers proved the
popularity of the Overwatch League, and in general esports (Simmonds, 2019). Prior
to this, in June 2016, European broadcaster Sky, ITV, and gaming company Ginx TV
announced the launch of a 24-hour esports channel, Ginx eSports TV (Barraclough,
2016). Game streaming services like Twitch have also played a key role in the growth
of esports since the early 2010s.
Likewise, esports involves various cultural and economic dimensions, and esports
must be comprehended as a more complex process than other sports, emphasizing
the connection between sport, technology, and media. For example, the convergence
of online games with digital media has two different levels of integration: one is the
integration “between electronic gaming and sport” and the other is “between electronic
gaming and digital media, which is convergence between culture and business” (Jin,
2010, 61). As Jenkins (2006) points out, media convergence denotes the technological
integration that powers new media and distinctive new media forms. The outcome is
the growth of esports spectatorship, of course. Esports has indeed become a global

Introduction 3
sensation that attracts thousands of spectators to live events held at arenas and other
venues around the world:
People are realizing hundreds of millions of influential, affluent kids are spending
a huge amount of time and money on esports. In 50 or 60 years, people are going
to look back at esports and recognize the same kind of cultural shift. For TV
and video programmers, the challenge of catching and keeping the attention of
young millennials has never been greater than in today’s multiplatform, thousand-
channel world. (Tribbey, 2016, 12)
In the early twenty-first century, competitive player-versus-player digital game play

has been a heavily promoted feature of overall gamer culture. Global youth, ranging
from mid-teens to mid-twenties, have participated in esports as either professional
players or fans in the age of digital media. For them, esports is one of the most
significant youth cultures to follow, while many ICT corporations, including game
firms, telecommunications companies, new media, and advertisers have leveraged
esports as one of their most lucrative businesses.
The Growth of Esports in the Digital Age

Esports has continued to grow as people enjoy digital games, such as console, online,
and mobile games. The digital game market has consequently increased over the past
two decades, which is not a cottage house industry anymore. In 2018, esports captured
the attention of nearly 395 million viewers worldwide, and that is expected to surge to
roughly 646 million viewers by 2023, according to a report from Newzoo (2020). Of
those 646 million projected viewers, 351 million will identify as “occasional viewers”
and 295 million will consider themselves esports enthusiasts. The rapid growth of
esports spectatorship means growth of the esports market.
According to PwC (PricewaterhouseCoopers, 2018), esports revenues totaled $805
million in 2018, with the largest portion coming from sponsorships ($277 million),
followed by media rights ($181 million) and streaming advertisements ($163 million).
As such, esports has continued its rapid growth with soaring revenues and increasing
audiences and players across the globe since the early twenty-first century. Newzoo
(2020) predicts that esports revenue will be as much as $1.56 billion in 2023. That
is greater than American Football and rugby combined (Ayles, 2019). As audiences
grow, so do expectations. Esports viewers want to be able to watch their favorite teams,
players, and tournaments on any screen, at any time—and this will push profitability
(Koch, 2019).
Esports has been a global phenomenon; however, most of the attention thus far has
focused on North America and Asia, the two largest esports markets. By region, Asia-
Pacific leads the global esports markets and is projected to capture the largest market
share. As Paul Verna explains, “the U.S. is a natural growth opportunity for esports
because of the strong gaming culture here, the ties between gaming and sports, and
4 Global Esports
the country’s natural inclination toward competitive endeavors. The same is true of
Western European markets, particularly the U.K., Germany, and France” (Koch, 2019).
However, esports is not only for the Global North, because several countries in the
Global South like Latin America, Africa, and Southeast Asia are actively developing
their own esports and relevant activities. As one of the recent esports leagues, Africa
Esports Championship (AEC) has been created with the aim of organizing world
class esports across Africa since 2019. Currently, the AEC has about twenty-four
participating countries that are running national leagues in various games. For the
AEC, FIFA 19—a football simulation video game—and Tekken 7—a fighting game—
are two major games (Ogeto, 2019).
Likewise, Latin America has developed esports teams and tournaments, including
Latin American League. They don’t seem to gain as much attention as tournaments
in other regions do, although they are very active. For example, in 2019, the Latin
American League achieved new records—a larger audience than ever before, and a
much higher level of competitive play.
Mexico is the largest market in Latin America, with roughly $1.8 million in revenue,
followed by Brazil with $1.6 million. Other countries such as Argentina, Chile, and
Colombia are close behind (esports.net, 2019). This is seemingly small, compared to
North America and Asia. What is important is that underdeveloped countries in Latin
America and Africa have rapidly advanced esports and relevant activities.
Meanwhile, Southeast Asia, comprising Indonesia, Malaysia, Philippines, Singapore,
Thailand, Vietnam, and Taiwan, projects huge growth in the esports market. The
number of online gamers alone is expected to rise from 154.3 million in 2019 to 186.8
million in 2023. Mobile gaming is also a big part of the Southeast Asian market. As
of 2019, 40 percent of the 500 million smartphone owners play mobile games. While
China, Korea, and the United States are considered the powerhouses of esports, there
are plenty of other countries with a massive investment in the esports culture (Worrall,
2019). This implies that, in the 2020s, esports is global in scope, and the popularity of
esports as both youth culture and new business will continue to grow.
Literature Review on Esports

Over the last two decades, people have witnessed a dramatic expansion of esports in
every corner of the world. As a result of this phenomenon, many media scholars, game
scholars, and cultural anthropologists have developed their ideas. Several existing
books and articles address terrain similar to what will be covered in this book. Unlike
practical guidebooks, commonly talking about “how to become esports players,” “how
to become esports broadcasters,” and “how to win esports games,” several academic
works, mentioned later, seriously discussed esports based on research from various
perspectives. As discussed, esports has had a long history. Up until the mid-2010s,
there was little academic work on esports; however, we have seen signs of that changing
in recent years, as several game scholars have started to pay attention to esports and

Introduction 5
relevant areas, including professional gamers and new media. While it is still limited,
there are a handful of book-length academic works.
To begin with, in her new book Watch Me Play: Twitch and the Rise of Game Live
Streaming, T. L. Taylor (2018) took a close look at the revolution in game live streaming
and esports broadcasting focusing on Twitch as thousands of people broadcast their
gaming live to audiences over the internet using popular sites like Twitch. She also
attempted to find answers to “what happens when people began to transform private
play into public entertainment and an emerging media form of network broadcasting
arises” (p. 22). Roland Li (2017), in his book titled Good Luck Have Fun: The Rise of
Esports, addressed esports as one of the fastest growing industries in the world and
argues that a confluence of technology, culture, and determination has made this
possible. Li explored the players, companies, and games that have made it to the new
major leagues. T. L. Taylor (2012) previously examined pro-gaming, with its highly paid
players, play-by-play broadcasts, and mass audience, and therefore, discussed whether
or not esports should even be considered sports. She also discussed the importance of
leagues, teams, owners, organizers, referees, sponsors, and fans in shaping the structure
and culture of pro-gaming.
Focusing on the business side of esports, Tobias Scholz (2019) discussed esports
management, industry, and business models, while addressing the early history of
esports as well. He believes that the esports industry is still emerging, in terms of
structures, new companies, and markets, and he emphasizes the significance of
research on historical observations concerning the business aspect of esports. As
one of the first books on esports, Jin (2010) analyzed Korean esports as a pioneer
in the early stage of esports. Jin discussed the emergence of esports as a youth
culture phenomenon and the working conditions of professional gamers, while
mapping out the role of game fans as consumers. Rogers (2019) also explored
the ways in which the rise of professional gaming has shaped and been shaped
by media, interpersonal communications, and what it means to be classified as
an athlete.
The books mentioned earlier are valuable sources, and many scholars and students
have learned about the concepts and scope of esports through these fine books.
However, as their titles prove, none of them fully and comprehensively analyzed the
entire scope of esports in the global context. Some of them discussed several cases
(e.g., Korean esports) and/or particular areas (streaming platforms like Twitch) of
esports. These academic works mainly talked about limited areas without discussing
history, industry, sociopolitical issues, and government regulations.
None of them analyzed the emergence of mobile esports. More importantly,
they did not seriously analyze the significance of the convergence of broadcasting
(both old and new forms), players, games, and smartphones. Unlike these previous
works, this book contributes to a better understanding of the major characteristics of
esports currently undergoing reorganization in the global cultural industries and the
broadcasting systems. I hope that this book makes a significant contribution to the
literature, as we believe that the book puts new ideas on the agenda, and it is global in
scope and readership.
6 Global Esports
Goals of the Book

This edited book explores the recent surge of esports in the global context and
comprehensively discusses people’s understanding of esports. This book addresses
several major dimensions differentiating it from existing literature by understanding
contemporary esports.
First, it discusses why esports has become a global phenomenon, reflecting the
rapid growth of esports around the world. Indeed, one of the major characteristics of
the book is that it is global as chapter contributors and areas examined are not limited
to any particular regions or areas. Chapter contributors in this book are located in
various countries, including the United States, the United Kingdom, Canada, Germany,
Australia, Finland, China, Korea, Hong Kong, and Brazil, and therefore, they represent
diverse systems, industries, and cultures, which are embedded in their chapters. Their
focuses, however, are not local, but rather comparative and global. This globally well-
distributed contribution will certainly attract more readers than regionally skewed
monographs and edited volumes. By historicizing and institutionalizing esports in our
global scope and expertise, we commonly analyze the rapid growth of esports and its
implications in youth culture and digital economy. Instead of emphasizing case studies
based on national or regional esports, it analyzes the institutionalization of esports in
comparison with regular sports, like football and soccer so that the readers are able to
historicize the growth of esports.
Secondly, it analyzes the growth of esports from diverse approaches and frameworks.
For example, some chapters address business and political economy perspectives
together, which are some of the most significant matters for our interpretation of the
growth of esports. Other chapters examine cultural implications in global youth, in
particular among college students. In so doing, the readers are fully able to understand
not only the business models, but also critical matters embedded in esports like
neoliberal implications on esports.
Third, some chapters in this book also discuss a potential shift of esports from
online to mobile gaming. They address why many global game players and fans play
and enjoy online and mobile games in professional game competitions, and therefore,
they investigate the manners in which the transfer to, from and between online and
mobile gaming culture is occurring in a specific subset of global youth. Fourth, it
analyzes the convergence of media and esports. While discussing the significant role
of several cable and online streaming services, including ESPN and Twitch, chapters
in this category emphasize previously unexamined areas, such as esports and music,
esports and news, and play-by-play game commentary, known as shoutcasting,
which make the book unique from other existing books. In this light, this book also
emphasizes new perspectives by identifying the major platforms used to enjoy esports,
including broadcasting and smartphones.
Last, but not the least, this book examines the increasing role of esports in the realm
of youth culture. Some chapters discuss college esports in a few areas, including North
America and China. Likewise, these chapters analyze several cultural issues, such as gender
among esports players, while investigating the significant role of game communities.

Introduction 7
Overall, by analyzing these unexamined or less-discussed agendas, we advance the

current debates on the growth of global esports culture. We expect that our readers
will be able to advance their understanding of global esports from diverse perspectives
and utilize theories, approaches, and debates learned from this book in interpreting
esports, which is itself rapidly becoming part of our daily activities and culture.
Overview of the Book

One major advantage of this book is the scope that it is able to provide for gathering
together a relatively large number of specific esports studies. To encourage the
reading of the chapters alongside other cognate areas I have organized the contents
across five broad thematic points. Part 1 documents history, institutionalization, and
legitimization and explores some of fundamental issues in tandem with the growth of
esports. Chapter 2 accomplishes two goals. On the one hand, it attempts a comparative
analysis between the institutionalization of late sports and esports institutions. On the
other hand, it seeks to discuss how the modern esport institution may look in the
future with reference to the ongoing discussion, by institutional bodies, of what the
ideology of esports should be and what this discussion has been for late sports and
esports in the past. To achieve these aims several case studies of sporting institutions
are examined, including the X Games, the Starcraft ProLeague (Proleague), and the
Evolution Championship Series (EVO).
Chapter 3 analyzes esports along three important axes: industry size, viewer
friendliness, and game competitiveness. Researching the size of the esports industry
allows for observation of potential economic impact. Examining the viewer friendliness
of esports can help better understand the appeal to spectators. Analysis of game
competitiveness can show potential engagement by audiences. The chapter discusses
esports by comparing them to traditional sports in order to provide for a relatively
well-understood frame of reference. This means that some of the comparative analysis
of sports leagues in this chapter is unique.
Chapter 4 traces the recent development of esports in the Chinese context. Esports
for China is uniquely situated as it can capitalize on a culture of esports existing within
the country. Unlike football, a traditional sport on which the government has set its eyes
on, esports is still in its infancy allowing the Chinese government to stake their claim;
however, there are several obstacles which become apparent in the chapter. The chapter
begins with outlining esports in China, particularly zooming in on Hangzhou and
Shanghai to show the scale of current esports developments in terms of infrastructure
and governmental intent. It then goes through various perspectives on esports, after
which current issues of esports development in China are discussed.
Chapter 5 documents the very early esports era, which played a major role in
developing Korea’s esports scene, between the late 1990s and the early 2000s. It
articulates the historical backgrounds for the emergence of esports in tandem with
Korea’s unique sociocultural milieu, including the formation of mass spectatorship. In
8 Global Esports
so doing, it attempts to identify the major players and events which contributed to the
formation of esports culture. It periodizes the early Korean esports scene into three
major periods, namely the introduction of PC communications like Hitel until 1998,
the introduction of StarCraft and PC bang, and the emergence of esports broadcasting
and the institutionalization of spectatorship in the Korean context until 2002.
Part 2 comprises chapters focusing on money, data power, and network to
discuss several business models and the importance of data power and network.
Chapter 6 analyzes the ways in which the esports industry is highly volatile amid
exponential growth; however, it acknowledges that there is still no one best way to
create a sustainable business model. It argues that we can observe convergence as well as
divergence tendencies, especially as the actors are profoundly intertwined in a business
model network. In this chapter, the business model network has been described, and the
underlying convergence mechanism is described as well as potential strategies to create a
sustainable business model network for Overwatch and every company involved.
Chapter 7 is concerned with the use of statistical information in broadcasts of
esports matches, concentrating on applications in the game Defense of the Ancients 2
(Dota 2). It situates statistical information as a key technique for accumulating, and
deriving commercial value from, the consciousness of viewing subjects. Specifically,
it argues that statistics work as an intermediary that frames viewers’ attention to
esports broadcasts, linking together disparate parts of esports matches, leagues, and
tournaments. It develops two further arguments that 1) the statistical orientation
of the user creates the potential for the emergence of affective states that may be
commercially desirable, specifically in impelling continued viewing, and that 2) this
statistically mediated mode of attention is further monetized by Valve through paid
access features.
Chapter 8 argues that the gameplay metrics used to measure player performances in
video games enable the competitive logic of capitalism, and a neoliberal subjectivity, to
circulate through esports cultures. Drawing on a case study of the esport hit game Dota
2, this chapter critically considers how its metrics, like “actions-per-minute,” “match-
making rank,” and “kills-deaths-assists,” reward neoliberal bodily performances. In
particular, it shows how these metrics entangle players into a discourse of “competition
that requires players to monitor and optimize their performances” to remain
competitive within the game’s market.
Chapter 9 analyzes Overwatch as transmedia. It utilizes multisited data that we
approach with two methods. First, it makes use of an ongoing survey concerning the
reception of Overwatch and its professional Overwatch League; second, it employs a
close reading of the game both as a playable product and as a spectatable Overwatch
League show including broadcasts, social media engagement, and so on. It situates
Overwatch in the framework of previous transmedia studies and ponders what kind of
transmediality emerges in the case of this particular esport game and speculates what
it can furthermore teach us about the relationship of fiction and non-fiction in game-
centered esports transmedia universes.
Part 3, Media and Esports focuses on the crucial relationships between media and
esports. In Chapter 10, Renner and Taylor forward a theorization of shoutcasting

Introduction 9
attending to how the experience of space is remediated and transformed for esports
spectators, that builds on and extends the limited, albeit productive research currently
on esports commentary. They do so by foregrounding a shoutcaster perspective
regarding the work of color commentating. By guiding us to these different spaces
through media-intensive practices of data analysis and visualization, casters locate
audiences materially and perceptually while also discursively orienting them. It offers
a theoretical, empirically driven account that understands how the work of esports
commentators narrativize space in order to orient audiences.
Chapter 11 examines what used to be the “Wild West” of sports, showing a
rapid transition to a full-fledged professional sport moving into the mainstream.
In an endeavor to grow the scene, the league infrastructures, broadcastings, and
monetization of esports have been immensely based on those of traditional sports,
and naturally, the intersections between the two industries are apparent to the public.
However, as the focus lies in the “sports” frame, the potential of esports has also been
acknowledged with limitations around the sports-related notions of “competitive
gaming” and “spectator culture.”
Chapter 12 investigates the ways in which the media plays an important role as
an information disseminator for its consumers, setting the agenda of what to think
about and how to think about it. Cumming uses the Australian mainstream media
that provides an interesting case, reflecting the core sport values integral to the
Australian national identity. With esports embodying values of both gaming and
sport, a thematic analysis was conducted to investigate how esports was portrayed
in the Australian mainstream media. Esports was portrayed in six main ways as: an
investment opportunity, having societal impacts, sport-like, entering the mainstream,
professionalized, and underdeveloped in Australia.
Chapter 13 explores the recent surge of esports in the global scene. Through a
comparative analysis of Korean esports fans and Canadian esports fans and players,
it articulates three major unconventional prospects. First, it discusses the reasons why
esports has become a global phenomenon, from a small youth culture in Korea. It
analyzes the ways in which people in North America perceive the significant role of
Korea in the realm of esports. Second, it analyzes the second unconventional aspect,
which is a potential shift of esports from online to mobile gaming. Finally, it discusses
the third unconventional perspective by identifying the major platform to enjoy
esports, including broadcasting and smartphone, and therefore, its implications in
global youth culture.
Part 4, Collegial Esports, Youth Culture, and Gender addresses a handful of key
issues relevant to esports in the context of youth culture and gender. Chapter 14 unpacks
the institutionalization of the esports industry to highlight how esports has become
a significant cultural site for multiple generations who consider digital games
an integral part of their daily activities. It argues that understandings of esports
should be expanded beyond a global youth culture as there are multiple instances,
constructed in news media, demonstrating that the emerging cultural phenomenon
is indeed multigenerational and intergenerational. It highlights the contours of the
emergent discursive relationship between esports, youth culture, and adults at a time
10 Global Esports
when esports is constructed as a mainstream and pervasive global popular culture

phenomenon.
In Chapter 15, Kauweloa discusses the creation of collegiate esports programs by
educational institutions that has sparked curiosity about how the culture and practice
of competitive video gaming fits within educational settings. This chapter explores
the backgrounds of competitive gaming in colleges, the various stakeholders in the
collegiate esports space, policy concerns for universities and colleges as esports
programs gain in popularity, and issues of diversity and inclusion of gamers in
collegiate esports.
Chapter 16 asks how esports is framed as a university activity by the companies
and organizations involved in running intercollegiate esports tournaments. It argues
that ads for university esports competitions use four main frames to present esports to
these stakeholders in a flexible way that addresses their perceived desires and anxieties
about esports on campus. It contributes to understanding the changing attitudes to
computer games in China and how commercial and state organizations are involved
in this reshaping of attitudes. It also contributes to understanding one of the ways
in which commercial organizations in China navigate the regulatory landscape by
adopting a flexible and interpretable set of frames for their activity.
Chapter 17 considers the representation of male and female gamers in competitive
gaming, and it focuses on the issues of access to gaming communities and opportunities
to compete competitively. It emphasizes that it is important to highlight that the
history of video games is filled with tournaments and competition, where competitive
gaming later developed the association of the specific term “esports.” While the esports
industry itself is still young, it has attracted a vast community of professional players,
teams, commentators, sponsors, and, most importantly, spectators and fans. How to
understand these contemporary esport elements is the concern of this chapter.
References
Ayles, J. (2019). “Global Esports Revenue Reaches More Than $1 Billion as Audience
Figures Exceed 433 Million.” Forbes. December 3. https://www.forbes.com/sites/jamesa
yles/2019/12/03/global-esports-revenue-reaches-more-than-1-billion-as-audience-
fi gures-exceed-433-million/#21bc18ae1329
Barraclough, L. (2016). “Pay TV Operator Sky, U.K. Broadcaster ITV Back Ginx Esports
TV Channel.” Variety. June 16. https://variety.com/2016/tv/games/sky-itv-videogam
ing-tv- channel-ginx-esports-tv-1201796789/
Bloom, D. (2019). “Esports Stadiums Are Popping Up Everywhere.” Forbes. May 31.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/dbloom/2019/05/31/esports-stadiums-are-popping-
up-everywhere/#16bf02525210
Borowy, M. and D. Y. Jin (2013). “Pioneering Esport: The Experience Economy and
the Marketing of Early 1980s Arcade Gaming Contests.” International Journal of
Communication 7: 2254–75.
Hawthorne, M. (2019). “The Future of Esports in Latin America,” Esports.Net, August 10.
https://www.esports.net/news/industry/the-future-of-esports-in-latin-america/

Introduction 11
Hutchins, B. (2008). “Signs of Meta-Change in Second Modernity: The Growth of Esport

and the World Cyber Games.” New Media & Society, 10(6): 851–69.
Jenkins, H. (2006). Convergence Culture. New York, NY: New York University Press.
Jin, D. Y. (2010). Korea’s Online Gaming Empire. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Koch, L. (2019). “Esports Playing in the Big Leagues Now,” eMarketer, February 5.
https://www.emarketer.com/content/esports-disr upts-digital-sports-streaming
Li, R. (2016). Good Luck Have Fun: The Rise of Esports. New York, NY: Skyhorse
Newzoo (2020). 2020 Global Esports Market Reports. Amsterdam: The Netherlands:
Newzoo.
Ogeto, M. (2019). “Africa Esports Championships 2019. Medium.” May 20. https://me
dium.com/ludiqueworksmedia/africa-esports-championships-2019-641cf8a8397e
PricewaterhouseCoopers (2018). Sports Industry: Lost in Transition-PwC’s Sports Survey
2018. London: PWC.
Rogers, R. (2019) (Ed.). Understanding Esports: An Introduction to the Global Phenomenon.
Lanham, MD: Lexington Books.
Scholz, T. (2019). Esports Is Business: Management in the World of Competitive Gaming.
London: Palgrave.
Simmonds, J. (2019). “ABC Viewership Stats for OWL Playoffs Revealed. March 30.”
Upcomer. https://upcomer.com/overwatch/story/1415530/abc-viewership-stats-for-
owl-playoffs-revealed
Taylor, T. L. (2012). Raising the Stakes: Esports and the Professionalization of Computer
Gaming. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Taylor, T. L. (2018). Watch Me Play: Twitch and the Rise of Game Live Streaming.
Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
Tribbey, C. (2016). “Watching People Playing: It’s Game on Esports Media Players
Multiply, Drawn by Rapid Growth and Digital Youth Reach.” Broadcasting and Cable.
June 27, 12–13.
Worrall, W. (2019). “Greater Southeast Asia Is Becoming a Gaming and Esports
Steamroller.” CCN.COM. November 19. https://www.ccn.com/greater-southeast-asia-
is-becoming-a-gaming-and-esports-steamroller/
Part 1
History, Institutionalization, and

Legitimization
2
The Future of Esports Institutions

A Comparative Analysis of “Late-Twentieth-Century
Sports” and “Esports” Institutions
Rory K. Summerley
Introduction
Many have defined sports by citing their commonly institutional nature (Abanazir,
2018; Guttmann, 1994, 158; Polley, 2007, 16; Suits, 1988, 61) and so it is worth
considering how esports fit into this paradigm. This chapter follows up on work done
to compare the early institutionalization of traditional sports with that of esports
(Summerley, 2019). In conclusion it was noted that the large gap in time between
traditional sports (primarily institutionalized in the nineteenth century) and esports
(first institutionalized in the late twentieth century) made an exact comparison
challenging. It has been proposed by Abanazir (2018), Esports Bar and Newzoo (2018,
4), and Summerley (2019) that more recent sports institutions from the 1990s that
failed to topple traditional sports from their throne (hereafter “late sports”) to roughly
contemporaneous esports institutions may reveal more about the current state and
likely future of esports.
Thus, this chapter intends to accomplish two goals. First, it attempts a comparative
analysis between the institutionalization of late sports and esports institutions.
Secondly, it seeks to discuss how the modern esport institution may look in the future
with reference to the ongoing discussion, by institutional bodies, of what the ideology
of esports should be and what this discussion has been for late sports and esports in
the past.
To achieve these aims several case studies of sporting institutions are examined. For
comparative analysis of contemporaneous sports institutions that were created in the
late twentieth century and early twenty-first century, the primary case studies discussed
here include the Ultimate Fighting Championship series (UFC), the X-Games, the
Starcraft ProLeague (Proleague), and the Evolution Championship Series (EVO).
These institutions have been chosen because of their year of institutionalization,
their relative popularity, and continued success among niche audiences, the diversity
16 Global Esports
of sports included, as well as representing a mixture of corporate and grassroots-led

organizations and sports. Esports Bar and Newzoo (2018, 4) see esports as being
historically similar to the UFC specifically which informed comparisons made in
this chapter. Furthermore, because of the financially precarious nature of esports it
is worth examining lessons to be learnt from sports institutions and games that are
historically contemporaneous or ceased such as those listed by Abanazir (2018, 10).
Other miscellaneous institutions1 will naturally be touched upon throughout.
Comparative Analysis of Late Sport and Esport Institutions

In the late twentieth century, particularly during the 1990s, many alternative sports
had developed to the point of institutionalization and often in response to dominant
mainstream team sports. Wheaton (2004, 2) notes that this bundle of activities is
variously lumped under labels such as “extreme,” “alternative,” “lifestyle,” “whiz,”
“action-sports,” “panic sport,” “postmodern,” “post-industrial,” and “new” sports.
Kusz (2004) notes that they “were primarily imagined in American media culture as
a radical new collection of non-traditional sporting activities” (p. 198). Kusz contests
that the collective label of “extreme” was branded in the 1990s, even though the sports
themselves did exist before this point.2
Given the temporal focus of this chapter they will simply be referred to as “late
sports” to differentiate them from traditional sports and the increasingly general term
“modern sports.” These late sports were often institutionalized in conjunction with the
rise of a generation that had grown up in an increasingly media-entertainment-driven
world or in the wake of highly masculine ideologies about sport that had perpetuated
through the twentieth century. All of these late sports institutions technically represent
multiple sports and practices but for the sake of simplicity this chapter focuses on the
institutionalization of the most popular sports in each (mixed martial arts in UFC and
skateboarding in the X-Games).
Brazilian Jiu Jitsu practitioner Rorion Gracie and pay-per-view producer Bob
Meyrowitz partnered to institutionalize the UFC in 1993 with the first tournament
taking place later the same year (O’Hara, 2008, 22). Less of a sporting institution
initially, the idea was to create an event to determine which martial arts style was “the
best” (Smith, 2010, 621). As infamously noted by sports journalist Lewis Wertheim
(2007), early UFC events “were more spectacle than sport” (p. 54).
The X-Games were institutionalized by American sports media conglomerate
ESPN Inc. in 1993 although the event was not first held until 1995 (Marcus, 2011, 227).
They were originally called the “eXtreme Games” to capitalize on the newly monikered
“extreme sports” (Wheaton, 2004) and became a dominant institution within that
niche. Kusz (2004, 198) identifies extreme sports as forming in 1995 primarily targeted
at “Generation X.” Kusz (2004) sees ESPN as pouncing on this new audience as a
lucrative revenue stream with the development of the channel ESPN2 and subsequently
the X-Games themselves.

The Future of Esports Institutions 17
The continuing conversation about esports often focuses on active institutions and,
especially, successful cases of growth; very rarely are failed ventures discussed. Starcraft
2: Wings of Liberty’s (Blizzard Entertainment, 2010) release was one of the earliest
experiments by a major corporation to manage the direction of a developing esport
that it directly owned. The first Starcraft league was created in 1998 (Jin, 2010, 59). The
institution most closely associated with the Starcraft series was the Starcraft Proleague,
which began in 2003 and ceased in 2016 (Kim, 2016; Liquipedia StarCraft II, 2019). It
was technically formed by the Korean ESports Association (KeSPA) in 2005 from two
competing leagues that started in 2003: MBCGame StarCraft League (MSL, formerly
known as the KPGA Team League) and the OnGameNet StarLeague (OSL) respectively
formed by rival broadcasters MBCGame and OnGameNet. While active, Proleague
organized tournaments for Starcraft: Brood War (Blizzard Entertainment, 1998) and
later Starcraft 2, as well as the Starcraft 2 World Championship series (WCS) starting in
2013 and run by Blizzard (Rea, 2016, 24). It was one of a number of tournaments run
under the Battle.net World Championship series, which collected several tournaments
for different Blizzard games under a single banner (Blizzard Entertainment, 2012; Hillier,
2012). Eventually Starcraft 2 settled into a niche role within esports but its history is
worth examining as an example of the factors that hold back a game from penetrating a
global market and maintaining a lucrative revenue stream despite its iconic legacy.
To broaden the discussion, this chapter also considers a primarily grassroots esports
organization, annual US fighting game tournament the Evolution Championship Series
(EVO), to contrast Blizzard’s more corporate approach. EVO (explain it a bit) aimed to
preserve tournament culture through its own institutional philosophy. Regional fighting
game communities on the east and west coasts of America would brag about regional
strength online message boards in the 1990s. This settling of disputes became an impetus
for announcing B3 (first held in 1996), the precursor to EVO (Harper, 2010, 67–8). This
“B series” tournament (1996) began in an influential west coast arcade at Southern Hills
Golf Land which, like many arcades, closed in the early 2000s due to the rise of the home
console industry (Harper, 2010). Arcades were where competitive fighting game play
began, and tournaments during this era were almost exclusively grassroots events funded
and organized by community members in conjunction with the proprietors of arcades.
EVO was created as a means of preserving this environment so that the community that
had grown up in the arcades would not die with them (TheScore Esports, 2018). EVO
(beginning in 2002) was intended to preserve tournament culture, not necessarily arcade
culture (i.e., coin-operated games and attractions). Comparing the processes and factors
of institutionalization affecting the case studies outlined earlier will help determine what
late sports might reveal about esports and their future.
The Institutionalization Process

Taylor (2018, 136–7) describes the history of esports as coming in three waves:
“Game” (amateur community and enthusiasts), “Sport” (institutionalization and
18 Global Esports
professionalization), and “Media entertainment” (a focus on esports events as

entertainment product over competition). It is worth considering how these waves
create tensions in both esports and late sports. The process of institutionalization
concerns how institutions universalize and regulate a ruleset for competitive play,
promote an institutional philosophy to legitimize and reflect the character of the sport,
and propagate the institution’s sport(s) to ensure its continued existence (Summerley,
2019).
Universalization is the codification of the rules of a game, universally adopted by all
competitors under an institution. Informally, this begins prior to institutionalization
through the development of communally agreed rules about sporting behavior first
created by the community. Then, as Taylor (2012) puts it, “formal tournaments
operationalize many of these bottom-up community practices” (p. 63). The institution’s
burden to codify rules is a concern for all institutions but fewer rules are explicitly
stated in esports rulesets (by the nature of certain rules being hard-coded into the
game). Esports have still developed along similar lines to the late sports examined here.
In a legal history of the UFC, Smith (2010) notes how the universalization of mixed
martial arts (MMA) rules was tied up in regulatory concerns surrounding violent
sports in the late twentieth century. Like many “third wave” esports, MMA was initially
promoted as “media entertainment” under the UFC. Smith (2010, 621) notes that the
rules were not as formalized as for most institutionalized sports. This lack of rules
combined with the relative danger posed by injury led to the UFC holding events in
regions where “athletic or boxing commissions were either inept or non-existent”
(Smith, 2010, 621). The sport’s violent nature and its association with risk and danger
was likely a draw for early fans but also a risk for the propagation of the UFC.
It was not long before the sport would be criticized as being morally dubious and
lawmakers had to get involved. In the late 1990s, the sport’s popularity had died off
and, in 2001, the UFC was bought by Frank Fertitta, Lorenzo Fertitta, and Dana White
(Smith, 2010, 622). The new owners realized that an institutional philosophy that was
in line with the law was necessary for the sport to proliferate.
Executive director of the Nevada State Athletic Commission Marc Ratner was
brought on as vice president of Regulatory Affairs to ensure that regulation was built
into the institution (Smith, 2010, 623). In 2001, the “Mixed Martial Arts Unified
Rules of Conduct” (or the Unified Rules) were established in meetings between MMA
promoters and members of various state regulatory bodies (Smith, 2010, 627). The
amount of regulation of UFC blossomed between 2008 and 2009 as the UFC actively
complied with lawmakers to establish a means of regulating the sport (O’Hara,
2008, 4). This presents an interesting difference when comparing the UFC to esports
institutions since esports have not often had to deal with the legal status afforded to
sports, especially violent or dangerous ones.
In a 2008 interview with assistant general counsel of the Ultimate Fighting
Championship, Michael Mersch noted that universalization was an important factor
for the perceived legitimacy of UFC: “The rules give the people watching it the idea that
they are watching a legitimate and professionalized sport” (Wertheim, 2007, 54). Smith
(2010, 634) echoes this sentiment, stating that the unified rules of MMA distinguish it

from other violent and unregulated activity. MMA rules describe the circumstances of
a foul, when a match can end and imply what constitutes acceptable levels of violence
(Smith, 2010, 635–6). They promote a legally compliant philosophy of violence within
reasonable boundaries. The UFC does this not only to maintain a less confusing and
dangerous sport but also to maintain legal status and cultural legitimacy. However, its
reliance on legal frameworks in the United States make widespread acceptance difficult
due to differences in regulation by state.
Skateboarding has many important differences and similarities to MMA and esports.
Unlike other games discussed here, skateboarding is not always seen as a definitive
sport performed under rules. One skater interviewed stated they “Did not want to see
it become an Olympic sport because it would be too regulated and too competitive;
whereas “[the] whole point of skating is opposite of becoming a sport”” (Beal and
Wilson, 2004, 41). In other interviews, a generational change between amateurs who
“keep it real” and younger participants who look to commercial sponsorship and
processes can be seen (Beal and Wilson, 2004, 36).
Although skateboarding had been around as a pastime for much of the twentieth
century including formal institutions such as the California Amateur Skateboarding
League (est. 1980) and the National Skateboarding Association (est. 1983) (Glionna,
1997, 114–15; Marcus, 2011, 200), the X-Games have remained the dominant
institution.
Many skateboarders were uninterested in seeing the culture formalized to any
extent. Indeed, they clung to an identity that privileged an “outsider” label (Beal and
Wilson, 2004, 32). Mainstream understanding of the activity reflected the attitude that
skateboarding was not a sport: “As Steve Hawk recalls: ‘In 1986, after Sports Illustrated
did a story on Tony Hawk, there were letters to the magazine for weeks from people
saying, “How could you devote six pages to a skateboarder? That’s not a sport!”’”
(emphasis original) (Glionna, 1997, 117). This led to a gap that could easily be filled by
corporations like ESPN to formalize the activity under the moniker of a sport. In some
ways, skateboarding jumped straight to the “third wave” of competition when ESPN
took it up as media entertainment in the form of a sport.
Kusz (2004) sees ESPN as pouncing on this new audience as a lucrative revenue
stream with the development of the television channel ESPN2 as well as the creation of
the X-Games. The X-Games were a commercial success and established the character,
rules, and philosophy of the sport in the mainstream in part thanks to the support and
prowess of Tony Hawk (Glionna, 1997, 119). Sponsors included nonendemic brands
like Mountain Dew, Advil, and Miller Lite. Much of the X-Games’ identity was hated
by most amateur skaters; it was seen to be corporate invasion into an authentic lifestyle
(Marcus, 2011, 227). However, the size and power of the X-Games meant that these
criticisms were mostly invisible in the mainstream.
One blogger from concretedisciples.com described corporate activity in
skateboarding as “the bastardization of skateboarding to meet the goals of a boardroom
full of executive buttf@#$s [sic]” (Marcus, 2011, 227). As with any sport the dominant
perception of it changed over generations (Beal and Wilson, 2004, 41). Older skaters
are not keen on younger generations as they see them as products of institutions such
20 Global Esports
as the X-Games (which deemphasizes risk, authenticity, and physical danger) but these
younger skaters also tend to be more skilled (thanks in part to formalized competition)
which presents a challenge to criticisms of newer generations (Beal and Wilson, 2004,
43).
The first ESPN X-Games had an audience of 198,000 spectators internationally and
prominent skateboarders such as Andy MacDonald noted the positive quality of the
X-Games in bringing cultural legitimacy to skateboarding despite the event’s perceived
inauthenticity (Marcus, 2011, 228). ESPN considered it a success despite grassroots
criticism and moved to hold the games annually rather than every two years as initially
planned. Core skating magazines did not cover the X-Games extensively, however, the
mainstream skating audience still attended live events and spectated online (Marcus,
2011, 230).
Unfortunately because of grassroots skateboarders’ inherently anticorporate and
outsider philosophy, an opportunity to grow the sport through cooperation was missed
and it has now arguably splintered into two very different practices. Not only do some
skateboarders look at mainstream sports derisively, they also look at sports similar to
their own with derision. This might be due to competition for the same community
or simply gatekeeping. Beal and Wilson (2004, 47) note that “The lack of respect
most skateboarders had for in-line skating is frequently equated with femininity and
homosexuality.” This discriminatory perspective on other sports is one more case of
a community’s resistance to opening its doors to external forces that has prevented
skateboarding from growth amid grassroots practitioners. The split in skateboarding
between corporate and grassroots ideologies can be roughly aligned to the notion of
“street” and “vert” skating which privileges the use of ground level obstacles and ramps
respectively (Beal and Wilson, 2004, 50; Marcus, 2011, 229–30).
Wheaton (2004, 4) emphasizes that the character of late sports originates from
grassroots values but are quickly subsumed by companies that place a televisual
focus on the sport. In skateboarding’s case this is met with hostility as many of the
participants in late sports are also players or dedicated spectators who do or live
the sport: “the sports are performed in ways that often denounce—or even resist—
institutionalisation, regulation and commercialisation” (Wheaton, 2004, 4). American
skateboarder Jake Burton is quoted by Wheaton (2004) as defining lifestyle sports as
“completely living it all the time.” Fans are also players in the same way that EVO
maintains tournament culture from early arcades. Despite their grassroots stalwarts,
late sports became dominated by corporate institutions like ESPN’s X-Games and
NBC’s Gravity Games (Wheaton, 2004, 8). Esports are similar in that many early cases
of esports were clearly grassroots in flavor but recent moves by developer-publishers
aim to capture a relatively young audience eager to watch their games online. Thus late
sports and esports have a similar trajectory from grassroots sport that was colonized
as a form of entertaining spectacle by corporations for a young audience (primarily
men in their late teens to early thirties) (footballbenchmark.com, 2019; Gray, 2018;
Lombardo and Broughton, 2017).
The institutionalization of many sports involves mythologization, often with the
goal of making a sport seem more legitimate, traditional, or national than it really is.

A popular practice with sports clubs is consecrating them as “ancient” or proving their
age as evidence of the legitimacy of such an institution (Harvey, 2005, 8). The story
is slightly different with late sports and esports as the argument for wider cultural
legitimacy through institutions is more of an uphill battle due to their relative recency.
The legitimacy of MMA is often derived through comparison to ancient events such
as gladiatorial bouts (Bolelli, 2014; O’Hara, 2008, 6). In the case of skateboarding and
many other extreme sports, the philosophy tends to appeal to notions of counterculture
or youth culture and so are not as concerned with widespread cultural legitimacy. In
the case of the X-Games this is, to put it cynically, motivated by corporate direction
rather than to necessarily reflect the philosophies of “legitimate” skateboarders. Instead
of appealing to legacy, esports institutions (assuming they want to be financially
successful) must develop aspirational philosophies such as those promoted by EVO or
ones aligned with corporate values such as those held by Blizzard Entertainment (n.d.).
In a panel on EVO’s history Tom Cannon, one of the founding members of EVO,
outlined the mission statement of EVO organized under three principles that aspire to
preservation:
Evo’s Mission: preserve and grow the arcade competitive culture Competition:
All competitors are equal, regardless of skill.
Hype: The drama of humans under pressure.
Struggle: Every player’s personal journey to get stronger. (Evo2kvids, 2017)
While regulated competition is a concern of the institution, other aspirational moral

qualities also underpin EVO as in traditional and late sports institutions. Even global
esports institutions see this as necessary for development of a sporting institution
(Valentine, 2019). EVO’s ongoing “struggle” amid other esports is to never sacrifice its
grassroots origins in the increasingly corporate space of esports. Thus EVO primarily
concerns itself with the preservation of the culture of fighting games. Rulesets
determined for many of its games reflect the values held by sub-communities for each
individual fighting game (e.g., the SBR [Smash Back Room] rules for competitive Super
Smash Bros. Melee) (HAL Laboratory, 2001; Harper, 2010, 189–90). Harper (2010, 193)
frames EVO cofounder Seth Killian’s term, a “social collective” view, to describe how
communities codify rulesets through emergent play which are subsequently refined
and universalized by institutions like EVO.
EVO is a comparatively grassroots institution, and Cannon stresses that EVO’s
success is because it has never relied on giant sponsorships or venture funding because
of the precarious situation this would put the tournament in if it grew (Evo2kvids,
2017). Cannon compares other esports events, such as the International, to EVO
making the point that they are superficially similar but have very different qualities.
Everyone in an esports arena is there as a fan but at EVO, every attendant is a player.
Cannon acknowledges that EVO is going against the grain of most other “traditional”
esports institutions and claims that its unique qualities are exactly what make EVO
worth preserving rather than emulating other esports tournaments. However,
grassroots institutions like EVO have considered the wider commercialization and
22 Global Esports
context of spectatorship that propagation requires (Summerley, 2019, 7). EVO does
not resist professionalization or commercialization but it is not principally founded on
being a “third wave” entertainment event either.
While Starcraft 2 is still played by a dedicated community, its size and influence has
waned dramatically compared to the central role the Starcraft series once commanded
in the esports scene at the turn of the twenty-first century. As early as 2004, Starcraft
(Blizzard Entertainment, 1998) would attract up to 100,000 fans for professional
Starcraft finals matches in South Korea (Rea, 2016, 22). Despite their ownership of
the brand, Blizzard was generally disinterested in managing esports up until around
2008 (Rea, 2016, 24; Taylor, 2012, 163). In the run-up to Starcraft 2’s release is when
they became infamously embroiled with KeSPA over the rights to broadcast the game
(Rea, 2016, 24; Taylor, 2012). As early as 2008 Blizzard had considered how Starcraft
2 might fit into the emerging esports landscape (Taylor, 2012, 163). This culminated
in Blizzard’s eventual dropping of KeSPA and adoption of ownership of esports events
with their own esports department between 2010 and 2013 (McCutcheon, 2010; Rea,
2016, 24).
In the early 2010s, Starcraft 2 was the most popular esport worldwide. Although
its “failure” is not completely remarkable considering how many video games are no
longer actively played competitively, Starcraft 2’s status combined with the struggles of
its institutions is what makes it an interesting case study. Partin (2018) saw the success
of the Brood War expansion for the original game as the catalyst for Blizzard to ask
themselves what their role in the emerging phenomenon of esports might be and
developer-publishers began to see their games as ongoing services. Blizzard’s attempt
to control their esports scene directly may have begun with steps like removing LAN
support from Starcraft 2 so that any match played via Blizzard’s platform, Battle.net,
would have to go through them inherently (Petzall, 2009).
Starcraft 2 esports product manager (2016–19) Adrian Harris, in interview with
Partin (2018), recalls that saturation of streamed esports content presented a problem
to the long-term state of the game. Simply too many tournaments and events were
being held annually (sixty to seventy per year by WCS alone) and event organizers
could not compete with Blizzard in terms of management and funding. The WCS’
initial points system was highlighted by Partin (2018) as an unintentionally exclusive
structure for early Starcraft 2. Rea (2016, 24) also notes that WCS circuits were at one
point divided into a worldwide “WCS Circuit” and a “WCS Korea” circuit to emphasize
the dominance Korean players had at the time. Not only that but Korean players
competed and dominated in both.
Starcraft 2 was also likely seen as stale in comparison to then-upcoming multiplayer-
online-battle-arenas (MOBAs) which have now fully supplanted real-time-strategy
(RTS) as a major genre in esports3 (Partin, 2018). RTS would not have had as diverse
a community as other genres. Within the fighting game genre, as many as nine sub-
communities may be large enough to support just as many titles in a year at EVO. If a
Starcraft 2 player liked RTS games but only had Starcraft 2 to choose from, there may
not be much incentive to continue with the genre (or they might migrate to MOBAs)
when institutions for RTS games collapse. Since institutions for Starcraft 2 did not also

typically host MOBAs circa 2010–15 (due to Blizzard not having a MOBA at the time),
the resilience was not there.
Partin (2018) also identifies the game’s “Heart of the Swarm” expansion as a
key contributor to its failure to hold community interest. The “Swam Host” unit
in particular is cited as being extremely powerful but boring to use and watch. By
2015, international Starcraft 2 had effectively gone dormant and Blizzard began to
rethink institutional events. Region-locked competition was introduced and WCS
2015 combined to represent a genuine spread of global competition with guaranteed
qualifier spots for less-represented regions such as Latin America and Oceania (Partin,
2018). Having more successful non-Korean players at WCS 2015 also helped boost
international interest in SC2. The Legacy of the Void expansion also rebalanced the
game to be more action-oriented and a metagame that was perceived to be slow and
dull. The game was also made free to play in 2017 which would have likely expanded
the market to fence-sitters as well as other territories. Partin (2018) notes that Brazil
and Russia picked up interest in the game around this time.
Partin (2018) emphasizes three factors that an esport must balance to achieve
success: “one, it must be enjoyable for the vast majority of players; two, it must be
deep enough to retain the interest of elite players; and, three, it must be fun to watch.”
Starcraft 2’s legacy and relatively small size have endured as benefits though despite a
lack of growth. It is logistically easier to run, its smaller audience places less pressure
on a broadcaster to secure a guaranteed amount of views and league prize pools do not
need to be as high to attract top-tier talent. In 2019, Starcraft 2 was ranked sixth by live
esports hours watched in 2018 (Newzoo, 2019, 28) but there are also those who point
out the lack of Starcraft 2 in Blizzard’s long-term esports plans (Schreier, 2019; Tassi,
2019). Partin (2018) also cites the high level of skill required as another factor that
maintained a secure niche for Starcraft 2.
Concerns of the Sport Institution—Capital,

Identity, and Longevity
Esports researcher Newzoo may not fully understand the reasons for UFC’s success if
they intend to compare it to the potential growth of esports (Esports Bar & Newzoo,
2018, 4). Although the target demographic and development of both the UFC and
esports may have superficial overlap there exist important differences. As I (2019)
discussed elsewhere, on the comparison of esports and late sports, three factors can be
isolated as defining the nature of a given sport: capital, identity, and diffusion.
As I (2019, 8) suggested a Bourdieusian notion of capital (Bourdieu, 1986, 243,
248) can be used to understand the balance of power within a sports institution.
Fundamentally they are supported by economic capital (usually corporate or elite
patronage) and legitimized by social and cultural capital (through grassroots support
and influential advocates for the sport). This is true of the late sports institutions
covered earlier as well as most cases of esports. Esports differ from traditional sports
24 Global Esports
in terms of how economic capital was sourced historically (the former derive funding
from corporate sources whereas the latter, initially, derived funding from wealthy
individuals of the upper classes). Late sports are historically contemporaneous to
esports and so the structure and development of capital has influenced these sports
in similar, more comparable ways. Summerley (2019, 15) concludes that esports
institutions tend to not only receive more corporate funding early on compared to
traditional sport institutions but are also often directly owned by corporate entities.
This means that economic capital weighs heavily on the interests of these institutions.
Economic capital cannot prop up an institution alone, the cooperation of a sport’s
community is necessary, and this can be seen in all examples of successful sports.
However, the inevitable participation of corporations in esports given their legal
claim as the rights holder of the game in question makes the esport institution an
awkward thing given how capital is understood by the institution’s owner. Thus,
a difference in the goals of corporations and of individuals involved in the sports
community is something that must be discussed when looking at the future of esports
in their current state. This discussion can be seen happening in the cases of both the
UFC and the X-Games which respectively negotiated the needs of or splintered from
their communities.
With regard to identity, Kusz (2004, 197) argues that mainstream news media in the
United States during the late 1990s framed extreme sports as mostly white everymen
(despite a relatively diverse audience) as well as reviving traditional notions of American
masculinity when describing them. Beal and Wilson’s (2004, 32) ethnographic work on
skateboarders revealed that skateboarders value an “outside” identity and this appears
to be framed in opposition to conventional sport and the identity of “jocks.” They also
framed skateboarding as “artistic” or creative as well as being a physically risky activity.
Beal and Wilson (2004, 39) further note the inherent contradictions in the identity of
skateboarders, particularly with regard to gender. Many skateboarders extol “generic”
virtues which are actually coded as hegemonically masculine. Skaters also value
authenticity in terms of amateurism since money should not be involved in a desire
to skate. However, skaters are not generally anti-capitalist and accept commercial
processes that allow them to buy and be marketed equipment (Beal and Wilson, 2004,
32). The X-Games are firmly located in skateboarding’s mainstream identity and most
institutions would probably appear more “inauthentic” when juxtaposed against a
more grassroots equivalent (Beal and Wilson, 2004, 35).
The UFC engages a relatively diverse audience as it has been broadcast in over
149 countries and the demographic of UFC is 18–34 and 39 percent female as of
2013 (Weaving, 2014, 129–30). However, in 2017 it was reported that the median
age of UFC television audiences had jumped fifteen years from thirty-four to forty-
nine between 2006 and 2016 (although this may be due to younger viewers moving
away from television) (Lombardo and Broughton, 2017). Weaving’s analysis of the
UFC’s approach to gender tells a conflicted story. Current UFC president Dana
White is on record saying that he would never feature professional women’s fights,
especially not as a headliner, but was convinced otherwise by the lucrative profit to
be made from broadening UFC’s audience (Weaving, 2014, 130). In this case, the

philosophy of the sport was guided by economic capital meeting the demands of
social capital.
McClearen (2017, 3225) looks at diversity through the marketing of the UFC
which has arguably improved over time. McClearen (2017) argues that the “brand
ethos” of UFC 200 “we are all different” would have been received very differently
by the comparably less diverse audience of UFC1. Again, this pivot may have been to
propagate the sport for social reasons although McClearen (2017, 3226) also links it to
the “neoliberal logic” that a diverse audience is a larger and therefore more profitable
audience.
It is clear that late sports suffered a lot of the identity problems (lack of diversity,
discrimination) that plague traditional sports. Many of these arguments make appeals
to the physical nature of the games played or to ludic balance. Yet, there’s no ludic
reason why esports players should be formally bracketed for competitive play by
classical markers of identity apart from a competitor’s income, country of origin, and
class.4 Age, gender, race, and even physical ability theoretically do not interfere with
one’s ability to compete in most esports. However, reality is evidently different from the
ideal. Gender division does still happen informally, and Caucasian male competitors
are predominant. A parallel can be drawn between the codification of late sports and
esports as white and masculine. For esports this may have developed similarly to crises
felt about masculine identities in post-1960s America (Kusz, 2004, 199). Taylor (2012),
Voorhees (2015), and Witkowski (2012a, 129) argue that hegemonic masculinity,
which defines the identity of sporting athletes, also primarily defines the esports player
who sees themselves as an athlete “minus the emphasis on physical qualities” (Taylor,
2012, 116). Esports have the potential to level the playing field across many sectors of
society but if esports institutions aspire to succeed modern traditional sports they may
see the adoption of hegemonic masculinity as necessary.
“Ludic Diffusion,” a term employed by Guttmann (1994), refers to the process
of a game spreading across geographical areas. By propagating their rulesets and
centralizing legitimate competition, institutions take on the responsibility of directing
ludic diffusion. If a sport is to “diffuse” then it is worth considering how it can be
made to generate income and appeal to the non-player, and so commercialization and
entertainment become concerns for institutions over time. The ludic diffusion of late
sports was relatively limited by regional differences in law, early corporate colonization
and a grassroots resistance to mainstream culture. Marcus (2011, 232) outlines five
“major influences” that helped the development of skateboarding as a sport in the 1990s.
These include market diversification, the boom in shoes and soft goods industries,
the widespread use of the internet, California legislation that framed skateboarding
as dangerous (and thus appealing to the youth), and the institutionalization of the
X-Games. Although factors external to an institution play a big role in a sport’s
diffusion, institutions are also present in this process.
Guttmann states, in reference to more niche sports: “receptivity to ‘exotic’ sports has
been limited to the more affluent and better educated sectors of the population” (1994,
173). Esports and many late sports are arguably sites for gentrification as a grassroots
crowd gives way to middle class consumers attracted to a sport by its refinement for
26 Global Esports
a broader set of consumers by corporations. Wheaton outlines nine commonalities

featured across many “lifestyle sports” although some are not unique to this type of
sport and many of them accurately describe esports.5 In the case of late sports it may be
because of an identity or philosophy that is fundamentally perceived as other, as is the
case with the UFC and the X-Games as well as other late sports such as In-Line Skating
or Ultimate Frisbee (under the World Flying Disc Federation) (Thornton, 2004, 186,
192). Skateboarding communities were highly resistant to direct cooperation with
corporations whereas the UFC was restricted by differences in the legal regulation of
martial arts in the United States and public perception of MMA as an unnecessarily
violent sport. Skateboarding and other late sports were presented as alternatives to
popular traditional sports. The history of MMA is littered with comparisons to the
perceived legitimacy of boxing and other martial arts (O’Hara, 2008; Smith, 2010, 653).
Esports are currently in a similar identity flux between being categorized alongside
other sports, other video games, or as their own separate thing. Corporate practice
in the esports sphere may even push them as media entertainment as Taylor (2018)
suggests or, cynically, nothing more than a marketing vehicle. What determines
their “ludic legitimacy” (Guttmann, 1994, 137) is still uncertain when considering
their long-term success. Most esports are a precarious other in the world of sports
because of various factors including (but not limited to) expensive equipment; the
commonplace degradation of that equipment; developer changes to the core game that
may conflict with institutionalized competition; intellectual property ownership by a
corporate author; commercial pressure on publishers to supplant existing games with
new games; the number of esports dividing attention among a community; broadcast
guidelines conflicting with ratings information in games; the radical difference
between video games markets in certain nations; and competition with other sports
and entertainment. Esports are not only other to traditional sports but to sports
generally.
However, recent efforts such as the inclusion of esports as a medal event at the SEA
Games in 2019 may change this (BBC News, 2017; BBC Sport, 2018; Villar, 2018).
Ludic diffusion occurs at a rapid pace for esports due to several factors. Given that
esports emerged in the mid-1990s and developed alongside the internet and modern
arcades, the ludic diffusion of esports has grown in parallel with these locations. Taylor
(2012, 9) argues that the initial success of organized esports was due to the capacity
for play over LAN and DWANGO events and later broadband (Chee, 2006) (similar
to Marcus’ observations about the internet’s effect on skateboarding). The Starcraft
series was inherently LAN-based in its early history and Korea’s advanced internet
infrastructure, alongside early investment from broadcast media, was instrumental
in the success of Starcraft and other games (Jin, 2010, 35, 59). Since latency is still a
competitive limitation, esports teams playing over the internet would still be somewhat
regionally aligned (Rambusch et al. 2007, 161). The real aid of the internet to esports
institutions is how much easier it makes finding and communicating with others
who can propagate a niche interest. The ability to find a community that shares one’s
interests is expedited by the internet which was key to forming early grassroots esports
tournaments such as EVO (Harper, 2010, 193) or the Cyberathlete Professional League

(CPL) (King and Borland, 2003 in: Taylor, 2012, p. 8). Even arcade-based esports
would have been aided by the spread of the internet. EVO’s institutional precursor was
kickstarted by online discussion and fighting games have generally benefitted from
online discussion (Harper, 2010, 67–8).
The Future of Esports Institutions

It has been suggested by other theorists that esports cannot easily be compared to
traditional sports (Abanazir, 2018) and that “eSports should be understood as a
more complex process” (Jin, 2010, 61). Comparing radically different sports brings
a number of historical “ifs” and “buts” to the fore. And yet the narrative of esports’
future success attempts this comparison without much reflection on the specifics of
sports history. Much has been made of the continuing and future success of esports,
often framed as entertainment media while also being favorably compared to popular
sports such as association football, basketball, or baseball despite radical differences
in history, audience, and size. Industry reports and trade body discussions on esports
are overwhelmingly positive and, simultaneously, omit any discussion of how esports
might fit into the history of sports broadly (footballbenchmark, 2019; Gray, 2018;
Newzoo, 2018a, 2018b, 2019; Partin, 2018; UKIE, 2019). In comparing esports to
traditional sports there is a risk of making natural equivalences that fail to look at the
history of similar endeavors (such as late sports or sports institutions that have ceased).
Esports are unusually unstable compared to other sports and still command only a
relatively niche audience even among people who regularly play or watch video games.
Despite these comparisons, it is never usually recognized that the most popular
spectator sports are relative historical flukes and the factors informing their success
are historically unique. The extinction of sports rarely factors into the question of
how far esports might go. Over the course of Taylor’s (2012, 136) research, they kept
meticulous track of various organizations that were set up over the years and noted
that a majority “closed.” This speaks to the early challenges of a new field but also to the
potentially different nature of esports.
This chapter was written as the infamous “Blitzchung” controversy that embroiled
the Hearthstone Grandmasters ASIA 2019 unfolded (Chalk, 2019; Prescott, 2019;
Serrels, 2019). History doesn’t often provide comparative case studies but the recent
political embroilment of the National Basketball Association and the Hearthstone
Grandmasters with the politics of Hong Kong’s proposed “Fugitive Offenders and
Mutual Legal Assistance in Criminal Matters Legislation (Amendment) Bill 2019”
in October 2019 will likely be a case study that helps define the nature and future
of sports and esports going forward (Serrels, 2019; Silver, 2019). Esports institutions
and participants must strongly consider the way forward for the values they espouse
and how this is rectified with the economic capital they must seek if they are to grow
and diffuse. As corporate esports institutions extend into university campuses in
France, Australia, the United States, and China (Martin and Song, 2019; Taylor, 2019;
Witkowski and Kow, 2019) and begin negotiation with national esports associations
28 Global Esports
(Besombes, 2019; Taylor et al., 2019; Witkowski, 2019), a more global market may run
into problems concerning how social and economic values meet.
There is no doubt at this point that esports demonstrate a legitimate sporting
culture but what kind of culture is this and what are its values? Throughout the
comparative analyses here and by Summerley (2019), an institution’s philosophy, and
how this is negotiated with the community, continually informs how a sport develops.
Esports largest advocates still frame esports through a lens that mimics the masculine,
televisual nature of traditional sports of the United States. The most popular esports
have, as Taylor (2012) has noted, demonstrated a masculine identity which may be
more reflective of its early investors than of its potential audience. Esports, like all
other sports, is communal in nature. EVO (and the fighting game community broadly)
stands as an example of the community valuing not only play and spectatorship of
the various games in its domain but also the gathering and peripheral community
activity that gives fighting games (as an esport) their distinct flavor (Evo2kvids, 2017).
Ethnographic studies by Taylor (2012), Witkowski (2012a, 2012b), Cumming (2019),
and Law (2016) certainly support this omnipresent, social aspect of esports. Likewise,
there are those who see a lack of support for minority voices in esports (Caetano,
2019; Gray and Kamuneola, 2019; Peterson, 2018). Many have noted the need for new
approaches to sport (electronic or not) in order to foster a more inclusive community,
especially for female players (Weaving, 2014, 133; Taylor, 2018, 199; Young, 2005,
2010). Given their influence and power, the way forward could be spearheaded most
effectively by institutions.
It is clear from Blizzard’s development of its esports that control of the development
of the community is a motive in managing the development of esports in an official
capacity (Bago, 2016; Sacco, 2017; Blizzard Entertainment, 2017a; Liquipedia, 2018).
Starcraft 2, Heroes of the Storm (Blizzard Entertainment, 2015), Hearthstone (2014),
and Overwatch (2016) were all transformed and managed into esports by Blizzard
shortly after their release (Hill, 2017). This is understandable given Blizzard’s troubled
history negotiating broadcast rights with KeSPA (Rea, 2016, 24; Taylor, 2012) but
the direct ownership of games and institutions by a developer requires examining.
The sports institution must negotiate a symbiotic relationship between the economic
capital required to fund and propagate them and the social capital that makes the
widespread play and enjoyment of universalized competition socially and culturally
legitimate. This is how the UFC prospered but also how the X-Games created a split
in the skateboarding community. Corporations that directly own and manage the
development of sports may eventually be at odds with community interests if those
interests do not align to profitable growth of the corporation’s product.
To summarize, there are two main conclusions of this chapter. First, the existing
narrative of the comparison of sports is often optimistic due to a disregard for sports
history. Late sports are somewhat more useful to compare to esports since they share
more historical similarities but also feature big differences that mean a comparison
is still difficult. Secondly, political and legal issues will bring to the fore the need for
economic capital to balance with social capital. This is difficult given the commercial
aspirations of publisher-developers and the Blitzchung case has already shown how

this may develop. The influence of esports institutions might be used to outline a new
political philosophy on sports rather than retread sports’ dominant masculine frame
that sees competition as the only option. The need for a distinct and clear impression
of what esports is and can be will be instrumental in determining whether esports
institutions will be another department within developer-publishers, an advocate for
the communities that play them or something else.
If ever there was a need for an esports manifesto, it is now. Will esports amount
to a marketing vehicle for publishers to wield, faux-institutions that regulate play
without input from a dedicated community or will they aspire to compete with or
even surpass traditional sports in terms of the social, cultural, and economic values
they stand for? Or will esports become a haven for gambling as suggested by Newzoo,
(2019, 19)? History shows many similarities between late sports and esports but it
may not necessarily indicate that they will arrive at the same fate. Grassroots, niche,
mainstream, or other esports must be individually considered within the context of
sports history so that they may be scrutinized for what they are and can be.
Notes
1 While there are many things related to sports that could be called institutions
(sponsors, broadcasters, etc.), this chapter is primarily concerned with those
institutions that regulate and organize competitive play of a game itself.
2 This is similar to how esports were labeled and defined in the early twenty-first
century, institutionally by the Online Gamers Association (OGA) (Gestalt, 1999) and
then academically by Wagner (2006). Like “extreme sports”, “esports” is arguably an
institutional label that acts as shorthand for a genre of sports that unintentionally
glosses over many of the important differences between individual games.
3 MOBAs are sometimes referred to by the genre label of “action-real-time-strategy” or
ARTS.
4 Videogames are not commercially available in every country in the same way that
traditional sports freely are in almost all of them.
5 Only the ninth (and arguably seventh) do not describe characteristics of esports
(Wheaton, 2004, 11–12).
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3
Sports versus Esports

A Comparison of Industry Size, Viewer
Friendliness, and Game Competitiveness
William Campbell, Amanda Goss, Kyle Trottier, and Mark Claypool
Introduction
Traditional sports, such as Taekwondo, handball, cricket, and soccer, are popular and
well understood around the world. Over the last couple decades, a new phenomenon
is emerging: electronic sports, or esports, which could redefine the meaning of the word
“sport.” Esports are the professional, competitive play of computer games for a spectator
audience. Esports are growing in popularity, with both increased participation and
increased viewership in recent years and will likely have many of the same societal and
cultural impacts as do traditional sports.
The goal of this chapter is to analyze esports along three important axes: industry
size (revenue, salaries/prizes, viewers), viewer friendliness (game complexity, broadcast
action), and game competitiveness (based on team points during a game). Researching
the size of the esports industry allows for observation of potential economic impact.
Examining the viewer friendliness of esports can help better understand the appeal
to spectators. Analysis of game competitiveness can show potential engagement by
audiences. We analyze esports by comparing them to traditional sports in order to
provide for a relatively well-understood frame of reference. That said, some of our
comparative analysis of sports leagues is novel, too.
In order to compare the industry sizes of the professional sports and esports, we
gathered data on revenue, player salaries, team sizes, viewership, and growth in viewers
over time, concentrating on the North American sports and esports industries. To
compare viewer friendliness, we designed and deployed surveys assessing complexity
and viewer friendliness of a sport or esport and combined that with data gathered
on viewer friendliness, including gameplay per broadcast, and rule complexity. To
compare game competitiveness, we analyzed how often a team leads in a game and the
likelihood of relinquishing a lead at various stages in the game. In all cases, analysis of
the data is primarily in the form of visual aids (e.g., graphs and timelines) to compare
and visualize the data collected.
36 Global Esports
Overall, sports are larger than esports in terms of industry size, with the exception
of prize pools for tournaments where esports are comparable. However, esports are on
par with Major League Soccer in terms of industry size. Sports have the two events with
the most number of viewers by far—the FIFA World Cup and the NFL Super Bowl—
but esports have the third most—the League of Legends World Championships—
which itself is far larger than any other esports event in terms of viewers.
Esports are somewhat more complex and somewhat less understandable to viewers
than sports based on rule complexity and game action, but esports broadcasts are more
viewer-friendly than sports broadcasts since the former are shorter (about one to two
hours compared to two to three hours) and have a large percentage of broadcast time
showing live gameplay (about 50%).
Esports tend to be more competitive than sports since for much of their game time,
the outcomes of esports are not known and/or the team that is leading can change
several times during a match. In contrast, the least competitive sports (based on our
metrics of lead changes)—the NBA basketball and MLB baseball—have the leading
team win over two-thirds of the time, compared to about only one-third for esports.
The rest of this chapter is organized as follows: the “Background” section provides
relevant information on the professional sports and esports analyzed in this chapter;
the “Industry” section compares industry sizes for sports and esports; the “Viewer
Friendliness” section analyzes aspects of sports and esports rules and broadcasting
that suggest general appeal to viewers; the “Game Competitiveness” section compares
the competitiveness of sports to esports; and the “Conclusion” section summarizes our
findings.
Background
Table 3.1 summarizes the professional sports and esports analyzed and compared in
this chapter.
Table 3.1 Professional Sports and Esports Analyzed and Compared
Primary
Acronym Name Region Sport/Genre
EPL English Premier League Global Soccer
MLB Major League Baseball NA Baseball
MLS Major League Soccer NA Soccer
NBA National Basketball Association NA Basketball
NFL National Football League NA Football
NHL National Hockey League NA Hockey
CS:GO Counter Strike: Global Offensive Global First Person Shooter
DOTA 2 Defense of the Ancients 2 Global Multiplayer Online Battle Arena
LCS League Championship Series Global Multiplayer Online Battle Arena
OWL Overwatch League Global Hero Shooter

Sports versus Esports 37
For representative sports, we analyzed major professional sports in North America

(NA): the National Football League (NFL), the National Hockey League (NHL),
the National Basketball Association (NBA), Major League Baseball (MLB), and
Major League Soccer (MLS), with the English Premier League (EPL) added for an
international comparison (based in the UK, but with global following).
For comparative esports, we primarily analyzed two major professional esports: the
League of Legends Championship Series (LCS) and the Overwatch League (OWL). The
LCS is a professional esports league founded in 2013 featuring the multiplayer online
battle arena (MOBA) game League of Legends (LoL) (Riot Games, 2009). The LCS has the
highest level of professional LoL players in North America. The OWL is a professional
esports league founded in 2017 featuring the hero shooter Overwatch (Blizzard
Entertainment, 2016). In addition, we include some analysis of professional tournaments
featuring the first person shooter (FPS) game Counter Strike Global Offensive (CS:GO)
(Valve Corporation, 2012) and the MOBA game Defense of the Ancients 2 (Valve
Corporation, 2013) where data is available and comparisons are appropriate.
League and Team Sizes

Figure 3.1 compares the sizes of the leagues and teams for each sports and esports
league and tournament studied and Figure 3.2 compares the number of simultaneously
active players (i.e., engaged in play, not on the bench) per team for each game. For
Figure 3.1, the x-axis is the league/tournament, for Figure 3.2, the x-axis is the sport or
game, and for both graphs, the y-axis is the number of teams/players.
Figure 3.1 Number of Teams per League for Sports (solid black) versus Esports
(hashed gray).
38 Global Esports
Figure 3.2 Number of Players per Team for each League for Sports (solid black) versus
Esports (hashed gray).
From Figure 3.1, sports generally have more teams in competitions than esports,
with the exception of the Overwatch World Cup and the League of Legends World
Championships. From Figure 3.2, sports generally have larger teams, too, with about
2x as many players per team as the esports teams, with the exception of the NHL
hockey and the NBA basketball sports teams.
Brief History
While sports themselves are quite old, the six professional sports leagues studied in
this chapter are relatively new. The National League of Professional Baseball Clubs
(which became the National League in Major League Baseball) was founded in 1876,
the American League (AL) in 1901, and the first World Series by Major League Baseball
(MLB) in 1903 (History.com Editors, 2019). The National Hockey League (NHL)
was founded in 1917, and the American Professional Football Association in 1920,
later changing its name to the National Football League (NFL) in 1922 (Reiss, 2017).
Professional basketball started as the Basketball Association of America in 1946, but
changed to today’s National Basketball Association (NBA) in 1949. Professional soccer
was most recently established in the United States with the founding of Major League
Soccer (MLS) in 1996 (Pyne, 2019). Internationally, soccer has been popular since the
World Cup started in 1930 (World Cup, 2018), but the English Premiere League (EPL)
is relatively new, too, founded in 1992 (Premier League, 2018).
The first recorded esports event was a game tournament sponsored by Rolling Stone
magazine at Stanford University in 1972 (Brand, 1972). The tournament featured
college students competing in the game Spacewar for a subscription to the magazine.

The first large multiplayer esports event was the Space Invaders championship
in 1980, sponsored by Atari, with over 10,000 players (editor, 1982). Shortly after, a
US national team was created to promote gaming and break world gaming records,
making them the first recorded esports team in history.
The popular first person shooter Quake (id Software, 1996) led rise to the first
US-wide online video game competition, the Red Annihilation tournament in 1997,
with about 2,000 players competing for the first esports prize pool (Lawrence, 2018).
The real-time strategy game Starcraft: Brood War (Blizzard Entertainment, 1998) in
1998 had a tremendous viewer appeal, particularly for the South Korean audience and
led to Korea’s first professional gaming league (Lawrence, 2018; Jin, 2010).
Two more esports competitions launched in 2000: the World Cyber Games and
the Electronic Sports World Cup (Lawrence, 2018; Taylor, 2012). In 2002, the Major
League Gaming organization was formed and began awarding prize pools exceeding
$200,000 (Fantastic Esports, 2018; Taylor, 2012). In 2013, the US government began
recognizing esports athletes as professional athletes (LeJacq, 2013; Tassi, 2013), and as
of 2015, esports had been recognized by the Korea esports Association (KeSPA) as a
2nd-level Olympic Sport, alongside chess and polo (Bago, 2015).
Industry
This section compares industry sizes for sports and esports, with data analyzed for
revenue, salaries, prize pools, and viewership.
Revenue
The amount of money an industry makes is typically the metric by which industry sizes
are measured. As revenue reporting often lags a given calendar year, we gathered data
for sports and esports organizations for the year 2017. Data was obtained primarily
from Forbes (Brown, 2017),1 Statista (Statista, 2018),2 and NewZoo (Pannekeet, 2018).3
While individual sports leagues often report yearly revenue, esports leagues do not,
and only an aggregate esports revenue for 2018 was available.
Figure 3.3 compares the most recently available sports and esports revenues. The
x-axis is the sport or esport (with corresponding year) and the y-axis the revenue in
billions of US dollars. From the graph, sports occupy the highest and lowest spots—the
NFL at $13.6 and the MLS at $0.6 billion, respectively. Even aggregated, esports are
relatively low compared with sports, only just above the MLS at $0.9 billion.
Salaries
Player salaries are often correlated with revenue, are an indication of how attractive
and viable a player’s career is, and can help attract the top talent. We gathered salary
data from Spotrac (Spotrac, 2019)4 and Forbes (Heitner, 2018).
40 Global Esports
Figure 3.3 League Revenue for Sports (solid black) versus Esports (hashed gray).
Figure 3.4 Average Player Salary for Sports (solid black) versus Esports (hashed gray).
Figure 3.4 compares the average sports and esports salaries for 2018. The x-axis is
the sport or esport and the y-axis the average salary in millions of US dollars. From
the graph, most sports have higher average salaries than esports, with the average
NBA salary of $7.2 million being 25x more than the average LCS salary. However, the
average salaries in the sports league MLS is on-par with the average salaries in the LCS
and OWL esports leagues.
Prize Pools
Another monetary measure of industry size is the amount of money in prize pools and
similar awards in major sports and esports tournaments. In such cases, teams that win
receive large payments, often dividing this up among the players. Data from Esports

Figure 3.5 Championship Prize Pools for Sports (solid black) versus Esports (hashed
gray). Esport OWL Has Prize Pools Greater Than the EPL and MLS, Too.
Earnings (Esports Earnings, 2019) provided data on the tournament prize pools and
CNBC-Money (Martin, 2018) provided data on player winnings for the major sporting
championships.
Figure 3.5 compares the prize pools for championship events for sports and esports
salaries for 2018. The x-axis is the sport or esport and the y-axis the prize pool in
millions of US dollars. MLB has the World Series (note, data is from 2017), the NFL
has the Super Bowl, and the NHL has the Stanley Cup. From the graph, while sports
occupy four of the largest five spots, the largest prize pool is for the esport Dota 2, at
$25.5 million. The esport OWL has prize pools greater than the EPL and MLS, too.
Viewers
The number of viewers of sports or esports events usually directly affects league
revenue through advertising and indirectly impacts player salaries. Figure 3.6 shows
the average viewers for the championship event for each sport or esport. The x-axis
is the sport or esport event and the y-axis the average concurrent viewers (CCV) in
millions. Note, the y-axis is shown in log scale.
From the graph, the number of viewers of the FIFA (international soccer) World
Cup5 dwarfs all other events, except for the NFL Superbowl which had over 1 million
concurrent viewers. For other championship events, sports generally has more viewers,
with the exception of the LCS Worlds championship and the MLS Cup. Note, the EPL
does not have a final championship event but rather plays simultaneous games on the
last day of play.
Figure 3.7 shows the change in viewers over time (since 1970) for some of the sports
and esports championships. The x-axis is years, and the y-axis the average concurrent
viewers (CCV) in millions. The FIFA World Cup is not included since it is only once
42 Global Esports
Figure 3.6 Average Concurrent Viewers for Championship Events for Sports (solid
black) versus Esports (hashed gray). Note, y-axis in Log Scale.
Figure 3.7 Average Concurrent Viewers for Championship Events Over Time.
every four years. The OWL is not included because at the time data was gathered for
this chapter there has been only one season. The MLB and NHL have small gaps in
their timelines due to strikes when the season or championship was canceled. In the
case of Dota 2, the year 2016 had no viewership data reported that corresponded to
concurrent viewership.

From the graph, while the NFL championship (i.e., the Super Bowl) still
dominates in terms of viewer numbers, esports, specifically LoL and Dota 2, have
viewerships comparable to other professional sports with LoL having a sharp
upward trajectory.
Summary
Overall, sports still generally dominate esports in terms of revenue and viewers, but esports
has a significant presence in both, and some esports have larger prize pools than sports.
Sports dwarf esports in terms of revenue, with the NFL alone making $12.7 billion
USD more than the entire esports industry. Player salaries show a similar difference,
with the largest sports salary around $7 million USD, while the largest esports salary
is only $0.3 million USD. However, some esports have larger prize pools than sports.
The 2018 DOTA 2 International tournament had a prize pool of $25.5 million USD,
larger than the largest sport prize pool (the MLB World Series) of $22.5 million USD.
(See sections "Industry” and “Revenue")
The largest two events with the most viewers are for sports—the FIFA World Cup and
the NFL Super Bowl have 562 and 103 million viewers, respectively. An esport event is
third in this list, however—the LCS World Championships at 43 million viewers—and
is more than double the number of viewers of any other sports leagues.
Viewer Friendliness
A core element of professional sports and esports is the audience. In essence, the appeal
to viewers is what makes sports and esports professionally viable. While aficionados
can be found for almost all sports and even most computer games, a sport or esport
needs broad viewer appeal for industry growth. This section analyzes the main aspects
of sports and esports that suggest general appeal to viewers—game complexity and
broadcast action.
Game Complexity
While some amount of complexity to a sport or esport can add nuance and depth for
viewers, in general, events that have mass appeal are often simple. This is particularly
true for first time or casual fans that help establish an industry and then grow.
We compared the complexity of the largest sport and esport leagues—the NFL and
the LCS, respectively—by analyzing the rules of the game for each. Since the intent is to
compare the game rules as needed for a viewer to understand the game, the “Rules of
Sport” site was used for football (RulesofSport.com, 2016) instead of the official NFL rules
(Roger Goodell, 2018)—the latter has many specifications not needed for viewers, such as
the maximum diameter of the goalposts and dimensions of painted yard numbers. The
official rules published by Riot Games were used for LoL (Riot Games, 2019b).
44 Global Esports
We compared the word count and reading level6 for each ruleset as a broad measure
of complexity. We also quantified the different roles and positions for players in football
(Dick’s Pro Tips, 2019) and LoL (Riot Games, 2019c). Roles provide a specific context
for watching teams (e.g., offense versus defense). Positions provide a specific context
for watching individual players (e.g., throwing the ball as a quarterback) in support of
the role (e.g., scoring points on offense). The more roles and positions a game has, the
more specific player goals the viewer has to understand.
We also compared the number of “special cases” that are helpful in understanding
the game and appreciating nuance. For NFL football, these are the various penalties for
rule infractions (National Football League, 2018) and for LoL these are the different
champion abilities wielded by individual players (Riot Games, 2019a). While NFL
infractions and LoL champion abilities may not seem comparable on the surface, they
both provide a quantifiable measure of depth of the knowledge a viewer may need to
understand how and why the observed gameplay is unfolding. As of February 2019,
there are 143 LoL champions, each with five unique abilities—one passive, three basic,
and one ultimate.7 Each LoL game has only ten unique champions, with a total of about
fifty unique abilities. The results are summarized in Table 3.2.
Table 3.2 Rule Complexity
Attribute NFL/Football LCS/LoL

Basic Rules Word Count 753 689
Reading Level 9th-10th grade College
Game Roles 3 6
Game Positions 14 5
Special Cases 56 penalties 715 abilities
Table 3.3 Football Roles and Positions
Role Positions
Offense Quarterback, Running Back, Fullback, Offensive Line,
Wide Receiver, and Tight End
Defense Linebacker, Cornerback, Safety, Defensive Line
Special Teams Kicker, Punter, Return Specialist, Long Snapper
Table 3.4 League of Legends Roles and Positions
Role Position
Tank Top, Jungle, Support
Fighter Top, Jungle
Assassin Jungle, Middle
Mage Middle, Support
Marksman Bottom
Support Support

Table 3.5 Video Clips Used in Surveys
Game Event Duration URL

Baseball 2014 World Series 3m 9s https://youtu.be/QrN9kiefrQY
Football 2017 Super Bowl 2m 50s https://youtu.be/bUNl30SL_PU
LoL 2018 World Championships 2m 48s https://youtu.be/n74JT59mOC0
Overwatch 2018 Stage 1 Finals 3m 11s https://youtu.be/Hw58NDx7VD0
Football and League of Legends have a comparable number of words (753 versus
689), but the football rules are written at a slightly lower reading level (9th/10th
versus college). There are three different roles for football with fourteen total positions
(linemen are counted as one position, here), detailed in Tables 3.3 and six different
roles for LoL but only five different positions, detailed in Table 3.4. For special cases,
NFL has 56 different penalties while LoL has a corresponding 715 different abilities
for viewers to understand, although only 50 for a given game (ten unique champions
play in a game at a time). Note, that LoL may have additional complexity in that
combinations of champions can have synergies beyond those of their individual
abilities, and NFL football can have also have combinations of players and positions
that provide for team capabilities. These are not easily identifiable, however, so we do
not report them further.
We also created two online surveys where users watched a clip from a professional
sports broadcast and then watched a clip from a professional esports broadcast and
answered survey questions about the content and their experience.
One survey compared NFL football and LCS League of Legends and the other
compared MLB baseball and OWL Overwatch where users (1) rated their experience
with the specific sport and esport in the study, (2) watched a short video clip from each
game (two to three minutes each, chosen so as to have some game “action” with a bit
of professional commentary), (3) answered basic comprehension questions to be sure
they watched the clip (e.g., “what number was displayed on the screen”), and (4) rated
their understanding of the clip, the complexity of the clip, and the complexity of the
game as a whole. Step (3) allowed us to filter out users that did not actually watch the
clips yet still completed the survey.
Details on the video clips used in the surveys are summarized in Table 3.5. The full
text of the survey is available in our report (Campbell, Goss, and Trottier, 2019).
Participants were eligible for a raffle for a $25 Amazon gift card. Users were solicited
through online forums (e.g., Reddit) and on-campus mailing lists. The survey took
about ten to fifteen minutes to complete.
For the NFL football and LCS League of Legends surveys, we had fifty-six responses,
but discarded seven due to incomplete surveys or incorrect answers in step (3) (i.e., it
was obvious they did not watch the clip(s)). Of the forty-nine remaining responses,
forty-five were eighteen to twenty-four years old and four were above twenty-five years
old. Ten identified as female and forty-nine as male.
For the MLB Baseball and OWL Overwatch survey, we had forty-two responses,
but discarded of the thirty-six remaining responses, thirty-three were eighteen to
twenty-four years old and three were above twenty-five years old. Eight identified as
female, twenty-six as male, and two declined to answer.
46 Global Esports
Figure 3.8 Box Plots of User Ratings (1-Low, 7-High).
Figure 3.9 Complexity Rating and Understanding (1-Low, 7-High).
Figure 3.8 shows box plots of the user survey responses, with Figure 3.8a the
complexity and Figure 3.8b the understanding. Figure 3.9 shows a scatter plot of the
same data, shown with the mean rating for each of the four games. The error bars in
each direction depict the standard error.
From the figures, baseball is the least complex and most understandable. Football
is about as complex as Overwatch, but more understandable. League of Legends is the
most complex and least understandable.
Additional analysis, available in our report (Campbell et al., 2019), of clusters of
users based on prior knowledge of the sport/game (e.g., beginner or expert) did not
show significant difference in complexity ratings nor understanding.
Broadcast Action
Another aspect that can affect the appeal of watching a sporting event for viewers
is the broadcast time (the consecutive duration of a single game plus commentary)

for an event—large blocks of time are more difficult to fit into a busy schedule, so a
shorter broadcast is likely more accessible to viewers. Moreover, the amount of game
action (i.e., players actually engaged in the sport/esport) compared to the amount of
broadcast time can impact appeal—in general, it seems reasonable to assume that the
larger the fraction of the broadcast time spent showing actual sport/game play, the
more appealing to viewers.
We consider live action in a broadcast to be footage showing players in a position
capable of scoring. For sports, live action is only when the ball is in play and for
esports, live action is only when the players are actively pursuing the objective (e.g.,
in League of Legends, minions have spawned and players are pushing their lanes and
in Overwatch, when the spawn doors are open and the players are trying to take an
Figure 3.10 Average Broadcast Time for Sports (solid black) and Esports (hashed gray).
Figure 3.11 Average Broadcast Time Breakdown for Sports and Esports.
48 Global Esports
objective). For example, in an NFL broadcast, there are replays, gameplay analyses,
commercials, shots of the fans, and so on—none of this would count as live action. We
apply this same idea equally to both sports and esports.
Data on the amount of action in professional sports was reported by the Wall Street
Journal (Biderman, 2010; Moyer, 2013). For esports, we manually inspected professional
broadcasts for the LCS (LoL Esports, 2018) and the OWL (Overwatch League, 2018),
recording the amount of time spent in live action and the total broadcast time.
Figure 3.10 depicts the average broadcast times for sports and esports. All the sports
broadcasts are longer than the two esports studied. The OWL Overwatch broadcasts are
Figure 3.12 Action for Sports (solid black) versus Esports (hashed gray).

comparable to the MLS soccer and the EPL soccer broadcasts, but the NFL football and
the MLB baseball broadcasts are nearly an hour longer on average. The LCS League of
Legends broadcasts are much shorter than those of all sports, averaging just over one hour.
Figure 3.11 depicts a breakdown of the average broadcast times for sports
and esports. We break broadcast time into the average time of action (from our
definition of live action stated earlier), and game time recorded from the official
game clock (e.g., one hour for NFL football games). Most esports do not have a
fixed-length game clock, so we manually tallied the observed variable-length game
clocks and averaged them across the videos we watched. The MLB baseball does not
have a game clock.
From the graph, the average time showing live action (the green bars) are noticeably
longer for the NHL hockey, the NBA basketball, and the MLS/EPL soccer sports
broadcasts, while the NFL football, the MLB baseball and both the esports broadcasts
have noticeably shorter green bars. The NFL and the MLS/EPL have significantly
longer game times compared to the action times, while the esports have game times
comparable to their action times.
Figure 3.12a and Figure 3.12b depict the percentage of action per broadcast and
action per game, respectively. In general, the esports percentages of action for both
broadcast and game are around 50 percent, in the middle of sports, with far higher
percentages of action than the lowest (NFL broadcasts), but significantly lower
percentages than the highest (MLS/EPL broadcasts).
Figure 3.13 provides combined analysis, showing the percentage of action per
broadcast on the y-axis versus the broadcast length. The average for sport and esport
is depicted as a dot (solid black for the sports, grey for the esports). Generally, areas
in the top left (high action percent, relatively short broadcasts) are likely more viewer
friendly than areas in bottom right (low action percent, relatively long broadcasts).
From the graph, MLB and NFL broadcasts stand out as long (about three hours) and
with relatively low percentages of action (under 10%). Based on this broadcast analysis
alone, esports tend to be more viewer friendly with higher percentages of action and
lower broadcast lengths.
Figure 3.13 Action per Broadcast versus Broadcast Length.

50 Global Esports
Summary
In summary, for viewer friendliness, esports are somewhat more complex than sports,
evidenced by (1) the League of Legends rules being at a college reading level compared
to NFL football’s early high school level, and (2) survey results that show the LCS
League of Legends and the OWL Overwatch viewers find their games 1-2 points (out
of 7) more complex and less understandable than NFL football and MLB baseball,
respectively. However, esports broadcasts (LCS and OWL) are more viewer friendly
than sports broadcasts given that the former have about 40 to 45 percent of the time
showing live gameplay, while broadcasts for NFL football and MLB baseball only have
10 to 20 percent time with live gameplay.
Game Competitiveness
For viewers, the competitiveness of a game is important to its appeal. When the
outcome of a game is known early on, it can be less interesting to watch than one where
the outcome is uncertain for longer. A non-competitive game may cause fans to lose
interest and stop watching the game early, instead finding another activity to do. This
section applies metrics that have been applied to assess the competitiveness of sports
to esports, allowing for a head-to-head comparison.
Methodology
A part of the excitement of competitive games is not knowing which team will win.
Games where the outcome is known early in the game tend to be viewed less. For
example, point spreads play a key role in television ratings where viewership is higher
for games where covering the spread is in doubt (Salaga and Tainsky, 2015). The
competitiveness of a game can be conceptualized by how uncertain the game outcome
is in terms of which team wins or loses.
There are potentially many ways to quantify competitiveness including, for example,
the probability of winning or the likelihood of an “upset” based on prior ranking. In
order to allow for direct comparison with prior analysis of sport competitiveness,
we use competitiveness metrics developed for sports (Wills, 2017), allowing for a
comparison across individual games and also across professional sports and esports
leagues. This approach provides insights on the relative competitiveness of sports
versus esports. Specifically, we analyzed how often a team is in the lead, how often a
team that is currently ahead goes on to win, and how often a team is ahead for good
(meaning the team never loses the lead and wins). The idea is that matches that have
more lead changes are more competitive (and fun to watch) than a match that has
fewer lead changes. Put another way, a match where the lead changes many times has
an unknown outcome, and is likely more interesting to watch, than a match that has
one team leading the whole time and then winning.

In order to compare across different sports and esports, games are normalized by
percentage of game time (we divided the esport matches into 2.5% increments), so that
different length games can be directly compared. For the sports data, we obtained the
data sets from Wills (2017).
For esports data, we gathered data manually by watching recorded games on the
official leagues’ YouTube channels (LoL Esports, 2018; Overwatch League, 2018),
manually scoring thirty LCS League of Legends and 31 OWL Overwatch games. For
each game, we recorded the start and end time, as well as each time a given team took
the lead or tied the score. What team was in the lead was recorded, whether or not that
team would lose the lead, and what team would eventually win the game. In LCS, there
is about a fifteen second time at the game start where both teams are unable to leave
the spawn area, so this time was disregarded for our competitive analysis. Similarly in
OWL, there is an initial time where the offensive team cannot move about the map and
interact with the defensive team, so this time was disregarded for our analysis.
LoL does not have points or any other type of game score as do most sports.
For LoL scoring, the goal is to destroy the opponent’s base. However, before doing
so, defense towers placed in front of the Nexus must be destroyed. Hence, we count
towers destroyed as points—whenever a team had more towers destroyed than the
other team, that team was considered in the lead. We acknowledge that there are many
other metrics that can be factored into a score, such as the number of champion kills/
deaths or amount of “gold” a team has earned, but leave additional game scoring and
subsequent competitiveness analysis as future work.
For Overwatch scoring, there are different game modes, each with a different
scoring mechanism from which we created scoring metrics.
In Escort mode, the attacking team must push a payload object down a set track
to the end. The track has three checkpoints which we count as the points needed for
scoring. Assault mode focuses combat around two marked zones that the offensive
team must capture, each with three checkpoints. We count each checkpoint as a point
for scoring. Hybrid mode is a mix of the Escort and Assault and we count scoring in
Hybrid the same as in the two previous modes.
The teams alternate between offense and defense to complete the objective of the
game mode. If the first team is unable to fully complete that objective, the second
team only needs to beat the first team’s progress in order to win. Otherwise, the first
team wins. If the second team is unable to beat the first team but reaches the same
checkpoints, then the resulting match is a draw. If the first team is able to fully complete
the objective, and the second team is also able to complete the objective, the map is
replayed, with each team’s remaining time on the game clock. The team with less time
goes first, and the match is replayed with the same rules. Lastly, if both teams use all of
their time and complete the objective, then the game is a draw.
Results
A game with the score tied is a competitive game since the outcome is not known and a
game with one team in the lead is less competitive. Figure 3.14 shows the distribution of
52 Global Esports
game timelines where there is a team in the lead. The x-axis is the timeline percentage,
where 50 percent is halfway through a game, and the y-axis is the percentage of games
where a team is leading. The figure shows that NBA basketball games are the least
competitive by this metric, as more than 90 percent of NBA games have a team in
the lead less than 10 percent of the time into the game, and maintain that value for a
majority of the game’s timeline. The OWL games reach similar values around 25 percent
into the game, making them the next least competitive. The MLS soccer and the EPL
soccer games have very similar lines, and by this team-is-leading metric are the most
competitive. However, the LCS games are the most competitive early, as no game has a
leader until around the 20 percent time mark (when the first tower is finally destroyed),
but rises quickly to have around 90 percent of games with a leader 80 percent into a game.
The results at the right edge of the figure show that the OWL and the LCS always have
a winner at the end of a game (the trendlines go to 100%), whereas other professional
sports can be tied (e.g., about 25% of the MLS and EPL games end in a tie).
We next analyze the frequency by which a team is currently in the lead and goes on
to win. The idea that if a team in the lead usually wins that makes for a less competitive
game. Figure 3.15 features a similar graph to Figure 3.14 with the same axes, but the
y-axis is whether the team that is leading goes on to win the game. For example, the
LCS at the midpoint of games has the lowest percentage (about 40%) of games where a
team is in the lead and goes on to win, and the NBA has the highest (about 70%). The
OWL is similarly low at the midpoint and, in fact, the outcome is not known for about
half of all games until the very end.
Figure 3.16 summarizes the data from Figure 3.15 with averages. The y-axis is the
percentage of all games (shown with standard error bars), and the x-axis is the different
Figure 3.14 Distribution of Timeline (Percent) a Team Is Leading.

Figure 3.15 Distribution of Team with Lead and Wins.
Figure 3.16 Percentage of Time Team with Lead and Wins.
leagues. From the graph, 72 percent of NBA games are spent with the team that wins
in the lead. On the other end, the EPL and the MLS are at 45 percent and 44 percent,
respectively. For esports, the OWL and the LCS have the lowest values, 43 percent and
38 percent, respectively, making them the most competitive.
However, the above metric does not account for a team that has an early lead, may
trail for much of the game and still win—that type of game can seem quite competitive
54 Global Esports
for viewers. For example, in the 51st NFL Super Bowl, the New England Patriots
played the Atlanta Falcons. The Falcons led for the entire game, but the Patriots won,
only pulling ahead in points on the final play of the game. A number of media outlets
proclaimed this game the greatest Super Bowl of all time (Carpenter, 2017; Steele,
2017; Gagnon, 2017). As such, we analyzed when a team scores whether they keep the
lead and win (i.e., they are “ahead for good”). Figure 3.17 depicts the results, with the
same axes as for previous figures. From this graph, the MLB is the least competitive,
with around 56 percent of games at the halfway point being led by a team that does not
lose the lead. The OWL maintains a flat line that slowly goes up with a large spike, with
just over 40 percent of games having a team ahead for good at a game’s midpoint. The
LCS has the lowest percentage (is the most competitive) at only 20 percent at a game’s
midpoint, but rises up to be similar with the NBA and MLB, making it less competitive
by the game’s end.
Figure 3.18 summarizes the data from Figure 3.17 with averages, similar to
Figure 3.16. From the graph, the MLB is the least competitive with 55 percent of game
time having the winning team never lose the lead. On the other end, esports tend to be
the most competitive, with the OWL and the LCS games only having about 38 percent
and 30 percent of games, respectively, with the leading team winning.
The final graph in Figure 3.19 compares the summary percentage of game time
with the lead for good against the percentage of game time where the team in the lead
goes on to win. The graph is augmented with explanatory arrows indicating leagues
that are closer to the upper-right corner are relatively less competitive while those
closer to the lower-left corner are relatively more competitive. Results from these two
metrics indicate that games in the NBA basketball and the MLB baseball leagues are
Figure 3.17 Distribution of Team with Lead for Good.

Figure 3.18 Percentage of Time Team with Lead for Good.
Figure 3.19 Percentage of Game Time with Lead for Good versus with Lead and Win
(Sports solid black, Esports light gray).
56 Global Esports
relatively less competitive while those in the MLS soccer and the EPL soccer leagues
are relatively more competitive. These same metrics show esports OWL Overwatch is
as competitive as the most competitive sports, MLS and EPL, while the esport’s LCS
League of Legends is slightly more competitive than all.
Summary
In summary, based on games with teams in the lead, the OWL Overwatch and the
NBA baseball leagues are the least competitive while the LCS League of Legends, MLS
soccer, and EPL soccer leagues are the most. Based on the amount of time a team in
the lead wins, the NBA is still the least competitive, while the OWL and LCS leagues
are the most competitive. For leagues with teams ahead for good, the MLB baseball
league is the least competitive (the NBA is second), while the OWL and LCS leagues
remain the most competitive. Overall, esports are somewhat more competitive than
most sports.
Conclusion
Sports are prevalent and pervasive, not only as a hobby for leisure and fitness, but also as
a profession. Professional sports employ highly paid professional athletes, competing in
yearly leagues and championships events, fueled largely by the massive audiences that
are interested in watching. The relatively more recent esports—multiplayer computer
games played competitively by professionals—have a lot in common with traditional
sports, providing a platform for professional players and millions of viewers. Analyzing
esports with sports as a reference can help better understand the size of the industry,
and hence economic impact, as well as the scope of appeal to viewers.
This chapter provides a comparison of sports to esports for professional sports
leagues and major esports leagues along three key dimensions: industry size, viewer
friendliness, and game competitiveness. We compare industry sizes through player
salaries, tournament prize pools, and audience sizes. We assess viewer friendliness
through rule analysis and a 50+ person survey that subjectively measures viewer
understanding. We analyze game competitiveness by applying and comparing a
competition metric from sports to esports.
For industry size, sports are considerably larger than esports, with the National
Football League (NFL) having about 15x more revenue and the National Basketball
Association having about 20x higher player salaries than the largest esports. However,
the largest tournament prize pool is for the esport Defense Of The Ancients 2 (in
2018), being about 15 percent larger than the largest sports tournament prize (the
Major League Baseball World Series in 2017). For viewers, sports’ championship FIFA
World Cup and the NFL Super Bowl dwarf all others for viewers, but the esport League
of Legends World championship has about 3x more viewers than any other sporting
event.

For viewer friendliness, esport’s League of Legends is slightly more complex than
football, although both have a comparable number of roles, positions, and special cases.
Viewers subjectively indicated the same, with esports League Challenger Series (LCS)
and OWL being about 20 percent more complex and one-third less understandable
than baseball and football, respectively. However, the LCS and OWL broadcasts are
more viewer friendly, being somewhat shorter than all sports broadcasts and having
a comparable amount of action per broadcast as the top sports (hockey and soccer).
For competitiveness, esports are more competitive than all sports considering point-
based metrics that account for team leads over the course of a game. The outcome of
the LCS and OWL games are typically not known until well past the half-way point and
both feature many more lead changes than the least competitive sports (baseball and
football). Overall, professional sports are still larger than the biggest esports, generally
commanding larger revenues, player salaries, and viewers. However, esport’s viewer
numbers are growing, potentially fueled by appealing aspects of broadcast lengths and
game competitiveness that will likely continue to drive industry growth and social
impact.
Notes
1 Forbes is a global media company, focusing on business, investing, technology, and
entrepreneurship.
2 Statista aggregates consumer survey results and industry studies from about 22,000
sources on about 60,000 topics on the internet.
3 Newzoo provides market research on games and esports analytics.
4 See: sport/rankings/average where sport is one of: (eps, mlb, mls, nba, nfl, nhl).
5 Data from 2014 is shown since data from 2018 was not available. The tournament is
every four years.
6 Reading level refers to the education level a person would need in order to understand
the words, obtained from WordCounter (https://wordcounter.net/).
7 There are only a few champions that have more than five abilities (e.g., Nidalee and
Jayce).
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4
Esports
A Chinese Sport?
Milan Ismangil and Anthony Fung
Introduction
In 2016, Foreign policy (Liu, 2016) published an article titled “China Rules Esports.”
China was held up as an example of esports developments in terms of codification,
legalization, the development of infrastructure, and the size of its fan base. Three years
later in 2019 an esports report by Newzoo stated that China is set to become the second
largest esports market, boasting $210 million in revenue and leading the world in the
number of esports fans and viewers (Pannekeet, 2019). Does China indeed rule esports
as this article states? This chapter will discuss whether China can become the global
leader for esports, it argues that while China is well set up to benefit from the esports
boom it still faces many challenges with regard to truly creating an esports environment
that is globally enabled and not only concerned with the domestic market. We will
provide an overview of the Chinese perspectives on esports to argue that while China
is a strong player in terms of numbers (i.e., population and investment size), its actual
influence is constrained by typical factors such as the isolation of its community, the
lack of export of its domestic video games, and the tension that exists between the
governments need for information control and a global sport that traverses borders.
This chapter will trace the recent development of esports in China. Esports for
China is uniquely situated as it can capitalize on a culture of esports existing within
the country. Unlike football, an already fully developed global sport on which the
government has set its eyes on, esports is still in its infancy allowing the Chinese
government to stake their claim as the sport is still in its early days. By moving fast
in this field esports can not only contribute to the economy but also project an image
of China as a digital, capable, and competitive nation. For China to truly solidify its
image as an esports hegemon, however, there are several obstacles which will become
apparent in the chapter.
We start with outlining esports in China, after which current issues of esports
development in China will be discussed. We then go to some of the growing pains that
China experiences in developing a global esports industry in a country whose internet
is defined by the degree of government control. In an authoritarian country like China,

Esports 61
private and public organization of gaming can only operate with the support or consent
of the government. We will touch upon the issue of internet addiction and esports, the
former seen by the government as a major public health risk (Jiang, 2014) while the
latter has been imbued with ideas of glory, optimism, and (economic) growth. Finally,
in the conclusion we argue that reputation management and domestic innovation
might form bigger challenges than those of infrastructure, as managing the intangible
aspects of the esports industry might prove harder to be overcome. China might rule
esports in terms of pure numbers but growing a foreign, global fan base will prove to
be difficult given the current circumstances.
Esports as Opportunity
The Chinese government, following in the footprints of South Korea has arrived
early on the scene in esports. Esports was recognized by the government as an official
sport in 2003 by the General Administration of Sports which in 2010 started to host
national and international esports competitions and in 2015 it recruited its first
national esports team.
The word for esports in the Chinese academic and government discourse is
opportunity. It is an industry that went from around $200 million in revenue in
2014 to more than a billion today with an audience of around 500 million people, and
an annual growth of more than 10 percent being the norm rather than the exception
(Newzoo, 2020). How to capture, develop, and exploit this market has been a source of
discussion among Chinese academics since the late 1990s. Esports can boost China’s
digital economy and the question of which policies might make it bloom has been a
fierce source of discussion (Tian, 2000).
Esports is regarded as a golden goose with near unlimited growth potential and an
industry in which China cannot lag behind others (Lei and Xia, 2005). It can boost the
economy in a time where the digital economy is receiving much attention from the
government (Yu, 2018), and could invigorate its cultural policy by using tournaments
as opportunities for city and nation brand building using esports as a form of public
diplomacy. The idea is that one simply builds the infrastructure and the tournaments,
and tourists and money will start pouring in (Tian, 2000; Liu and Zhu, 2007). As an
industry it not only provides work for more skilled labor in terms of technical staff,
marketing of events, and event creation and management but also contributes to side
industries such as tourism and hospitality. The need for esports to have a fast and stable
internet would be a boom for other (creative) industries that benefit from fast internet.
As tournaments can last for multiple days, the increase in tourism and city marketing
can also be a large boon to the local economy. Especially for areas in which higher
quality jobs are in demand, esports is purportedly set up to be a relatively easy method
to create new jobs. In contrast to regular sports the ingredients for all esports are the
same, fast, and stable internet, a large screen, and a suitable viewing environment which
means that a one-size-fits-all approach is particularly suitable. In addition, it’s potential
as a spectacle can boost nationalist and empowerment narratives among a young,
male audience which has been framed as disillusioned and cynical (Rosen, 2009).
62 Global Esports
An audience for which traditional forms of nationalism might appear outdated or

worthy of parody. Stimulating grassroot forms of nationalism through esports can
serve to further embed narratives of the (nationalist) state (Ismangil, 2018).
As the Chinese government has been touting its “from made in China to created
in China” plans now for more than a decade (Keane, 2006) esports would give it a
much needed jolt and provide global Chinese representation in an industry that
provides both economic opportunities and a new way for China to show off its digital
capabilities and dazzle global and domestic audience with its esports spectacles.
Government, Industry, Media

In Chinese traditional (or older) media esports is something of a novelty. In this regard
it is similar to other countries where it might only appear in extraordinary cases. One
such case is the 2016 international victory by Wings gaming, a team consisting of five
mainland Chinese players that won the, at the time, largest first prize in history ($9.1
million). This was reported on by government outlets such as China Daily, CGTN,
as well as other international and domestic outlets. Esports is separated by both the
media and the government from the discourse of internet and video game addiction:
for example by praising “Chinese victories” when a team wins, or by using esports to
“promote Chinese culture” (China Daily, 2019). To quote the (English) news articles
about Wings gaming: “thanks to strong government support and a flood of investment
in the gaming industry, Chinese eSports teams can now access the best equipment and
coaches.” The story of esports is similar to that of the economy in its ties to optimism
and growth. More recently in 2018, when the Chinese organization Invictus gaming
won the League of Legends world championship Guangming Daily framed it as an
alternate path toward the national sports dream (GuangMing Daily, 2018; Liao, 2018).
A sports dream that is becoming recognized, as Chinese national esports teams are
already a reality (Sina, 2015).
In esports the focus of the Chinese policy makers is on the end product of esports as
a fully formed sport with athletes who have been recruited and trained by professional
teams and organizations, ignoring the thousands if not millions of aspiring esports
professionals1 who grind their respective video game daily in order to achieve their
dream of becoming renowned esports athlete. In China esports is growth, opportunity,
and a chance for a younger generation to give meaning to their own type of Chinese
dream. The development of esports in China is not a centralized affair as local
government plays a large role in organizing esports events. Cities or provinces such as
Shanghai, Chongqing, Hangzhou, and Zhuhai, to name the major ones, all put in bids to
host international annual events for multiple tournaments and are actively developing
infrastructure for (international) events. Large investments and the largest esports fan
base in the world provide it with a strong base from which to create a domestic esports
industry with international aspirations (Pannekeet, 2019). In 2018 Hangzhou received
worldwide attention as it opened its “esports town,” comparable to a university campus
but solely focused on esports, including facilities such as training sites for esports

Esports 63
teams, esports stadiums, hotels a esports academy (Hangzhou government, 2018;

People’s Daily, 2018b). Hangzhou will host the 2022 Asian games (Fitch, 2018), of
which esports are slated to be an official component. It is also host to PSG.LGD’s2
League of Legends team, one of China” most well-known teams. Other regions such as
in Beijing a $1.5 million fund has been created to stimulate the development of local
esports businesses (Chen, 2019).
Aside from Hangzhou another up and coming esports city is Shanghai, whose
esports plan falls more in line with a general restructuring of the economy as part of
transforming the economy from a manufacturing to a service one (Jing, 2018; Ashton,
2018). In cooperation with Tencent, the city is investing in a major esports park which
is meant to house hundreds of different companies relating to game development,
tournament organization but also education, animation, and other industries that
do not directly relate to esports. Shanghai already has a strong tradition of hosting
esports tournaments in for example the repurposed Mercedes Benz Arena,3 which
will also host the upcoming International 2019, slated to be one of the highest prize
pool tournaments in esports history. An article published by Sixth Tone in 2018 notes
that Shanghai is plotting to be the “worlds eSports capital,” citing a strong culture of
gaming, good infrastructure and a cooperative and willing government that could set
up Shanghai as the world’s esport hub. Shanghai is already host to several esport teams
(Vici Gaming, CDEC, PSG-LGD, OMG Esports) and in combination with their status
as a world city and international allure might just succeed in marketing itself as Asia’s
if not the world’s esports capital.
As esports is growing it is capturing the attention of many different companies, some
content with simply sponsoring esports teams and others even going as far as creating
their own branded esports teams. Of the companies investing in esports Tencent is by
far the most important one. It is a dominant player on the market and their size is hard
to overstate, as they branch out from video game properties, development, streaming
services, esports developments, not to mention hosting its own video game service
platform (Wegame).
Tencent therefore is able to control most aspects of the esports experience in
China. From the esport game in question down to the streaming platform as it is a
major stakeholder in some of the most popular Chinese streaming services available
(e.g., Douyu and Huya (Huang, 2019)). Tencent through acquisitions owns League of
Legends, one of the most popular (esports) games in the world. Tencent is not the only
major player as other companies such as Alibaba, NetEase, and others are all investing
in esports. The popular video streaming website BiliBili and Suning, a major retail
company, both own esports teams for example (iResearch, 2018).
The picture might not be as rosy as described, however. The question is as to
what extent the Chinese government is open in creating a global esports culture
within China. Due to its habit of strictly controlling the information environment of
its citizens and the particularities of the “Chinese internet,” it seems more apparent
that the government opts for a two-way strategy: on the one hand, catering to the
international market, while on the other hand, providing for its domestic one. This
“Chinese internet” (Yang, 2011) allows the government better control of content as
64 Global Esports
domestically operated and owned websites, in theory it should be easier to control

than foreign ones. China has separate streaming websites, separate forums and esports
communities, news sites, and so on leading to a segregated audience which puts into
question to what regard the government wants it to be international. Rather it seems
China is being framed as a spectacle (Szablewicz, 2016) for foreign observers to dazzle
at, while the domestic market is strictly controlled. A spectacle which serves the
domestic audience in terms of nationalism and a foreign one with narratives of China’s
rise. Information control and its consequences for esports will be discussed next.
“Chinese” Internet and Global Esports: Managing

Domestic Information Flows
Scholz in Esports Is Business characterizes esports as “born digital, born global, and
born agile” (Scholz, 2019). Esports has grown up amid global flows of information
in an industry that is quick to change and innovate toward consumer demands. This
section discusses the issues China faces in juggling an environment where information
is highly controlled by the government with an industry that is “digital, global, and
agile.”
Integrating the online watching environment would mean exposing the domestic
Chinese audience to a barrage of information which will prove hard to filter in-real
time. Being familiar with Twitch culture for example, it is almost certain that non-
Chinese audiences would spam items that are extremely sensitive to the Chinese
government such as those relating to the Tiananmen movement, independence of
Taiwan and Hong Kong, and other matters. In the case that such a controlled digital
environment is possible then it might do more harm than good as China’s reputation
would drop due to the frustration fans would feel in being unable to have a full range
of expression. Lastly and perhaps most importantly it also makes economic sense to
maintain two separate products as the mandarin-speaking market is the largest one
next to the English-speaking one. Catering to these two makes businesses sense and as
a side effect solves any tricky issues of information control.
Another major point of contention is the fact that most if not at all internationally
popular esports games are created and maintained by non-Chinese studios. Even
Tencent’s League of Legends is maintained by Riot Games which operates in the United
States. This means that if China wishes to grow its international esports it is by proxy
promoting foreign content which it might not always agree with. It undermines the
nationalist narrative and plays into stereotypes of an uncreative China, one who can
only gain success in its domestic esports games by acquiring or copying existing
(foreign) games. This is problematized by the tensions that exist between various
government institutions. In 2019 the mobile version of the global hit Player’s Unknown
Battlegrounds (PUBG), seen as a major up-and-coming esports game, was promptly
banned in China and replaced with a copycat called Game for Peace, developed by
Tencent (Reuters, 2019). A major reason for this change was monetization, as Tencent

Esports 65
was unable to apply for a license to monetize the game leading it to release their own
sanitized version.4 This form of protectionism under the guise of protecting the public
morals draws makes the development of esports games with violent content difficult
as arbitrary intervention by the government is a constant threat. The fact that a game,
of which its developer is heavily investing in esports can be barred from one of the
largest esports markets highlights the tensions between esports promotion and the
Chinese information control apparatus. Another game is Fortnite, which exploded in
popularity in 2018, but like PUBG enjoys uncertain status in China due to government
scrutiny. These two games are not isolated cases. In 2018 an internal document was
leaked (Sina Technology, 2018) which gave censorship guidelines for twenty popular
video games that ranged from “withdraw” to “corrective” actions, with reasons such
as “vulgar content,”” inharmonious chat,” or “too revealing women.” This list made
the rounds among English esports media as a ban would have ramifications for the
global developments of the respective esports communities (Fox Sports, 2018). News
like this as well as tournaments which are organized improperly continuously fuel
negative stereotypes about China and undermine the government project of image
management toward an international audience, which will be discussed later. The
tension between a global creative endeavor such as esports and operating within a
strict authoritarian environment is difficult to solve (Keane, 2006). If it truly wishes to
be a global player then the ruleset regarding which video games are allowed must be
clear. Otherwise China is left out of a large number of esports games. This brings with
it a risk of isolation where it might only end up participating in esports games which
enjoy circulation mostly China. Honor of Kings, or Arena of Valor as the English version
is called, is another example that shows the difficulties of Chinese games in breaking
through into the international market and developing its esports component while also
dealing with government control. This game, by and large a mobile version of League
of Legends has, was criticized by the government for being a negative influence termed
toxic and a harm for teenagers, with Tencent having to limit young players time in the
game. On the other hand, the game was featured in the 2018 Asian Games and the
Chinese national team was given a feature in an issue of People’s Daily (People’s Daily,
2018a). Of note here is the complicated discourse China has with internet and video
game addiction. There is a natural tension where the government promotes esports on
the one hand while “fighting” addictive behaviors on the other hand (Szablewicz, 2011;
Yue, 2018). To become a professional esports player, however, one has to first become
good enough, which naturally involves hours and hours of playing video games and
being online. As there are still few institutionalized methods in terms of becoming
professional (e.g., talent scouting), the reality is that for many players becoming
noticed and potentially being recruited into a team means playing video games as a
fulltime job. However, like traditional sports only a few are able to perform at the top
level, meaning that many (mostly young males) would see their efforts are in vain.
Aside from information control an oft touted issue is the clash between the
promotion of esports on the one hand and China’s firm position on (online) video
game and internet addiction on the other hand. The tension between the Chinese
government firm stance toward internet addiction, and the fostering of what they see
66 Global Esports
as productive internet activities and esports which requires large time investments in
playing video games will be discussed in the following section.
Esports, Addiction, and the Narrative of Growth

The dividing line between diehard esports gamers and prospective professionals is
one that appears difficult to distinguish. While in English academia the contradictions
between China’s discourse of internet addiction and esports are frequently made (e.g.,
Synder, 2018; Szablewics, 2011; Yue, 2018; Yu, 2018) this does not exist according to
the government. In fact esports is construed as a part of the solution as it channels
(young) people’s energy into “positive” outlets in terms of consumer nationalism and
spending. Szablewicsz (2011, 2016) for example discussing the development of esports
in China states that esports serves as a viable alternative to the discourse of internet
addiction for the Chinese government. Esports form part of the “Chinese dream”
(Liu, 2016), in which Chinese people through hard work and talent gather wealth
and (inter)national fame. It is characterized as a “civilized” form of gaming which, if
successful, can lead to serving ones country as a representative athlete. Esports is used
as a spectacle through which cities (governments) (re)brand themselves as modern,
hybrid, and capable (Szablewics, 2016). Reports of the creation of esports hotels,
stadiums, and other infrastructure all serve to create a narrative of growth underlying
the supposed unstoppable momentum of China’s global rise. While internet and video
game addiction conjures up images of loneliness, esports rejects this image as it focuses
on community elements and the spirit of participation. While in reality there might
not be much difference on the outside for most (would be) esports athletes with the
average internet café enthusiast there is a qualitative difference as one presumably
contributes to a profession while (internet) video game addiction on the other is
framed as a dangerous activity classified as harmful and unproductive (see also Lu,
2016). The government frames esports as having economic and social benefits while
in contrast internet, or (online) video game, addiction is paired with loneliness and
unproductiveness (Liu, 2016). Esports is a space of opportunity, growth, and hope and
dreams (Cheong, 2019). Academic articles in Chinese are in general concerned with
the challenges and opportunities for this new industry. It is a site of opportunity for
which a new (legal, economical) framework has to be created (e.g., Cui, 2006; Dai and
Hu, 2013; Gao, Zhao and Du, 2015, Liu, 2010). Only recently have esport investors
become wary of the over-optimism and bubbling esport market as a report came out
that 90 percent of the esport teams supported by angel investors faced serious financial
problems (Sing Tao Daily, 2019).
This attitude is exemplified in a piece published by China Global Times about five
traditional athletes that tried esports. Titled “Five Chinese Sports Champions Try
League of Legends, Praising Esports,” different sports heroes are used to legitimize
esports as a activity worth doing, to quote: “I felt this is a healthy sport instead of
video game addiction” (Zhe, 2018). If one is pursuing esports, one is supporting one’s

Esports 67
country economically and emotionally, it is an activity that is promoted as a “healthy

alternative to harmful internet games” (Szablewicsz, 2011, 264). Another example of
this discursive reframing of esports is a China Daily piece titled “Time to End Prejudice
against Esports” (Zhang, 2018).
This move from unproductive internet addiction to sites of productivity can be
seen in how internet cafés have dealt with a scrutinizing government. Internet cafés
in China are using esports to rebrand themselves. Linked to internet addiction and
wasting time before many internet cafés are now rebranding themselves as hip offline
esports sites, meant as places where the next generation of China’s esports athletes can
meet and train together (Economic Daily, 2018). Emphasizing the social, productive
role of esports allows companies to follow the government’s narrative and benefit from
beneficial policies and subsidies. From isolated to social, online to offline, and inside
to outside as companies are organizing esports camps meant as a kind of team building
environment combining typical (summer) camp outdoor activities (usually to build
teamwork) with esports elements.
In this regard it makes sense to separate them from each other. This might be
regarded as contradictory, as it could be argued for example that esports fandom
will fuel more video game addiction in young people who desire to become the
next esports superstar. As Nielsen and Karhulati (2018) conclude in a discussion of
“internet gaming disorder” and esports: “dedication might be mistaken for addiction.”
Administratively it makes sense to separate these issues as one relates to the growth
and subsequent exploitation of a new industry while the other falls under health and
social issues. Having discussed the current trends in Chinese esports we now turn to
the future. Which challenges does China face in its desire to become the global esports
leader. In particular we discuss esports as public diplomacy and the difficulties China
has in exporting its own “Chinese” esports games.
Into the Future

As Pun, Yin, and Fung (2019) have emphasized, with the changing cultural policy of
China, and hence the public discourse, the public perception of esport has changed
from a form of “digital heroin harming the lives of youth” to “a professional avenue with
a bright future.” The year 2018 was a milestone for esport as the Chinese authorities
have changed their policy from suppressing to supporting the industries (Sigmaintell,
2018). Local authorities and companies are investing large sums of money into creating
a physical space for esports in major regions in China. The Chinese government
declared its intentions to develop esports in the twenty-seventh article of “Notice on
Printing and Distributing the Action Plan for Promoting Consumption to Transform
and Upgrade in 2016” (Government of China, 2016) did the situation improve. Creating
this legal and public framework for esport competition is important as clear guidelines
from the government create clarity for new investors willing to join the industry. For
China to become the world leading esports country there are several hurdles that
68 Global Esports
have to be overcome. First there is the issue of reputation management as Chinese

esports tournaments, at least in several video game communities, have acquired a bad
reputation due to its (mis)management of large esports events. Nationalism also plays
a factor in how China balances the domestic and international reputation of its esports
communities. Second there is the general development of infrastructure and expertise
in terms of tournament management. For the latter point investment should solve this
issue but the question remains if a consistent quality of spectacle can be produced
in the many cities in China that have esports aspirations. Inconsistent quality across
Chinese cities might have a blanket effect on Chinese reputation as a whole. Third, as
discussed there is the issue of information management in an authoritarian country
and the by and large online separation of the domestic and international audience.
Lastly, there is the fact that there are no globally popular esports games that have been
created from the ground up in China.
Managing Reputation, Esports as Public Diplomacy

For China to be truly successful internationally it needs to be regarded positively by
both audience and esports professionals to make a successful bid as a global, leading
esports country. Due to the bad organization of a number of high-profile tournaments
held in China their national reputation as a tournament and esports host is less than
stellar. A less than stellar reputation as a tournament host affects not only the audience
but also the players and crew for which people flock to a tournament. A common
complaint for tournaments held in China is the bad stream quality and production
values which is often only focused on the Chinese (mandarin speaking). Two famous
examples from the video game Defense of the Ancients are the Shanghai Major in
2016 and the Chongqing Major in 2019. The first is notorious for its huge delays, bad
image quality, and bad treatment of staff and players visiting Shanghai (Thursten,
2016). Both from the audience and the players’ perspective the tournament was badly
organized as many reported things missing from their hotel rooms, or lacking facilities
in general. The second example can be found two years in the “Chongqing major.” This
major, while technically sound, was nicknamed the “hospital major” due to many cases
of food poisoning among (foreign) staff and players (Mtera, 2019).
While these tournaments represent a worst case scenario for China it is emblematic
for the stereotypical image that exists for many tournaments and events hosted in or
organized by Chinese organizations. It can boost its reputation not only by hosting
domestic tournaments but also through proving the capabilities of its domestic
organizers in hosting successful tournaments overseas. The 2019 “Disney major” held
in Disneyland Paris is an example of this, as this was the first international tournament
organized by the Mars Dota League, which, some complaints about overt Chinese
or French focus from the English-speaking community notwithstanding, went off
without a hitch.
This complaint of being “too focused” on the Chinese side of things ties in with
a stereotypical discourse of the Chinese esports organizers and community as being

Esports 69
overly nationalistic. Nationalism, its utilization by the government and its potential
impact on foreign investment and reputation esports, can be a potent tool for the
reinforcement and maintenance of nationalist sentiment as it involves continuous
engagement of teams identified as Chinese versus non-Chinese teams (Ismangil, 2018).
Nationalism can also work to alienate foreigners, however, potentially dissuading
international investment. The balancing of nationalism by esports stakeholders will
prove to be crucial if Chinese esports is to become global, international esports. Esports
can serve as a tool for the government to imbue a young generation with new dreams
and a nationalist sentiment. It can be an effective vehicle for nationalism (Ismangil,
2018). While, to paraphrase Scholz (2019), esports “grew up in the global, connected
internet” this does not make it immune to forms of (digital) tribalism and politicization.
Due to its decentralized nature and the fact that there are many “Chinese” teams, as
well as different tournament matches of different games being played on a daily basis,
esports offers an easy, nearly on-demand space for nationalist sentiment.
Nationalism can be both a boon for Chinese esports as it creates strong emotions
in its viewers, creating narratives of clashing nations and an emotional payoff when
the “Chinese team” emerges victorious (see Si and Jing, 2016; Techweb China, 2018;
Ye, 2018; Ismangil, 2018). It can also, however, alienate an international audience, as
especially in the online environment interactions between fans can quickly become
toxic. Nationalistic framing by Chinese esports can also lead to alienation among an
international fan base (why should a Belgium fan care if the team is Chinese). In this
sense organizers and teams have to carefully balance their twin audiences, on the one
hand playing with narratives of nations and a confrontation with the foreigners while
on the other hand not alienating the non-Chinese fan base through use of English
language social media, for example, engaging the international audience on their own
terms.
The negative reputation and stereotypes of esports events organized in China or by
Chinese organizations is a painful point. For a spectacle to be delivered properly it has to
be perfect, the fact that subpar events have been delivered weakens both the nationalist
narrative as well the modernist narrative of a capable China. Nevertheless if Chinese
organizers are successful in retrieving their image and boosting their reputation
esports can serve as a tool for public diplomacy for the Chinese government. Esports
can serve as a neutral space, separating the Chinese and the non-Chinese audience
serving spectacle to both. As broadcasting for foreign audience is done on non-Chinese
platforms this means that non-Chinese observers have the benefit or appearance of
freedom of expression on the one hand while on the other hand witnessing a carefully
orchestrated piece of marketing. More and more tournaments serve double as city
marketing, overlaying shots of touristic highlights in between games as well as showing
pre-recorded vignettes that showcase cultural or touristic highlights. In this regard
it falls in line with China’s public diplomacy aims (Rawnsley, 2015), which mean to
increase “understanding” of China through public outreach and news outlets. It can
help to undermine narratives of state oppression and authoritarianism by bringing
foreign (Western?) viewers in contact with carefully contracted images of a “normal”
China that embraces esports.
70 Global Esports
Chinese Esports Games

In an authoritarian country like China, private gaming organizations can only operate
with the support or consent of the government. Currently, Western game developers
have to rely on Chinese game companies to publish video games in the Chinese market
and operate servers for online play in China. This means that the central government
in China can retain their influence over video game content through the domestic
game companies, for example banning games if they violate certain principles, for
example overly excessive violent content. Similarly, esport competitions are organized
only legally with the collaboration of local Chinese gaming companies, this results in
only few games having a formal competitive arena.
Despite the size of the investment and the scale of companies such as Alibaba
and Tencent, China has so far not been successful in exporting its own, domestically
produced esports games to an international audience. A true, from the ground up
esports games created by China, and adopted globally, has yet to be made. How and
why certain esports games gain popularity seem impossible to predict. There are many
games released each year which feature sizeable esports components and promotion
budgets but fall flat quickly. There are many pathways to global esports success. Games
like Player’s Unknown Battleground and Fortnite for example enjoy sudden worldwide
success, while Dota 2 or Starcraft 2’s success has been built through many years of
sustained effort. Domestic (esport) games share difficulties with China’s other creative
industries in terms of exporting their products. As has been discussed by many (see
Cai, Ting and Pang, 2009), the move from “ made in China” to “ created in China”
is one that has still not manifested itself properly. This does not mean that there is
cause for too much pessimism in the Chinese camp as industry giants such as Tencent,
NetEase, and more recently Alibaba have made substantial investments in both
domestic video game creation, esport development, and foreign game acquirement.
The broader question, however, is if this investment into domestic development will
result in esports games that will gain a foothold outside of China. Closest to a Chinese
esports game would be the Tencent’s Honor of Kings, or Arena of Valor as it is known
internationally, which enjoys huge domestic popularity but internationally, has not hit
the same heights by any margin (Snyder, 2018).
Honor of Kings can be regarded as a mobile version of Tencent-owned League of
Legends. It has been argued that the game is too reliant on Chinese cultural idioms and
might be confusing for a non-Chinese audience (Sue, 2018). This is a similar problem
that other creative industries also face in China. If Chinese companies succeed in
creating a successful global esports game it will be a great boon to the nationalist
narrative and legitimize an up and upcoming video game market that internationally
has not had the best reputation due to the perception of China as a copycat nation, as
made evident by many popular games today being eerily similar to earlier released
games. While companies such as Tencent due to its sheer size is able to buy out many
non-Chinese companies and influence game design from that angle (i.e., League of
Legends), the fact remains that China does not have one homegrown game among
most, if not all internationally popular esports. Many video game companies such

Esports 71
as Blizzard (of which Tencent owns shares) or Valve recognize the opportunities
present in the Chinese market and openly cater to by, for example, creating Chinese-
themed video game content and hosting of major tournaments in Chinese locales.
Nevertheless, the lack of a global Chinese sourced esports game might prove to be a
lacuna in the ideological argument of nationalism as it underlines the narrative of an
“uncreative China.”
Conclusion
Esports can be a great boon to China. It can not only provide economic benefits in
terms of high skill jobs, tourism, and the transformation to a digital economy but also
be of great value in terms of projecting Chinese tournament hosts as modern, capable,
open, and international. For the domestic audience it provides the government with
a powerful channel in which nearly daily international encounters can be framed
in nationalist terms. The frequency and scope of esports potentially provide a near
endless stream of consumer nationalism, which further enables the esports economy.
The manner in which major media such as China Daily or CCTV further pick up
China’s international esports successes further amplifies the recognition of esports as
a legitimate means of national representation as well as folding it under the umbrella
of the Chinese dream. Time spent on pursuing esports in this regard is constructed as
young people who pursue their own version of the Chinese dream. Chinese esports has
seen a positive turn in recent years with many large international events being hosted
all around China, as well as winning major victories in prestigious tournaments.
These opportunities not only provide Chinese organizers with chances to boost their
international reputation but also give Chinese teams to earn worldwide respect for
their skill. While it is President Xi’s ambition to win the football world cup, perhaps
it is, at least currently, more realistic to look at the Chinese esports tradition seriously
and see how, in stark difference to football, their teams are often respected and admired
for their skill, tenacity, and tradition in many esports games
For esports to blossom, Chinese companies and government have to carefully
balance its engagement with both the local and foreign audiences, engaging with
nationalism while simultaneously projecting an image of an international and
welcoming China to its international audience. Reputation management will prove
to be a key issue in the coming years for Chinese esports as it has to battle both a
stigma due to mismanagement of several high-profile tournaments and the more
general issue of bad reputation due to their closed off, authoritarian nature. Relying
on the strength of the domestic market has so far proven to be a successful strategy as
China’s esports economy will or has already surpassed Western Europe’s but in the long
term the development of an international fan base and reputation will be paramount to
secure both a healthy esports economy and maintain the nationalist tradition. China
needs both talent and infrastructure, and developing both will be key in becoming
an esports frontrunner. Especially in the light of the professionalization of esport and
the combination alongside regular sporting events such as the 2022 Asian Games in
72 Global Esports
Hangzhou. This event might prove to be a litmus test for China to show to the world its
capabilities similar to the Olympic Games in 2008.
China is well positioned to be a global leader in esports development. They are
rapidly developing their infrastructure and industry, and perhaps more importantly
have a burgeoning esports culture among their youth. This culture if harnessed probably
can set up China to dominate esports on the competitive level, which might mean
the respect of a growing audience worldwide. Chinese esports versions of Ronaldo or
Federer admired worldwide might be a possibility in the near future. A boon for both
the economy and the potential for image projection in the hearts and minds of a large
mostly young international audience.
Acknowledgments
This research project was funded by a grant from the Research Grant Council of
HKSAR (Project no. GRF 14617716) and the Key Fund of the National Social Science
Foundation of China: Arts category (18ZD12).
Notes
1 See Yue (2018) for a summary of the negative health aspects.
2 LGD is one of the major esports brands in China (and the world), recently partnering
with the football TEAM PSG (Murray, 2018).
3 Originally utilized for the 2010 world expo.
4 The mobile version of PUBG has also been banned in India citing similar reasons of
“promoting violence” and propagating “addiction” (Jones, 2019).
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5
Historiography of Korean Esports

Perspectives on Spectatorship
Dal Yong Jin
Introduction
In the late 2010s, millions of global youth participated in esports as gamers and
viewers every day. With the rapid growth of various game platforms, in particular,
online and mobile, people around the world enjoy these new cultural activities.
From elementary school students to college students, to people in their early careers,
global youth are deeply involved in esports, referring to an electronic sport and the
leagues in which players compete through networked games and related activities,
including the broadcasting of game leagues (Jin, 2010; T. L. Taylor, 2012). As esports
attract crowds of millions more through online video streaming services like Twitch,
the activity’s popularity as one of the most enjoyable sports and business products
continues to soar.
With that said, there were several game competitions before this boom period, as far
back as several decades ago. Already in the 1950s the foundation stone of digital games
“was laid and with it the competition on PC or console” (Larch, 2019b, para. 1). When
Tennis for Two—known as the first video game, created by William Higinbotham,
in 1958, in the United States—came out, it had esports potential. The game design
allowed for spectating, as it was possible to follow the match between two players,
leading to a public spectacle. At that time, people were already watching other people
play video games (Kalning, 2008; Scholz, 2019). In the 1970s and the 1980s, arcade
games were popular, and several major competitions attracted many game players
and fans (Borowy and Jin, 2013). Of course, although some people watched game
competitions, this did not mean that mass spectatorship (the increasing involvement
of mass media in mass competition events like esports, with people not only playing
but also watching other players’ games and sharing their opinions for fun) occurred
immediately, nor was it televised on screens. Back then, computers were also expensive,
and most people could not enjoy this particular entertainment medium (Scholz, 2019;
T. L. Taylor, 2018).
78 Global Esports
It was during the 1990s that people started to compete with each other offline,
which means that esports in our contemporary terms has had such a short history and
exploded like a cornucopia. In other words,
in the 1990s, it became clear that the future of competitive gaming would be found
in PCs and networks. As hardware became more and more affordable and more
powerful, PCs became interesting for private households and thus also for the
gaming industry. In the mid-1990s, the first big LAN parties were held at which
gamers could compete with each other. However, not only on a large scale, but
above all on a small scale, gaming over the network exerted an ever-increasing
fascination. More and more gamers met at small network sessions and gambled
their favorite games. (Larch, 2019b, para. 16)
Several countries, including the United States, Germany, and Australia, developed the
early form of esports. Two gaming leagues that formed in the United States in 1997 are
attributed to jump-starting the contemporary history of esports: the Professional
Gamers League (PGL) and the Cyberathlete Professional League (CPL). The PGL—a
LAN-based tournament organization—was one of the first professional computer
gaming leagues. It was run by Total Entertainment Network, partnered with Advanced
Micro Devices (AMD), and was one of the first online professional organizations for
computer game players (“Short Take,” 1997). The CPL was formed in the United States
with the goal of regulating gaming competitions (T. L. Taylor, 2012). However, in no
other country did esports become more popular than in South Korea (henceforth,
Korea) in the late 1990s, which established Seoul as the home of esports (Larch, 2019a).
Although Korea is not the first country to have developed esports, Korea has been
known as the capital of esports (Yu, 2015), a mecca of esports (“Seoul Is a Mecca,”
2019), a juggernaut of esports (Barrett, 2016), and a suzerain of esports (Han, 2008) by
both national and international media and game players. When Blizzard Entertainment
(2018) offered Seoul the opportunity to host the Hearthstone Championship Tour
in May 2018, it called Seoul the unofficial capital of esports as well. As Rea (2016)
aptly observes, “not only have esports had a significant impact on Korean popular
culture, Korea has also influenced the development of global esports” (p. 22). The New
York Times (Mozur, 2014) also indicates that for Korea, esports is a national pastime,
although this was a bit of an exaggeration because digital gaming was mainly for those
in their late teens and their twenties during the early stage of development.
Nevertheless, there is no serious academic discourse on the early history of Korean
esports and spectatorship, whether targeting the entire public or narrowing the scope
to those in their teens and twenties.
As a historiography of esports in Korea, this chapter documents the very early
esports era, which played a major role in developing Korea’s esports scene, between
the late 1990s and the early 2000s. It articulates the historical backgrounds for the
emergence of esports in tandem with Korea’s unique sociocultural milieu. In so doing,
it attempts to identify the major players and events that contributed to the formation of

Historiography of Korean Esports 79
esports culture, in particular mass spectatorship. It periodizes the early Korean esports
scene into three major periods—namely, the introduction of PC communications
like Hitel until 1998, the introduction of StarCraft and PC bang, and the emergence
of esports broadcasting and the institutionalization of spectatorship in the Korean
context until 2002. To discuss the early esports scene, this chapter interprets several
underused trade magazines and popular media articles, including game magazines
like Kyunghyang Games and Game Donga, mainly between the late 1990s and the early
2000s. Online blogs and discussion boards of the late 1990s on PC communications
like Chollian were also identified and examined. These data were sporadically found in
several online sources, and I carefully checked them in comparison with newspapers
and weekly magazines of the same period to guarantee credibility.
Spectatorship in Esports
Esports has grown and evolved over the past twenty years. Unlike previous game
competitions in the 1970s and the 1980s, one distinctive dimension for the recent growth
of esports is mass spectatorship, which means that the involvement of mass competition
events and broadcasting channels became a turning point for esports. Again, there
were several early game competitions in several countries; however, esports was first
popularized in Korea. Korea created the early boom of esports, both nationally and
globally, as internet cafés, known as PC bangs, fostered an environment of competition
and spectatorship as early as 1998. As time progressed, friendly competitions grew into
tournaments, and professional leagues, professional game teams, and superstars were
rapidly formed. In particular, spectators became fans, and new web communities were
established (Cheung and Huang, 2011). Consequently, it has become a twenty-first-
century spectator sport (Hutchins, 2008), which is even more popular than other sports
such as baseball and basketball, as hundreds of thousands of fans turn up at esports
arenas to support their favorite players while enjoying games together. The esports
industry heavily relies on mass audiences to grow; however, little critical attention has
been paid to the activities and perspectives of spectators—to those who attend esports
events in person and watch esports online or through traditional media (N. Taylor,
2016). As N. Taylor (2016) points out, “there has been little attempt thus far in studies of
esports to attend to the embodied work of watching” (p. 294).
As briefly discussed, esports mainly refers to an electronic sport and the leagues
in which players compete through networked games and related activities, including
broadcasting of game leagues, which means that it is crucial to analyze esports
comprehensively—not only the professional gamers but also broadcasting, including
online streaming services and audiences in terms of their spectatorship. In particular,
Paradise (2018) points out, “for any particular game to become a sport, it needs three
core components: competition, tournaments, and spectators” (para. 3) core elements
contribute to the esports industry’s rise as a new major spectator sport: “streamed
competitions with organized leagues, professional players that can be viewed
anywhere, and live events in major offline sports venues” (Paradise, 2018, para. 8). As
80 Global Esports
Gibbs, Carter, Cumming, Fordyce, and Witkowski (2018) point out with the case of
esports spectatorship in Australia, a significant body of academic research into esports
practice, such as the performance, play, professionalization, and appeal of competitive
digital gaming, has been established over the past decade (e.g., N. Taylor, 2016, cited
in Gibbs et al., 2018; T. L. Taylor, 2012). These scholars focused on the major role
of players, professionalization, game tournaments, and the industry (Gibbs et al.,
2018). However, the study of spectatorship should also be conducted as a significant
component of research in the esports area.
Spectatorship is one of the most significant and valuable assets of esports as it is
the foundation for the growth of esports. Without fans and audiences, esports cannot
grow. Here, the spectator refers to the person who follows the in-game experience, but
who is not a direct participant in the game. People watch esports for the entertainment
value it provides, and therefore entertainment is at the heart of every spectator sport
(Cheung and Huang, 2011). In this regard,
Jonathan Beales, an esports organizer and commentator, says the crowd is part of
the experience. They [the crowd] get behind their teams in the same way people do
at football games. The crowd will roar when a map or level is completed, there is
a sigh of disappointment for a mistake. Make no mistake, this is a spectator sport.
The demographic is aged between 12 to 45, some with ambitions of making it as
a pro player. Then when a team comes offstage there is a clamber for selfies and
signatures as fans look to get their shirts and posters signed by the pro players. The
players love the adoration, and the fans get to see and talk to their heroes close up.
(Arthur and Stuart, 2014, para. 8)
The spectatorship of esports has rapidly grown over the past ten years. For example,
the total Dota 2 championship audience of 2018 was similar in size to the total
number tuning into the Kentucky Derby, and larger than Tour de France audiences,
underscoring the global dimension of competitive gaming:
Given esports’ popularity among younger [Americans], growth appears to be a

given in the U.S. as well. A 2018 Washington Post–University of Massachusetts
Lowell poll found, for instance, that 58% of 14-to-21-year-olds said they watched
live or recorded video of people playing competitive video games, with a similar
percentage reporting that they played such games themselves. Among adults
overall, just 16% said they watched competitive video gaming. (Ingraham, 2018,
para. 12)
Though it remains to be seen whether competitive gaming will ever be bigger than
the NFL in revenue, the two are running neck and neck on a potentially even more
important metric: popularity among younger fans. The Washington Post poll found
that 38 percent of young Americans identified as fans of esports or competitive
gaming, similar to the 40 percent who said they were fans of the NFL (Ingraham,
2018).

As such, esports has a close relationship with spectatorship, which means that both
broadcasting and online streaming services are significant in esports as audiences now
become an even more integral part of esports. Because of the significance of the role
of media, it is critical to understand the history of esports in conjunction with media,
both old and new, and spectatorship.
Role of PC Communication in the Pre-Esports Era

The first kind of esports, consisting of professional gamers, leagues, and spectatorship, started
in Korea in the late 1990s. In the 1990s, the public also witnessed the rise of the indispensable
internet and the World Wide Web (WWW). The internet connected video gamers through
the web so that online competitive gaming was made possible. Internet connectivity also gave
rise to the growth in popularity of online games, instead of just console games.
In Korea, more than anywhere else, esports already oozed into mainstream culture.
Korea provided glimpses of technology-related transformations before they expanded
globally, including widespread, high-speed internet availability and smartphone adoption.
Korea also led in esports, creating organized leagues, training well-financed pro-teams
and filling giant game stadiums with frenzied fans as spectators to cheer on their favorite
teams and players (Mozur, 2014). In the early stage of Korean esports, several factors
created the environment for the activity to thrive, almost at the same time:
When Koreans embraced the concept of esports in the late 90s, they went all in.
Rallying behind StarCraft: Brood War, Korea would build the esports culture it is
today around the Blizzard game, naturally making it the most popular esport game
of all time in Korea. In 2000, a governing esports body, called the Korea e-Sports
Association (KeSPA) was formed. Tournaments were hosted with money on the
line. Teams were created, filled with players, managers, and coaches. Esports started
being shown on TV which led to the biggest bump to esports development—the
inclusion of big sponsors such as Samsung, Korean Air, and Asiana who played
huge roles in the booming esports scene. From here onwards, Korea emerge as
the esports haven of the world. Only in the mid-2000s did the West start to slowly
catch on to the esports wave and Korea was miles ahead. (Yu, 2015, paras 12–13)
As expected, when esports became a popular event in Korea, it was at first not a
televised event, but a small game community event in tandem with fan activities on
personal computers.
In the late 1990s, two major technological breakthroughs played key roles for the
formation of esports. One was the growth of PC communications, and the other was
the growth of PC bang (internet cafés). Early digital game culture as part of people’s
activities and their online communities was not on the internet itself, but on personal
computer (PC) communications developed in the 1980s and the 1990s (Jo, 2017). A
new type of network service—PC communications—was developed in 1984 when
82 Global Esports
DACOM’s Hangul Mail was invented, and then was consolidated in 1986 as Chollian—
the largest PC communications system at that time.
Meanwhile, the KETEL (Korea Electronic Economic Daily TELepress) service that
began in 1988 was reorganized as Hitel and soon became the most prominent PC
communications service. This type of online communication using PC communications
operated as a separate service, independent from the internet, until 1995, when regular
PC network users were able to connect to the internet using commercial networks.
The most notable significance of PC communications is that they contributed to
the development of the concept of online communities, including game communities
(Chun, Park, Kang, and Lee, 2005). Before the invention of the WWW, people used only
text to communicate with each other. In the late 1990s, there were 100 game-related
communities at Hitel, and around 400‒500 game communities with 35,000 people who
were members at the game communities at Chollian (Chae, 2000). PC communications
certainly helped people, in particular Korean youth, to organize online forums to
discuss and exchange information, as well as to establish clubs among people with
similar hobbies. Many Korean youth began to communicate with one another through
boards, and game communities were among the most popular online communities.
PC communications, followed by the rapid growth of PC bangs, greatly contributed
to the growth of the early stage of esports. As discussed earlier, there were many online
community members who played and enjoyed digital games. Based on the growth
of game communities and PC bangs, the first professional game league (Korea Pro
Gamers League; KPGL) was started by Hitel in December 1997. The development
of this early esports league had been made possible by the information technology
revolution and rapid expansion in the availability, capabilities, and popularity of
interactive digital communications technologies, which Korea developed enormously
(Hutchins, 2008). Hitel held the KPGL competition four times in 1998. During the
same year, IPac Net and PC bang chains together established another game league
titled StarCraft-KPGL. The Korean game world considers 1998 as the first year of
esports due to the competition between these two game leagues, which attracted many
gamers to become part of esports (Yoo, 1999).
Of course, these game leagues were different from esports leagues in the early
twenty-first century, as they mainly focused on offline competition at PC bangs while
excluding online game competitions. Although StarCraft was one of the major games
for these early esports leagues, there were several more games, like Rainbow Six, Quake,
and FIFA series games. As discussed in the next section, the shift of the major venue
to online gaming, from PC communications to PC bang, became a turning point in
developing spectatorship culture.
StarCraft, PC Bangs, and the Emergence of the Esports Era in

the Late 1990s
When StarCraft, a game released by Blizzard Entertainment in 1998, made its way
to Korea, it quickly became a mainstay of Korean esports. With investment and

organizational help from Blizzard itself, professional tournaments in Korea outgrew

the cramped PC bangs, first moving to hotel ballrooms and later stadiums (Mozur,
2014). It is not inaccurate to claim that a full-swing esports phenomenon started with
StarCraft. As Stephen Rea (2019) points out, the release of StarCraft, a sci-fi-themed
online strategy game, was “a boon for Korean digital gaming culture, arriving as it
did at the height of PC bang expansion. StarCraft became a pop culture sensation in
Korean seemingly overnight” (p. 120).
During the IMF (International Monetary Fund) financial crisis era right after
1997, which was the worst economic recession in Korean history, many people were
unable to buy their own copies of StarCraft, but they were able to enjoy games at PC
bang. Luckily for them, the first internet connections were already introduced in
1994 with the name of BNC (Bit Communication Café) in Seoul. People connected to
the internet via dial-up modems. At that time, uses for networks mainly consisted of
text-based bulletin board systems or services (BBS), not the internet we know it today,
with graphical web browsers. The internet was limited to the concerns of enthusiasts.
In 1995, the first commercial examples of internet cafés, providing faster connections,
began to emerge (Huhh, 2007; S. H. Lee, 2016). These internet cafés were called such
as Model Café, Network Café, and Cyber Café, and people could play simple games
like Go. Koreans who did not have internet connections at home came to check emails
or printed out documents at these PC bangs. However, as people mainly used these
cafés to meet with friends, like at coffee shops, the contemporary form of PC bang,
with PCs installed on a large scale, therefore made revenues from hourly rental fees
from the users starting in 1996, and this kind of PC bang exploded in popularity with
the introduction of high-speed internet service and StarCraft in 1998 (S. H. Lee, 2016).
The hourly fees at PC bang were less than $1, which was cheaper than that of a billiards
room. People especially poured into PC bangs to play StarCraft. The convergence of
PC bang as a new physical place and StarCraft as a game that people could play against
each other through the internet brought a culture shock, becoming a social sensation
in Korean society (Im, 2009).
Here, a common misunderstanding is the relationship between the rapid growth of
PC bang and the Korean government’s information and communication technology
(ICT) policy. Some popular magazines and newspapers, including The New York
Times (Mozur, 2014), and academic works (e.g., Li, 2016) claimed that the Korean
government focused on telecommunications and internet infrastructure in response
to the 1997 financial crisis; however, this is a far cry from the truth, as the sudden
growth of PC bang was made possible because people who left big corporations in the
middle of the crisis started to open PC bangs. The Korean government developed its
ICT policy in the late 1990s to build national infrastructure like broadband (Li, 2016),
which eventually helped the boom of PC bang. However, the swift growth of PC bang
itself was not the result of the government’s ICT policy. Once StarCraft was released,
many gamers became interested in this new game, and on a large scale participated in
various competitions.
PC bang rapidly became a venue for esports. Early Korean (pro) gamers participated in
game competitions on Blizzard’s Battle.net, which was launched on December 31, 1996.
84 Global Esports
Battle.net was the first online gaming service of its kind, and game players could
connect to the service remotely to play Diablo. As popularity of this service increased,
features such as ladder rankings and game filters were added. The release of StarCraft
in 1998 increased usage of the Battle.net service significantly (Chaves, 2011). Several
Korean game players achieved huge success through competitive play on Battle.net,
and they consequently became the first generation of Korean professional gamers in
the late 1990s and the early 2000s.
More specifically, in 1998 the number of PCs and internet-equipped houses was
very low, so most gamers had to go to play at PC bang. Through word-of-mouth
advertising, teens and people in their early twenties started to learn about StarCraft
and created so-called PC bang culture. In fact, StarCraft in conjunction with PC bang
changed Korean youth’s life patterns. Until the mid-1990s, young people used to get
together at billiards room and electronic game room (bang in Korea); however, in the
late 1990s, they started to go to PC bang to play StarCraft.
For them, it was a culture shock to know that they could compete with people
through networks anytime and anyplace, which triggered the growth of PC bang.
Recognizing StarCraft’s appeal among their customers, “PC bang owners began
organizing informal tournaments that laid the groundwork for a televised, professional
StarCraft league with sponsorship from companies like Korea Telecom and Samsung,
as well as the Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism” (Rea, 2019, 120). Korean
esports traces its origins to informal tournaments that PC bang managers organized
among their patrons. Customers, mainly Korean youth, flocked to PC bang not only to
play games but also to watch PC bang regulars go head to head, which evidenced video
gaming’s value position as a spectator sport (Rea, 2019):
PC bang owners began to observe a strange phenomenon among their customers.

Not only were people flocking to PC bang to play StarCraft, they were also coming
to watch others play. Soon, PC bang began organizing informal competitions
in which the best players built their reputations in the community, developed
rivalries, and even cultivated fan followings. Before long, PC bang franchises
realized that they could use these competitions as marketing tools, and began
sponsoring individual players and teams, marking the beginning of professional
Korean esports. (Rea, 2016, 23)
A typical case would have been small-scale local StarCraft contests that were popular.
Before the official establishment of the esports industry, PC bangs often sponsored
StarCraft contests of their own:
While Battle.net—a service provided by the developer [of StarCraft] to make

online matches among players—was a reliable large-scale scoring board for
the competition, players often wanted to contend and compete directly in the
same offline space. These early local contests founded what would become the
burgeoning esports industry in Korea. Aside from competitions in Battle.net,
Korean players derived much pleasure in playing StarCraft with players whilst

sharing the same physical environment. Even today, professional league players
(“pro-leagues”) of the game still conduct preliminary elimination contests
in PC bangs. A PC bang is still the ground for aspiring esports superstars.
(Huhh, 2007, 6)
Under this circumstance, the introduction of the notion of professional gamers (or
pro-gamers) started in 1998. Although Korean youth played on PC communications,
there was no concept of professional gamers in the realm of digital games. Some game
players seemed to compete against each other, and their major goal was to play for
fun and recognition by peers, but not for money. The awards for winning in some PC
bang-hosted competitions included discount coupons or free admission to PC bangs,
for example. The early game leagues provided small money rewards or eliminated their
fees at PC bang.
In December 1998, Shin Ju-young won the Blizzard Ladder Tournament, became
the first registered Korean in the PGL, and was introduced as a professional gamer in
Korea for the first time in game history. Shin often played games at PC bang. In 1999,
he regularly went to PC bang around 2:00 p.m. daily and connected to Battle.net for
StarCraft—Blizzard’s online matchmaking service. Shin Ju-young would regularly play
until 8:00 a.m. the next day, which means that he used to play games for more than
fifteen hours per day. Through these game tournaments, he started to earn money, as he
received around $2,000–$10,000 when he won the championship game. He also made
some extra money by participating in exhibition games at newly opening PC bangs.
New PC bangs around the country wanted to attract young gamers, so they invited
a few famous gamers and offered exhibition games. People’s interests, in particular
young people’s interests, in esports started around that time, as they believed that
they could also become world champions with games while making money. However,
because there were no regular game leagues, nor pro-game teams that paid salaries,
the income of these early pro-gamers was still marginal (“World Champion,” 1999).
Several offline competition events also started, and the first esports league in the
field of online gaming started in 1997 in Korea. In December 1997, PC bang chains
offered the first national online gaming league, the KPGL. The KPGL organized as an
offline game league. Players competed against each other in many PC bangs, and the
best few were selected for its final offline games. Two of the first offline game leagues,
NetClub and KPGL, were born. Shin won the first NetClub league to earn $10,000, and
Lee Gi-suk won the first two KPGL leagues. Lee Gi-suk—known by his ID SSamjang—
won the first and second KPGL championship games and became a national star. This
was the time when the first game team, SG—supported by PC bang chain company
Chung Oh Information and Telecommunication—started (“Esports 10 Years,” 2010).
As such, the use of PC communications and Battle.net played major roles in the
formation of professional gamers and esports in the late 1990s.
Lee Gi-suk seized one of the only championships that mattered—Blizzard’s official
Ladder Tournament. StarCraft was at the apex of its popularity in Korea, and the
victory made him an instant celebrity. He also earned a starring role in a national
television advertisement for internet provider KORNET (Korea Internet), giving him a
86 Global Esports
level of mainstream recognition that may not have been matched even to this date. His
yearly salary at its peak was approximately $44,000, dropping to only $2,600 several
years later as he did not win any championship games (J. H. Cho and Woo, 2017). In
October 2000, the Ministry of Culture, Sports, and Tourism and Samsung partnered
to host the first World Cyber Games, “a global esports competition modeled after the
Olympics” (Rea, 2019, 120). In other words, thanks to developments in Korea, the first
global esports league was held in Seoul in 2000. “StarCraft’s intricate depth became an
escape from the real world for players like Lim Yo-Hwan” (Li, 2016, 39). In 2002, pro-
gaming was recognized as an official job category in Korea, further legitimizing the
world of esports (Jin, 2010; Rea, 2016, 23).
As a reflection of the sudden popularity of esports, professional gamer became the
most popular job category for elementary school students. For example, according
to a survey conducted by the Korea Research Institute for Vocational Education and
Training in 2001, pro-gamer was the most popular future job for the first time in
history, followed by sport athletics, computer technicians, scientists, and developers.
The influences of pro-gamers were compared with famous sport stars and talents
(“Changing History,” 2016; Han, 2008).
With the expansion of PC bangs in tandem with the soaring popularity of
StarCraft, the number of esports games also rapidly increased. In 1999, there were
twenty-five esports games in Korea, but it increased to fifty-one in 2000 even before
the esports broadcasting era. As a reflection of esports’ growing role as youth culture
and a potential tool for boosting corporate and institutional images, several agencies,
including telecom companies like Hanaro Telecom and KORNET; big corporations
like Samsung and Hyundai Securities Co.; media like Sport Seoul, Tooniverse, Sport
Today, Digital Chosun, and SBS; and universities like Hoseo University hosted esports
games. The success of StarCraft and esports in Korea drove local game developers
to create new online games as well. For example, NCSoft’s Lineage I, an MMORPG
(massively multiplayer online role-play game) made in 1998, immediately became a
big hit, which helped to start Korea’s golden age of online game development and early
spectatorship.
From Participation to Observation: Growing Esports

Spectatorship
Digital game competition finally met with media to form esports when Tooniverse
broadcasted a FIFA series World Cup 98 game, which also became a turning point
toward mass spectatorship. When StarCraft syndrome swept Korea, Hwang Hyun
Joon, a television producer at Tooniverse, who also broadcasted the FIFA World Cup
98 video game, proposed to create video game programming. What he planned was
to create a broadcasting program based on the boom of StarCraft by making a game
league. In the late 1990s, however, he was not able to easily find a studio for the game
league, as digital games were looked on disparagingly by many Koreans, and nobody

wanted to lend space for gaming. Alternatively, he established a ministudio on top

of a table tennis table on the ground level of Tooniverse. Producer Hwang recruited
Jung Il Hoon, a sportscaster, and later Lim Chae Kyung, who worked as an animation
producer. They started to broadcast Hitel KPGL in March 1999—the first esports
league televised in Korea—and they became key members in establishing OnGameNet
(OGN), the first ever game-dedicated television channel (J. Y. Kim, 2013). OGN
became the first online game specialty channel in the world and opened the world’s
first esports-dedicated stadium (Jin, 2010).
Esports and mass spectatorship grew with the live broadcasting of competitions
on cable channels, followed by networks, which expedited the growth of esports and
spectatorship among young Korean people. As T. L. Taylor (2012) correctly observes,
the power of computer games is seen first and foremost as located in the way they
ask us to interact with them, to be engaged. The classic formulation of engagement
within game studies says it is direct action upon the game that signifies the heart
of the play experience. (181)
However, with the involvement of television, the concept of watching computer game
matches by spectators was popularized, which fundamentally changed the nature of
computer games.
Hitel and Tooniverse, again, established a game-only channel named OnGameNet
in 2000. OGN (formerly OnGameNet) is a cable television channel that specializes in
broadcasting video game-related content and esports matches. OGN was previously a
subsidiary of On Media, the parent company of several other cable channels. After a
corporate merger in 2010, it is now owned by CJ E&M—the largest media company
in Korea. OGN (Chung, 2000) planned to develop a two-way broadcasting system
to reflect the increasing demand by gamers and players, while developing the cable
channel’s competitiveness. It broadcasted game-related content for twelve hours per
day starting in July 2000.
Originally starting out as a television program to follow the rising popularity of
StarCraft, the successful growth of broadcast gaming allowed the Starleague in 2000 to
become its own dedicated channel on OGN. Starting out with a small prize sum and
very few followers, Starleague grew tremendously. It helped to catapult electronic
gaming into a major competitive and watchable sport. Interestingly enough, during
the first Starleague, Guillaume Patry, known as “Grrrr . . .” from Canada became the
first and only non-Korean to win an individual Starleague. After dominating the first
few online leagues arranged by Blizzard Entertainment and AMD Professional Gamers
League in the United States, he turned his eyes to Korea and moved to Seoul in 2000.
During the same period, the term “esports” was established in Korea. In the 1990s,
several countries, including the United States, already used the term “electronic
sports”; however, Koreans used cyber athletics, digital athletics, or pro-gaming to
explain esports. With the rapid growth of online gaming and game competitions, Korea
needed a proper term. Timely enough, the term “esports” was presented by Ji-Won
Park, minister of the Department of Culture and Tourism, in February 2000, when
88 Global Esports
he first used the term at the inaugural meeting of the KeSPA. It immediately became
an official term indicating online game competitions and related activities, including
pro-game teams, broadcasting, and fan community activities ever since (Ministry of
Culture, Sports, and Tourism, 2008; Samsung Economic Research Institute, 2005).
Back to the early game television channel, OGN technically opened the
watchable esports market by developing its camera techniques. Korea’s esports
world especially claimed that OGN’s “observing technique” was the most significant
point for the growth of esports on screen. Observing means that television cameras
go into the games so that they could zoom in and zoom out to select some major
game scenes that the audiences must see. For example, in the case of League of
Legends, a team consists of five players, and therefore ten players play at the same
time. The broadcaster must select the best scenes of any particular players to be
watched (W. C. Jang, 2018).
Mass spectatorship continued to grow as a few game channels also jumped on the
bandwagon. MBC Game—a subsidiary cable channel of MBC Plus—began its 24-hour
game broadcasting in 2001, although it was replaced by MBC Music in 2012. MBC
Game was the Korean non-free-to-air television station, which was well known for
being the esports broadcaster. Alongside OGN, it specialized in broadcasting video
game-related information and matches. It covered StarCraft, Warcraft III, FIFA Series,
Counter-Strike, Winning Eleven, Age of Empires III, and Dead or Alive. MBC started its
game cable channel by acquiring Look TV, a fashion specialty channel owned by CJ
Cable, and opened in the name of Gembc to become MBC Game in 2003 (“Esports,
10-Year Vestige,” 2009). Gembc was the combination of game and MBC and attempted
to develop a more beautiful community through games (S. Y. Kim, 2002). There were
a few more channels, like GGTV; however, only OGN and MBC Game became major
players (Yoon et al., 2012). The creation of game television channels expedited the
growth of esports and fundamentally shifted the trend of esports. Because of the
financial crisis of 1997, Korean esports leagues struggled in the late 1990s; however,
with the introduction of two game specialty channels and esports leagues organized
by these two channels, Korean people and corporations started to pay attention to
esports. Several big corporations like Samsung, SKT, and KT also began to support
esports game teams (“Esports, 10-Year Vestige,” 2009). In other words, several chaebol
(big conglomerates) started to have their own professional game teams to boost their
corporate images as esports spectatorship soared, which greatly helped the boom of
esports in the 2000s.
Meanwhile, the Pro League, which was formerly hosted on OGN and MBC Game,
then became solely hosted on OGN after MBC closed down its gaming venture. The
Pro League allows for fans to follow their favorite team or player. It also allowed up
and coming amateurs to participate in a televised setting. A total of thirty-one Pro
League events for StarCraft: Brood War, existed from March 2003 to September 2012.
The increasing rise of mass spectatorship can be exemplified with a particular event
at the Pro League final—which attracted as many as 120,000 spectators to an outdoor
stadium at the Gwangalli beach in Busan—a southern city in Korea, in 2004 and 2005
(J. H. Jang, 2006).

Another major development in the Korean esports world was the establishment
of the 21st Century Pro-Game Association in 2000 (later changed to Korea e-Sports
Association in October 2003; see Korea e-Sports Association, 2019) permitted by
the Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism. This was the first national-level esports
association around the world, and it helped the growth of esports as it developed
several necessary regulations and principles, as well as hosting esports leagues.
As such, compared with other parts of Asia and Europe, Korea had several key
advantages in developing esports, including widespread high-speed internet, PC bang,
and the institutionalization of spectatorship, which meant huge numbers of people
could watch the action without video dropouts in the initial stage of esports. With
the rapid growth of digital technologies and their convergence with several primary
sociocultural elements, emphasizing dynamism and mass play culture, Korea has
developed its unique spectatorship model in the realm of digital games.
Sociocultural Elements for the Early Growth of Esports

Spectatorship
While the rapid growth of infrastructure like PC bang and high-speed internet in
the IMF era of the late 1990s played key roles for the Korean esports scene, several
sociocultural dimensions also greatly influenced the formation of early esports and
mass spectatorship. Cultural specificities embedded in Korean history should be
emphasized as significant factors that prompted the rapid deployment of esports.
There are a few distinctive cultural characteristics, based on the mentality of the
people, rooted in Korean society and its historical context that are unique contributing
elements to the swift deployment of esports, including enthusiasm for “edutainment,”
and developing dual personalities of two competing forces, social solidarity, and
individualism (Jin, 2010).
To begin with, most Koreans would certainly agree that Korea is nothing if not
dynamic. This relentless drive, which has led Korea to chalk up a number of significant
achievements, including its economic growth, has driven the rapid spread of
broadband internet connections. Korea’s dynamism has played a role for the growth of
esports, as many Koreans are good at immersion and competition. In modern Korea,
until the late 1990s, han (the Korean sentiment of grievance or grudge) was one of
the most significant national characteristics that portrayed Koreans’ passive desire for
redemption after enduring pain, including the Japanese occupation for several decades
until 1945 and the Korean War (1950–3). Over the past two decades or so, Korea’s han
has rapidly been changing into heung (excitement), which is one of the most significant
parts of dynamism, as economic development and democratization has resulted in
growing self-confidence among its people. Since then, dynamism has mostly become
synonymous with Koreans (Chang, 2011; Jin, 2016). Dynamism indeed represents the
vibrant spirit, which embodies the unshakable moral strength that has overcome so
much hardship, as well as a vision that proactively explores the future. Dynamism is
90 Global Esports
especially based on Koreans’ unique attitudes in that they prefer working together and
playing together as opposed to working and playing independently, as seen in many
Western countries (K. I. Y. Lee, 2015).
As dynamism is one of the major characteristics in playing and enjoying online
games like StarCraft, it is natural for Koreans to adore it most (W. J. Cho, 2017). Young
people enjoy both playing and spectating popular online games sometimes with
friends and other times with nobody, but through high-speed internet. This also shows
social solidarity (Chee, 2006), which means that Koreans not only play together but
also watch and enjoy games together more than people in other countries.
In fact, Korea has been proud of its tradition of social solidarity (Crotty and Lee,
2002). As The New York Times stated, while reporting on booming online games,
“Korea is a group-oriented society, where socializing in bunches is the preferred form
of interaction, and Western-style individualism is frowned upon” (French, 2002, 8).
After conducting a case study of online games in Korea, Chee (2006) also emphasizes
the importance of social solidarity of teens and people in their twenties in the process
of growing online game communities.
Korea has certainly developed several collective play cultures, like farm music, Yut
no ri—a folk game, and Gut—an elaborate type of shaman ritual. These traditional
collective play cultures appeared as forms of Cyworld, Karaoke bang, PC bang, and
jjimjilbang (Korean sauna), and eventually expedited esports as these collective cultures
are embedded in game culture as well. Unlike North Americans and Europeans who
like to play with computer and/or console, Koreans like online games to play games
collectively between human players through networks, and this cultural characteristic
is a reflection of Korea’s traditional collective culture (W. J. Cho, 2017).
In tandem with social solidarity, a relevant aspect of the Korean culture is “mass
play culture,” which has become a critical element for the growth of esports. People do
not want to be left out by not working and/or playing together. In the realm of digital
games, unlike young people in the United States, who mainly want to play alone, in a
single player with/without computers, young Korean people do not like to play with a
computer alone; instead they prefer to be part of teams to defeat other teams. The mass
play culture characterizing Korean society has been a major factor for the popularity
of Lineage I, for example. Sociocultural aspects are significant factors for the growth of
both esports and mass spectatorship as amateur gamers sometimes go to game arenas
to cheer up their favorite players together, while at other times watch digital games
online or on broadcasting (Jin, 2010).
Meanwhile, Korea is also a society driven by competition. While Olympians would
become national heroes in most countries when they receive any medals, a Korea’s
athlete who wins a silver medal at the Olympics would often hang their head in shame
and apologize to the public for not achieving gold. Koreans just love “to make rankings
and compare, and if you are not first, you are nothing” (Li, 2016, 43), as John Park, who
worked at the StarCraft broadcaster GOMTV, stated.
Several mobile games developed in Korea, such as Anipang and Candipang in
the early 2010s, certainly showed that these mobile games became popular based on
Koreans’ strong competitive nature. Anipang as a mobile game strategically fits into

KaTalk’s social networking platform, and Anipang added in a ranking system where
players compete with their friends on KaTalk—an instant mobile messenger. Through
encouraging competition with other users that they seem to know, Anipang has
become entrenched in the lives of smartphone users. It is the rankings between friends
that drive people to keep playing Anipang. When someone ranks lower than a friend
or learns that a friend just scored higher, they are compelled to play until they achieve
a better score, at which point an automated message is sent that states, “I beat your
score by scoring 000” through KaTalk (“Four Reasons,” 2012). Anipang can be played
alone, but its allure is that it is community-based, which has been a very important
feature for mobile gamers in Korea. Anipang players pointed to the push notifications
and pressure they felt to attend to this particular mobile game from others (Jin, Chee,
and Kim, 2015).
In sum, the growth of esports and spectatorship in Korea has been possible due in
large part to various cultural factors, rooted deeply in Korean society and its historical
context. Korean esports has achieved its tremendous growth mainly because of the
convergence of infrastructural growth and cultural elements. On the one hand, high-
speed internet and PC bang, and later game specialty channels were significant as
infrastructure, and on the other hand, people’s mentalities, wanting to play together
with dynamic spirit while enjoying competition and immersion, played a role. As Aizu
(2002) pointed out, several social and cultural elements, including so-called me-too
culture, the aggressive mentality of the Korean people, high awareness of the challenges
of globalization, and political and historical contexts embedded in contemporary
Korean society played the decisive roles in its dynamic acceptance of internet and
the acceleration of esports (see Jin, 2010). These sociocultural elements, including
dynamism, enthusiastic competition, and mass play culture are major elements of
spectatorship, uniquely embedded in Korean society. As Borowy and Jin (2013) point
out, “there is no better example of the combination of media as sport than esport, and
by examining its origins we see how this competitive play activity grew” (p. 2270)
alongside the developments of both event marketing and spectatorship.
Conclusion
This chapter has explored a historical understanding of esports and the initial
formation of esports spectatorship in the Korean context. Korean esports became a
model for global esports since its inception. Korea has not only institutionalized its
esports in that it developed esports leagues, professional gamers and teams, and a
national esports association but also established the direction of esports spectatorship
as the country developed esports ICT infrastructure and specialty channels for the
public to watch and enjoy games together. Korea has had these dimensions in place
since the beginning. In other words, the rapid growth of IT infrastructure, the IMF
crisis and the consequent growth of PC bang, and the development of esports channels
all played key roles in the early esports scene.
92 Global Esports
Among these, several local cultures and characteristics embedded in digital games
and esports, such as Korea’s dynamism, competitive mentalities, social sodality, and
mass play culture, worked as the foundations of early esports spectatorship. Increasing
spectatorship by both esports fans and general audiences in tandem with sociocultural
milieu surrounding the growth of digital games has expedited the popularity of esports.
In the early 2020s, there is no doubt that esports is one of the major sporting events
and youth cultures; however, twenty years ago, Korea already developed the early stage
of esports, which played a significant role for the growth of global esports. As T. L.
Taylor (2012) points out,
the story of South Korea holds an interesting place in North American and
European pro gaming because it is regularly held up as a model for the future of
esports worldwide The story of South Korean esports highlight the ways culture,
larger infrastructural developments, policy decisions, and economic activities
have intersected in a fortuitous way at particular historical moment to support the
formation of a new form of leisure and sport. (p. 18)
What is missing in this interpretation is the significant role of spectators. As game

players and fans, the general public, in particular youth in their teens and twenties,
fundamentally shifted their interests toward digital games in the early 2000s: They
played games together, and they watched games together. Consequently, Korea not only
developed the esports leagues but also advanced the first game broadcasting channels,
and therefore substantially contributed to the growth of esports spectatorship.
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esports- and-havent-looked-back
Part 2
Money, Data Power, and Network

6
The Business Model Network of Esports

The Convergence of Overwatch
Tobias M. Scholz
Introduction
The world of esports or competitive gaming has grown exponentially in recent years
(Taylor, 2012; Scholz, 2019). This rapid success gathered interest from a variety of new
outside actors. Companies like Amazon bought the live streaming platform Twitch
for $970 million (Amazon, 2014) as well as sports organizations like the Kraft Group
(owner of the New England Patriots) got into the esports business. This development in
the recent years is striking as esports evolved mostly in isolation without interference
from outside actors for nearly two decades. Consequently, the esports industry had the
chance to develop a unique cultural environment in terms of business context due to
the lack of traditional business intervention as well as governmental regulation. From
an evolutionary perspective, this led to a certain degree of self-regulation as well as to
a distinct network composition involved in esports.
Furthermore, these actors had the freedom to choose the fitting rules for their
industry based on trial and error. The esports industry mimicked strategies from
the media industry, the sports industry, and the general business world, but, also,
developed unique strategies that fit the needs. Therefore, esports is more than just a
subcategory of sports, media, or entertainment, but rather a unique composition of
these various business contexts (Scholz, 2020).
With the absence of a standardized governance structure, esports is
predominantly self-organizing. Furthermore, it is mostly business-driven, as the
organizations in esports could not rely on governmental support or other ways of
funding, therefore, they had to rely on creating a working business model to survive
(Scholz, 2020). In addition due to the young audience, the global approach, and the
digitized environment, this industry indeed follows the rule “survival of the fittest”
(Spencer, 1875) There is no one best way how to create a successful business model
and, especially, a successful and sustainable business model.
Even games like Counter-Strike that is a crucial pillar had several iterations
in its twenty-year history and were near to collapse several times (Zacny, 2016).
100 Global Esports
Subsequently, there is an ongoing evolution and innovation for creating a successful

business model. This situation has become increasingly more dynamic due to the
exponential rise in popularity. A variety of other industry actors are keen to invest,
going beyond entrepreneurs, media companies, and sports organizations toward,
for example, insurance companies in desperate need to reach a younger audience.
Consequently, there is an observable clash of business models, leading to an even
higher degree of dynamism.
Furthermore, we hear discussions about a bubble (D’Anastasio, 2019), and despite
highlighting crucial aspects, esports had experienced several bubble-like events (e.g.,
the downfall of the Championship Gaming Series). This chatter is adding even more
fuel to the actors in the esports industry to be innovative and be prepared to survive
the impending doom. We are, potentially, at the height of a hype cycle, but that is
the excellent news, historically every downfall led to more growth for the industry.
However, some companies will vanish, and we already see it with OpTic Gaming
(Immortals Gaming Club, 2019).
This environment of growth and risk can influence the actors involved and how
they will adapt to this new situation. Rooted in the organizational ecology theory
(Aldrich, McKelvey, and Ulrich, 1984), companies have to decide strategically where
to adapt and where to innovate. This approach can lead to an inevitable convergence
and divergence in strategies. In general, companies tend isomorphism and, thereby,
mimic successful companies (DiMaggio and Powell, 1983; Haveman, 1993). However,
in esports, a variety of vastly different companies are seemingly successful as there are
no standardized key performance indicators to benchmark them: therefore, making it
difficult to adapt to a specific, proven strategy. Especially as every actor in the esports
industry are interwoven in a so-called business model network (Scholz, 2019) and,
similar to nature, it is essential to establish a stable environment in which a precise
balance is achieved.
In this chapter, the goal is to research these mechanisms of understanding the
evolution of a business model network on the example of the video game Overwatch
how it evolved and describe the tendencies of convergence within the video game
and most importantly the convergence within the business model network. The case
of Overwatch and the Overwatch League is compelling as the publisher Activision
Blizzard shows isomorphic tendencies in mimicking traditional sports leagues like
the US-American concept of creating leagues. Leagues like the MLB, NBA, NFL, or
NHL are strikingly similar and are incredibly successful in North America, therefore, it
seems a risk-minimizing approach to copy these structures for an esports league under
the premise that esports functions like a sport. Furthermore, the Overwatch League
was prepared on the drawing board, diverging from the majority of video games that
grew into an esports league, for example, League of Legends. The Overwatch league
diverges from the “standard” esports approach and converges to the “standard” sports
approach of creating an esports league. This case reveals the potential benefits as well
as risks of following this unique strategy of mimicking traditional sports structures.
Finally, specific strategies will be presented that describes the future of the business
model network Overwatch in the esports industry.

The Business Model Network of Esports 101
Convergence and Divergence

Creating an esports league is influenced by the existing work of other leagues in esports
as well as traditional sports. As the video game developers are the gatekeeper due to
being the creators of the video game (Scholz, 2019) they have the choice to follow
a convergent or divergent strategy (Gentry and Sparks, 2012). This decision triggers
other organizations in the business model network to change their strategy as well.
However, convergence and divergence are more than a binary construct.
Convergence and divergence are instead processes that describe a tendency of
organizations to each other. Over time companies could converge or diverge from
another. As stated earlier in the business context, there is a certain tendency toward
convergence. This is described in the neoinstitutionalism in which companies tend to
converge due to an institutional isomorphism (DiMaggio and Powell, 1983). There
are various ways this convergence can happen. For one the coercive isomorphism,
where the organization is pressured by the cultural expectations from society or other
organizations. In our case Activision Blizzard has, as being a gatekeeper, the power to
enforce certain behavior of the other organizations in the business model network. The
mimetic isomorphism describes the belief of an organization that other organizations
have structures and strategies that are superior to their own. Activision Blizzard is
mimicking the US-American league structures. Finally, the normative isomorphism
describes the convergence driven by the people in the organization. In esports, there
is an ongoing debate if esports is a sports, depending on the definition an organization
is following, there is a convergence or divergence observable. Activision Blizzard hired
various sports executives for the Overwatch league, due to this selection, they have a
convergent tendency toward traditional sports structures for their league.
The concept of convergence and divergence can be divided in various tendencies
(see Heichel et al. 2005), for this case study, it is more relevant to discuss the target
of convergence or divergence. The esports industry has many influences and any
esports leagues could converge or diverge toward other esports leagues, sports leagues,
media/entertainment concepts, or other influences. Understanding the underlying
convergence logic in an esports league helps to explain the composition of the business
model network and the dynamics between the different actors of the network.
The Business Model Network of Esports

In recent years, the concept of business models has received significant attention
(Klang, Wallnöfer, and Hacklin, 2014). Despite the significance of the term for
strategic management (Zott, Amit, and Massa, 2011), there is no shared consensus
on the use of this term in the business context (e.g., DaSilva and Trkman, 2014). The
general idea of a business model is essential for creating a sustainable business (Foss
and Saebi, 2017), establishing a “design or architecture of the value-creating, delivery,
and capture mechanisms” (Teece, 2010, 172). To categorize the process of business
102 Global Esports
model creation strategically, Chesbrough and Rosenbloom (2002, 533–4) derived the
following functions of a business model:
●● “articulate the value proposition, i.e., the value created for users by the offering
based on the technology;
●● identify a market segment comprised of the users to whom the technology is useful
and for what purpose, and specify the revenue generation mechanism(s) for the firm;
●● define the structure of the value chain within the firm required to create and
distribute the offering, and determine the complementary assets needed to
support the firm’s position in this chain;
●● estimate the cost structure and profit potential of producing the offering, given the
value proposition and value chain structure chosen;
●● describe the position of the firm within the value network linking suppliers and
customers, including identification of potential complementors and competitors;
●● formulate the competitive strategy by which the innovating firm will gain and
hold advantage over rivals.” (2002, 533)
It is essential to highlight that business model is always linked with the strategy of a
company. A business model is often seen as the formulation of the short focus, and the
strategy is the general long-term direction of a successful and professional company
(DaSilva and Trkman 2014). Therefore, the statement “every organization has some
business model” but “not every organization has a strategy” (Casadesus-Masanell and
Ricart, 2010, 206) seems fitting.
The business model of one company is always intertwined with the surrounding of
the company (Zott and Amit, 2009). Consequently, any business model is linked with a
network of actors (or in that case, stakeholders), and, therefore, any business model is
connected to a business model network (Scholz, 2019). Especially in the context of the
esports industry, it becomes evident that every stakeholder plays a crucial role. If the
business model network survives, every individual actor increases its survivability. The
esports industry is driven by innovations and technologies, but also by the interconnection
of creative people trying to exploit technologies to the fullest. This unique setting, aligned
with the start-up mentality and an understanding of interconnectedness, led to a distinct
network of stakeholders (Scholz and Stein, 2017). Still, most of the successful business
model networks having the player audience in the core of their network as depicted in the
following figure. This focus on the core strengthens the network, leading to an increase in
profitability throughout the system (Scholz, 2019). The business model network focuses
on value integration with an emphasis on cooperation rather than competition. Every
single business model is linked with other business models in the network, creating one
combined business model network.
Although Figure 6.1 depicts the general logic of a business model network with
various stakeholders, the business model network will vary from esports-title to
esports-title. For example, the role of the game developer in Overwatch is exceptionally
dominant, but the part of the game developer in Counter-Strike is less dominant. The
Overwatch league is in this case unique, as they are enforcing their Gatekeeper role

Figure 6.1 The Business Model Network of Esports (Scholz, 2019).
into the business model network and maximized their potential power in the network.
Based on their isomorphic tendencies toward traditional US-sports leagues, they are
forcing the other stakeholders in the network to con-verge toward their strategy for the
Overwatch league. It is essential to highlight, that the basis for any long-term success
of an esports-title is to find a sustainable balance in which every stakeholder can find
their spot in the eco-system. It is, however, not predetermined if the best approach is
to foster convergence or divergence, still, the Overwatch league is a novel approach in
exerting so much convergence to the business model network, an approach that might
be successful but could also lead to undiscovered risks.
The Potential Blind Alley of Overwatch

In the case of Overwatch, the dominant force in the business model network is the
game developer Activision Blizzard. Not only are they the game developer, they are the
104 Global Esports
sole tournament organizer, they are creating the media content, they negotiate with the
sponsors, they decide which teams participate, they stipulate the rules for the players,
and essentially Activision Blizzard is the governing body of Overwatch League. With
this product, Activision Blizzard is trying to become the next big US-American styled
league—although being a global league—and, by that, mimic a vast portion of the
strategies, that seem to work in these leagues.
Interestingly Activision Blizzard is not only mimicking existing and succeeding
sport leagues, certain convergence tendencies toward a league called Championship
Gaming Series are observable. This league was backed by the satellite broadcast provider
DirecTV in 2007 and was one of the biggest esports leagues based on a franchise model
with geolocalization. However, the CGS was the biggest failure in the young esports
history. Jason Lake (owner of CompLexity) summarized the downfall as follows:
It all went to hell in a hand basket when some well intentioned but corporate suit
type people tried to change gaming, the spirit of gaming and it crashed and burned
during a bad economy. That was really hard on me, man. I’m quoted on video
saying, “if this doesn’t work, eSports is dead” and, unfortunately, I wasn’t that far
from the truth at the time. When CGS crashed and burned, the scene in North
America especially was just a train wreck. That took a lot of emotional energy from
me and just sucked it out. (O’Neill, 2012)
It is debatable, if Activision Blizzard still remembers the CGS or experienced as

historical amnesia (Scholz, 2019) as they are promoting the Overwatch league as
something unique and completely new. Although the similarities may be coincidental,
as the CGS also tried to copy the US-centric sports league concept toward esports,
but the similarities are striking. Especially as Activision Blizzard is not only copying
the structure, they are also trying to enforce their regulations on the business model
network and exerting their power in regulating every bit of the league. This strategy
may seem appropriate as leagues like the NFL are enforcing their power throughout the
league and any organization involved in the league. Such leagues are highly profitable
and behave, due to some antitrust exemptions, like monopolies (Vrooman, 2009). For
any business organizations creating a new NFL seems alluring and, therefore, trying to
mimic a business model network with such a strong focus on power at the “top” (Lee
and McFarlin, 2016). This type of convergence is not necessarily the typical case in
the esports industry, as mentioned earlier, Counter-Strike is the contrast to that with a
more laissez-faire strategy. Due to that power-move the strategy and structure of the
league is stipulated by Activision Blizzard leading to a self-selection in the business
model network. This self-selection can be observed that some professional teams shut
down their operations in Overwatch with the announcement of the Overwatch League.
Activision Blizzard is focusing on geolocalization as well as franchising, thereby
creating a seemingly attractive product. The Overwatch League is sold as an
innovative evolution for an esports league. The sales team of Activision Blizzard did an
extraordinary job in selling the franchise slots for an unbelievable price. Furthermore,
they achieved to generate interest from outsiders of the esports industry. That led to

franchise prices ranging from supposedly $10 up to $60 million as well as many big
players like the Kraft Group. It is striking to observe how many investors chose this
league for their first endeavor in esports. In addition, Twitch is paying at least $90
million for streaming rights (Baccellieri, 2018). It becomes evident that Activision
Blizzard sold a vision, and many bought this vision. The vision of becoming the next
big thing was convincing enough to buy-in for many different organizations. However,
as the former commissioner told: “We didn’t know what we didn’t know before we
launched the season” (Valentine, 2018)—saying that as a company that played an
integral role in the esports evolution with StarCraft and Warcraft this can be already
seen as a confession of failure. Nevertheless, the Overwatch League transformed the
business model network fundamentally and centralized all power toward Activision
Blizzard.
Although the game developer has the potential to have all rights to make such a
strategic move, it is essential to highlight, that this is only one way to interact with the
business model network of a specific esports title. Esports is business and, consequently,
any stakeholder is part of the value creation. Therefore, any individual business model
and strategic decision influence the business model of any other linked stakeholder.
There are threats of new entries, buyer power, and supplier power, a risk of substitution,
and competitive rivalry, but there is also a need for cooperation to utilize synergies.
The core of this business model network is the audience and the monetization of the
customer. Following general market rules, some balance is achieved in this business
model network over time based on legitimated stakeholders, negotiations, power, and,
subsequently, successful strategic decisions.
There is a substantial need for coopetition (cooperation and competition) (Walley,
2007) as well as an underlying co-destiny (Davidow and Malone, 1992; Scholz, 2000)
that is shared with everybody in this business model network. Coopetition and
co-destiny usually are negotiated between the stakeholders. This negotiation can be
a source of risk for the success of an esports ecosystem as the interest might diverge,
furthermore, it might be a significant risk for the game developer. The approach
of Activision Blizzard to deal with the potential risks is to exert power and enforce
coopetition of any stakeholder as well as demand co-destiny.
It is essential to highlight the unique position of the game developer in esports
and any esports ecosystem. The role of the game developer is often discussed as the
gatekeeper of esports (Scholz, 2019), and this potential power is one of the main
criticisms of traditional sports (DOSB, 2018). Nobody owns Football, but the game
developer owns Overwatch. However, this comparison is wrong, as nobody owns the
genre Team Shooter and Activision Blizzard cannot forbid anybody creating a Team
Shooter. This can be seen with the announcement of Riot Valorant, a game that can be
seen as a direct competition to Overwatch. However, what is correct, within Overwatch
Activision Blizzard can regulate everything. In this case, Activision Blizzard chose to
overregulate Overwatch:
●● They create the game and they create the rules.

●● They choose the franchise and dictate the regulations.
106 Global Esports
●● They enforce the player rules and transfer system.

●● They create the content and stream the broadcast.
In management theory, this strategy can still be successful, but any organizations
should evaluate any potential risks that could harm this strategy. Activision Blizzard
makes a high profit if Overwatch League turns out successful, but if it fails Activision
Blizzard will have destroyed the whole business model network for this distinct esports
title. Having to decide everything on their own, they also have to deal with every risk.
Ironically Activision Blizzard has a history in trying to overregulate their games and
nearly fail with that approach. In the case of StarCraft (Scholz, 2019) they created the
most prestigious tournament with the World Championship Series and allowed that
players could choose their region in which they play. It is important to highlight that
South Korea is dominant in that game, so players from South Korea moved around the
world and played there. Subsequently, the WCS became nearly Korean-exclusive and
the viewership dwindled. The game developer tried to counteract, but the game nearly
died (Partin, 2018). For the game Heroes of the Storm, most of the league was organized
by Activision Blizzard, but the game did not gain momentum and was lagging behind
League of Legends and Dota 2. Still, it had a solid fan base, but it seemed it was not
viable in business terms, so Activision Blizzard pulled the plug and the whole esports
ecosystem died (McWhertor, 2018). Both examples reveal that Activision Blizzard has a
tendency to monopolize and centralize the power in an esports ecosystem, but, thereby,
increase the risk of failure for the whole ecosystem, if they fail. All responsibility lies
upon Activision Blizzard rather than spread throughout the ecosystem. Consequently,
there is extreme pressure to succeed, and as Nate Nanzer, Activision Blizzard knew
they are playing high stakes (Valentine, 2018). Maybe that is the reason why the
Overwatch League is nearly an exact copy of the typical North American franchise
system down to the Overwatch logo that resembles the MLB logo. Although Activision
Blizzard is overregulating, in general, the strategy is consistent. However, there are
several predetermined breaking points that may lead to the situation that Overwatch
may be led to a dying business model network for Activision Blizzard.
First, we should take a look at the game itself. There are problems with the game
itself. In general, the game is not easy to watch, and with the current GOATS meta
(three tanks and three support) it is becoming less entertaining to watch. Furthermore,
with characters like Lucio and Brigitte with knockback abilities, it can be even harder
to watch. Interestingly as game developer, everything could be fixable from the game
development perspective, but it seems that Activision Blizzard is not trying to fix
it, but rather enforce a 2-2-2 rule (2 tanks, 2 DPS and 2 support) (Heinisch, 2019).
Overall in the game there is too much happening for the viewership and there is a
certain unease throughout the game. It is difficult to understand for the viewers what
is actually happening. Even though the game may be easy to learn and hard to master,
the game is not easy to watch. By enforcing such regulations this problem of chaos for
the viewer is not addressed as these are fundamental game design problems. However,
this approach is going against the general tendency in the esports scene, that games
are constantly patched to be more watchable (Taylor, 2012), especially as the idea of

patching the game imposes the concept of constant shift in the meta-game (Scholz,
2019). Activision Blizzard is moving against the general and underlying tendency in
the esports scene, by regulating the players and enforcing rules to strangle change.
That is a significant sign for the organizational culture within Activision Blizzard,
rather than solve a game design problem to make their game more esports friendly,
they regulate the teams. They do not search for a solution in their capacity, but rather
enforce their power through regulation.
Second, the imbalance between geolocalization and regional unlocking. This topic
is probably the most striking one for Activision Blizzard and it is the main selling
argument for investors from traditional sports. Teams have a hometown, and they have
a home crowd, especially in North America. This development may be helpful to create
a community, although this is still unproven in esports. The only evidence existing is
the Championship Gaming Series that failed. Still, with the growth of esports, it could
be, that this situation may have changed. However, Overwatch is facing a different
problem, more than 50 percent of all players in the Overwatch League are Koreans.
Teams like Vancouver Titans and New York Excelsior are entirely Korean. So, there is
no reason for the players to adapt toward the local crowd.
How is it possible to relate with those players as a fan, if they do not speak any
English at all? This problem is not novel for Activision Blizzard as they are struggling
with this Korean dominance problem for decades in StarCraft and had to enforce
regulations to limit Korean players. Only recently it got to a point where non-Koreans
can compete and win prestigious tournaments. However, the game is past its glory
days. This Korean dominance may be reasonable for the teams, by choosing the best
players in the world, but it also translates in additional risks for the geolocalization
strategy and the fan engagement.
Third, the location of franchises is focused on North America and China. At the
moment, thirteen teams are from North America, and four teams are from China.
Only two teams are from Europe and one from South Korea. In the case of Europe,
both teams are owned by North American organization. The product Overwatch is
presented as being a global league, but it is highly US-centric. It becomes evident that
the decision for cities is purely industry-driven. For the global phenomenon, the vital
region of Europe is vastly neglected. Furthermore, teams get not only the city but also
regions surrounding this city. For example, Seoul Dynasty “owns” the Korean market
and can prohibit other teams from doing events there (Fitch, 2018). This strategy
destroys competition and denies potential innovations as the teams have their market
secured. As described in the organizational ecology theory, competition is necessary
to evolve and to change (Kelly and Amburgey, 1991). Interestingly, there is a certain
rivalry observable in Los Angeles with the only city having two teams. The Gladiators
and Valiant are fighting the “Battle for LA” (Markazi, 2019).
Fourth, the devastation of the Tier 2 system. Tier 2 means the league system below
the Overwatch League, comparable to a minor league in other sports. The Overwatch
Contender league is technically open for any team to participate in it. But, Activision
Blizzard actively downgrades the second highest league in Overwatch to a farm league
for the OWL teams, a situation that encourages Contender players to leave their team
108 Global Esports
to become free agents and hope they will be picked up: if not, “there will be no trouble
in finding a new Contenders team to join” (Carpenter, 2018). There is no incentive
for any other organization to participate in this league, and consequently, besides
some academy teams, there are only temporary teams that may see it as some form
of proving ground. However, recent downsizing measures will make the Contenders
league even more irrelevant (Lewis, 2018). Furthermore, there is no space for any other
professional esports organization to participate as there is no possibility to become
part of the OWL. In the long run, this will lead to a massive de-professionalization
of Tier 2 and fewer possibilities to draft talented and well-formed players. Talent
development will be in a dire stage in the future and may lead to even more Korean
players in the league. Compared to other games like League of Legends, there is no
steady stream of young players in Overwatch.
Fifth, how the league is dealing with their players. Salary and prize money are
the core of the income of players, and even though teams have to set up a retirement
savings plan and provide health insurance, a significantly high number of players quit
the game. For example, the player Brandon “A_Seagull” Larned quit playing Overwatch
for Dallas Fuel to return to streaming full time (D’Orazio, 2018a). In some cases, this
could be a less stressful way to make more money without extreme training regimens
and competitive pressure. Several players highlight that they are getting tired, and
some even quit because of burnout (D’Orazio, 2018b). It becomes evident that playing
in the Overwatch League is not a healthy lifestyle and not sustainable. Even though the
topic of unionization is discussed in the press, it is not discussed openly in the OWL
(Garst, 2019). Especially with the overregulation strategy, it is nothing that Activision
Blizzard will openly encourage. Players are, therefore, quitting the game more often,
than in other games.
Sixth, employees are leaving the ship. In the recent weeks, several key employees
have left Activision Blizzard. Commissioner Nate Nanzer is moving to Epic Games,
and long-time esports head Kim Phan recently departed from Activision Blizzard
(Mamiit, 2019). There are many other rumors of other critical esports employees
leaving the company. This is a recent trend within Activision Blizzard that many long-
time figures within the Blizzard team are moving away from the company. However,
Activision Blizzard also laid-off several essential employees, most prominent lay-off
was the producer and esports figure Jason “Alchemister” Baker (Mary-Justice, 2018).
Consequently, talent and knowledge are draining away from Activision Blizzard.
Finally, the numbers are underwhelming. There is no significant growth in
viewership observable (Miceli, 2019). Furthermore, it becomes evident that besides
the Overwatch League, the game Overwatch is less streamed as the data reveals that
most of the viewership is solely contributed to the times when Overwatch League
games are played. That highlights the dominance of the Overwatch League in the
Overwatch business model network but also highlights the nonexistence of anything
besides the Overwatch League. It seems that Overwatch has a certain threshold that it
cannot overcome. It is also questionable when Overwatch League is moving to their
home cities if the turnout of local fans continuously is high over the whole season.
Although, the first homestands were successful, it is unclear if these numbers are

sustainable in the long run. For comparison, the Overwatch League Arena has only
450 seats available. Those seats are mostly sold out, but not comparable to other events,
primarily as the United States is known for being a problematic region for attracting
fans (Scholz, 2019).
The Overwatch League is struggling, and with the high stakes of franchise fees
and extreme success of the sales team in acquiring an extraordinary Twitch deal,
Overwatch League is a short-term success, at least in the form of the shareholder value.
However, this success highlights the importance that Overwatch League needs to be
a success for Activision Blizzard, especially as they are copying the same concept for
their Call of Duty franchise strategy with a franchise fee of $25 million (Brockwell,
2019). At the moment, the return on investment for the shareholder is due to the
franchise fees and the media rights is high, however, many risks are still unknown.
There is no proof or sign that a city-based league can work in this global industry, and
there is no evidence that people like to make a pilgrimage to every game every week
as it is observed in traditional sports. It may even sound incomprehensible in times
in which European football teams are neglecting their home audience and fans in the
arena for their international television audience (Ginesta, et al., 2018). The strategy
from Activision Blizzard also proved that franchising might be harmful without an
overarching strategy for the whole talent-pool and their whole ecosystem. In general,
the overregulating strategy is not, per se, deemed for failure, but overregulation also
needs complete knowledge of all risk, a holistic strategy, and a business model that will
lead to a return on investment in a short period. But, Activision Blizzard is in lock-in,
and they have to make the Overwatch League work, they have to succeed, or their role
as a Tier 1 game developer for esports title is in danger. As Nate Nanzer said: “The
train has left the station” (Valentine, 2018). Activision Blizzard failed to make Heroes
of the Storm work, Hearthstone is struggling, and StarCraft is sustainable, but far from
its glorious times. And there are no rumors for a new game in the pipeline. World of
Warcraft may seem to work and generate high viewership numbers, however, this is
mostly due to the community and the enthusiasm of teams like Method to promote
PvE content as esports (Cocke, 2018). From the outside, it seems that there is no plan
B available.
Activision Blizzard introduced a new approach to influence the business model
network, to set the optimal strategy in the delta-convergence and it may have worked.
However, their strategy is lacking many obstacles which, exponentially, increasing the
risks in the risk network. Still, it is an evolution that may have a new iteration and
evolution in the Call of Duty franchise.
Strategies to Escape This Fate

In the end, everything sums up to the question: What made Activision Blizzard
confident, that their version of the Championship Gaming Series concept will work
successfully in the current evolution of the esports industry? This question rises the
argument, that the success of their esports title is based on a cooperative strategy rather
110 Global Esports
than an overregulation strategy. The great success stories of StarCraft and Warcraft
happened due to the laid-back role of the game developer or even nescient role in the
esports ecosystem. Activision Blizzard (or at that time Blizzard Entertainment) had
no negotiating power for StarCraft in South Korea. The whole South Korean industry
evolved despite the game developer; they “simply” contributed the game and kept it
running (Jin, 2010).
Still, the business model network of Overwatch is not yet dead, but the only stakeholder
capable of changing the ecosystem is Activision Blizzard. Therefore, Activision Blizzard
has achieved the goal of having the power to decide. Consequently, they have to adapt
to the environment they helped to create. Based on the recent developments, several
strategic adaptations could save the business model network of Overwatch:
●● Reevaluate the strategy, is Overwatch a top game in esports? What does it need to
become a real top game that can compete against League of Legends and Counter-
Strike? Is this reasonable or is being in a niche economically sufficient.
●● Focus on its core markets by creating a North American division and an Asian or
Chinese division. The NBA is internationally successful, but it has no European
team.
●● Abandon the other regions and allow everybody else to create their own
operations outside of North America and Asia to foster talents. The
internationalization strategies of the NHL could be helpful to establish such an
environment.
●● Foster the university league system to create a draft system in North America to
have a solid Tier 2 environment. Again, Activision Blizzard has some experience
in that with the Heroes of the Dorm, but with the growth of Collegiate esports in
North America this could be an approach to create something completely unique
in esports.
●● Focus on the needs of the players until this draft system is viable. Any quitting
player hurts the teams and the league overall. Pay competitive salaries and allow
them to form a union to express their interests.
●● Commit to regional talents to foster their brands. If Activision Blizzard sticks to
their overregulation, they can enforce a rule of one player from their respective
region in any lineup.
●● Fix the game in-game as meta changes all the time. Design new heroes that are
easy to watch. Don’t take the easy path, as this may hurt Tier 2 or any other
amateur level where these rules are not enforced.
●● Learn from your past. Every experience in StarCraft, Warcraft, World of Warcraft,
Hearthstone, and Heroes of the Storm as well as Call of Duty makes Activision
Blizzard the most knowledgeable game developer team in the industry.
The case of Overwatch is interesting to observe, as it highlights the over-energetic

dynamism of the esports industry (Scholz and Stein, 2017). At the moment, the future
of the Overwatch League is not bright, and there is still a risk that the league will
collapse in two years with renegotiations concerning media rights and sponsor deals.

By enforcing and dominating its business model network, the game developers may
diverge from the esports industry in creating their closed industry and trying to retain
every stakeholder. The case of Overwatch will be highlighted in this presentation as
an example of a business model network in which the game developer actively tries to
control every part of the game and the league. By doing so, it jeopardizes the long-term
success of the esports title as one of the top games in the esports ecosystem.
Conclusion
The esports industry is still evolving, and many are struggling with achieving the right
balance to find sustainability in their business. It becomes evident that sustainability
can only be achieved by continually changing, converging to others in specific ways,
but also diverging in other parts. Furthermore, the optimal strategy is also shifting,
and, consequently, the concept of delta-convergence, even though it is intriguing
for companies, may be obsolete in the esports industry. This case showed that even
Activision Blizzard had nearly all power, the optimal strategy is shifting. The strategy
of Activision Blizzard can be seen as the typical strategy for traditional companies,
and however, in the digitized world, this strategy is perilous. The rules of business are
shifting in the digitized world, and change is the new stability (Farjoun, 2010).
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7
Statistics, Spectatorship, and the “Attention

Economy” of Esport
Ben Egliston
Introduction
Wearing a suit and sports-broadcaster style headset, a man stands in front of several
large television monitors displaying footage from the popular esports video game
Dota 2 (Valve Corporation, 2013). It’s a scene that wouldn’t look out of place on a
television sports network like ESPN. The presenter is economics professor turned
Dota 2 statistician Alan “Nahaz” Bester—the “statsman” for most major Dota 2 esports
events. He addresses the audience—watching via online streaming platforms and
in-person at a packed-out sports stadium in Vancouver—ahead of a deciding match
between the European powerhouse and crowd favorite Team Liquid and newcomers to
the scene, American squad OpTic gaming. Nahaz goes on to provide a lively narrative
of the two teams’ performance to date, setting the stage for the upcoming match. To do
so, he draws largely from statistical information about each team’s key players’ career
performance. He first describes Team Liquid’s star player, Amer “Miracle” al-Barkawi, a
twenty-year-old Jordanian-Polish prodigy known for his tendency to single-handedly
win games for his team. “Watch Miracle in this match, he is the only player to average
10 or more kills per game in the history of the international [tournament].” He goes
on to describe OpTic’s key “play-maker,” Neta “33” Shapira. “In their last 29 games,
dating back to the Summit 9, they are 0 and 13 when he [33] has more deaths than kills,
they are 13 and 3 when he has more kills than deaths. They [OpTic] are going to need
to hold up 33 in his lane if the green wall [referring to OpTic and their green logo] is
going to stand up to the assault of the defending champs.”
Through the relay of statistical information about each team’s wider performance
history, Nahaz frames the upcoming match as a significant challenge for OpTic, facing
off against the dominant force of Liquid and Miracle. By weaving statistical information
into this expository pre-game narrative, supporters of OpTic might feel uneasy or
anxious ahead of a challenging and daunting matchup, whereas Liquid supporters
might feel reassured in what is expected to be a relatively easy victory.
As this opening vignette shows, much like traditional sports, statistics are a central
and active part of how viewers experience the spectacle of esport. Extending and
116 Global Esports
deepening the limited existing work on the technologies and techniques of esports
broadcasts, as I show in this chapter, statistics operate as an important intermediary
in framing how spectators perceive and engage with esports. To do so, I offer some
reflections upon esports in the popular video game Dota 2. Dota 2 is a MOBA
game—a mix of strategy and role-playing game genres—which involves two teams
of five players (playing as individual “heroes,” or characters with unique gameplay
mechanics) attempting to destroy one another’s “base” (a well-defended structure
located at two corners of the game’s symmetrical map). Dota 2 is popular globally as
an esport, regularly attracting audiences of hundreds of thousands (see https://escharts
.com/tournaments/dota2).
To articulate how statistical representations of player activity might be read as
a crucial aspect of perceiving modern esports, and their stakes in what we might
call the esports “attention economy,” I develop three main arguments. I argue, first,
that statistical information is a key part of how viewers pay “attention” to esports.
Attention, in this context, is not understood in a common sense way as a cognitive
mode of focus or concentration (cf. Davenport and Beck, 2001, 20). Rather, drawing
from the philosopher of technology Bernard Stiegler, attention is understood in terms
of humans’ capacity to perceive time—specifically, our capacity to develop forward-
leaning expectations and potentialize action based on our memories of the past—
something which is always mediated by artifactual forms (with technologies, within the
context of “hyperindustrial” capitalism, as Stiegler sees it, constructing commercially
desirable “circuits” of attention). To give an example, attention to a film is about the
viewers’ capacity to perceive its unfolding, our perception conditioned by a reserve of
cultural and artifactual memory (for instance, a previous scene we’ve viewed, or from
our viewing of other films in its franchise).
Drawing from Stiegler’s concept of attention and mediated temporal perception,
I argue that esports spectators perceive the unfolding of an esports match, or situate
moments of play in relation to a wider tournament, league, or season, via systems of
quantification and numerical abstraction in the form of statistical information. I draw
from Stiegler’s account of cinematic technicity, offered in the third volume of Technics
and Time (2011), to theorize how these statistical interfaces shape perception. To gloss
his argument, Stiegler offers an innovative post-phenomenological reading of cinema
(and techniques like editing) as the technological construction of a flux of perceptual
or temporal experience (which he sees as a key mode of attention and power for the
culture industries). Statistical information I argue is analogous to the selection and
sequencing of editing and postproduction characteristic of cinema—shaping the
temporal flux of the viewer in the unfolding of the esports match, orienting attention
in commercially desirable ways.
From there, I argue that the function of these statistical interfaces is not just to
orient viewers (and help contextualize the match), but to shape how viewers think,
feel, and engage with the content they are watching. To make this point, I draw from
debates around the technological mediation of affect, and the way that contemporary
technologies of capitalism generate value through channeling and modulating affect.
I contend that statistical interfaces as technical exteriorizations of gameplay activity

Statistics, Spectatorship, and the “Attention Economy” 117
create what Slaby et al. (2019) have referred to affective “arrangements”—assemblages

of human and nonhuman actors in a particular setting which affect one another in
particular ways, from which affective states emerge. In the case of esports, data interfaces
give way to particular ways of seeing and parsing the often-complex phenomena on
the screen, from which affective states, or emotional content, may emerge. I suggest
that the goal in doing so is to generate the potential for affective states that might
result in continued viewing and consumption (e.g., excitement, elation, and suspense,
as opposed to boredom or apathy).1 Such a framing is useful, I believe, because it
avoids playing into reductive, determinist claims about technology and affect. Media
do not straightforwardly make us feel things, but rather are designed in such a way
that desirable feelings might be evoked from certain arrangements of user and media.
Having established how statistics work as a kind of technological intermediary
that frames perception of the match, potentializing commercially desirable affective
states (beneficial for both Valve and tournament organizers), I develop a final
argument: attention via statistical information—an enduring part of Dota 2 esport—
is further leveraged for commercial ends by Valve by creating a pay-for-use “fantasy
Dota 2 league.” The mode of attention of spectating through statistical information
is commodified and sold back to viewers in the form of this “freemium” feature for
Dota 2. This represents a unique and interesting way that esports, particularly in
Dota 2, are monetized in contrast to attention economies in other audio-visual media
like television, which more straightforwardly sells commodified consciousness-time to
advertisers (see Stiegler, 2011, 122).
The stakes of my analysis are not to advocate for the “legitimacy” of esports qua
sports (e.g., by showing how they resemble popular sportsmedia, remediating their
use of statistics). Rather, my aim is to examine how esports—as a globally consumed,
ubiquitous, real-time spectacle operates as a key site of what Stiegler (2016) calls
“hypercapitalism”—that is, the condition by which the mediation of perception is put
in service of the growth of capitalism and the stoking of consumerist activity. This
said, while I identify these techniques and evaluate how they modulate consciousness
for commercially desirable ends, I do not go as far as Stiegler—for reasons of scope—
in developing a tactics for combating technologies and techniques of hypercapitalist
mediation, and the dominance and destitution he associates with it.
The argument I develop in this chapter is expected to be pertinent to researchers
studying esports’ “formal” qualities, asking questions like “how does content appear, and to
what end?” Existing work has covered areas like commentary (see, for example, Egliston,
2018; McCrea, 2009; Taylor, 2012), yet there has been relatively little consideration of the
role of statistics or data in the spectator experience (as I discuss in the following section).
Moreover, scholars of esports lack any sustained and critical scholarship about how
paying attention to esports, via data, might encourage habits profitable to commercial
stakeholders in the esports industry (whether designers of esports games, like Valve, or
esports organizations like the Electronic Sports League, or Pro Gamers League). More
generally, the arguments developed in this chapter are relevant to wider discussions
about the role of data in video games—specifically, those about how data mediate ways
of feeling and acting within games (see Egliston, 2019, 2020).
118 Global Esports
This chapter proceeds by situating the topic of statistics in esports spectatorship

around existing work on data and statistics in sportsmedia and everyday life more
broadly. I also do some work surveying the current (yet limited) literature on statistical
spectatorship in esports—outlining the specific contributions made in this chapter.
Next, I introduce and theorize the relation between the main concepts that drive my
analysis—Stiegler’s reading of attention as the mediated perception of time (focusing
specifically on his reading of cinematic/audio-visual media and temporality) and the
notion of affect (and specifically, its meditation or technological arrangement). From
there, I examine how statistical information in Dota 2 esports broadcasts mediates the
flux of perceptual, temporal experience constituting the esports match. I then argue
that the mediated perception of viewers’ perceptual experience works to potentially
elicit particular affective states in viewers, which may be commercially desirable to
Valve and the esports industries. Following on from this, I argue that the mode of
attention of perceiving the game through statistical information has been further
monetized by Valve in the creation of “fantasy Dota 2 leagues.”
Data, Sports Media, and Video Games

As a range of writers have suggested, the capture and relay of “data” has profoundly
shaped how people experience and perceive everyday life (Kitchin and Dodge,
2011)—shaping how phenomena appear, and convening modes of doing and being.
Importantly, this data is often visualized rather than presented in raw statistical or
numerical form. As Wright (2008) notes, data visualization is an effective way to make
data legible for humans. For Drucker (2014), visualization techniques work as not
only an “objective” or “quantitative” account of phenomena but are also “generative” or
“active,” creating capacities for new understandings to emerge.
The relationship between data (and the visualization thereof) and sports has been
considered by a range of scholars from different disciplinary perspectives, with much
of existing work focusing on the interface between the play of sports and data—for
example, in the statistical optimization of performance (see Hutchins, 2016; Millington
and Millington, 2015). Differently, scholars have also considered the relationship
between data and its relation to sports fandom. As writers like Burroughs (2018) note,
the rise of statistical analysis methods in sports (e.g., sabermetrics) and the popularity
of sports-related paraphernalia associated with statistics (e.g., baseball cards) saw a
rise in statistical fandom (e.g., fantasy baseball). As Hutchins and Rowe (2012) note,
networked sports media saw the emergence of specialist communities dedicated to the
statistical analysis of professionalized sports.
More in line with this chapter, some researchers have made the connection between
statistical representations of sports activity and the experience of spectating televised
sports. As Galily (2014, 721) puts it, statistical information (and its visualization and
incorporation into the commentary of the game) is important in shaping how sports
spectators perceive and understand a match. Drawing on perspectives of time from
continental thinkers Stiegler and Heidegger, Crogan (2007) offers a different take on

statistics in televised test cricket matches on an Australian television network. He

suggests that statistical information about the ongoing (lengthy, multi-day) test series
makes moments of past play an “instantly retrievable modality of the present” (2007,
n.p.), creating a continuity between the images on the screen, connecting moments of
significance for the viewer. A range of perspectives about esport have proliferated in
recent years which have made similar arguments about the statistical linking together
of temporally disparate events. Some of this has been from within media and game
studies (e.g., Egliston, 2018), and some within the proceedings of conferences like the
ACM Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, focused on the design of
statistical interfaces for spectating (see, for example, Charleer et al., 2018).
Related to, yet distinct from these perspectives, I argue through the case of Dota 2’s
esport that the apprehension of the esports event in the form of statistics not only
does work to orient the viewer, but also goes further in creating an interface between
viewer and match from which commercially desirable affective states might emerge.
Moreover, the mode of viewing through data is further monetized through Valve’s sale
of pay-to-play “fantasy esports leagues”—an activity that is heavily reliant on statistical
understandings of the game (proliferated through the permanence of statistical
information in Dota 2 esports).
Attention Economy, Technology, and Affect

In this section I outline the concept of attention economy, and how it can be deployed
to think about technology, the mediation of perception, and how people engage
and feel about media. The notion of attention economy (which can be attributed to
writers like Herbert Simon, Michael Goldhaber, Jonathan Beller, and Georg Franck,
see Crogan and Kinsley, 2012) has been used by a range of theorists and researchers
to describe the value of attention over information that has emerged as a valuable
commodity in the twenty-first-century “information age.” Work from the Italian
autonomist Marxist tradition has made significant contributions here—understanding
attention as “embodied as a cognitive capacity expressed not only consciously but also
subconsciously in the various ways in which we comprehend and interact with the
world” (Crogan and Kinsley, 2012, 7). The throughline in much of this work deriving
from Marxist autonomia is that modern, digital capitalism is built upon the capture
and exploitation of attention as scarce commodity (see Lazzarato, 1994; Terranova,
2012).
One of the most perceptive takes on attention economy and contemporary
technology comes from the phenomenologically inspired (or more accurately, post-
phenomenological) work of Bernard Stiegler. Stiegler’s perspective on attention focuses
on questions of power and the management of people as psychopolitical subjects. The
method of this is the mediation of attention (once again, understood as the always-
mediated perception of time) through the technics of capitalism (a dynamic that is
always materially specific; that is, specific to particular kinds of technics. Technics like
television are distinct from books, for instance. See Stiegler, 2009, 6).
120 Global Esports
To understand Stiegler’s take on attention economy we must first understand what

Stiegler posits as “technicity” (and the wider set of concerns about human being and
becoming which motivate his thinking). Developed in volume 1 of Technics and Time
(1998), Stiegler argues that the condition for human existence and individuation
(i.e., the human subject’s always-ongoing becoming, or self-constitution) is neither
the result of some innate biological force (after the transcendental anthropology of
Jean-Jacques Rousseau) nor the presence of technological supplements (after the
paleoanthropology of André Leroi-Gourhan). Rather, Stiegler suggests that the human
“who” exists in composed complicity with the nonhuman or technical “what” (2009,
6). There is, simply, always an equipmental dimension to human individuation. The
capacity for projective thinking, or the potential for any action is the outcome of
cognitive and somatic developments that have arisen from presence of tools and the
capacity of human beings to manipulate them. This originary relation between human
individuation and technics is what Stiegler refers to as a condition of technicity (1998).
In claiming that individuation always has an equipmental horizon, Stiegler is
focused squarely on the reference point of time, which in drawing from and renovating
Husserl’s phenomenology of time is taken as a milieu of human experience. Specifically,
Stiegler draws on and rereads Husserl’s concept of the “temporal object”—which refers
to how an object of our perception unfolds, and is constituted, over time (see Stiegler,
2011, 8–34). Husserl characterizes this in terms of a bipartite schema of “retention.”
The first part is primary retention, our perception of the now, and forward-leaning
anticipation of the future, based on our immediate “just-past.” The second part is
secondary retention, our memory, recall of a temporal object. Husserl’s analysis of
the flux of consciousness crucially takes these categories as distinct (arising from
his rejection of Franz Brentano’s idealist view that there is no way of distinguishing
perception and imagination, see Stiegler, 2009, 188–243). Stiegler’s contention is that
these two forms of memory are distinct, yet related (contra Husserl). Additionally,
the relation between memory and perception is always mediated. For Stiegler, human
temporality is constituted out of an anticipatory projection of the past, made possible
through the medium of technics. Desire, agency, action, imagination, and so on are
temporal experiences that are only ever possible through technics, of a past recalled
through artifactual exteriority. Adding to Husserl’s schema, Stiegler calls this “tertiary
retention.”
It is from this theorization of tertiary retention that Stiegler develops his genealogy of
technology and technicity; that is, his account of how innovations in technical systems,
and adoptions thereof (which variously mediate time consciousness), transform
human life. A large part of this genealogy is dedicated to evaluating the stakes of
what Stiegler calls “industrial” temporal objects, which put temporal perception, and
moreover, human technicity, in service of capitalism (of which he develops a sharp
critique, particularly in his work following from Technics and Time).
Cinema—as a form of time-based media—is a key example used by Stiegler to
develop this argument about capitalism’s mediation of perception. As Stiegler sees it,
cinema as an industrial temporal object is reliant on specific techniques that shape
temporal perception. Editing for instance, as a selection of what appears and structuring

of how it appears, mediates an interplay between our memory and anticipation as we

perceive each ongoing moment. Relevant here is Stiegler’s description of the cinematic
montage and the “Kuleshov effect” (2011, 13–20), which, coined after the Soviet
filmmaker Lev Kuleshov, refers to how viewers of a film sequence derive enhanced
meaning from two sequential shots, rather than a single shot. The point for Stiegler
is that cinematic techniques of editing work to maintain the “just-past in an ongoing
present” (2011, 15). For Stiegler, cinema aims to connect disparate elements together
into a single temporal flux.
Stiegler’s interest in cinema (and electronic and digital media more generally) is a
political one. Through cinema he aims to understand the profoundly transformative
potentials of media on psychosocial individuation, how this materializes power, and
for whom (and how we might develop rehabilitative, critical, and creative uses of
technics as response to this).
Media like cinema, as he suggests, play a transformative role in behavioral
modification, encouraging commercially desirable consumption habits, and so
on. This is not only because of their representational verisimilitude (see Stiegler’s
discussion on this point around Barthes’ well-known analyses of photography, 2009,
42) but rather because consciousness itself exists in a permanently unfolding flux of
perceptions and cultural and artifactual memory; perception itself is cinematic. In
short, Stiegler’s post-phenomenological contribution to thinking about the notion of
“attention economy” is to understand the specific methods of attention capture and
control by the technologies of the culture industries.
While the examples of televisual or cinematic media are perhaps now outmoded
in the current moment of ultrafast and ubiquitous information transfer, we see the
dynamic described by Stiegler—of media as cinematic temporal object shaping our
desires, habits, perceptions, and so on—remediated in a range of contemporary
media. As I show in the following section, esports broadcasts are an exemplary form
of industrial, cinematic temporal object within the landscape of twenty-first-century
media. Esports matches employ a range of “editing” techniques, such as commentary,
analysis (as discussed elsewhere, see Egliston, 2018) and as I discuss in this chapter,
statistics, to link together the images on the screen, mediating an interplay between
recall of past moments (in the present game or in the tournament or league more
broadly) and our forward-leaning expectations of what’s to come.
While I have theoretical commitments to Stiegler’s thought about technology and
the technicity of time consciousness, to think about how we actually become affected
by the unfolding of an esports match, I want to move away from his perspective
that media condition our perceptions in economically desirable, yet often herd-like
ways (with the implication a stifling of our psychosocial individuation). Instead, I
venture another different, but related, argument—one that is only latent in Stiegler’s
theorization of the industrial, cinematic temporal object—that technologies have the
capacity to mediate affect and the affective states of the viewer. In this way, I argue
that mediating time does not just condition us to act as passive consumers, but rather
shapes our capacities to feel or become affected in ways that may be amenable to the
economic interests of the media (here, esports) industries.
122 Global Esports
Recently, numerous theories of technology looking at relations between individuals

and their worlds (e.g., humans and their material environments) have understood
affect as the force or intensity of these situated relations (see, for example, Ash, 2015b;
Slaby et al., 2019). Affect is in this way not something produced epiphenomenally.
Rather, affect denotes relations that provide the foundations for our being in the
world. In this way, affect might be considered in similar terms to what Heidegger
calls Stimmung—translated to “mood” or “attunement.” Stimmung, for Heidegger,
denotes “how we find ourselves disposed . . . the how according to one is in such a
way,” which is “never simply a consequence or side effect of our thinking doing and
acting” (Heidegger, 1995, 67). There is no “being-in-the-world” without the relational
property of Stimmung.
Through a more-than-human perspective toward technology and affect, much
of the focus of inquiry is on the transductive exchanges between a range of different
human and nonhuman forces in an environment, circulating in a way that creates
affective states which may come to matter for humans (see Ash, 2015b). In summary
terms, I argue that by translating gameplay information from one form (video
footage of in-game action) to another (statistical information in numerical form or as
visualization), introducing data into the assemblage of technical and human elements
comprising a broadcast of an esports match (and shaping how we pay attention to
esports matches), the potential for affective states that matter to humans arises.
In the following two sections I apply Stiegler’s theorization of attention (and
the mediation of temporal perception) to think about the orientational function of
statistics in Dota 2 esports broadcasts. From there, I look at how the assemblage of data
and gameplay, which produces a particular mode of attention, creates the capacity for
commercially desirable affective states to emerge in viewing. Following this, I discuss
how the attentional mode to do with spectating through statistical information is
further monetized through Valve’s “fantasy esports leagues.”
Statistics and Spectating Esports

In this section, I argue that statistics are technical exteriorizations of moments of
potential significance within matches, and previous leagues and tournaments, working
to orient the viewer. This orientation, I go on to suggest, works to create an arrangement
of affect—that is, relationalities between viewer, game, and statistical interface. It is
from this arrangement, and the particular modes of viewing it facilitates, that creates
the potential for commercially desirable affects to emerge.
In working to orient the viewer, the goal in using statistical information in esports is
to present information about esport matches as an extended “now.” It is about relating
the present moment of consciousness, and our forward-leaning expectations, to
statistical recaps and data about past play. Statistics—much like the editing techniques
of cinema—generally work to intimate continuity between the images presented on
the screen.

One example of this is of statistical information permanently present on the

screen when watching a match. We might think here of the “resource-lead” figure (see
Figure 7.1) which works as a kind of tertiary retention that spatializes the advantage of
one team relative to another (in terms of total in-game resources accumulated). This
allows viewers, at a glance at any point throughout the match, to situate the present
gameplay in terms of previous performance and shape our expectation of how the
game might unfold. For instance, if one team is at a significant disadvantage, we might
expect them to make bolder plays to stay in the game. Alternatively, if one team has a
significant advantage, we might anticipate them as more likely to win the match.
The mediation of temporal perception is also clear when statistical information is
both presented onscreen and enfolded into the game’s commentary. One illustrative
example of this comes from a match I observed in the 2019 Mars Dota Major League,
during a deciding match featuring 2017 world champions Team Liquid and 2018 world
champions Team OG. Both teams were playing to keep their spot in the tournament,
and to keep progressing to compete for the first-place prize of $350,000. Following
a scrimmage between OG player Ana and some of Liquid’s players, a small window
appears in the center of the screen. The text within it reads: “Highest amount of
damage at 23 minutes on any hero at this event!” with a small image of Ana and a
graphic of a sword (signifying damage dealt) and the text “23958 hero damage.” The
information on the screen made me immediately aware of the significance of Ana’s
performance, framing it within the broader context of the Mars Dota Major. As the
game’s commentator, Austin “Capitalist” Walsh puts it, when the statistics appear on
the screen: “Wow . . . Ana, highest amount of hero damage at 23 minutes on any hero
at this event. Quite an impressive performance.” At this point, a bar graph appears at
the top of the screen showing Ana’s total damage dealt relative to all other players in the
Figure 7.1 Resource-Lead Figure within the Game’s Spectator Interface (Highlighted)
124 Global Esports
game. In this way, statistical information works to frame Ana’s performance, relative to
others in the match and others in the wider tournament series.
Statistical information also often works to create a sense of continuity between a
match and other matches in a league or tournament series, doing so to frame our
anticipation of what may unfold. For example, I observed the use of statistics in a pre-
game analysis segment at the 2016 Manila Major tournament (see also this chapter’s
opening vignette).
During this segment Nahaz contextualizes a matchup between two teams, situating
them within the tournament as both underperforming. As he puts it:
Vici Gaming . . . have a 1.6 team KAD in the tournament, one of the lowest. Lowest
GPM, lowest XP. On the other hand, EG . . . they actually got weaker as the group
stages went on. They lost two straight games with Timbersaw at the end. Their last
match against MVP Phoenix, they called GG just after 17.30, that was the quickest
GG loss in about four months, since they lost to EHome at MDL.
In presenting this description, Nahaz contextualizes the upcoming game as a relatively
even match between the two teams, with both teams characterized by their poor or
uneven performance across the tournament.
Taken together, what these examples spotlight is a linking together moments
of (potential) significance for the viewer, staged via the presentation of statistical
information about the game. Memories of the past, or just-past moments of play
are exteriorized as to shape how we perceive the match. This information is often
present within the spectator interface, but also more directly woven into the game’s
commentary and analysis segments.
In presenting these statistical recaps of past play, which mediate the viewers’
perceptual flux, esports broadcasts create the capacity for audiences to become affected.
As noted in the previous section, the translation of gameplay information into data
does not straightforwardly generate affect. Rather, the mediation of a relation between
the viewer and the ongoing match creates the capacity for affective states that matter to
viewers (and that are often commercially desirable to Valve and the esports industries)
to emerge. Various arrangements of broadcast match and statistical information work
to channel, circulate, and amplify affective states in different ways.
One basic example of the statistical mediation of affect can be seen in the
incorporation of statistical information into the game’s commentary. The previously
mentioned example of Ana’s gameplay is illustrative of this. The game’s commentators
express their own excitement or awe as the statistical information appears on the
screen—exteriorizing Ana’s gameplay performance at the tournament relative to
other competitors. In watching this match live on Twitch, this immediately provoked
a response from the audience. I observed the audience respond and express their own
excitement and awe within the technical limits of Twitch’s chat system (e.g., as text,
emoji-style images). Users responded collectively with chat “emotes” like “PogChamp”
(taken to convey excitement over a moment of skilled play) or text like “Liquid LUL”
(as to play up Ana, and OG’s performance, by disparaging Liquid). I observed that the
atmospheric “tone” of the chat changed significantly during this particular moment,

excitement seemingly experienced most intensely as the casters became affected by

the statistical information on the screen, with the chat pane filled with messages. In
this way, this collective response to statistical information worked to create a kind of
affective resonance (or “contagion” after Gibbs, 2011) between bodies—with viewers’
ways of doing and feeling connected to the experiences and responses of others,
namely, the visceral excitement of the commentary team channeled through the
stream and their responses to the onscreen statistics (resonating with wider accounts
of sports commentary and affect—see McCormack, 2013 and esports commentary and
affect—see Egliston, 2018).
Pre-game panels similarly shape our affective states in viewing—particularly in
terms of affective states to do with anticipation, such as trepidation or uncertainty.
I noted this, for instance, during a segment from the 2019 Starladder ImbaTV
Dota 2 tournament, prior to the grand final series. In this segment, the panel host Rich
Campbell addresses the audience:
Folks we already know that two teams that are going to be going to the major, but
who is going to get the king’s share of the $300,000. . . . Who do we think is going
to take it? We’re going to have some stats to back this up. NIP vs Alliance, Nahaz?
Nahaz responds:
Now this series has taken a turn, because you back all the way 4 months to ESL
Katowice and NIP took 9 straight maps against Alliance, 5 straight series. All of a
sudden Alliance having won 2 of the last 3, upsetting NIP at the EpiCenter Major
qualifiers as well as the win here, 2-1 this series, going the distance, as have all
Alliance this tournament.
Nahaz’s statistical account frames the outcome of this match as unpredictable and
uncertain—either of the two teams could take this high-stakes tournament. In my
experience of watching this match as a NIP supporter, I recall feelings of excitement,
but also anxiety at the outcome of the match, following Nahaz’s statistical overview.
Nahaz’s pre-game framing of the match—and watching the game unfold—I recall
my heart rate rising in moments of tension, particularly when NIP was playing at a
disadvantage to Alliance. Yet, overall, this statistical framing enhanced my experience
of the match, by intensifying my own emotional stakes or investment in it. It felt good to
be a spectator completely mesmerized in the game, something transduced through the
specific technologies and techniques of the esports event. In this way, the incorporation
of statistical material into pre-game segments functioned as a technique of making
temporal experience a permanent anticipation of the next mediated experience—the
end result being more immersed, captivated viewing.
Importantly, affect is something which can be conceived in terms of variable
intensity. Affects can be backgrounded or foregrounded to varying degrees, especially
when mediated (see Ash, 2015a). Most of the examples thus far have demonstrated
how affect is intensified, yet other features demonstrate a more ambient circulation
of affect. We might think here of the previously mentioned resource-score statistic,
126 Global Esports
always present throughout the match. In contrast to other statistical information,

which appear at key moments throughout the game, the resource-lead figure operates
as a kind of low-intensity background, not drawing attention to itself (e.g., through its
prominent placement on the screen, or through elaborate visualizations), yet always
framing our perception and feelings toward the ongoing match. The outcome might be
understood as one of “maintaining” affective states. Because these statistics are always
on the screen, they might, for instance, maintain a prolonged feeling of uncertainty
(and potentially, captivated viewing) if one’s favorite team is at a disadvantage.
Statistical win-probability graphs can also be considered in terms of affect. In
Dota 2, these graphs are often generated by Valve’s machine intelligence program
called Dota Plus.2 The percentage is generated based upon the AI’s data about past
games, and observation of the present game’s unfolding—dynamically responding to
changes within the game. These statistics can straightforwardly channel affect, such as
when they predict a win or loss for a team that one is particularly invested in. Another
less-straightforward way that predictive statistics channel affect is through a kind of
de-legitimization of their own veracity. Statistical information is not always correct,
and when an outcome runs counter to that of the predictive tool, there is often an
amplification of affect. For example, when a team overcomes a significant disadvantage,
this may intensify affective states of elation, excitement, joy, and so on, particularly if
one is a supporter of a particular team. To give an example, in the final game of the
International 2018 tournament, a deciding match for a prize of $11 million and the
title of world champions, Team OG, against Team LGD, had a predicted 8 percent
chance of victory (against LGD’s 92%). Despite these odds, OG played out a highly
unlikely counternarrative, winning the game and the tournament—intensifying my
positive affect as an OG supporter.
Taken together, in this section I have argued that statistical information in esports
broadcasts works to mediate the flux of temporal, perceptual experience—specifically,
working to orient the viewer, linking together moments of significance. From there,
I have argued that the mediation of temporal perception creates the capacity for
commercially desirable affective states to emerge.
Monetizing Attention: Fantasy Leagues

Beyond manipulating viewer attention as to provoke commercially desirable affective
states, recently in Dota 2, Valve have demonstrated how the mode of attention of watching
play through the gaze of statistical information has been further commodified (beyond
enticing continued viewing) through monetized, pay-to-play “fantasy esports” leagues.
To participate in a Dota 2 fantasy esports league, players must purchase a $10 “ticket”
called a “battle pass”—a monetization strategy in the tradition of “freemium” games
(free to play with paid features). Purchasing a battle pass allows users to participate in
Dota 2 fantasy leagues during major, Valve-run tournaments.
Fantasy leagues—traditionally associated with sport—are a form of game where
players assemble “virtual teams” of real-life players. These assembled teams “compete”

against one another based on the statistical performance of their real-life counterparts in
actual games (with fantasy league players’ team performance ranked on a global leader
board). Emulating a managerial role on an esports team, players must select and
remove players from their fantasy team in order to enhance performance. In this
way, familiarity with statistical information about players’ performance is essential to
success. I argue that Valve has piggybacked off statistical representations of gameplay
as a popular mode of attention in Dota 2 esports in introducing this feature.
This is not an argument without precedent. Previous work has made connections
between the enduring presence of statistics in sports (baseball in particular), and the
performance of sports fandom via participation in fantasy leagues (see Burroughs,
2018). As Burroughs puts it, sabermetrics (as a statistical method for the analysis of
baseball) brought with it a way of seeing baseball play as “quantified.” Widely used in
the organization of baseball teams, sabermetrics describes the measurement of in-game
activity via statistical measurements (e.g., batting average). Burroughs connects the
prevalence of sabermetrics and the quantification of baseball to the rise in popularity
of fantasy baseball leagues, a now widespread and commercially lucrative practice
surrounding the sport.
While Burroughs does not put it in such terms, his argument is reminiscent of Stiegler’s
genealogical approach to thinking about technics, and moreover, for conceptualizing
the relationship between advances in technology and attentional modes. Recalling
discussion in the third section of this chapter, for Stiegler each epoch is defined by a
technological innovation, building on that of the previous major innovation. This
process of technological innovation introduces profound disorientations of an existing
cultural program, transforming our ways of doing and being. Stiegler offers some
explanation of this dynamic through his concept of grammatization, which refers to the
process of spatializing or discretizing mental or temporal phenomena. Newer media
or technology often grammatizes previously existing ways of doing and being. An
example is the grammatization of the flux of speech as writing. These grammatizations,
as Stiegler sees it, not only reshape how we think about the flux that was grammatized
(e.g., the influence of writing on oral rhetoric) but also form the basis of new cultural
programs. We might think, for instance, about the kinds of intellect and cultures of
critical reflection emerging from attention to writing. Particularly relevant here is the
discipline of philosophy, the emergence of which can be traced to modes of attention
to do with writing, across a history from Mesopotamian cuneiform, to Egyptian
hieroglyphs, to the Greek alphabet (see Stiegler, 2010). The relevance of this perspective
here is that the discretization of esports phenomena as statistics—as argued in the
previous section—conditions a mode of temporal awareness or perception, which is
sold back to users in the form of fantasy leagues. The result is not the standardization
and commodification of attention in a straightforward sense (e.g., consumerist passivity
around television, with the “time” of consciousness sold to advertisers). Rather, in a
different, more dynamic, yet no less manipulative way, statistics form part of a (meta)
ludic activity (reliant on statistical knowledge)—which players must pay to access.
In Dota 2, a fantasy league involves a player choosing professional players for their
fantasy team based upon their possession of “player cards”—a virtual item, purchasable
128 Global Esports
via real-world currency (in addition to the cost of the battle pass)—which gives the
league player “access” to that professional player. Mirroring the composition of a real-
life esports team, players create a fantasy team comprised of two core hero players (the
main characters that deal damage, accumulate power, etc.), two support hero players
(the characters that back up the core heroes), and one player to fill any hero role. The
individual players on one’s fantasy team accrue points based on their performance
in pro matches played across a particular tournament. A player’s “roster” is scored
each day of the tournament based on the performance of the fantasy team’s real-life
counterparts on that day. Table 7.1 shows the metrics players are scored against.
Success within the “fantasy” Dota 2 arena is reliant on familiarity with the
performance of professionals, and moreover, how to “read” the game through statistics.
For example, knowing that Miracle, a player who has a history of accumulating many
kills can be recruited into my league, I would select him for my team over one of
my current “core” players, EternalEnvy, who has a far less reliable performance
(characterized by very high peaks and very low troughs). It is also crucial that fantasy
league players are aware of not only individual player strengths, but team strength—
with the capacity to perform well in terms of these metrics often dependent on a
team’s overall performance in the game (i.e., if a team loses a match, it is unlikely
that its individual player will have very strong Gold per Minute, etc.). A key part of
this is knowing which teams are likely to win against others based on their “career”
performance (as noted in the previous section, this kind of information is often relayed
through esports broadcasts). Also crucial is an understanding of team performance
in different formats of matches. Certain teams have statistically fared better in
elimination matches or in the elimination bracket (such as Evil Geniuses, known as
the “lower bracket kings” due to their ability to perform better when on the cusp of
being eliminated from a tournament), whereas others—particularly newer teams—
often struggle to perform under pressure. In summary, to accumulate points, a player
Table 7.1 Dota 2 Fantasy Esports

League Scoring System
Statistic Points per

Kill 0.3
Death -0.3
Assist 0.15
Last hit 0.003
Gold per minute 0.002
Tower Kill 1
Roshan Kill 1
Team Fight 3
Wards Planted 0.5
Camps Stacked 0.5
Runes Grabbed 0.25
First Blood 4.0
Stuns 0.05

needs to apply their statistical understanding of the game within the rules and scoring
system of the fantasy league.
While statistical information, as presented in the previous section, works to
technologically construct a flux of perceptual, temporal experience, and moreover,
mediate commercially desirable affective states in viewers, this section offers a different
perspective on the stakes of a statistical mode of attention for Valve. I have argued
that the prevalence of statistical information in Dota 2 esports broadcasts has come
to constitute a taken-for-granted mode of paying attention to Dota 2, one which has
formed the basis for engagement with monetized features like “fantasy leagues.” In
contrast to Stiegler’s take on the commodification and standardization of attention,
this represents a more complex and dynamic mode of deriving economic value from
the attention of media subjects.
Conclusion
This chapter has offered some reflections on the role of statistical information in
shaping how viewers experience and perceive esports, concentrating on the case of
Dota 2. I have argued that statistics and data interfaces operate as key technological
intermediaries that orient viewers in watching esports matches. Drawing on Stiegler’s
account of attention, understood as humans’ always-mediated capacity to perceive
time, I have argued that statistical information works to reshape the temporal
perception of esports viewers—accumulating the consciousness of subjects in a way
consistent with common methods of a contemporary “attention economy” and other
“industrial temporal objects.” Paralleling the techniques of cinema, and like Stiegler’s
reading of cinematic technicity and the mediation of temporal consciousness, I argue
that statistical information allows spectators to link together disparate parts of esports
matches, leagues, and tournaments, operating as a technique to maintain the “just-past
in an ongoing present” (Stiegler, 2011, 15).
This statistical staging of viewer perception of esports matches is a key technique
for creating economic value for commercial stakeholders in the esports industry. I
provide two accounts of how this value is generated. First, I argue that the statistical
orientation of the user, and the mediated experience of the time of the esports match,
represents what Slaby et al. (2019) call an “affective arrangement”—assemblages
of various objects and forces within an environment which affect one another. It is
from this arrangement, I suggest that affective states, which matter to humans, can
potentially emerge. Through these arrangements, esports broadcasts “narrow” the
capacity for affective states to emerge, particularly those which might be characterized
as “positive” and impel continued viewing. Adding to this, I suggest that the mode
of paying attention to esports is monetized in a more complex and dynamic way
than Stiegler’s understanding of older audio-visual media, like television. Instead of
selling the time of captivated attention to advertisers, Valve have introduced a form of
monetized gameplay activity which operates on the very basis of statistical information
being a key mode of paying attention to esports.
130 Global Esports
Notes
1 Relevant here is the question of resistant reception. Of course, users do not all
experience esports in the same way—and the capacity to be affected is contingent
upon one’s own history and context as much as the material configuration of the
esports spectacle. The point made here is that these arrangements make commercially
desirable states more likely (minimizing resistant reception), rather than necessarily
mediating them. Future work might focus more closely on resistant reception.
2 Notably, since DotaPlus’ 2018 launch, a range of data-driven interfaces have been
developed by the broader data analytics industry for use within esports. Perhaps most
notable here is the collaboration between data analytics firm SAP and the Electronic
Sports League. Thanks to the anonymous reviewer for pointing out SAP’s involvement
in esports.
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8
Counting Clicks
Esports, Neoliberalism, and the Affective Power of
Gameplay Metrics
Tom Brock
Introduction
This chapter argues that the gameplay metrics used to measure player performances in
video games enable the competitive logic of capitalism, and a neoliberal subjectivity, to
circulate through esports cultures. Drawing on a case study of the esport Defense of the
Ancients 2 (Dota 2), this chapter will critically consider how its metrics, like “actions-
per-minute,” “match-making rank,” and “kills-deaths-assists,” reward neoliberal bodily
performances. In particular, it will show how these metrics entangle players into a
discourse of “competitive uncertainty” (Beer 2016 also see Davies, 2014) that requires
players to monitor and optimize their performances to remain competitive within
game’s market. This chapter begins by considering existing critiques of video games
and quantification (Whitson, 2013) and its relationship to capitalism (Silverman and
Simon, 2009; Paul, 2018). The purpose is to show that gameplay metrics create the
characteristics of a competitive market and the need for a neoliberal subject. What is
meant by “neoliberal” here? As Dave Beer (2016) argues, neoliberalism is made possible
by the ability to rank and measure things. Ranking things requires the application of
an “economic methodology” to social practices that provide standard measures and
tests against which to differentiate people and establish hierarchies of value (also see
Davies, 2014). This chapter argues that the use of gameplay metrics to rank, compare,
and evaluate Dota 2 players is an example of the economic methodology needed to
make neoliberalism possible.
Moreover, it considers how esports requires a “neoliberal masculinity” (Voorhees,
2015; Voorhees and Orlando, 2018) to manage the game’s competitive market and
what relationship this has with risk and entrepreneurialism (see Baerg, 2012).
The second-half of this chapter will discuss the affective nature of this process by
examining the emotional and embodied responses that gameplay metrics stimulate
and provoke. As James Ash (2010; 2015) argues, video games produce sensory and

Counting Clicks 133
perceptual forms of feedback that shape the habits and conduct of players by “attuning”
their bodies to meet with the challenges and demands of video game environments.
Drawing on Beer (2016), this chapter will consider how players “attune” their bodies to
the numericized setting of Dota 2, giving critical attention to how players navigate the
risks and uncertainty of its competitive market. In particular, it will discuss the feelings
of anxiety that come with the measurement of in-game actions and how players turn
to networks and technologies of performance coaching and “self-help” to manage their
behavior.
This chapter will further our understanding of how competitive video games
bring neoliberal subjects into being in three ways. First, it will draw attention to
how gameplay metrics create the characteristics of a competitive market through
the ranking, comparing, and evaluating player behavior. Second, it will show how
metrics leverage competition and emotion to shape players bodily practices. Third,
it will raise questions about the psychosocial dimension of player identity and how
metrics structure the psyche of a neoliberal subject. Indeed, this chapter will conclude
by suggesting that the competitive gamer is not a purely “instrumental” actor (Taylor,
2011, 2012) but, instead, evidences a fragility and insecurity that metrics help stabilize.
Metrics, Power, and Neoliberalism

What are “gameplay metrics”? According to Anders Drachen, et al. (2013, 23–4),
gameplay metrics are quantitative measures about what players do inside the virtual
environment of a video game. As a player, users can generate thousands of behavioral
measures throughout a single gaming session—each click of the mouse or control pad
generating a reaction and response that is captured and analyzed by the game’s system.
Indeed, sophisticated measures of player activity include the measurement of dozens
of these inputs per second. Drachen et al. argue that these measurements generate large
databases of information that serve a range of purposes, including
1) Informing critical business decisions, such as evaluating user experiences;

2) Notifying developers of games design errors and issues;
3) Supporting players by monitoring and optimizing their in-game performances,
specifically through the use of paratextual statistical analysis to “theorycraft”
(also see, Paul, 2011).
It is this third use of gameplay metrics—to optimize player performances—that is of

concern here.
There is a critical, albeit small body of literature about the use of metrics within
video games and the monitoring of player performances. Most recently, Christopher
Paul’s (2018) book The Toxic Meritocracy of Videogames argues that the measurement of
player performances has a long-standing relationship to the divisiveness and inequalities
present within video game cultures. Of particular note is Paul’s account of World of
134 Global Esports
Warcraft (WoW) (Blizzard, 2003), which suggests that the game’s systems of item levels,
gear scores, and achievement points, create a culture that judges and attributes talent,
ability, skill, and merit to those with the highest or best set of numbers. Indeed, Paul
goes on to argue that, despite the fallacy of attributing skill to item level, players typically
use these metrics to benchmark one another; pre-selecting and grouping only with
those who have attained the highest-level items. This process, argues Paul (2018, 138),
reproduces a meritocratic ideal that encourages inequality and difference,
“Video games are predicated on inequality, on the perception that some people are
better than others and that when one is victorious it is precisely because of that player’s
actions, that player’s timely interventions and button presses.”
Metrics facilitate this normative expectation by providing players with a measure or
number that acts as a “symbolic currency” (Paul, 2018, 113) of their skill.
Paul is not the only games scholar to critique this symbolic currency or to recognize
that metrics play a divisive role in video game culture. Silverman and Simon’s (2009)
account of “Dragon Kill Points” (DKP) in WoW raises an interesting question about the
relationship between numerical systems in video games and competitive self-interest.
DKP was a commonly accepted method of calculating and distributing rewards within
raiding guilds by assigning players points for participation in boss kills. However, as
Silverman and Simon note, many of the world’s best guilds rejected the DKP system as
it incentivized self-interest over group accomplishments.
Players would accumulate or “horde” DKP and exchange it for one highly prized
item, rather than incremental upgrades that were of benefit to the raiding group as a
whole. As such, the DKP system discourages collaboration and rewards meritocratic
play (also see Paul, 2018, 114).
Indeed, Simon and Silverman (2009, 364) argue that the DKP system was a prime
example of what Foucault calls “disciplinary power”; a set of techniques of (self-)
surveillance that regulates the behavior of individuals to accept the competitive logic of
capitalism. For example, the DKP system tracks and codifies the value or merit of each
player; rewarding those sufficiently committed and skilled while punishing those who
were either late or lazy. Simon and Silverman (2009) argue that this quantifiable-me
asure-cum-mechanism-of-disciplinary-power shapes player bodies and subjectivities,
creating an obedient, efficient and productive “power gamer” willing to embrace the
most rational and competitive characteristics of a capitalist market.
Baerg’s (2012) analysis of risk and risk management in digital role-playing games
also highlights this relationship between ludic structures and neoliberal logics. Baerg
argues that stat distribution systems and combat sequences in games like Neverwinter
Nights 2 position the player to manage the game’s world as a risk. He provides examples
from character creation to spell and equipment selection to reveal how players
manage the data of the game to maximize their avatars. Baerg argues that the search
for an “optimal build” through cost-benefit analysis is an example of how neoliberal
rationalities undergird players engagement with the game’s quantitative systems. In
this sense, he provides an excellent example of how play practices take up the mandate
of “neoliberal technologies of the self ” to engender and refine more productive bodies
(also see Whitson, 2013).

Counting Clicks 135
This argument aligns with more recent critiques of the body politics within esports.
Recent esports research has interrogated the relationship between masculinity and
neoliberalism to establish a groundwork for the critical examination of video games.
The work of Gerald Voorhees (Voorhees, 2015) and others (Voorhees and Orlando,
2018) has been central to this, as it recognizes that esports is a nexus for thinking about
the relationship between neoliberal rationalities and contemporary masculinities
within Western culture. Voorhees argues that the masculine-identities present within
esports scenes is motivated by a single guiding logic or principle—competitive success.
Indeed, he uses Michel Foucault’s theorization of “neoliberal governmentality” to
make the following claim,
The professionalization of digital gaming is a means of bringing into being Homo

Economicus by incentivizing, through high-stakes competition, a way of being
dictated by rational choice and cost-benefit analysis . . . . [Esports] rationalizes
the activity of play and legitimates patterns of interaction that are otherwise
unacceptable within the dogmas of hegemonic masculinity. (Voorhees, 2015, 68)
Voorhees presents a sophisticated analysis of the neoliberal body politic within esports,
which draws on the idea that elite players must purposively train their bodies in the
art of Homo Economicus. That is, through a cost-benefit analysis, players rationalize
every act of play in order to determine their effectiveness within a competitive
market. In this sense, Voorhees is developing an argument following the work of
T. L Taylor (2012) and others (Taylor, 2011) who recognize that there is a tendency
within esports to “instrumentalize play.” For example, Taylor suggests that competitive
success is contingent on professional players maximizing their chances to win through
the extensive study of game mechanics and the competitive circuit. The process of
rationalizing play occurs as players seek to achieve the most efficient return upon
in-game activities through a great deal of study, whether of past matches, databases
containing game data, and discussion forums. Voorhees argues that this practice
transforms play into a kind of “economic calculus”—the study and record of complex
information to calculate costs and benefits. Indeed, Voorhees suggests that the gender-
identity of the professional gamer is one which eschews a typically hyper-masculine,
violent, or muscular subject position. Instead, it is one that normalizes neoliberal logic
by celebrating the most efficient combination of skills and abilities needed to succeed
(also see Brock, 2017).
Helpfully, these critical analyses draw attention to the power of metrics in video
games, but more needs to be said about their affective capacity to create neoliberal
subjects. In the book Metric Power the sociologist Dave Beer (2016) examines the
intensifying role that systems of measurement and calculation play in ordering and
shaping everyday life. Drawing on a range of examples, from Apple Watch, Facebook,
and Google Scholar, Beer (2016) argues that metrics have the “affective power” to
entangle people into a neoliberal discourse. Beer’s argument begins from the simple
premise that metrics are often used to judge our performative capacities and create
mechanisms that compare, rank, and display our victories and failures. Apple Watch
136 Global Esports
is an obvious example—its systems continuously measure and evaluate our bodily

routines against a set of performative goals. It tells us what to eat, when to sleep, and
how much to walk. The device continually evaluates and ranks how “well” each act is
performed by providing us with positive or corrective feedback in the form of a “score.”
For Beer (2016), it is this quantifiable judgment of our performances that aligns our
identities toward the values of neoliberalism.
Metrics like, “personal bests” or “move goals,” which can display information
through competitive leaderboards, reward self-interest and normalize the idea that the
market is the principal organizing feature of social life. In Beer’s (2016, 7) own words,
“Perhaps then the very growth of systems of measurement that we have seen is a kind of
marker of neoliberal rationalities at work—found in the desire to measure. Wearables
devices like the Apple Watch make it possible to govern ourselves by numbers in much
more nuanced, personalised, and direct ways.” Beer’s main point—which goes beyond
wearable technologies—is that systems of measurement are crucial in the realization
and deployment of neoliberal political formations. Competition cannot exist without
measurement as measures enable the criteria and hierarchies needed to judge winners
and losers. Why is this important? Because, for Beer, metrics change how people frame
social relationships and practices. His concern is that quantifiable measures evaluate
social conduct solely in terms of their capacity to compete productively within the
market, rather than having any social or cultural value. It is this process, argues Beer,
which connects metrics to the political economy: systems of measurement establish
competition as the behavioral norm while cementing inequalities into the composition
of social life. Indeed, following Foucault, Beer (2016, 27) sees metrics as a way to
shift power into the hands of those who can present numbers as an “apparatus” of
knowledge.
Of particular interest in Beer’s analysis is the affective or emotional capacity
of metrics to entangle our bodies into neoliberal political formations. Beer (2016,
212) argues that the power of metrics extends beyond mere surveillance—beyond
the simple tracking, capturing, or comparing of physical acts—into the structuring
of how we feel and what it is that we think and do. In his own words, metrics can
“entangle” our bodies into processes of governance and self-governance by provoking
emotions of anticipation, expectation, worry, fear, anxiety, and concern. Here, Beer
is developing on the work of James Ash (2010), who argues that video games are
successful because they create environments that purposively produce affective
encounters (they establish an “architecture of affect”). Beer (2016, 203) advances Ash’s
original argument by examining the way that metrics captivate or “attune” bodies
to the demands of marketized competition through negative affect. He argues that
systems of measurement produce “competitive uncertainty”: an unshakeable sense that
our performances will be compared, ranked, and judged. This uncertainty cultivates
feelings of anxiety, which people try to manage by adopting strategies of self-training
and performance management. Competitive uncertainty is how metrics connect bodies
to neoliberalism: by using anxiety to drive competitive advantage. Indeed, Beer argues
that the model subject of neoliberalism is the entrepreneur: a person who, through
the calculation of risks and uncertainties, can pursue personal success competitively.

Counting Clicks 137
Beer’s critique of the affective power of metrics raises the question of how
a competitive video game entangles people into the processes of neoliberal
governance. This chapter argues that this entanglement takes place through the
measurement, ranking, and comparison of player performances, which generates
the uncertainty and techniques of self-surveillance required to secure competitive
advantage. Uncertainty is a critical component of games design (Costikyan, 2013)
and Dota 2 is no different in this regard. Indeed, the next section of this chapter will
consider how Dota 2 generates a discourse around metrics that draws players into
processes of neoliberal governance by requiring them to manage the uncertainty of
its competitive ranking structure.
Dota 2: Metric Power

Dota 2 is a competitive team-based multiplayer online battle area (MOBA) with roughly
11.7 million unique players (Valve, n.d.). The objective of the game is to collectively
destroy the opposing team’s “Ancient” base structure while defending your own. Two
teams of five players battle against one another with each player selecting 1 of the
115 playable characters known as “heroes.” The design of each hero has specific attributes,
which influence health points, mana points and attack speed, and unique abilities, like
offensive or defensive spells. Players may also purchase items that augment these heroes’
unique abilities for in-game currency, earn through the killing of “creeps”—computer-
controlled creatures that travel predefined paths along lanes within the map.
This arrangement means that Dota 2 has a complex and highly emergent ruleset
that provides players with a vast array of information and detail. Players must use this
information to develop their strategies while working together, as a team, to destroy the
opposition’s base. To help players efficiently control these heroes and assimilate vital
information from the game world, Dota 2 utilizes several systems of measurement.
These systems analyze gameplay and provide real-time and post-game feedback to
help players improve their performances (also see Egliston, 2019). Examples of these
metrics include the following:
“APM,” which measures how many actions a player performs per minute.
“KDA-ratio,” which measures how many “kills,” “deaths,” and “assists” a player has
acquired.
“GPM” and “XPM,” which measures how much gold and experience a player has
acquired per minute.
“LH/DN score,” which measures how many “killing blows” a player has landed to
a creep or enemy hero to generate gold.
“MMR,” which represents the skill level of each player and is used to determine
leaderboard rankings.
These metrics are not only used to help players keep track of in-game events and
activities. They are also used to help players acquire a sense of game mastery, and skill
138 Global Esports
(Brock and Fraser, 2018) as increments in these measures reflect an understanding of

the in-game strategies and the meta (Huang, et al., 2017).
Now, following Beer’s argument about metric power, consider the discursive
environment that these metrics generate. According to the esports journalist Stephen
Chiu (2018), writing for the website vpesports.com, APM is considered the baseline
that we give to measuring the “raw mechanics” and “peak potential” of a Dota 2 player,
Spamming APM is one of the key things players should do as beginners for a few
reasons. First is that it trains your fingers and mind to move at that speed [. . .]. The
second step is to try to think about what you actually need to do in each game with
your allotted APM. Then with practice, you push your limit over and over again in
ladder games, and that is how you eventually improve.
Chui suggests that APM is about connecting the body to strategy through what he
calls “processing speed”: “the ability to see a specific moment in time and analyse,
break down, and come up with a counter-strategy within milliseconds.” This speed—
which comes from clicking quickly—is said to establish a “reflex” that connects a
player’s capacity for quantitative analysis with a competitive advantage. Indeed, it is
an “apparatus of knowledge” (Foucault, 2007 in Beer, 2016) within the Dota 2 esports
community that APM (or to be more accurate, Effective Actions Per Minute, EAPM)
facilitates active and faster reaction times. APM is said to give players better control
over the game, better visualizing of the maps, better knowledge of the items available,
and better insight into how to manage one’s heroes and competitors effectively and
efficiently.
The rhetoric or language used typically concerns advising players on how to “better
manage your game.” There are a range of websites, such as dotabuff.com, joindota.com,
dotafire.com, and dota2.gamepedia.com, as well as YouTube or Twitch.tv channels, such
as Dota Alchemy, Game Leap, or Purge Gamers, which offer players many “tips” and
“tricks” on how to maximize their game time and boost their leaderboard rankings.
This advice comes in the form of advising players about their metrics as indicators of
skill and areas for improvement. For example, as part of his “Dota Basics” YouTube
series, Kevin “Purge” Godec (2018a), suggests that metrics indicate the speed and
efficiency by which players accomplish in-game tasks, such as farming resources, like
gold or experience points. He gives the metric “LH/DN score” particular attention,
arguing that it reflects the effectiveness of players to generate gold by killing creeps (or
by denying enemies of this income),
once you get the basics of the game you should try to improve your current
speed. For example, if you average 40 last hits by 10 minutes, practice your
last hitting a bit and later try to get 50 last hits by 10 minutes instead. The
gold difference will give you a big edge over your opponents. Generally, always
keep in mind how you are spending your seconds in the game if you become
inefficient and accomplish little with your time then it will have a very big
negative effect on your game.

Counting Clicks 139
Central to Godec’s advice is the idea that LH/DN score is a measure of player
productivity and indicative of wasteful or inefficient “gold farming” practices. He shows
the importance of this through a discussion of the need to practice with the “Last Hit
Trainer,” a core feature of the Dota 2 gameplay system, which provides players with
additional scores, percentages, and rankings of their LH/DN capabilities. Godec suggests
that each practice session with the trainer is an opportunity for players to learn from
their mistakes, and he encourages them to ask the following questions, introspectively:
“Why did you waste your time there?,” “What should you have done instead?,” and
“How could that have helped you?” The goal of these self-surveying questions, Godec
suggests, is to encourage players to secure an economic advantage, training them to be
more time and resource-efficient. Indeed, he concludes by arguing that a good (gold)
income is the foundation on which Dota 2 players establish victory—cementing the
connection between measurement, resource management, and competitive acuity.
This focus on measuring player efficiency extends beyond farming practices to a range
of other behaviors in Dota 2, specifically those concerned with MMR. As a selection of
articles, blog posts, and videos affirm (Brown, 2018; Meric, 2019; Stronk, 2017), there are
no less than eleven different metrics that calibrate player rank or leaderboard position,
including KDA, APM, LH/DN score, Win/Loss Rate, Match Length, Damage to Tower,
Damage to Enemy Heroes, Wards Placed, Neutral Creep Stacking. The implication here
is that players need to multitask across many different activities and that metrics assist
them in understanding their efficiency and effectiveness (also see “Calibration MMR in
Dota 2: A Detailed Guide,” 2019). Indeed, there are several related YouTube channels, like
Game Leap, Goodboy Guides, or Purge Gamers, which promise to help players improve
upon their MMR. This advice typically comes through the suggestion that players focus
their training on practices related to these metrics, from laning effectively to stacking
neutral creeps to optimizing itemization. As Godec (2018b) suggests, “if you want to get
good at Dota 2 it helps to understand how the numbers work.”
To take another example, consider Godec’s (2019) advice about itemization. Itemization
refers to how players can improve their hero’s abilities by using gold to purchase in-game
items that boost specific spells and attributes. There are over 150 of these items in Dota
2, each with attributes that modify core hero mechanics, like health, mana regeneration,
armor, movement speed, attack speed, and many more. Many of these items also modify
multiple attributes at once, making the selection particularly complicated, as each hero
only benefits from specific attributes. Godec (2019) suggests that, if players want to win,
they need to understand the costs and benefits of each item. He gives a detailed analysis of
the vast array of numbers that players must pay attention to when considering each item
and its potential to influence a hero’s damage, defense, and mobility. In particular, Godec
(2019) suggests that players need to understand how the attributes of each item correlate
to specific hero abilities. Otherwise, players will “waste” gold and time by undermining
the effectiveness of their heroes. This rhetoric draws an equivalency between metrics
and player skill. In particular, it suggests that by controlling these numbers, players can
render the competition more intelligible and manageable. Indeed, the launch of Dota 2’s
new premium monthly subscription service—called “Dota Plus”—is aimed at delivering
tools to meet with this very rationality. Dota Plus boasts a range of statistical features and
140 Global Esports
measures to improve player performances (also see Egliston, 2019). One feature that is of
particular relevance here is its performance-coaching technology called “Plus Assistant,”
which Valve (n.d.) describes in the following way:
The collective knowledge of the Dota community is vast, and every day, in millions
of games played around the world, it grows. Now, with the help of Plus Assistant,
that global repository of Dota knowhow can be brought to bear on every single
game you play. Plus Assistant offers real-time item and ability suggestions—
generated from data gathered across millions of recent games at each skill
bracket—to keep you up-to-date on the latest trends. Whether you need advice on
which hero best fits a draft, or aren’t sure what to build after securing that coveted
Blink Dagger, Plus Assistant is in your corner.
As such, for a small monthly fee, players can now pay money to have access to the latest
in performance coaching technologies—they can benefit, on an individual basis, from
the use of big data, statistical analytics, and AI modeling to get a competitive edge. The
Plus Assistant will tell players what items to buy and when. It will also offer players
advice on what abilities to select, and it will change these suggestions, in real-time,
depending on previous behavior, current opponent hero selection, and lane—or area of
the map—the player resides. In Valve’s own words, Dota Plus is about “enhancing” the
play experience by helping players to get the most out of every match. Indeed, Dota Plus
gives players access to smart data solutions to produce speedy and efficient subjects.
“Second-by-second death summaries,” “post-game analytics,” “spectator game outcome
prediction graphs,” “in-game real-time analytics comparisons,” “hero trend analyses,”
including “pick rate,” “win rate,” “ban rate,” “talent pick rate,” “average KDAs,” “average
GPMs,” “average XPMs,” and so on—all of these metrics aim to assist player victory by
turning their clicks into clear frameworks of efficiency and progression.
Following Beer, it is this leveraging of data to help improve player performances
that embed neoliberal rationalities into the gameplay practices of Dota 2 players.
The real power of these metrics is in their capacity to simplify complex, competitive
arrangements and present them to players as a way to promote their individualized
agendas. Indeed, players use Dota Plus (and other community-generated content) as a
means to leverage data to remain competitive.
However, this is a double-edged sword. There is always an area where the data shows
that players are behind or that their competitive position looks fragile. These metrics
intensify the competitive culture in and around Dota 2 as its discourse attributes value
to those who can(not) manage competitive uncertainty by making quick, accurate, and
efficient decisions.
Dota 2: Affect and Anxiety

Like Beer (2016), we might unpack the relationship between metrics and neoliberalism
by revealing the “psychosocial costs” of measuring player performances. Indeed, Beer

Counting Clicks 141
argues that the costs of neoliberalism often manifest themselves in the feelings of stress,
insecurity, anxiety, and shame that comes from measuring people’s performances
(also see Gill, 2010). What instigates these feelings is a sense of the uncertainty of
competition, which, then, drives agents to embrace further methods and techniques
of self-training and risk management (also see Scharff, 2015). In particular, Beer
argues that uncertain subjects are likely to fashion entrepreneurial strategies out of
the precarious experiences afforded by marketized competition. Indeed, he argues that
the neoliberal outlook is to embrace risk in the certainty that one can overcome its
challenges and anxieties.
An excellent example of this is how the discourse of measurement and calculation
provokes feelings of anxiety within the Dota 2 community. Indeed, there is an intense
affective dimension to MMR with many forums, blog posts and community-driven
content providing examples of players talking about the anxieties and insecurities that
come with playing ranked competitive matches. A search of Reddit, as well as forums
on websites like dotabuff.com, joindota.com, dotafire.com, reveals over 3,700 posts from
Dota 2 players, discussing the negative effects that “ladder anxiety,” “SOLOQ anxiety”
(and other terms) have on player experiences of the game.
For example, in one Reddit thread, entitled “Does anyone else get solo queue
anxiety?” (WinterTitan, 2017) players discuss the worries that come with “obsessing”
over MMR as well as the “anger,” “fear,” and “frustration” that comes with losing
coveted leaderboard positions. One player writes,
I have a hard time looking for a game on solo because I get so anxious about losing
and can never hit the play game button. Idk if it’s just me or how to even get over it.
This quotation reveals that the MMR system, through solo queuing, has the power to
generate symptoms of stress and anxiety; the strength of which creates a physical and
mental barrier to playing the game. Another player captures the way that this stress
manifests as a result of criticisms of their previous performance(s):
I’ve had this for years, can’t play solo unless I’m really drunk. I’ve tried a few times
and it’s gone really well, no flaming, even won some, but it’s been so stressful.
This is a type of performance anxiety, where you worry about playing well and
that you’ll get flamed if you don’t. As a result I’ve become unable to take negative
feedback in all parts of my life. If anything negative happens, I brood on it for days.
I keep thinking about playing more, but as soon as I run the game and look at that
play button, I get physically ill and give up.
This quotation gives deeper insight into the affective power of metrics as the player
reflects on the “toxicity” of Dota 2 (also see Paul, 2018) and its mental and physical
impact on their play. In particular, through the notion of “flaming,” it’s clear that the
prospect of losing ranked games (and therefore MMR) justifies a fear of personal
attacks based on previous experiences. This fear appears to generate anxieties
alongside a strong physiological response (“physically ill”) to stay away from the game’s
142 Global Esports
competitive culture. Of course, this culture (and toxicity) also extends to the Reddit
post itself, as one commentator shows,
Stop being a pussy. It’s a video game.
Not all comments capture the negative affect that competition, through MMR,
drives. There are also examples of players offering advice. For example, one player, in
responding to a post by user “Mega The Medic Main” (2015), entitled, “How do I get
over my solo queue anxiety?,” writes:
identify the root of problem: are u scared of playing vs other people? are you
scared of getting pwnd? are you scared of losing mmr?
just remember that losing is a great way to learn . . .
learn the game, and raise your skill level instead of the number called match
making rank points because your mmr will follow your skill level one way
or another and not the other way around.
always have confidence in your skills and every time you queue you should feel
excited to outsmart, outplay and destroy the opposition.
This advice clearly links the physiological impact of anxiety to MMR and offers
emotional and practical advice to help this player manage the uncertainty that
accompanies competition. In particular, the advice suggests that the player can manage
their anxiety by improving upon their in-game skill, bringing the focus back to the
player’s need to improve as a means of developing self-confidence.
Some members of the community take this idea of support much further, creating
content that coaches Dota 2 players about their mental and physical well-being.
For example, one YouTube channel, The Dota Clinic, dedicates some of its content
to offering players explanations of and remedial strategies to ladder anxiety. In one
video, entitled “Understanding Anxiety,” MJ “Finch” Finch (2014a), whose public
profile suggests that he is a behavior analyst, and holds a master’s degree in Clinical
Psychology, explains that ladder anxiety is caused by the physiological response(s) of
the body to stress factors. These factors include the following:
●● Event importance—the more important the event, the more anxiety it causes in
the individual.
●● Uncertainty—the more uncertainty, the more anxiety.
●● Personal sources of stress—if a person has a lot of personal things going on, it all
builds up.
●● Trait anxiety—some people are just more anxious than others.
●● Self-esteem—low self-esteem leads to low self-confidence, which leads to more
anxiety.
●● Social physique anxiety—When a person is anxious due to a person viewing
something about them (in sports, physical appearance). In Dota, your MMR
rating.

Counting Clicks 143
Finch argues that these stress factors are likely to affect player performances negatively
as, if left unattended, anxiety can become overwhelming and lead players to “crumble.”
As such, Finch (2014b) suggests that players adopt a range of self-care and confidence-
building practices to manage the performance anxiety that accompanies ranked
games. Finch suggests that by exercising regularly, eating healthily, breathing deeply,
thinking positively and acting confidently, players can manage their ladder anxiety and
compete more effectively. The key to these therapeutic techniques, Finch suggests, is
that they manage the emotional aspects of the stress (or “fight-or-flight”) response that
the ranking and evaluation of player performances instigates.
Finch is not alone in coaching players on the therapeutic strategies needed to persist
in ranked Dota 2 games. Across various sites, and community-driven content, there is a
list of remedial practices, including meditation, stretching, drinking green tea, twisting
a towel very hard, taking regular hot showers and hot baths, avoiding caffeine and
sugary sweets, taking regular breaks, and reviewing past achievements. These practices
appear to be particularly important when players are facing a losing streak. For example,
as part of Dota Alchemy’s “Mental Game” video series, professional player Andrew
“Jenkins” Jenkins (2018), talks about the well-being routine that he has established to
help him manage the competitive stresses of the ranked matchmaking system, which
includes listening to classical music, keeping his bedroom clean, going for walks at
night, and developing a “mantra” that focuses and self-motivates him—all activities
that Jenkins says help to “calm” and “ground” him by providing a sense of control.
Jenkins notes that the need for these therapeutic strategies are particularly poignant
when he is being “flamed” or having his performance criticized by other players, as
negative comments about his performance typically intensify his insecurities,
[these strategies] give me something that I can focus on that’s not just okay does
this guy hate me, is this guy going to trust me, oh my god, I’m going to fuck up. I’m
not going to think all of these things. I’m just like okay, I got to do this job, I got
to do this job, and I got to do this job, you know it creates this structure for you.
Jenkins’ advice here reveals the strategies that he deploys to “become un-tilt-able”—a
phrase commonly adopted (from Poker) to capture the state of mental or emotional
confusion or frustration in which a player adopts a less than optimal strategy. Jenkins
establishes a well-being routine to control his environment and manage this anxiety
such that it does not interfere with the efficiency or productivity of his gameplay.
This idea—that anxiety must be dealt with to ensure competitiveness—is conferred
through the advice of Dan “Foxdrop” Wyatt. In his video entitled, “How to deal with
and overcome ranked anxiety,” Wyatt (2015) suggests that he has consulted a chartered
psychologist and an academic researcher on emotions to provide players with the
coaching needed to change their behavior. First, he outlines what the symptoms of
ranked anxiety are—feeling nervous when queuing for games, getting cold hands,
shivers, and a faster heart rate. Then, second, Wyatt offers players a list of methods to
control their actions. He suggests that triggering player anxiety is a two-step process.
On the one hand, players “think” incorrectly by spending too much time focusing on
144 Global Esports
what is to lose or at stake. On the other hand, players “act” incorrectly by not coping
with the realization that failure is a constituent of playing a competitive multiplayer
game. This realization leads Wyatt to suggest that players need to change the way that
they view their losses because this will change the way that they “cope” with them. He
goes on to advise that players need to rethink games as opportunities to improve:
if your end goal is to come out a better player than you went going in, there isn’t
doesn’t matter if you lose as long as you learn something from each game that
you play then win or lose you’ll be successful and you can remove the anxiety
connected with the outcome of the game.
Wyatt’s rhetoric establishes the idea that anxiety comes from misperceptions in player
thinking. He reframes the problem to suggest that gameplay is not about winning but
about one’s ability to learn and improve. He suggests that players need to “train their
brains as if it were muscle”—the being to improve one’s performances through micro-
enhancements in player strategy. Indeed, in his own words, players need to develop a
better “internal locus of control” by focusing on the elements of gameplay that they can
improve upon—like their gold farming practices, laning strategies, and build orders.
For Wyatt, such practices establish a positive “feedback loop” in psychology that helps
players to manage their anxiety by producing a stable internal locus of control.
It is clear from this rhetoric that the psychosocial costs of metrics—to generate
feelings of stress, insecurity, anxiety and even shame—are all present within the
discussions around MMR in Dota 2. Indeed, techniques of power and self-governance
operate through the affective capacity of MMR to generate uncertainties and anxieties.
In response, players seek advice and are offered amateur forms of psychological
counseling as a way of coaching them to become “better” players. These coaching
techniques mix holistic remedies with cognitive behavioral therapy to encourage players
to embrace methods and techniques of self-training and risk management. Indeed, the
unifying logic behind each act of advice is that players need to improve themselves
if they are to manage and overcome the competitiveness that characterizes Dota 2.
In this sense, players, as uncertain subjects, establish an “entrepreneurial alertness”
(Beer, 2016, 194; also see Lilley and Lightfoot, 2014) to the precarious experiences
afforded by marketized competition. The coaching and advice provided by members of
the Dota 2 community reflect the need for players to develop entrepreneurial strategies
to manage the psychosocial costs of neoliberal competition. The irony is that many
of these strategies refer back to the very methods of measurement and performance
evaluation that produce the uncertainties and anxieties that entangle players into
seeking out advice.
Conclusion: Metric Tyranny

The application of Beer’s concept of “metric power” to Dota 2 reveals the impact
of gameplay metrics to generate competitive uncertainty through the ranking,

Counting Clicks 145
comparison, and evaluation of player performances. As such, this chapter captures

the tendency for measurement in games to encourage players to adopt the approach
of Homo Economicus (Baerg, 2012; Voorhees, 2015; Brock, 2017). There is plenty of
evidence within the discursive environment of Dota 2 to suggest that metrics assist
players to apply an economic methodology to their gameplay practices.
Examples from the rhetoric used around APM, GPM, LH/DN score and other
measures reveals how players manage the data of the game to maximize their
efficiency and effectiveness. As with other examples, Dota 2 players are encouraged
to adopt a cost-benefit analysis as the game rewards those who take up the mandate
of self-improvement and productivity. Indeed, Dota 2 is an example of a “neoliberal
technology” (Whitson, 2013), given its emphasis on metrics as a pathway to performance
enhancement and success. Equally, this technology leverages data to create a discourse
of uncertainty in which success pivots on the capacity of players to respond quickly,
accurately, and efficiently. Dota Plus is a technology built to aid players in managing
the risk of this uncertainty, offering them even more measures on the understanding
that this will render the competition intelligible and manageable. In this sense, the
Dota 2 player meets with Voorhees’ account of neoliberal masculinity—players use
metrics to find the most efficient combination of skills and abilities needed to succeed.
Indeed, the very idea of performance coaching draws parallels with his analysis of
entrepreneurialism in esports. In essence, the Dota 2 player manages competitive risks
by calculating the costs and benefits of this advice.
However, this chapter also contributes new knowledge as it reveals that behind the
economic rationalities that typically characterize a neoliberal agent is a precarity or
uncertainty that profoundly affects the Dota 2 subject. There is a “biopolitics” (Foucault,
1997) to counting clicks—a fragility, uncertainty, and insecurity within masculine
identity formation as it is thrust into the market of competitive gameplay and asked
to cope with the stresses and anxieties of having one’s performances monitored and
evaluated. Following Voorhees (2015), this subject is both neoliberal and hegemonic.
It is clear from the discourse that players adopt techniques and strategies of self-
governance that further rely on engaging with the competitive market. Thus, we see
examples of community-generated content coaching players on the costs and benefits
of managing the risks to their well-being. In other words, the community naturalizes
the anxiety that metrics generate by holding one another individually responsible for
overcoming the psychological and physiological constraints that market conditions
generate. Entrepreneurialism rules within this grid of intelligibility—as players coach
one another into becoming speedy, smart, prophetic, efficient, and, above all, “un-tilt-
able,” subjects.
There is, of course, something paradoxical about players packaging and distributing
this self-help advice according to market criteria (Giddens, 1991). Dota 2 players
position themselves as concerned with overcoming the anxieties that competition
generates while also seeking out ways to make themselves more effective within
its marketplace. This process often involves them having to embrace the risks,
uncertainties, and anxieties that gameplay metrics generate while insourcing the
responsibility for making the correct choices needed to remain competitive. As the
146 Global Esports
advice from Wyatt and others show, the central motif running through performance
coaching is that players must take responsibility for their own life and sense of well-
being. This discourse takes competitive uncertainty and combines it with an ethos
of self-actualization, self-development, self-growth, and self-help to drive the player
toward constant productivity.
Indeed, Wyatt suggests that the only barrier to success is the player themselves,
thereby securing the conditions for constant self-work through anxiety and guilt (see
Salecl, 2011). This self-work through metrics is tyrannical: creating the conditions for
social control through the ideology of life-coaching (see Cederström and Spicer, 2015).
In drawing this chapter to a close, it is crucial to consider its argument for debates
about masculinities in play. It is evident through the work of Paul (2018), Voorhees (2015),
and others (Voorhees and Orlando, 2018) that the competitive nature of video games can
contribute to the “toxic” communications that take place between players online. Dota 2 is
certainly no different in this regard. Indeed, in-game and paratextual communications
often confirm examples of discrimination, exclusionism, and cyber-bullying (Adinolf and
Turkay, 2018; Sheepsticked, 2019). It certainly makes sense that metrics can contribute
to the “gender-assemblages” (Taylor and Voorhees, 2018) that facilitate patriarchy and
misogyny as well as examples of neoliberal masculinity. After all, as Beer (2016, 197)
argues, metrics are active deeds, loaded and carry consequential forms of communication.
The very notion of measuring is active: it is a practice in which someone is trying to do
something to achieve something over someone else. What the arguments of Beer (2016)
and others (Wetherell, 2012) raise is the recognition of the psychosocial power of metrics
to penetrate individual subjectivity here, perhaps more deeply than rational choice.
Indeed, as the example of performance coaching reveals, metrics structure the psyche
by generating conflicting forces, tensions, and emotions that drive players to act in fuzzy,
paradoxical, and unstable ways. Future research on player subjectivities and constructions
of masculinity may start here to reveal the power of metrics.
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9
Esports Transmedia Universes

The Case of Overwatch
Raine Koskimaa, Tanja Välisalo, Maria Ruotsalainen, and
Veli-Matti Karhulahti1
Introduction
Over the years and recently in particular, various elements of esports have gathered
piles of research from culture and economics to health and gender (e.g., Jin and Chee,
2008; Scholz, 2019; Szablewicz, 2016; DiFrancisco-Donoghue et al., 2019; Taylor and
Voorhees, 2018; Witkowski, 2018; Kari et al., 2018). However, few have considered the
role of transmediality as an explicit part of esport ecosystems—perhaps because of the
strong tendency of both the industry and scholars to entertain esports as an extension
to traditional sports (e.g., Kane and Spradley, 2017; Jenny et al., 2017; Hallmann and
Giel, 2018) rather than part of fictional and narrative cultural lineages. In other words,
transmedia studies have always been concerned with fictional and narrative cultural
content in particular, and current esports research somewhat uncritically perceives
the phenomenon as sports or sports-like to which fictional elements are trivial. In this
chapter, our goal is to introduce transmediality as a core pattern that delineates esports
design, play, and player-audience interaction on multiple levels. As a case study, we
provide a cross-sectional analysis of the esports title Overwatch.
Transmediality has been studied from numerous perspectives such as media
economics (Albarran, 2013; Clarke, 2013; Davis, 2013; Rohn and Ibrus, 2018), storytelling
engagement (Dena, 2009; Evans, 2011; Harvey, 2015; Jenkins, 2006, 2013; Klastrup and
Tosca, 2004, 2011, 2014; Mittel, 2015; Ryan, 2013), and journalism (Rampazzo and
Tárcia, 2017). Transmedia storytelling has been coined by Henry Jenkins (2013)
as “the systematic unfolding of elements of a story world across multiple media
platforms.” In this chapter, analysis is conducted within the rubric of a specific
“transmedia universe,” which reconciles these perspectives and takes into account
the complex and incoherent nature of many transmedia phenomena, including
storytelling, production, and consumption (Koskimaa, Välisalo and Koistinen
2016). As such, the transmedia universe encompasses the production, franchise
marketing, non-diegetic contents (including paratexts), collectibles (like toys), as
150 Global Esports
well as the wide range of unofficial transmedia expansions: fan fiction, fan art, and
other externally created materials generated via multiple transmedial user practices
(Koistinen, Ruotsalainen and Välisalo, 2016). Thus, the transmedia universe is not
fixed on storytelling or production viewpoints, but aims to incorporate audience
(and player) perspectives to transmedia in equal measure. As such, the transmedia
universe differs from most other conceptualizations of transmediality by its scope
and therefore fits well with multilayered media phenomena such as esports.
In order to analyze Overwatch as transmedia, we utilize multi-sited data that we
approach with two methods that correspond with the game’s transmedial pathways
between two overlapping domains: the fictional world of the game Overwatch, and
nonfictional world of competitive esports—both of which are channeled and developed
by various diverse media. First, we draw from an ongoing survey concerning the
reception of Overwatch and its professional Overwatch League; second, we employ
a close reading of the game as a playable product and a watchable Overwatch League
spectacle including broadcasts, social media engagement, among others. We situate
Overwatch into the framework of transmedia studies and probe how (and what kind
of) transmediality emerges in the case of this particular esport—and what can it teach
us about the relationship between fiction and nonfiction in game-centered esports
transmedia universes. The first section provides an overview of how transmedial
elements have operated in esports historically and how the emergence of Overwatch
fits in this historical context. The subsequent four sections discuss transmediality in
Overwatch via the respective angles of media presentation, characters, narrative, and
social media. The chapter ends with a discussion and conclusions.
Background: Transmediality and Overwatch

Transmediality has been part of the gaming culture from early on, and has been a topic
of several case studies such as those of Walking Dead (Ecenbarger, 2016), World of
Warcraft (Barbara, 2018), and playable webtoons (Pyo et al., 2019). To a large extent,
many popular esports belong to this same tradition—yet with a number of elements that
make them particularly interesting for transmedia studies. While transmedial forms
and dimensions of gaming have certainly evolved in time along with cultural, social,
and technological change, we stress that the below elements of esports transmediality,
despite being represented in a linear way, overlap significantly.
Already in the “prehistoric” era of competitive arcade gaming, tournaments made
heavy use of multiple media outlets. Petri Saarikoski and colleagues (2017), for instance,
provide an archeological window to how Atari and related distributors employed
marketing strategies for their Pac-Man tournaments: the event could be held at an
amusement park, be reported via numerous magazines, geared toward TV audiences,
and ultimately expanded with promotional material that included the hit song “Pac-
Man Fever.” As such, early gaming tournaments were transferred and transformed to
multiple media channels that were critical in the formation of the “esports product”
into a coherent entity (see also Borowny and Jin, 2013).

Esports Transmedia Universes 151
Characters and their storylines were used as transmedial entities in competitive

gaming already in the 1990s. While characters have been associated to gaming since the
birth of the industry, titles such as Street Fighter and StarCraft set them in direct contact
with the time’s “esports” scene: players’ styles, strategies, and professional identities
were developed in partial relation to heroes, races, and other playable entities that had
characteristics and fictional histories of their own. David Sirlin’s (2005) founding work
on competitive fighting games provides relevant insights concerning the differences in
strategies and play styles that intertwine with the characters and narratives both inside
and outside the games (see also Kane, 2008; Ferrari, 2013).
The rise of MOBAs (multiplayer online battle arena games) in the 2000s is an
example of an explicit application of transmedia narration. Titles like League of
Legends that were designed specifically for esports play involved evolving narratives;
playable champions were published with dramatic written backstories that followed
wider storyworld building in comics, fictional bulletins, and video media. While few
players paid attention to the above elements in the first place (Watson, 2015), these
narrational attempts presented various experimental means of transmedia storytelling
by developing plotlines via actual gaming outcomes and, vice versa, allowing the plot
events (such as character death) affect competitive play (cf. Seo, 2016).
The proliferation and enriching of social media has added one more layer to esports
transmediality affecting the temporalities and modes of production and consumption
of transmedial content. Image, text, and video based services such as Reddit, Twitch,
and Twitter have become key channels through which the phenomenon is discussed,
distributed, created, and recreated. Esport play no longer takes place in-game alone (it
never did), but also outside of the game where experts, fans, and players engage to a degree
that can easily outplay the core gaming activity (Taylor, 2018). While these changes have
played a key role in the recent development of esports in particular, we repeat that none
of the transmedia elements have emerged by linear progression, but rather via various
shifts and threads related to production and popularity in the cultures of gaming.
Our present case study—team-based online multiplayer first-person shooter
Overwatch—was published in 2016 by Blizzard Entertainment and it utilizes all of
the mentioned transmedia approaches. The game provides its players with heroes of a
squad formerly known as the Overwatch, plus a selected number of friends and foes.
These form the playable character pool, set in a future where Earth is inhabited by not
only humans, animals, and plants, but also by evolved robots known as the Omnics.
This has also led to a worldwide conflict known as the “omnic crisis” (war between
omnics and humans) and the Overwatch was created to put an end to this. When
starting the game, players learn some of the earlier information through opening
cinematics. There is much that is left unknown, and the background remains oblivious
as long as one merely plays the game itself: the lore does not unfold, as the game is
focused on six-player teams combating against other six player teams. To learn about
the lore, one has to adventure beyond the game and look for comics, animated shorts,
and short stories by the publisher.
At the same time, the menu screen would (currently) be dominated by the illustration
of a hero called Zenyatta, wearing a particular skin devoted to the professional player
152 Global Esports
Jjonak, who became known for his hero defining play style on Zenyatta. And indeed,
turning Overwatch into lucrative esports has likewise been an organized effort from
the developer: in late 2017, globally franchised Overwatch League was started with
a Pre-season followed by Season 1 starting in January 2018. All the teams in the
league, rather than representing established esports organizations, represent new
organizations based on cities around the world, inviting fans to forge local affinities
for their chosen team.
While a plethora of literature about transmedia storytelling, transmedia worlds,
and transmedia universes focus on the fictional world of a given product (see Thon,
2016), the concept of transmedia has also been applied to nonfictional narratives and
worlds (see View special issue “Non-Fiction Transmedia” in 2017). In line, while the
fictional lore and world of Overwatch are part of the Overwatch product, it is steadily
surrounded by the nonfictional universe of Overwatch esports. These two are not
opposite to each other, but exist alongside each other, mingle, and overlap. Overwatch
is a combination of a professional esport scene and a rich fictional universe. The
latter, while present in the game itself through playable heroes, maps, and occasional
co-op events, is further developed in multiple media such as comics, animated shorts,
short stories, and further speculatively expanded by the fans and their products.
Memes, stories, and fan art around Overwatch esports and its players (and casters)
simultaneously function as transmedial extensions in themselves.
Accordingly, not unlike its peer esports that seek the sweet spot between centralized
competitive gaming and expanding transmedia annexes, the culture and play of
Overwatch comes with a range of active para-sectors the diversities and intensities of
which fluctuate along with both temporal and spatial factors. The present focus is on
the current state of Overwatch transmedia in the West. The following four sections
look at Overwatch transmediality through media presentation, characters, narrative,
and social media.
Medium of Overwatch
Much like Pac-Man already in the early 1980s and many follow-up gaming titles
since, Overwatch has been marketed openly as a transmedia product with a video
game as its core. While it is technically possible to engage solely with the video
game and ignore the rest, the results of our Overwatch reception survey suggest
that this is rarely the case. The survey data was collected between August 2018 and
July 2019 in Overwatch-related social media locations (Facebook, Reddit, Twitter).
The survey received 457 responses overall, of which 29 were deemed unreliable
and removed. This left us 428 valid responses overall. Due to the collection
strategy that targeted game communities online, the final sample should be
considered representative of the active online players and fans in particular. The
survey included a great variety of questions, only selected of which are referenced
in this study (Table 9.1).

Table 9.1 Reasons for Playing Overwatch.
Why do you play Overwatch? Choose all the relevant options. Percent
To relax/unwind 50.8
To socialize 30.7
To have fun 83.1
To get better at the game 75.0
To become a pro-player 13.3
To obtain in-game cosmetics 30.0
To produce content for stream/videos 6.3
To be part of the Overwatch community 28.5
To learn more about the Overwatch storyworld and its heroes 29.7
Other, what? 3.0
Table 9.2 Overwatch-Related Activities.
Have you taken part in any of the following activities, in connection to

Overwatch?
Choose all the relevant options. Percent
Follow/participate in discussions on Overwatch forums 35.3
Follow/participate in discussions on Reddit (e.g., r/overwatch; r/competitiveoverwatch) 37.4
Follow/participate in discussions on other websites and services 32.7
Watch live-streams and videos 92.5
Stream / Create videos of gameplay (your own or others’) 30.6
Writing about the game (reviews, blogging, creating wiki content, etc.) 7.5
Writing fan fiction 3.3
Creating fan art 7.7
Enjoying other people’s fan productions (fan fiction, fan art, etc.) 57.7
Cosplay 7.7
Collecting cosmetics (skins, voice-lines, poses, emotes, etc.) 60.0
Collecting merchandise 38.1
Watching animated short- films of Overwatch created by Blizzard 86.1
Reading comics of Overwatch created by Blizzard 60.3
Other, what? 10.5
None of these 1.5
Table 9.3 Do You Watch/Have You Ever Watched

Overwatch League Games?
Do you watch/Have you ever watched

Overwatch League games? Percent
Yes 92.8
No 7.2
The first question to be discussed here concerned motivation. The respondents

were asked to choose (as many as needed) from ten motivational factors that can be
considered representing competitive, social, and autonomous dimensions of play—
partly consistent with self-determination theory and its revisions (see Ryan et al., 2006;
154 Global Esports
Table 9.4 Overwatch League-Related Activities. Those Respondents Who Indicated They
Follow or Have Followed Overwatch League (n = 397)
Have you taken part in any of the following activities, in connection to

Overwatch League (OWL)? Choose all the relevant options Percent
Watching matches online 97.7
Watching matches on site 28.2
Watching streams by professional players 75.8
Following OWL related content in media 76.3
Follow/participate in discussions on forums and in social media 32.7
Writing about OWL (on fan sites, blogs, eSports publications, etc./articles, 6.3
blogging, creating wiki content, etc.)
Creating fan art about players/teams 0.8
Writing fan fiction about players/teams 0
Engaging with other people’s fan creation 7.2
Buying OWL merchandise 23.9
Buying OWL cosmetics (in-game or twitch) 44.6
Other 2.2
None of these 0.4
Vahlo, 2018). Expectedly, the respondents expressed multiple motivations to engage

with Overwatch, most popular being “to have fun” (83.1%), closely followed by “to get
better at the game” (75.0%). Moreover, the survey shows that participating in practices
that are somehow transmedial in nature (Koistinen, Ruotsalainen and Välisalo, 2016)
are typical for Overwatch players, as no less than 98.4 percent of the respondents (n
= 428) engage in practices beyond playing the game. The most common of those
practices is watching live-streams/videos (92.5%), followed by the consumption of
fictional lore via developer- produced animated short films (86.9%). More than half of
the respondents also enjoyed reading Overwatch comics (60.3%) or consuming content
such as fan fiction and fan art, created by other fans (57.7%). It is also noteworthy that
consuming fictional content created by fans was nearly as popular as consuming official
comics published by Blizzard. The majority of respondents (92.8%) also mentioned
watching Overwatch League matches online.
Again, the lore of Overwatch is mainly told in three mediums: comics, animated
short stories, and written narratives. As these open up the genesis of Overwatch and
reveal hero origins, such content is almost entirely lacking in the video game. Special
events like those of “anniversaries” make an exception by introducing brief playable
missions with background stories, yet these are few in quantity and scarce in depth.
Next to the above, the world of Overwatch expands to a number of toys and figures like
LEGO sets, clothing, discussion forums, content platforms, and a cereal brand named
after one of the playable heroes, Lucio.
A big part of all parallel Overwatch media outlets derive from the game’s active
esports scene, which officially took off in 2016 along with the Overwatch World Cup.
The event in question marked the beginning of an era of active Overwatch esports
scene, to be tightly controlled by the developer-publisher Activision Blizzard. The
Overwatch World Cup was followed by Season 0 that set the stage for the franchised

Overwatch League, starting in January 2018. This led to a shutdown of most third-
party Overwatch tournaments due to the company’s desire for (trans)media control.
Overwatch esports strongly seek to represent its transmedia content as sports and
tend not to draw from the fictional Overwatch world. Hence, the two remain clearly
separate from the perspective of the product-owning company: next to (or above) fan-
created media content, the Overwatch esports world is mediated through its owner’s
video productions, and the fictional world likewise via Blizzard-controlled comic and
animation productions (see Karhulahti, 2017; Blom, 2018). Despite this polarization,
esports and fictional elements get mixed in both professional Overwatch League
productions and the evolving video game. For instance, the Battle.net launcher that
enables access to Blizzard’s other video games also broadcasts Overwatch League
matches, thus merging fictional Overwatch (and other Blizzard) content with Overwatch
esports. The contrast between the two surfaces strongly in the game’s official forums,
where requests for the possibility to disable the “irrelevant” esports content have been
frequent. The introduction of team skins (available as in-game purchases) that can be
earned by watching Overwatch via the live-stream platform Twitch received similar
criticism, forming a conflict typical to transmedia universes. While cross-media
cosmetics remain part of Overwatch video game play and the professional Overwatch
League is persistently advertised in almost all of the company’s public channels, the
contents of the two dimensions remain separate and the links between them function
first and foremost as marketing.
Our final example is a poster of Dennis “internethulk” Hawelka that is part of the
Overwatch in-game world. “Internethulk” was the founder and an original member
of the highly successful competitive Overwatch team IDDQT (later known as
EnvyUs), which dominated the Western Overwatch scene before the franchised era of
Overwatch League. As “Internethulk” passed away in 2017, Blizzard commemorated
him by establishing a Dennis Hawelka award as well as placing a poster in his honor
to one of the video game’s maps, Eichenwalde (Hawelka was German). This poster,
alongside with a candle burning next to a flower, remains part of playable product with
a small text saying “I <3 DH.” This illustrates how the playable video game Overwatch
functions as a mediator and a moderator between the professional esports universe
on one hand and the fictional world on the other. In both, the two can be occasionally
experienced simultaneously.
Characters of Overwatch
In transmedia storytelling, fictional characters are a common transferable element
between the affiliated media (Beddows, 2012, 146; cf. Eder, Jannidis and Schneider,
2010, 19). Likewise, in Overwatch, playable heroes are central to many forms of
content published around the game. Episode by episode, the animated short stories
and comics usually tangle around one hero and their background. These characters
seem to be important for the majority of Overwatch players—our Overwatch survey
indicated almost all the respondents (over 95%) to have a favorite hero either based on
156 Global Esports
the fictional lore or gameplay; meanwhile, consuming these character-centered stories

were among the most popular user practices around the game itself.
In Overwatch esports, the characters are present first and foremost in connection
with professional players. Most players are known for playing particular characters,
and audiences strengthen this connection through different practices such as creating
fan art about the players as playable heroes of the game. These depictions of players as
game characters are occasionally integrated into official marketing materials, which
blur the lines between the fictional world of Overwatch and the nonfictional world of
Overwatch esports.
At the same time, professional players bear similar transmedial features as the
playable characters in the fictional Overwatch world. One example is the players’
battletags (i.e., nicks) that are used as their names of reference. These battletags travel
beyond the official Overwatch League and its broadcasts: players use and are known
by them in multiple media platforms such as Twitter, Twitch, Reddit, and so on. In
our Overwatch survey, nearly all respondents who mentioned a favorite player only
referenced the player by their battletag, not their given name.
The professional players of the Overwatch League are often presented as star
athletes whose images are built on their skills, performances, and personalities—not
unlike the game’s playable heroes or fictional characters in general. Accordingly, for
the survey respondents who mentioned a favorite player the personality of the player
was the most important reason for choosing them as a favorite (58.5% of respondents).
Evidence for a strong connection between the two is present in the second most
important reason for choosing a favorite player: the hero the player usually plays
(50.9% of respondents). This further underlines the mixed relationship between the
fictional and the nonfictional worlds of the Overwatch esports product.
Again, while audiences thus draw straight lines between the characters and the
players, the actual lore published by the developer (as character backstories and other
fictional world developments) is kept largely outside the public presentation of the
competitive esport scene. On some levels, this applies also to fan engagement, as
collective activities related to fictional characters such as fan fiction or fan art creation
are much more rare when it comes to esports players. For example, Archive of Our
Own (one of the largest fan fiction archives online) currently hosts over 30,000 stories
written by fans about the fictional characters of Overwatch, but only a little more than
a hundred stories about Overwatch esports players. In one analysis concerning the
sportification of Overwatch, Turtiainen and colleagues (2018) correctly note that the
fictional narratives of the game are barely present in Overwatch League; rather, these
competitive events follow the formulae of traditional sports and attempt to duplicate
the ethos. However, stories and narratives are an important part of Overwatch esports
as well—but as stories of the world of esports, its players, and teams. Prominent forms
of these stories are copypasta (short text clips often focused on players) circulated in,
for example, discussion forums and the chats of livestreams. Memes can serve this
function as well, as we discuss further on. This further expands the role of transmediality
in Overwatch: not merely centered around the lore, but also (and sometimes more so)
on the stories of actual players and their roles in everyday life.

Narratives of Overwatch
Narrative inquiry of transmedia storytelling has mainly focused on the fictional
transmedia worlds and how they deliver stories. The “stories” are purposely in plural
here, as an unlimited number of stories may be situated in any transmedia world.
The stories as a whole, and how they relate to each other, is one focus of transmedia
narratology (Scolari, 2009). Another approach is to look at transfictional identities,
how fictional characters travel between the stories (Ryan, 2013). Typically, there is an
expectation of a high degree of coherence between the stories (Jenkins, 2006).
Looking at Overwatch as a transmedia universe encompasses not only the fictional
and narrative world of Overwatch but also the nonfictional and non-narrative elements.
As to the latter, Overwatch is dominantly built upon various contents tied to the
professional scene, including the live-streams with commentators, pre and post-game
analyses, player presentations, and so on. The possible narratives constructed around
these elements are mainly nonfictional ones; the characters within are not in-game
heroes but actual players and their public personas. The coherence, if there is such, is
to be found in how the Overwatch League is branded and reinforced in the totality of
the contents produced, and the story arc usually spans one competitive season. There
are similarities between TV series and league seasons: breaks between them create
disruptions (players change teams and actors get written out) and the waiting time gets
filled in with extra materials (such as short online episodes of TV series or stories and
videos on esports players and teams): all providing fans something to follow and build
up expectations toward forthcoming events (cf. Evans, 2011, 38–9).
The Overwatch League provides an integrating frame for the stories, but the contents
themselves are heterogeneous and diverse. The narrative aspects are unstructured
compared to the fictional stories of the game that get disclosed via animations and
comics. In both cases, as in transmedia generally, the audience has an important role
in filling in the enrichening perspectives on the narratives. The audience can make its
voice heard in real-time via the chat windows of live-streams, but also in “audiencing”
(see Taylor, 2015) at physical esport events, cosplay groups, and the multiple fan content
sites offline as well as online. The voice of the audience is subdued by the developer
and its current direction, but there are always dissenting voices finding their way to
official and unofficial sites. The narrating voices, in general, can be divided into two
main discourses: the directing or dominating one, and the dissenting or resistant one.
At the time of writing, the game’s official website offers two types of narrative
domains concerning the professional Overwatch League: articles and videos. The
former has three distinct categories: analysis, feature, and news. Both features and
analyses articles are written by named persons, whereas the news pieces are usually by
the developer Blizzard Entertainment. On the main page of the website, all article types
are published under the heading “Recent News,” but Analyses and Features are written
in first person which makes them more like stories than news pieces as such.
There is also a tendency to “storify” the accounts, like in an analysis article “Meta
2.0: You Can (Not) Go Goats,” where a statistical analysis of hero selections and
combinations for the current season is presented as a step-by-step evolving change of
158 Global Esports
the “meta,” which in esports refers to a “shared notion of the most efficient competitive
strategies” (Karhulahti, 2020, 110). The protagonists in this story are the teams
Outlaws and Valiants, who are trailblazing a new meta. The implied reader, in turn, is
a committed Overwatch player who is able to enjoy all the subtleties of the professional
level strategic choices mentioned (but not much explained). This kind of addressing
creates a strong feeling that the reader belongs to the in-crowd of true Overwatch
aficionados. Feature articles, in turn, usually focus on a specific team or player; for
example, “The Indispensable IDK” focuses on one player, but again, builds up a story
of a young person not too interested in the beginning—yet ending up as a key player
in one of the professional teams and becoming a potential contender for the Best
Support Player title. The story takes its closure from Ho-Jin “IDK” Park’s twentieth
birthday which he spent in Texas, showing how far from his South Korean home
IDK has reached through the Overwatch career. Interestingly, the IDK article makes
a reference to the fictional world of Overwatch by comparing IDK to his favorite hero,
“perpetually gregarious and good-natured, just like Lúcio.” Lastly, the news articles are
more impersonal in tone, and reporting rather than narrating.
Notably, there are earlier accounts of the meta practices in regard to evolving esport
play strategies, and how they expand the play space outside the game itself. Ben Egliston
(2015), for instance, explicates the connection between the meta and Marsha Kinder’s
early transmedia concept, but like Christopher Paul (2011), still mainly employs Gerard
Genette’s notion of paratexts and their reading (see also Donaldson, 2015; Taylor and
Elam, 2018). In this article, our focus is not on the practices, however, but (like the
original Genettean position) we rather perceive the materials as connected particles;
namely, as parts of a specific transmedia universe. In the same way as the Overwatch
fictional materials, the Overwatch meta articles are storified and personified.
In the videos section, there are recordings of full matches but also video features,
analysis, and news clips. The features are mainly player presentations, with the
exception of reality TV (like) shows where the teams are competing in cooking. All
these are filled with product placement and overt advertising, yet references to the
fictional Overwatch world are scarce. In “A Very Zen Interview with Jjonak,” the video
opens with a scene of an Overwatch character in a meditation posture, before cutting
to the player Jjonak, in a similar posture—this exemplifies once more the character-
driven transmedia strategies that, in Overwatch, tend to bind fictional hero(ine)s to
actual players and their personas. Here narration can be characterized as a Blizzard
discourse, which emphasizes the Overwatch League and addresses players largely as
elements in it (with rare exceptions of players being portrayed more as individual
personalities exceeding their in-game role). This discourse also acknowledges the
sponsors and the Overwatch merchandise. Fans and the audience are present in many
videos, both match recordings and the features, but are mainly used as an illustration,
for example, to emphasize the crowd’s wild appreciation of Sinatraa’s non-conventional
moves. Notably, frequent references to the home cities of the teams are added by
making the players visit specific regional sites, asking them to prepare local food in a
chef competition, and thus tagging the events to traditional sports teams that place the
Overwatch team in question into the lineage of longer traditions.

Lastly, in addition to articles and videos, the Overwatch website offers information
on professional standings, program, and basic statistics. These data are not narrative in
the narratological sense, but do fill a position in the transmedia storytelling framework
by providing elements for the stories about Overwatch League and its players. With
reference to Lisbeth Klastrup and Susana Tosca’s (2004, 2011, 2013) notion of
“transmedial worlds” in which such networks are “abstract content systems,” the above
non-narrative data still operate as “content” that adds to the complexity of the “system.”
Social Media around Overwatch

Every stage and season in the Overwatch League has its narratives that are continually
repeated in broadcasts by shoutcasters and analysts. These narratives sometimes have
their origins in the personal livestreams of players, their fan channels, and other social
media outlets such as the popular discussion forums. The occasional viewer might
learn about these narratives from a produced broadcast but also from its chat that
is often full of memes traversing through multiple media. Arguably the most central
location of development and origin for such narratives as well as memes is the Reddit
platform and its subreddit r/competitiveoverwatch in particular.
Subreddit/competitiveoverwatch has over 150,000 subscribers and contains posts
about competitive Overwatch at large, with a particular focus on the esports scene and
the Overwatch League. The topics of the posts vary: there are match threads in which
the users discuss ongoing games, highlights of good plays, and rumors about possible
player transfers, among others. The subreddit also hosts numerous posts about the
professional players in the Overwatch League and their sayings in other social media
accounts. Team representatives, players, casters, and the game developers appear to
follow the conversations to an extent, as they are frequently found commenting on
discussions via their verified accounts. The casters constantly refer to the subreddit
in questions during Overwatch League broadcasts, with comments such as “see you
in reddit” often dropped after controversial statements. The subreddit plays a crucial
role in the production and sharing of news, gossip, and topics in general related to the
Overwatch League. The users of the subreddit continuously not only watch the official
matches of the league but follow the personal streams of the players too.
As an example, the subreddit/competitiveoverwatch was central in the creation of
perhaps the most popular meme of Season 1 in the Overwatch League. Taking place
from January 2018 to July 2018, Season 1 was pioneered by the stories of players and
teams that played an essential part in building the transmedial world of Overwatch
esports. From the beginning, some teams turned out to be clear fan favorites: Dallas
Fuel by the value of being the most successful Western Overwatch team “EnvyUs”
rebranded, Soul Dynasty by being the only South Korean team (while not the only
team consisting of South Koreans alone), and Houston Outlaws by being perhaps the
most well-branded team in the League.
Central to the branding of Houston Outlaws was captain Jacob “Jake” Lyon, who
has also become known as the “cover boy” of the Overwatch League. Considered
160 Global Esports
good looking and clearly articulated by the fans, Jake is seen as the antithesis of the
“stereotypical gamer” by the press too and is consequently often seen representing
esports and Overwatch in public occasions (see Voorhees and Orlando, 2018). While
thus widely loved by the fans, Jake also evoked dissenting opinions that in the subreddit
were commented to be too articulated and long, and his general ethos and skills fake
or lacking. Those arguing for the lack of skill further insisted him to be competent
with merely one hero, Junkrat. This fictional hero, a rough-looking outlaw from
Australia, was generally held as one of the easiest to play with area of effect damage
grenades as the main weapon—against the many other heroes who rely on sharp aim
(a common measure of skill). Along with Jake’s success with Junkrat, the fictional hero
was eventually turned into “Jakerat” and numerous memes constructed around this
pun entered the live-stream chat every time Huoston Outlaws was playing or the hero
Junkrat was played by others. The broadcasters took the “Jakerat” meme still further
by using the term in official shows as well. Jake the Junkrat thus passed through the
transmedia worlds of Overwatch, tying together fictional and factual entities via a
player, hero, and fan-created character drama.
Discussion
Transmedia “worlds” have been seen to operate by the principle of reestablishing
connections between dispersing media and fragmented audiences, or, as Christy
Dena has phrased it, transmedia is a way to satisfy different audience groups through
“tiering”: “the addressing of different audiences with different content in different media
and environments” (2009, 239). In a similar vein, Carlos Scolari has investigated “how
these new multimodal narrative structures create different implicit consumers” (2009,
586). The present case Overwatch implies transmedia being an efficient response to
the increasing trend of fragmentation of media and audiences, indeed. As a game with
a rich player base—in the light of our survey—of diversely motivated and oriented
individuals, transmediality is a means to satisfy multiple desires and interests in a way
that provokes further desires and interests, depending on one’s respective approach.
The official Overwatch website seems to serve first and foremost dedicated Overwatch
(and Overwatch League) followers who also have considerable play experience with
the game. This group is able to appreciate the highly technical analyses, and know the
players and teams well enough so that little background information is needed. On the
other hand, the parallel content types are likely to attract more casual followers too.
The livestreamed Overwatch League matches (as well as pre- and post-game studio
discussions) provide explanations also of the basic aspects of the game, clearly aiding
newcomers and occasional followers. Hence, tiering of content for different audience
segments is prominent, addressing various implicit audiences.
Our analysis provides a base for a number of practical implications. For instance,
the fact that livestreams appear more accessible than official website content suggests
Blizzard seeing the former as the main entrance for new players. The already engaged
and dedicated audiences, on their turn, would rely more on the detailed website

accounts, ultimately culminating in user-generated fan content. In the end, all the
mentioned sources belong to the holistic Overwatch transmedia universe where teams,
players, sponsors, and audiences represent and reproduce tiered contents. There are
almost limitless options to enter (and exit) the universe, and while it makes no sense
to talk about “a” story, many stories intersect in it and add to its near infinite depth.
Ultimately, Overwatch can be looked at through two types of transmediality. One
can be called the Jenkinsian transmedia storytelling approach, which emphasizes
the fictional worlds and stories set in them, and is focused on the game itself. The
other one, focused on Overwatch esports, emphasizes the spectacle: matches and
tournaments bounded by time and place, as well as stories and media content used to
build this spectacle. While one of the main motivations here is tiering of contents for
different audiences, this transmediality also serves as a marketing strategy to grab and
keep the attention of audiences—especially when the main attraction, for example a
TV show, is not running (see Evans, 2011); or as in this case, between the matches and
Overwatch League seasons. Additional tiered content provides breadth and depth to
the players and the world itself.
While the same players seem to engage with both Overwatch fiction and esports,
there are considerable differences in the ways they engage with them, as revealed
in the answers to the survey questions “Have you taken part in any of the following
activities in connection to Overwatch” and Overwatch esports, respectively? While
certain activities are popular in relation to both—such as participation on discussion
boards—other activities such as writing fan fiction are much more common in relation
to the narrative world of Overwatch (see Tables 9.1 and 9.2). Meanwhile, most popular
activities related to following the Overwatch League are simply watching the matches
(97.7%) and player streams (75.8%) online as well as following Overwatch esports
content in media (76.3%). The fictional Overwatch world, however, leaks into the
esports scene too through audience practices, as in memes used in live-stream chats
and popular copypastas. The developer’s inclination to keep the two worlds separate
may be a product of the relatively premature state of transmedia esports and Overwatch
in particular, and once better established, may capitalize potential to engage audiences
even better by more overtly acknowledging the overlap specifically with players and
characters, not excluding those in proliferating user-generated contents.
Conclusion
In this chapter, based on player survey data (n = 428) and close reading of fictional
as well as nonfictional public game contents and esports contents, we have provided
an analysis of esports transmediality in practice via the case study Overwatch. With
reference to the surveyed Overwatch players and the game’s four examined transmedia
dimensions (medium, characters, narratives, social media), our analysis paves the way
for an understanding of the networked connections and operations between relevant
entities in not only the present context but esports in general.
162 Global Esports
First, the study at hand draws a picture of the Overwatch transmedia universe as a
system of two worlds, one focused on fictional world building and another on actual
esports. The former is developed primarily by the game’s developer in the media of
comics, videos, and written narratives. The latter, while likewise largely directed by
the developer in its official Overwatch League, evolves in competitive esport scenes
via various platforms such as those of live-streams, social media, and online websites
in general. The two worlds overlap and are mediated by Overwatch and its play that
advances or promotes few elements of either; instead, it allows the two worlds to exist
and connects them.
Second, our findings evidence a leading function of characters and esports athletes
in transmedia worlds and esports transmediality in particular. In Overwatch, both
fictional characters created by the developer and actual (professional) players in the
Overwatch League are frequently introduced, promoted, and transferred from one
medium to another. While there are different transmedial worlds at play, they are not
separate, but intersect and affect each other—and the present case provides an example
of how the fictional heroes and esports players occasionally merge as a result of both
the developer’s official content design and the fan’s unofficial creative efforts.
Third, we advance and provide support to what previous transmedia theory has
referred to as tiering: a strategy by which the execute owner of the product employs
transmedial practices in order to invite and satisfy audiences on various levels of interest
and motivation. In Overwatch, the (sometimes blurring) networked dichotomies of
factual-actual, casual-competitive, and narrative-non-narrative present transmedia
elements the appreciation and understanding of which depends largely on one’s
personal as well as media-specific affordances and preferences. Depending on how
one is able and willing to participate, the Overwatch universe enables one to access,
affect, and even create various fictional and actual stories.
We stress that esports, Overwatch, and their transmedial play are in constant
change and have always differed between regions around the globe. Hence, as a
possible limitation, our analysis has been based mainly on the Western perspectives
of production and reception in the current era of one single esport, which may differ
from those of other times, regions, and esports. As such, nonetheless, the study paves
the way for transmedia research in the field and sets a ground that hopefully allows for
more detailed scrutinies.
Note
1 This article was supported by the Academy of Finland Grant No. SA-312397.
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Part 3
Media and Esports

10
Orienting Esports
Locating the Perceptual and Cultural Work of
Shoutcasters
Max M. Renner and Nicholas Taylor
In the actual game, there are two commentators, the play-by-play and the
color commentator.
The colour commentator can sometimes jump in during team fights, if there’s some-
thing important. Outside of team fights, the play-by-play’s job is to let the colour talk
and show their knowledge of the game and tell a story.
ShadowVisions, a semi-professional esports color commentator
Introduction
Broadcasting techniques and practices have developed alongside the professionalization
of games like Quake 3, FIFA, Call of Duty, Counter-Strike, and more recently League of
Legends (or League) and Overwatch, as a crucial element of the ways esports organizations
“audience” their spectators (N. Taylor, 2016). Broadcaster commentary, or “shoutcasting,”
is intended to provide both an audible explanation of events in the game and on-the-fly
analyses and interpretations, often with a division of labor between play-by-play casters
and “color” casters. Unlike the plethora of research attending to the professionalization
of esports play and players (see, for example, Witkowski and Manning, 2018), academic
scholarship relating to this central form of esports activity has been fairly silent. The aim
of this chapter is to contribute to a small but highly productive body of work on game
broadcasting as a vital form of content creation for the esports industry (and game culture
more generally; see T. L. Taylor, 2018).
This chapter draws from ethnographic work with a competitive collegiate League
of Legends team, whose members critically consume esports broadcast as part of their
intensive training regime, and one of whom is also an amateur color commentator,
under the nametag ShadowVisions. Focusing on League of Legends, we discuss how
play-by-play and color casters, in their respective roles and in tandem with the technical
apparatus of their broadcast, work to guide the camera (and audience’s attention) to
specific moments on the field and in the game.
170 Global Esports
The process and practice of casting works by moving and locating the audience, within
the space of the game, to different spaces. Our theorization of esports commentary as a
spatial practice is informed by our ethnographic work and ShadowVisions’ discussion
of color commentary as specifically spatial.
In this chapter we forward a theorization of shoutcasting attending to how the
experience of space is remediated and transformed for esports spectators, that builds on
and extends the limited, albeit productive research currently on esports commentary
(see, for example, Sjoblom and Linderoth, 2017 and T. L. Taylor, 2018), and does so by
foregrounding a shoutcaster perspective regarding their work as a color commentator.
By guiding us to these different spaces through media-intensive practices of data
analysis and visualization, casters locate audiences materially and perceptually (“look
at this,” “did you see that”?) while also discursively orienting them. We therefore offer
a theoretical, empirically driven account that understands how the work of esports
commentators narrativize space in order to orient audiences, specifically as a kind
of double orienteering—one that is both perceptual and cultural—of audiences to the
material and discursive terrains of esports.
Background
League is one of a few notable games, alongside Dota 2 and Heroes of the Storm, referred
to collectively as “Multiplayer Online Battle Arenas” (MOBAs), in which matches are
most conventionally played by two teams of five players. Teams choose from among a
multitude of playable characters (champions) and fight in matches in which resource
acquisition, champion advancement (“leveling up”), and opportunistic skirmishes
against the opposing team’s champions are keys to winning a battle for territorial
supremacy, typically lasting between twenty and forty-five minutes. The terrain on
which action unfolds, called “Summoner’s Rift,” features the two team bases at opposite
sides of the map, connected by three lanes (top, middle or “mid,” and bottom or “bot”),
patrolled on either side by computer-controlled minions and turrets. One member of
each team is typically tasked with occupying their team’s side of each lane; these roles
are called top, mid, and bot, according to the respective lane. Between these lanes is
a large forested area, in which one player on each side is conventionally assigned to
roam, jumping into each of the three lanes as the match progresses so as to create
mismatched skirmishes against opponents. The fifth player on each team is typically
“Support,” tasked with aiding the player on the bottom lane with powering up. Matches
are divided into two continuous but distinct phases: a “laning” phase, in which teams
race to gather resources and destroy computer-controlled enemies, thereby advancing
their characters’ strengths and abilities and securing valuable “buffs” (statistical
enhancements and special abilities); and a “team fight” phase, in which (as the name
suggests) teams seek to push deeper into their opponents’ territory through a frenetic
series of group battles, culminating in one team destroying their opponent’s base.
The flagship title published by Riot Games, League has been a mainstay of the
global esports landscape since its release in late 2009, and, even after the release of

Orienting Esports 171
popular competitive games such as Fortnite and Overwatch, remains one of the most
watched and most played competitive videogames, as well as one of the most popular
esports. With 148 possible champions to choose from (as of January 2020), each with
its own specific mechanics, abilities, strengths, weaknesses, and associated playstyles,
League is a difficult game to learn. And with a notoriously “toxic” player base (Kou
and Nardi, 2014; Taylor and Hammond, 2018), a constantly evolving set of optimal
strategies produced through a cyclical relationship between Riot’s continuous updates
to the game and the game’s top players developing strategies and playstyles to take
advantage of these updates (collectively referred to as “the meta”; Donaldson, 2015), it
is even harder to master. Aiding players in their efforts to “get good” is a rich ecology
of Twitch streams and YouTube channels in which professional players (and aspiring
professionals) broadcast their play; community websites like lolking.net and op.gg
that draw from Riot Games’ API to aggregate and display the dizzying array of game
statistics (by match, player, champion, etc.); and player-published guides for optimally
using particular champions and roles. The path toward becoming a professional League
player—by which we mean, a player that is recruited onto an esports organization such
as Team Liquid or SK Telecom 1 and earns some, if not all, of their living through
their contract and prize earnings—is nonetheless extremely difficult, with only several
hundred professional players currently out of a player base in the tens of millions.
And life as a pro player is, itself, demanding and precarious; for the upper echelons of
players in the esports industry, turnover and burnout are ever-present (Taylor, 2012).
Mid-Level Play
The world of elite, professional esports has been well documented by scholars, as
well as through the invaluable efforts of documentarians and journalists. In recent
years, esports researchers have begun to look more deliberately at the heterogeneous
networks of mid-level play: the clubs, tournaments, organizations, and practices in
place for players who are take the game seriously—enough to form stable teams, and/
or maintain their own Twitch or YouTube channel, and/or enter into tournaments,
perhaps—but for whom the prospect of becoming a professional is either undesired or
unattainable. Emma Witkowski has arguably done the most to illuminate this complex
and often bewildering landscape, through her ongoing work with Australian esports
organizations operating across both the professional and amateur scenes (Witkowski,
2017, 2018). A common theme across current accounts of mid-level play are the
constraints in which amateur players operate—constraints of time, resources, stability,
and so on—particularly compared to their professional counterparts. There is simply
not enough time in the day (and night) to stay on top of the game while juggling
work, school, relationships. But if this work has been instrumental in attending to
the conditions of amateur play, another underexplored aspect of esports with which
this work often intersects is the activity of people who participate in esports in roles
other than players, whether in professional or amateur domains: event volunteers and
organizers, broadcast technicians, team nutritionists and psychiatrists, community
172 Global Esports
moderators, coaches, analysts, and so on. Central here—both in terms of the work
we’re undertaking in this chapter, and in terms of the work they do within their
respective communities—are esports commentators.
Commentating
Commentators fulfill a vital if somewhat understudied role in the esports industry, for
a number of reasons. For starters, they offer an immediate connection to the world of
sports broadcasting; particularly in recent years, their dress codes, modes of address,
and division of labor they enact between play-by-play and “color” commentators
have all explicitly appropriated professional sports commentatorship (Sell, 2015),
constituting one additional layer to the legitimacy and cultural intelligibility of
esports via its adjacency to professional sports. But their work extends beyond simply
appropriating the styles and techniques of pro sports; esports commentators carry out
vital work through serving as a kind of living archive, the “sole history-keepers,” of the
often ephemeral and tumultuous world of esports (Taylor, 2012, 228). Likewise, Jesse
Sell (2015) notes how the relationship between esports commentators and audiences
is often more dialogic and intimate than their sports counterparts, their labor often
encompassing a sort of “community management,” via near-constant interactions with
players and fans on social media, creation of secondary video content, in between
broadcasts (Sell, 2015, 64).
The crux of their work, and our particular focus here, is making sense of the
hyperkinetic and often near-unintelligible moment-to-moment action of the matches
they broadcast. For many esports, what happens onscreen is often inscrutable to those
who do not actually play the game; in this way, commentators act as a kind of epistemic
prosthesis, or “guided vision” (Sjoblom and Linderoth, 2016), for spectators who
must learn how to watch. Sjoblom and Linderoth elaborate on this perceptual work
of commentating: “spectating esports is a competence in itself: something you can
learn and become better at, something that requires training and something which,
crucially, you can be given instructions for how to do” (p. 12).
At the same time, however, commentators’ work extends beyond the sensory and
perceptual; they also provide broader frameworks for making meaning of the onscreen
action, by tying it to broader patterns and histories: as T. L. Taylor writes, this is “not just
commentating, but narrating, making the action real and intelligible to the audience”
(2012, 225). Jessica Elam and Nick Taylor (2020) illustrate some of the effects esports
commentary has on player/spectators: in their study of how players of various skill
levels made sense of the same Dota 2 match they individually spectated (separated into
MOBA novices, League players, and Dota 2 players), they noted how players’ narrations
of the game grew more “commentator-like,” that is, closer to the rhetorical conventions
of esports commentary, the more familiar they were with the genre and game. In other
words, esports commentators mediate onscreen action for spectators.
To draw a non-arbitrary but ultimately messy distinction, the work of esports
commentating is both perceptual (making sense of the noise) and cultural (assigning

it broader meaning). This dichotomy is messy, because of course, perception and the
organization of our senses is cultural, as both sensory ethnographers and posthumanist
media theorists alike point out (Pink, 2009; Kittler, 1999); but it is also useful and
not entirely arbitrary, as it follows a division of labor that many esports have adopted
(Sell, 2015). The play-by-play commentator draws attention to onscreen (and not
infrequently, off-screen) events, and offers a series of brief expository comments,
pitching their affect and delivery to convey drama, disbelief, and so on; the color
commentator uses moments in between events (or in between matches) to offer
deeper insight into what happened, why, and how it matters. The way this division
of labor plays out varies, of course, from game to game and match to match; a typical
Overwatch match has a different rhythm than a typical League of Legends (League)
match, for instance. As ShadowVisions, the color commentator whose perspectives
and practices form the backbone for this chapter, describes it in relation to League,
the color commentator (his role) has a lot more work in the early (“laning”) phase of
a match, when players on each team are generally focused on farming resources and
leveling characters, or between matches. As he explained to us in an interview about
his casting work, “outside of team fights, the play-by-play’s job is to let the colour talk
and show their knowledge of the game and tell a story.”
Study Description
ShadowVisions graduated from NC State University in the Spring of 2019; prior to
that, he was a member of NC State’s competitive League team beginning with its
formation in 2015. Over roughly the same period of time, ShadowVisions and his
teammates participated in a longitudinal ethnography of collegiate esports. The
ethnography began shortly after the team formed in 2015, and has followed them
through the 2019 Collegiate League of Legends (CLoL) season, where they were
among the final eight teams (out of hundreds) to compete in the finals of the North
American intercollegiate tournament. They lost in the first round of the finals to
Maryville University (a team supported by a varsity program), which went on to win
the championship.
Given their success as a student club in a collegiate scene increasingly dominated
by varsity esports programs—which typically offer top collegiate players scholarships,
dedicated training arenas, and support staff from coaches to nutritionists to yoga
instructors—the NC State team has, in the past, characterized itself as “one of the best
teams without a program.” The ethnographic study of this team was accompanied by
Nick’s role as faculty advisor, putting him in regular contact with the team while also
providing them with on-campus space to hold weekly meetings.
The material we report on here is an offshoot of that larger project, in which we
invited ShadowVisions to share his experiences and insights as a semi-professional
color commentator. We conducted an interview with him in Fall 2018, alone, after
having interviewed he and his teammates together regularly over the previous
174 Global Esports
three years. ShadowVisions’ budding career as a color commentator was closely

intertwined with his activities as a high-ranking collegiate League player. One of his
responsibilities on the team was to arrange scrimmages with other teams and to scout
for amateur leagues and tournaments through which the team could gain experience
and prize earnings; this put him in touch with various tournament organizers and
commentators who worked his team’s more high profile games, many of whom
invited him to work as a commentator. Eventually, this culminated in an invitation to
a tournament hosted by a notable Twitch streamer and League personality, for “super-
high ELO challenger players” to compete. He says his team applied to participate, but
didn’t get in; instead, he was “actually brought on to cast this event,” and “probably
casted a third of their games,” garnering what he guessed was “about 40 thousand
viewers at peak on Twitch.”
ShadowVisions’ experiences as simultaneously a high-level amateur player and
commentator are compelling, for a number of reasons; for one, they illustrate how
porous the boundaries between various forms of esports participation are, particularly
at the amateur level where such roles may not be as formalized through economic
and organizational divisions of labor. More important, at least for our purposes in
this chapter, is the extent to which his commentator work is informed by a reflexive
theorization of what esports color commentary should do. The specific examples we
draw from later, guided by our interview with ShadowVisions, and furnished by some
of the matches he helped broadcast, which he pointed us to, illustrate his understanding
of how commentary functions, ideally, to orient spectators to onscreen action (and
through the histories of players and teams involved) through a reflexive and expertly
crafted narration. In what follows, our aim is not to supplant either ShadowVisions’
own nuanced theorization, nor those of the scholars who have approached as “history-
keeping” (Taylor, 2012), “community management” (Sell, 2015), and “guided vision”
(Sjoblom and Linderoth, 2016), but to further build upon these through a framework
that is robust enough to piece together the connections between orientation, narration,
and cultural production that these theories, separately, lay out. For that, we turn
briefly to the work of feminist geographer Doreen Massey, before getting into specific
examples of ShadowVisions’ color commentary.
“Stories-so-Far”
ShadowVisions’ articulations of the practices and processes at play in shoutcasting
certainly match notions of “guided vision” (Sjoblom and Linderoth, 2016), while
extending how color commentating animates this practice in particular ways.
Where ShadowVisions rearticulated the importance of kinds of guided visions, he
also emphasized that casting, and color casting, in particular, is a spatial practice; it
narrativizes space. In our interview, ShadowVisions further nuanced the distinction
between play-by-play and color commentators and noted “a lot of times the play-
by-plays are not very good at the games. They’re in it for the hype moments.”
Commentators articulate and focus on the game through these moments and by

focusing on specific spaces. Where play-by-play commentators work to orient

us to these moments/spaces to hype up the game, ShadowVisions points out that
color commentators look to these moments within games as illustrations of stories.
ShadowVisions comments that “in team fights we’re [play-by-play and color casters]
also both looking at the same things. . . . But the play-by-play has to be taking the
absolute most important events.” As the color caster, “you’re telling a story.” Both
commentators engage these moments in unique ways, for distinct, complementary
purposes. ShadowVisions describes navigating and experiencing moments within
games by focusing on particular spaces and stories, thereby signaling the pivotal role
of space in this practice. The gamespace navigated and fought over by players, panned
over by the game’s third person camera, and narrativized through commentators is
a social (and technical) process that is animated by articulations of different aspects
of the game; at the same time, it helps construct the social relations. Although space
is a ubiquitous word that often escapes active attention, for the purposes of engaging
with ShadowVisions’ perspectives on his color commentary practice, Doreen
Massey’s work on space emphasizes the sociality and power relations that constitute
space (and that are in turn, constituted in space).
Massey (1984) has argued that “the spatial is socially constructed” but more than
simply that, “the social is spatially constructed as well” (p. 6). Massey’s work, particularly
her book For Space (2005), is indicative of a productive move toward reconceptualizing,
or recovering, space. In her book, she defines space as a “simultaneity of stories-so-
far,” foregrounding the process and potential inherently at play in space. Perhaps the
greatest strength, and in this case complication, of Massey’s project with space is that it
is an unapologetically political project.
Her commitments to recognizing space are always invested in the democratic
potential and sociality of what space could be. It would be a fair question to ask,
how does Massey’s theorization of space, a project that is inherently focused on
power relations, translate to considerations of space, particularly digital spaces in
professional esports? Why does Massey’s work that inherently focuses on power
relations matter for this context? We see Massey’s focus on power as crucial
for understanding how we consider spatial practices, metaphors, and modes of
perception that shoutcasters carry out in order to “recast” this work as providing a
kind of orientation for spectators.
This orientation throughout these “stories-so-far” is also a kind of discursive
orientation; one that has specific histories, dispositions, and vernaculars required
for participation in esports cultures. Although her project is about power, the
discussions and practices of casting are political in nature; understanding space in
this light is extremely productive for emphasizing its sociality, process, and contingent
nature. This understanding of space extending from Massey, foregrounded in
ShadowVisions’ discussions, lends further clarity to his discussions of the work of
color commentary as both perceptual and cultural. In the next section, we offer two
instances from games that ShadowVisions helped cast, the first demonstrating the
work of perceptually orienting viewers, and the second examining how he situates
viewers culturally.
176 Global Esports
Interpretations of Interpretations of Gameplay

Just as Massey may illustrate space as a series, although not chronological stories in
process, that you may or may not see, space is also narrativized, and in that sense
made intelligible, by casters in esports. ShadowVisions points to stories as the broad
organizing structure for casting. He notes that “the role [of a caster] is to tell the story
of the game and make it so that a beast of game that not everyone can tell what’s
happening if they’re looking at it, especially if they don’t have the experience, you have
to translate that into a more digestible format for people.”
Using the interview to guide how we ourselves make sense of ShadowVisions’
practice, we turn next to two examples of his shoutcasting. The first offers an
examination of the perceptual work of orientation, and the second emphasizes the
cultural work. Translating the kinetic, kinesthetic experience of gamespace into
language is hard enough as a shoutcaster, but we will attempt to offer a narrativized
account of ShadowVisions’ narrative-focused work. As has been pointed out by other
game scholars attempting to describe the actional and multimodal complexities of
gameplay, we are aware of the potentially cumbersome and reductionist character
of this process (Giddings and Kennedy, 2008). At the same time, we find inspiration
in Clifford Geertz’s reminder that ethnography itself is a narrative-driven practice
that operates with second-order epistemologies: “interpretations of interpretations.”
What we offer in the following examples are our interpretations of ShadowVisions’
interpretations of competitive gameplay.
Example 1: Perceptual Orientation

ShadowVisions was the color caster for the Collegiate Starleague East Regional Finals
in 2018. The series featured Western University (Western) and University of Ottawa
(Ottawa) in a best of five series. Of the three games played in the series, the first example
we would like to discuss is from the first game. At nine minutes in, the camera focused
on a brief struggle over a vision ward near the bottom of the blue side’s map. Vision
wards are important items in League since they expand the area in which players are
able to see in the game map. Within about six seconds, what began as a flicker escalated
into full fight. As a teamfight broke out, it began with three members from Western
(their Jungler, ADC, and Support), and two members from Ottawa (their ADC and
Support). Ottawa’s Top Laner teleported into the fight, joined by their Jungler; a second
later, Western’s Top Laner teleported in as well. As the fight moved across the terrain,
the camera followed; Ottawa began to retreat back to their side, at which point both
teams’ Mid Laners jumped into the fight as well, turning a prolonged skirmish into a
full brawl. Western ended up winning the engagement, and as the camera returned to
bot lane, ShadowVisions drew the discussion back to the fight, saying “What actually
happened in that fight was that [Western’s jungler] came down to the bot lane [adc and
support] to make a play and the summoner spells had just come back up for his team,”
but weren’t yet up for Ottawa’s duo (support and adc) which allowed them to ultimately
be run down and killed.

Certainly, casters outsource much of the perceptual work to the technical apparatuses
that facilitate the visuality of the casting: the informational and statistical overlays
displaying item and skill cooldowns, available buffs, gold farming differential, and so
on. Yet how they engage with these apparatuses is an important facet of this perceptual
work. Where the camera will focus on specific spaces in which momentous events are
taking place, for example during this teamfight, the color caster offers clarification and
elaboration as to the underlying reasons why the event coalesced where and when it
did, and why it was resolved in a particular way. During ShadowVisions’ explanation
of “what actually happened in that fight,” the camera retraced the locations where
the fight took place and where the surviving characters were as he spoke about them.
Just as critically, he explained how the resources at each team’s disposal, in this case
having summoner spells available for use, allowed Western to recognize and enact a
strategic advantage in that moment. By both bringing to light and explaining why these
obfuscated strategies/nuances matter, ShadowVisions was making these complexities
accessible and intelligible for viewers.
When describing what work casting does, ShadowVisions says that knowledge and
accessibility are two critical, interrelated components. Having a high knowledge of the
game is crucial, but casters may be “in Diamond tier” whereas ShadowVisions is in
“Master tier.” An in-depth knowledge about the game must be complemented with the
“ability to articulate analysis of the game that is very understandable for someone that
does not necessarily watch the game, or is familiar with the game.” The ability to distill
complex concepts and strategies into relatively quick, accessible discussions within
specific game spaces is part and parcel to the role of a caster. If the expert maneuvering
of the game’s camera allows spectators to see what’s going on, the expert interpretation
of the color caster allows us to understand it—to situate it in relation to other stories so
the action makes sense. ShadowVisions is orienting the viewer, in this instance, to the
factors that shaped Western’s success in the teamfight.
Example 2: Cultural Orientation

The second example is an analysis ShadowVisions provided in the second game of the
same series between Western and Ottawa. At twenty minutes in, Western was almost
5,000 gold ahead of Ottawa and there was a lull in team fighting—a prime opportunity
for color casters. The teams were playing reserved and safe. At this point, the camera
was shifting between each of the players on the map, and ShadowVisions commended
the success of Western’s ADC, saying that “despite not being the focus of their team, he
has been able to put out consistent damage and have success throughout this game.”
He continues that
you know if you don’t put the name plates on these team compositions, it looks
like Ottawa has drafted two fine team compositions, but they are not accounting
for the situation they are in, in which Western has shown to be the better team in
these teamfights. They haven’t been exploitable with the early game roaming from
[Ottawa’s mid laner] or the laning strength from [the bot lane of Ottawa]. But if
178 Global Esports
[your team composition] isn’t working you have to adapt and find something that
works very fast.
This explanation and articulation of these stories is a productive illustration of the

work color casters do to culturally orient viewers.
ShadowVisions cycles through several themes in this story of Western proving
to be a more savvy and opportunistic team despite being outmatched “on paper” by
Ottawa: individual champion success, team composition, the history of the series,
teamfighting, early game strategy from Ottawa. In our interview, he described the kind
of work that goes into weaving such themes together, telling us it’s a matter of “every
so often doing a narrative check,” by which he means, updating the game’s unfolding
action and “checking” it against information about the teams, the tournament, and
so on. As he explains by example, if a team’s record “is 7 and 1 in the league, and the
other team is 2 and 3 or something. They’re expected to win.” In this instance, the
central questions that need to be addressed are “How are they going to do this? What
is the most common strategy? If they do something different, how does that divert and
surprise people? If the other team is winning, wow this could be a huge upset if they
can just pull it off.”
Part of ShadowVisions’ attentional and cognitive work is to keep these
kinds of questions in mind in order to further add meaning to his unfolding
narrativizations.
This cultural practice of making something meaningful is clear in the selection of
these stories and in their repetition and embellishment. Again in our interview with
him, ShadowVisions articulated this work of constantly updating the story:
every couple minutes you kind of want to revisit that narrative, but you also want
to include how the new information that has just happened since the last time
impacts the story. As well as that, you kind of want to prioritise the stuff that is most
important. So it’s not really that important if one player is up two minions over the
other lane-er. You can talk about that if there’s nothing else really happening. But
obviously you want to prioritise more important stuff.
If the perceptual work of color casters is to make onscreen events intelligible, the work
he’s doing in this example from the second Western versus Ottawa game, and which
he describes here, is making them meaningful: deciding which aspects of the match
to connect to things happening “outside” of the match but which nonetheless shape
it. This could be everything from League’s ever changing meta, to the histories of
particular teams and players. Implicit in this work, therefore, are decisions about what
matters, culturally, to League players and viewers: what constitutes good and bad play,
what each role on the team should be doing at any point in time, and so on. Returning
to T. L. Taylor’s rich theorization of commentators (2012), ShadowVisions is an esports
“archivist,” a keeper of stories about the game, and specific teams, players, and matches.
By summoning these stories in his commentary, he is imbuing events with particular
histories and meanings: he is making space.

As ShadowVisions illustrates, deciding which particular information to highlight

and include in what kinds of stories is complex work, given the sheer amount of stuff
happening at any given moment in a single match of League:
gold difference between the two teams, item builds, experience difference between
champions, what time it is during the game? What kind of dragon is up? When
is the respawn timer for this? . . . Do they have a lot of vision control on topside?
What does that mean? What can the team get off of this if they have control of this?
These moments throughout the game map are potentially important stories all
happening simultaneously. Given this overwhelming amount of information,
narrative functions as a way of organizing data distributed spatially and temporally:
of weaving particular threads of meaning into an account of the game so as to
give it shape. Narrativizing gameplay is thus not simply a rhetorical practice, but a
technical and spatial one as well—a matter of highlighting, selecting, and revisiting
threads of meaning extending beyond the space and time of the match in order to
make the games’ events, unfolding simultaneously across multiple locations on the
game’s virtual terrain, perceptually and culturally intelligible. As we argue later, and as
Massey’s theorization of space makes clear, the decisions that ShadowVisions makes
from moment to moment, orienting viewers via a series of highly deliberate, expertly
crafted spatial stories to what matters to high-caliber League play, are political.
Discussion
Working with Massey’s feminist theorization of space allows us to better understand
the work that ShadowVisions does in orienting his audiences, perceptually (toward
onscreen action) and culturally (toward the stories, and broader discourses, animating
League of Legends and esports more generally). We want to emphasize that this
conception of space does not foreground “the spatial,” as in existing research that
explores the logics behind the production of game space (Aarseth, 2008) or considers
our embodied sensations of game space (Flynn, 2004; Ash, 2009). This scholarship
is invaluable for its articulations of how game space is foundational (literally) to our
experiences and understandings of digital play. Neither the overriding emphasis on
players, however, nor the focus on what goes “into” game spaces, whether design
logics (Aarseth), or player attention (Ash), align with Massey’s (and our) concern with
space as a “product of social relations” and a simultaneity of stories-so-far. If space,
for Massey, is a concatenation of bodies, energies, and histories, and if the work of
esports commentary is to derive sense and meaning from these concatenations as they
coalesce and reform from moment to moment, then it makes sense, for us, to not only
regard esports commentary as a spatial practice, but to understand it as inherently
political—as engaging, embodying, and transforming sociotechnical relations of
power. In this section, we articulate some of the ways in which we see these cultural
politics of esports commentary in play.
180 Global Esports
Gender
Perhaps the most obvious is the marked gender disparity that characterizes esports
commentary. Like the majority of League commentators and esports commentators
more generally, ShadowVisions self-identifies as male, and many elements of his own
history with competitive gaming, such as his prolonged involvement with a successful
college team, ability to network with organizers and other players and commentators
to find more gigs, are possible through the kinds of capital and mobility that are most
often (though certainly not always) markers of male privilege (Jenson and de Castell,
2018). While esports communities regard themselves as meritocratic (Featherstone,
2017), we know that this not only obscures the numerous, longstanding cultural and
socioeconomic barriers that constrain women from entering and remaining in esports
(Witkowski, 2013; T. L. Taylor, 2012); it also glosses over the abuse and harassment
that are often leveled at them when they do “stick it out” (Grayson, 2015). Ultimately,
ShadowVisions benefits (however obliquely) from a culture and discourse that
positions young men as the natural claimants to esports’ rewards (Taylor, Jenson and
de Castell, 2009).
Furthermore, by pitching his commentary at an imagined audience that is not as
knowledgeable as he is, but is by no means inexperienced, ShadowVisions is perhaps
helping to reproduce the idea that League is, and ought to remain, an obtuse and
complex game—one that takes time to learn. Again, this positioning is not without its
political dimensions, as this relative inaccessibility is one of the mechanisms by which
League (alongside other titles with steep learning curves such as Dark Souls and EVE
Online) gatekeeps against more “casual” players—a moniker that, insofar as it denotes
preferences for play experiences that are short and feature more streamlined mechanics,
is often feminized (Anable, 2018). For these reasons, and much like we’ve seen from
both the actual physical contexts of esports events, practice sites, and tournaments
(Taylor, 2018; Witkowski, 2013), as well as the ideological terrains players traverse
(Voorhees and Orlando, 2018) the discursive landscape in which ShadowVisions
orients his audience remains resolutely masculinized.
Editorializing Esports
Another sense in which we can see power relations at play in the practices of
ShadowVisions and other commentators is through their careful and reflexive
selection of which stories to tell. While a deeper dive into the logics informing any of
ShadowVisions’ particular storymaking activities from game to game (or indeed, from
moment to moment) is beyond the scope of this chapter, we think it important to point
out that he describes his own activity as one of selecting appropriate information—
something that he says often takes primacy over paying attention to his play-by-play
commentator. The cognitive and attentional labor of esports commentary is, thus, one
of filtering and making connections between relevant data. This comes with (at least)

two key interrelated concerns for the critical appreciation of commentators’ labor we
offer here. The first is that ShadowVisions seems careful not to connect his analyses to
issues and concerns outside of the immediate world of League. Esports are profoundly
political, rife with exclusion and exploitation, and no stranger to controversy, whether
around sexual harassment, substance abuse, labor unrest, or the senseless tragedy of
gun violence. And yet, esports organizations often go to great lengths to cast themselves
(and by extension, their events and players) as “apolitical,” so as not to alienate fans or
anger government agents (Partin, 2018). This was certainly the case when Blizzard
punished Blitzchung, a professional Hearthstone player from Hong Kong, who voiced
their support for the pro-democracy protests in Hong Kong during a post-match
interview in 2019 (Carpenter, 2019). Of course, as has been argued with the game
development industry (Condis, 2018) maintaining an “apolitical” stance is a political
decision. Regardless, ShadowVisions seemed careful (both in his interviews with us
and in the work of his we observed) to avoid overt references to external events and
issues in his commentary. In his case, and perhaps with many other workers in an
esports industry, it may be that remaining apolitical is a matter of professional survival.
A second point regarding the forms of selection and omission that constitute so much
of ShadowVisions’ work has to do with the economic and technological conditions in
which this kind of work unfolds. Increasingly, the task of filtering and categorizing
information is handled by automated algorithmic processes. In unpacking the politics
of algorithms, Tarleton Gillespie (2014) notes how they have taken on added legitimacy
as sources of knowledge, at the same time as public trust in credentialed expertise has
been undermined (whether that of the scientist, journalist, and so on). Pitching this as
a tension between algorithmic and “editorial” logics, Gillespie writes:
The editorial logic depends on the subjective choices of experts, who are themselves
made and authorized through institutional processes of training and certification,
or validated by the public through the mechanisms of the market. The algorithmic
logic, by contrast, depends on the proceduralized choices of a machine, designed
by human operators to automate some proxy of human judgment or unearth
patterns across collected social traces. (192)
It is therefore worth noting the extent to which esports commentary relies on the
commentators’ accumulated knowledge, their curation of a craft that is resolutely
subjective, insofar as it is expressive of a unique and marketable persona. This is
especially remarkable given the prevalence of algorithms in competitive gaming,
where everything from matchmaking, to player rankings, to camera maneuvering
during replays (in some instances), to the movement and behaviors of computer-
controlled characters, is algorithmically managed. Given the centrality of esports
commentators—living archives (T. L. Taylor), community managers (Sell), mediators
of perception (Sjoblom and Linderoth) and culture, spatial storytellers—we think
it important to underscore that this remains a resolutely human(ist) role. Whatever
concerns we may have for the gender disparities in esports commentary (and esports
more broadly), and esports workers’ increased vulnerability that often results when
182 Global Esports
they acknowledge the imbrication of esports in contemporary political issues, the logics
guiding ShadowVisions’ selection and narrativization of information, his practices of
sense- and meaning-making, are not hidden in the black box of proprietary algorithms.
All we need to do is ask him.
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Witkowski, E. (2017). The C-league: Grassroots Netcafe Esports Tournament Play.
Foundation of Digital Games conference. August 14–17, 2017. Cape Cod, USA.
Witkowski, E. (2018). Learning the Ropes: Recruitment Practices in Pro/Am Esports.
University of California Irvine Esports Conference, October 11–12, 2018.
Witkowski, E., and Manning, J. (2018). “Player Power: Networked Careers in
Esports and High Performance Game Livestreaming Practices.” Convergence
the International Journal of Research into New Media Technologies, 1–17. DOI:
10.1177/1354856518809667.
11
Convergence of Music and Esports

Yaewon Jin and Tae-Jin Yoon
Introduction
In recent several years, as esports rapidly expanded its audience base, the public’s
reception of esports moved beyond the realm of sports. With a year-on-year growth of
+15.0 percent, the global esports audience grew to around 453.8 million worldwide in
2019 (Newzoo, 2019).
As the esports industry grew exponentially, the focus moved to how to deal
with the fast audience growth that resulted from engaging experience untethered to
traditional media. In order to reach and satisfy the live, networked, global audience
of video-culture generation, esports scene now is flooded with various convergences
of traditionally less-related areas. One of the most interesting areas would be the
convergence of music and esports.
In fact, the game industry has had fairly close affiliations and direct collaborations
with the music industry for years: game OST’s have been produced in collaborations with
the musicians, idol stars more than often signed endorsement deals with video game
developers, and esports events from the early 2010s have been tried to incorporate some
of the world’s biggest musicians to produce/perform theme songs. Although some of the
attempts that were successful were well received and celebrated within the subculture of
specific game/esports communities, it was around 2018, when esports scene’s “music”
exploded all over the world, impactfully revealing a less discussed potential. A Billboard
analyst even called the phenomena as “One of the biggest entertainment business trends
of the year 2018” (Hu, 2018). We have witnessed an unprecedented rate of numerous,
publicly announced deals1 among big-name companies and that of related content
distribution all over the globe. Some of the esports music has broken various records
of pop music scene and the audiences who previously were not part of the gaming or
esports community now listen to the song by virtual idol group with game characters.
Some of the mainstream musicians are not only engaging in sporadic esports events but
also actively investing their assets long-term into esports.
Despite the salience of the phenomenon, there is a serious lack of discussion in
the academic field; questions to be asked in order to understand the phenomenon
such as what is triggering the change in music-esports relations, how music-esports
is collaborating, and how is it impacting the course of gaming/esports culture moving
forward are yet to be answered or even discussed.

Convergence of Music and Esports 185
The purpose of this chapter is thus to conduct an exploratory research of the

conjugation between music and esports and formulate a theoretical categorization
to understand the phenomenon. First, we take a look at the development process
of esports and its convergent nature to understand the general tendencies of the
esports scene with other industries. Drawing on the concept of convergence, we next
attempt to formulate a typology of various phenomena where music and esports
collide. Then we take a close look at how music and esports interact and produce
in various layers in difference cases. Given the nascent state of academic discourse
of the sector and the speed of changes occurring in the scene, our focus lies in
attempting a comprehensive approach to discover the patterns and tendencies that
penetrate the overall process rather than focusing on providing the strict typology of
what has happened so far.
The Convergent Nature of Esports

Esports of its current form or system has a short history. It was only after the
network and live streaming technology that enabled real-time streaming of esports
matches through various hardwares that esports could become the fastest growing
global phenomenon. Before such technologies, esports in most of the areas in global
landscape, except the special case of South Korea, struggled to secure exposure in
traditional media such as TV but was never really successful. Taylor’s formulation of
esports history in “waves” might be helpful to further understand the developmental
process of esports:
●● The first wave (the 1970s and 1980s) was anchored in arcades and around home
console machines where the local dominated.
●● The second wave (the 1990s through 2010) leveraged the power of internet for
multiplayer connections and a more global formulation of the competitive space.
That period also witnessed the power of networking as a means to jump-start an
esports industry.
●● The third wave (starting around 2010) has at its core the growth of live streaming
that takes the power of networking we saw earlier and powerfully combines it
with the televisual.
(Taylor, 2018, 4)
As we can see, the distinctive phases were characterized or triggered by accommoda

tion of new technological developments. What is interesting is that the jump between
each wave is so huge that we tend to recognize esports differently. For example, through
the second and the third waves, the dominant conceptual frame to explain esports has
also shifted from “sports” to “entertainment media,” as the form and activities involved
also changed significantly. Also at this point, esports producers who once were eager
to legitimize esports by being part of mainstream media’s existing paradigm are
saying “it doesn’t need to be on TV” because it already is “legitimized” (Taylor, 2018,
141). Esports indeed is an avid early adaptor in broader media field that is willing to
186 Global Esports
metamorphosize according to new technologies or opportunities and is continuously

in the process.
While technologies have massively impacted the trajectory of the development of
video game and esports, it is “convergence” which characterizes the modern esports
scene. Most researchers may agree that in general terms convergence refers to “coming
together of two or more things,” as various arguments have been put forward attempting
“to define what exactly is coming together” (Grant and Wilkinson, 2009). In media fields,
the convergence is used mostly to refer to technological convergence; “the merging
of information from different technologies into one application or service” (Spacey,
2016), such as watching television shows on devices other than TV like mobile phone
or tablet. As digital evolution of technology continues to alter our media environment
in unprecedented ways, convergence now refers to not only “the technology enabled
technological convergence” but also its “social side-effects” (Rheingold, 2002) such as
flow of content across platforms, new forms of media content, cooperation of industries,
the migratory behavior of media audience, and so on (cf., Murdock, 2000; Jenkins,
2006a; Deuze, 2011; Herkman 2012; Flew and Liu, 2016). Theorists also suggest that
convergence is rather “a historically open-ended migration”2 (Jensen, 2010, 15) or “an
ongoing process”3 (Jenkins, 2006a; Dwyer, 2010, 2) than an outcome (Dal Zotto and
Lugmayr, 2016, 4). Thus, convergence is not about old media to be increasingly
replaced by new media, as in initial digital paradigm shift, but about the continuous
act of becoming, the process of revealing dynamic phenomena of various interactions
in a media ecosystem.
In this aspect, despite some shortcomings4 due to the multiplicity of uses of the word,
convergence is a very useful concept to explore the already convergent nature (Jin,
2010) of esports ecosystem, which from a mere “marketing tool” or “paratext industry”
(Consalvo, 2007) of “grassroots” game industry transformed into its own distinctive
industry utilizing the most of modern technology and enthusiastic community, and is
evolving even at this moment.
Development Process of Esports—Music Convergence

As esports is an ongoing process of development, so is the convergence between music
and esports. With the novel technologies constantly changing the structure of the
esport scene and its players, and the active engagement of live-networked collective
audience, the various attempts to incorporate two industries, even at a glance, take
ever-changing forms and make them very difficult to trace its boundaries. In cases
of music made specifically for esports (events), just like music composed for games,
the connection between esports and music is evident. However, in some other cases
the connection is less apparent. The playlist compiled by a streamer who used to be
esports pro-player (e.g., Ninja’s Ninjawerks), the music composed for in-game usage
becoming the main ceremony music at esports events (e.g., TheFatRat’s “music pack”
for DOTA 2), and music for one of the esports game’s mode’s advertisement becoming
one of the most hyped songs in the original game’s global esports community

(e.g., Mushvenom’s ‘Dududunga’) are some of the examples. Although the creation of

such music may not be originally intended for the narrow boundaries of esports such
as official events, they are meaningful examples of how music and esports as a broader
ecosystem interact with each other and also provide glimpse into how the interaction
occurs in diverse layers in esports culture. Thus, rather than limiting our analysis to a
narrower boundary, we will take a look at the various convergence cases of music and
esports in comprehensive manner, as we believe such approach could generate better
understanding of the phenomenon given the convergent nature of esports scene.
Drawing on Dal Zotto and Lugmayr’s illustration of different types and evolutionary
paths of media convergence (Dal Zotto and Lugmayr, 2016, 6), we formulated
cooperation between esports and music into four categories: technological convergence,
product(content) convergence, business level convergence, and industrial structure
convergence.
1)
Technological convergence: “the tendency of different technological systems to
evolve toward performing similar tasks”;
2) Product(content) convergence: “the convergence of different functionalities into
a new product”;
3) Business level convergence: the integration of “convergent areas of business
either within the company or through outside cooperation”;
4) Industrial structure convergence: structural change or the adaptation to the
environment to create a new “system entity”
(Dal Zotto and Lugmayr, 2016, McPhillips and Merlo, 2008)
Though this sort of categorization in any domain risks drawing a veil over the non-
depicted aspects, it can be beneficial in case of understanding the novel process of
esports-music convergence, especially when the research on the topic is in its nascent
state, as long as we acknowledge the limitations. Table 11.1 shows some of the major
deals and collaborations between esports and music through 2018 and mid-2019 (see
Table 11.1).
Technological Convergence
In the case of abovementioned esports-music convergence, technological convergence
refers to esports’ platforms or products serving as music’s additional exposure outlets or
revenue streams in exchange of music service to provide its already existing audiences a
greater value. Until recently, live esports events5—tournaments’ finals or game shows—
have been the primary sites of such cooperation, however more creative sites are being
discovered. For example, a German electronic music producer, TheFatRat (real name
Christian Büttner), who mentioned that “The biggest mistake is to focus only on the
exposure you get from an esports event” (Dredge, 2019), sold his “music pack”6 in a
game’s store. He sold more than 25,000 downloads in just the first three days, for the
price of 4.4 euros each. Riot Games’ LEC (League of Legend Europe Championship)
league after rebranding provides its esports broadcast live streaming (Figure 11.1)
Table 11.1 List of Major Deals and Collaborations between Esports and Music (2018–mid-2019)
Primary Actors
Date # Deals Convergence Paths Esports Music Third party
2018 February 22 1 Creative Artists Agency (CAA) and Evolution Business level convergence Investment Fund/ Talent and sports
Media invested $38 million in Vision Esports. Conglomerate agency,
Investment
Company
March 15 2 Ninja and Drake play duos in the game, Fortnite. Product convergence Streamer Artist
May 1 3 Imagine Dragons announced an investment in Business level convergence Conglomerate Artist
ReKTGlobal, and coownership of Esports
league Rogue alongside Steve Aoki.
July 13 4 Spotify partnered with Activision Blizzard’s Product convergence League Music Streaming
Overwatch League to launch a new playlist Platform
titled “Party on the Payload,” consisting of
songs that were picked by pro-players.
July 13 5 Universal Music Canada and Luminosity Gaming Business level convergence Multi-league Team Global music
announced an exclusive partnership. corporation
July 13 6 Universal’s Spotify playlisting service Digster.fm Product convergence General culture of playlisting service
launched a new “GAMING HIP HOP” playlist, Esports
featuring a selection of mainstream hip-hop
tracks.
August 2–4 7 Wacken Open Air, an annual heavy-metal music Product convergence Festival Organizer Festival
festival in Wacken, Germany, hosted its
first-ever Esports village in partnership with
German Esports company ESL.
August 4–5 8 LoL developer Riot Games partnered with MTV to Product convergence Game developer/ Music Channel
host the Esports and music festival Hyperplay publisher
at the Singapore Indoor Stadium.
August 24–26 9 The second annual ICBC e-Sports & Music Product convergence Hong Kong
Festival Hong Kong, hosted by the Hong Kong Tourism
Tourism Board, took place at the Hong Kong Board
Convention and Exhibition Centre.
September 13 10 German electronic producer TheFatRat made Technological convergence In-game Store Artist
a “music pack” (the equivalent of an EP)
available for download in the Dota 2 store, for
the price of 4.4 euros each. It still sold 25,000
downloads through the Dota 2 store in just the
first three days.
September 11 Pennsylvania’s Harrisburg University partnered with Product convergence FM radio station Harrisburg
21–22 iHeartMedia and Alt 99.3 to host the first-ever Outdoor University
Harrisburg University Esports (HUE) Festival. advertising
Twenty-one collegiate teams competed live in company
LoL and Overwatch tournaments over the course
of two days at Harrisburg University’s Whitaker
Center, with Columbia College ultimately
winning the grand prize of $50,000. The second
day of the festival featured a full music lineup
that was free to the public, with bands like Atlas
Genius, Alien Ant Farm and The Great Enough.
October 12 Insomniac Events, the electronic music promoter Product convergence Festival Organizer
12 behind festivals like Electric Daisy Carnival
and HARD Summer, announced a
brand-new music and Esports festival called
PLAY, in partnership with artist-manager Paul
Campbell (founder of Nû Management).
(Continued)
Table 11.1 (Continued)
Date # Deals Convergence Paths Primary Actors

Esports Music Third party
October 23 13 Drake and Scooter Braun became coowners in 100 Business level convergence Team Artists
Thieves.
October 26 14 Ninja announced a new compilation of gaming Industrial structure Streamer Record Label
music called Ninjawerks that will be released convergence/divergence
through Astralwerks, a subsidiary of Universal
Music Group’s Capitol Records.
November 1 15 South Korean game developer Actoz Soft launches Industrial structure Game developer/
the Esports girl group AQUA, featuring a total convergence/divergence publisher
of six members “who will promote both as idols
and as gamers,” according to a press release.
November 5 16 Universal Music Group’s new Esports label Enter Business level convergence Global music
Records, which soft-launched in early October corporation
as a joint venture with ESL, announced that
their first signee would be TheFatRat.
November 3 17 Riot Games announced a new “mixed-reality,” Industrial structure Game developer/ Artists
bilingual K-pop group called K/DA—formed in convergence/divergence publisher
part to promote new in-game cosmetics for LoL
champions Ahri, Akali, Evelynn and Kai’Sa.
November 11 19 Riot Games has signed a deal with music Business level convergence Game developer/ Technology
distribution service FUGA to handle its music publisher service
catalog for League of Legends. company
2019 June 7 20 Warner Music will be the official music partner for Technological convergence League Global music
the 2019 LEC Summer Split. The music label corporation
giant will provide the league with an exciting
new soundtrack that will play at least one song
per game during breaks, while also playing
music at roadshow events.
June 18 21 Rekt Global adds new investor with DJ Dicky Business level convergence Conglomerate Artist
Romero.

Figure 11.1 Esports Audience Growth (Newzoo, 2019).
screen for Warner Music to play at least one song per game during the break, for
2019 Summer Split period.
In a broader sense, some of the shared characteristics of two industries, basic as
their digitized format to their involvement in video-sharing platforms or the necessity
of creating a spectacle at live events, are the traces of past technological convergences
each separately evolved through. Since they allow “any content to be converge into
undifferentiated bits of data, regardless of the signal type,” previous convergence
process functions as a key tool that not only enables but also drives further integration
to a “higher, more complex or better state” (Lugmayr and Dal Zotto, 2016) leading to
the convergence of various functionalities into a new form of products or contents.
Product (Content) Convergence

Even through a robust history of active collaboration, gaming and music have tended
to position at the distant ends of vast entertainment family. Music represented “cool,
outgoing, popular youth culture” gaming on the other hand, until very recently, was
discussed in a certain stereotypes of “geeky, solitary images.” At least, this was the
common perception prevailing in our society. However, as esports boom, gaming
suddenly becomes “one of the key-pillars of pop-culture” (Fitch, 2018), according
to Bernhard Mogk, SVP Global & Business Development at ESL (Electronic Sports
League).7 Cases of product(content) convergence covered in this section also support
that esports and music are at the same level of playing fields.
As market in digital convergence era is filled with competing agents in integrated
platforms, the area of content production often requires integration strategies to
differentiate themselves; music streaming platforms add gaming content as cover to
192 Global Esports
Figure 11.2 LEC (League of Legend Europe Championship) Broadcast Live Streaming
Screen.
the compilation of their existing catalogues to reach gamers, who in average “can spend
up to 10 hours listening to music,” according to Dirk Baur, the president of marketing
labs at Universal Music Germany. Spotify with Activision Blizzard’s Overwatch League
launched a playlist “Party on the Payload” (see Figure 11.2), which consists of twelve
songs of various genres, in commemoration of the League’s playoffs and Grand Finals.
Digster.fm also released a “GAMING HIP HOP” playlist, featuring a selection of
mainstream hip-hop tracks. These playlists use esports leagues only to promote and
revive existing catalogue not to pursue mutual benefits (see Figure 11.3).
“Perhaps the most organic and lucrative exchange between music and esports
lies in live events,” says Hu, a billboard analyst, because it is where “the potential
to gather up audiences thrive in both directions” (Hu, 2018). Just as many esports
tournaments feature live musical performances during opening ceremonies, music
festivals are increasingly including esports sections and program; iconic music festival
Lollapalooza introduces special gaming lounge, where popular game streamer Ninja
and music artists—instead of performing their music—stream their game play.
Wacken Open Air, an annual heavy-metal festival, with ESL, also hosted esports village
where festivalgoers could play games like League of Legends and Player Unknown’s
Battlegrounds (PUBG) for free, in addition to daily training sessions and amateur
tournaments. However, more interesting cases are newly formed festivals—Harrisburg
University Esports (HUE) Festival and ICBC e-Sports & Music Festival Hong Kong—
hosted by third-party entities outside of esports and music industries that are designed
to incorporate music and esports in the same basket.
However, some of such attempts often face “epic failure” due to organizers’ lack of
understanding of both culture; in the midst of so many high quality options available,
just putting esports and music together without giving much thought into the audience

Figure 11.3 <Party on the Payload> Playlist on Spotify.
the event is actually targeting. This kind of ignorant convergence is perhaps an

example of less “authentic” convergence, where the product possesses “less potential
than others” (Banet-Weiser, 2012, 218) and might as well end up as “competitive or
complementary convergence” (Dowling, Lechner, and Thilmann, 1998; Greenstein
and Kanna, 1997; Picard, 2000, 2009; cited from Dal Zotto and Lugmayr, 2016), in
which users consider products as either substitutes or complements.
Business Level Convergence

“When company realizes that it would be more advantageous to integrate convergent
areas of business either within the company or through outside cooperation” (Dal Zotto
and Lugmayr, 2016), product level convergence leads to business level convergence,
consolidation through industry alliances and mergers. One of the simpler cases is the
partnership between Riot games and FUGA. Riot games, which has been producing
and handling distribution of their own music in-house, has decided to delegate the
mission to a distribution company, as it “can stimulate economies of scale” (Wirtz,
2011) through the expertise of distribution specialist to reach mainstream music fans.
Another form of business level convergence is direct investment. Considering that
music industry is still much bigger than esports industry, the investment usually came
from music industry, mostly from talents or talent-based organizations to esports
teams or conglomerates who also own several teams and other platforms. While
celebrity athletes have been investing in esports much earlier, Steve Aoki, a popular
EDM artist/DJ, was the first to start the trend in the music scene when he became
the owner of Overwatch team Rogue, back in 2016. During the period of 2018–19,
Imagine Dragons and DJ Dicky Romero also invested ReKTGlobal following Aoki,
while Drake and Scooter Braun became coowners in 100 Thieves. Most of them are
gamers themselves, which makes it easier for them to recognize the potential of the
esports market and its use as a marketing platform that can introduce their music acts
194 Global Esports
to its highly engaged viewers. However, in the case of Drake, he viewed 100 Thieves as
a “lifestyle brand,” an “apparel” company, and then a “esports organization” (Alexander,
2018), which resembles the “economic trends favoring the horizontally integrated
media conglomerates” (Jenkins, 2014).
Industrial Structure Convergence

The serious potential which previous convergence of esports and music industries have
shown leads to actual changes in industrial structure, such as creating a new entity
and altering the mode of production. The joint venture, Enter Records, established by
Universal Music Group and ESL is a new type of music label that is specialized in esports.
Unlike previous attempts to promote existing catalogues with esports packaging, the
label focuses on “artists who came from esports community” so that music is relatable
to the audience. Ninja’s compilation of gaming music, “Ninjawerks” resembles in a way
that the mode of music creation is based on the cultural convergence of two entities.
Ninjawerks Vol.1 features tracks from famous EDM artists including Tiësto, Kaskade,
Alesso, who specifically produced music inspired by gaming experience or music that
will be suitable to listen to while gaming:
When making “Game Time,” I wanted to create the perfect blend of energy and
familiar gaming soundscapes.
—3LAU, producer of “Game Time (feat. Ninja)”
We spend every day either producing music, playing Fortnite or watching videos of
Ninja play Fortnite.
—NOTD, producer of “Start It Over” (feat. CVBZ & SHY Martin)
We chose “All About It” to be part of this compilation because it sounds like something
we’d want to listen to while we game ourselves.
—GTA, producer of “All About It”
With Jetty, I set out to try and capture the sense of wonder and immersion I feel when
experiencing a new world inside of a game.
—Tycho, producer of “Jetty”
It’s always so fun to see my worlds collide. Gaming and music are a hand- in-glove fit;
when this opportunity to release “On Your Mind” on a compilation curated by Ninja
was introduced to me, I had to say yes. I love playing video games, and I love music.
—Kaskade, producer of “On Your Mind”
(Bein, 2018)
Both cases of the mode of production could be understood as “digital readymade”—

original concept, “readymade” associated mostly with the aesthetic activities of
Marcel Duchamp—utilizing everyday object selected and designated as art. However,

Ninjawerks production can even be viewed as “concept music,” because the artists did
not just use “gaming” as the material of the production but as a core principle.
Convergence to Divergence: Case Study of K/DA and

True Damage
Various types of convergence in the scene of esports showcase how we are witnessing an
evolutionary process. However, what emerge as a result of such processes often seems
like more of a revolution, where it becomes a divergence rather than convergence. The
case of K/DA is an interesting example as it not only touches upon various aspects of
convergence discussed in literature but also sheds light on less expected aspects.
On Saturday during the 2018 League of Legends World Championship opening
ceremony in Incheon, South Korea, video games developer Riot Games unveiled a new
virtual K-pop unit called K/DA, in what is being called a mixed reality performance
that blended live staging and hologram technology. K/DA’s debut song “Pop/Stars”
broke the record for the most viewed K-pop group debut music video in twenty-four
hours with 5 million views and named the no. 1 track on Billboard’s World Digital
Song Sales Chart (Benjamin, 2018). Though it’s not the first foray into music for Riot
Games, who have been producing music—in-game character collaborations for many
years, K/DA was especially successful.
The band wasn’t even a project of its own. The unit originally started as Riot Games’
way of building hype for the 2018 League of Legends World Championship and getting
players to buy in-game cosmetics for the four champions of the unit, Ahri, Akali,
Evelynn, and Kai’Sa. According to a Verge article, “In addition to being able to buy
these looks for the champions in-game, you’re also motivated to keep playing to earn a
‘Prestige’ Kai’Sa skin where the woman from the void dons a blonde wig and is dressed
in all white” (Liao, 2018). In short, the core purpose of this unit was the product level
convergence, where the music and its presentation would provide higher product value
to in-game cosmetics item. Such convergence also diversified the revenue model of the
company through actual sales of the song.
In the process of connecting two in the environment of this specific time, the
attempt for product(content) level convergence also discovered the new mode of
global content creation, a business level convergence. The esports’ development is very
much dependent on the live streaming media technology and culture which enable
simultaneous growth in the global ecology, thus in order to satisfy the global audience,
the mode of creation also was “a global experience.”
It also helps that Riot hired cool dancers and artists to perform its track. American
singers Madison Beer and Jaira Burns contributed the English lyrics, while two
members of (G)I-DLE sang and rapped in Korean. For the “behind the scenes”
dance video, Riot contracted a variety of dancers, including Ellen Kim, who hails
from Los Angeles. It’s a global experience, much like League itself. (Liao, 2018)
196 Global Esports
It was global not only in a geographical sense but also in a cultural aspect. Manovich
(2001) analyzed that “the language of contemporary media as the mix between different
sets of cultural forces” and as the result of the mix, we get strange hybrid. It can be
“remix of past conventions and current media language’, and/or ‘mix of international
style and locality,” and/or even “the mix of various cultural formats/interfaces new
software technology” (Manovich, 2001). All three types are apparent in the case of K/
DA. Moreover, the construction of the performance presenting both augmented virtual
characters and the singers who acted the part also expanded the scope of popular
music creation. Whereas past attempts for cyber-musicians never really overcame the
uncanny valley, the public took game characters with famous human voice as easily
as dubbing of some Disney animations. For most of esports fans, Kaisa and Ari are
much intact with their everyday lives, through which they recognize reality, than four
popular singers.
The success of K/DA was yet another expansion of esports, tapping into an audience
bigger than the typical League of Legends player base or the fans of music-side. It also
became viral in the user-generated art communities. According to a magazine article,
Figure 11.4 True Damage’s Quiana Louis Vuitton Wardrobe.

many were attracted by “art of Akali, the kunai-twirling assassin who hides in a shroud
and glows in psychedelic neon colors as she raps” (Liao, 2018) in the music video: “You
can find art for K/DA on Deviantart, Tumblr, Twitter, Instagram, and other platforms.
Many users captioned their art by saying that they used to play League of Legends and
then quit, or that they don’t know what this game is at all but are just participating in
the fandom because the video looks so cool” (Liao, 2018). The mode of consumption of
esports content also was created with broader network and new activities.
The process did not stop here. In 2019 League of Legends World Championship
opening ceremony in Paris, Riot games introduced their second virtual music
group called True Damage. Unlike K/DA, the new group was a hip-hop group again
made up of five fictional League of Legends champions but included Akali from K/
DA again. Soyeon, who sang/performed in place/with Akali in K/DA reappeared
with four new singers who represented four other new champions. Their wardrobe
was made in collaboration with Louis Vuitton, a luxury fashion brand, which was
sold in Louis Vuitton as a special collection and at the same time as in-game skins,
expanding the possibilities to another level of convergence with other industries, too
(see Figure 11.4).
The sporadic creation of new musicians from virtual champions in collaboration
with real singers of global music scene in two years of existence not only changed
the mode of production in esports and music sectors but also redefined the relations
between gaming and high fashion. The convergence of music and esports in its
development process is moving beyond the boundaries of existing industries and
creating new system entities divergent from them.
Discussion: Shifts in Production/Reception through

Convergence
There are many different moments that games and music encounter and converge.
There are various ways and types of convergence, too. In the narrowest sense, esports
music can be defined music that is uniquely made for esports events. However, there
are many other instances that the esports field creates new meaning by appropriating
existing music, and they can also widely regarded as esports music. The purpose
of this chapter was to conduct an exploratory research and formulate a theoretical
categorization to understand the conjugation between music and esports. Drawing on
the concept of convergence, we observed how music and esports interact in various
layers in difference cases.
Though our categorization was described with causality, it does not represent a strict
sequential order; rather, it is to demonstrate the intensive correlation of different areas
in esports-music convergence ecosystem. Thus, as much as each case discussed earlier
may seem like an independent endeavor, in a broader context, they are all connected
as parts of collaborative effort to expand our understandings and experiences and as a
sum, they alter the ways how we perceive both music and gaming.
198 Global Esports
For some researchers of popular music studies, the challenges and benefits that
result from ever-progressing path toward technological innovation and media growth
are understood with the concept of “sonic synergies.” The editors of Sonic Synergies:
Music, Technology, Community, Identity define the concept as “the interaction of music
with and on other cultural forces, particularly technology, identity, and community—
all catalysts of change within the new creative knowledge economy, which together
create and entity that is bigger than the sum of parts” (Bloustien, Peters, and Luckman,
2008). They viewed the phenomenon as “a wake-up call to reassess work done
on popular music” not only because of the fundamental shift in the process or the
mode of production but also because of the changes in reception: in the “new form
of creative knowledge economy the processes of production and consumption are
increasingly blurred and fluid, with audiences moving with ease and expertise between
consumerism, entrepreneurism and music practices” (Bloustien et al., 2008)
One distinct example would be the shift in the relationship of the audience and the
music genre. In pop music culture, traditionally, audiences of subcultures related to
specific music genre, and music festivals, ever since the Woodstock music festival took
place in New York state in 1969, also tended to focus on one particular genre. Various
collaborative efforts in esports showed otherwise, as genre distinction is blurred in
esports contexts.
There is a common misconception that “esports music” is limited only to hard-

hitting hip-hop and EDM, but the Party on the Payload playlist—which features
artists as far-ranging as Taylor Swift, Luis Fonsi, Queen and The Offspring—
suggests that that myth could not be further from the truth. (Frometa, 2019)
With technologies that enable close yet loosely constructed global audience group,
“what counts as ‘good’ music in esports contexts depends heavily on players’ individual,
organic passions and tastes, which are likely to diversify as esports becomes more
global and more mainstream” (Frometa, 2019).
It also carries a valuable lesson to understand this generation of gamers and esports
audiences. For older generations, gamers and music-festival-goers were different
groups that did not belong together. However, as esports tournaments now also
function as music festival, where young people can meet up and celebrate their culture,
the public’s reception of “gamer-stereotype” and how gamers themselves perceive their
culture also are changing. This generational shift is apparent in the case of “Fortnite
dance,” where gaming is not a geek subculture, rather a hip-pop culture paralleling
with pop-music. It also invited non-gamers to celebrate gamers’ way of play.
Such expansion brings various social practices which had been less considered
in traditional notion of gaming, and often times, music functions as collective
tissue to surround all of them. In other words, music may function as the glue to
connect various practices surrounding esports, such as competition, spectating,
fandom, secondary production, and so on. Furthermore, it provides the basis for
audience group members’ self-identity by setting the tone of the shared experience
that provides guidelines in how to identify one’s experience. One of the players of

League of Legends made a comment on the developer’s self-produced music: “Riot’s

music makes us sad, sometimes it makes us joyful and playful, and sometimes it
makes us feel so pumped up we want to start rocking our heads back and forth!”
(bluefire492). Music is not just one of many components that make esports
more exciting. The convergence of esports and music in various dimensions is
a significant cultural “event” that changes the nature of the game and how we
experience it. This is why we should pay more attention to the convergence of
esports and music.
Notes
1 Famous artists such as Drake, Scooter Braum, TheFatRat, Steve Aoki, and Jennifer Lopez
and some of world’s biggest music corporations such as Universal Music Group, MTV,
Creative Artists Agency, and Insomniac Events signed deals with major eSports corporations
and leagues such as Riot Games, ESL, Luminosity Gaming, and Vision Esports.
2 “a historically open ended migration of communicative practices across diverse
material technologies and social institutions” (Jensen, 2010, 15).
3 “the process whereby new technologies are accommodated by existing media and
communication industries and cultures” (Dwyer, 2010, 2).
4 One of the challenges is that convergence is such a heavily discussed term, tagged
to almost any new digital activity. Even in the academic literature, multiplicity of
uses of the word “convergence” creates “diverging views, conceptualizations and
understandings” (Arango-Forero, Roncallo-Dow, and Uribe-Jongbloed, 2016) and,
as a result, the concept is “underdeveloped from both a theoretical and an empirical
perspective” (Wirth, 2006).
5 The fact that “the majority of esports festivals now take place in arenas that are
normally used for big music concerts” also is an exemplary case of technological
convergence, in which esports uses platforms of music industry and mimics the
spectacle of music industry : “The UK recently saw the ESL One Dota 2 gaming
tournament taking place at the Arena Birmingham that has a capacity of well over
15,000 and usually features music stars such as Ariana Grande, Rod Stewart and The
Chemical Brothers” (Frometa, 2019).
6 the equivalent of an EP (Extended Play record: a compilation of songs that contains
more tracks than a single, but is unqualified as a full-length album)
7 ESL is an esports organizer and production company based in Germany launched
in 2000. With eleven offices globally, ESL is the largest, and the oldest (that is still
operational), esports company, and host various competitions such as ESL Play, ESL
Pro Leagues, ESL National Championships, etc.
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12
Esports, Australianness, and Beating

New Zealand
Portrayals of Esports in Mainstream
Australian News Media
David Jian-Jia Cumming
Introduction
With the rise of esports in the past decade, it is unsurprising that the global phenomenon
has begun to garner considerable mainstream media coverage (Jenny et al., 2016).
Broader acceptance of esports is being seen across the media landscape, with outlets
like ESPN that previously shunned esports easing their stance and incorporating the
practice into their coverage (Burroughs and Rama, 2015). Thus, the practice and
phenomenon of esports is being relayed to a wider audience. This recent media coverage
likely provides the first impression of esports for those previously uninformed. Among
other political, social, and cultural factors, news media performs an important role
in setting the public agenda (Hughes at al., 2010). Taking the role of an information
disseminator for new issues, events, and phenomena, mainstream news media outlets
are the sources that often first make the general public aware of trends initially
contained in niche groups (Conrad, 1997; Nicholls, 2011). Consequently, mainstream
new media also shapes the public’s perceptions and understanding of these emergent
trends and technologies, providing not only information but also interpretative
frameworks (Nelson et al., 1997; Rooke and Amos, 2014). Content framing is often
informed by national identity, with the media reflecting and reinforcing a country’s
core values (Due, 2011). With this in mind, Australia and the way its news media
covers esports becomes an interesting case.
The media has long held a symbiotic relationship with sport, each relying on the
other for their own success (Wenner, 1998). In particular, this relationship is well
pronounced in Australia, partially due to the country’s self-identification as a sporting
nation. This stems from the importance of sporting prowess in the distinction of an
Australian identity from the British (White, 1981; Anderson, 2006). Consequently,
core sporting values are also important in the expressions of Australian national
identity (Geertz, 2000). As Nicholson et al. (2016) highlight, the degree to which a

Esports, Australianness, and Beating New Zealand 203
concept does or does not align with Australian sporting values can determine whether
it is acceptable in Australian culture. Such values represent a conundrum regarding
the representation of esports in the media, as the practice embodies a convergence of
sporting and video gaming elements (Macey and Hamari, 2018). Debate surrounding
esports in various circles, including academia (Hallman and Giel, 2018), proclaims
that the concept of esports is oxymoronic by nature as a practice built on two sets
of values seemingly at odds with each other. Physicality (Jenny et al., 2016), motor
skills (Hilvoorde and Pots, 2016), embodiment (Ekdahl and Ravn, 2019), and fandom
(Thiborg, 2009) are samples of the concepts evoked in these discussions surrounding
esports. While researchers have worked to understand esports as a practice (Taylor,
2012), define it and identify its spectating motivations (Hamari and Sjöblom, 2017),
comparatively little work has been conducted regarding how esports is perceived by
outsiders to the esports community.
This chapter does not seek to join the debate surrounding the distinction between
esports and sports. Rather, it seeks to investigate how esports is portrayed in Australian
news media, considering how deeply sporting values are ingrained in the country’s
culture and national identity (Mewett, 1999). Such insight will help develop a greater
understanding of how esports is normalized or marginalized in the mainstream
as it continues to gain notoriety. While it is inaccurate to suggest that mainstream
news media directly determines and reflects public opinion, Priest (2006) asserts
that “media accounts express relevant values and beliefs, help confer legitimacy to or
discredit particular groups by treating them as part of the mainstream or as marginal,
and therefore indirectly affect which perspectives do or do not ultimately come to
dominate collective discourse and decision-making.” In order to understand how
individuals are initially positioned to think about esports, we must look at the ways it
is framed and presented in mainstream news media coverage. These insights may also
identify how perceptions and attitudes toward sport have changed. With increasing
reliance on technology in the production and spectacle of spectator sports (Bale, 1998),
the undeniable disruptive nature of esports in sporting discourse as an electronically
facilitated practice may identify ways in which sporting values have shifted.
This chapter addresses the need for research on this topic and presents a study
conducted to identify portrayals of esports in Australian mainstream news media.
Roughly eleven years’ worth of Australian media coverage regarding esports was
analyzed, culminating in the identification of six major themes. Further examination
of these themes identified the influence of core Australian values in their portrayals,
particularly those relating to sport.
Method
The study was based around a thematic analysis of 229 articles mentioning esports
published in the Australian news media. This ranged from the first mention of the term
in March 2008 until May 2019. Sixteen major Australian news outlets were selected
to provide a comprehensive sample that would broadly cover various readership
demographics across the nation. The selected outlets were chosen to represent
204 Global Esports
publications on the metropolitan and national level, in print and online, private and
government owned, and tabloids and broadsheets. Television and radio news outlets
were excluded from the sample due to the lack of comprehensive coverage archives.
Furthermore, Hughes et al. (2011) assert that print publications often set the agenda
for coverage in other mediums (see Table 12.1).
While other studies investigating representations in the Australian news media base
their publication samples on circulation figures (Hughes et al., 2010; Hughes et al.,
2011; Nicholson et al., 2016), this chapter did not exclude relatively small publications
for the sake of representing the local news of each Australian state and territory. This
was deemed important when considering the grassroot efforts of small, scattered
local esports communities (Keiper et al., 2017). If coverage concerning these modest
endeavors were to be captured, then sampling by circulation was unsuitable. For
example, the Northern Territory News has a relatively small average daily circulation
Table 12.1 Publication Sample
Publication Name Ownership Audience Medium Format

The Advertiser News Corp Australia Adelaide (South Print Daily tabloid
Australia)
The Age Nine Entertainment Melbourne (Victoria) Print Daily compact
Co. broadsheet
The Australian News Corp Australia National Print Daily broadsheet
Australian Broadcasting Government National Online News website
Company (ABC)
News
Brisbane Times Nine Entertainment Brisbane Online Online newspaper
Co. (Queensland)
Canberra Times Nine Entertainment Canberra (Australian Print Daily compact
Co. Capital Territory) broadsheet
Courier Mail News Corp Australia Brisbane Print Daily tabloid
(Queensland)
Daily Telegraph News Corp Australia Sydney (New South Print Daily tabloid
Wales)
The Herald Sun News Corp Australia Melbourne (Victoria) Print Daily tabloid
The Mercury News Corp Australia Hobart (Tasmania) Print Daily tabloid
News.com.au News Corp Australia National Online Online newspaper
Northern Territory News News Corp Australia Darwin (Northern Print Daily tabloid
Territory)
Special Broadcasting Government National Online News website
Service (SBS)
News
Sydney Morning Herald Nine Entertainment Sydney (New South Print Daily compact
Co. Wales) broadsheet
WAToday Nine Entertainment Perth (Western Online Online newspaper
Co. Australia)
The West Australian Seven West Media Perth (Western Print Daily Tabloid
Australia)
While owned by the Australian government, the SBS also generates profits from commercial activities, such as
advertising and sales (“Faqs: SBS Corporate,” n.d.).

of 53,000 despite being the major metropolitan newspaper for the Northern Territory
(“NT News—News Corp Australia,” n.d.). Such an approach also helps shed light on
state-based differences in esports representations.
Content aggregator Factiva was used to search for and collect the articles, using the
search queries of esports, e-sports, and eSports. Since many of Australia’s media outlets
are owned and syndicated by either Nine Entertainment Co. (formally Fairfax Media) or
News Corp Australia, duplicate articles appearing multiple publications were manually
excluded from the data set, with the earliest iteration of the article remaining. Articles
that referred to esports other than as “a form of sport where the primary aspects of
the sport are facilitated by electronic systems” (Hamari and Sjöblom, 2017) were also
excluded. PDF files of each article were downloaded from Factiva and imported into
qualitative coding software NVivo 12, sorted by publication date, then subjected to a
thematic analysis.
This analysis method was informed by guidelines developed by Braun and Clarke
(2006) for its comprehensiveness and ability to consolidate large data sets. The analysis
leads with an initial familiarization with the data, which involved the reading of each
article. Each article was then systematically coded for themes concerning the presentation
and portrayals of esports. Besides the content of these articles, the tone of writing was also
considered in the coding process. These codes were consolidated and categorized against
each other, followed by a process of axial coding informed by Straussian grounded theory
methods (Strauss and Corbin, 1997) to explore relationships between categories. This led
to the generation of six key themes. The articles were then read and coded again, this time
with these key themes in mind to ensure they were broadly representative of the data set.
Results
Six key themes were generated from the thematic analysis. Although presented
independently here, these themes inform each other to varying extents. From the
analysis, esports was presented in the Australian mainstream media coverage as:
An investment opportunity: Portrays esports as an untapped opportunity for

business investment among multiple entities external to esports.
Having societal impacts: Suggests that the growth of esports will have broad
impacts on Australian society, both positive and negative.
Entering the mainstream: Presents esports as increasingly becoming normalized
and known by the general public.
Underdeveloped in Australia: Presents esports in Australia as underdeveloped in
comparison to mostly Northern Hemisphere countries and regions.
Sport-like: Portrays esports as possessing qualities similar to conventional sports
in terms of practice, spectatorship, and industry.
Professionalized: Portrays esports as a profession, evolving beyond an activity
of leisure. Esports careers were presented as viable employment with various
professions within the esports industry.
206 Global Esports
An Investment Opportunity
The recognition of esports as an opportunity to conduct business occurred early in
the surveyed media coverage. This was the most prevalent theme throughout the
229 analyzed articles and first appeared in an August 2009 article. Here, a producer
for a competitive gaming event organizer speaks of esports audiences as a target for
advertising.
With our model, we’ve taken [competitions] out of LAN cafes and we’ve put them
into TV studios—and as soon as you do that, you create something for spectators
to watch, players want to take part in and sponsors can use to advertise their
products. (The Age, August 20, 2009)
Esports was presented as an untapped market with an elusive demographic that could
be accessed through investment. This demographic was commonly portrayed as
youthful, with millennial often used to describe the esports audience. This youthful
market was presented as attractive in two main ways: as a target for advertisers and as
a way for existing organizations to broaden their existing demographic reach. This was
predominately in relation to sporting organizations, which were reported as investing
into esports to reach a technologically engaged, young demographic who were
perceived to lack interest in conventional sports. The majority of this coverage started
appearing from May 2017 onwards, following the purchase of two esports teams in the
Oceanic Pro League (OPL) by Australian Football League (AFL) clubs, following in the
footsteps of overseas sporting organizations.
Crows chief executive Andrew Fagan said the fast-expanding eSports industry
would augment fan reach, the club’s brand and its commercial platform,
intersecting the areas of technology, media and entertainment. (The Advertiser,
May 18, 2017)
This diversification through esports appeared to be a part of a larger push for

Australian sporting organizations to reach new audiences following a perception that
existing sporting outlets had reached “peak capacity” (The Age, December 19, 2018).
Esports was often grouped with other recent alternative sporting ventures, such
as AFL Women’s (AFLW) and AFLX, designed by the AFL to capture a female and
international audience respectively.
the Crows have added baseball, Esports, AFLW and an expanding media operation
working beyond sport. (The Advertiser, March 1, 2019).
Besides interest in esports as an investment opportunity from an industry perspective,

other coverage noted a growing interest in esports on a governmental level. The
majority of this coverage appeared from June 2018 after the announcement of the
Melbourne eSports Open, an esports exhibition event sponsored by the Victorian state

government. The event was portrayed as an attraction that would “bring a whole new
demographic of tourists to Melbourne” (Herald Sun, June 24, 2018). Through tourism,
the event was described as a substantial boost for the local Victorian economy. Prior to
the announcement of the MEO, the success of esports as a tourist attraction overseas
appeared in coverage surrounding the rising popularity of esports globally, alongside
early considerations of local government-lead esports events. Additionally, coverage
surrounding local government interest in esports portrayed a sense of competition
between Australian cities to establish themselves as the national esports capital. This
was often portrayed as a rivalry between Sydney and Melbourne.
MELBOURNE will stage Australia’s biggest annual video gaming tournament this
year in a bid to become the eSports capital of the nation. (Herald Sun, August 3,
2018)
Gambling opportunities surrounding esports were also picked up in the coverage. The
esports market was portrayed as having grown large enough to warrant investment
into esports wagering, targeting new demographics. Alongside the rapid growth of the
esports industry, the satellite esports gambling industry was also presented as quickly
growing. The opportunities for investment into esports gambling in Australia were
presented as alluring, based on lucrative figures from overseas esports gambling.
Having Societal Impacts

Coverage presented the phenomenon of esports as having broad societal impacts.
Many of these impacts concerned children, who were perceived as the main
demographic engaging with esports. The organized, supervised elements of esports
were seen as beneficial for bringing at-risk youths off the streets and into a positive
environment, reducing crime and anti-social behavior. Coverage also presented esports
as a productive form of gaming, particularly for school children. This type of coverage
predominately surrounded the introduction of extracurricular esports programs in
Australian schools. Here, esports was presented as a way to harness school children’s
existing interest in gaming and apply it in a productive manner.
“The kids are going to play anyway,” Smart said. “To have it as an organised
competition is similar to netball and football—you play for a team, there’s scoring
and points.” (The Advertiser, May 19, 2018)
By engaging in esports, it was anticipated that school children would learn valuable
life skills in a similar manner to conventional sports. Through this portrayal of esports
as a productive form of gaming for school children, regular forms of gaming were
implied to be an unproductive, solidary, and anti-social activity. In this sense, gaming
was perceived to have been transformed through esports into a productive pursuit.
208 Global Esports
Conversely, esports was also portrayed as luring individuals away from playing
conventional sports, presenting the sedentary aspects of esports as unhealthy and
against core sporting values. Much of this sentiment was concentrated in opinion
pieces questioning the legitimacy of esports appearing at the Olympics. Through the
growing popularity of esports, it was feared that sports would become devalued or even
defaced. For most Australian children an interest in sport is inevitable (if you unplug the
PlayStation) (The Sydney Morning Herald, December 22, 2018).
Even in coverage surrounding the success of professional Australian esports players,
esports was also presented as a distraction from activities accepted as productive, like
studying and conventional sports. This position commonly appeared in relation to
parents of young Australian esports professionals expressing skepticism toward their
child’s career choice.
Mr Dennis said he was supportive of Sam’s passion for eSports, provided his
school marks didn’t drop and he played a team sport outside as well. (The Mercury,
October 14, 2018)
Concerns surrounding the violent content of esports titles were expressed regarding
gun-based imagery and gameplay. Much of this coverage concerned children and
fixated on how exposure to violent esports content would negatively impact them. This
centered around the possibility of esports appearing at the Olympics. The concern here
was twofold—a fear of children being negatively influenced by exposure to violent
content and the Olympics’ image being tarnished.
“It’s a concern for the Olympic Committee that they don’t want to bring that kind
of narrative of killing into the Olympic Games,” Dr Orlando said. (ABC News, June
1, 2018)
While the economic prospects of esports gambling was presented as profitable, most
coverage portrayed esports gambling negatively. Fears surrounded esports becoming a
gambling gateway for young fans. Companies and organizations investing directly into
the esports industry were keen to differentiate themselves from the satellite esports
gambling industry. Here, an executive of an Australian online esports matchmaking
platform stressed that their services were centered around skill-based prize pools,
rather than luck-based wagering.
But Mr Abl is quick to distance himself from gambling, even though eSports
Mogul users buy digital coins to form a prize pool to compete with other users.
(The Sydney Morning Herald, February 4, 2016)
Governmental distain for esports gambling was also represented. While illegal in most
of Australia, offshore online gambling services and a lack of regulation were reported
as making enforcement difficult. The South Australian and New South Wales state
governments were both reported as cracking down on unregulated esports betting,

with SA explicitly rejecting proposals to legalize the practice. Fears of gambling

encouraging the formation of organized crime syndicates around esports was another
concern, potentially leading to match-fixing as seen overseas.
Sport-like
Throughout coverage a consensus emerged that esports at least somewhat embodied
elements of conventional sports. This manifested through the use of illustrative sports
comparisons to describe the concept of esports for the uninitiated. These comparisons
also appeared early in the coverage, first being used in a July 2008 article to convey the
high salaries, celebrity status, and intense training regimes of South Korean esports
players.
The life of a pro game player in South Korea is not unlike those of sports stars.
They earn six-figure salaries, play for corporate-sponsored teams and live with
their teammates. The typical daily regime of a pro StarCraft player includes up to
10 hours’ practice, plus interviews, photo shoots and paid appearances. (The Herald
Sun, July 16, 2008)
These comparisons were made across a range of topics including spectator motivations,
rules of play, professional careers, fandom, organizational structure, industry, player
skills, strategy, and popularity. By relating esports to established sporting conventions,
an alienating concept was transformed into something familiar. Even in articles
arguing against the notion of esports as a sport, sport-like elements of esports were
highlighted. However, these comparisons were instead framed as deceptive, with an
underlying emphasis on a required element of physicality needed for an activity to be
considered a sport. These articles grouped and compared esports with activities often
placed at the fringes of the sports definition, such as rock climbing, surfing, chess,
and darts. In some opinion pieces, the sport-like aspects of esports were portrayed
as distracting the International Olympics Committee from considering other, more
deserving nonconventional sports for inclusion in an upcoming Olympics. It was
alleged that the inclusion of esports at the Olympics would set the precedent for other
seemingly trivial activities to be also included.
If eSports makes it onto the schedule for the 2024 Olympics or any time thereafter,
what comes after that - sprint karaoke, putt-putt golf and teams hide-and-seek?
(The Sydney Morning Herald, December 22, 2018)
Other articles deemed esports as an appropriate addition to conventional sporting

events due to the practice’s alignment with sporting culture. Being able to support your
country through esports was a common example of this, evoking sporting narratives of
training hard to represent your country on the international stage.
210 Global Esports
Esports deserves its place in sport’s showpiece event, argues Scott Wenkart. It’s the
pinnacle of sporting achievement. Representing your country in a sport you’ve
dedicated your life to. Pulling on your nation’s colours because you’ve earned the
right. (The Sydney Morning Herald, October 3, 2017)
Similarly, esports was presented as an alternative outlet for the expression and
engagement in sporting culture. In some cases, esports was presented as a sporting
outlet for video game fans who held little interest in conventional sports throughout
their life and struggled to understand the allure of spectator sports.
Finally, here was a game I understood. A game I could follow. (The Herald Sun,
February 4, 2018)
Other articles presented esports as an alternate way to fulfill professional sporting

desires for those lacking in aptitude or suffering from injury. This type of coverage
arose following the purchase of esports teams by AFL clubs, which lead to esports
players competing under the banner of iconic Australian sporting institutions.
I grew up as a big Essendon fan, so to be part of the Essendon Football Club, it was
a surreal feeling. (ABC News, July 26, 2018)
Also following the acquisition of esports teams by AFL clubs was the development
of rivalries between esports teams, mirroring those found in the AFL. These rivalries
were presented as a positive addition to Australian esports, fostering competition
among these newly acquired teams. This would help esports become further sport-like
and drive a sense of localized team fandom.
IT is not quite a fiery MCG blockbuster between Collingwood and Carlton yet,
but a new sporting rivalry is brewing in Melbourne. eSports clubs Bombers
and ORDER are confident their rivalry will one day be among the biggest in
Melbourne’s sport. (The Herald Sun, January 25, 2018)
Furthermore, the opportunity to engage in established Australian sporting rivalries

with other countries were presented in a similar fashion.
Plus, we might even get to beat New Zealand at something, and really, isn’t that
what being Australian is all about? (The Herald Sun, January 19, 2018)
Entering the Mainstream

Esports was presented as making progress toward receiving mainstream recognition.
Early coverage from 2008 portrayed esports as a niche interest starting to be pushed
into the mainstream by several new and established esports organizations. Although

portrayed as well established in Asian countries like South Korea and China, it was
implied that mainstream recognition in the West was needed for the practice to be
legitimized.
when will “eSports” mature from being some esoteric, nerdish peculiarity of the
technophile East, and reach the mainstream media of the West? (The Canberra
Times, July 19, 2013)
Often, esports was portrayed as entering the mainstream through empirical figures
representing the broad popularity of esports, such as large viewership numbers and
industry’s value. Emphasizing these figures, comparisons were often made to those
of other popular media like spectator sports and television shows, highlighting ways
in which esports were comparable or surpassed them. The growing trend of esports
adopting mainstream sporting conventions was also used to highlight esports’ growing
appeal. In particular, the play of esports in iconic sporting venues was used to portray
esports as becoming popular and sport-like enough to warrant the use of these sites.
This weekend in a stadium built for the 2000 Sydney Olympics, an event like none
seen before in Australia has drawn gamers from around the world competing for
glory. (The Herald Sun, May 6, 2017)
Esports was presented as defying negative stereotypes of associated with gaming. It was
emphasized that esports professionals were not simply “anti-social, maladjusted nerds
who dwell in basements in the eerie glow of their computer screens” (The Herald Sun,
April 3, 2018). Rather, this coverage presented esports players as social, professional,
mature, and healthy individuals who regularly travelled as a part of their career. The
anecdote of gaming “moving out of the basement” was commonly used to evoke this.
Esports was also portrayed as being engaged with by people beyond the stereotypical
teenaged boy demographic. It was stressed that esports fans were generally older than
one would expect and that a sizable number of fans were female. These assertions often
did not draw from figures derived from esports itself, but rather extrapolated from
broader gaming practices.
Articles also reported issues which had become apparent through esports’ rapid growth.
Those presented were portrayed as pernicious remnants of gaming culture that needed
to be dealt with if esports was to truly become an accepted mainstream entertainment
media. Issues often related to gender, namely a lack of female representation in esports
professions and hostility directed toward female esports players. While these issues
were not presented as inherent to esports, they were presented as ingrained in gaming
culture and hence an issue for esports as a derivative of gaming. It was reported that
female gamers were less likely to pursue esports as a profession out of fear of harassment.
Additionally, in articles reporting on gender issues, the esports demographic was
presented as teenaged and male, in contrast to diverse representations in more optimistic
coverage. While these issues were presented as major hurdles for esports, the esports
industry was reported as actively working to overcome them.
212 Global Esports
Of course bullying will occur—we are dealing with a demographic of competitive

teenagers with access to social media. However, the league has a zero tolerance
policy on it. (ABC News, May 11, 2017)
Underdeveloped in Australia
Despite a shift toward the mainstream, coverage reported esports in Australia
as underdeveloped. Comparisons were made to esports in northern hemisphere
countries, where esports was presented as well established, popular, and lucrative.
In early coverage, the Australian esports scene was presented as similarly passionate
as those overseas, albeit on a smaller scale in terms of earnings, prize pools,
industry, professional opportunities, and viewership. As coverage continued, certain
developments in international esports were reported as landmarks in the advancement
of overseas esports scenes. These landmarks were used as a metric to measure the
progression of Australia’s esports scene. In all cases, they highlight how far behind
Australia was in comparison to major esports regions like North America, Europe, and
Asia. These landmarks included the purchase of an esports team by a sporting entity,
the hosting of a prestigious esports event, and the salaries of national players.
ADELAIDE has set a Australian precedent - landing a professional eSports team in

a trend set by global franchises from Philadelphia 36ers to Manchester City. (The
Advertiser, May 18, 2017)
Contributing to this delayed development of Australian esports were issues depicted

as uniquely Australian. These issues were commonly presented as compounding
each other. Australia’s distance from the major northern hemisphere esports regions
was portrayed as a natural geographical disadvantage when combined with an
underwhelming national broadband network, leading to uncompetitive high latency
conditions when trying to play against international opponents. As a result, coverage
reported that Australians were forced to play against mainly Australian opponents,
leading to underperformance when competing internationally.
But he says eSports’ greatest challenge in Australia is internet speeds. “Australia

is quite a distance behind,” he said. “Last I checked we sat behind Slovakia in
global internet speed rankings and general geographical spread.” (The Advertiser,
September 16, 2018)
In response to these issues, coverage reported that many skilled Australia esports
professionals had moved overseas as a necessity to further pursue their careers.
Although this exodus of Australian esports professionals was depicted as taking
resources away from the development of Australian esports, the representation and
presence of Australians in international esports was anticipated to draw international
attention to Australia as an esports region. Australian esports professionals working

or competing overseas were presented as patriotic, taking pride in expressing their

Australian identity on the global stage. This was not limited to players; Australian
shoutcasters were often presented as finding success overseas, promoting Australian
esports in the process.
“I want people to know I’m Australian,” Leslie said. “I’m gonna hurl at them a
bunch of phrases they don’t understand, because I’ve got a country of 20-plus
million people behind me, and I’m really happy that I’m able to represent them. It’s
huge.” (The Australian, January 23, 2018)
Reflecting the Australian esports struggle was a portrayal of Australian esports teams
as underdogs going into major international competitions. Teams from South Korea,
the United States, and China were presented as juggernauts with major sponsorship
deals and a vast range of resources at their disposal. In contrast, Australian teams
were presented as somewhat amateurish with players studying or working side jobs
to support themselves. Despite the unfavorable odds, coverage was usually optimistic,
suggesting that these underdog narratives would help draw attention to Australian
esports if Australian teams were able to manage an unlikely win. Although Australians
winning major international events were rarely reported, simply placing among other
established esports regions was worthy of celebration. Recent coverage presented
the setbacks of Australian esports in a somewhat positive light, asserting that these
conditions led Australian esports players to work hard and overcompensate for these
disadvantages, creating valuable players.
while we’re usually lower on athletes than other countries, we’re often over-
achieving because we’re probably putting more emphasis on the psychology aspect
of competition. (News.com.au, February 22, 2019)
Professionalized
Throughout the coverage esports was presented as achieving a level of professionalism
and was no longer simply an activity of leisure. The key distinction made was the
transition of esports from a hobby to a career. The ability for esports players to be
able to financially support themselves through esports was used to signal this notion.
The travel to other countries to compete was also an integral signifier of esports
professionalization, presented as a rite of passage for Australian esports players.
I don’t get paid a lot right now but I definitely think that is going to change. I only
really started playing professionally in the last year and I’ve already competed in
Poland and Malaysia. (The Herald Sun, May 6, 2017)
Being salaried while working set hours and interacting with other organizational figures
was a commonly drawn on example to demonstrate that playing esports had become
214 Global Esports
a job. The time investment of players and the skills they acquire were also depicted
as integral aspects of esports professionalization. Specifically, the ability to invest
ample time to develop the skills needed to compete at the highest level was depicted as
unobtainable without financial support. This newfound professionalism in esports was
often depicted as being surprising for esports players, who were often unaware of their
own popularity. Much of the legitimacy behind esports as a profession was expressed
through the recognition of esports players as celebrities in esports fandoms. Similarly,
esports professionals were often reported as feeling legitimized after being treated as
equals by other professional athletes. This coverage appeared following the acquisition
of esports teams by the AFL, who proceed to host their esports facilities in the same
locations as their football facilities.
“I was a little bit nervous when I first came here—we wouldn’t fit in,” he said. “But
honestly, everybody has been so welcoming. It’s so cool [having] a footy player
coming up to you asking how your day is.” (ABC News, July 26, 2018)
Through the association with established sporting organizations, esports was portrayed
as appearing legitimized to those initially unfamiliar with the phenomenon. Here, the
mother of an esports industry figure was able to comprehend the concept of esports as
a profession through its relationship with an AFL club.
My mum was like, “My son is now working for Essendon” and could see it in real
terms. (The Herald Sun, June 30, 2018)
Major esports events were also presented as professional spectacles through their high
production values and their aesthetic similarities to conventional sporting events.
Much like how the defying of stereotypes was portrayed as helping esports gain
mainstream acceptance, the same can be said about professionalization. Through the
dispelling of immature depictions of gaming, esports was presented as a mature and
refined gaming practice.
Discussion
The analysis revealed that esports was presented as experiencing growth predominately
through investment by external parties. Growth was commonly attributed to the
facilities, support, and funding provided by conventional sporting organizations, while
little evidence of internal growth was portrayed. From this sporting influence, esports
was portrayed as having developed signifiers indicative of conventional sports, ranging
from its aesthetics, organizational structure, career progression, revenue streams, and
spectacle. Coverage surrounding the purchase of esports teams by AFL clubs was
particularly rich in these observations, noting that sporting organizations brought
funding and resources that esports entities did not have prior. Through this external
influence and support, esports was construed as moving into the mainstream and

becoming professionalized through its growing reminiscence to conventional sports.

Conversely, this suggested that esports would have remained a niche without external
influence, with early coverage detailing how esports struggled to receive mainstream
attention through their own endeavors.
Such observations reflect the notion in literature that esports has become sportified
(Karhulahti, 2017; Cunningham et al., 2018; Heere, 2018). According to Lopez-
Gonzalez and Griffiths (2017), “sportification is the process of incorporating the logics
of sport to non-sporting contexts.” The most explicit way that this was highlighted
in the coverage was the transformation of gaming as a vice to a productive activity.
Sportified elements of esports such as organizational structure, sociality, teamwork,
wages, and spectator spectacle were drawn on to highlight a stronger relation to sports
than to gaming. Established negative stereotypes of gaming were shown as being
defied by esports. As an already well-established and enjoyed of past-time Australians
that traces back to the formation of the Australian national identity (White, 1981),
sport was used as an understandable comparison to explain the concept of esports in
the coverage. This worked to present esports as a similarly professionally viable career.
Such professional acceptance was seen in articles discussing how esports as a career
became accepted among family members of esports professionals and how esports
professionals came to be treated as equals by their conventional athlete counterparts.
Although debate surrounding whether esports could or should be considered a sport
was varied in the coverage, the evidence of the sportification of esports was pervasive
throughout. Even in opinion pieces which portrayed esports as wrongly encroaching
on sanctified sporting territories like the Olympics, coverage still portrayed esports
as having been professionalized through associations with sports and the efforts of
sporting organizations to push esports into the mainstream. This is an important point
to highlight, as it reflects debates within sports management literature on sportification
and whether esports should be researched in the scholarly field of sports and sports
management. Heere (2018) asserts that approaching the conundrum from such a
perspective ill-informed. Rather, he claims that the domain of sport is polymorphic
and cannot be institutionally defined. He suggests that scholars should account for
emergent sport-like activities and instances of sportification to fuel developments
in sports management. While there was no unifying stance toward esports’ status
as a sport in the coverage, in almost all case sport was considered at least somewhat
polymorphic in relation to esports. Although few articles explicitly claimed esports to
be a sport, most presented esports as either a nonconventional sport, an alternative to
sport or a false sport. Common among these representations was a notion of a sport-
like quality to esports, which was portrayed both positively and negatively. This sport-
like quality was presented as allowing esports to fit into conventional sporting contexts
and could be organized and managed in a similar manner. Even coverage portraying
esports as a false sport still presented this way, in that it would detract from other
nonconventional sports.
Acceptance of esports as a legitimate professional pursuit in the coverage stemmed
from how well esports was perceived to align with core Australian values. Specifically,
sporting values in Australian culture and national identity were drawn on, reflecting the
216 Global Esports
ambiguity surrounding the status of esports as a sport and the difficulty to define sport
as a concept (McBride, 1975). Articles opposing the notion of esports being portrayed
and promoted as a sport highlighted how esports differed from conventional sports. This
argument was often based perceived lack of physicality in esports. In these articles, the
engagement with esports was portrayed as a subtractive activity, rather than something
that could be engaged in conjunction with conventional sports. By playing esports, it
was thought that Australian children would not develop an inevitable interest in sport.
While sporting pride is a value held by numerous nations and communities, Mewett
(1999) claims that sport is intrinsic of the Australian national identity. This traces to
the sporting prowess of Australian sports teams in comparison to British teams in
the nineteenth century (White, 1981). The consistency at which Australians began to
win sporting competitions against the colonial motherland birthed a perception in
the colonies that Australian-raised “Britons” were more adept than those born in the
British Isles, thus developing the one of the first notions of Australian nationalism
(Horton, 2000). While the United States had fought for its independence, Australia
remained closely associated with Britain in terms of identity. This aptitude for sport
thus acted as a way for a distinct Australian national identity to emerge despite
remaining a colony (Mewett, 1999). In this sense, esports was portrayed as unnatural
and incompatible with core Australian values, even to the extent of undermining what
it means to be an Australian.
Conversely, coverage presenting esports as a productive activity highlighted ways
that esports was compatible with Australian sporting values. This was achieved by
relating elements of teamwork, communication, and dedication found in esports to
those similar well-received analogues found in conventional sports. Although no
articles denied that esports was a mostly sedentary activity, some articles supporting
the legitimization of esports as a sport presented this characteristic as irrelevant to
the core values of sport. Alternatively, the sedentary nature of esports was presented
alongside quotes from esports players or coaches outlining the importance they placed
on physical conditioning and maintaining a healthy lifestyle to supplement their
mental state and composure. Through this alignment with sporting values, esports was
presented as being distanced from its gaming heritage, deflecting recent moral panic
(Bowman, 2015) surrounding the effects of screen time on children (Gentile, 2011),
gaming-related aggressive behavior (Przybylski, 2014) and medical classifications of a
“gaming disorder” (“WHO | Gaming Disorder,” 2018). In turn, this presented esports
as compatible with Australian culture, being portrayed as a sport or sport-alternative
for a new, technologically engaged generation of Australians with comparable benefits
to conventional sports. Esports was also presented as a new medium to engage in
conventional sporting rivalries, which were implied to be integral aspects of Australian
sporting culture. Internationally, the opportunity to engage in the friendly pseudo-
sibling rivalry between Australia and New Zealand (Smith, 2013) was described
as “what being Australian is all about”; a contemporary derivative of formative and
still prominent Australian sporting rivalries (Maguire, 2011). Symbols of Australian
sporting rivalry, such as The Ashes cricket series played against England, represent a
“historic antagonism between the one-time ‘mother country’ and a young nation too

long handicapped by an unnecessary sense of cultural cringe” (Smith, 2013). From

its use to push back against authoritarianism in colonial Australia, the importance
of national sporting rivalry has persisted into the present day and was presented in
coverage as having found a new outlet through esports.
It became clear that further elements of Australian culture and national identity,
particularly those related to sporting, were evoked and reflected in the coverage. Loss
on the global stage is a normalized aspect of the Australian national identity, stemming
from the deaths of Australian troops on the shores of Gallipoli in a failed assault against
the Ottoman Empire during the First World War; an event that is often attributed as
further developing the notion of a distinct Australian national consciousness through
a loss of innocence. Despite the mass casualties of Gallipoli campaign, the loss of life
was and continues to be celebrated nationally as a demonstration of the uniquely
Australian Anzac spirit;1 a manifestation of stories recounting the unwavering bravery
and mateship expressed by the Anzacs in the face of certain death (Due, 2008).
Furthermore, the Gallipoli campaign is presented as a failure experienced by Australia,
but not caused by it. The English commanders who directed the Anzac troops at
Gallipoli are often blamed and portrayed as misguided at best, or malicious at worst
(Due, 2008). This deflection of blame is exhibited in various facets of contemporary
Australian culture since, particularly in sports. Nicholson et al. (2016) describe how
Australia’s poor performance in the 2010 FIFA World Cup was dismissed in Australian
media coverage as being the result of several external factors, stacking the odds against
the Socceroos and downplaying their own shortcomings. Through their analysis,
Nicholson et al. suggest that there is a precariously thin line which separates strong
feelings of nationalism and inadequacy in relation to loss in Australian culture. While
the nature to deflect blame works to establish Australian sports teams as competent, it
creates deeply ingrained expectations of success. Nicholson et al. assert that losses are
“translated as a threat to Australian national identity.” Australians perceive themselves
as held back by uniquely Australian issues outside of their control, yet their endeavors
to overcome these disadvantages generate a great sense of pride and accomplishment,
even in relative failure. On the other hand, the idea of such failures being a self-
identified fault is seen as threatening to Australian values. As such, these external
factors are blamed instead and deemed “un-Australian” (Due, 2011).
Such elements of the Australian national identity make it unsurprising that the
admiration of and national self-identification as “the underdog” have been portrayed
in numerous Australian narratives. Beyond the Anzacs, other Australian cultural icons
reflect the Aussie battler underdog ideal. Bushrangers and convicts are key examples;
victims of external, unfair authoritarian discrimination vehemently attempting to
triumph against seemingly hopeless odds (Tranter and Donoghue, 2007). This icon of
the Australian underdog was reflected heavily in the analyzed esports media coverage.
While Australian esports players were consistently portrayed as talented, skilled,
valued, and overachieving, they were also paradoxically portrayed as rarely successful
in international competitions. Like Nicholson et al.’s (2016) observations, blame for
losses were shifted to external factors while the Australian players were presented as
victims of unfortunate circumstances, competing unfazed despite of their setbacks.
218 Global Esports
The recipients of this blame were almost always portrayed as beyond the control of
the Australian esports players and industry. The emphasis of these circumstances
downplayed the impact of losing, construing the losses as somewhat impressive when
considering these setbacks. Winning was often not presented as the only form of
success, with a desire to demonstrate Australian esporting prowess to the world being
a goal itself. This also manifested in the international pursuits of non-player esports
professionals, demonstrating a strong desire to express patriotism and draw attention
to Australian esports. Australia, among other countries of minor global political power,
views international sports as an outlet to prove their prowess and fortify their national
identity (Sack and Suster, 2000). The same can now be said of Australian esports as
portrayed in Australian mainstream media coverage.
Conclusion
While debate continues in academia and general discourse about where esports fits in the
definition of sports, Gratton and Taylor (2000) suggests that the broad acknowledgment
of an activity as a sport is in part dictated by its acceptance within the media or sporting
agencies. This chapter has provided insight into how the Australian public is positioned
to perceive esports through the portrayal of the practice in mainstream Australian news
media. Through the thematic analysis of 229 Australian news articles from 2008 to 2019,
it was evident that much coverage of esports was made in relation to sport. Although
previous work explored esports as a gaming future (Wagner, 2006; Seo and Jung, 2016;
Burroughs and Rama, 2015), it was largely presented as a sporting future in the analyzed
coverage. While portrayals of esports were varied, they were often based on how well
they aligned with Australian sporting values. This was a common thread throughout
the six major themes that were generated from the thematic analysis. These six themes
portrayed esports as an investment opportunity, having societal impacts, sport-like,
entering the mainstream, professionalized and underdeveloped in Australia.
From a business perspective, esports was presented as future direction for the
established sports industry to expand into, granting access to a young, technologically
savvy audience. External investors saw esports as a logical and fitting diversification
while also working to shape esports in the image of sport. On a governmental level, the
subsidization of esports reflects a similar acceptance of sporting values and benefits
(Gratton and Taylor, 2000). Through this association with conventional sporting
organizations, esports was portrayed as legitimized and professional. The appearance of
esports events in conventional sporting places and references of the growing presence
of esports in the mainstream media presented esports as entering the mainstream,
despite being held back by several remnant issues of its gaming heritage.
It was widely presented that esports was sport-like to a certain extent. Through
sport-like elements the practice embodies, esports was portrayed as a new outlet to
express patriotic Australian sporting narratives and provided new and comforting
experience for those who had no previous interest in conventional sports. By engaging
in patriotic sporting rituals and behaviors through esports, Australian esports fans

gain a sense of belonging in a country that expresses nationalism through sports

(Cumming, 2018). The reported underdevelopment of the Australian esports industry
aligned with the Australian underdog icon, presenting Australian esports professionals
as talented, yet unsuccessful due to unavoidable factors unique to Australia.
The sport-like nature of esports was not entirely seen positively, however. The
potential for esports to appear at landmark sporting events like the Olympics was
portrayed as undermining the value of conventional sports. In positive portrayals, the
sport-like elements of esports were perceived has having a positive impact on gamers
and young people. While some articles conceded that esports was sport-like in some
respects, a perceived lack of physicality was drawn on the quell notions of esports
belonging within the definition of sport. Although some proponents debate that the
fine motor skills needed to manipulate a mouse and keyboard constitute this necessary
requirement for physicality (Hilvoorde and Pot, 2016), even some esports players and
organizers struggle to articulate how elements of sporting physicality manifests in
their practice (Witkowski, 2012). Other coverage placed less emphasis on the element
of physicality and presented esports as a sport based on its other sport-like qualities.
It is important to note that while the Australian news media may portray esports in
these ways, these observations should not be interpreted as direct representations of
how Australians perceive esports. As Denemark (2005) asserts, Australians maintain a
“love-hate relationship” with the media. While they rely on it for information, they also
are highly skeptical, stemming from a belief that Australian media ownership lacks
diversity. Rather, mainstream news media portrayals presented in this chapter inform
what Australians think about (Cohen, 1963) and how to think about it (McCombs,
1997). While it is assumed that the media holds influence over the thoughts and
attitudes of its consumers, these media effects are not comprehensively understood
and the extent of their influence remains the subject of debate (McQuail, 2005).
Future research may find it fruitful to directly investigate individuals’ thoughts and
perceptions toward esports. The media sets the agenda for notable issues and topics
in the community (McCombs, 1997). From the analysis presented in this chapter, it is
clear that esports has become a part of this agenda with various portrayals. However, it
is yet to be seen is how this information is processed by news consumers.
Note
1 Although “Anzac” stands for Australian and New Zealand Army Corps., Due (2008)
suggests that the term has come to represent uniquely Australian values and ideas
when used in Australia.
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13
The Emergence and Transformation

of Global Esports
Comparative Perspectives of Korean and
Canadian Esports Scenes
Dal Yong Jin
Introduction
In the early twenty-first century, competitive player-versus-player digital game play
has been a heavily promoted feature of overall gamer culture. A vast majority of global
youth ranging from mid-teens to mid-twenties in many countries have participated
in esports (electronic sports) as either professional players or fans in the age of digital
media. For them, esports, consisting of games, media, and sport, is one of the most
significant youth cultures, while many information and communication technology
(ICT) corporations, including game firms and advertisers have utilized esports as
one of the most lucrative businesses. Esports has been one of increasing networked
and distributed expert practices as a commercial media production. “As a form of
competition, many practitioners and institutions have moved closer toward or fully
embraced esports as a sports media construct, with expert performances professionally
packaged as a competitive sporting event and commodified as a networked media
entertainment spectacle” (Witkowski, 2018, 32).
The history of competitive digital gaming dates back to the early 1970s when some
American students gathered at computer labs to do battle among the stars. However,
contemporary esports started in Korea as it began to develop its esports league in the
field of online gaming in 1998 as StarCraft became popular in the country (Jin, 2010).
On March 31, 1998, Blizzard Entertainment released StarCraft, a real-time strategy
game pitting three powerful and distinctive races against each other in a war-torn
galaxy. The year of its release, more than 1.5 million copies were sold around the world,
making it the bestselling PC game of 1998. A considerable number of those copies were
sold in Korea, where many years after its release, the game still continued to “enjoy
unprecedented levels of popularity” (Blizzard Entertainment, 2008; Lindbergh, 2018).
224 Global Esports
In its online archive, Blizzard Entertainment (2008) clearly identified the growth of
esports embedded in StarCraft in the Korean context:
After its release, StarCraft rapidly grew in popularity around the world. In South
Korea, it quickly became the preeminent multiplayer game in the country, and
was instrumental in the rise of professional gaming there. The game is still as
popular as ever in a country where top StarCraft players are celebrities and their
competitive matches are watched by millions on national television networks.
(Blizzard Entertainment, 2008)
Despite the two game leagues developed in the United States at the end of the 1990s
as discussed in Chapter 5 in this book, Korea has fundamentally advanced its own
esports tradition due to several socioeconomic milieu surrounding the late 1990s,
such as the rapid growth of high-speed internet service, the emergence of PC bang
(internet cafes), several successful online games developed during the same period,
including The Kingdom of the Winds, and broadcasting immersion, which drove
an online gaming boom in the Korean context (see Chee, 2006; Jin, 2015). Esports
have been identified with three major conventional traditions: Korean contingency,
competition among players through networked games, and media, in particular
broadcasting media’s involvement. As Hutchins (2008, 851) argues, “media,
communication and information flows now define the logic and structure of social
relations, a situation that affects almost every dimension of cultural life and activity,”
and one could assume that any significant changes consisting of the convention of
esports could transform people’s understanding of esports culture.
This new youth culture that furthermore developed in Korea with online gaming has
become a global phenomenon. In other words, “as a reflection of its emerging market
and its convergence with youth culture, Korea initiated the first-ever international
game competition,” and the WCG (World Cyber Games), which “originally emerged
from a vibrant Korean gaming culture” starting in 2001, became a global gaming event
(Jin, 2010, 68). Ever since then, gamers around the world have started to enjoy esports,
making esports into one of the most significant youth cultures as well as broadcasting
cultures.
In particular, in the late 2010s, as “competition has always been a central part of
video games” (Li, 2016, 2), many global youth enjoy global competition primarily with
online gaming. The phenomenal global growth of esports and related gaming activities
and cultures over the past two decades clearly indicate the characteristics of social and
cultural understanding of esports.
Millions of viewers watch competitions every day, and “players train full time to
compete for cash prizes” (Li, 2016, 2). Newzoo, a consulting company, previously
estimated that over 88 million active esports fans and an additional 117 million
casual esports fans watched events and competitions as of January 2016 (Gaudiosi,
2016). The same company (2018) also predicted that the global esports audience will
reach 380 million in 2018, and Asia-Pacific will account for 53 percent of esports
viewers.

Transformation of Global Esports 225
This chapter explores the recent surge of esports in the global scene and especially
compares people’s understanding of esports. By employing a comparative analysis of
Korean esports fans and Canadian esports fans and players, it articulates three major
unconventional prospects. First, it discusses the reasons why esports has become a
global phenomenon, from a small youth culture in Korea. It analyzes the ways in
which people in Vancouver as one of the most active esports venues in North America
perceive the significant role of Korea in the realm of esports, and why they develop
global esports culture, differentiating from Korean esports culture. Second, it analyzes
the second unconventional aspect, which if a potential shift of esports genre from
online to mobile gaming. It explores why many global game players and fans play
and enjoy either online and mobile gaming in professional game competitions, and it
investigates the manner in which the transfer to, from and between online and mobile
gaming culture is occurring in a specific subset of global youth. Finally, it discusses the
third unconventional perspective by identifying the major platform to enjoy esports,
between broadcasting and smartphone, and its implications in digital gaming and
youth culture. By analyzing these unexamined or less-discussed agendas, this chapter
will shed light on the current debates on the growth of global esports culture.
In order to fulfill these goals, I conducted in-depth interviews with sixty-five
esports players and fans in both countries between December 2017 and April 2018 to
analyze the recent developments characterizing the global popularity of esports among
youth. In Korea, twenty participants who were all amateur players and/or esports
fans were recruited, and in Canada forty-five participants were recruited through a
snowball sampling method. More specifically, in Korea, a few participants in Busan
were introduced by acquaintances, and the early participants introduced their friends
and relatives. In Canada, I contacted some students who I had known at both the
University of British Columbia and Simon Fraser University, and they introduced
new participants. In Canada, I divided them as either professional players (N = 21)
as long as they compete with other teams for money and championship or amateur
fans (N = 24) who play games, not for money but for fun. Therefore, this current study
compares the Korean esports scene and the Canadian esports scene, while contrasting
professional gamers versus amateur gamers.
The Korean participants had been enjoying video games since their early elementary
school years, and even since they were five years old. Among them, eleven were male
and nine of them were female participants, and their ages were between fourteen and
twenty-seven years old. Many of them have played more than ten years. Meanwhile,
in Canada, among participants who expressed themselves as professional gamers,
nineteen of them were male and only two were female players.1 Among twenty-four
amateur players, eighteen of them were male and six of them were female participants.
Compared to Korean participants who had played about ten years, many Canadian
participants played games since very young ages, even four to five years old mainly
due to their older brothers who introduced some games to these participants. The
participants were between eighteen and twenty-seven years old with one thirty-year-
old male player and were undergraduate or graduate students. I used a semistructured
interview format to allow them to express their opinions beyond the given questions,
226 Global Esports
meaning I used designed questions on both venues, but asked some relevant questions
on spot so that they explained their experience in detail. Each interview lasted
between sixty and ninety minutes per person, and the participants were asked about
their experience with video games, both online and mobile games—for instance,
when they started to play video games, why they followed domestic esports, whether
they experienced mobile esports, and what the most significant issues for esports to
improve—and their opinions on contemporary esports phenomena—like on the most
significant factors for the growth of esports, both domestically and globally. After
recording and reading handwritten interviews, I divided and analyzed them into three
major unconventional perspectives discussed in this article.
The Convergence of Digital Games and New Media in the

Global Culture Sphere
It was not long ago when ESPN—the largest sport channel in the world—launched its
own esports vertical on ESPN.COM. This new movement came out only one and a half
years after ESPN President John Skipper’s stunning remark on esports. When asked to
comment on
What is significant here is ESPN—previously rejected esports for its own program—
suddenly jumped on the esports bandwagon, which was considered “another step
toward mainstream acceptance of professional video gaming” (Gaudiosi, 2016). In
other words, when it established this esports section on ESPN in 2016, it was admitted
that an electronic sport finally became one of the major sports for many (Myers, 2016).
ESPN’s recent inclusion of esports in its own program also clearly indicates that esports
has become one of the most significant global cultures as well as sports. As ESPN
covers several esports leagues, including League of Legends, Overwatch, CS:GO, and
Dota 2, esports has continued to grow in popularity. As Burroughs and Rama (2015, 1)
aptly put it, “this mainstream cable-broadcast esports event highlights the growing
interest in competitive gaming as a culturally valued and potentially profitable form
of spectatorship.”
More importantly, ESPN’s entry into the esports world fulfills the convergence
of digital games, sport, and media, which means that esports is the intricate
interrelationship among these three, previously separated, elements (Hutchins,
2008). Likewise, esports is complex because it involves diverse cultural and economic
perspectives embedded in these different areas. In other words, “esports is a new area
developed through the convergence of culture and technology, culture and sport, and
culture and business”; and therefore, esports must be understood as a more complex
process than other sports like baseball and football focusing on the nexus of sport and
media (Jin, 2010, 60). For example, the convergence of online games with digital media
has two levels of integration: the one is the integration “between electronic gaming
and sport” and the other is “between electronic gaming and digital media, which is
convergence between culture and business” (Jin, 2010, 61). Again, ESPN’s inclusion

of esports in its own consideration has become a turning point for many people who
consider it from the negative aspect to shift their perception of digital games.
The growth of esports is also closely related to new media, including cable
channels, internet TV, online streaming services (e.g., Twitch), and social media
(e.g., YouTube and Facebook). The Twitch.tv directory especially reveals the more
established games such as Dota 2 and League of Legends to be among the most
popular games, garnering over 120,000 viewers at any given time during the day in
2015. Fortnite—a survival game developed by Epic Games and People Can Fly—had
also 16.4 million followers and 213,545 views as of May 17, 2018 (Burroughs and
Rama, 2015; Twitch.tv, 2018). Twitch was already “the fourth-highest website in peak
Internet traffic in the U.S. and offers gamers a multitude of live-streaming gamecasts
to choose from—the most popular channel featuring multiplayer online battle arena
games or MOBAs like League of Legends” (Burroughs and Raman, 2015, 2). As
Jenkins (2006) points out, media convergence denotes the technological integration
that powers new media and distinctive new media forms. Due to Covid-19,
many sports have cancelled all activities; however, esports shows a very different
direction. Global viewership on Twitch was up significantly the first part of 2020 as
schools and office buildings around the world closed in response to the coronavirus
pandemic (Epstein, 2020).
The media industry, both old and new, is “in tune with the potential of esports
and is especially mindful of how digitally connected the young esports audience is,”
as they start to believe that “esports delivers live and then archiveable content that
is in demand among elusive market segments on a global scale that is otherwise
difficult for brands and advertisers to reach. Its prime content is already drawing
comparable audiences to traditional sports” (Tribbey, 2016a, 24). On June 16,
2016, “European broadcaster Sky and international gaming company Ginx TV
announced the launch of a 24-hour eSports channel, Ginx E-Sports TV, featuring
major esports tournaments from around the world, including coverage of Turner’s
ELeague, Faceit’s esports Championship Series, and Valve’s The International Dota
2” (Tribbey, 2016b).2
As such, esports has been working toward the commodification of gaming
spectatorship since the early 2000s, banking on a new vision of games as the twenty-
first-century spectator sport (Hutchins, 2008; Taylor, 2016). “The explosive growth
of esports and the ongoing convergence of games and video provides the biggest
opportunity for the games industry since the launch of the iPhone back in 2007,”
Newzoo CEO Peter Warman has said. Between August 2015 and May 2016, Newzoo
estimated that fans watched more than 803 million hours of esports content on
Twitch. And according to a spring study by research firm PricewaterhouseCoopers,
esports viewers are dedicated: Nearly one out of five (18%) of the respondents who’ve
watched an esports competition paid a subscription fee to do so (Tribbey, 2016b, 13).
Media convergence in the realm of esports has become a new trend as this form of
convergence encompasses several different elements to formulate the bigger and larger
cultural and technological entity deeply influences out daily lives that digital gaming is
rapidly becoming part of.
228 Global Esports
The First Unconventional Prospect: From Korean

Esports to Global Esports Culture
While there are several important dimensions characterizing esports, it is crucial to
comprehend that the idea of esports primarily emerged as an appealing combination of
youth culture, play, and media in Korea. Professional gaming especially became a new
job category in Korea along with attendant new job market roles such as team manager,
analyst, and esports play-by-play commentator (Taylor, 2015; Li, 2016; Borowy and Jin,
2015). The Korean esports industry in Korea has continued to grow since its inception
in the late 1990s. As of December 2013, there were nine professional esports leagues
in Korea for some online games, including (1) League of Legends; (2) StarCraft 2, (3)
Sudden Attack, (4) Dungeon & Fighter, (5) FIFA Online 3, (6) Dota 2, (7) Counter-Strike,
(8) KARTRIDER, and (9) two amateur leagues. The total prizes were approximately
$3.4 million during the same year. With the rapid growth of esports, many spectators
regularly watch these games, and some leagues have started to sell tickets (around
$20 per ticket) since 2012 (Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism, 2014).
It is not surprising to know that many global game players and fans naturally consider
Korean esports as one of the highest and the most advanced leagues. In fact, there
are several confirmed and common perceptions on Korean esports, such as talented
young players, advanced infrastructure (e.g., high-speed internet and game leagues),
and cultural acceptance. As the early adopters of esports, Koreans have continued
to play several essential esports games, and they play games as their lifetime career,
which cannot be seen easily in North America and Europe. While many professional
players in Korea are high-school dropouts because they wanted to focus on games,
the majority of professional game players in North America are college students.
Millennials in North America and Europe have grown up surrounded by technologies
and digital platforms, and they are likely to support esports; however, in Korea, esports
activities started in the late 1990s, and the first generation already reached their late
thirties. This implies that the esports environment of Korea is matured and advanced,
which make Korea better in this particular field.
A twenty-six-year-old male professional player who is playing CS:GO in Vancouver
stated, “Korean players are extremely smart and analytical. When we think of esports, no
matter what games are, we think about Korean players who are methodical, intelligent,
and calms based on their early exposure and practice.” Interestingly enough, a twenty-
three-year-male professional player said, “there are huge differences between Korean
players and North American players. In North America, many professional players are
arrogant and very commanding to win; however, Korean players are very reserved and
disciplined, which is very important to be professional players.”
However, a male player (twenty years old) claims that Koreans are equipped with
high skills, not because of their talents given, but because of their hard-working
manner:
in general, the characteristics of esports is not like other sports. For example, in
basketball, if you are not tall enough, you have a significant disadvantage; however,

in esports, it is not the case. There is no natural talent, comparable to height and
weight. Instead, practice has become a changer. Korean players practice more than
12 hours per day and sacrifice their own time to be the best they can.
What one has to understand is that esports is “never just an issue of individual skill but
the ways an entire system of practices, institutions, values, and forms of identity work
on, and through that player” (Taylor, 2015, 132).
Several interviews commonly say that Korea has a relatively long history of esports
and esports is socially well received (regardless of increasing concerns for younger
generations’ gaming disorder issues), which makes Korean esports globally popular.
For example, a twenty-one-year-old male professional player states, “unlike Korea,
esports is still a new thing to the general public in North America. It is more like a
community-based phenomenon.” These perceptions of esports by Canadians are not
much different from those of Korean players and fans. For example, a twenty-seven-
year-old female Korean fan said, “the most important thing in Korea is that people
recognize game players as a job category which is prospective.” Another female fan
(twenty years old) in Seoul also states, “Korean esports is very exciting; however,
making a better environment that players are comparably enjoy playing is essential
for the further growth of esports.” A nineteen-year-old female amateur player living in
Vancouver especially stated, “Korea esports is the most talented fraction that I know
of. The big part of it is cultural acceptance.”
In fact, many Canadian game players, both professional and amateur, point out the
significant role of Korean esports for the global popularity of digital game competition
in the global scene. A nineteen-year-old male player stated, “Korea is the country
that technically started esports, and therefore, Korea has had a history of very well-
organized eSports culture and system while North America and Europe do not have
the same level of discipline in terms of players and practice levels.” A male professional
player (twenty-six years old) also states, “I used to watch StarCraft a lot, and when I
think about esports, I immediately remind of Korean players as they are extremely
smart and analytical.”
In the 2010s, however, people have witnessed the emergence of mainstream
resources brought into esports via investors, sponsorships, and personnel in North
America and Europe. For example, the esports team at the University of British
Columbia (UBC) is part of a growing legion of esports athletes who may one day be as
famous as today’s top sports stars. In 2015, the National Collegiate Athletic Association
(NACC) in North America featured 1,600 collegiate teams playing League of Legends,
arguably one of the most popular games in the esports world. After breezing through
the qualifying rounds, UBC defeated Simon Fraser University, a local rival, 2-0 in the
west regional finals. In the finals, UBC faced top-seeded Robert Morris University,
a small private university in Illinois of the United States that offers esports athletes
scholarships valued up to $19,000 annually (Azpiri, 2015).
Due to the soaring number of esports watchers as well as players, people also consider
it as spectator sport (Taylor, 2016). For example, over 20 million online spectators
watched the International Defense of the Ancients 2 (Dota 2) Championships held
230 Global Esports
in Seattle in the United States in August 2015, which offered a total prize pool of $18
million (Strom, 2015). The construction of esports culture and major corporations
being involved in esports is not new in Korea as it has been ahead of the rest of the
world and continues to lead in esports performance, viewership and infrastructure.
However, this esports phenomenon as a new culture is lately emerging in North
America.
More or less, Korean esports is also still controversial as many people, in particular,
parents do not like digital games themselves due to game addiction, known as gaming
disorder (Nielsen and Karhulahti, 2017), which potentially hurts their children’s health
and academic achievement. After the World Health Organization (WHO) officially
recognized “gaming disorder” as a disease in May 2019, for example, a group of Korean
game developers and companies stated that they oppose the WHO’s acknowledgment
of gaming as a disease, “instead labeling the pursuit as a healthy sport for those seeking
fun” (Lim, 2019).
Most of all, the infrastructural situation of Korean esports has changed in recent
years, as Samsung Electronics has sold its hotshot esports team Samsung Galaxy,
which had been one of the best teams in Korea, to Silicon Valley-based esports firm
KSV. Samsung Galaxy has been a leading esports team in a popular multiplayer
online battle game League of Legends. In 2000, it led the creation of the world’s first
eSports Olympics, World Cyber Games, by providing funds of around 10 billion won
($9 million). Samsung Electronics CEO Yun Jong-yong once served as a chairman
of WCG to support the competition. In 2017, it won 2017 League of Legends World
Championship that was held in China. Samsung Electronics said, “We decided to sell
Samsung Galaxy to KSV for the sake of the players’ growth. We viewed it will be better
for (Samsung Galaxy) to work with a more professional esports company.” However,
many experts regarded the decision as Samsung having lost its interest in the PC-based
game business in light of the surging mobile era. In 2013, Samsung ended the WCG
competition on the ground that the PC-based esports does not match with the mobile
era (Shin, J. H., 2017). Nothing lasts forever, and esports culture has been burgeoning
in North America in the late 2010s.
The Second Unconventional Prospect: Competition versus

Entertainment
With the rapid growth of smartphones and mobile games, the milieu surrounding
esports has been shifting, although it is not fundamentally yet. As esports itself
identifies, it refers to what players compete through networked games, and the
primary platform has been PC. Many game players sit on their computers either at
home or internet cafes and play with other players on the internet system. However,
with the rapid growth of smartphones, mobile gaming has become one of the largest
game genres, and mobile gaming itself is gradually becoming part of esports. This asks
people to understand whether we witness a transition from PC-based gaming habits

to a mobile-based set of habits; therefore, a fundamental shift of the major platform

of esports, from PC-based online games to smartphone-based mobile games, which is
another unconventional prospect in the esports sphere.
In fact, it is well known that many global youth are shifting their gaming habits,
in terms of their consumption of games, from online to mobile. Mobile games were
largely viewed as “killing time,” which meant that there was little multi-tasking done
while engaged with a mobile game. Nevertheless, a few years ago, no one could imagine
that mobile games could become a major competitive discipline like traditional
PC-based esports. However, with several successful mobile games, like Candy Crush
Saga, Angry Birds, and Candy Pang (2012–16 by WeMade Entertainment in Korea),
game developers started to pay attention to mobile-based esports. Vainglory became
the first real esports title of mobile gaming in 2014. For several years, Vainglory was the
only major esports in mobile games (Winkle, 2018). Recently, several mobile games,
like Clash of Clans and Hearthstone have been added, and mobile, which would be
the last platform any gamer would expect to games with an esports-ready template
implemented, started its era (eSportBet, n.d.). Partially due to the growth of mobile
games, the number of female gamers and fans has been increasing. As Chess (2017, 4)
points out, “an increasing number of video games have been designed for women.”
According to the 2018 Entertainment Software Association’s annual Essential Facts
About the Computer and Video Game Industry report, women enjoy gaming as much
as men, with 45 percent of gamers identifying as female in the United States, increased
from 32 percent in 2008 (Casti, 2014). As is well articulated (eSportBet, n.d.), mobile
esports is growing in popularity due to the wide spread of smartphones and accessibility
of controls and gameplay as traditional esports fans and hardcore game players could
not easily imagine, in particular in Asia, but globally.
As several mobile game developers create not only casual games but also mid-
core mobile games, esports itself is also attempting to focus on mobile games as the
next generation of esports. As discussed, Samsung Electronics especially sold off
its Samsung Galaxy—an esports team in 2017, partially because the interest in the
PC-based games appeared to subside in recent years with the tech industry’s focus
shifting from PCs to mobile devices (Shin, J. H., 2017). Of course, people’s habit cannot
change within a day or two, and PC-based esports still remains as the most favorable
for many fans and players.
There are two different trends in this particular context: general players and fans are
shifting toward mobile games, while professional players and die-hard esports fans still
play online games and watch online-based competitive games. During my interviews
in both Korea and Canada, several participants as fans indeed stated that they were
enjoying mobile games because of convenience and easy rules to understand; however,
professional gamers clearly indicated that they preferred online games to mobile games
due to interactivity, screen size, and skills embedded in these two games.
What is significant is that these fans and players certainly differentiate the
priority of these two different digital games. For them, mobile games are mainly for
entertainment, while online games are for competition. As the nature of esports focuses
on competitions, online games are able to contribute to be the primary game genre for
232 Global Esports
esports in the near future, regardless of the recent growth of smartphone and mobile
games. Indeed, one male professional player in Vancouver (twenty-three years old)
stated, “I like to play online games due to competitiveness. Mobile games are more like
casual fun games than online games, which allow me to expand and develop my skills
so that I can compete with other players at a higher level.” Another interviewee who
claims himself as a professional gamer (twenty-three years old) claimed, “as a game
couch and player, I try to watch and learn something while watching CS: GO games.
Playing mobiles gaming is a waste of time to me because I have to learn and develop my
skills and strategies. Entertainment is not important anymore.” Interestingly enough,
a twenty-four-year-old professional gamer in Vancouver talked about the difference
between mobile and online games with money investments:
I certainly like online games, because it is more fund and enjoyable than mobile
games. I am not a big fan of mobile games, mainly because I have to put money in
games to become a high-level player, which bothers me a lot. Mobile gaming is not
about skill, but about money.
A nineteen-year-old male fan living in Vancouver stated, “mobile games are mainly
casual games, and they do not have lots of depths; therefore, I like watching and playing
online games.” Another male interviewee (eighteen years old) also stated, “for mobile
games, the screen is really small, and it has limited visibility. Since the screen is smaller
than on a PC, the mobile gaming platform severely hinders mobile game players.
In addition, it is more difficult to control games on a small screen.” The experiences
largely revolve around the PC. Once at home and not in transit, for the most part,
users were not inclined to pay attention to their phones for gaming when there was a
PC available. Of course, several participants clearly indicated that they enjoyed mobile
competitive games as part of esports. For example, an eighteen-year-old male amateur
player said, “I enjoyed some mobile esports, including Heartstone because I can play it
one the smartphone as well. Due to the screen size issue, I prefer playing Heartstone on
tablet to smartphone, though.” One Korean interviewee (twenty-seven years old) also
said that he participated in an amateur mobile esports league, which was fun.
Overall, our data indicates that many teens and twenties in their ages prefer online
gaming to mobile gaming in conjunction with esports and their daily games as long
as they are esports players and fans, which are different from general players who
like mobile games a lot these days due to its usefulness as a hobby or as a pastime.
Smartphones allow people to play games at the right time and at the right place with
just one touch of their game applications (Jin et al., 2015). However, this does not mean
that playing games on PC is disappearing anytime soon although mobile gaming has
expanded its fan base and general use for entertainment.
Instead, it clearly implies that people’s interests are different between esports fans
and professional gamers, and online and mobile gaming go hand in hand in the realm
of esports. Although online gaming is currently more desirable than mobile gaming
for esports players, due to the soaring use of smartphone technologies may trigger the
shift in digital game cultures and therefore esports.

The Third Unconventional Prospect: Broadcasting versus

Online Streaming in the Smartphone Era
Esports consists of games, sport, and media; and one of the most significant
characteristics is the role of media. As ESPN—one of the largest television sport
channels—has started to broadcast esports since a few years ago, many media, both
traditional broadcasting media and new media (e.g., online streaming service) are
deeply involved in esports these days. ESPN as one of the most popular significant
sports television channels now plays a key role consisting of esports. Esports fans
enjoy game competitions in two different ways: the one is visiting onsite competition
arenas, and the other is watching these game competitions through media. Esports
has become a new field developed through the convergence of culture and technology,
as well as culture and sport, which means that the convergence of video games with
digital media has proved the integration between electronic games and new media.
The rapid growth of esports is closely related to the media, particularly broadcasting.
When esports started in Korea, the major outlet for the game leagues was television,
both network and cable channels. For example, SBS, one of three major television
network broadcasters, hosted and broadcasted Game Show, Amusing World on Friday
(sixty minutes), as a reflection of the popularity of online games between 2001 and
2012. Although it was a game show televised once a week, the show contributed to
expanding the range of viewers, not only of young game maniacs but also of general
audiences (SBS, 2008; Jin, 2010). Primarily due to the existence of two cable television
channels (Ongamenet, now OGN; MBC Game until 2012), several internet protocol
TVs (IP TVs), and two web portals (Naver and Daum) which dedicate to game
competitions, game players involved in professional gaming often become celebrities,
supported by major corporate sponsorship and a loyal fan base like TV talents and
movie stars. In Korea, esports events have been regularly televised by television
channels and later IP TVs (Jin, 2010).
Unlike this esports convention, the main medium for electronic sports coverage
in most countries is the internet, which was unconventional turning into a
conventional trend. In particular, the development of streaming technology in the
2010s has been another milestone for professional gaming; it allowed anyone to
broadcast their gameplay, and video game streaming became so popular. In fact,
after the birth of Twitch.tv in 2011, the streaming community has also rapidly grown
to a major foundation for esports (Dargonaki, 2018). Twitch is a free platform that
anyone can use to stream their gameplay via their own channel to the audiences. As
of January 2015, more than a million people streamed their gameplay to more than
100 million viewers every month (Brightman, 2015). In this regard, Consalvo (2017,
85) points out:
While most of those viewers and streamers are engaged in competitive individual
and team-based esports games like League of Legends and CounterStrike: Global
Offensive, a significant number of streamers also play through single-player
234 Global Esports
games, sometimes to see how fast they can complete them (the community of
speed-runners) and sometimes simply to enjoy, comment on, and critique them
publicly. Twitch only launched in 2011, yet its impact on the videogame universe
is growing exponentially.
Many esports events are streamed online over the internet to viewers, and Twitch is by
far the most popular streaming service for esports. Interestingly, esports events are not
only technical displays or events, but also social and financially viable, which are only
growing in popularity and recognition (Burns, 2014).
While accessibility has changed much, each country has its own unique means to
enjoy. Interestingly enough, Korean esports fans enjoy games via smartphones and
partially internet TV, while Canadian fans enjoy esports mainly through online stream
services. Among twenty Korean interviews, in fact, sixteen participants said that they
used to watch esports on their smartphone, while two of them watched television
channels and another two interviewees enjoyed it via the internet. A twenty-six-year-
old female stenographer said, “the smartphone is handy for watching esports. When
I want to learn skills that I do not know and I have to develop my character, I watch
other’s playing clips on smartphones. I especially like Afreeca TV.” Another twenty-
seven-year-old male robot engineer in Korea stated:
I use my smartphone to watch esports. There are two major outlets: one is a game
channel on Naver, and another is Afreeca TV. Naver especially has lots of blogs
which summarize the primary results of the game and provides highlights to the
fans, which is very useful.
However, some of them used to watch esports on television monitors. For example,
one female university student (twenty years old) in Seoul said, “I prefer television to
smartphone, because television has a big screen with high-quality definition. There is
no buffering as well, which is convenient and enjoyable.”
Unlike Korean esports sphere, North Americans used to follow esports via online
streaming services, and the outlet is mainly PC connected to the internet for both
amateurs and professionals. Among twenty professional players interviewed, ten
participants said that they primarily used computers to watch Twitch or YouTube, while
three participants used smartphones to watch Twitch. However, seven participants
clearly responded that they used both PC and smartphones, depending on their
locations. Among twenty-five amateur players, as many as fourteen participants used
computers to watch Twitch, while only two participants used their smartphones to
watch online streaming services. However, nine of them responded that they used to
enjoy esports over both PC and smartphones.
Since, some of them said that they also used their own smartphones to enjoy esports
once they were out of home, their primary outlet was not only PC connected to the
internet. For many, smartphones are very convenient because they can use them anytime
and anyplace to enjoy esports, their preferences are mainly computers because “there is
not any dedicated TV in North America, unlike Korea’s OGN.3 It is quite hard to watch

TV; therefore, people enjoy esports through computer or smartphone.” A twenty-

six-year-old professional male player in Vancouver stated, “I mostly watch esports
through Twitch on my PC, just because I always have a game open and the streaming
service open as well. I watch esports on the smartphone when I am in bed; however,
other than this particular time period, I watch game competitions on my computer.”
Interestingly enough, one male professional player (twenty-three years old) said, “I
like PC because people watch events and enjoy them together, which smartphones
cannot provide.” One male respondent (twenty-year-old professional player) said
that he used to watch esports on YouTube, and the outlets are evenly divided into his
computer and smartphone. This implies that many people, either players or fans, use
smartphones as their outlet to enjoy esports. As mobile-based esports itself has been
increasing, it is not difficult to predict the increasing role of smartphones as a major
medium to enjoy esports. Smartphones are not only playing as a competitive game
platform, but also as an outlet for enjoying both online and mobile game competitions.
The previous unconventional concept and tool have rapidly become traditional and
conventional means. While reflecting the shifting esports environment, smartphones
have continued to transform the esports scene in the smartphone era.
Conclusion
This chapter has discussed the rapid growth of esports as a youth culture through the
comparative approaches between Korea and Canada. By employing in-depth interviews
in conjunction with a historical analysis, it articulates three major perspectives, and
therefore, the unconventional trends in esports in order to understand this rapidly
emerging global culture: Korean esports contingency in the global esports scene,
the potential shift of esports focus, from online gaming to mobile gaming in the era
of smartphone, and the shifting outlet for esports. These dimensions are not only
individually significant due to their significant role for the growth of esports but also
closely connected one after another to make esports a newly rising digital youth culture.
However, these major elements are clearly indicating not only contemporary shift in
the esports sphere but also the future of esports, which will be providing fundamental
ideas for game developers, players, and fans, as well as media.
Once nontraditional to many young and sport mania, esports has become a very
traditional sport for many in Korea and Asia with online gaming and broadcasting
converged. In the late 2010s, esports has rapidly moved into nontraditional markets and
trends: no more Korean only, no more online gaming only, and no more broadcasting
only, which have greatly expanded the boundaries of the esports scene.
Most of all, the Korean esports scene has continued to influence global esports and
youth culture. As Tom Burns (2014) points out, digital gaming competition was not
initiated in Korea. Instead, the 1980s saw a boom of interest in electronic gaming in
the United States and elsewhere with arcade games (Borowy and Jin, 2013) and console
games. As Kocurek (2015, 2) aptly puts it, by the early 1980s, “arcades had become
mainstays in shopping malls, strip malls, and smalltown storefronts across the U.S.,”
236 Global Esports
although “the period that many consider the real glory days of the video game arcade
was short-lived.” By the early-to-mid-1990s home consoles such as the Super Nintendo
dominated the market and were the entertainment systems of choice for the first truly
international video game tournaments, although it was not like our contemporary
form of esports. “With the proliferation of personal computing and the increasing
utilization of the Internet at the turn of the millennium,” Korea started to develop
esports, consisting of gaming, media, and sport, and “players were soon sharing virtual
experiences with one another from opposite sides of the globe” (Burns, 2014).
Secondly, competitive gaming has continuously expanded its game genres. As it
started with arcade gaming, followed by console games, a recent shift shows another
transformation from online gaming to mobile gaming due to the increasing use of
smartphones and increased in the size of smartphone screens in order to accommodate
mid-core MMORPGs for game players. Several professional game teams, including
Samsung Electronics, gave up its emphasis on online gaming because they plan to
expand their focuses on mobile gaming. However, people’s attitude toward this shift
does not follow the change in technology. Many professional gamers and regular
players still play and enjoy online gaming.
However, the outlet to watch esports has changed as many fans watch esports via
smartphones, in particular in Korea. Since Korea has arguably become a leader in
esports, this is a significant precursor for other countries. In North America, online
streaming services in particular Twitch are the major media, and PC connected to the
internet has been a major outlet; however, once they are out of home with no PC, they
use their smartphone to watch and follow esports. It is not easy to predict the surge of
mobile gaming as the major game genre for esports, one can say that smartphones are
going to be the major platform for many fans and players.
“Esports is an emergent techno-social phenomenon characteristic of a meta-
change in social relations globally,” therefore, the emergence of these three
unconventional esports culture is expected to change the global esports sphere in
the late 2010s and the early 2020s (Hutchins, 2008, 863). As sports have had an
important impact on mainstream culture, esports is now taking it to another level
as it integrates with new media culture, including social media. Twitch has become
one of the dominant live-streaming game platforms in the 2010s. Furthermore,
esports has its own ability to develop in parallel with new social media platforms,
like TikTok. Viral content like #gamersonTikTok “serves to propel the young social
media platform into a niche domain of popular culture that gamers are driving
into mainstream convergence with social media” like Facebook, Twitter, YouTube,
and Instagram (Wolf, 2019). In other words, the expansion of gamer culture into
new media is indicative of a significant movement toward increasing digital gamer
culture influence on the mainstream youth culture. Esports has been evolving, but
still in its early stage, which means that there are several new unconventional trends
that are upon us. As one of the most exemplary phenomena of media convergence,
esports will continue to grow to become a new digital culture for youth in their teens
and twenties with their new prospects and make people delighted on the one hand,
and puzzled on the other hand.

Notes
1 Although they are still college students, since they earned money through
competitions, they thought that they were professional players. For example, the
League of Legends team at the University of British Columbia won $180,000 for second
consecutive year in 2017 (Wallach, 2017).
2 As Newzoo (2018) stated, the global esports economy will grow to $905.6 million, a
year-on-year growth of 38 percent, which was from $278 million in revenue in 2015.
Esports is particularly attracting a young male gaming demographic that advertisers
crave. Esports has become a global sensation that attracts thousands of spectators to
live events held at arenas and other venues around the world.
People are realizing hundreds of millions of influential, affluent kids are spending a
huge amount of time and money on esports. In 50 or 60 years, people are going to
look back at esports and recognize the same kind of cultural shift. For TV and video
programmers old and new, the challenge of catching and keeping the attention of
young millennials has never been greater than in today’s multiplatform, thousand-
channel world.” (Tribbey, 2016b, 12)
3 OGN (formerly Ongamenet) is a Korean cable television channel that specializes in
broadcasting video game-related content and esports matches. The channel runs high
level professional tournaments such as the Ongamenet Starleague (OSL), Proleague,
and League of Legends Champions Korea.
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Part 4
Collegial Esports, Youth Culture,

and Gender
14
Are Esports Only for “Youth”?

How Ageing and the Institutionalization of Esports
Blur the Generational Lines of Video Game Culture
Dan Padua
Introduction
This chapter unpacks the institutionalization of the esports industry to highlight how
esports has become a significant cultural site for multiple generations who consider
video games an integral part of their everyday lives. The institutionalization of
esports is driven by various organizations that recognize its cultural and commercial
importance and are involved in developing or supporting the industry (Jin, 2010;
Taylor, 2012). There is a need to develop knowledge on the cultural impact around
“the institutionalization of gaming,” especially in esports which also represents a rich
site to investigate “audiences for new forms of digital culture” (Taylor, 2012, 249).
Although video games are typically perceived as the domain of youth (Fromme, 2003),
the Digital Australia study conducted by the Interactive Games and Entertainment
Association found that most Australian parents with children under eighteen years
living at home played video games for family bonding, educational purposes, or to
monitor and regulate their children’s video game play (Brand, Todhunter and Jervis,
2017). Educational institutions (elementary schools, high schools, and universities) are
establishing esports athlete training programs and professional sports organizations
(clubs from the English Premier League, National Basketball Association, National
Football League) are buying or establishing their own esports teams to participate
in the space. Media reports of these actions serve to transition the discourse around
esports from a fringe, video game-related culture into an established part of mainstream
culture supported and institutionalized by adult-run organizations.
The insights presented in this chapter are based on textual analyses of online news
articles to investigate how media reports construct the ways in which esports are being
institutionalized by the activities of adult-run organizations and supportive parents.
Analyses of texts provide ways of understanding popular culture phenomena and how
they are discursively constructed in the media (Foucault, 2002; Philips and Hardy,
244 Global Esports
2002). Underpinning discussions of age in this chapter is how the concept of “youth”
becomes unstable when used to describe a category of biological age, a mindset or
lifestyle, and a cultural identity (Grossberg, 1992; Bolin, 2016). The findings suggest
that the conceptualization of esports as a global “youth” culture needs to be critically
examined and instead reimagined as a global popular culture phenomenon enjoyed
by a multigenerational audience and encompasses various forms of intergenerational
exchanges. The multigenerational nature of esports has implications for the longevity
of the industry as it collectively strives to establish itself as a legitimate “sport” and
industry that will rival traditional sports codes and other forms of entertainment media
(Taylor, 2012; Jin, 2010; Wagner, 2007; Witkowski, 2012). The generational blurring of
this so-called global “youth” culture is a product of the long history of video games,
its maturing audiences who are now parents and the emergent institutionalization of
esports by organizations and business investors. This chapter highlights the contours
of the emergent discursive relationship between esports, “youth” culture and adults at a
time when esports is constructed as a mainstream and pervasive global popular culture
phenomenon. The findings are used to offer insight into the potential impacts that
maturing audiences and long-running video game practices on the institutionalization
of the esports industry.
Youth Culture, Age, and Video Games

Academic interest in esports so far has focused on the definitions of esport,
legitimization as a sport and industry, the labor of professional gamers, and improving
the performance of esports professionals. This chapter, however, answers Taylor’s
(2012, 188) call for more research into the fandom of esports audiences, “which
remains an underdeveloped aspect of game studies.” The importance of researching
esports audiences comes from the need to understand who they are and how they are
engaging, especially if they are an audience that resides predominantly online (Taylor,
2012). Questions about maturing age and youth culture in gaming sit within a broader
shift in understanding gamer identities, as Taylor (2012, 111) argues, “Game culture
is actually quite diverse, made up of a number of conventions, values, and practices
that are specific to various gamer communities.” Although Taylor’s (2012) argument
more so refers to gender identities in context of esports, video games, and computing
in general, it echoes Consalvo’s (2012) observation that the dominant understanding
of video game players is limited. I argue that, by expanding on the stereotype of
players and esports audiences, attention should also be given to the ways in which all
generations contribute to and enjoy esports and broader video game culture.
Youth and youth culture are used to articulate real and perceived generational gaps
when maintaining distinctions around age groupings. Grossberg’s (1992) work on the
discursive struggle between young people, adults, media, and commercial organizations
over the meaning and ownership of “youth” is useful for analyzing notions of age and
audience participation within esports and video game culture. Looking to studies of
other popular cultures, such as popular music, offers a way to frame notions of age and

Are Esports Only for “Youth”? 245
identity for a youth culture with a longer history than that of video games. Rock ‘n’
roll music, which was once framed as a signifier of rebellious young teenagers during
the 1950s, has since arguably lost its rough edges over the decades as it has become
institutionalized by teenagers who have grown into adults. The result of which means
that rock has come to signify and be incorporated into mainstream culture. Bennett’s
(2012, 2013) work on the notion of ageing within popular music “scenes” provides
insight into how adults and parents negotiate their identities and responsibilities with
“youthful” activities. Shifting focus back to video games, Taylor (2012, 242) states
that ageing players “find that their own play patterns shift, that new genres catch their
interest, and that their more youthful formulation of what it meant to be a computer
game player (when perhaps a certain posturing was the norm) is morphing.” However,
scholarly work produced on addressing this shift has been scarce and with specific
focus on esports as a potentially and increasingly important source of everyday
entertainment for multiple generations around the globe.
Understanding esports within the context of a decades-long video game history
allows an analysis of how discourses of youth, age, and adulthood impact on
dominant perceptions of esports with particular focus on how we understand who
esports are typically targeted toward compared to who engages with esports-related
activities. Textual analyses from news reports illustrate the shifting discourses around
ageing, participation, and esports as framed in the media. Ongoing debates around
the legitimacy of esports in academic and industry circles shape broader public
understandings of video games, having flow-on effects for families for whom gaming
plays varying levels of significance in their daily lives. The intent of this work is to draw
attention to and raise questions about how we understand the relationship between
the discourses of age and youth culture within the context of esports and video games.
“Games Are No Longer a Child’s Play”

This section traces how adults and video games have been discursively constructed
in the media and to demonstrate that video games have always involved parents and
adults but also to show how the involvement and identity of parents in video game
culture is shifting. It is important to recognize how age is conceptualized more broadly
in discourses of video game culture, given that it has shaped global understandings
of esports especially for companies who are focused on the commercially lucrative
audience of young people.
The decades-long history of video games means that the initial waves of young people
who enjoyed arcade and home console are now adults, some of whom are potentially
parents or grandparents. A study funded by Atari even paid particular attention in
reporting how parents during the 1980s were just as involved if not more competitive
than their children when it came to gaming within the family home (Mitchell, 1985).
Examples of home consoles such as the Atari, Nintendo Entertainment System, and
Nintendo Wii demonstrate how video games in totality were not and still are not
exclusively a youth activity and youth culture practice.
246 Global Esports
Taylor (2012, 184) looks back at the social and cultural impact that arcade and
home console systems have had on family media audiences stating, “Younger siblings
often watch older ones play through difficult passages, learning and then imitating
moves.” The notion of a video gaming within the family is not new, as the Nintendo
Entertainment System and Nintendo Wii were marketed as consoles for family
consumption. Even though parents and adults have always been present within video
game history, what has shifted are the ways in which they are constructed in the media.
It has been well documented in academic and industry research that the average
age of self-identified video game players is increasing. Nielsen’s (2019) Millennials
on Millennials: Gaming Media Consumption report states that “the first generation
to grow up with widespread access to video games, are now adults between the
ages of 22 and 38,” and that 46 percent are parents with children aged seventeen or
younger. Fullscreen (an ATT WarnerMedia subsidiary) produced a report titled The
Modern Gamer: Today’s Trendsetter, suggesting that the gamer stereotype is shifting
significantly. The published findings indicate that 42 percent of gamers are parents;
31 percent of gamers are aged between thirty-four and forty-four; and that they are
also more likely than non-gamers to own a home and more likely to want children
(Fullscreen, 2018). Similarly, the Digital Australia 2018 report commissioned by the
Interactive Games and Entertainment Association found that most Australian parents
with children under eighteen years play games for family bonding, educational
purposes, or to monitor their children’s gaming (Brand, Todhunter, and Jervis, 2017).
The Global Games Market Report, published by the self-touted leader in games and
esports analytics, Newzoo (2019), found that many game companies are servicing the
nostalgia of older gamers while introducing younger audiences to classic titles and
game hardware such as the Nintendo Entertainment System and the first-generation
Sony PlayStation among others.
Given the increasing prevalence of adults who play video games, it pays to investigate
the cultural identity of young gamers as they transition into parenthood or parents
who have picked up video gaming as a family “tool.” Gamers who are adults and/
or parents contribute to the shifting relationship between the discourses of esports,
video games, youth, and age. Their existence and coverage of their stories shape the
discourses and cultural identities that are attached to video games. As Taylor (2012,
188, emphasis hers) argues, “fans do not simply consume but are crucial participants
in the production of cultural products.” The high number of video gaming parents
should be understood in an era where the esports industry is enjoying rapid expansion
across the globe and how it plays a significant role in the mainstreaming of video game
culture through the industry’s struggle for recognition as a “serious” and legitimate
sport (Wagner, 2007; Jin, 2010; Taylor, 2012; Witkowski, 2012).
Are Esports Dominated by Young Audiences?

Although overall industry reports about video games highlight the maturing age
range of video gamers and their transition into adulthood, the discourse around

esports in comparison is largely focused on the imagined audience of “young people.”

Academic and industry discussions about esports are typically conceptualized as a
young person’s domain (Adamus, 2012; Jenny et al., 2017; Jonasson and Thiborg,
2010; Hamari and Sjöblom, 2017; Jin, 2010). Commercial organizations seek to
appeal to legions of young esports and gaming fans due to their disposition for
adopting new technologies and disposable income (Jin, 2010). This discourse is
constructed in the popular media when covering the rise of esports. For example,
Reuters’ reporting of a study conducted by Nielsen into online esports viewership
frames the audiences primarily as a “youth market” that companies, such as
Disney, Spotify, and Chipotle, who are not “endemic” to the video games industry
are attempting to “court” (Russ, 2019). While this business strategy attempts to
establish a life-long relationship with a younger audience, the discussion around
esports markets and audiences excludes any consideration for audiences who are
not “young.” Dom Remond, CEO of Gfinity Australia—an esports company, spoke
to the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) stating, “The millennial audience
and esports fans are digital natives” (Galloway, 2018). This position highlights
the belief that new digital technologies and content are intrinsically connected
to younger generations and therefore an attractive commercial market. In Korea,
advertisers and media preferred esports stars to be young males to appeal to
young female audiences (Jin, 2010, 89–90). Corporations involved in the esports
industries “understand changing cultural phenomena among young people” and
develop strategies to exploit the intersections of youth culture and media (Jin, 2010,
64). Following Jenkins’ (2006) work, Jin (2010, 64) remarks that these organizations
understand the critical nature of how commercially valuable young audiences move
from one media and communications platforms to another.
The effects of biological ageing and its impact on the competitive performance
of esports players (Jin, 2010) contribute also to the discourse of esports as a youth
culture. The esports industry, like traditional sports, requires an almost eternal stream
of young talent. Media reports construct the esports industry’s need to develop greater
structural support for esports players because they are dependent on young talent to
generate competition and entertainment. In an opinion piece for Forbes, Cook (2019)
states that “esports is becoming enough of a moneymaker to require a feeder system.”
Writing for The Washington Post, Knorr (2018) educates her parental audience that
the “life span of a professional gamer is even shorter than that of a pro football or
baseball player—usually from age 19 to 25.” Such blazingly short timeframes are
also reported as one of the reasons supportive parents hire esports “tutors” for their
children to increase their chances of being awarded a scholarship to study at a higher
education institution (Needleman, 2018; Gibson, 2017). However, the fast churn that
amateurs and professionals experience in esports is perhaps more apparent and visible
in traditional sports where strenuous activities place a greater burden and emphasis on
the physical well-being of professional players. Despite constant replenishment with
young talent, traditional sports continue to be enjoyed by a wide range of audiences
representing different ages, in part because of the long-running nature of these physical
sports. The comparatively short age of esports as an entertainment industry has had
248 Global Esports
the effect of shaping participation in it, whether professionals or audiences, as a young

person’s game.
Ageing and Esports

Although esports are dominated by and typically marketed toward a young audience, it
can also be viewed as having multigenerational audiences. A combination between the
age of video game franchises that have become synonymous with esports competitions
and the maturing of the esports scene into an industry indicates that more than just
biologically young people with disposable income now constitute the audience. There
is some discussion in the media that suggests a growing understanding that esports is
not only a cultural activity for young people, particularly if the industry is successful at
sustaining public interest and viewership over a prolonged period of time.
The author of an Australian Broadcasting Corporation news article positions esports
as an industry that is at least a decade old, indicating a broader conceptualization of
esports as not just catering toward school-aged children but also young professionals,
some of who might even have children themselves (Galloway, 2018). The words of the
CEO of an Australian esports organization hint toward a growing understanding by
businesses to develop life-long, sustainable markets. Dom Remond stated, “[esports]
will be part of their life. . . . It’s not a trend. It’s not something that people stop doing
when they get to a certain age.” Galloway (2018) attributes the “staggering” development
of the industry to technological shifts and “its convergence with entertainment and a
generation with Xbox and PlayStation controllers wedded to their hands.” Attention
needs to be given to how commercial entities capitalizing on esports understand their
slice of audiences and how they might sustain these generations for decades to come as
they mature into adults and parents over their life-course, akin to how sports-affiliated
brands such as Nike and Adidas have enjoyed success. Such an investigation requires
a comparative look at other franchises and brands within other media, sports, and
entertainment industries to identify the challenges unique to esports.
Though esports may appear to be a younger and newer segment of video game
culture, its history can be traced back to the 1990s and early 2000s, illustrating how that
there is an almost twenty-year history in which people who have enjoyed esports in the
past have now aged. For example, audiences of esports on commercial broadcast and
cable networks in Korea would now range from eighteen to thirty-four years old (Jin,
2010). Korea’s StarCraft esports league, which was established in 1998, has contributed
much in the way that esports has become a core activity for Korean “youth in their teens
and twenties” (Jin, 2010, 13). Even though esports has a “short history,” attention should
be given to ageing audiences of esports, who may, twenty years later, have children and
families of their own (Jin, 2010, 62) and whether the form of entertainment plays a
significant and sustained role in their everyday life. Research should be conducted
with ageing esports audience members to map what impact esports engagement has
had on their identities as gamers, adults, and parents, especially in locations where
esports is highly established and institutionalized at a national level such as Korea.

Looking at how esports audiences have aged in Korea, given its widespread acceptance
and popularity at a national level, may provide some guidance on investigating ageing
audiences in other national contexts around the globe. As such, the transition of young
esports audiences and professionals into adults is contributing to the transformation of
a niche community and activity within video gaming culture into legitimized esports,
through professionalization within the industry and support from institutions external
to it. Taylor (2012, 240) states, “Perhaps unsurprisingly we are seeing young people
transform and push into the domain of serious engagement, commitment, and work
activities that have thus far been relegated to fun and leisure.”
Popular esports titles played on the PC platform have a long history with some
originating as mods for video games that result in the veteran esports audiences.
Counter Strike: Global Offensive’s (2012) predecessor Counter Strike (2000) was a
mod for Valve’s Half-Life (1998). Defense of the Ancients (Dota) was introduced as a
mod in 2003 for Blizzard’s Warcraft 3 (2002) before being released as Dota 2 (2013)
by Valve and also inspiring Riot Games to produce League of Legends (LoL) in 2009.
Nielsen’s (2017) research on esports audiences in the United States, the United
Kingdom, France, and Germany states that these titles are some of the most popular
esports titles and set the age range of the 1,000-person sample to 13 to 40-year-
olds self-identifying as esports audiences. The same age range sample was also set
for Nielsen’s (2018) research into esports audiences in the Australian market, with
the breakdown of ages as follows: 17 percent (thirteen to seventeen), 30 percent
(eighteen to twenty-four), 35 percent (twenty-five to thirty-four), 18 percent
(thirty-five to forty). Although the bracketing and thresholds of each age range are
inconsistent and exclude audiences under the age of thirteen and over the age of forty
from the data set, it shows that high-school aged children through to parent-aged
adults are engaged with esports. Further research may reveal the length of esports
fandom among these age ranges and develop insight into whether the longevity and
continued developer support of some titles is cited by older players as a key reason
for their sustained interest in esports. In any case, what constitutes “young” and
“youth culture” becomes blurry as audiences age but sustain their engagement with
esports. How developers, publishers, and organizers of esports competitions will
work together on continually producing video game content and brand loyalty in the
decades to come is subject to future research.
Attention should also be paid to the initial wave of esports professionals who
have aged alongside esports audiences. For example, ESPN (2017) published a story
comparing the ages of professionals from esports and traditional sports played in the
United States. Their write-up stated that Counter Strike: Global Offensive (2012) was
the “old man’s game” since several of the players featured in the article were at least
thirty years old and still actively competing. It is highly likely that these professionals
would have been playing since the Counter Strike (2000) mod release. Some of the
most revered professionals from the early days of competitive gaming are now aged
over forty. Dennis Fong, whose alias is Thresh, is now forty-two and earned fame as the
winner of a Quake (1996) competition in 1997. A Fast Company article historicizes Fong
as the “world’s first professional gamer” and frames his skills in being able to “read his
250 Global Esports
competition and trust his intuition” during gameplay as one of the reasons he was able
to build a multimillion dollar business after retiring from professional gaming (Karlin,
2017). The article constructs the discourse of competitive gaming as having a positive
and profound impact on esports players by framing older professionals as iconic and
successful. It is worth investigating how the ageing of esports’ public personas, such as
Fong’s, contribute to the shaping of discourse about age, youth, gamers, and esports
surrounding age and the industry via media coverage and promotion, especially in
national contexts such as Korea where esports professionals have become pop icons
for young Koreans whose “cultural influence should not be overlooked” (Jin, 2010,
13). Further research on the way coverage of esports’ development impacts on how the
industry is received by wider (non-video game playing) audiences and how this might
impact how producers of esports-related content conceptualize their core “youthful”
audiences may prove insightful.
While some esports pro gamers typically have short careers spanning a few
years, a minority are able to maintain a competitive career into their late twenties
while others more commonly stay in the industry taking on other roles (Jin, 2010;
Taylor, 2012). There are instances of older men, who were not esports athletes,
who were passionate about esports and were involved in the management and
promotion of esports competitions (Taylor, 2012). These men understood that
they would not be the visible stars of esports when it becomes mainstream, but
their crucial involvement demonstrates how older generations engage with and
sustain their activities within the industry. For example, former esports athletes
become commentators who rely on their historical knowledge of the once small
scene contextualize gameplay and the significance of important moments for new
audiences (Taylor, 2012, 229). In the context of sustained careers, Taylor (2012,
243) ponders the future of esports:
And as those in e-sports age, as they complete their careers as players and move
onto other aspects of the business (or out of it entirely), they find themselves facing
the question that the more and more adults do—what does it mean to simply have
computer gaming as an integrated form of leisure in an adult life? As the broader
culture shifts its stance on computer gaming and embraces it as simply another
everyday activity, what was once an important identity and community term also
faces transformation.
The transition of young esports professionals and audiences into adulthood while
maintaining sustained engagement in the industry brings into question the perception
of esports as a “youth” culture phenomenon. However, it is apparent that media
reports of multiple generations—the people who make up the audience and industry
professionals—and their involvement in the esports industry are contributing to
shifting discourses about youth, age, and video gaming. This brings into question
how privileging the discourses of youth might impact the longevity of esports more
broadly, especially when adults and adult-run institutions are increasingly reported to
be involved in supporting the growth of esports.

The Valuing of Esports by Parents and Organizations

The ageing of gamers and those involved in the various layers of the esports industry
contribute to the institutionalization of esports. This section illustrates how the
coverage of adults and parents, together with organizations, is “actively” contributing
to the institutionalization of esports in a way that produces a multi-generational
audience and behind-the-scenes support network. The act of supporting esports also
demonstrates a discursive shift in the way adults typically assign value to video game
playing and game culture.
Esports is a commercial and industrialized media sector that was once considered
to be a “fairly tight and closed subculture” (Taylor, 2012, 189). Mediated content related
to esports has been made more accessible globally to a larger audience as a result of
investment poured into it to generate the economic and cultural potential it seems to
represent. What was once described as a subculture is being incorporated into parent
culture, not least because of the inevitable ageing of video gamers and esports but has
accelerated due to the actions and attention of adult-run institutions that want to develop
and harness the value esports might bring them. Taylor’s (2012) work reported on the
lack of official structural support, compared to the way traditional sports has through
school, the family home, and media. However, this section highlights the increasing
support for esports is evident in the actions taken by multiple interested actors resulting
in a discursive shift in the way esports is valued by adult-run institutions.
Parental Approval and Support

The industry has been appealing to parental concerns to gain the approval and investment
of parents. Media coverage of esports attempts to educate parents about the benefits of
esports-related careers by appealing to parental concerns for children’s careers. They also
highlight how other parents want to assist their children with esports-related careers.
The path to professionalization in esports is typically difficult for the friends and family
of young hopefuls to understand, especially compared to formal and institutionalized
pathways available in traditional sports fields (Taylor, 2012). This lack of knowledge has
been increasingly filled in by reports and coverage in mainstream news outlets about
the involvement of governments, commercial and sports organizational, education
institutions, and parents. These reports are important in shaping the discourse of esports,
particularly in countering the stigma associated with video gaming in general.
Video games and gamer stereotypes have a well-documented history of being
stigmatized and positioned on the fringes of mainstream popular culture, and to some
extent continue to be in the crosshairs. For example, one needs to look no further than
comments made by President Donald Trump proclaiming that violent video games
create violent youth (Gach, 2018). Similarly, esports competitions such as the World
Cyber Games are “seen as a festival[s] for game maniacs around the world” (Jin, 2010,
69). Despite these discourses, video game culture has become increasingly mainstream
252 Global Esports
as evidenced by the ways that titles such as Fortnite (2017) have become household
names in the media and popular culture.
Such examples speak to the ways in which video games and the associated cultural
practices are increasingly embraced within everyday life, especially within the family
unit. On how the mainstream media discuss esports, Taylor (2012, 85) states:
The age of the player is frequently a kickoff point, the piece marveling at young
people engaged in serious endeavors. But this seriousness is also positioned against
videogames, which are still typically seen as entertainment and perhaps even a bit
frivolous. Add to the story face-to-face competitions with actual prize money and
you tend to get a tale about a cultural oddity in the making.
Esports, to some extent, has been able to circumvent the stigma and moral panics that
plague video games more broadly because of the legitimizing discourses in the media
that have assisted in easing the fear of esports in the public eye. Narratives that portray
esports favorable focus on the discussion of its potential status as a sport, economic
value, and cultural importance to creative industries across the globe. Taylor (2012, 85)
argues that popular coverage of esports in general by news outlets such as The New York
Times, ESPN, and 60 Minutes serves to legitimize, in the eyes of the esports community,
the developing industry of competitive video game play. Knorr’s (2018) article in The
Washington Post describes the esports phenomena to parents and asks them to “forget
the image of the sulky video gamer along in his bedroom and three days’ worth of
pizza boxes.” Knorr is also the parenting editor for Common Sense Media, which is
an advocacy nonprofit focusing on safe technology use within families. As with other
articles reporting on impacts of esports, Knorr (2018) focuses on the earning potential
esports hopefuls stating that “pro gamers can make big bucks.” She also draws on
parents’ concerns for their children’s futures in expressing that “top student esports
players can even win college scholarships.” The article forecasted the growth of esports
into a billion-dollar industry by 2020. Even though the article presents typical critiques
of any sedentary computer-related activity that negatively affects health, the discourse
is countered by explaining how it is safer in comparison to physical contact sports.
Other coverage weighs in on this debate by privileging the importance of physical
fitness and its link to the mental performance of esports players. Articles published in
The Guardian and National Public Radio provide some insight from esports coaches
and managers who demand their rigorous diet and exercise regimens alongside
the sedentary esports activities (Cocozza, 2018; Smith, 2016). As such, coverage on
esports (and video games to a larger degree) suggests that the industry is far from a
“problematic” youth culture that video gaming was once viewed as.
The “education” of the wider public about esports helps to position it as an
alternative career pathway for children. esports-related job prospects have garnered
increasing awareness due to the celebrity status of esports players whose status seem to
rival film and music stars to the point where pro-gamers have been deemed an official
job category in Korea (Jin, 2010) and more recently by the Chinese government in
2019 as reported by Variety (Gera, 2019).

Coverage positions esports-related careers as creative labor that typically appeals

to young people as well as beneficial for the development of national economies
that want to be competitive on a global scale (Gill, 2002; McRobbie, 2002). Popular
media construct esports careers as viable and legitimate as well as explicitly encourage
parents to consider it seriously, particularly if they do not identify as gamers or esports
fans. Appealing to parental concerns around video games is important since adults are
responsible for monitoring and moderating young people’s gameplay within the family
home (Llorens, 2017, 474), especially in an era where there is an increasing emphasis
on children’s safety due to the emergence and mass integration of digital technologies
into the family household (Livingstone, 2009).
Parents not only regulate their children’s gameplay within the family home but are
also concerned with helping their offspring develop their potential future careers. As
such, reportage of esports-supportive parents mirrors typical concerns of parents who
want to prepare their children to be the best-prepared and most successful generation
than the last (Grossberg, 1992; Buckingham, 2011).
Parents are constructed as being concerned with the career outcomes for their children
as professional players or the other employment opportunities associated with esports.
An article published by The Wall Street Journal highlighted how parents hire Fortnite
“tutors” to help their children improve on their game skills in an era of competitive
video game culture and esports (Needleman, 2018). One father in the story who paid
for his twelve-year-old son’s lessons rationalized the investment through by articulating
how it would eventually pay off in the form of tournament prize money or a university
scholarship for his child. Similarly, a journalist writing for The Guardian also jokingly
stated that parents could reap the benefits of supporting their gamer children when they
go professional and provide them with “a handsome retirement fund” (Gibson, 2017). In
one extreme case, The Boston Globe ran a story about a 49-year-old father who reportedly
spent $30,000 on computer gaming equipment as part of an attempt to turn his sixteen-
year-old son into a successful Fortnite professional (Arnett, 2019). The father stated that
his position on the matter—“I’ve been breeding him for this,” and positions himself as
a self-proclaimed oracle who “saw [esports] coming before anybody.” This investor-style
approach to parenting demonstrates how parents are framed as commodifying their
own children as symbols of “successful” parenting (Brusdal and Frones, 2013). In this
way, parents are positioned not only as supporters of their children’s interests but also as
investors in their esports careers. The ways in which parents are framed as filling support
and investor roles reconfigures the notion of playing video games and the cultural
identities of parents who play games as increasingly common.
Parents are constructed as not only understanding the career potentials in esports,
but also the significance of esports content and video game culture to their children’s
social and cultural status. Such a reconfigured generational approach to parenting puts
children in the driver’s seat. For example, a mother interviewed for CBS News stated:
Maybe it’s time for us, as a different generation [of parents], to look at things
through their eyes and see what it is that they’re going to be interested in
learning. . . . Maybe, stop forcing the piano lessons on them, or the ballet
254 Global Esports
lessons, or all the traditional things that these kids are so crammed with all the
time. (Holcombe, 2018)
This example represents how parents are constructed as recognizing that video games
are central to developing children’s social and cultural capital (MacDonald, 2018;
Irwin, 2018). Identifying and nurturing children’s interests demonstrates a parental
approach that provides children with more agency in the construction of their own
youthful identities. As Furedi (2002, 126) states, the “ideal parent [as] someone who
was with it, learned [their] children’s slang, and adapted to their world.”
Veteran gamers are also framed as self-interested parents who vicariously
experience video game glory through their children’s successes as seen in the following
extract from an article published by Variety about the way parents hire Fortnite tutors
for their children.
And now those same kids who grew up playing Asteroids and Pac-Man have kids
of their own. The new proving grounds aren’t black starfields stationed in darkened
arcades but virtual playgrounds accessible on the home TV, office computer, or
even our personal phone. The stakes, though, remain the same: Win or be cast
aside as lesser-thans. And with some parents viewing their offspring as a second
chance at childhood, a kind of vicarious replay of a game already finished, they
take whatever steps necessary to make sure their spawn succeed, happy to spend
money and time to help their children attain mastery: Not in the art of dance or a
wicked curveball, but on the crowded islands of Fortnite. (Irwin, 2018)
The actions of parents in experiencing nostalgia, as described in the previous excerpt,

through their children’s activities comes from the parental tendency to “live over
again their own childhood and adolescence and promote their own interest through
the child’s consumption” (Brusdal, 2007, 395). Such performances of parental identity
are also typical of other extra-curricular and cultural activities where adults take their
children to engage with something from their own youth, such as a traditional sports,
dance, and music. The support and approval of esports by parents and adults further
institutionalizes esports and video games into the fabric of contemporary society and
challenges the dominant notion that young people are the only ones engaged with the
industry.
The Increase of Formal Organizational Support

Support from organizations and individuals typically situated outside esports scene
has proved crucial in developing the audience and industry. In the early years, the
industry attracted professionals from other entertainment fields and traditional
sports industries as well as older men who were “keen on seeing e-sports grow”
(Taylor, 2012, 15). The media consistently frames government, educational, and
commercial organizations as highly interested in commercial returns and therefore

key to supporting the development of esports. Although esports has been framed as a
subculture (Taylor, 2012), as a global industry it has been integrated and commoditized
by adult-run institutions due to the economic and cultural significance, challenging
the notion of esports as only youth-oriented and youth-lead. Youth culture has
typically been understood through its construction as oppositional to parent culture
and adult institutions by the media and commercial industries (Parsons and Turner,
1991; Grossberg, 1992; Frith, 1984). Once perceived as a subcultural activity situated
within the gaming community, at its core, esports is highly commercial. As such,
media reports about the way adult-run institutions support young people’s gaming
and esports activities helps to reconfigure the discourse of the industry as mainstream.
It also signals a shift in the attitudes of adult culture toward esports as a valuable
commercial and cultural phenomenon.
Coverage tends to favor esports by highlighting the potential impacts for national
economies. For example, an article in The Sydney Morning Herald positioned “the
influx of investment” in Australian esports, through the creation of local sponsored
competitions and commercial funding, as a way of keeping Australian talent from
moving overseas and will “help build the local scene instead” (Manisier, 2019).
The author also outlines how investment in Australian esports will help to build
competitiveness on a global scale and Australian identity by describing the rivalry
between Australian and UK teams and their supporters during a match of Counter
Strike: Global Offensive in Sydney. He witnessed Australian members of the audience
performing “deafening shouts of ‘Aussie Aussie Aussie!’” in a way that signified “an
emerging eSports culture, uniquely Aussie in every way” (Manisier, 2019).
Government’s realization of the economic and cultural significance of esports can
be traced back to the establishment of the Korean eSports Association, which was
formed by Korea’s Ministry of Culture and Tourism (Jin, 2010; Taylor, 2012). For
Korea, esports are an integral part of the digital economy, referring to the way the
expansion of esports impacted on the development and growth of the wider media
and communications industries within Korea (Jin, 2010). Following Korea’s lead,
understandings of esports as a critical component of boosting digital economies and
global competitiveness is being adopted elsewhere. Taylor (2012, 173) states that video
gaming is used as one way to “[enfranchise] teens into structured activity,” serving to
legitimize gaming and boost creative industries sectors in national contexts.
Reportage of the benefits of esports is unsurprising given the commercial
investment being poured into it. The Australian Broadcasting Corporation published
a story that highlighted how Australian sports organizations are following the lead
of other traditional sports organizations across the globe in chasing the “eSport
dollar” and “attract new groups of fans” to the organization’s brand (Cox, 2018).
Similarly, business-oriented news site, Forbes, presents esports as a legitimate and
cutting-edge investment opportunity by highlighting how organizations such
as the NBA, ESPN (owned by Disney), and Walt Disney are throwing significant
amounts of time and energy into their ventures (Ozanian and Settimi, 2018). The
commerciality of esports is also constructed in reports about the involvement of
educational organizations.
256 Global Esports
Organizations dedicated to the cultivation and development of educated

professionals now officially support gaming activities that are often constructed as
subcultural and juvenile. Coverage tends to position educational organizations as
performing an engaged and critical role in the institutionalization of esports. While
there have typically been few official pathways for young esports hopefuls to train
during school hours as they would with traditional sport (Llorens, 2017; Taylor, 2012),
an increasing number of educational institutions that favored traditional sports in
the past are now showing support for esports careers. The Australian Broadcasting
Corporation published a story framing esports high school leagues as “changing the
modern-day classroom” (Slessor, 2018). The South Australian gaming and animation
high school teacher featured in the story explained how he is using esports as a
“common language” to engage with students and believes the program he teaches
in sets up a “career path or future learning pathway.” The article also points out how
some of the students would participate in the High School eSports League, which is an
Australian competition jointly organized by Riot Games, the developers of League of
Legends (2009), and the Adelaide Crows (an Australian “Football” Club). The support
of adult-run institutions for esports is also occurring on the tertiary education level.
For example, Queensland University of Technology in Australia established an esports
“arena” for training and casual play in 2018 and formally started offering esports
scholarships to foster the competitiveness and performance at the beginning of 2019
(Garcia, 2019).
Video game developers have established initiatives that foster esports activities
within educational organizations. Variety reported that Riot Games formed the Riot
Scholastic Association of America (RSAA) in response to the growing trend of high
schools and universities in building their own esports programs and campus esports
cultures (Fogel, 2019). Michael Sherman, who represents the RSAA, stated, “The
formation of the RSAA represents Riot’s long-term commitment to [LoL] and its
development as an inclusive, multigenerational, college and high school sport” (Fogel,
2019). Comments such as this indicate an understanding of the need to create support
structures that will feed future generations through formal, adult-run institutions in
a way that supplies an industry suffering from a high turnover of young talent. It also
constructs those invested in esports as having an awareness that they need to plan for
their audience to span multiple generations in the same way that traditional sports
have managed. The activities by educational organizations reported in the media
further positions esports as increasingly common and not as exclusively tailored for
young people as typically perceived.
Conclusion
This chapter recognizes that media coverage on esports and academic research
emphasizes the phenomenon as a “youth” culture. As Jin (2010, 81) states, esports
and online gaming are “no longer just trivial” but a serious consideration for young
people. However, discourses constructed in the media suggest that esports has a
multigenerational nature due to a multitude of factors that signal the institutionalization

of the phenomenon within the family home, educational and commercial contexts.
Discourses constructed in the media suggest that the dominant notion of esports as a
youth culture activity that is positioned exclusively for young people is challenged by
larger cultural shifts brought on by ageing of the industry and the transition of young
people to parents while sustaining their enjoyment of the industry as well as the large-
scale commoditization of esports by commercial, media, educational, and government
organizations. The discursive boundaries of esports as a global youth culture are less
clear than typically conceptualized. These findings point to significant changes in the
way video games and parenting are discussed in popular culture and wider society.
Video games are increasingly seen as tools of intergenerational communication and
familial bonding in a similar fashion to the way popular music plays a significant role
in establishing and maintaining family relationships.
Esports’ institutionalization into the family and more formal organizational
structures reflects, at large, a fundamental shift in understandings of parental identities
and the valuing of video game culture. As Kerr (2006, 4) states that “the changing
political, social and cultural contexts in which its commodities are produced and
consumed” must be considered when investigating online gaming activities. The
significance of the emergent multigenerationality is that it will impact on decisions
made by producers of esports-related content based on understandings and
conceptualizations of esports audiences. In the decades to come, assuming esports has
a sustainable trajectory, the ageing of the industry and its ambition to grow means that
it will need to consider how to cater for an increasingly multigenerational audience.
Research is needed to investigate how producers and distributors of esports-related
experiences and content will conceptualize their imagined audiences and strategize how
to commodify them as audiences will consist of older members who are newcomers
or self-identifying veteran gamers. What is certain is that the parents among these
older audiences will use esports-related activities and content as a family bonding
practice with their children, as seen in other cultural activities such as traditional
sports and popular music fandom. Further investigations into the institutionalization
of esports and its multigenerationality will extend on contemporary understandings of
how youth culture and ageing present implications for media consumption habits and
cultural identities within the family home.
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15
The Emergence of College Esports

in North America
Nyle Sky Kauweloa
Introduction
The presence of students huddled together to play video games on college campuses is
nothing new. The very first recorded video game tournament traces its historical roots
to a college campus, when in 1972, a group of students from Stanford University met to
compete in the “Intergalactic Spacewar Olympics.” Nearly two-dozen students gathered
to take part in a series of player-versus-player and team matches for a year’s subscription
to Rolling Stone magazine (Brand, 1972). The winner of the event was a young male
graduate student who, while doing work on artificial intelligence and robotics at
Stanford University, developed a competitive drive for a video game called Spacewar!
While most of the attention at the tournament was centered on the significance of the
latest computing technologies, the event offered a small, but important, glimpse into a
culture of competitive video gameplay as a college experience.
Over forty years later, playing video games competitively in college still bears
some of the hallmarks of that 1972 event. Students in the United States first started
to seriously organize around specific esports titles, such as StarCraft and League of
Legends, in the late 2000s.
Nationwide college esports organizations developed to hold tournaments with
hundreds of students participating in events. The early connections made among
gamers from different colleges across North America became the foundations for
where collegiate esports is today.
While colleges and universities have engaged with students through video games, a
unique shift in institutional support happened in 2014 when the first university based
in the United States began to offer varsity scholarships by recognizing esports as a
college sport. Just like traditional sports on college campuses, college esports players
are treated to opportunities similar to what basketball and football players would
experience (Kane and Spradley, 2017).
However, the state of collegiate esports is in flux, with no consensus about how it
should be regulated. Various stakeholders exist in the space, with students, video game

College Esports in North America 263
publishers, educators, college administrators, and university presidents all interested

in integrating esports into schools (Amazan-Hall et al., 2018).
The goal of this chapter is to explore the evolution and development of college
esports, from its origins as a student-led initiative of teams and clubs to a large-
scale movement across campuses in North America. While varsity esports programs
continue to receive most of the public’s attention, student clubs have been an important
part of the development of what is happening with collegiate esports today (Kow,
Young, and Tekinbas, 2014). Gaming1 publishers and developers have played an
important role in cultivating the collegiate esports scene by working directly with
grassroots organizations as a means of supporting what students have been working
toward for years. With the growth of varsity esports, colleges and universities have
looked to traditional sports as a framework to make sense of a very popular, but still
unfamiliar, activity for students.
Questions have been raised, however, by the esports community over the threat
that outside institutions pose when it comes to governing esports in colleges (Hollist,
2015).
Currently, college esports does not have an overall unifying governing body that
provides consistency across different schools and college varsity programs. Instead,
individual video game publishers, being the copyright holders of their digital products,
stand as the final word.
The chapter ends on examining questions about inclusivity in collegiate esports and
how the community can build upon best practices that create welcoming environments
for students who may feel alienated from gaming cultures on college campuses. Now
that esports is being adopted by colleges, concerns are whether the collegiate esports
community is doing enough to be more inclusive of women. Diversity and inclusivity
measures need to address the lack of representation of people of color and LGBT
students within college gaming communities.
Accomplishing those goals may require thinking about diversity and inclusivity in
holistic terms (AnyKey, 2016).
Grassroots College Esports

To understand the formative years of student-led intercollegiate gaming in North
America, it is important to highlight the popularity that developed around the video
game StarCraft: Brood War (hereby referred to as StarCraft) in South Korea at the turn
of the millennia. Jin (2010) explained that the global reputation of StarCraft was built
from its achievements as being one of the more popular video games played during the
early development of esports in South Korea. The growth of StarCraft in South Korea
is sometimes regarded as the “first real esports,” where the country introduced high-
quality commentating, sold-out arenas, and superstar esports players (Knocke, 2016).
In particular, Taylor (2012) pointed out that the professionalization of esports in South
Korea entailed a series of factors that included mainstream corporate sponsorships of
StarCraft teams, the recognition of esports by South Korean departmental ministries,
264 Global Esports
and governmental policies supporting a path for career development. South Korea,
under this context, became the focal point of competitive StarCraft as it inspired the
imagination of young players, fans, and spectators around the world on what it meant
to create a professional scene in esports.
Blizzard Entertainment’s real-time strategy game StarCraft became the game of
choice for the first successful intercollegiate esports league in the United States. While
college students played a variety of video games in the mid-2000s (Microsoft’s Halo,
Nintendo’s Super Smash Bros., EA Sports’ Madden NFL, Activision’s Guitar Hero,
and EA Sports’ FIFA), the early work to create a sustainable esports league gained
momentum from the collegiate StarCraft community. Finding students on campus
with shared interests in video games is how Princeton University (Princeton) student
Mona Zhang began her search for teammates to join a StarCraft club on her campus.
Initially, the idea of creating a group of like-minded students who loved StarCraft felt
like “a far-fetched daydream because that’s what I expected other people to think of
it as. I’m sure people thought of the idea, thought it was cool, but then decided to
play basketball in college” (Hazelynut, 2009). In a study by Kow, Young, and Tekinbas
(2014) about the influences of StarCraft communities on youth culture, Mona Zhang
explained how plans for the first documented intercollegiate StarCraft match, between
Princeton and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), started because of a
discussion between her and a childhood friend. As she recalled:
We were thinking, “Hey, in two years, if we get 20 schools we will be happy.” What
happened was, the Princeton students—I started trying to meet the Princeton
team—and someone from MIT who was my friend, he said, “Hey, we play
StarCraft here, let’s have a show match.” We thought it was great fun so we made a
hype video about it and we broadcast it. (p. 23)
The show match between Princeton and MIT took place in February of 2009, soon
to be followed up by the official start of the Collegiate Starleague (CSL). Schools that
participated in the league varied by geographical location, size, and history, which
included academically prestigious institutions on the east coast of the United States,
large public universities in California, a community college, and several schools from
Canada. The newly formed college StarCraft league replicated a particular tournament
style and broadcasting program that consisted of “1-on-1 games of pure competitive
StarCraft every week; live audience, commentators, and live internet stream optional”
(Collegiate Starleague, 2009). The motivation for the college organizers of CSL to run
tournaments in this format drew from the desire to mimic the expertise, energy, and
enthusiasm of what South Koreans created with professional StarCraft (Kelly, 2009).
The momentum for the first intercollegiate StarCraft league came from students,
with everyone involved thinking about video games in a more structured manner.
Students who planned to participate in the CSL started to search for other students
interested in StarCraft through meetings, tournaments, and word-of-mouth. Initially,
face-to-face efforts to recruit players on college campuses were impromptu. For
instance, Mona Zhang talked about how the recruiting strategies she used included

approaching students around campus who “kind of looked Korean” and asking them
if they wanted to join a team (Kow, Young, and Tekinbas, 2014, p. 23). While targeting
college-aged individuals who looked Korean may seem like an extreme measure to
find StarCraft players, Jin (2010) explained how the immense popularity of StarCraft
positioned esports as “one of the major activities among youth in their teens and
twenties” in South Korea (p. 13).
College students in North America who were interested in creating teams began
organizing online through a forum associated with the professional StarCraft scene.
The online forum, previously located on the teamliquid.net website, provided
information about students and their in-game ranks in StarCraft and allowed
students to network around the growing collegiate StarCraft scene. The forum was
also important in jumpstarting the early collegiate esports community as it helped
facilitate offline meetings for large-scale events across colleges in the United States
and Canada.
Getting students to establish college StarCraft teams or clubs was an important
first step in CSL’s efforts to form a coast-to-coast college league. The prospects of an
inaugural match against MIT and Princeton spurred players to think seriously about
competitive gaming as a campus-focused activity. Students thought about how to find
coaches among friends, schedule practice times after classes, and host gaming events
where students brought their own keyboards, monitors, and mousepads. The students
at Princeton figured the next major step for the community would be to register their
team as an official student club so that the group could gain access to on-campus
facilities and school funding for tournaments and events (Hazelynut, 2009).
As members of Princeton’s StarCraft club started to articulate a more public stance
about their intentions to start an esports club and to identify themselves as esports
players on campus, some of the students worried about the prejudices they might have
to face as gamers. Once the club members were able to situate themselves in a room on
campus where their practices became more visible, the players recalled hearing jeers
and taunts from other students as they walked by. In thinking about formalizing their
esports team as part of campus life, club leadership feared that seeking institutional
support could yield similar prejudices about gamer stereotypes. When the Princeton
team approached campus authorities for funding, the club leader explained:
It was our first trip, and I was incredibly nervous. It’s really too easy for people to
misunderstand Starcraft and think of it as an utter waste of time with no benefits to
campus life, and it was very possible that everything would fall through because of
the social stigma against playing video games seriously. (Hazelynut, 2009)
For spectators present at CSL’s opening season, the first set of matches provided students
and fans new experiences around esports. The atmosphere of collegiate StarCraft was
likened to traditional college sports. The Harvard Crimson newspaper described what
it saw as being like baseball or football, where rather than “pads and helmets, this sport
merely requires a computer, keyboard, mouse, and Internet connection” (Kelly, 2009).
The local student newspaper at Princeton focused on the strategic depth of the game,
266 Global Esports
referring in detail to the playable characters (“Zergs” and “Protoss”) used inside the
science-fiction inspired game.
Though Princeton’s StarCraft team lost to MIT, the writer noted that in future
competitions, “the Tigers will definitely be capable of surprising the elite of collegiate
StarCraft” (Rao, 2009).
With the popularity of StarCraft and the growth of the CSL, Tespa (formerly known
as the “Texas e-Sports Association”) entered into college esports space.2 Created with
the original purpose of bringing together students from the University of Texas at
Austin for competitive gaming and esports, the registered student club that began
in 2010 grew into a state-wide college esports organization. The college esports club
began by focusing on its local community of students at the Austin, Texas, campus,
with the goal of bringing “together competitive gamers of all backgrounds to play,
improve, and compete” (Texas e-Sports Association, 2011). Similar to how the CSL
started as a group of friends from Princeton, the coordinators of Tespa recruited
from the same teamliquid.net website, generating student interest to form a team
around the newly released StarCraft II: Wings of Liberty game (hereby referred to as
StarCraft II). In preparation for their first StarCraft II team at the University of Texas,
students assured players in their opening online post for recruits that the group is
committed to “friendly competition,” and are “glad to take members of all skill levels”
(IndecisivePenguin, 2010).
Tespa embarked on a mission of organizational development after its initial years at
the University of Texas at Austin. As the group expanded its support of local chapters
on different colleges, their scope shifted away from focusing on their Texas campus to
thinking about how it could start “sharing resources and knowledge” among member
chapters by “providing technical, promotional, and sponsor support for local e-sports
events” (TeSPA, 2013). Tespa chapters exist at universities where the organization’s
goals are centered on creating local knowledge with running clubs, hosting local area
network (LAN) tournaments, planning for viewing parties, and creating interest in
other social gaming events. The path toward operating as a college esports organization
across different chapters involved two big changes: first, that the word “Texas” be
removed from its name (thereby going by “Tespa”) to reflect its wider mission of being
a national organization; and second, that Tespa committed itself to hosting memorable
esports events for the community every year (Sankin, 2013).
Running StarCraft II tournaments became a mainstay in the early development of
Tespa. Tyler and Adam Rosen, founders of Tespa, approached the production of college
esports events by starting small, learning from mistakes, and trying again. Starting
in 2010, the organization held its inaugural esports tournament, which included over
10 Texas universities, offered a prize pool of $700, and attracted over 100 students.
Successive StarCraft II events imparted greater confidence in students to throw even
bigger and more ambitious events. Within the next 2 years, the organization held the
Tespa Texas Open tournament, attracting nearly 10,000 views to their stream. For the
fall semester of 2011, the Texas StarCraft Showdown offered a prize pool of $3,000 to
students through corporate sponsorships (FluX-, 2011). In speaking about the success
of its student-led esports organization, Tyler and Adam noted that the confidence to

create large-scale tournaments stemmed from the diverse experiences gained from
being a student at the University of Texas, saying:
We don’t have any particular background in management or entrepreneurship, but

we had organized stuff before in high school (theater, math clubs) and we always
liked making things happen. That came to us naturally. We had also participated in
college student government and worked on a program that taught communication,
team building and leadership to engineering students at UT. That gave us some
confidence, too. (Plott, 2012)
Notable in Tespa’s evolution into a nationally recognized collegiate esports organization

was the creation of the popular Lone Star Clash competitions. The success of the Lone
Star Clash tournaments became a turning point for the founders of Tespa that showed
they were ready to expand into college esports nationwide. Similar to how the CSL looked
to the professional StarCraft scene in South Korea, the Rosen brothers were inspired by
professional esports tournaments, ones usually held by Major League Gaming (MLG),
for how they planned to hold collegiate esports events. The Lone Star Clash tournament
allowed student organizers to experiment with different formats by bringing in professional
players from South Korea, France, Ukraine, the United Kingdom, the Netherlands, and
gamers from several local colleges to compete in separate StarCraft II matches. Tespa’s
Lone Star Clash tournament offered more than $35,000 in prize monies and attracted
millions of online viewers from around the world (Rifai, 2014; Sankin, 2013).
Publisher Tournaments in College Esports

As publishers, Riot Games (hereafter Riot) and Blizzard Entertainment (hereafter
Blizzard) offer two very popular venues of collegiate esports tournaments for students.
Publisher-held tournaments provide clues into what direction college esports is
heading, as boundaries between publishers and schools in the collegiate space are still
being worked out. For Riot and Blizzard, the key to the longevity of their brand lay in
how the publishers link the culture and practice of esports to traditional institutions
(Summerley, 2019). What publishers hope to achieve in that process is the acceptance
by the public that college esports should be regarded as equals with traditional sports
(Hallmann and Giel, 2018; Kane and Spradley, 2017).
From 2015 to 2018, Blizzard made a big impression on collegiate esports through
its Heroes of the Dorm tournament. Organized by Tespa, the tournament offered
students in North America a chance to play a new game called Heroes of the Storm for
scholarships that covered the tuition for the winners’ college careers. Tyler and Adam
Rosen had a strong vision for what Heroes of the Dorm could represent for college
competition, as Adam Rosen explained:
When I watch an eSports competition, I might not know any of the players but I
know ASU and I know Cal and in some way, I have a connection to one of those
268 Global Esports
schools. I may hate one of them, I may be rooting for one of them. It gives us a
natural way for someone who may not have been exposed to eSports yet to take a
look into the world and fall in love. (Barnett, 2016)
For Blizzard, the narrative power of Heroes of the Dorm came from the compelling
storylines of the collegiate teams, irrespective of whether spectators understood the
game or not. Blizzard approached acceptance for its Heroes of the Dorm tournament
by replicating how traditional collegiate athletics is structured: The selection of the
month of March, a 64-team bracket, and a final match comprising of the “Heroic
Four” was part of Blizzard’s plan of linking to the wider American culture of college
basketball and the “March Madness”3events.
Getting Heroes of the Dorm televised on ESPN was another important step in
crafting a collegiate esports experience that came near to replicating the culture of
traditional collegiate sports. Sport-centered audiences on ESPN were given their first
exposure to college esports on a major sports broadcasting network with championship
matches between the University of California, Berkeley and Arizona State University.
By putting Heroes of the Dorm on ESPN, the television network placed the tournament
in adjacent timeslots with other well-known sports shows and broadcasts, such as
the National Basketball Association (NBA) playoffs. The reception of the games was
mixed, with ESPN viewers divided about their opinions of college esports. Sports
traditionalists saw college esports as an unnecessary distraction to what should count
as real sports and athleticism (Parry, 2019). Alternatively, spectators who watched the
broadcast expressed fascination over the growing popularity of esports in the United
States (Keiper, Manning, Jenny, Olrich, and Croft, 2017; Morrison, 2018).
With Blizzard wanting to structure Heroes of the Dorm4 after events surrounding
March Madness to lend a sense of familiarity to its competitions, Riot has also held to
the idea that League of Legends could become a “global sport that lasts for generations”
(Rand, 2019). Riot looked to achieve that goal early in the development of League of
Legends by seeing where collegiate esports could help.
When Riot entered college esports in 2014 by launching the North American
Collegiate Championships (NACC), the publisher was not sure how to approach the
growing collegiate esports space, nor to what degree would the NACC serve as means of
promoting college esports. In an interview in 2014, Riot’s manager of North American
Programming was excited, but also unsure, about the student-led movement, saying
that “[e]veryone is still feeling this out” (Grubb, 2014). Where Riot was clear about
encouraging student-led efforts, however, was providing publisher support to a faction
of the League of Legends community that has always been there from the beginning.
Riot saw the NACC as the first step in forming stronger bonds between the publisher
and the population of students who loved their game. One way they started to do this
was to allow students to win tournament monies, gain visibility through the publisher,
and perform in front of a live audience at Riot’s esports arena.
Over several years, the primer League of Legends tournament for college students
went through several iterations of changes (in its competition format and official
name) in response to developments in the collegiate esports space. Rather than playing

a background role, Riot started to think about how it could give meaningful support to
students through scholarships that were “not life-changing until you apply it to college”
(Appleton, 2015). As the NACC transitioned into the University of League of Legends
Campus Series tournament (uLoL), Riot surprised the collegiate esports community
by presenting competing teams with $180,000 in scholarship money starting in 2016.
The University of British Columbia (UBC) won back-to-back NACC tournaments,
taking home nearly $400,000 in scholarships and establishing a Canadian presence in
a largely American roster of colleges. The size of the scholarships awarded generated
a lot of attention and quickly energized the esports community to take what Riot was
doing with college esports far more seriously.
Riot has committed to making the game League of Legends a college varsity sport.
The question for the publisher has been how far will Riot extend itself in achieving
that goal? Abanazir (2019) argues that the fragmented nature of the esports makes
institutionalization a subjective measure that becomes “hard to quantify, measure
and set a ‘threshold’” (p. 11). Riot, however, sees the importance of linking its College
League of Legends (cLoL) tournament to traditional collegiate athletics as part of the
process of defining that threshold. Strengthening connections between its collegiate
tournament and collegiate athletics, Riot has established partnerships with various
college athletic conferences. Those relationships have garnered different levels of
collaboration between the publisher and the college conferences.
Working with the Mountain West Conference, the Peach Belt Conference, and the
Big Ten Conference, Riot runs full-season tournaments, in-person championships, and
a chance for teams to participate in a “play-in” tournament that leads to the possibility
of playing in the cLoL championship game. Ultimately, Riot hopes to establish working
relationships with other athletic conferences in the United States, with the goal of
mirroring its collegiate League of Legends tournament to feel more like an American
college sports event.
Varsity College Esports

College esports currently exits at varying levels of organizational commitment and
structure. Baker and Holden’s (2018) survey of the landscape identified three categories
of college esports: “(a) teams representing varsity programs, (b) club teams, or (c)
privately formed recreational teams” (p. 64). Varsity5 support for esports at universities
and colleges across the United States gained momentum after 2014 when Robert
Morris University (RMU) started the first scholarship-based varsity esports program.
Esports programs represent a new level of backing by colleges and universities, with
students having access to a combination of practice facilities, gaming equipment,
coaching, and scholarships. There are now over 200 programs with varying levels of
institutional support in North America.
There were three distinct points of development for varsity esports in the United
States, with universities initially orienting esports on their campuses in slightly different
270 Global Esports
ways. When the initial wave of interest began in 2014, smaller mid-Western universities
saw the success of RMU and the possibility of promoting student recruitment and
retention through esports. In 2016, the University of California at Irvine (UCI) began
its varsity esports program, making the school the only large-scale public research
university to have a program. The following year, the first school belonging to the
Power Five athletic conferences entered college esports, when the University of Utah
created its program.
Justifications for supporting college esports often stem from how the activity can
provide students who are not interested in traditional athletics with an avenue to
participate in college activities through video games. Research on traditional athletes
and esports players reveals how both groups of individuals have similarly developed
strong leadership skills, learned to communicate effectively as a team, and worked
together in pursuit of competitive excellence (Hallmann and Giel, 2018; Jenny,
Manning, Keiper, and Olrich, 2017; Kane and Spradley, 2017).
Schaeperkoetter et al. (2017) found that college esports players shared a greater
sense of community with other esports players and felt a stronger sense of pride in
their school. Additionally, several players self-identified with being “athletes” and were
interested in becoming professional esports players. Similar to traditional athletes,
varsity esports players are expected to practice and train regularly, which can be at a
minimum of five to six hours per day (with dedicated college players approaching ten
hours a day) (DiFrancisco-Donoghue, Balentine, Schmidt, and Zwibel, 2019).
Alternatively, Baker and Holden (2018) observed that besides university athletics, the
“remainder of collegiate varsity esports programs are located in departments for student
affairs or within academic programs, centers, or institutes” (p. 65). Over the course of
several years of program development, UCI has been applauded for how it has approached
esports as part of a larger mission outside of competition. At the center of its program is
a collection of pillars intended to address broader objectives for esports, which include
competitions, research, community, entertainment, and careers. Amazan-Hall et al.
(2018) explained that the goals of UCI Esports draw from the wider UCI community,
which has a “long-standing commitment to serve as a national leader and global model of
inclusive excellence in all aspects of campus life” (p. 72). As a result, numerous universities
have followed a similar path, building programs with an eye toward the development of
student success, where competition is one among several aims for universities to meet.
The paradigm of program development has centered on looking at athletics and
student affairs as institutional homes for esports, with academic departments now
taking on an important role with support. The University of Utah, for instance, located
esports under academics as a way of adding to an already well-known video game design
curriculum (Andra, 2018). While there has been a wider selection of support for esports
programs on college campuses, Pizzo, Jones, and Funk (2019) found that institutional
“creation strategies” still favored looking at athletic departments as the right place for
esports. This largely exists because the organizational fit of “GPA requirements, routine
practice schedules, and access to mental and physical health support systems” (p. 187)
can be applied to esports. However, the authors also explained that athletics lacked
guidance with the recruitment of esports players. Conventional methods from traditional

sports, for instance, do not neatly map to esports because the lack of established pipelines
between high schools and colleges in esports complicates the process of finding talent.
With the development of college esports, universities have invested money into
building out locations on campuses for “esports arenas.” Regarded as the modern-day
equivalents to basketball courts or football fields, esports arenas give college students
locations “to show off ” (Boise State, 2019). For universities with limited budgets or
the lack of physical space to accommodate extra infrastructure, schools have thought
about how esports could fit into existing educational settings. The dean of libraries at
Ohio’s Miami University worked with their esports program to locate its esports arena
in the library because it “was just another iteration of the library’s role” (Enis, 2017).
Alternatively, institutions with the funding to allocate to esports have the option of
building arenas with school colors, team logos, and sponsor names. Full Sail University
offers students access to a multi-million-dollar college esports arena, with high-end
personal gaming computers, media production technologies, and room for fans on
campus to spectate games (Peralta, 2018).
Although college esports programs are less costly to create and maintain, not all
schools can afford the investments in infrastructure designed for collegiate esports.
The results are that a digital divide has developed between schools with the resources
to offer a complete varsity esports experience versus schools that are working with their
own constraints. In their study of college esports players, Kauweloa and Winter (2019)
examined how students took a serious leisure approach to collegiate esports, finding
ways that participants formed identities as college esports players, conceptualized their
expertise, and formed bonds with teammates through their time spent in clubs and varsity
programs. Beyond the personal efforts that students invested into when becoming better
players, the authors found that the advantages of access to the material technologies of
high-end gaming meaningfully empowered students to become competitive players
on their college teams. Belonging to an institution with the financial means to support
esports infrastructure afforded a qualitatively different experience for players.
With varsity programs working as the nexus of institutional investment on college
campuses, access remains an important question. College esports programs with
resources continue to operate with advantages, giving students a variety of ways to
participate in collegiate esports. Alternatively, with educational institutions that have not
seen the same level of investments, as with smaller universities, but also for America’s
community colleges and Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs), the fight
for visibility from communities not traditionally seen as part of “college esports” raises
important questions about what should be done to promote educational institutions
that are presently sitting on the sidelines of these important developments.
Governance of College Esports

North American collegiate esports exists outside the control and regulation of a wide-
ranging governing entity. The National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA), while
part of the early discourse around governance, has refrained from wanting to regulate
272 Global Esports
college esports in the United States, and instead has taken measured steps to lend help
at a distance. This development has opened up options about the emerging role video
game publishers will have in regulating their titles and the control they will have in
shaping the future of collegiate esports.
On August 25, 2017, the NCAA officially put out a Request for Proposal (RFP) to
learn more about the developing landscape of college esports in the United States. The
NCAA stated that the purpose of the proposal was to “determine if the NCAA should
have a role in supporting growth in this rapidly expanding space” (Radford, 2017).
The debate over whether the NCAA should govern college esports centered around
the issue of sports amateurism versus institutional legitimacy. Calls for the NCAA
to play a governing role was one way for “eSports to be taken seriously as a sport at
the collegiate level” (Kane and Spradley, 2017, p. 3). Where there has been a lack of
structure and consistency that exists across tournaments, publishers, and games in the
esports industry, leadership within the community originally signaled the urgency of
developing strong institutions by aligning itself with collegiate sports.
The director of the University of Utah’s esports program initially noted, for instance,
that the benefit of having the NCAA involved in the development of college esports
would be the organizational know-how it could provide to “legitimize this in a way
that nothing else possibly could and offer a template to those schools to get involved”
(Darcy, 2017). The NCAA, in other words, could serve as a repository of knowledge for
colleges and universities wishing to create programs. Kane and Spradley (2017) argued
that because the NCAA has traditionally dealt with rules involving the eligibility of
players, recruitment of students, standardization of transfer rules, schedules for
training, and the distribution of scholarships, their presence could be tremendously
helpful with the creation of programs.
While the NCAA can bring organizational structure and guidance to college esports,
the collegiate esports community sees the institution as an obstacle to its development,
with the heart of the contention between the esports community and the NCAA sitting
squarely with the principle of amateurism. Bryce Blum, an esports lawyer working in
the industry, expressed the concern, saying:
The biggest fear within the esports community is that the NCAA will simply apply
existing rules, regulations and norms to esports, and if that happens the impact
on the rapid growth and development of the collegiate esports ecosystem could be
catastrophic. (Smith and Fischer, 2018)
The origins of NCAA amateurism trace its historical roots from nineteenth-century
English society, where the early manifestation of “[o]rganized sport was the province
of the aristocracy—young men of title who attended elite colleges such as Oxford and
Cambridge. They espoused the notion that glory, not remuneration, was the only
true motivation for sports” (Crabb, 2017, p. 184). The NCAA’s values are centered on
the “revered tradition” that student-athletes should never gain financially from their
athletic activities while in college (“NCAA v. Board of Regents,” 1984). In the RFP
sent out in 2017, the NCAA affirmed that esports could be brought into the fold of

collegiate athletics so long as it “aligns with the organization’s values” (Fischer and
Smith, 2017). The problem for the collegiate esports community, however, is that a
large part of the culture of competitive gaming can often blur the distinctions between
amateur and professional play (Seo, 2016; Taylor, 2012). Reinforcing its commitment to
amateurism, the NCAA places strict control over the type of activities student-athletes
are allowed to do, stating that “[s]tudent participation in intercollegiate athletics is an
avocation, and student-athletes should be protected from exploitation by professional
and commercial enterprises” (NCAA, 2018, p. 4). Events that allow student-athletes to
profit from their talents as college players are strictly prohibited, with players risking
the loss of their status as student-athletes and their scholarships.
Emerging within this regulatory vacuum are organizations, such as the National
Association of Collegiate Esports (NACE), that operate as guides for colleges and
universities seeking to start varsity esports programs. NACE has a membership of over
130 colleges and universities, with more than “94% of all varsity esports programs in
the U.S.” as members of NACE (NACE, 2019). The organization sees itself as addressing
issues related to getting college esports players on a path toward graduation, providing
scholarships to students who belong to varsity teams, and setting standards of player
eligibility.
When it comes to the topic of amateurism and governance in esports, NACE
believes the NCAA would have a difficult time governing college esports as a whole
“[u]nless there are some pretty dramatic exceptions being considered specifically for
esports” (ESPN, 2017). Baker and Holden (2018), in their research on the governance
structures of collegiate esports, have been critical of how NACE structured its policies
concerning amateurism, saying:
[A]llowances for students such as the opportunity to profit off of their publicity
and the opportunity to participate despite past professional status are undermined
by NACE rules that incorporate by reference any stricter policies set by individual
schools or conference policies that go beyond what NACE requires. (p. 83)
While NACE has gathered a coalition of colleges that wish to sidestep some of the
restrictions placed on schools through the NCAA, member institutions of NACE are
limited by commitments schools have already agreed to with the NCAA, superseding
any promises given to NACE. Effectively, NACE is incapable of countering those
“dramatic exceptions” that kept in place principles of sports amateurism among their
membership. The best way forward will be to create paths separate from what has been
created by the NCAA.
Crucial to the discussion about the future of college esports is understanding
what role video game publishers will play in shaping regulations. In a significant step
forward, Riot created a governing entity entitled the Riot Scholastic Association of
America (RSAA). The decision to go public with the regulatory group came soon after
the NCAA board of governors made their decision to suspend ongoing discussions
about the topic of collegiate esports and the role of the NCAA. Now that the NCAA has
decided to remove itself from regulations over college esports, Riot has taken the lead
274 Global Esports
by officially creating an advisory board comprised of individuals from college sports,

college esports, and academia. The RSAA aims to structure college esports around
League of Legends that foregrounds educational goals, longevity of esports through
colleges, and competitive integrity (Riot Scholastic Association of America, 2019).
Efforts to establish policy in an environment that is in flux will call for a balance
to be maintained between the rights of the publisher and the needs of the collegiate
community. While Riot is the intellectual property (IP) rights holder for League of
Legends, the publisher understands that the collegiate esports community has played an
important role in the success of the game. Lessons can be learned, argues Taylor (2012),
from how Blizzard handled breaches over its IP (StarCraft titles) by organizations in
South Korea. Competing parties raised important points about the proper boundaries
between the publisher (and the rights over its IP) and the larger gaming community
(and its grassroots role in promoting the game). Ultimately, questions asked back
then about “ownership, authorship, forms of actions and agency, and the relationships
between structure and culture” (p. 161) will be relevant for Riot and the college esports
community, as both parties continue to navigate the parameters of their relationship.
The presence of Riot as an official governing entity in college esports is an
unprecedented step that adds direction and scope to the regulatory environment. As
Riot establishes partnerships with colleges and universities, it should be mindful of
the unique context brought from higher education. Sudden changes of policy by the
publisher, if not given enough time for deliberation, can cause serious disruptions
among stakeholders that include teachers, administrators, students, and parents.
Diversity and Inclusion in College Esports

Problems that have traditionally plagued the wider gaming population, such as toxicity
with language, the marginalization of groups, and disparities in participation, are
familiar issues in college esports. Concerns have been raised about the gaps between
men and women represented on college esports teams and the effects that can have
for schools starting up esports programs (Holden, Kaburakis, and Rodenberg, 2017).
Title IX has operated as a powerful framework in the United States for instituting
greater participation and opportunity with sports in higher education. However,
there have been calls for a broader look at inclusivity in gaming that includes, but
also goes beyond, looking at Title IX. In addition to striving for compliance through
Title IX, stakeholders in the esports community have proposed promoting a culture of
inclusivity and diversity that derives its significance and impact separately from just
being compliant with the law (AnyKey, 2016).
Title IX has played a crucial role in expanding access for women to services in
higher education over the past four decades. Where Title IX has made a difference,
however, has revolved around the increasing opportunities women have had in
participating in college athletics. Before the enactment of Title IX in 1972, fewer than
32,000 women participated in intercollegiate sports. In 2010, that number increased to
2 million (Brake, 2010). Taylor (2018) explained that the esports community now finds

itself at a “pivotal moment” where it can begin to define what inclusivity means for
women in gaming by looking to IX (p. 194). With college esports programs garnering
greater public attention, whether these programs can provide women with the same
opportunities in gaming, as was accomplished with college athletics, remains to be
seen.
College esports programs have fielded teams with women players, but not much
has changed over the past several years, where “more than 90 percent of varsity esports
players are men” (Schonbrun, 2017). College esports continues to develop in an
environment where esports teams are largely male-dominated operations. In research
on the regulatory state of esports, Hollist (2015) stated that the “current model” guiding
varsity esports is “out of compliance with Title IX and NCAA bylaw requirements”
(p. 834). When there are discussions for change, the collegiate esports community has
often focused on being compliant with the law by creating teams that come close to
“a distribution of male and female varsity athletes and scholarships that mirrors the
proportion of male and female undergraduate students at the institution” (Melnick,
2018, p. 19). While appealing to a greater number of women to participate in college
esports continues to be an important goal, getting more women into college esports
may require creating conditions on college campuses that are generally appealing and
welcoming overall.
Considering how college esports programs can become welcoming spaces, for
instance, sports historian Victoria Jackson argues for a perspective that goes “above
and beyond compliance with the law” (AnyKey, 2016, p. 5). Going beyond compliance
means thinking about how the gaming community can utilize a range of resources
and experiences to nurture a wider culture of inclusivity. AnyKey, an organization
committed to diversity issues in gaming, talks about how the community can use
“case histories, successful prior interventions, learning from failures, and empirical
data” (2016, p. 1) for thinking broadly about the topic of inclusivity and diversity. Key
themes were identified on how to address the topic.
An organizational approach highlighted by the group, for instance, was the use
of official esports programs as opportunities for “mentorship and multi-level skills
training” (AnyKey, 2016, p. 1). UCI, for instance, involved students, faculty, campus
leadership, and alumni as part of a core group of participants invested with the
responsibilities of an official task force (UCI Esports, 2017). The group met weekly
to draft a working document that outlined realistic objectives and a timeline for
accomplishing goals that ranged from grassroots initiatives dealing with students and
communities (a new player night) to more official projects with UCI’s esports program
(staff training in diversity). Promoting a wider culture of inclusivity at UCI meant
bringing in multiple perspectives from the university to apply the school’s “inclusive
excellence to the esports arena in order to begin developing a model for change”
(Amazan-Hall et al., 2018, p. 73).
In situations where esports programs can be viewed as too formalized, alternatively,
offering a variety of events for gamers with a more casual spin can help students engage
with the larger gaming community on campus. AnyKey (2016) proposed working
with students and clubs directly to “[s]upport a range of ways to participate” (p. 2).
276 Global Esports
Creating gaming-related environments, specifically, where girls and young women can
be together can broaden participation on campuses. The Crimson Gaming club at the
University of Utah, for instance, held girls’ night events for attendees to find other
girls who shared a love for gaming culture at school. As Romine (2019) argues, girls
and women have consistently faced both “structural and cultural barriers” to gaming.
Opportunities to be with other women in competitive environments can serve as a
foothold where girls start to feel comfortable with their skills and experiences, which
may lead to more interactions with other communities of play in college.
Collegiate leaders are learning how to create conditions welcoming for people of color
(POC) and lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgendered (LGBT) students on campuses.
Research by Taylor and Hammond (2018) on marginalized gamers provided insight
into the dynamics of how women of color and LGBT students interacted with their local
college League of Legends club and how that differed from majority cultures that operated
in the same space. An important part of why some of the LGBT students opted to join
their college gaming club was the “deliberate de-emphasis on competition and progression”
(p. 227). Instead of seeing their League of Legends gaming club only as a competitive space,
the authors explained that marginalized students used the club initially to build friendships
and to socialize. In going beyond compliance, offering opportunities to interact with the
wider gaming community by recognizing the variety of interests that women and LGBT
students have with video game culture overall can be a helpful step forward.
For programs and clubs new to the collegiate space, suggestions are to welcome
students into gaming spaces, acknowledge that players come from diverse
backgrounds, and create novel opportunities for interactions. AnyKey (2019) updated
its list of recommendations for creating spaces of inclusion and diversity in esports.
After covering the basics, campus leadership are advised to “clearly assess not simply
where they stand in raw participation numbers, but how their materials, language,
policies, and community norms are working when it comes to the diversity of their
organization” (p. 14). This provides the community (students and clubs) and programs
(managers and staff) with similar orientations to take when building out a practice of
assessment. Making sure that policies of inclusion are being revisited, improved, and
integrated upon will be an essential part of helping programs take seriously how they
are implementing diversity and inclusion policies.
The collegiate esports community has a lot of work ahead of itself when it comes to
providing a network of spaces open to diversity and inclusion. While there have been
small victories with getting students of diverse backgrounds to engage with on-campus
gaming communities and esports programs, the scene is still heavily dominated and
foregrounded by a majority population of men.
Conclusion
What began as the first college esports program in the United States has grown into a
larger movement of colleges and universities that have provided institutional support
for esports programs across North America. However, there is nothing new about

the culture and practice of students playing video games on college campuses, with
the first recorded video game tournament taking place at Stanford University in 1972
(Brand, 1972).
With greater involvement by publishers overseeing tournaments and events, a
primary reason for Riot and Blizzard to be involved in college esports has been to
establish a closer connection between esports and traditional sports. Universities and
colleges have continued to forge linkages between esports and college athletics with
the creation of varsity-based esports programs (Pizzo, Jones, and Funk, 2019). While
college athletics has been a useful framework to think about how college esports can be
structured, video game publishers have started to assert their roles as regulators now
that the NCAA has decided to remove itself from the debate.
The growth of institutionally supported esports on college campuses are sites of
opportunities for participation, but emerging issues around disparities and digital
divides privilege students with institutional access to technologies (Kauweloa and
Winter, 2019). Lastly, diversity and inclusion within college esports remain a problem.
Novel approaches are needed to rethink how clubs and programs can be spaces where
marginalized gamers can feel welcomed to participate. An important milestone will be
achieved when efforts to meet compliance eventually transition into a wider culture of
acceptance (AnyKey, 2016).
Notes
1 The author uses the term “gaming” or “games” as a shorthand way of talking about
video games within the context of collegiate esports activities.
2 Besides the CSL and Tespa, other leagues, such as the Varsity eSports League (VeSL)
and IvyLoL (among others), played important, but short-lived, roles in supporting
collegiate competitions.
3 “March Madness” is a nationally televised college basketball tournament that includes
the top basketball programs in the United States.
4 In 2018, Blizzard announced the cancellation of the Heroes of the Dorm tournament,
as the company started to move resources to other game titles.
5 The term “varsity” refers to the role of a team being granted the right to represent a
school in competitions.
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16
Gaming on Campus
The Promotion of Esports in Chinese Universities
Paul Martin and Wei Song
Introduction
Esports is very popular in China. At the elite level, Chinese teams have won major
international tournaments, much to the delight of China’s many esports fans. The
market is big and growing, overtaking the United States in 2016 as the largest esports
market in the world (Yu, 2018, 94). This economic success has happened alongside a
growing cultural acceptance, with an esports athlete invited to be a torch-bearer for
the 2008 Beijing Olympics and a national esports team established in 2013 (Blocksom,
2008; Lu, 2016). There is a big overlap between university students and esports fans.
According to a report by the Communist Youth League, two-thirds of the 260 million
“esports users” in China are young people, with 87 percent of college students
participating in esports events. The same report argues that esports needs university
graduates to fill the talent gap in a rapidly developing industry (Center of Internet,
Film and Television of the Communist Youth League Central Committee [CIFT],
Tencent Esports and Tencent LoL, 2018). The university, then, is an important site for
the industry, both as a market and in terms of talent recruitment.
The esports industry is involved in universities in a number of ways. There has been
a growth in esports majors, and some of these include input from esports companies
such as NetEase and Tencent. These companies also have on-campus “academies” to
help students set up esports societies or clubs and host events and tournaments, with
these academies presented as improving students’ opportunity to find a career in the
esports industry. Esports college tournaments at the provincial and national level are
also important ways in which different stakeholders in the industry develop their
relationship with university students. These tournaments can be divided into three
broad types. The first are run primarily by government bodies. The Chinese Youth
Esports Competition (CYEC), for example, is sponsored by the Communist Youth
League, the University Cyber League (UCL) is the only esports competition approved
by the Federation of University Sports of China, and the Chinese University Esports
League (CUEL) is run by the General Administration of Sport of China. The second
set of competitions is run by game developers or publishers. These are the League of
282 Global Esports
Legends College League (LCL, Tencent), the Kings College League (KCL, Tencent),
the DoTA 2 College League Competition (Perfect World) and the College Star League
(CSL, NetEase/Blizzard). The last category consists of competitions run primarily
by private companies that are not game developers or publishers. These are the
International Esports Festival, the World College Students Esports Championship, and
the World University Cyber Games.
Esports is developing in a context that has been traditionally quite hostile to computer
gaming as a hobby. The discourse around game addiction in China is well documented
(Bax, 2014; Golub and Lingley, 2008; Szablewicz, 2010) and advocates of esports have
been at pains to distance esports from “ordinary gaming.” However, this does not mean
that the government regulation is simply hostile to games or to esports. Yu (2018)
describes a “double track” (p. 92) in regulation, where gaming is criticized but esports
is heavily promoted, leading to a set of “seemingly contradictory policies” on esports.
There is an uncertain and unpredictable regulatory landscape, and this unpredictability
is a major factor in how the esports industry presents itself to the public.
This chapter asks how esports is framed as a university activity by the companies
and organizations involved in running inter-collegiate esports tournaments. In other
words, how do these companies draw on broad cultural frames to align esports with
the values and goals of the university, the state and the young people who constitute
their audience? We argue that ads for university esports competitions use four main
frames to present esports to these stakeholders in a flexible way that addresses their
perceived desires and anxieties about esports on campus.
The chapter contributes to understanding the changing attitudes to computer
games in China and how commercial and state organizations are involved in this
reshaping of attitudes. It will also contribute to understanding one of the ways in which
commercial organizations in China navigate the regulatory landscape by adopting a
flexible and interpretable set of frames for their activity. The results are of practical use
for regulators and universities wishing to control how these commercial organizations
interact with their students and to maximize the benefit of esports to their students
while avoiding exploitation and other potential harms.
Framing Analysis
When a complex cultural phenomenon is represented—whether that is in a newspaper,
an advertisement, a policy paper, a conversation, a documentary, or any other form—
certain aspects of that phenomenon are emphasized and highlighted, and others are
downplayed or altogether neglected. Representers may compare the phenomenon
with other cultural phenomena, either explicitly and directly through clear similes or
metaphors, or more indirectly, for example by using certain words, phrases, and images
usually associated with another domain. This process of representing something from
a specific angle, with a specific scope, and with specific associations is known as
“framing,” and framing analysis is the attempt to understand the range of frames used
by certain actors in certain situations when engaged in processes of representation.

Gaming on Campus 283
The concept of framing is used in a wide range of disciplines, from psychology

(Tversky and Kahneman, 1981) to sociology (Goffman, 1974) to communications
(Entman, 2007). The approach taken here has mainly been developed in relation to the
representation of events in news coverage. In this context, Entman (1993) states: “To
frame is to select some aspects of a perceived reality and make them more salient in a
communication text” (p. 52). The process of framing relies on the prior existence in a
given culture of a stock of frames that are drawn upon in a particular representation
(Van Gorp, 2007, p. 62). To conduct framing analysis, Van Gorp (2007) breaks frames
down into their constituent parts. The first is the cultural phenomenon itself. This exists
outside the text. In the present case, the cultural phenomenon is esports at Chinese
universities. The second element is the set of framing devices. Framing devices are
manifest parts of the texts that activate a particular frame in the minds of audiences
who share that frame. Triggers of this kind include “word choice, metaphors, exemplars,
descriptions, arguments, and visual images” (Van Gorp, 2007, 64). The third element
is the set of reasoning devices. Again, these are manifest parts of the text. They are
text elements to do with definition, causation, moral evaluation, and course of action.
These may be explicit declarations where the text directly advocates for, say a particular
definition or course of action, or more implicit aspects of the text where a definition,
cause, moral evaluation, or course of action is implied but not stated. To aid analysis,
Van Gorp (2007) advocates constructing a “frame matrix” that illustrates the frame
titles alongside examples of the framing and reasoning devices in a given sample.
Framing analysis in media studies, while predominantly focusing on newspaper
articles, has been used for other kinds of media texts. Van Dyke and Tedesco (2016),
for example, employ framing analysis to discuss how advertisers frame environmental
issues and Egres (2018) discuss how politicians frame the issue of immigration in
political speech. There are some significant differences to be considered when using
framing analysis outside of journalism.
Journalism often (though not always) operates according to an ideal of impartiality,
or at least balance (e.g., Society of Professional Journalists, 2014). Journalists do not
write with the single purpose of pushing the newspaper’s position on an issue but may
also wish to show different positions. Promotional material is much more likely to
have a single aim, and this usually involves the explicit and purposive framing of a
particular issue (or product or service) in such a way as to create in the audience a
positive attitude toward the issue, or a desire to consume the product or service in
question. We would expect, then, to see a clear set of framing devices in promotion,
consciously deployed to activate a frame that will present the issue in a way that the
company feels will increase consumption. Van Dyke and Tedesco (2016) define the
frame in advertising as “an explicit message structure created by an advertising sponsor
with the goal of promoting a particular interpretation of a product, service, or idea” (p.
38). This is the definition used in the current analysis.
Another difference between journalism and advertising or promotion is in how
problems appear and therefore the kinds of reasoning devices present in the text.
For Entman, journalists frame problems and discuss their causes and solutions. The
advertiser, on the other hand, frames products. However, these framings may well be
284 Global Esports
in response to existing problematic representations of that product or service that are

unstated in the ad. For example, McCurdy (2018) shows how fossil fuel companies
in Canada, rather than engaging in the environmental debate in their ads reframed
their product in terms of lifestyle. Here, the problem of nonrenewable energy is
not explicitly mentioned in the ad, but McCurdy interprets the lifestyle frame as a
means by which the companies respond to this already existing problematic framing.
Framing in promotional material, then, is about framing a product, often in relation
to an unstated problem.
The objects of analysis were twenty-three videos and twenty-four written texts (most
with images) drawn from promotional material of eleven major Chinese collegiate
esports competitions between 2015 and 2019. A list of competitions was drawn up
using interviews with university esports players and fans and this was supplemented
with an internet search. Promotional materials for these competitions were then
downloaded from the internet by visiting the competition webpages, video-sharing
websites, and through a general internet search. None of the competitions keeps an
archive of promotional material from previous years and so it is likely that this sample
is not complete; however, we are not claiming that the frames found in this sample
are representative of all promotional material for Chinese university esports. Rather,
this sample is intended to generate a range of frames that have been used to promote
esports in Chinese universities. Information about this sample of promotional material
can be found in Table 16.1.
Based on a review of the literature, ongoing interviews with stakeholders in Chinese
collegiate esports, and initial inspection of the promotional material from this project,
we drew up an inventory of the main frames used when discussing esports. The first
frame is purposefulness. Szablewicz (2016) reports that both Chinese officials and
esports players frequently emphasize the difference between gaming and esports in
order to legitimate esports in a context where gaming is seen as a potentially harmful
activity. In our own interviews we have found that players often frame this in terms
Table 16.1 Breakdown of Types of Ads for Eleven University

Esports Competitions
Competition Video Ads Photo/Text

DoTA 2 College League Competition 2 4
University Cyber League 3 1
College Start League 4 1
International Esports Festival 1 4
World College Students Esports 0 1
Championship
Chinese Youth Esports Competition 3 2
League of Legends College League 2 0
Chinese University Esports League 1 3
Zhejiang University Esports League 0 3
World University Cyber Games 3 3
Kings College League 4 2
Table 16.2 Frame Matrix
Frame Reasoning Devices Framing Devices

Definition of Esports Moral Values of Esports Image/Style Statements
Purposeful activity Unlike gaming, esports has a Esports develops career skills Ordinary gamers transforming into “2018 CSL includes one more
purpose. and opportunities. esports athletes. ‘recruitment plan’, which will
provide e-sports lovers with career
development consulting services
for professional gamer, game
commentator and e-sports
Internship.”
Youthful activity Esports is part of a Esports develops social Images are exclusively of young “Come to the CYEC China Youth Esports
developmental phase that relationships and gives people; youth register in Competition, pay tribute to your
young people go through. outlet for expression. language. youth with a hearty battle!”
Healthy activity Esports is a type of sport. Esports is good for Images of esports athletes “College students from all over the
individual bodies and for competing in traditional sports. world developed a healthy esports
the national body. culture through communication and
Competition.”
Struggle for Esports is an activity that The legitimation of esports Use of official language; stock “The road forward is rugged, filled with
legitimation has been unfairly is a just cause that aligns footage of announcement of prejudice, opposition, and loneliness.”
marginalized in Chinese with national goals. esports as ninety-ninth official Successful players “realize the dream of
society. sport and of China winning glory for the country.”
esports competition in Jakarta
Asian games.
286 Global Esports
of purposefulness. While “ordinary” gaming is merely for fun and has no positive
outcomes for the player, esports allows players to develop a range of skills, helps them
forge important relationships, and potentially opens up a career in the esports industry.
The distancing of esports from gaming in China is in stark contrast to the development
of esports in US context, where, Borowy and Jin (2013) argue, early arcade competitive
gaming flourished as a site for the development of a “unified gamer culture” in the
face of mainstream criticism of gaming (p. 2258). The second frame is youth. Esports
is usually seen as an activity for young people. Our interviewees frequently refer to
the generation gap in understanding esports, with parents and teachers failing to
appreciate esports as a proper sport. There is a lot of optimism about the future of
esports in China once the older generation makes way for a generation of politicians
and regulators with a better understanding of the industry’s potential. Furthermore,
the esports industry squarely targets the younger generation, as previously discussed.
The third frame is health. The distinction between gaming and esports is also made in
terms of health, with internet gaming heavily associated with game addiction. In our
interviews, critics of esports tend to point out the sedentary nature of the activity and
the effect of prolonged computer game play on the eyes and hands, together with the
supposed addictive qualities of computer games. Defenders point to social benefits
and improvement in motor skills and teamwork. The last frame is struggle. Several
of the students we talked to adopted a siege mentality, where esports was seen to
be undergoing a struggle for legitimation and mainstream acceptance. Indeed, this
struggle for legitimacy is a wider theme in esports.
Young and Strait (2019) and Turiainen, Friman, and Ruotsalainen (2020), for
example, discuss the strategies used in broadcast esports tournaments to market
esports as a mainstream sporting event rather than a niche activity.
This gives us our four frames, which are illustrated on the frame matrix in Table 16.2
by connecting them with reasoning devices and framing devices found in the sample.
What follows is a qualitative analysis of this empirical material in relation to these
four frames. The aim of this analysis is to better understand how these frames are
being used to promote particular interpretations of esports such that it can be accepted
as a normal campus activity. Framing analysis is aimed at textual structure, and as
such cannot explain how specific audiences interpret texts in different ways. It is not
possible, therefore, to determine through frame analysis the range of resistant readings
that these texts invoked, or the relative prevalence of these different readings. Rather,
this chapter focuses on the ways in which esports stakeholders draw on broad cultural
frames to develop a particular image of esports in line with their agenda. A focus on
audience reception would make valuable future research in this area.
Results and Discussion

The four frames in the sample—purpose, youth, health, and struggle—each present
esports as an acceptable form of university extra-curricular activity. While the ads do
not explicitly mention already-existing problematic framings of esports and gaming,

the frames that are employed can be seen as reactions to these prevailing frames. This
is most clearly the case in the first three frames, where the ads reframe esports as
purposeful and healthy and reframe youth as a time of experimentation that will pass.
The final frame—struggle—is less an attempt to change a previously existing frame
and more an attempt to elevate esports from the status of a mere hobby to a collective
movement, but one that does not threaten national stability.
Gaming with a Purpose

Traditional Chinese cultural thought contains much that criticizes play as a waste
of time. The San Zi Jing (Three Character Classic), an educational tract used to teach
children Confucian values since the thirteenth century, leaves the student with the final
line “Diligence has its rewards; play has no benefits; be on your guard and put forth all
your strength” (de Bary and Bloom, 1999, 807), and a long-standing warning to adults
and children alike is that “play enervates the spirit” (玩物丧志/wanwusangzhi). This
way of thinking characterizes play as a wasteful activity that contributes nothing to—
or even adversely affects—one’s development. Similar admonitions against excessive
play exist in the Western tradition too, but since at least the romantic period there has
been a countervailing discourse that sees the lack of instrumentality in play as its most
positive value, most clearly stated in Schiller’s (1795/1994) argument that play is an
antidote to the “specialization of human powers” that increases human productivity
at the cost of the human spirit or, later, in Roger Caillois’ assertion that the value
of play lies precisely in the fact that it is an “occasion of pure waste” (1958/2001).
Chinese culture, however, lacks any significant philosophical tradition that attempts to
recuperate play’s wastefulness as something positive.
When play is defended it is instrumentalized. In order to avoid esports becoming
embroiled in the same set of criticisms that have been levelled at computer games
more generally, esports proponents disavow any connection between the two. The
distinction between gaming and esports in Chinese discourse is, then, mainly a
distinction between gaming as a hobby that has no purpose and esports as a hobby that
can be leveraged for some gains of a personal (in a career), societal (as an industry), or
national (as soft power) kind.
The ads under consideration here follow this distinction between gaming and
esports. Gaming is rarely mentioned at all, and the instrumentality of esports is
emphasized. Several of the videos contain a transformative narrative, where the ennui
associated with play is erased through a commitment to esports. One video shows a
lonely adolescent failing to engage with his studies, drinking alcohol, and exhibiting
the kinds of alienation and attention to triviality associated with wanwusangzhi. The
computer, far from being a source of this alienation, provides the solution when he
enrolls in an esports competition and, by training with his team and encountering the
highs and lows of competition, transforms himself into a well-adjusted and sociable
young man. In another, more humorous video a college student is being surveilled by
detectives who cannot understand how the student, who had previously been working
288 Global Esports
in badly paid jobs, is now flush with cash. The answer, we find at the end of the video,
is that he has leveraged his skills in StarCraft to lead a successful college esports team.
The detective sighs at the end “You can’t judge a book by its cover.” The discovery of
esports is framed again and again as a kind of rebirth, with this term explicitly used
as the title of one video, where the player claims “Esports set me on fire and brought
me back to life.” Far from being a source of youth alienation, esports is presented as a
means of escaping it.
Esports is distinguished from ordinary gaming in a number of ways, but it is always
set in terms of the distinction between a purposeless gaming and a purposeful esports.
In an ad entitled “No Playing” a young man complains of his family’s lack of support
for his gaming hobby when he was a child: “Since I started playing games they doubted
me: ‘What can you get in the future? Games are just for fun’.” His solution, however, is
not to insist on the autotelic pleasures of play but to transform his hobby into a more
useful pastime: “So I don’t want to play anymore. It’s time to create my own miracle.” By
this he means it is time to transform himself from an ordinary player into a professional
esports worker, thus instrumentalizing the time spent on gaming by turning it into an
apprenticeship for a real career.
Many of the texts specifically mention college esports as a route to a successful
career, either as a player or a commentator. This framing is most evident in videos
for the WUCG, a competition organized by a successful former esports player who,
unusually, started his esports career after graduating university. He serves as a role
model for aspiring players, and proof that collegiate esports can lead to an elite esports
career. In one video, he muses, “Sometimes I wonder what my life would have become
if I hadn’t played in that game on campus.” This identification of enrolling in an esports
contest at university as a pivotal moment in a young person’s life is seen throughout
the ads.
Framing Youth
Esports is usually seen as an activity for young people, both as players and audiences
and this makes universities a primary focus for the esports industry (CIFT et al., 2018).
However, this creates a problem for the industry because young people are seen as a
particularly vulnerable sector of Chinese society who ought to focus on their studies or
risk being left behind in a competitive post-university careers market. In the context of
the present study, the most relevant form of vulnerability attributed to young people is in
relation to internet addiction, a disorder that is practically synonymous with computer
game addiction. The psychological and psychiatric research on internet addiction is still
in early stages and has been contested in some quarters (Bean et al., 2017), but the term
is used freely in Chinese popular and official discourse to describe excessive playing of
computer games. Research in this area has suggested that internet addiction is most
prevalent among college students (Kandell, 1998; Odaci and Kalkan, 2010), with one
study claiming that internet addiction is “prevalent” among Chinese university students
(Zhang et al., 2015) and another that it is the leading cause of drop-outs in Chinese

universities (Zhang et al., 2003). Whether internet addiction is a robust concept or not,
such research feeds into a more widespread belief in China that the internet poses a
risk to the life chances of college students. To the extent that esports are associated
with gaming addiction, esports on campus will be met with suspicion or hostility by
university administrators and parents who fear that students will neglect their academic
work. This concern among administrators has been expressed in research on college
esports outside of China too (e.g., Pizzo et al., 2019; Kauweloa and Winter, 2019).
However, the discourse on internet addiction has been stronger in China than elsewhere
and so we would expect this resistance to esports in Chinese campuses based on this
fear to be correspondingly greater. The solution presented to this problem in these texts
is not to reframe esports as an activity for older people but to reframe youth as a time
for people to make friends and try new things and to characterize esports as a good way
of doing this. Youth is not, on this view, a high-risk moment where mistakes will have
a lasting impact on one’s life chances, but rather is a time for experimentation in which
one finds one’s dreams.
Several ads describe the esports competition as a “carnival,” emphasizing the fun
aspect of esports and also its transient nature. The carnival has several characteristics
that make it a useful metaphor in the framing of esports as a safe hobby for young
people. The carnival is separate from everyday life, where the values of everyday life
are turned upside down. However, this radical potential of the carnival is undermined
by the fact that the carnival is temporary (Bakhtin, 1984). This temporariness of the
esports-carnival is emphasized in several of the ads. Many suggest esports as a means
for young people to create memories that they will cherish throughout their life. This
frames esports as an important but ultimately ephemeral hobby.
Working in contrast to the purposeful activity frame, the danger of becoming
obsessed with esports is downplayed by framing it as a phase that college students
go through and emerge from, once the “carnival” is over. In the words of one ad, “We
can’t play esports for a lifetime, but we can be friends for a lifetime.” Such a framing,
where esports is tightly aligned with youth, assuages parental fears of addiction by
representing esports as “just a phase” while selling esports to young people as an
important and natural part of the college experience.
Esports is also presented as a means by which young people can find their place
in life. One ad shows several students talking about their experience of esports at
university. One student discusses his nervousness on the first day and how these nerves
disappeared when he discovered his dorm-mates were all fans of esports games and
they began to play together. Other ads frame esports as a way of developing romantic
relationships. Still others, as we have seen, show esports as igniting a passion in a
previously bored young person or guiding students on a viable career path. In each of
these examples, youth is being framed as a time of exploration and discovery. Many
ads speak positively about creating memories through esports and negatively about
missing out on this potential if one fails to make the most of university by sticking too
closely to academic studies and failing to find one’s passion. Youth here is framed as the
only time when one can discover one’s fate: “This enthusiasm is only formed in youth.
This memory is left in the bottom of our heart forever.”
290 Global Esports
Individual and National Health

Computer gaming is often seen as a sedentary activity. Despite the existence of arcade
games such as Dance Dance Revolution (Konami, 1998) and the success of the Wii in
presenting gaming as an active hobby, the stereotypical view of the gamer is of a person
sitting in front of a computer, eyes locked on a screen, with only hands moving. Public
health experts have expressed concern about this in the context of the development
of esports (Wattanapisit et al., 2020) and in the specific development of esports on
American campuses (DiFrancisco- Donoghue and Balentine, 2018). In the Chinese
context, health has been a keyword in discussion of computer gaming, with gaming
seen as unhealthy because of its sedentary nature, its association with smoke-filled
internet cafes, and the early establishment in China of gaming addiction as a clinical
disease. In framing esports as a legitimate campus activity, these ads work against these
perspectives on gaming.
Much of the promotional material here pushes the idea of esports as a healthy
pursuit, doing so in three main ways. First, esports is framed as just one component
in a student’s life rather than being a singular obsession. The ads do contain images
of players competing at computers, but this is intercut with players doing a range
of other activities: playing traditional sports, dining together, doing karaoke, and
watching cosplay. This works against the idea of games as addictive, presenting esports
as something that can be enjoyed in a casual way without interfering with other
aspects of a student’s life. Second, esports is social rather than isolating. Players are
rarely shown alone, with esports being framed as a collective endeavor. One typical
ad reminds viewers of the importance of teammates, saying: “Don’t forget to look up.
Your teammates will always give you a hand.” Other ads suggest that competing on
the esports team will make you popular, both with friends and romantic partners.
Third, esports is a sport rather than a hobby. Traditional sport is the most common
activity aligned with esports in the sample. Sometimes this is in explicit statements
of the kind “College students realize the difference between esports and games, and
deliver esports as a positive energy that a sport should have.” On other occasions, the
link is made through juxtaposition, for example of esports teams taking a break from
training by playing basketball, or discussing strategy while sitting in a sports field.
Montages of esports athletes training usually include footage of them running on a
track, implicitly making the argument that one of the variables in esports success is
good physical health.
By framing esports as a sport, a whole set of connotations are opened up that would
not be available for an activity framed as a hobby. First, and in line with research
elsewhere, the alignment of esports with sports has a legitimating function. T. L. Taylor
(2012) reports interviews with esports athletes in which they emphasize their athletic
achievements prior to their esports career, and interprets this as a way of legitimizing a
“marginalized” and “deviant” hobby (p. 109) by comparing it with a more mainstream
one. Pizzo et al. (2019) found that rhetorically aligning esports with traditional sports
is one of the ways in which college department directors in the United States overcome
the challenges of convincing their universities to devote resources to esports. Similarly,

Tutiainen et al. (2020) see sportification as a means of legitimizing esports in the

Overwatch World Cup. The ads in this study are also involved in legitimization in this
sense. However, in the Chinese context, where sport is an important way in which
physical health of the individual body is itself metaphorized as health of the body politic
or nation, the sportification of esports takes on an extra significance. Susan Brownell
describes this connection between individual health and the health of the nation as
“somatization,” and argues that it is a key way in which the health of the nation is
figured in China. Brownell (1995) defines somatization as “the way in which social
tensions are often expressed [in modern China] in a bodily idiom, so that calls for
their resolution often center on healing and strengthening the body” (p. 22). She goes
on to argue that Chinese nationalism has historically been linked to the strengthening
of individual bodies through physical exercise. This strengthening is valued not only
as a means of creating economically productive and militarily robust bodies, but also
has a metaphorical value in reimagining China away from its nineteenth-century label
as the “sick man of East Asia” (Xu, 2009).
Framing college esports as healthy, then, does not only serve to assuage parental
fears of individual students becoming addicted or sick (though it does this too), it
also serves to align esports with the national project of the rejuvenation of China.
This dovetails with more explicit images throughout the sample of collegiate esports
athletes being framed as model citizens, and esports framed as a healthy-as-patriotic
sport. The Chinese flag appears throughout the ads, and references to China’s success
in the esports events of the Jakarta Asia games, the first Olympic tournament to feature
esports, makes the case that esports is not only healthy for individual bodies, but is
healthy for the national body.
The Esports Struggle

While the first three frames can be seen as responses to prevailing public opinion of
gaming and esports and attempts to redirect public understanding of esports toward
more acceptable interpretations, the final frame is not so much a reaction to public
opinion as an attempt to characterize the essential spirit of esports and its history in
China. This framing attempts to educate those unfamiliar with esports and to bind
those already sympathetic to esports into a Chinese esports community united not
only by their interest in esports but in their shared participation in the struggle to get
esports recognized as a mainstream, acceptable activity.
In these ads, esports is framed as a struggle in two ways, which overlap and support
each other. First, esports as a competitive activity involves striving against challenges,
winning and losing, and pushing one’s own limits. Several of the ads contain narratives
where an individual or team enters a competition and loses, but ultimately prospers
after committing to esports and toiling hard at learning the game. This narrative—
which dovetails with Lin and Zhao’s (2020) discussion of the relationship between
Chinese esports and meritocracy—is typical of sports stories, but in the context of these
ads, the struggle to master the game runs in parallel with a second esports struggle: the
292 Global Esports
struggle for esports itself to become accepted within Chinese society. Shots of teams
winning competitions are intercut in one video with milestones in the development of
esports in China, for example the announcement of esports as the ninety-ninth official
sport in 2003. Other videos show the development of their esports tournament over
the years with images of a map of China and new cities being added as teams from
local universities join the competition and esports events are held there. These maps,
used in several of the videos, signify not only the growth of a particular tournament
but the growing acceptance of esports as a campus activity. But obstacles remain. Ads
talk of the “prejudice and opposition” of mainstream society toward esports, and the
same spirit of determination that esports players bring to their competition is brought
to bear against this prejudice. In this way, the individual struggle of the esports athlete
in the game is transformed into a collective struggle.
As we have already seen, the youth frame presents esports as a social activity. The
struggle frame also emphasizes the social aspect of esports, but here sociality is not just
about making friends and being a good teammate but is rather about being part of a
nation-wide collective struggling for national recognition and acknowledgment. The
esports community thus takes on a quasi-political dimension. Young and Strait (2019)
identify a similar phenomenon in the North American ELEAGUE, which constructed
the esports fan identity in relation to a form of pride competitive with—indeed
superseding—national pride. In the case of Chinese collegiate esports ads, however,
such a threat to the preeminence of national identity is carefully managed, as they
tightly align the collective struggle of esports’ legitimation with the struggles of the
nation. One way in which this is done is through the adoption of official jargon in
descriptions of esports and esports college competitions. A typical example is an ad
for the CYEC, which directly references the “Opinions of the Central Committee of
the Communist Party of China on Strengthening and Improving the Party Work,” and
invokes keywords and phrases such as “healthy and harmonious,” “guide the nation’s
youth,” “integrate the international Internet cultural resources,” and “the development
of a green esports industry.”
The second way in which the esports struggle is aligned with the national agenda is
in the invocation of the trope of the “dream.” Shortly after coming to office, Xi Jinping
introduced into the political discourse the term “Chinese Dream,” by which he meant
the ambition and hope of Chinese to see the rejuvenation of China on the world stage.
The Chinese Dream has been a particularly successful political slogan, infiltrating a
range of discourses, from the political to the academic to the popular. Its ubiquity is
in large part due to the fact that it can be interpreted in a wide range of different ways,
from people’s dreams of individual material success to the dream of China retaking a
central role in world affairs (Bislev, 2015).
While the term “Chinese Dream” is not explicitly used in these ads, its presence
is unmistakable in the sheer number of references to dreams, both individual and
collective. The term “dream” comes up at least once in the promotions for eight of the
eleven competitions. In the cases of LCL, CYEC, and WUCG, dreams are a central
component in how they frame their competitions. Dreams are rhetorically useful as
the content of the dream can be filled in by the audience with their own personal

meanings. However, the full range of possible meanings are somewhat circumscribed
by the context in which the term is used. For example, sometimes the ads include
a student talking about “my dream,” suggesting a dream about realizing individual
ambition. On other occasions, the ads refer to “our dream” or “esports’ dream,” referring
to the ambition of esports as a whole. One ad for the IEF, an international collegiate
tournament, makes explicit this link between an esports athlete’s individual struggle,
the struggle for esports’ recognition and the national Chinese dream: “The esports
players who had been criticized were able to gloriously wear the national flag and stand
at the top of the competitive arena to realize the dream of glory for the country.” This
nesting of individual dreams inside more collective dreams is characteristic of how the
Chinese dream has been deployed (Bislev, 2015). The alignment of esports with the
Chinese dream tallies with previous research on esports in China.
Lin and Zhao (2020) see Chinese esports players as defining themselves in terms
of a discourse of “ideal patriotic citizen,” where they explicitly connected their self-
actualization as esports athletes to China’s national rejuvenation and the Chinese
dream. Szablewicz (2016) similarly argues that the Chinese esports industry presents
itself as “patriotic leisure”: a form of “productive, skill-building” leisure that produces
ideal citizens who are technologically sophisticated and aspirational while also being
aligned with the interests of the state. In the present study we see this alignment of the
esports athlete with national aspirations in the context of the Chinese university.
Conclusion
Discussing the construction of the esports audience during the establishment of the
CS:GO ELEAGUE in North America, Young and Strait (2020) note the challenge facing
esports broadcasters in drawing in new fans while not alienating existing fans. The
ELEAGUE achieved this, they argue, by interpellating audiences as both gamers and
sports fans (p. 174). That is, the discourse of esports had to be multi-vocal, speaking
simultaneously to different stakeholders and defining esports for each in a way that
fit the league’s agenda. The ads discussed here also have multiple audiences in mind,
but this extends beyond different kinds of fans. To promote esports as a legitimate
college activity, the ads must speak to a number of different stakeholders, each with
their own relationship to esports. The ads are aimed primarily at students interested
in esports, growing the esports audience and talent pool. However, they are also
aimed at university administrators and parents who may be skeptical about esports
as a college activity, and at regulators in local or national government in a position to
support or undermine esports companies’ activities on campus. The frames used in
the promotional material analyzed are designed to address the desires and concerns of
these different stakeholders in a flexible manner.
The four frames allow the industry to flexibly align esports with the sometimes
contradictory value systems of the university, the regulators, and the audience. On
the one hand, the promotional material moves between these frames. For example,
when addressing students, the ads often adopt a humorous tone, employing memes
294 Global Esports
from youth culture in general and esports in particular to present esports as a popular,
fun, and youthful activity. These ads emphasize the frames that represent esports as
a youthful activity struggling for mainstream recognition. When addressing officials
either in government or in the university, an official linguistic register is used and
esports tends to be framed in terms of health and purposefulness.
On the other hand, the frames are sufficiently ambiguous to allow for contradictory
interpretations by different stakeholders. For example, a student may read the youthful
frame as showing esports to be full of passion, self-expression, and opportunities to
expand one’s social circle. Parents, on the other hand, may read it as emphasizing the
transient nature of esports, and this may moderate concerns about a young person
becoming obsessed with esports to the exclusion of other pursuits. Promoters can thus
establish esports as a plurality of contradictory activities: collective and individualistic,
real and fantasy, fun and serious, autotelic and instrumental, all-consuming and casual.
This flexibility of meaning and value is essential in the current regulatory landscape,
where tournament organizers and universities are uncertain about the state’s attitude
to esports. This is important because, as Yu (2018, 97) has argued, esports in China
is part of “the digital enclosure movement involving Chinese digital empires and
heavyweights. It is also a story of public-private alliance (state-business collaboration)
in promoting, regulating, and incorporating private resources and players into the
orbit of the Chinese dream.” The universities are very much a part of this public-private
alliance. How esports organizations frame esports will have real consequences for how
universities and their students are made use of in this alliance.
This chapter is part of a larger project on esports at Chinese universities. Tournament
promoters are just one stakeholder in this area of Chinese collegiate esports. We
are currently interviewing people from different areas, including game developers,
university administrators and managers, students, and parents, and future work will
turn to understanding how these other stakeholders use these and other frames in
defining the value and meaning of Chinese collegiate esports.
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17
A Balance between Competition and

Community in Public Gaming Spaces
Ying-Ying Law
Introduction
This chapter will present a literacy review to understand gendered play practices and
participation in competitive gaming communities. Specifically, it focuses on the issue
of esports pathways to compete competitively and the opportunities within male
dominated spaces.
Esports, also known as electronic sports, commonly refers to competitive gaming
with high stakes among professional players and teams. Even though video games
have existed for almost five decades (since the late 1950s), it is important to highlight
that the history of video games is filled with tournaments and competition (originally
the competitive scene was more focused on high scores against a computer), where
competitive gaming later developed the association of the specific term “esports” (from
multiplayer modes playable over a local area network to connecting players together
and online gaming). Despite the rising popularity of esports, the fundamental question
“Why are there still so few women competing in esports tournaments when we’ve
seen a steady increase in the number of women playing these competitive games at
home?” (Romine, 2019, para. 3) remains a debated question among those involved in
competitive gaming. Anykey (2020) suggests that stereotypes, outdated models, and
an overall lack of data remain a persistent issue when we think about participation
in esports. It is the precise nature of this debate, and the enlightenment of inclusivity
through emerged practices and code of conducts, which will be examined in this
chapter. As T. L. Taylor states, we need to think:
about the power of representation in front of the camera and making sure we have
diverse esports workforces behind it. It means thinking creativity about fostering
participation all along the chain, from casual to amateur to professional play.
Tournament organisers in the 2020s must acknowledge that they play a crucial
role in this. (Chaloner and Sillis, 2020, 198)
298 Global Esports
The next few years may be key to esports’ long-term progress, stability, and mainstream
acceptance. Thus, this chapter proposes a reminder that the essence of esports is about
skill, but not one that solely lies among its players, rather, a variety of skillsets of those
behind the scenes, that supports and embraces these competitive gaming communities
and competition.
Before we begin, it is important to highlight that understanding esports is complex
because of the relative novelty of the industry as well as the convergence of culture,
technology, sport, and business (Jin, 2010). Esports is a subset of gaming and is
interconnected with multiple platforms. In contrast to mainstream culture where
video games are perceived as casual leisure, video games within the social world
of esports become a serious and competitive activity, associated with skill and self-
improvement. It is further illustrated in Taylor’s (2012) research, where she provides an
account for professionalization of esports culture and practices. Therefore, throughout
this chapter, video game culture will be referred as the mainstream culture of video
games; and esports culture will be referred as the professionalized and commercialized
cultures and practices of competitive gaming.
The aim of this chapter is to explore gender and participation in esports, specifically
toward a more balanced competition and community. First, this chapter will consider
the demographics of those who play competitively and the gender dimensions
of it. It will explore early considerations of gender and video games, to the recent
developments of large- scale transformations of ludic play within the public domain
(physical and digital). Finally, using examples from specific esports communities (such
as Hearthstone and Super Smash Bros. Melee), it will explore the issues of both entering
and participating in esports. It is important to recognize that gender issues continue
to be prominent in esports, and these should be highlighted to promote reflection and
change toward the future of esports competition and communities.
Who Plays Competitively?

To begin, it is important to distinguish between those who play video games and those
who play competitively. Among the researchers who have examined video gamer
demographics, Garry Crawford (2012) suggests that the stereotype of video gamers
as predominately white male adolescents who are commonly reported in industry-
based surveys and academic research. For instance, the “Essential Facts: About the
Computer and Video Game Industry” (ESA, 2019) reported that the average American
male gamer age is thirty-two years, and the average American female gamer age is
thirty-four years; American video gamers consists of 54 percent males and 46 percent
females; and 63 percent of American video gamers frequently play with others (ESA,
2019). Similarly, GameTrack stated 23.1 million people between the ages 6 and
sixty-four in the UK play video games. The report consists of 54 percent male and
46 percent female with an average of 10.3 hours per week playing video games (Ukie,
2019). These statistics suggest several positive aspects of video gaming; such as video
games being suitable for all age groups, there is an “equal” representation of male and

A Balance between Competition and Community 299
female gamers, and that it should be considered a social activity. However, statistics
are often considered as a powerful weapon, because numbers appear to carry the
weight of authority and objectivity. As Crawford (2012, 50) argues that numbers can
be presented in a variety of ways:
some statistics can be excluded, while others are emphasised, and of course who
is asked what questions, as well as numerous other factors, can all radically shape
any given statistics . . . it is always important to understand not only the origin of
the figures, such as how they were collected, who are samples and so forth, but also
the agenda of those presenting them.
This suggests that, arguably, statistics collected from industry, which invariably
use data that present their business and their customers, could be interpreted to be
represented in their best possible light—such as countering the stereotype of video
gamers as exclusively anti-social male adolescences. Although Crawford (2012) states
that these findings should not be simply mistrusted, he suggests that they have their
value to understand how the public perception of video games is shaped from messages
conveyed in the mass media. For instance, these findings often focus on headline-
grabbing statistics to convey a very particular image of video gaming as a normal,
social, and healthy pursuit. It is also important to highlight that similar practices have
also been applied to esports—where Newzoo’s (2020) report shows that the global
esports market will generate $1.1 billion, up +15.7 percent, around three-quarters of
the total market ($822.4 million) will come from endemic and non-endemic brand
investments (media rights, advertising, and sponsorship), and the global esports
audience will reach 495 million in 2020 (made up of esports enthusiasts and occasional
viewers). These statistics convey a very particular image of esports being well funded
(sponsorship for specific esports titles), have large player base (highest recorded figures
for specific game titles), and overstated spectatorship figures (from peaked viewership
on Twitch for specific esports tournaments and events—usually from grand finals).
Although this suggests that esports is growing exponentially, we should acknowledge
that this does not apply to all esports titles, but only for specific esports titles—currently
(at the moment of writing this chapter) there are over fifty esports titles ranging from a
number of genres (such as first-person shooters, multiplayer online battle arena, real-
time strategy, fighting, sports, racing, virtual reality games, and more).
Furthermore, the transition of a more “balanced” divide between those who play
video games among male and female gamers has not reflected in the same process for
those who play competitively in esports. This suggests that while women play games at
growing rates, they may have less experience with esports (as a formalized competitive
scene) (Anykey, 2020). According to Esports Earnings (2020) (data sourced from
published major tournament results), the majority of the top 100 highest earners
consisted mostly of “male” professional players. In comparison to the mainstream
demographic reports (ESA, 2019; Newzoo, 2019; Ukie, 2019), Newzoo (2017) which
suggests similar gender ratios toward the participation of gamers; however, YouGov
(2017) and Neilsen (2017) suggest higher proportions of male esports fans watching
300 Global Esports
Table 17.1 Esports Reports from Newzoo (2017), YouGov (2017), and Neilsen (2017)
Newzoo (2017) YouGov (2017) Neilsen (2017)

Sample Size Close to 35,000 respondents 9,473 adults (aged 18+) 4,000 esports faces ages
aged 10-65 13–40 (1,000 per
country)
Country 13 Countries UK, Germany, US, Australia, US, UK, Germany,
China, Singapore France
Research Primary consumer research Online interviews Proprietary online
Methods and data feeds from survey
partners and third-party
research
Findings 1 46% of gamers are women 76% UK males and 24% UK 71% of esports fans are
(Osborn, 2017) females watch esports male
Findings 2 48% and 37% of men play on 66% UK males and 34% UK 36% male and 23%
PC and console at least females have esports female view a live
once a month, compared prospects stream weekly
to 35% and 23% women
(Osborn, 2017)
Findings 3 52% men and 48% women play 77% China, 55% Singapore, 53% of esports
mobile games more than 44% Germany, 44% fans across the
once a month (Osborn Australia, 41% US, and 4 countries consider
2017) 35% UK adults are aware esports to be an
of esports actual sport, while
only 28% think
esports should be an
Olympic sport
esports compared to women esports fans (see Table 17.1). However, very little
information is usually provided on how the data sets are collected and analyzed—in
particular, the original sources of secondary data are often poorly referenced.
Although there have been continuous debates on male and female interests with
video games, as well as the thrive to compete competitively in esports, these arguments
often fall within two theories from gender studies, the “sex role theory” (biological
determinism) and the “social learning theory” (gender roles are socially and culturally
defined) (Richardson and Robinson, 2008). The sex role theory highlights that men
and women have different biologically determined roles within the literature on video
gaming due to natural differences (Rutter and Bryce, 2006). The behavior of males
and females are biologically determined, where females will have feminine attributes
and interests while males have masculine ones (Marchbank and Letherby, 2007). For
example, Green (2001) highlights that females often take on a nurturing and expressive
role in the family, while males take on a competitive and aggressive role, such as the
breadwinner of the family. This suggests that many forms of leisure activities are
gender marked and play on the gender differences in everyday life. For instance, there
is a social acceptance that females are not interested in masculine activities such as
competitive video gaming and that they prefer to base their leisure around the family
or household such as reading or craftwork, while men enjoy leisure activities with

modern technology and sports (Krotoski, 2004; Green, 2001). In contrast, the social
learning theory critiques the sex role theory, as it argues that the gender product of
culture and society is not biological (Marchbank and Letherby, 2007). Individuals
learn gender appropriate roles from birth through socialization from cultural and
environmental aspects of everyday life through different forms of social institutions
(Marchbank and Letherby, 2007). This suggests that the lack of female engagement
in video games is related to deeply rooted understandings of gender differences in
cultural norms through the social construction of gender—such as the essentialist
notion that females are not interested in “masculine” activities, male themes, and the
binary opposition between gender categories (Cassell and Jenkins, 2000; Rutter and
Bryce, 2006)—or females find games unappealing because they have better things to
do and other concerns (Reisingler and Crotts, 2010). Hence, both theories provide a
different perspective toward gendered preferences.
To further this discussion, this chapter will explore the early considerations of
gender and video games, and the recent developments of large-scale transformations
of ludic play within the public domain (physical and digital).
Early Considerations of Gender and Video Games

A great deal has been written on gender and video games since the early 2000s;
specifically, the lack of gender representation in game characters, game themes, and
gaming spaces (Mou and Peng, 2009). From a feminist perspective, Haywood, Kew,
and Bramham (1989) highlight that leisure reflects a “man-made” view of the world,
where women’s leisure experiences have often been ignored. This form of behavior
in society reflects patriarchy, which is “a system of social structures and practices in
which men dominate, oppress and exploit women” (Walby, 1990, 20). Feminism aims
to challenge the marginalization of women, their experiences and interests, as well as
seeks to understand and theorize gender inequalities (Richardson and Robinson, 2008).
In relation to video games, the lack of female representation in video gaming has
been recognized as a social problem, where modern technology has been argued to be
male dominated (Cassel and Jenkins, 2000). For instance, female gamers have often
been routinely marginalized with a lack of acceptance in video game spaces (Cassel
and Jenkins, 2000).
Cassell and Jenkins (2000) suggest that the lack of female engagement in video
games is deeply rooted in the construction of gender and the understandings of gender
differences in cultural norms:
Gender construction operates with an internal and external system of constraints.

Internally, the identity formation of women in relation to leisure privileges
importance of physical appearance and presupposes a sense of a lack of equal
entitlement to leisure with males. Externally, women’s participation in leisure if
constrained by a lack of time and money compared with men in the same class
formation. (Rojek, 2005, 74)
302 Global Esports
Valentine (2004) argues that video gamers are often presented and engaged with
stereotypical gender roles that are shaped by culture without often realizing. For
example, forms of hegemonic masculinity have traditionally reinforced video games
to be primarily marketed toward male interests, involving male lead characters, and
commonly featuring “male themes,” which are characterized by high levels of game
aggression and violence (Kinder, 1991). Meanwhile, female characters are often
represented in either heavily sexualized or stereotypical ways, which represented
patriarchal stereotypes and treat women as objects (Krotoski, 2004). These social
meanings are deeply rooted within culture and cause “gender polarisation,” which is
incorporated through patriarchal gender roles represented in society (Marchbank and
Letherby, 2007). Hence, gender stereotypes are everywhere and difficult to escape:
It is a system which organizes virtually every realm of our lives; whether we are
sleeping, eating, watching TV, shopping or reading, gender is at work . . . every
human body in modern societies is assigned a place in a binary structure of
gender. (Cranny-Francis, Warring, Stavropoulos and Kirkby 2003, 1)
However, male and female gaming preferences are not always opposites (Bertozzi,
2007). The first female heroine “Samus Aran” from Metroid (Nintendo, 1986) does not
apply aspects of the male gaze (Rutter and Bryce, 2006). The female heroine Samus
Aran was portrayed and presented as a man throughout the game from addressing
Samus Aran as “he” (Grimes, 2003). It was not until the end of the game that Samus
Aran was revealed as a female heroine, which caused a major shock among video
gamers from proving that women can be strong heroes too (Grimes, 2003). Later
developments of video games include diverse characters and gender-neutral games
(Bertozzi, 2007); such as Overwatch (Blizzard Entertainment, 2015), Ovecooked 2
(Team 17, 2018), Pokémon Sword (The Pokémon Company, 2019), Pokémon Shield
(The Pokémon Company, 2019), and Animal Crossing:
New Horizons (Nintendo, 2020). Also, Taylor (2003) suggests that massively
multiplayer online role playing games (MMORPG) such as Ultima Online (Electronic
Arts, 1997), Everquest (Sony Online Entertainment, 1999), and World of Warcraft
(Blizzard Entertainment, 2005) provide women freedom to explore online worlds
and compete with men on an equal level, which is often denied to most women in
“real life” (Crawford and Gosling, 2005). This provides players with opportunities to
alternate and play male or female characters, with flexibility to gender their own game
characters through the creation and the development by the gamers themselves (Taylor,
2003). The increase of freedom to play with gender within video games reflects post-
structuralist arguments that there is no one way of being masculine or feminine, as
gendered existence is formed from dominant and hegemonic ideology (Butler, 1990).
For example, “Grrl gamers” and female Quake (GT Interactive, 1996) or Counter-Strike
(Sierra Studios, 2000) clans demonstrate that women can be interested in competition
and “masculine” game themes of war and aggression (Bertozzi, 2007). It has been
suggested that cultural messages differ over time and place, where masculinity and
femininity become diverse (Barnard, 2002). For instance, Judith Butler (1990)

rejects the binary model and masculinity and femininity and describes gender as
“performative,” that is we act out our gender roles. For some of us those roles follow a
traditional script, whereas others may reject, revise, or adapt gender messages in the
creation of an alternative, different way of performing femininity and masculinity. It is
those refusing to confirm to the hegemonic performances that can create what Butler
(1990, 25) refers to as “gender trouble”; where “there is no gender identity behind the
expressions of gender . . . identity is performatively consisted by the very ‘expressions’
that are said to be its results.” Like language, discourse can create other ways to express
masculinity and femininity (Butler, 1990).
Nevertheless, it is important to highlight that most explanations of gender
differences continue to remain focused on gender duality; such as the demographics
of those who play video games, as well as those who play competitively. Even though
there are more than two genders, there has been more focus towards a specific lack
of gender representation (specifically women) in video games, over wider diversities
including race, ethnicity, sexuality, disability, class, as well as the assisted issues of
privilege. Also, further research has emphasized that practices and performance in
both physical and digital domains continue to be designed, played, and organized by
men, as well as marketed and audienced for men within public gaming spaces (Jenson
and Castell, 2018; Taylor, 2018).
Participation in Gaming Spaces

Previous studies on gender and video games tend to focus on the marginalization of
female gamers within private spaces (such as in their own home), rather than their
participation in public spaces (such as physical and digital domains). The relationship
between women and video gaming within private spaces have often focused on the
ambivalence around technology (such forming a core interest and passion in video
games) (Schott and Horrell, 2000: Rutter and Bryce, 2006), male spaces within the
household (such as bedrooms and living rooms) (Green, 2001, Gray, 1992; Morley,
1986), and unequal domestic labor responsibilities and leisure activities (Crawford and
Gosling, 2005; Krotoski, 2004). In contrast, the relationship between video gaming
within public spaces has often focused on the lack of female participation in male-
dominated spaces and presence of increased toxic behavior and harassment in online
gaming.
“Toxic behavior” is an umbrella term used to describe various types of negative
behaviors including harassment, griefing, and cheating. Esports communities seem to be
particularly suffering from toxic behaviors and “toxic gamer culture,” which create barriers
to players achieving high performance and can reduce players’ enjoyment (Consalvo,
2012; Cote, 2017). Online harassment is hardly new and anonymous public participation
may lead to a disinhibition effect that allows an online user to disassociate themselves
from their anonymous online actions (Suler, 2004). The Pew Research Centre survey
of 4,248 US adults finds that 41 percent of Americans have been personally subjected
to harassing behavior online, and 66 percent have witnessed these behaviors directed at
304 Global Esports
others (Duggan, 2017). Due to anonymity, online spaces can facilitate discrimination and
hostility, specifically toward women and other under-represented groups. In Gamergate,
which drew popular notoriety, women in the video game industry who spoke up about the
need for gender equity in video games and video games industry were sexually harassed
online and received real-life threats of rape and violence (Wingfield, 2014). Although this
is an extreme example carried out by a few individuals, these widely publicized events
serve to create a hostile environment that may push female gamers out of competitive
gaming (Adinolf and Türkay, 2018). For example, Morgan Romine (Chaloner and Sillis,
2020, 194) suggests issues with toxicity and harassment in online spaces, from the games
themselves to Twitch chat and online channels:
This toxicity is regularly taken from granted, treated as “just meme’s” or as an

inevitable part of the culture, and sometimes excused as a fundamental part of the
competitive environment. As a result there are a lot of people who love esports but
don’t feel welcome and therefore opt out of official tournament spaces… Like if a
women appears on a Twitch stream and suddenly the chat fills up with “GRILL,
GRILL, GRILL, GRILL, GRILL, GRILL” (the joke being that this is misspelling of
“girl”).
Romine highlights that this may seem to be a “harmless meme” or “banter,” but the
reality of being treated differently may be subjected to more negative patterns of
behavior than the average gamer. Such as the dualistic experience for women avoiding
the identity of “girl gamer” in online and streaming contexts due to attached stereotypes
regarding lower skill level and not wanting to be seen as a token (Witkowski, 2014).
Also, it has been suggested that female players often receive more body-focused
messages (such as their appearance), whereas male players receive more gameplay-
focused comments (such as their strategy or play) (Ruvalcaba, Shulze, Kim, Berzenski
and Otten, 2018). For example, Raihnbowkidz, a former “bobbie streamer” (a female
gamer wearing low cut tops and usually has a bigger webcam overlay) expressed
her concerns she was contributing negativity to the League of Legends (Riot Games,
2009) community, and opened up the debate to whether women feel pressured into
exhibiting their bodies rather than simply being opportunistic (Hernandez, 2016).
These expectations (such as from the audience of live Twitch streams) highlight the
additional burden of being visible and a quasi-role model; where women, LGBTQUA
folks, and people of color regularly face harassment and abusive chat behavior (Taylor,
2018). Although the discussion around online harassment has often focused on those
from marginalized groups, this is not to say that less marginalized groups do not face
online harassment too; but like underreported crime (such as the Crime Survey for
England and Wales—formerly British Crime Survey), there has been limited statistics
to explore further.
On the other hand, it should be emphasized that not all competitive gaming
communities are “toxic” (Adinolf and Türkay, 2018). For earlier online gaming
environments, admins on the server could kick or ban people who behave in toxic
ways—but as games and their communities got larger, moderation became difficult.

Consequently, a commonly used system in online games include reporting bad player
behavior, which may consequently lead to a temporary ban or permanent suspension
(based on the severity of the behavior); positive reinforcements through endorsements
and honoring positive comments; and priming players by displaying positively and
negatively framed messages on game loading screens to discourage players from toxic
behavior (Peña, Hancock, and Merola, 2009). In-game chat and text chat is also a
major tool for toxic enactments, which enforce specific chat restrictions. For example,
specific game titles such as Hearthstone (Blizzard Entertainment, 2014) have opted out
of open text communications with strangers, where players can only communicate
using emotes—which can also be squelched (muted). This suggests that online
harassment within games may differ among different esports titles (see Table 17.2).
However, due to convergence of culture and communications tools, harassment
can fester onto multiple platforms, such as online channels and events. As a result,
punishments have been issued from developers banning players (such as Capcom from
Pro Tours) and suspending employees (such as Riot COO), online channels banning
streamers (such as Twitch bans), and tournament organizers banning players from
events (such as the UK Melee Backroom with its recent announcement on Twitter
of player bans to all Melee events within the UK). In light of issuing punishment, it
is worth mentioning that not all have been consistent, which ties to a long standing
esports issue of governing rules and regulations.
Thus, Anykey (2020), an advocacy organizations that support diversity, inclusive
and equity in competitive gaming, provides publicly accessible white papers, tools, and
templates that anyone can access for best practices for live stream moderation (such as
Twitch chat moderators) and esports tournaments (such as code of conducts).
In relation to public gaming spaces, there has been limited statistics considering
the participation of male and female gamers, such as those competing in esports
tournaments, and attending competitive gaming tournaments (such as LAN parties).
To name a few academic papers that have considered the lack of female participation in
public gaming spaces; this includes Jansz and Martens’ (2005) research on Campzone
2 in the Netherlands, and Taylor and Witowski’s (2010) study on Dreamhack Winter
(2005 and 2009). Jansz and Martens’ (2005) study showed that from a sample of 1,200
people, all participants were almost exclusively male, only about 30 were female, with
a mean age of 19.5 years (Jansz and Martens, 2005). In contrast, Taylor and Witowski’s
(2010, 6) study on Dreamhack Winter (2005 and 2009) suggests a growing presence
Table 17.2 The Main Systems Designed to Deal With Toxicity in the Esports Games
(Adinolf and Türkay 2018)
CS:GO Dota 2 HS LoL OW RL

In game reporting Yes Yes No Yes Yes Yes
Honoring Yes No No Yes Yes No
Priming No No No Yes No No
Restriction: text No No Yes No No No
Muting Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes
Avoiding No No No No Yes No
306 Global Esports
of women in game culture; “we counted about 1 for every 20 seated participants and
DreamHack puts the total number of women visitors generally at 10-15%.” However,
Taylor and Witkowski (2010) argue that women are taking on the role of gatekeepers for
other women and providing an alternative access point to gaming. For example, in 2016,
Genesis 3 hosted the first ladies’ crew battles for Super Smash Bros. games—these series
of women’s crew battles are also known as the Smash Sisters, events organized by women
for women (D’Anastasio, 2016). This example prompts some worthwhile considerations
of access to gaming and game spaces where entry involves a more complex structural
arrangement, including networks, gaming know-how, and access to technology/games.
Reconsidering Communities and Competition

With the rising popularity of esports, we have also begun to observe an increasing
number of esports events and the emergence of various competitive gaming communities
(Law, 2016). Certain competitive gaming communities have made their mark in the
esports scene and at the same time depleted in numbers due to various reasons; such
as having a large player base, being competitive and well-funded. Esports titles that
lack competitiveness have often been deemed to lack its demonstration and practice of
skill—for example, Team Dignitas dropped their Hearthstone players after Insomnia
Gaming Festival i57, Truesilver Championship, when the game was critiqued to be “too
much RNG (random number generator) gameplay” (Sacco, 2016). Similarly, when a
player base and viewership numbers become too low, even with funds available, such
as $1 million in tournaments for Artifact (Valve Corporation, 2018), it may become
“too little too late” for communities to return. In comparison, with limited funds and
support from Nintendo, large player base and viewership, and competitive ruleset, the
Super Smash Bros. Melee’s (Nintendo, 2001) competitive scene continues to fund their
own tournaments—even after the recent announcement of being dropped and replaced
by Super Smash Bro’s Ultimate (Nintendo, 2018) from Evo 2019 Championship Series.
Hence, it is important to acknowledge the players who support certain esports titles
which keep the community thriving.
The community and culture of competitive gaming has often been described to be a
form of subculture; where it reflects how video gamers often organize themselves into
groups and behave in ways that are based on a particular game, or a particular genre, or
the broader phenomenon of gaming. This also includes those with shared interests, values,
norms, and sometimes even languages (Mäyrä, 2008). This suggests that the emergence
of video gamer culture is a cultural force that influences individuals in complex ways
through cultural trends. Although Muriel and Crawford (2018, 27–8) state:
One of the most notable indication that video game culture is no longer, if it ever
was, a strongly bounded subculture, is the increasing number of people playing
video games. It seems that more and more individuals of different background,
ages, and gender are becoming video game players; or at least, occasionally play
video games.

The term “subculture” is still useful with importance to consider the tight-knit bonds
among competitive gaming communities. For instance, Hodkinson’s (2002) discussion
of “subcultures” and their participants’ varying levels of commitment suggests that those
who were consistent in their adherence to community tastes and norms tended to receive
more social rewards, in comparison to those who “flirted” at the boundaries. Hodkinson
(2002) refers to subcultures as providing a strong sense of “us” and “them.” This refers to the
perception that individuals are involved in a distinct cultural grouping with shared identities.
Similar observations were made from Law’s (2016) ethnographic study; the attendance of
video game events often involves a certain level of commitment, dedication, and finance.
Also, those who contributed often received benefits in forms of recognition and
status; such as the reputation of a “regular attender” or “competitive player” (Law,
2016). This suggests that those who attended regularly and participated in more
“community-based practices” often felt the benefits of being part of a competitive
gaming community; whether it was support provided among community members,
inclusiveness of certain video game community practices, or sharing similar tastes
and values. However, as discussed, competitive gaming communities continue to be a
male-dominated environment.
In relation to opportunities to compete at a competitive level with high states—to
date, some esports tournaments and organizations have started to consider the gender
diversity of competitive gaming communities with “women only tournaments” and
“women gaming spaces” to normalize the notion of women competing. This includes
GirlGamer Esports Festival (2020) women-only tournaments for Counter-Strike:
Global Offensive (Valve, 2012) and League of Legends (Riot Games, 2009) (with non-
endemic sponsors, such as Sephora); World Electronic Sports Games (2020) women-
only tournaments for Counter-Strike: Global Offensive (Valve, 2012) and Hearthstone
(Blizzard Entertainment, 2014) (with smaller prize pools when compared to the mixed
tournament). However, there have been continuous debates whether women only
tournaments can be justified with issues of further segregation and stereotypes. For
example, the Hearthstone International Women’s Invitational, in 2015, by IMBAtv
consisted of eight women wearing white dresses, with stage decorations consisting
of rainbow card back design walls, purple drapes, flowers projected on the floor, and
uncomfortable stools at high tables (Leslie, 2015)—this tournament was sponsored by
the chair manufacturer DXRacer (see Figure 17.1).
Traditionally, women in public gaming scenes have been documented as the
marginalized girlfriend, or more recently as the hyper-sexualized or sideshow
professional player/all-female team (Taylor and Witkowski, 2010). Recent studies
have drawn on “stereotype threat theory” (Steele and Aronson, 1995) to consider how
female gamers are negatively affected by persistent stereotypes that portray the typical
gamer as straight, white, and male (Bryce and Rutter, 2003). For instance, Ratan et al.’s
(2015, 19) study suggests an “unequal playing field” for the inequitable distribution of
rewards and benefits associated with competitive gaming.
many female players may be compelled, pressured or otherwise directed towards

playing the support role that, though requiring no less competence than other
308 Global Esports
Figure 17.1 Hearthstone International Women’s Invitational.
in in-game roles (and arguably more), is nonetheless seen by many players as

subordinate to, and less desirable than, the role of ADC . . . female gamers are not
as confident in their gameplay ability.
In large-scale societies it is inevitable that there will be a range of femininities and

masculinities to be found. However, some will be preferred over others—an idea that
Connell (1987) captures with his concepts of “hegemonic masculinity” and “emphasized
femininity.” In the short documentary, Fight Like a Girl, Victoria “VikkiKitty” Perrez
suggests that harassment is inescapable and suggests developing a “thick skin” against
it. This suggests that we live in a society where men and masculinity are the norm and
often go unchallenged (Adam, 2005). Thus, discrimination in competitive gameplay
has led to the creation of supportive spaces. For example, Smash Sisters is a series
of women’s crew battles featuring the Super Smash Bros. games (Anykey, 2020) and
Badass Women of Hearthstone (Badass Women of Hearthstone, 2020). In these
spaces, women provide support to each other and create gaming spaces that help
them compete; but at the same time women have also expressed feeling conflicted in
these spaces too (Gray, 2012). Although they believed they should not have to create a
separate space to game, they often felt drained from having to constantly defend their
abilities and identities from aggressive online players in conventional gaming contexts.
As Kelsy “SuperGirlKels” Medeiros states:
Smash tournaments are very welcoming to all competitors. . . . Kids can join,
girls, guys, any race, everyone is welcome. I think including everyone is such
an important goal because that’s how you expand the community. It’s partly for
this reason that I’m very much against women-only events. I support the idea of
having women come together and make each other feel more comfortable in an
overwhelmingly male environment. But men have never created exclusive “men
only” tournaments so why would women do the same? That’s the way I look at it.
For there to be an even playing field between men and women, we all need to work
on atmosphere together. (Chaloner and Sillis, 2020, 196)

In summary, the argument against women-only tournaments suggests that segregation

of gender-specific tournaments should correspondingly be considered for the less
minority groups too, such as “male-only” or other groups; there are also arguments
for women-only tournaments to promote the number of women who choose to play
competitive games. This suggests that the key factor is creating a safe space for everyone
as a community effort.
Conclusion
While the esports industry has been fast moving and professional players retiring as
early as in their mid-twenties, the esports scene is continuously changing with new
games, players, spectators, commenters, and organizers drifting in and out of the
esports scene. Due to the difficulty for change, negotiation, and resistance within
competitive gaming communities and culture, where gender stereotypes are continued
to be exercised, the patriarchal theories embedded within culture will take time to
change. For instance, Taylor (2018) states:
The gendered division of competition is often seen as simply a stopgap measure

until women are structurally supported and skilled up enough to be able to compete
against men—though how that big leap will happen is typically little thought-out.
This suggests issues with equal opportunities for access and career pathways in esports
for both male and female gamers. With the rising popularity of esports, there has been
a focus on professional/semi-professional players and competition (also considered as
the top 1%), rather than the focus of the competitive gamers who “struggle” to climb
up the “competitive ladder” for specific esports titles (Law, 2016). Therefore, a better
support structure may be to provide more community-based practices. This includes
social gatherings and amateur brackets to create more opportunities to compete
against players with various levels of skill to grow and maintain competitive gaming
communities to build tight-knit bonds among community members—not just the top-
tier players, but also for middle- and lower-tier players to reduce the skill gap. For
example, the Heir to the Throne’s (Super Smash Bros. Melee National Tournament,
UK) slogan, “0-2 is not an option” considers standardized commercial tournament
rules (single or double elimination) to be problematic for knocking out players after
two rounds. In contrast, Heir guaranties eight sets of games for every player, promoting
a sense of community and leveled relations between players of all experience and skill
levels (Heir 5, 2018).
The after-thought of this chapter concludes to challenge community leaders
(such as grassroots tournament organizers and community managers) and “gamers”
(those interested in play competitively and participating in competitive gaming
communities) to consider creative ways to build better community structures focusing
on a variety of skills (such as community etiquette and life skills) and bettering of
themselves (from casual, amateur, to professional play) within a friendly, inclusive, and
310 Global Esports
competitive environment—conducive to learning, enjoyment, and fair competition.

This includes a balance between better structures for tournaments (at all skill levels)
and community services (such as amateur brackets, friendlies, side-events, and break-
out areas)—through better communication and community management tools to
reduce anonymity and build a stronger sense of belonging.
Unfortunately, due to the capitalistic nature of esports businesses, this may not
be achievable through professional and commercialized esports events, so this is a
challenge at the grassroots level. Self-sufficiency may be the key for communities to
grow, where communities organize events for themselves, by themselves. Therefore,
the focus should be at the entry level of esports (specifically friendlies and amateur
brackets), to grow the community, and naturally, high level and skilled players will
sought through to the top—esports in the end, is a numbers game, and for competitive
gaming communities to thrive, it needs players.
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Ludography
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314 Global Esports
Electronic Arts (1997) Ultima Online [Online game]

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Riot Games (2009) League of Legends [Online game]
Sierra Studios (2000) Counter-Strike [Video game]
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About the Contributors
Tom Brock is a lecturer in the Department of Sociology at Manchester

Metropolitan. He holds a doctorate in Sociology from the University of Durham
and is a fellow of the Higher Education Authority. His research interests include
social theory, digital culture and political protest. He has authored publications on
video-game consumption, critical pedagogy, student movements, and populism.
Tom is the coauthor of the book Structure, Culture and Agency: Selected Papers
of Margaret Archer (Routledge). He currently co-convenes the BSA Realism and
Social Research Group and steers the BSA Theory Study Group. Tom is also an
Associate at the Centre for Social Ontology at the University of Warwick. Tom is
an avid computer gamer and sportsman. He spent his teenage years playing video
games competitively during the emergence of the now popular electronic-sports (or
‘esports’) scene, attending some of the earliest ‘Insomnia’ or i-Series tournaments
in the UK. This experience has influenced his research into the social psychology
of work and play, particularly in terms of its relationship to changing employment
and career opportunities.
Mark Claypool has been a professor of Computer Science and Interactive Media
Game Development at WPI since 1997. Mark has a BA in mathematics from Colorado
College and MS and PhD degrees in Computer Science from the University of
Minnesota. He has published over 100 peer-reviewed conference and journal papers
and written two books on computer games. He has chaired several ACM conferences
on networks, games, and multimedia and served on the technical program committee
for over forty of them. His research interests include multimedia networking,
congestion control, network games, and information filtering.
David Jian-Jia Cumming is a PhD candidate in the Human-Computer Interaction

group at the University of Melbourne.
Ben Egliston is a postdoctoral research fellow at Queensland University of

Technology in the Digital Media Research Centre. He is interested in the practices
and politics of digital technologies. He is currently working on one project on data
analytics in videogame development, and another on the ethics of emerging mixed
reality technologies. His recent work appears in journals like New Media and Society
and Media, Culture and Society.
Anthony Fung is professor at the Chinese University of Hong Kong and studies
popular culture, digital media, and game studies. He has published more than
100 academic materials, including books, journal articles, and book chapters.
316 About the Contributors
Milan Ismangil is a writer who holds degrees in musicology (University of

Amsterdam) and Asian studies (University of Leiden), and is pursuing a PhD in
communications in Hong Kong. For more visit https://notjustaboutculture.com/
Dal Yong Jin’s major research and teaching interests are on digital platforms and
digital games, globalization and media, transnational cultural studies, and the
political economy of media and culture. Jin’s first book, titled Korea’s Online Gaming
Empire, was published by MIT Press in 2010. His solely authored book titled Digital
Platforms, Imperialism and Political Culture was published by Routledge in 2015. He
has continued to publish several books, including New Korean Wave: Transnational
Cultural Power in the Age of Social Media (University of Illinois Press, 2016) and
Smartland Korea: Mobile Communication, Culture and Society (University of Michigan
Press, 2017). He is the founding book series editor of Routledge Research in Digital
Media and Culture in Asia.
Veli-Matti Karhulahti works as a Senior Researcher in University of Jyvaskyla

for the Centre of Excellence in Game Culture Studies project. He is also an
Adjunct Professor in University of Turku. He’s the author of the book Esport
Play: Anticipation, Attachment, and Addiction in Psycholudic Development
(Bloomsbury).
Nyle Sky Kauweloa teaches at the University of Hawaii and is a gamer (novice
with Dota 2 and League of Legends). He also enjoys watching other gamers on
Twitch. He loves just walking, walking anywhere. His research interests with
research on competitive online gaming (esports) with Dota 2, League of Legends,
and Smite. Looking at the division (and tension) between digital play and work
at the professional and collegiate level of esports. He has also started to look into
the policy aspect of competitive gaming (addiction, player contracts, and gender
equality).
Ying-Ying Law is a lecturer in Games Studies and Esports at Staffordshire University.

Her research interests focuses on video gamer culture, play, communities,
grassroots esports, and gender studies from a sociological perspective. Her PhD is
an ethnography of video gamers and video game events across the United Kingdom,
where it considers the social and cultural practices of those who participate in,
and attend, various video game related events. Besides playing Hearthstone
competitively (between 2014 and 2017), Ying-Ying has also organized and executed
esports events and tournaments for a variety of esports titles, including Super
Smash Bros. Melee (such as Fête 2019 and Fête 2020), Hearthstone, Overwatch,
League of Legends and more
Paul Martin is assistant professor in Digital Media and Communications, School of

International Communications at the University of Nottingham China. His current
research areas are digital game studies and technology in the classroom. My work

About the Contributors 317
in the area of game studies focuses on textual analysis, expression in games, and
the phenomenology of digital game play. He conducts research on Japanese digital
games as expressions of contemporary Japanese culture. His work on technology in
the classroom mainly focuses on developing theory around student notetaking and
he currently works as part of a team involving students and academics developing and
testing notetaking software for use by students and researchers.
Dan Padua is a lecturer in the Media and Entertainment Industries study area (School
of Communication). He teaches CDB101 Managing Entertainment; KXB202 Project
Management for Entertainment; KXB302/303 Entertainment Capstone units; and
KCB310 Contemporary Investigation in Journalism, Media, and Communication.
Overall, his research is focused on how fandom and generational dynamics play
out in the media and entertainment industries. Specifically, his PhD investigated
cases of shared popular music fandom within families. Dan is currently investigating
the emerging global esports industry, its multigenerational audiences, and the
intergenerational interactions taking place within it. Dan is also interested in how
the global esports industry tackles issues related to diversity and inclusion, as well
as how cultural and national tensions manifest in this space especially in relation to
experiences of Filipino esports audiences and players.
Max M. Renner is an Assistant Professor of Digital Humanities and New Media at

Molloy College. Drawing on communication and architecture, his work takes a
rhetorical approach to the study of space and place, digital rhetorics, and civic life.
His research interests are all animated by a concern with the material and discursive
experience of space and place, particularly the plasticity of digital and urban
experiences.
Tobias Scholz is assistant professor at the University of Siegen. His research focuses
on general organization theory, electronic human resource management, big data,
gamification, and esports.
Rory K. Summerley is a game studies lecturer in the Games Academy of Falmouth

University, UK. His research interests include e-sports, the history and ideology of
games, game fiction, and parody. He enjoys playing Super Smash Bros. Melee with
close friends most evenings.
Nicholas Taylor is assistant professor of Digital Media at North Carolina State

University. His interest lies in digital gaming cultures and the many forms of
communication and work that sustain them, and he is committed to making
them more inclusive and equitable. This is carried out through the application
of critical, qualitative, and participatory research methods in collaboration with
gaming communities. He has published several papers in Critical Studies in
Media Communication, Games and Culture, Convergence, Game Studies, Ada: A
Journal of Gender, New Media, and Technology, and Journal of Computer-Mediated
318 About the Contributors
Communication. He codirects the Circuit Studio, a digital media research lab and
makerspace at NC State.
Tae-Jin Yoon is professor at the Yonsei University in Korea. His major research
interests are on digital games and popular culture. He has published numerous
books, journal articles, and book chapters in these fields and is a leading scholar in
Korea.
Index
#gamersonTikTok 236 audience 3–5, 7, 9, 15–16, 19–20, 23–5,

21st Century Pro-Game Association 89 27–8, 35, 39, 43, 56, 61–2, 64–5,
2019 Starladder ImbaTV Dota 68–72, 79–81, 88, 92, 99–100, 102,
2 Tournament 125 105, 109, 115–16, 124–5, 149–50,
2022 Asian games 63, 71 156–8, 160–2, 169–70, 172, 179–80,
184, 186–7, 191–2, 194–6, 198,
ABC 2 202, 204, 206, 218, 224, 227, 233,
action-real-time-strategy (ARTS) 29 243–51, 254–7, 264, 268, 282–3,
Activision Blizzard 100–11, 154, 188, 286, 288, 292–3, 303–4
192; see also Blizzard audience participation 244
ADC 176–7, 308 audiencing 157
addiction 66–7, 72, 230, 288–9 esports audience (see esports audience)
computer game addiction 288 young audiences 20, 99, 246–8
game addiction 230, 282, 286 The Australian 204, 213
gaming addiction 289–90 Australian Broadcasting Company (ABC)
internet addiction 61, 65–7, 288–9 204, 208, 210, 212, 214, 247
video game addiction 62, 65–7 Australian Football League (AFL) 206,
Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) 78, 87 210, 214
The Advertiser 204, 206–7, 212 AFL Women’s (AFLW) 206
affective arrangement 129
Afreeca TV 234 Badass Women of Hearthstone 308;
Africa Esports Championship (AEC) 4 see also Hearthstone
The Age 204, 206 Al-Barkawi, Amer “Miracle” 115, 128
Age of Empire III 88 Battle.net 17, 22, 83–5, 155
Alibaba 63, 70 Baur, Dick 192
Angry Birds 231 Beales, Jonathan 80
Animal Crossing 302 Beer, David 132–3, 135–8, 140–1
Anipang 90–1 Bester, Alhan “Nahaz” 115, 124–5
AnyKey 263, 274–7, 297, 299, 305, 308 Bilibili 63
APM 137–9, 145 biopolitics 145; see also Foucault, Michel
apparatus of knowledge 138 Bit Communication Café (BNC) 83
arcade 17, 20–1, 26, 185, 235–6, 245–6, Blizzard (company) 17, 21–3, 28, 37, 39,
254, 286 71, 78, 81–3, 85, 87, 108, 110, 134,
arcade-based esports 27 151, 153–5, 157–8, 160, 181, 223–4,
arcade games 77, 235, 290 249, 264, 267–8, 274, 277, 282,
arcade gaming 150, 236 302, 305, 307; see also Activision
Arena of Valor 65, 70 Blizzard
Artifact 306 Blizzard Entertainment 82, 87
Atari 39, 150, 245 Blizzard Ladder Tournament 85
attention economy 115–16, 119–21, 129 Blum, Bryce 272
ATT Warnermedia 246 bobbie streamer 304
320 Index
Bombers (eSports team) 210 consoles 3, 17, 77, 81, 90, 185, 235–6,
Bourdieu, Pierre 23 245–6, 300
bulletin board systems or services 83 convergence vii, 2, 5–6, 8, 83, 89, 91,
Burns, Tom 234–6 99–101, 103–4, 184–8, 190–1,
Butler, Judith 303 193–5, 197, 199, 203, 224, 226–7,
233, 236, 248, 298, 305
Call of Duty 109–10, 169 business level convergence 187–8,
The Canberra Times 204, 211 190, 193, 195
Candipang 90 delta-convergence 109, 111
Candy Crush Saga 231 esports music-convergence 186–7, 197
Candy Pang 231 industrial structure convergence 187,
carnival 189, 289 190, 194
CCTV 71 media convergence 2, 187, 227, 236
CDEC, 63 product(content) convergence
CGTN 62 187–9, 191
Championship Gaming Series 100, 104, technological convergence 187,
107, 109 189–91
China Daily 62, 67, 71 Counter Strike 88, 99, 102, 104, 110, 228,
Chinese Dream 66, 71, 292–4 249, 302, 307
Chinese University Esports League Counter Strike: Global Offensive
(CUEL) 281, 284 (CS:GO) 36–7, 226, 228, 232, 249,
Chinese Youth Esports Competition 255, 305, 307
(CYEC) 281, 285, 292 Counterstrike: Global Offensive 233
Chipotle 247 Crawford, Garry 298–9, 302–3, 306
Chollian 79, 82 cross-media 155
Chongqing Major 68 CS:GO ELEAGUE 293
CJ Cable 88 Cyberathlete Professional League (CPL)
CJ E&M 87 1, 26, 78
Clash of Clans 231 Cyber Café 83
college esports; see eSports Cyworld 90
College League of Legends (cLoL) 269
College Star League; see Collegiate DACOM 82
Starleague Dal Zotto, Cinzia 186–7, 191, 193
collegiate esports; see eSports Dance Dance Revolution 290
Collegiate League of Legends (CLoL) 173 Dark Souls 180
Collegiate Starleague (CSL) 264–7, 277, Daum 233
282, 285 Dead or Alive 88
commentators 9–10, 80, 123–4, 142, Defense of the Ancients (Dota) 249
157, 169–70, 172–5, 180–1, 228, Defense of the Ancients 2 (Dota 2) 8, 36–
250, 264, 285, 288 7, 41–3, 56, 68, 70, 80, 106, 115–19,
color commentators 169–70, 122, 125–9, 132–3, 137–46, 170, 172,
172–5 189, 199, 226–9, 249, 282, 305
community management 172, 174 Digital Australia 243, 246
competitive gaming 9–10, 78, 80–1, 99, digital culture 236, 243
151–2, 180–1, 206, 226, 236, 249, Digster.fm 188, 192
265–6, 273, 286, 297–8, 304–7, DirecTV 104
309–10 disciplinary power 134; see also
Consalvo, Mia 186, 233, 244, 303 Foucault, Michel

Index 321
Disney 247, 255 Australian esports 171, 208, 210,

Disney animations 196 212–13, 217–19
Disneyland 68 the Business Model Network of
Disney major 68 Esports 103
divergence 8, 100–1, 103, 190, 195 Chinese esports 62, 67–72, 291, 293
Dota 2 80, 160 college esports 6, 262–3, 266–77,
DoTA 2 College League Competition 284 288–9, 291
dotabuff.com 138, 141; see also Defense collegiate esports 10, 110, 173,
of the Ancients 2 (Dota 2) 262–5, 267–9, 271–7, 282, 284, 288,
dotafire.com 138, 141; see also Defense of 291–2, 294
the Ancients 2 (Dota 2) esports audience 184, 191, 198,
double track 282 206, 224, 227, 244, 248–9, 257,
Dragon Kill Points (DKP) 134 293, 299
Dungeon & Fighter 228 esports broadcast 8, 36, 45, 49–50,
DWANGO 26 116, 118, 121–2, 124, 126, 128–9,
DXRacer 307 169, 187
esports broadcaster 4, 88, 293
Effective Actions Per Minute (EAPM) 138 esports broadcasting 5, 8, 79, 86
Egliston, Ben 115, 117, 119, 121, 125, esports championship 4, 41
137, 140, 158 esports commentary 9, 125, 170, 172,
Eichenwalde 155 179–81
ELeague 227, 292–3 esports commentators 9, 170, 172,
electronic sports 35, 39, 87, 223, 233, 180–1
297; see also Esports esports community 64–5, 68, 138,
Electronic sports league (ESL) 117, 125, 180, 184, 186, 194, 203–4, 252,
130, 188, 190–2, 194, 199 263, 265, 269, 272–6, 291–2,
Electronic Sports World Cup 39 298, 303
English Premier League (EPL) 36–8, 41, esports culture 4, 8, 72, 79, 81, 132,
49, 52–3, 56, 243 175, 184, 187, 224–5, 229–30, 236,
Enter Records 190, 194 255–6, 285, 298 (see also global
Entertainment Association (EA) 243, 246 esports culture)
EA Sports 264 esports economy 71, 237
Entman, Robert M. 283 esports ecosystem 105–6, 110–11,
EnvyUs 155, 159 186, 272
Epic Games 108, 227 esports fan vii, 9, 60, 62, 92, 196, 211,
Erzberger, Tyler 1 218, 224–5, 231–4, 247, 253, 281,
ESPN 1–2, 6, 16, 19–20, 115, 202, 226, 292, 299–300
233, 249, 252, 255, 268, 273 esports fandom 67, 214, 249
ESPN.COM 2, 226 esports festival 189, 199
esports 1–10, 15–29, 34–43, 47–51, esports gambling 207–8
53–7, 60–72, 77–83, 85–92, 99–101, esports industry vii, 5, 7–10, 35, 43,
104–10, 115–19, 121–2, 125, 127, 60–2, 79, 84, 99–102, 104, 109–11,
129–30, 132, 135, 138, 145, 149–52, 117–18, 124, 129, 169, 171–2, 181,
154–6, 158–62, 167, 169–76, 178, 184–5, 193, 205–8, 211, 214, 219,
180–2, 184–99, 202–3, 205–19, 228, 243–4, 246–7, 250–1, 272,
223–7, 241, 243–57, 262–77, 281–2, 286, 288, 292–3
281–94, 297–300, 304–6, 309–10; esports institutions 7, 15, 18, 21–2,
see also electronic sports 24–7, 29
322 Index
esports league 1–2, 4, 39–40, 50, Facebook vii, 135, 152, 227, 236
56–7, 82, 85–9, 91–2, 100–1, 104, Faceit’s esports Championship
188, 192, 223, 226, 228, 232, 248, Series 227
264 (see also professional esports fans vii, 3, 5–6, 9–10, 18, 20–2, 43, 48,
league) 50, 60–1, 64, 69, 77, 79–81, 84, 88,
esports market 3–4, 60, 65, 88, 193, 92, 107–9, 151–4, 156, 158–60,
207, 247, 281, 299 172, 181, 193, 196, 206, 208,
esports-music convergence 210–11, 223, 225, 227–9, 231–6,
186–7, 197 246–7, 255, 264–5, 271, 284,
esports player 4, 6, 25, 65, 157, 162, 289, 292–3
208–11, 213–14, 216–19, 225, 232, esports fans (see esports fans)
247, 250, 252, 262–3, 265, 270–1, fan art 150, 152–4, 156
273, 275, 284, 288, 292–3 fan content 157, 161
esports team 4, 26, 38–9, 61–3, 127–8, fandom 67, 118, 127, 197–8, 203,
193, 206, 210, 212–14, 229–31, 243, 209–10, 244, 249, 257
265, 274–5, 281, 288, 290 fan fiction 150, 153–4, 161
esports title 102, 103, 105–6, 109, fantasy Dota 2 Leagues 117–18
111, 149, 208, 231, 249, 262, 299, female 24, 45, 206, 211, 225, 229, 231,
305–6, 309 234, 247, 275, 298, 300–3, 305
esports tournament 10, 21, 26, 40, female characters 302
63, 68, 192, 198, 227, 266–7, 282, female engagement 301
286, 292, 297, 299, 305, 307 female esports players 211
fantasy esports leagues 119, 122, female gamer 10, 211, 231, 298–9,
126, 128 301, 303–5, 307–9
global esports culture viii, 7, female participation 303, 305
63, 225, 228 (see also esports female players 28, 225, 304, 307
culture) female representation 211, 301
institutionalization of esports 6, female team 307
243–4, 251, 256–7 femininity 20, 302–3
Korean esports 5, 8–9, 17, 77–9, emphasized femininity 308
81–2, 84, 88–9, 91–2, 209, 225, FIFA (game series) 82, 88, 169, 264
228–30, 234–5, 255 FIFA 19 4
mobile esports 5, 226, 231–2 FIFA Online 228
professional esports 37, 45, 65, 108, FIFA series World Cup 98 game 86
152, 155, 169, 171, 175, 212, 228, FIFA World Cup 36, 41, 43, 56
230, 267, 270, 288 2010 FIFA World Cup 217
professional esports league 37, 228 First Person Shooter (FPS) 36–7, 39,
(see also esports league) 151, 299
transmedia esports 161 Fong, Dennis 249–50
Esports Is Business 64, 105 Fortnite 65, 70, 171, 188, 194, 198,
ethnography 173, 176 227, 252–4
ethnographic study 28, 307 Foucault, Michel 134–6, 138,
ethnographic work 24, 169–70 145, 243
EVE Online 180 franchise 84, 104–7, 109, 116, 149,
Everquest 302 152, 154–5, 212, 248, 255
Evolution Championship Series (EVO) FUGA 190, 193
7, 15, 17 Full Sail University 271
EVO, 7, 15, 17, 20–2, 26–8 Fullscreen 246

Index 323
game culture vii, 90, 169, 244, 251, gender identity 135, 244, 303
253, 306 gender-neutral games 302
digital game culture 81, 232 gender polarisation 302
video game culture 133–4, 244–6, gender representation (see
248, 251, 253, 257, 276, 298, 306 representation)
Game Donga 79 gender roles 300, 302–3
Game for Peace 64 gender-specific tournaments 309
gameplay 35–6, 44, 48, 116, 122–4, 127, gender stereotypes 302, 309
129, 137, 143–5, 153, 156, 176, 179, gender trouble 303
208, 231, 233, 250, 253, 262, 304, General Administration of Sport (China)
306, 308 61, 281
gameplay metrics 8, 132–3, 144 Genette, Gerard 158
gameplay practice 140, 145 Gillespie, Tarleton 181
gameplay system 139 Ginx eSports TV 2, 227
live gameplay 36, 50 Ginx TV 2, 227
gamer 4, 10, 66, 77–8, 81–4, 87, 90–1, Ginx E-Sports TV 227
133, 190, 192–3, 198, 211, 219, GirlGamer Esports Festival 307
224–5, 227, 231–2, 246, 248, 250–4, Godec, Kevin “Purge” 138–9
257, 262, 265–7, 275–7, 285, 290, GOMTV 90
293, 298–300, 302, 304, 306–7, 309 GPM 124, 137, 140, 145
female gamers (see female) Grossberg, Larry 244, 253, 255
gamer communities 244 GT Interactive 302
gamer culture 3, 223, 236, 286, 306 Guangming Daily 62
gamer identities 244 guided vision 172, 174
gamer stereotypes 265 Guitar Hero 264
girl gamer 304
power gamer 134 Half-Life 249
professional gamers 5, 79, 81, 84–6, Halo 264
91, 135, 225, 231–2, 236, 244, 247, Hanaro Telecom 86
249, 285 Harrisburg University Esports (HUE)
pro gamers 83, 85–6, 250, 252 189, 192
stereotypical gamer 160 Hawelka, Dannis “internethulk” 155
toxic gamer culture 303 Hearthstone 27–8, 109–10, 181, 231,
Gamergate 304 298, 305–7
Game Show, Amusing World 233 Hearthstone Championship Tour 78
GameTrack 298 Hearthstone Grandmasters ASIA 2019 27
gaming disorder 216, 229–30 Hearthstone International Women’s
internet gaming disorder 67 Invitational 307–8
gaming industry 2, 62, 78 Heir to the Throne 309
Geertz, Clifford 176, 202 The Herald Sun 204, 209–11, 213–14
Gembc 88 hero 36, 66, 80, 90, 110, 116, 123, 128,
gender 6, 9, 24–5, 149, 180, 211, 241, 137–40, 151–8, 160, 162
298–304, 306 heroine 302
gender-assemblages 146 hero shooter 36–7
gender disparity 180–1 Heroes of the Storm 28, 106, 109–10,
gender diversity 307 170, 267
gendered division 309 Heroes of the Storm tournament 267
gendered play practices 297 High School eSports League 256
324 Index
Higinbotham, William 77 KARTRIDER 228

Historically Black Colleges and KaTalk 91
Universities (HBCUs) 271 KDA 137, 139–40
Hitel 8, 79, 82, 87 K/DA (a virtual K-Pop unit) 190, 195–7
Honor of Kings 65, 70 KETEL (Korea Electronic Economic Daily
Hu, Cherie 184, 192 TELpress) 82
Husserl, Edmond 120 The Kingdom of the Winds 224
Hutchins, Brett 2, 79, 82, 118, 224, Kings College League (KCL) 281
226–7, 236 Knorr, Caroline 247, 252
hypercapitalism 117; see also Stiegler, Kocurek, Carly 235
Bernard Korea Esports Association (KeSPA) 17,
22, 28, 39, 81, 88
ICBC e-Sports & Music Festival Hong Korea Internet (KORNET) 85–6
Kong 189, 192 Korea Pro Gamers League (KPGL) 82,
IDDQT (later EnvyUs) 155; see also 85, 87
EnvyUs Kraft Group 99, 105
id Software 39 Kuleshov, Lev 121
IEF 293 Kuleshov effect 121
IMBAtv 307 Kyunghyang Games 79
information and communication
technology (ICT) 1, 3, 83, 223 Lake, Jason 104
Insomniac Events 189, 199 LAN (local area network) 22, 26, 78,
Insomnia Gaming Festival 157, 306 206, 266, 297, 305
institutionalization of gaming 243 LAN cafes 206
intellectual property (IP) 26, 274 League of Legend College League
Interactive Games 243, 246 (LCL) 281, 284, 292
Intergalactic Spacewar Olympics 262 League of Legend Europe Championship
International Esports Festival 282, 284 (LEC) 187, 190, 192
Internet cafés 67, 79, 81, 83, 224, League of Legends (LoL) 1, 37, 43–8,
230, 290 50–1, 56–7, 63–6, 70, 88, 100,
internet gaming disorder 67 106, 108, 110, 151, 169, 173, 179,
internet protocol TVs (IP TVs) 233 188–90, 192, 196–7, 199, 226–30,
Invictus gaming 62 233, 237, 249, 256, 262, 268–9, 274,
ITV 2 276, 281, 304–5, 307
IvyLoL 277 League 169–74, 176, 178–81
League of Legends World Championships
Jackson, Victoria 275 (LCS) 36–8, 40–1, 43–5, 48, 50–4,
Jenkins, Andrew “Jenkins” 143 56–7, 62, 195, 197
Jenkins, Henry 2, 149, 157, 161, 186, Lee, Gi-suk 85
194, 227, 247, 301 Lee, Sang-hyeok 1
Jin, Dal Yong viii, 1–2, 5, 17, 26–7, 39, Lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgendered
77, 86–7, 89–91, 110, 149–50, 158, (LGBT) 263, 276
186, 223–4, 226, 228, 232–3, 235, LGBTQUA 304
243–4, 246–8, 250–2, 255–6, 263, LH/DN 137–9, 145
265, 286, 298 Lim, Yo-Hwan 86
Jjonak 152, 158 Lineage I 86, 90
joindota.com 138, 141; see also Defense live-stream 153–5, 157, 160–2
of the Ancients 2 (Dota 2) live stream 300, 305

Index 325
live-streaming 5, 99, 185, 187, 192, multiplayer-online-battle-arena (MOBA)

195, 227, 236 22–3, 29, 37, 116, 137, 151, 170,
live streaming technology 185 172, 227; see also MOBA game
Lone Star Clash tournaments 267 Mushvenom 187
Look TV 88 music pack 186–7, 189; see also
Louis Vuitton 196–7 TheFatRat
ludic diffusion 25–6
Lugmayr, Artur 186–7, 191, 193 Nanzer, Nate 106, 108–9
Lyon, Jacob “Jake” 159–60 National Association of Collegiate Esports
(NACE) 273
Madden NFL 264 National Baseball Association (NBA) 36–
Major League Baseball (MLB) 36–8, 8, 40, 49, 52–4, 56, 100, 110, 255, 268
41–3, 45, 48–50, 54, 56, 100, 106 National Collegiate Athletic Association
Major League Gaming (MLG) 39, 267 (NCAA) 229, 271
Major League Soccer (MLS) 36–41, National Football League (NFL) 36–9,
48–9, 52–3, 56–7 41–5, 47–50, 54, 56, 80, 100, 104
Manovich, Lev 196 NFL Superbowl 41
March Madness 268, 277 NFL Super Bowl 36, 43, 54, 56;
Mars Dota League 68 see also Super Bowl
Mars Dota Major League 123 National Hockey League (NHL) 36–8,
masculinity 24–5, 135, 146, 302–3, 308 41–2, 49, 57, 100, 110
hegemonic masculinity 25, 135, national identity 202–3, 215, 217–18, 292
302, 308 Australian national identity 9, 202,
neoliberal masculinity 132, 145–6 215–17
Massachusetts Institute of Technology nationalism 62, 64, 66, 68–9, 71, 216–17,
(MIT) 1, 264–6 219, 291
Massey, Doreen 174–6, 179 Naver 233–4
massively multiplayer online role-play NCSoft 86
game (MMORPG) 86, 236, 302 neoliberalism 132–3, 135–6, 140–1
MBC Game 88, 233 neoliberal agent 145
MBCGame StarCraft League 17 neoliberal governance 137
Medeiros, Kelsy “SuperGirlKels” 308 neoliberal governmentality 135
media convergence 2, 187, 227, 236 neoliberal masculinity 132, 145–6
Melbourne eSports Open 206 neoliberal rationalities 134–6, 140
The Mercury 204, 208 neoliberal subject 133, 135
Metroid 302 neoliberal subjectivity 8, 132
Miami University 271 neoliberal technologies of the self 134
Microsoft 264 neoliberal technology 145
mixed martial arts (MMA) 18–19, NetEase 63, 70, 281–2
21, 26 Network Café 83
MMR 137, 139, 141–2, 144 New England Patriots 54, 99
MOBA game116 New Horizons 302
mobile games 3–4, 6, 90–1, 226, 230–2, Newzoo 3, 15–16, 23, 27, 29, 39, 57, 60–1,
235, 300 184, 191, 224, 227, 237, 246, 299–300
mobile gaming 2, 4, 6, 9, 225, 230–2, Nielsen 299–300
235–6 Ninjawerks 186, 190, 194–5
Model Café 83 Nintendo 264, 302, 306
monetization 9, 64, 105, 126 Nintendo Entertainment System 245–6
326 Index
Nintendo Wii 245–6 (see also Wii) Philadelphia 36ers 212

Super Nintendo 236 player vii–viii, 1–3, 5–6, 8–9, 20–3, 25,
North American Collegiate 28, 35, 37–9, 41, 44–7, 56, 60, 62–3,
Championships (NACC) 268–9 65, 68, 77–81, 84–8, 90–2, 102,
104–8, 110, 115–16, 123, 126–8,
Oceanic Pro League (OPL) 206 132–5, 137–46, 150–2, 154–61,
Olympics 86, 90, 208–9, 211, 215, 219, 169–81, 186, 195–6, 198, 206, 209,
230, 262 212–14, 217–18, 223–5, 228–36,
2024 Olympics 209 244–7, 249–50, 252, 262, 264–7,
Beijing Olympics 281 270–3, 275–6, 284–6, 288, 290, 294,
International Olympics 297–9, 302–10
Committee 209 esports player (see esports player)
Olympic Games 72, 208 player-audience interaction 149
OMG Esports 63 player salaries 39–41, 43, 56–7
OnGameNet (OGN) 17, 87, 233, 237 player-versus-player 3, 223, 262
OnGameNet StarLeague (OSL) 17 professional league players 85
Online Gamers Association (OGA) 29 professional players 3, 10, 56, 143, 223,
online games 2, 4, 29, 81–2, 86–8, 90, 228–9, 234–5, 237, 253, 307, 309
224, 226, 228, 231–3, 305 pro-player 153, 186, 188
online gaming 1–2, 82, 84–5, 87, 223–4, pro player 80, 171
232, 235–6, 256–7, 297, 303–4 Player’s Unknown Battlegrounds (PUBG)
On Media 87 64–5, 72, 192
OpTic Gaming 100, 115 PlayStation 208, 246, 248
ORDER (esports team) 210 Pokémon Company 302
Ovecooked 2 302 Pokémon Shield 302
Overwatch 2, 8, 28, 37, 45–8, 50–51, 56, Pokémon Sword 302
99–100, 102–8, 110–11, 149–62, popular culture 10, 78, 236, 243–4,
169, 171, 173, 189, 193, 226, 302 251, 257
Overwatch League 2, 8, 36–7, 48, Princeton University 264–6
51, 100–10, 150, 152–62, 188, 192 professional gamers; see gamer
(see also OWL) Professional Gamers League 1, 78, 87;
Overwatch World Cup 38, 154, 291 see also PGL
OWL 36–7, 40–2, 45, 48, 50–4, 56, pro gamers; see gamer
107–8, 154 (see also Overwatch Proleague 9, 15, 17, 237; see also
League) Starcraft Proleague
subreddit/competitiveoverwatch 159 PSG.LGD 63
public diplomacy 61, 67–9
Pac-Man 150, 152, 254
Park, Ho-Jin “IDK” 158 Quake 39, 82, 249, 302
Paul, Christopher 132–4, 141, 146, 158 Quake 3 i169
PC bang 8, 79, 81–6, 89–91, 224
PC communications 82 Rainbow Six 82
People Can Fly 227 Rea, Stephen 17, 22, 28, 78, 83–4, 86
Perfect World 282 real-time-strategy (RTS) 22
Perrez, Victoria “VikkiKitty” 308 Red Annihilation tournament 39
PGL 85; see also Professional Gamers Reddit 45, 141–2, 151–3, 156, 159
League subreddit 159–60
Phan, Kim 108 ReKTGlobal 188, 193

Index 327
Remond, Dom 247–8 Sony 246, 302

representation 10, 62, 203–5, 211–12, Soul Dynasty 159
215, 219, 263, 282–4, 297–8 Space Invaders 39
female representation (see female) Spacewar 1, 38, 262
gender representation 301, 303 Spectator vii, 3, 7, 9–10, 20, 22, 35,
national representation 71 79–80, 87–8, 92, 116–18, 123, 125,
statistical representation 116, 118, 127 129, 140, 169–70, 172, 174–5, 177,
representational verisimilitude 121 206, 209, 228, 237, 264–5, 268, 309
Riot Games 37, 43–4, 64, 170–1, 187–8, spectator culture 9
190, 193, 195, 197, 199, 249, 256, spectator interface 124
267, 304, 307 spectatorship 2–3, 7–8, 22, 28, 77–82,
Riot Scholastic Association of America 86–92, 115, 118, 205, 226–7, 299
(RSAA) 256, 273–4 spectator spectacle 215
RNG (random number generator) spectator sport 27, 80, 84, 203,
gameplay 306 210–11, 227, 229
Robert Morris University (RMU) 229, sportification 156, 215, 291
269–70 sports media 118–19
Rosen, Adam 266–7 Spotify 188, 192–3
Stanford University 38, 262, 277
Samsung 81, 84, 86, 88, 230–1, 236 Stanley Cup 41; see also NHL
Samsung Galaxy 230–1 Starcraft 1, 7–8, 17, 22, 26, 79, 82–8, 90,
Samus Aran 302 105–7, 109–10, 151, 209, 223–4,
San Zi Jing (Three Character Classic) 287 229, 262–7, 274, 288
SBS (a Korean broadcaster) 86, 233 Starcraft 2 17, 22–3, 28, 70, 228
SC2 23 (see also Starcraft II: Wings of
Scolari, Carlos 157, 160 Liberty)
sex role theory 300–1 Starcraft: Brood War 17, 39, 81,
ShadowVisions 169–70, 173–82 88, 263
Shapira, Neta “33” 115 Starcraft II: Wings of Liberty 17,
Shin, Ju-young 85 266–7 (see also Starcraft 2)
shoutcaster 9, 159, 169–70, 175–6, 213 Starcraft 2 World Championship Series
Sierra Studios 302 17; see also WCS
Simon Fraser University 225, 229 Starcraft esports league 248
Sina Technology 65 Starcraft-KPGL 82
Sixth Tone 63 Starcraft ProLeague 15, 17; see also
Skipper, John 226 Proleague
SK Telecom 171 stereotype threat theory 307
Sky (broadcaster) 2, 227 Stiegler, Bernard 116–22, 127, 129
smartphone viii, 4–6, 9, 81, 225, subculture 184, 198, 251, 255, 306–7
230–2, 233–6 Sudden Attack 228
smartphone-based mobile games 231 Summoner’s Rift 170
smartphone technologies 232 Suning 63
smartphone users 91 Super Bowl 41, 45, 54; see also NFL
social learning theory 300–1 Super Smash Bros 264
social media vii, 8, 69, 150–2, 154, 159, Super Smash Bros. Melee 298, 306
161–2, 172, 212, 227, 236 Super Smash Bro’s Ultimate 306
somatization 291 The Sydney Morning Herald 204,
sonic synergies 198 208–10, 255
328 Index
Taylor, Nicholas Thiel. 1, 8, 79–80, 133, University of League of Legends Campus

135, 146, 149, 157–8, 169–72, 174, Series Tournament (uLoL) 269
180, 227, 229, 276 University of Utah 270–2, 276
Taylor, T. L. 5, 17–18, 22, 25–8, 39, 77–8,
80, 87, 92, 99, 106, 117, 133, 135, Vainglory 231
151, 169–70, 172, 178, 180–1, 185, Valve (company) 8, 37, 71, 115, 117–19,
203, 228–9, 243–6, 249–52, 254–6, 122, 124, 126–7, 129, 137, 140, 227,
263, 273–4, 290, 297–8, 302–7, 309 249, 306–7
Team Liquid 115, 123–4, 171 varsity 173, 262–3, 269–71, 273,
Liquid LUL 124 275, 277
teamliquid.net 265–6 Varsity eSports League 277
Team OG 123, 126 Verna, Paul 3
technicity 116, 120–1, 129; see also Vici Gaming 63, 124
Stiegler, Bernard video game 1–2, 4, 8, 10, 22, 26–7, 39,
Tekken 7 4 60, 62–3, 65–8, 70–1, 77, 80–1,
Tencent 63–5, 70, 281 86–8, 100–1, 115–18, 132–5, 137,
Tennis for Two 77 142, 146, 152, 154–5, 184, 186,
Texas e-Sports Association (Tespa) 194–5, 210, 224–6, 231, 233, 236–7,
266–7, 277 243–54, 256–7, 262–5, 270, 272–3,
Thefatrat 186–7, 189–90, 199; see also 276–7, 297–304, 306–7
music pack video game tournament 236
Tier 2 (system) 107–8, 110 vpesports.com 138
TikTok 236
Title IX 274–5 Wacken Open Air 188, 192
Tooniverse 86–7 Walking Dead 150
Total Entertainment Network 78 wanwusangzhi 287
transmedia 8, 149–52, 155, 157–8, 160–2 Warcraft 105, 109–10
transmediality 8, 149–52, 156, 160–2 Warcraft III 88
transmedia storytelling 149, 151–2, Warcraft 3 249
155, 157, 159, 161 World of Warcraft (WoW) 109–10,
transmedia studies 8, 149–50 150, 302
transmedia universe 8, 149–50, 152, Warman, Peter 227; see also Newzoo
155, 157–8, 161–2 WCS 22–3, 106; see also Starcraft
Twitch vii, 2, 5–6, 64, 77, 99, 105, 109, 2 World Championship Series
124, 151, 154–6, 171, 174, 227, Wegame 63
233–6, 299, 304–5 WeMade Entertainment 231
Twitch.tv 138, 227, 233 Wii 290; see also Nintendo Wii
Winning Eleven 88
Ultima Online 302 World College Students Esports
Ultimate Fighting Championship series Championship 282, 284
(UFC) 15–16, 18, 23–6, 28 World Cyber Games (WCG) 39, 86, 224,
Universal Music Group 188, 190, 192, 230, 251
194, 199 World Health Organization (WHO)
University Cyber League (UCL) 281 217, 230
University of British Columbia (UBC) World Series 38, 41, 43, 45, 56; see also
229, 269 MLB
University of California at Irvine (UCI) World University Cyber Games 282, 284
270, 275 World Wide Web (WWW) 81–2

Index 329
WUCG 288, 292 youth culture vii–viii, 3–6, 9, 21, 86, 92,
Wyatt, Dan “Foxdrop” 143–4, 146 191, 223–5, 228, 235–6, 241, 244–5,
247, 249–50, 252, 255–7, 264, 294
Xbox 248 YouTube vii, 51, 138–9, 142, 171, 227,
X-Games 7, 15–16, 19–21, 24–6, 28 234–6
XPM 137, 140
Zenyetta 151–2
YouGov 299–300 Zhejiang University Esports League 284

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Global esports

Transformation of Cultural Perceptions of

BLOOMSBURY, BLOOMSBURY ACADEMIC and the Diana logo are trademarks of

First published in the United States of America 2021

Volume Editor’s Part of the Work © Dal Yong Jin

Each chapter © of Contributors

Cover design: Namkwan Cho

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted

ISBN: HB: 978-1-5013-6877-6

Typeset by Deanta Global Publishing Services, Chennai, India

1 Introduction: Esports Dal Yong Jin 1

Part 1 History, Institutionalization, and Legitimization

2 The Future of Esports Institutions: A Comparative Analysis of

3 Sports versus Esports: A Comparison of Industry Size, Viewer

4 Esports: A Chinese Sport? Milan Ismangil and Anthony Fung 60

5 Historiography of Korean Esports: Perspectives on Spectatorship

Part 2 Money, Data Power, and Network

6 The Business Model Network of Esports: The Convergence of

7 Statistics, Spectatorship, and the “Attention Economy” of Esport

8 Counting Clicks: Esports, Neoliberalism, and the Affective Power of

9 Esports Transmedia Universes: The Case of Overwatch Raine Koskimaa,

Part 3 Media and Esports

10 Orienting Esports: Locating the Perceptual and Cultural Work of

12 Esports, Australianness, and Beating New Zealand: Portrayals of Esports

13 The Emergence and Transformation of Global Esports: Comparative

Part 4 Collegial Esports, Youth Culture, and Gender

16 Gaming on Campus: The Promotion of Esports in Chinese

17 A Balance between Competition and Community in Public Gaming

About the Contributors 315

In the early twenty-first century, competitive player-versus-player digital game play

The Growth of Esports in the Digital Age

Literature Review on Esports

Goals of the Book

Overall, by analyzing these unexamined or less-discussed agendas, we advance the

Overview of the Book

when esports is constructed as a mainstream and pervasive global popular culture

Hutchins, B. (2008). “Signs of Meta-Change in Second Modernity: The Growth of Esport

History, Institutionalization, and

The Future of Esports Institutions

of sports included, as well as representing a mixture of corporate and grassroots-led

Comparative Analysis of Late Sport and Esport Institutions

The Institutionalization Process

professionalization), and “Media entertainment” (a focus on esports events as

While regulated competition is a concern of the institution, other aspirational moral

Concerns of the Sport Institution—Capital,

a broader set of consumers by corporations. Wheaton outlines nine commonalities

The Future of Esports Institutions

Sports versus Esports

Table 3.1 Professional Sports and Esports Analyzed and Compared

For representative sports, we analyzed major professional sports in North America

League and Team Sizes

Table 3.2 Rule Complexity

Attribute NFL/Football LCS/LoL

Table 3.3 Football Roles and Positions

Table 3.4 League of Legends Roles and Positions

Table 3.5 Video Clips Used in Surveys

Game Event Duration URL

Figure 3.8 Box Plots of User Ratings (1-Low, 7-High).

While Battle.net—a service provided by the developer [of StarCraft] to make