The first concept that stuck out to me was the middle of page 298 from “Witkowski -

Spectatorship - How to Play Video Games”. The middle paragraph talks about how a

professional gamer “pashaBiceps” was a celebrity in the space of CSGO. Not only was

he making money from his contract with Virtus.pro, but he also had income coming from

other sources. One of those sources was from Twitch. He was able to make money

from twitch by building a stable amount of viewers and getting donations from these

viewers. Esports players at this time make more money from sponsorships and self

branding than they could from playing professional esports. Professional tournaments

have prize pools, but only the top few teams get the money from the prize pool. This

leads players to start their own branding and to stream. For instance a professional

rainbow six siege player Beaulo quit professional esports last year. He quit because it

was a lot of work to practice constantly. This made him stressed when worrying about

practice and his own content creation. At his time playing he was one of the biggest

content creators for the game whilst being a professional player. He saw the bigger

potential for more money and less stress through streaming through twitch. Therefore

he left the professional scene for a bit to focus on himself. But since he was a

microcelebrity and streamed a lot his fans and the community rallied behind him to try to

get him back into the professional scene. He then thought about it and made his

decision. He made the decision to return back to professional since he was still good at

the game.

The second concept that stuck out to me was from the same article on page 296. The

concept talks about ever since the start of esports it has had the same setup as normal

sports. Such as commentators and broadcasting. This gives esports the feel of normal
sports. This also keeps the audience engaged such as normal sports do. Esports has

had the same charm as sports and real time media. Media makes the audience

engaged and feels like they are a part of what they are watching. From my own

experience playing esports it gives me my competitive itch. Games are broadcasted and

commentated. It makes me as an athlete feel truly immersed and engaged. Also here at

UND they have recognized esports as something that has potential.