Digital Entertainment: The new world of professional “digital” sports

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Doug Spindler has a fascinating take on a topic that’s about to hit my home: Esports, events and their infrastructure, and the impact on today’s kids.
[See the full post at: Digital Entertainment: The new world of professional “digital” sports]

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I didn’t know Fortnite was considered an Esport. I see games like League of Legends and Dota 2 being considere Esports. But not Fortnite. Then again I’m not into Esports. But I wouldn’t doubt it becoming one given how it’s the most popular game in the world.

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Maybe it’s just me, but it’s odd to me how kids so young are playing games where you actually use guns to kill things or people where other players say really horrible things to each other that even I wouldn’t have said in my teens. These types of games have ratings for 12 and over, but there’s tons of pre-10 aged kids playing these kinds of games. I am not trying to pick on you Woody as many kids that young are playing this game, but I just find it interesting the things people choose to protect their kids from and things they don’t like, for example, adult language. The things kids are being protected from in some cases aren’t nearly as questionable as the things deemed to be acceptable.

In a world full of things like gun violence and school shootings which occur every day, it’s even more puzzling why more and more kids are being exposed to this type of content so young. I am not saying that these games in any way cause these things, but it just seems strange whenever I hear about pre-middle school aged children playing games with realistic graphics where they are using guns to shoot and kill things sometimes other players shouting obscenities into their microphones.

Shooting zombies is one thing, but even that is too graphic for kids that age. The Battle Royale mode, you’re killing other people which IS mature content IMO. Anyway, just sparked my fascination reading that part especially in light of not being able to say “c**p” on here without being censored for the sake of the kids. I understand how insanely popular this game is, but I honestly don’t get the acceptance of it by many parents for young kids. You can shoot people in the head! It’s sugar coated violence. We’re trying to get this stuff under control and exposing young kids to this type of content seems to be contradictory to those ends.

I can certainly see how it would be a competitive sport, though. I just disagree that it’s for children. For adults, fine. JMO, though

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What is the supposed relevance of eSports to the workplace that this should be taught in college??? I still think his students were pranking him.

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topshot wrote:

What is the supposed relevance of eSports to the workplace that this should be taught in college?

eSports is a workplace in itself, not a subset of some other workplace.

Lugh.
~
Alienware Aurora R6; Win10 Home x64 1803; Office 365 x32
i7-7700; GeForce GTX 1060; 16GB DDR4 2400; 1TB SSD, 256GB SSD, 4TB HD

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eSports have existed for decades, eg they featured in big media like Time & Life in the 70s and were first televised early 80s. The first internet eSport was in the late 80s, but it was in the 90s that they really took off with the web and improving connectivity.

Of course, the explosion has continued. There were maybe 10 big international competitions at the start of this century, but today there are hundreds. The bigger ones have tens of thousands of fans physically present, with tens of millions of remote ‘attendees’.

Asia is the big leader in eSports due to its superior infrastructure, but the rest of the world is catching up, especially N America & Europe. Eg in USA the NBA & MLS have partnered with their comparable eSports leagues this decade, and many football clubs have done similarly in Europe.

It’s not all rosy, of course. Like many other demanding sports, performance drugs are an issue, and of course the competitive nature can lead to questionable gambling activity.

There are many types of games in eSports, probably hundreds by now—but only 40-50 which had/have professional competition. The 90s were led by fighting & shooter games, in the 00s Real Time Strategy was huge and laid the main foundation for how eSports operate today. As mentioned, there are sports games, also Pokemon and Tetris, and there’s even a card collecting game.

If I had investment money, a company which seemed to know what it’s doing in the eSports field would be a top priority. It will be massive soon, like how video games came out of nowhere to eclipse books, music & movies in a couple of decades.

Lugh.
~
Alienware Aurora R6; Win10 Home x64 1803; Office 365 x32
i7-7700; GeForce GTX 1060; 16GB DDR4 2400; 1TB SSD, 256GB SSD, 4TB HD

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