Institute For The Future

eSports: The Future of Entertainment?

On the weekend of July 30th, 2011, 20,000 spectators turned up for an event held in the Anaheim Convention Center.  This was no sporting event, at least by conventional definition.  Those 20,000 spectators were in attendance to watch other people play video games.  

Since 2010, eSports, also known as competitive videogaming, has experienced record growth in the United States.  Companies like Major League Gaming hold huge, week-end long competitions in major cities.  While the tournaments are watched live, orders of magnitude more watch the events streamed online through sites like TwitchTV.  Top prizes at these tournaments regularly exceed $10,000.  Professional gamers build a following, often as members of well-sponsored teams.  

Driven by popular titles like Starcraft II and League of Legends, the eSports industry is still young in the United States. Its audience is predicted to double every 2 years for the next decade, according to Michael Pachter, an analyst at Wedbush Morgan Securities.

Why does this matter?At first hand, professional video gaming seems novel and intriguing as a sub-culture.  Its growth has spawned a range of fascinating cultural artifacts, including ‘barcrafts’- a tradition of watching Starcraft II tournaments on the big screen in a bar.  But the projected growth indicates that, within a decade, eSports will rival traditional sports in popularity.Imagine a world where every family gets together on the first Sunday in February to watch the big game- A Starcraft II competition.  This seems ludicrous.  After all, adults aren’t as interested in video games as children, and why would anybody want to watch someone else play videogames anyway?

The games people play growing up define what entertainment experiences they deem ‘normal’.  In his analysis of the eSports market, Michael Pachter identifies an expanding culture of videogaming as a driving force that enables youth to see eSports as ‘legitimate culture’, which in turn drives its market expansion.  Decades ago, kids grew up playing sports.  They were surrounded by sporting institutions, from professional leagues seen live or on TV to local neighborhood baseball fields.  But in the past two decades, the nature of youth entertainment has drastically changed.  Now, 91% of kids aged 2-17 play video games.  To them, it might seem more ‘normal’ to watch competitive video gaming than to watch people stand in a field physically hitting and throwing things.

As these youth age, their definition of legitimate culture replaces what came before them.  And as for why anybody would want to watch other people play videogames, the answer is just as simple.  While traditional sports are limited by design constraints (you can’t give all the players jetpacks, for example), videogames are limitless.  Game developers can and are literally designing games from the bottom up with an audience in mind; Starcraft II being a perfect example.  In order to be easy to watch- not play- the designers simplified the graphics so audience members can easily see what’s happening on-screen.  In many ways, what theatrical plays are to movies, conventional sports are to eSports.  Also noteworthy is the possibility for proprietary ownership over an entire sport.  For example, in football, no company ‘owns’ football.  Some companies make footballs, the NFL runs the national football league, but anybody can play football without directly paying either entity.  In eSports, a successfully crafted game that becomes popular is, essentially, a monopoly.  Blizzard owns Starcraft II, and if you want to play the game, you have to buy it.  The notion of successful eSports as cashcows might make them appealing enough to develop that the industry moves forward even faster than predicted.