The concept of competition has existed as long as humanity knew how to do anything well. There would always be someone who felt like they could do it better. People wanted to build houses taller, be the strongest ruler, or simply be the fastest runner. However, competition has evolved greatly beyond just feats of physical ability or competitions of status and recognition. In today's ever-changing world, a new competition has risen to mainstream popularity and, in some countries, overshadow traditional sports. This new phenomenon is e-sports, or electronic sports.
Simply put, e-sports is competitive video gaming. There are many video games that are made for competitive online play, so various companies have embraced the idea of creating teams of the best players and competing for a prize pool of money. Video games have always encouraged competition with the only difference being that the competition itself is on a screen instead of a field. The first people to take advantage of this was Major League Gaming, or MLG, which was founded in 2002. MLG saw the local tournaments that were happening over the United States and decided to bring it to a national audience, broadcasting the first televised video gaming tournament in the United States. The game on broadcast was Halo 2, a competitive first-person shooter genre game developed by Bungie where two teams would compete to complete a similar objective, such as capture the flag or king of the hill. The game was made for online competitive play, so it was easy to suppose that people could get good enough to play competitively for prize money, and it took MLG to broadcast it on a nationwide scale. Once people realized that this was a good idea, investors and innovators created teams such as OpTic Gaming, Cloud9, and FaZe Clan, all of which are still very well established professional e-sports teams with a variety of games represented by their players.
Pictured: League of Legends Worlds arena.
At first, e-sports was met with confusion and laughter. Many people criticized people who became professional e-sports players, laughing at their choice to play video games for a living and claiming that it was a waste of time. In e-sports' early years, there was reason to think so, as there was not a lot of interest in the scene in its early stages. However, with releases of new games since Halo 2 such as League of Legends, Overwatch, Call of Duty, and Rocket League, e-sports have new competitive games with a variety of genres for every video game fan. E-sports have also gained a massive audience, with the 2018 League of Legends World Championship gaining a peak of 200 million viewers worldwide, surpassing that of the Super Bowl. E-sports is adapting fast, and it cannot be ignored or laughed away any more. People make millions of dollars from tournaments, such as Kyle "Bugha" Giersdorf, who won 3 million dollars from the Fortnite World Cup this year. It is a growing industry with people who can make sustainable income and win massive prize money, hosting an audience who is invested in the games, and will be a major staple of worldwide culture for years to come.
https://esportsbetting.ninja/esports-wiki/esports-history-major-league-gaming-mlg-organization/
https://www.halowaypoint.com/en-us/games/halo-2
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2018_League_of_Legends_World_Championship
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