The Viability of E-Sports: Part I

During the rise of video gaming in the late 1990s, a strange phenomenon began to occur. Certain games that placed a heightened sense of importance on both strategy and human reflex began to emerge at the forefront of "competitive" gaming. These games were played in LAN settings - short for Local Area Network - where gamers could hook up a multitude of computers together in order to participate in the same game while operating on different screens (done so opponents could not see what they were doing). Certain gamers began to develop into celebrities within their respective scenes, but they went largely unnoticed by anyone not directly and very intensely involved with that specific game.

Then games that used entirely separate servers were developed, gamers could play against opponents miles or even oceans away, and the gaming world changed forever.

It was decidedly less cataclysmic than this, but the metaphorical effect was just as large.

Games like Quake, Starcraft, Warcraft, and Halo became early contenders in the race to the biggest online game. Slowly, the players began to be referred to as "athletes", mostly because of the dexterity and mental discipline required to hone the skills required to be good as these games. Although North America had a slowly burgeoning scene, the same could not be said for China and South Korea. Here, E-Sports took shape much quicker, and on a scale that nobody would have predicted.

This is the crowd to watch the finals of a tournament in Starcraft: Brood War, a game that was soon considered South Korea's national sport. This is one of my favourite facts ever.

While Starcraft became an incredible success in South Korea, Warcraft 3 became just as popular in China. Here, these two games were analyzed with a precision that rivaled the kind of focus it takes to make a scientific breakthrough. Strategies were created, refined, and then countered. Players rose and fell swiftly, first those with good mechanics (essentially flawless play), then those with great in-game knowledge (the ability to make decisions on the fly and adapt), and then finally those who combined both of those into something dominant. Around 2001, Starcraft had its first hero. Lim Yo-Hwan, better known as BoxeR to his fans, became the undisputed best Starcraft player in the world, dominating tournaments and earning the nickname "The Emperor" in Korea.

This guy is in a long-term relationship with South Korea's most popular supermodel and has earned over $500,000 during his ten year career. He did it by playing video games. You can see why he's a bit of a hero to some gamers.

Although BoxeR was the first, soon there would be others. iloveoov, NaDa, saviOr, and then later Jaedong and Flash...all of these gamers would go on to become heroes in their home country and be signed to six-figure salaries to play for various gaming teams. Over in China, players like Moon became Warcraft 3 legends. E-Sports was officially viable, but the market was still very restricted. In North America and Europe, these games were also popular, but had nowhere near the same following and lacked in strategic development of the players. Although Quake garnered a rather large European following, it paled in comparison to what was happening in the Asian countries. That was until the introduction of the foreigner; a term originally used derogatorily but now used simply because it makes sense in the context of games like Starcraft and Warcraft. A foreigner was simply someone who wasn't from South Korea. That is how dominant the country was in these games; in the top tournaments, it was so rare to see someone who wasn't from South Korea or China competing that they were immediately labelled foreigner for their novelty, as well as their inevitable early exit at the hands of the superior country.

That was until players like Grubby and Day[9] came along. 

Tune in next week to see the second part of this article, where I trace the remaining history behind e-sports and delve into its current status and the questions that arise from it.