In a move that shocked a fair amount of people last year, ESPN, the sports network famous for sports, decided that they would broadcast Valve’s The International 4, a Dota 2 tournament with a prize pool of over $11 million USD. Sure, it was on ESPN3, a channel that contains such highlights as ‘the same football game you’ve watched live, but with different camera angles’, but it was not so much the esteem of the channel rather than it was the precedent of the event. Dota 2 made it to ESPN. The Grand Finals preview made it to ESPN’s main cable network. Esports in the West are becoming mainstream.
The idea of the esport is not a new one, having been a pretty consistent concept since games like 1998’s Starcraft: Brood War, but the ESPN coverage of The International 4 represents one of the few times that traditional, English-oriented media has actually taken the concept of the ‘esport’ seriously enough to give it air time. In our media sphere we are yet to catch up with the idea of there being video game professionals that treat the games they play seriously, in the same manner as footballers or rugby players or lacrosse enthusiasts. For the more famous examples of video game virtuosity the majority of internet dwellers have seen things like Evo Moment 37, the famous video clip where Japan’s Daigo Umehara beats America’s Justin Wong in Street Fighter 3: Third Strike, and you would think that the view count alone would speak to the popularity of this idea of esports, this idea of competitive video game playing for money and fame. However one can look at the reaction of traditional sports fans on twitter at the time of The International 4 airing on ESPN2 to see that general, mainstream acceptance might not actually be the case. http://imgur.com/QeGJwmU
Almost every one of the Twitter comments about ESPN2’s International coverage is about reinforcing the idea that video games are not a ‘normal’ competitive past-time – either to play or to watch. As the first charming comment puts it, “espn2 is showing professional video games. congratulations, you found something worse than poker and women’s basketball”. There are plenty of others about the shape of the competitors, athleticism in general, the size of the person who proposed on stage etc., all in traditional internet snark fashion, preying mean-spiritedly on the achievements, or perceived lack thereof, of the people on stage. This coverage, despite the backlash, despite the hate and the continued pervasiveness of traditional ‘gamer’ stereotypes, is still, I believe, ultimately a good thing.
Esports being aired on traditional media can only help to demystify what is already an incredibly popular, talked about thing. League of Legends, for example, hails itself as the most popular game on the planet, regularly crushing every other game’s views on streaming sites like Twitch.tv. Street Fighter and it’s fighting game contemporaries have international tournaments in Vegas. Starcraft, Pokemon, Halo, Quake (well, not any more), CoD, Counter Strike… all these games have dedicated fan-bases for the competitive scene that deserve the chance that mainstream media can give them to not feel alienated because they like watching people play video games competitively. These games probably don’t need the viewer numbers from ESPN, they already get more than enough on Twitch, but airing events like The International on these traditional channels can only help representations of professional gamers and the people who watch them and appreciate their skill and effort. It isn’t about the sweaty neckbeard in the basement, these are sponsored players, representing brands on a competitive, community funded stage of up to $11 million USD playing the game that they love and were willing to dedicate their lives to getting good at, and it is high time that traditional media helped in breaking down the Western stigma around both participating in and watching these events.
http://www.dailydot.com/esports/the-international-on-espn/
Videogames: Theory and Culture Class Blog 2015 