21.September.2014

Esports (Electronic Sports) is a relatively new thing in the gaming universe, yes competitions and events have been held for gamers for many years but gaming has never been called a sport. Until now. With games such as League Of Legends and DOTA 2 becoming so popular and practically out of nowhere the idea for annual competitions for those games was a no brainer. The game themselves are based around small teams of 5 or less playing against each other to complete a series of objectives and ultimately destroy the other teams base. With player v player games (PvP) being popular for online gaming with Call Of Duty holding similar events, the term Electronic Sports has been on the rise in recent years especially with the addition of Multiplayer Online Battle Arenas or MOBA's. A DOTA 2 tournement has just finished with the winning team taking home $10,000,000 (That's a lot 0's).

The outside world views gamers as "Fat, Lazy, Living in their mum's basement" but when you can play a game and earn that sort of money, you would be stupid to not give it a go after all gaming is supposed to be fun right? With this new look on the competitive gaming world, games go from casual fun with some friends to a very hardcore session resulting in anger, insults and eventually "Rage Quits". So if gaming is supposed to be fun why is it so many people find themselves shouting at the TV screen or computer monitor and eventually switching off their console mid game or just quitting usually with the words "I hate this (Insert swear word) Game" Is this the kind of feeling you want to get from games to end up expelling your hate for it? With so many players trying to be "Pro" or "MLGers" the gaming community is turning toxic (A lovely word to describe negativity i picked up from LoL) With every gamer wanting to be professional or make a living from gaming should we encourage this with such a huge pay out or should we cool it back a bit because you don't have to play a game online for too long before you're insulted. Remember i said gaming was fun?

Now let's look at the schedule of the teams who take part in these competitions professionally, for starters they all move into the same house normally, a Coach or Trainer will also live there. They will wake up, eat food and then train all day everyday. Behind the glamor of playing at tournaments and competitions there is a slightly less glamorous  scene with players "training" on their game most of the day especially days leading up to tournaments. They have to live through the negativity to make a living. Now this isn't all cases by a long shot but from what i have read it is many cases and as a professional gamer they probably see it all. But that huge pay out is just over that hill and all they have to do is climb it. Teams are changing players all the time kicking out players who are "Bringing us down" or "shouldn't be playing with us" in other words not to their standard. Which is probably heart crushing to be told "Yeah you're not that good of a player we want you out" everything you have worked for crushed in seconds. Remember how gaming was fun?

Now i know the thought of playing games for a living sounds fun and that it would be every gamers dream job but in reality it really isn't. Many game developers have quit because of how difficult, time consuming and mentally challenging it is. Watch Indie Game: Documentary and you will see exactly how some of those devs feel, a good majority have signs of depression purely from working in the game industry. I know some game testers and for every hours play they have to write their experience minute by minute, the fun just flies out the window and yes casual play testers who get beta access say "Oh this is great" but you aren't the ones going through every single minute of play finding bugs and exploits. How many Beta players have actually reported a bug to a company? I know some of you have but probably not many. Who is the first person to cry when that bug isn't fixed? The players. So again working in the game industry even as something as simple as a play tester is mentally draining and tears any joy from playing a game because you know "When i'm done here i have a 6 hour report to write" Remember how games were fun?

SO back onto the topic of Esports, yes Esports is great and promotes the gaming industry massively. The games featured on Esports population shoots up almost every year, but the negatives behind all that put a downer on things. For the players to be called Athletes (As recognized by the USA) is just a bit silly. When someone says "Athlete" who springs to mind? Go on say out the first name you come to when you hear Athlete. What? You mean it wasn't Walshy the DOTA2 player from America? Not even F0rest the Counter-Strike player from Sweden? See this is how Esports is evolving. Personally i think Athletes should stay as Athletes and Esports players given a new title because the day an Esports player gets mixed with another Athlete and ends up in the ring with Wladimir Klitschko (Heavyweight boxing champion) would be well interesting at the very best. But jokes aside Esports is good and all but in my very own personal opinion its bad is almost balanced with it's good and now every 12 year old with Call Of Duty thinks they're going to be the next world champion and it's just not realistic. Those winning Esports teams are more like robots than gamers they, play, eat, sleep, repeat. From a personal experience i played in a team for Rainbow Six and we were invited to a tournament in America but turned it down because yes it would have been great but we had to provide everything! From travel, food, accommodation and would only see any money if we finished in the top 4 and at the time we knew we sucked we were just a bunch of mates who played the same game. But there is many people who wouldn't have turned that down and maybe been soul crushed when they got there and faced the real "professional teams"

Overall i think Esports should keep doing what it's doing but make it more inviting for the players who don't want to play the same game every night, they should bring an open division where you can sign up and just play. I know MLG do this but for most you need a team and there is a schedule and most of us have work or School so we can't keep to schedules all the time. Maybe make it more open and for god's sake lower the prize fund! $10 million for being better at a game than some people is ridiculous it is encouraging negative behavior to players who aren't as good as you. Many times i have heard people call others insulting derogative names because they didn't finish as high on the scoreboard as others the gaming world is getting negative especially with online gaming and maybe the 12 year old Call Of Duty players should take a step back and maybe the 24/7 DOTA2/LoL players should say "Maybe the players on my team have jobs and school and can't play as much as me, so they wont be as good or familiar" instead of "F**KING NOOBS, You're so F**king S**T! stop playing the game" and the worst case ive heard was on Call Of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 in which i head a player no older than 14 say to the player at the bottom of our board "Oh my god you suck, "Go Die"..." Welcome to the gaming world kids. Remember how games are fun?

Thank you for reading if you disagree with anything let us know and if you agree then do the same. Make sure you check out the other articles on the site and head over to our YouTube and check out some videos.

~ Mike