Persuasive

Sport, an activity involving physical exertion and skill in which an individual or team competes against another or others for entertainment. This has been the same definition for years, with little to no revision. And for a while, no revision was necessary. Now however, with the uprising of E-Sports, people have started to question whether they are real sports.

Let's look into the main similarities. Traditional sports, usually have a full roster of people, with backups. Look at basketball. They can have a maximum team capacity of 12 people. This applies to the 5 players playing at all times, and some reserves.

E-Sports also has a similar situation. With CS:GO, or Counter-Strike: Global Offensive, there are 5 players on each team, resulting in 10 players in a match at a given time. There are also reserve players in case of some kind of emergency.

Traditional Sports teams have a coach and a manager. People who manage the background politics of teams.

E-Sports has the same thing. They have a coach and manager to sign them up for certain tourneys, and they also have an in-game coach, to decide what plays they should do and when.

Traditional Sports players have set aside training and scrimmages to further their skills, every day. Sometimes for 8-10 hours per day.

E-Sports players train with their teammates every single day, sometimes for 8-12 to even 14 hours per day. Keeping up with the meta of the game they are playing. A lot of teamwork is necessary to play these games at a competitive level.

There are many misconceptions about gamers, and the gaming profession as a whole. "Live in their mom's basement" or "completely overweight". These are the sorts of things that are said about gamers every day. But when you look at some of the top teams, they go to the gym every day and are in peak physical condition.

Often, these teams live together in their own house together, go to the gym together, and do everyday activities with each other. This furthers the bond that teammates have with each other, and their gameplay reflects it.

With all these similarities, one could argue that E-Sports is a sport. Technically, by the very definition of the word, sport. It is not a sport. But in the updated sense and how E-Sports are treated right now, they don't need to be called sports. They are in their own genre of entertainment that they run all on their own. The numbers that E-Sports pulls in every single day, are absolutely undeniable.

E-Sports are some of the fastest growing networks of entertainment in the world, and they are growing more everyday. So it is better to accept the future, than be left in the past.

Update #2

Shorter update this time. This one is supposed to be a reflection of this whole process, and how the blog is progressing. I am sitting here trying to think of what this prompt really wants out of me, but I am stuck. Looking over, it says to think about what I can do differently and what I might need to change? But this is a sort of different project, and a lot of these questions do not relate in an easy way to my project.


This project isn't something I can easily reflect upon, as there is little to no interaction I have with others in my project. I do not have a mentor, and I have little collaboration with others on this. This makes it very difficult to decide what I am doing right, or wrong. So I am just going to comment on what I plan to do for the finished product.


For the end product, I am going to be making a video that introduces E-Sports to people who do not know much about it, and may have not read my blog. This video will show the massively growing popularity of online video gaming, and how it changes peoples' lives. I will show the different games that I play myself, and what aspects of these games makes them different than others and how they can be played competitively for entertainment purposes. I will try to explain why that this ever growing phenomenon even exists; so that people who never knew something like this existed, will be able to understand the appeal of it.

Update #1

Back again with another post. For this update, normally I would conduct an interview with a "mentor" but with a subject like this, mentors are an odd commodity. So for this I am going to use myself as a mentor, and give details about how I learned about E-Sports, what games I've played and how long I've played them.

When and how did you learn about E-Sports?

Well, I used to play a lot of Call of Duty and whenever I would play, I would always play to win. This isn't necessarily E-Sports, but its the mentality of going into a game, and trying to beat others in strategy, reaction time, and sometimes just luck. People might not realize how much raw strategy goes into playing video games at a competitive level. Think of it like Chess: you need to predict where your opponent is going, how to counter it, and how to confront the situation without losing too many of your "pieces". Pieces in this case being your lives, in a game like Call of Duty.

When the game Call of Duty: Black Ops 2 came out, there was a mode called League Play. This was a pseudo- E-sports game mode that pitted 4 players against 4 players. If you won a lot of times in a row, you got placed in a global rank, that showed you how you lined up against the top players in the world. My team and I got placed as the 206th best team in the game. Now this number might not seem that much, but out of the thousands of people that make teams for this, it was quite an accomplishment for me at the time.

I wanted to get better, so I used the internet to find out how to further my skill at the game, and I stumbled upon a few websites, one being MajorLeagueGaming.com. This website opened my eyes to the world of competitive Call of Duty, and while I didn't go on to compete in many tournaments, but it did introduce an entirely new front for everyday entertainment.

What games have you played Competitively?

Mostly Call of Duty, I spend a lot of time growing up playing this title, and any games that came out with Call of Duty in the title, I bought and played.

League of Legends, while I didn't play this very much, it introduced an entire new genre of gaming.

Most recently, Counter-Strike: Global Offensive. This is one of the most popular E-Sports games of all time, and I spent a lot of time trying to get better at it.

Other than those, I've played other games at a somewhat competitive level: Destiny and Pokemon to name a couple.

How do I get into E-Sports?

First, find a game that has a competitive audience, and that you play/want to play. To find this, a website that works well is Twitch.tv which is a video game streaming website that many tournaments for games are played on. As soon as you find a game you want to get into, read everything you can about it and just spend time playing and learning the game. Learn the way people are playing the game right now and how you can do things better, and figure out what you need to do to be in the top percentile. You need to find a team. There is only so much one person can do and you cannot beat everyone with just yourself. The next step is to sign up for tournaments on MajorLeagueGaming.com and see how you match up against others. What comes next is up to you, if you get to the point where you are winning consistently, look for larger tournaments and some will have money prize pools.



I will be back with another update next week.

Intro

With the latest generation being on the front lines of the technological revolution, more and more technological advances have been made in every aspect of life. Whether it be lifelike robots, or major steps taken in the medical field to enhance the way we live our lives, we are nowhere near finished innovating the world as we know it.


Sports. Sports have been around for centuries, being defined as "an activity involving physical exertion and skill in which an individual or team competes against another or others for entertainment." This definition of a sport has held its own over the years, but as we are innovating other aspects of our lives, sports are not untouched. E-Sports, are sports played exclusively over online video games, with almost no physical ability necessary. You can see how this is contradictory to the current definition of 'sport' and some say that the arrival of E-Sports take away from the successes of "real" sports, with "real" athletes. However, it would appear as if these people are in the minority. With millions of people tuning in to their favorite E-Sports teams each day, E-Sports is one of the fastest growing sports in the world. Yes, I did use the word 'sport' to describe this new phenomenon, because that is exactly what it is.


Most professional E-Sport teams have a coach, practice every single day to hone their ability, and come up with strategies to defeat other teams. With this in mind, it is not difficult to see the parallels between sports and E-Sports, only separated by the generational difference. With the line between sport and E-Sport becoming more and more blurred each year, it is not reaching too far to state that being a competent player in video games, is a valuable skill.


I will be working alone, and spending the next few weeks explaining what qualities make a good player, and show the people that may not know much about E-Sports, what they could be missing. This project is directed at the people who wish to be better at certain games, or that do not know anything about the world of E-Sports. At the end of my time with this project, I will have a video to present on the topic, summing up everything I've written about on here. I will launch this project almost immediately, and I will make the video once I have said everything I have to say on the topic.


I will be talking about a few different games, what makes them different, and how to be a skilled player in each.