You’ve heard of video games; everyone knows about it. At least Candy Crush should ring a bell. You’ve heard of gamers, the people who play the aforementioned video games. But then, there is an elite group of gamers that stands a bit higher on the skill level of the average gamer; pro gamers. These “pro gamers” come into play in Competitive gaming, or Electronic sports. All this might sound like whatever kids are up to these days, but competitive gaming and pro gamers are a really interesting entity to look at.
To get to what E-sports are today, we must go all the way back to where it started, back to the year 1972. In 1972, the first official video game competition was held at Stanford University, where gamers were battling to gain the highest score in a game called Space Wars, with the prize for the winner being a lifetime subscription to The Rolling Stones magazine. The real gaming tournaments started in the 1980’s with video game producer Atari organizing a Space Invaders championship. This event attracted about 10,000 gamers and is widely recognized as the first major E-sports event. Throughout the 1980’s, E-sports continued to grow with other games like Pacman and Donkey Kong, with more players and pro-gamers all trying to one-up each other by getting the highest score.
Then in the year 1991, the real game changer entered the arena. 1991 was the year the game Street Fighter II came into arcades worldwide. And this time, players didn’t have to wait to take turns or try to break high scores of other players, because now, two players could play on the same screen in real time. That was real competition. This video game released the groundwork for the future of E-sports. As a result, other large-scale video game tournaments like EVO (Evolution championship series), a tournament specifically for the fighting game genre, came around in about 1996. This is also the time that internet access was becoming more accessible and this brought in massive changes to the world of video games.
With the advent of consumer internet, video games like Quake Online was introduced. And at that time, you could play this with your friends as long as no one was on the phone because dial-up internet was the worst. Quake Online went on to have the first ever online tournament in 1997, which eventually hosted the 16 finalists in a real-life, real-time match at the Electronic Entertainment Expo that same year, where spectators could watch the game online on their computers.
The E-sports environment was blooming. In the 2000’s, many other games like Halo and Counter Strike and Smash Bros had entered the competitive and online gaming scene, each with their own following and players who were pros at those games. t this point in time, pro gamers had virtually become celebrities and gaming tournaments were being shown on T.V. Major E-sports organizations were coming into existence, like MLG and Faze and Cloud9. Accordingly, the stakes on E-sports was rising as well. The trend that started by getting a lifetime subscription to The Rolling Stones magazine had evolved. In 2018, the prize pool for the DOTA championship was 25.5 million dollars. Some pro gamers like “Ninja” make almost 10 million dollars a year, and video game championships now sell out arenas.
But why should any of us care about any of these? Throughout the history of E-sports, there have been many amazing moments, many clutch plays and moments of just mind-blowing skill. It’s about the teamwork. It’s about the comebacks, when you’re the last person alive on the team and you pull that impossible shot securing the win. It’s about the prizes on stake. It’s about those special moments and the creativity. But most importantly it’s about the passion. The passion to do all that. The passion for what you like doing and doing it to the best you can, and your best being the best in the world. E-sports is an area that will continue to grow, and if you are passionate about it, maybe you could try it out too.
Rtr. Hasitha Nilaweera
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