Are Esports Sports?

The debate has raged on for years now about the idea of esports being synonymous with traditional sports, but is this a debate we even need to have? I owe who I am today to playing sports when I was younger. I know that without participating in Powerchair Football (Powersoccer), I likely would have become depressed and isolated in a world that was far too scary for a kid with a physical disability. Now that I’m an adult, I could say the same about esports. My friends and opportunities have been directly linked to my passion for esports as of late, and I find it to be an irreplaceable part of who I am now. With that said, I’d like to talk about some of the arguments that we see in the debate about sports and esports.

Firstly the Oxford Dictionary defines a sport as “an activity involving physical exertion and skill in which an individual or team competes against another or others for entertainment.” This is the root of the argument around the silly idea that sports have to be about physical attributes like strength or agility. I don’t see it say anywhere that you have to play outdoors or be physically fit. The two determining factors are “physical exertion” and “skill,” but what is “physical exertion”? Oxford Dictionary defines physical as “relating to the body as opposed to the mind” and exertion as “physical or mental effort.” In other words, you’re using your body and putting an effort into what you’re doing. I suppose that it’s a bit implied that you should feel tired after performing this activity since you’re putting a great deal of effort into it. With that said, esports definitely falls within this definition because of the physical energy necessary to have high APMs at a competitive level. It may be less physical than football or hockey but that isn’t what defines a sport. If level of physicality was the determining factor of what is a sport then the sport that changed my life, Powerchair Football, isn’t a sport by those standards.

The next argument that really bothers me is the notion of an esports athletes being “nerds.” I’m sure most that say this don’t really mean it like this, but this type of discrimination is no different than being sexist or racist. We live in a world where our social culture is changing constantly, and as such, we always have subgroups that feel the brunt of discrimination and persecution. In our day and age, we’ve tried to change our ways and huge steps forward have been made with regards to equality, but we still aren’t there yet. Even our greatest global event, the Olympics, has been surrounded by controversy about Russia’s laws towards gays and lesbians. This type of global dilemma is no different than esports being shunned because it’s a bunch of “nerds.” Everytime I hear this comment made it outrages me because it reminds me that we still live in a world where women are considered inferior and people with disabilities are invalids. The fact that people don’t take the time to learn and understand one another is the reason that when I go outside in public people stare. It’s the fact that the glass ceiling for women still exists, and it’s the fact that esports is ridiculed by mainstream personality.

With those pet peeves of mine aside, I’d like to tell you my definition of what a sport is and how esports fits into my definition.

Sport: an activity involving physical or mental exertion and skill in which an individual or team competes against another or others for entertainment.

I added two words to act as clarification, but those two words are so incredibly powerful. By allowing for the competition to occur on a mental level then we’re removing the shackles that lead to discrimination and inequality. The notion of sports should be more aligned with the ideals of the Olympic movement which states:

The practice of sport is a human right. Every individual must have the possibility of practising sport, without discrimination of any kind and in the Olympic spirit, which requires mutual understanding with a spirit of friendship, solidarity and fair play (http://www.olympic.org/Documents/olympic_charter_en.pdf).

Sports are about friendship, community, fairplay, and equality. They are not about who can kick the hardests or throw the furthest. Those activities come secondary to the spirit of competition and sportsmanship, which esports has in spades.

Esports and Equality: Gamers giving the world a real lesson in how to behave

In a world still filled with injustices and inequalities, I believe that, like traditional sports, esports bridges the barriers of race, sex and physical abilities that still plague the world. I realize that this is quite a bold statement to make given the behaviour of an average internet user can be quite unpleasant, but I believe that esports is heading in the right direction to help improve online communities. The basis of my opinion is centered primarily in two events, my online fundraising and a Las Vegas trip, that I've been involved in.

Last year, a few friends of mine made comments about how it would be cool for people to see how I play because of how unique it is. They were of the opinion that I could get quite a lot of viewers if I did it, and so, I decided that I would try it out. I decided that instead of streaming for myself, I would try to do an online fundraiser to help Muscular Dystrophy Canada provide support for kids and adults who have neuromuscular conditions. Additionally, I wanted to raise awareness for disabled gamers since I knew quite a few. While I knew this fundraiser was going to be successful no matter what, I was astonished by the publicity and support I received from the online communities. In fact, a number of big named professional players from many games promoted my stream, and in part, it was so successful thanks to the support from the esports community. The second event that helps form my opinion is from meeting people involved in esports.

Thanks to my fundraising and streaming, I've been able to meet a number of awesome gamers, and my recent trip to Las Vegas, firmly instilled my faith in esports as a tool for bringing people together. I went to Las Vegas for IPL6, but unfortunately, the event was cancelled. Due to a number of factors, I decided that I would still go on the trip and enjoy myself. A big part of my trip was getting to meet and hang with Optimus Tom, MissTeak, and Glyceroll. I wasn't really sure what to expect when I met up with them because as a guy with a disability, I've seen people reaction or handle it quite differently. Most people at first are a bit careful and stand off-ish till they get used to the wheelchair and such, but this wasn't the case when I met up with these 3. Honestly, I was shocked by how normal they acted around me from the very start. Typically, a person is only this comfortable from the start if they have prior experience with wheelchairs and such, so I was pleasantly surprised. To be quite honest, their acceptance and understanding is what made the weekend just that much more enjoyable. This kind of reaction is exactly the kind of bridging barriers that I'm talking about, and I believe that esports is a huge part of why this is possible.

The Barriers of Esports

I've been following Esport for years now, and it has been grown exponentially in the last year due to the growth of online streaming sites like Twitch TV and Own3d TV, and the large investment of capital from game companies like Riot Games. Despite the growth, I've noticed a few barriers for the current esport games and future ones.


Scope Creep


The first issue I noticed with the development of an esport for various online games is the concept of Scope Creep. Scope Creep is a term used by project managers that basically says that the project's scope has slowly grown too large. Essentially, the project evolves past what the company can manage to develop without compromising the quality of the product/service.

This is seen a lot in the gaming industry because advancements in technology are becoming so rapid and competitive that every new game needs to innovate to succeed. This is difficult for gaming producers and publishers because they have a market scope that is quite large. For example, MMORPGs are divided into a wide variety of segments such as casual, elitist, pve, pvp, etc. While games like World of Warcraft have been successful for years in targeting multiple segments, they fell short in the esport domain (competitive pvp) because they were restricted by the other market segment's demands. This is generally seen by the issues with balancing pve dps and pvp dps for games in the MMORPG genre.

The problem of Scope Creep isn’t isolated to the MMORPG genre. Developers of most games are trying to be the jack-of-all-trades instead of mastering one. What does this have to do with esports? Well, if there are no developers who wish to be the masters of competitive pvp then the games we use to showcase the esports scene will always be somewhat lackluster. Since I primarily play League of Legends and its growth in the esports scene has been incredible, I’ll be looking at the concept of Scope Creep as it applies to League of Legends.

Riot Games, the creators of League of Legends, has a philosophy that pushes them to the goal of being “the most player-focused game company in the world” (http://www.riotgames.com/about). While I absolutely love this goal, I can’t help but notice the difficulty in accomplishing such it since every player will want something different. Riot has chosen to focus on a few primary areas to achieve this goal such as esports, customer service, steady champion updates, steady gameplay balancing, improving player behavior, and quality of life improvements. With all of these focal points in mind, is Riot falling into the Scope Creep pitfall? I’d like to argue that they have found a good balance with the exception of one area. The area I’m thinking of is in fact esports. I know what you’re all thinking, “But Keith, they’ve had a record breaking year with regards to esports success!” You’d be right in thinking this, but I’m looking towards the future. I’m thinking of the longevity of the game and esports as a whole.

Let’s take a step back and consider traditional sports for a moment. Most sports you watch on television have been around for eons, and their gameplay has become very standardized in comparison to most esports who have new patches that can change the game dynamic drastically. This change in gameplay leads to a volatile environment for the professional scene that some would argue keeps it exciting. I would agree but that’s because I keep up with the changes. At the current rate of change I believe that if I were to stop following the game for a few months, it would be very difficult to start watching again and enjoy it to the same extent as I do now. I realize that my argument here is very biased, but let me try to give a better analogy. It’s 5-10 years from now, and I’ve drifted away from watching League of Legends tournaments, but my nephew is at the age where he’s starting to get interested in it. If we were watching hockey or football together, I could explain the game to him, despite me rarely following the games, but I wouldn’t be able to properly explain an esports game because of the constant changes shifting the meta. This is where Scope Creep comes in. Riot wants to please its playerbase by continually changing/adding to the game, but this undermines their goals of longevity and growth in esports. In fact, I would argue that this is an issue every potential esport game faces.

Am I suggesting that esports and League of Legends is destined to fail?

This is far from my point. I’d wager that sports like hockey and football started out just as volatile as esports are now. My point is simply that as players we can’t have everything. If we want League of Legends to become a permanent sport and not just a fad then Riot Games may want to focus their scope and standardize the game after they feel that they’ve reached the quality of traditional sports. This could be done by better utilizing their tournament realm since it could have far fewer updates and gameplay changes, but this creates a disparity between the game that amateurs play and the one that professionals play, which is a very bad directions to go towards since one of the underlining psychological principles behind fandom is relating to the professional you admire. It’s hard to relate with someone who plays essentially a different game.

My suggested solution (for League of Legends) for the above issue is quite drastic and may be horrible to do currently, but one day, it may be a suitable direction. My solution would be to halt all gameplay changes to Summoner’s Rift except balancing and yearly updates. I would adopt a similar model as item development by introducing new champions/changes into the other game maps and at the beginning of each season consider which champions/changes should transition to Summoner’s Rift.


Visibility


A huge problem faced by the esports scene is the ability to attract more viewers. This issue is based around two problems with visibility. First, you only hear about esports if you're already a gamer. This vastly limits the growth potential of esports, and it could be very detrimental in the future as companies are deciding whether it is worth it to put money into developing the esports scene. There is really no easy solution to this, but I'd like to see more buzz generated for the larger tournaments outside of the online domain. It is true that a majority of your target market is online, but it is important for esports to have a presence away from the internet so that people become aware of it.

The second visibility issue is with regards to gameplay. I've read a number of blogs and articles that go over what makes a game successful as an esport, and one of the biggest points they make is that it needs to be easy to understand. This means that the objectives, strategies, and risk vs reward decisions should be apparent to a brand new spectator. This issue is evident in League of Legends because it is hard for a new viewer, who has never played, to understand the champions and their roles. All of us players have no issue understanding things like the differences between various ap mids, but for a new player or someone who just happened to check out a tournament broadcast they would have no clue. While the casters do help with this issue, I find that they focus a lot more on the higher thought process involved in the gameplay and not the basics.

My suggested solution for this involves the creation of a new viewer stream that has casters explain the basic fundamentals of the game that the general audience would find tedious. Moreover, educational broadcasts and pre/post game shows that help delve deeper into the gameplay and decision making of professionals. These are not new concepts and are done for regular sports, so I believe they would be a welcome addition to tournament content.


Please post your thoughts and questions below! I’m going to continue delving into the realm of esports and League of Legends by trying to make use of my business degree.