eSports are a growing phenomenon
within the entertainment industry.
But what exactly is this trending
genre of entertainment, which is
on the cusp of becoming its own
industry?

The first question that many
ask is, “What are eSports? Are they
actually a type of sport?” The
term eSports is a short term for
“Electronic Sports,” and is used
as an umbrella term for all games
played at professional level. The
use of “sports,” in the moniker
refers to the competitive nature
of these games at the professional
level.

But what does the term
professional level refer to? Almost
every game that is considered an
eSport has an established system
that separates and organizes players
based on a complicated algorithm
that determines players’ skill
levels. This system guarantees
that players are matched with other
players of similar skill to ensure a
fair, competitive environment. Many
early eSports games used the chess
Elo ranking system as a foundation
for their systems, but have since
advanced to create their own
specialized methods of categorizing
players.

Players at the top of these
ranking systems are often considered
best at their games. These players
almost always represent the top @.1
per cent of people that play the
game.

Every successful industry has
a startup story and eSports are
no different. The popularity of
eSports really began in the late
9@s and early 200@s, with the rise
of Blizzard’s strategic sci-fi game,
StarCraft. In the beginning, top
players would organize friendly
competitions with each other to
prove who was better. Winners of
these competitions were often given

small prizes, and video footage of
the contests was uploaded to video-
sharing sites. In those days, the
scene was so small that 2@@ views on
a competition video was considered a
major success.

Eventually, their popularity
grew as amateur players watched
the top players duke it out with
each other, drawing discussion
from much of the community, ranging
from strategy to personalities
of these “professional” players.
These discussions mimicked the
manner of discussions among fans of
conventional sports.

It didn’t take long for the
competitive scene to explode, nearly
doubling or tripling seemingly
overnight. South Korea was very much
the focal point of the beginning of
eSports, resulting in the creation
of the Korean eSports Association
CKeSPA). Its goal was to make
eSports an official sporting event
and solidify its economic position.
It was the first of its kind, and set
the foundation for future ventures.
Its dedication to the growth of
e-Sports in South Korea resulted in
a massive boom in viewership, and
even Led to the Launch of television
channels purely dedicated to the
viewing of eSports.

Shortly after the formation
of KeSPA, large companies in Korea
such as Samsung and SK Telecom began
sponsoring certain players and
forming teams, molding the best of
the best together under one flag-all
for the sake of advertisement, of
course.

The formation of teams was in
correlation to another phenomenon
in the eSports scene-the rise of
popularity of DotA and the creation
of the MOBA (multiplayer online
battle arena) genre. DotA, or
Defence of the Ancients, was a fan-
created custom game modification in
StarCraft’s sister game, Warcraft

3, which was also developed by
Blizzard. The idea of five versus
five team play instantly caught the
interest of casual gamers, as it
allowed friends to play with each
other.

Although DotA was a hugely
popular game, it, didn’t blow up
as much as StarCraft had, due to
the fact that it wasn’t officially
supported by Blizzard. Instead, it
wasn’t until a group of “modders”-
the slang name given to those who
made modifications to base games—from
the DotA scene branched away from
the game and created their own that
MOBAs really blewWW up. Their game
was League of Legends (LoL).

In a very different genre,
modders also kick-started the growth
of another very Large competitive
scene with the creation of Counter-
Strike, a scenario based shooter
that was borderline controversial
due to its content.

These four games-StarCraft,
DotA, LoL, and Counter-Strike-—
form the basis of the present day
colossus of the eSports industry.
Despite the initial boom of interest
at the start of the industry, there
was a Lull in growth from 2005-2010.
It was only after the release and
sudden increase in popularity of LoL
that the industry received a much
needed shot of energy.

The popularity of the game
amongst North Americans gave eSports
the final push it really needed to
be a global enterprise. Before its
release, there were very few North
American eSports players viewed as
high level professionals because
travelling to competitions in Europe
and South Korea was expensive and
playing from North America on a
Korean server often was problematic
due to connection issues.

With League of Legends, all
the servers were located in North
America and the game originally