A work-in-progress cut of All Work All Play, a documentary that focuses on the rise of e-sports and some of the best competitive teams in the world, just premiered at the TriBeCa Film Festival. All Work All Play profiles a few professional League of Legends teams as well as the programming director of the Electronic Sports League, Michal “Carmac” Blicharz. The film attempts to bring the viewer into the world of competitive gaming while constantly making comparisons to other professional sports by highlighting team changes, grandiose spectacles, intense crowds, and broadcasters.
I watch a lot of let’s plays on YouTube, and as far as e-sports go, I only watch the various League of Legends championships, most notably the European and North-American leagues. The idea of watching other people play games is easier to explain if you dig back into your gaming childhood, which for me, meant playing games on the NES, SNES, and PC with friends. A large portion of the time, you would not be the one playing; you’d be one of the people watching.
I have a feeling the surge in let’s plays and e-sports has its roots in that. There’s something relaxing – and in the case of e-sports, exhilarating – about watching other people play the games you love.
Gaming is a world of a thousand niches. They don’t need to “go mainstream.” And if they do, you can be sure that the people who are super into them will be just as annoying as those who obsess over sports.
I mean, do whatever makes you happy, but sports popularity is super regional, and so will competitive gaming be. The interests of people are becoming more fragmented all the time. There may not be any “mainstream” culture by the time competitive gaming will have “caught on.”
I’m not sure if I understood you correctly but in regard to regionality of sports I’ve found it pretty interesting that it’s still there in e-sports but on a different scale.
E-sports regions are divided mostly by hubs of scenes that grow independent because of culture and I guess we can’t forget about ping. For the biggest games (LoL, Dota2, CSGO, Starcraft) these are NA, EU, CIS, SEA, China and Korea.
People do cheer for e-sports teams based on the region they’re from. The thing is, they’re not rooting for a team from their hometown, area or even a country with rare exceptions, at least in the “west” as Asia is a whole different story. Being from the same region is usually enough.
I like to think that’s because there’s so few barriers between people now.
[edit] my avatar is 10 years old, I haven’t been to OSAlert comments for a looong time haha
Edited 2015-04-22 22:56 UTC
I recognised the avatar, not the username. Did you use the avatar somewhere else as well? Tweakers/GOT?
I don’t think I’ve used it anywhere else. Such avatars were all the rage on Planet Gnome back in the day. Now that I checked, they still are.
I’m just an average tech enthusiast.
Edited 2015-04-22 23:08 UTC
I’ll just refer to it as e-games. Sorry, I’m from the Hemingway school of though when it comes to sport.
Me, I’m from the “Nope” school when it comes to any sports; watching someone else play is boring, be it a physical sports or a virtual one. Still, I believe I’m an outlier and that e-sports is here to stay and will become a somewhat mainstream thing in a decade or so.
I can’t imagine anything more boring than watching someone else play a game. That goes double for computer games.
I wonder if virtual reality will change that.
At the end of this year virtual reality will be made available as consumer products. At least one of these products allows you to walk around in a room (Valve/HTC Vive).
Watching someone play video games is really no different from watching someone play football or baseball or chess or whatever. Not a big fan personally but I can see why people would watch it.
I can’t see it. Tried it a few times, and it’s excrutiatingly boring. Is this “thing” really that big? If so, I’m lost as to why…
That’s how I feel about most sports but a lot of other people like watching it.
Maybe it won’t be as big as football/soccer any time soon but there’s quite a few people who like watching other people play games.
Can’t even imagine playing a MOBA myself, the total amount of human potential wasted by wannabes in solo queue with LoL alone is astounding. However, I often enjoy watching championships and final stages of league playoffs, mostly due to top notch presentation and high intensity, making it accessible even for people without any experience in MOBAs.
It can be lots of fun to watch herds of 12 hours-per-day trained bipolar nerds battling while chugging beers.
As for LPs, I find the fact that I don’t have to master a complex game to enjoy somebody else with tons of experience play it through on the highest difficulty level – the most relaxing. Besides, there’s always good commentary and courtesy of skipping boring and repetitive stuff from a decent LPer.
You can say e-sports have truly gone mainstream if it extends to professional e-golfers.
You win the internet for today. Take a bow, sir!!
Electronic sports will go mainstream when a large percentage of the general public expresses an interest. It will likely take a generation, or so, for the population to grow into it.
Sports are main stream because football is basically the same game it was when your father was your age. This isn’t true about tournaments for video games. They regularly rotate out versions add new features complicate the game.
We need the genre’s to stable out so for a generation your watching basically the same game maybe with a few rule changes. For that to happen graphics need to reach a point where looking back 10 years doesn’t make you cringe. In short we have a long way to go.
I attend EVO myself, but I don’t expect it to grow until the platform has more stability and I don’t have to explain the mechanics to each individual who sits down with me because the game lineup changes each year.