Electronic Sports

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A crowd watches the Starcraft II finals at the 2012 Major League Gaming Columbus event.

Electronic sports (eSports) is the competitive play of video games. It is also referred to as competitive gaming, professional gaming, or cybersports.

Background

Multiplayer video games have been played competitively on a multitude of platforms. From the first arcade cabinets to current generation console systems such as Microsoft's Xbox 360 or Sony's Playstation 3, national and international tournaments have been hosted to showcase the best players as far back as 1980.

The eSports community as a whole is represented by a variety of organizations, players and personalities dedicated to single or multiple eSports titles. In the arcade days, there was even a U.S. National Video Game Team comprised of the best arcade game players. Modern organizations often have salaried players, much like actual sports teams, with several teams owning houses dedicated to player training and development. This has most commonly been seen in South Korea, often considered the mecca of eSports with the immense popularity of Starcraft: Brood War and Starcraft II, but is becoming more common with organizations in North America and Europe with the growing popularity of League of Legends.

Both teams and major events also draw corporate sponsors looking to sell and market their product to target audiences. Major companies such as Intel, Coca-Cola, and Valve have sponsored both monetary and product prizes in recent events. Such prizes have often amounted to millions of dollars per year, with the single largest prize to date totaling $2 million USD with the conclusion of the League of Legends Season 2 World Championship.

Games

The following are a partial list of games (sorted by genre) previously or currently being played as major eSport titles in events, tournaments and leagues around the world.

First-person shooters

• Call of Duty (series)
• Halo (series)
• Counter Strike (Valve series)
• Quake (Id Software series)
• Team Fortress 2

Real-time strategy

• Starcraft: Brood War and Starcraft II (Blizzard Entertainment series)
• League of Legends
• Defense of the Ancients and DoTA 2 (Blizzard Entertainment/Valve series)
• Warcraft III

Fighting

• Street Fighter (series)
• Mortal Kombat (series)
• Tekken (series)
• Marvel vs. Capcom (series)
• Super Smash Bros (series)
• Various Japanese 2D fighters (Blazblue, King of Fighters series, Persona4Arena)

Sports

• FIFA (Soccer (20th Century) series)
• NCAA Football (Video Game Series)

Racing

• Trackmania (series)

Other

• Guitar Hero (series)
• World of Warcraft

Events and leagues

A panorama of the crowd at the 2012 Intel Extreme Masters event in Cologne, Germany.

There are several international large-scale annual events showcasing multiple eSport titles, including Major League Gaming, Intel Extreme Masters, Dreamhack LAN, Evolution Championship Series, the Electronic Sports World Cup, and World Cyber Games. The chosen titles often vary on an annual basis, and are either at the discretion of the organizers or voted on by the public.

eSports also contains numerous online competitive leagues and ladders dedicated to eSport titles. These range from amateur leagues to semi-professional leagues and online qualifiers for places in live events.

Media coverage

eSports is primarily covered via the internet, where multiple online news outlets and communities report on the latest results, events, games and teams. There have also been appearances of eSports on major networks, with several countries also have television shows dedicated to eSports. Online viewership comes primarily from online streaming websites. Viewership has risen dramatically in recent years, with a recent Major League Gaming event drawing in 4.7 million viewers.

Controversy

Game modification

See: Cheating in Videogames

References

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