Introduction:
Electronic sports, abbreviated e-sports or eSports, is used as a general term to describe the play of video games competitively. Other terms include competitive gaming, cybersports, cyber athletics (used by the CPL) and V-Sports (used by the GGL)
These games which are considered electronic sports normally belong to the first-person shooter, real-time strategy, or sports game genres. They are played competitively at both amateur and professional levels. Professional levels are played competitively at the professional league and tournament.
Over the Internet
The easiest way to play an electronic sports match is over the Internet. General online play is subject to the lessened ability to detect cheating and the more unpredictable network latency not being the ideal environment for high level competition; however, due to its convenience, even players who are used to LAN games use Internet games for fun and practice.
Usually teams, or clans as they are called; will need to contact each other prior to matches. Internet Relay Chat (IRC) is very popular for doing this due to the ability for each clan, league, or other gaming related organisation to set up its own chat channel on the network, making them easy to find. IRC has become so popular among gamers that the largest IRC network is QuakeNet, a network originally created for players of the first-person shooter Quake and now used by players of many different games. The matches are then carried out on the server according to the rules of the leagues the teams are familiar with.
Popular online leagues include the Canadian league, Pro Gaming League, along with Cyberathlete Amateur League, Cyber Evolution (CEVO), Major League Gaming, ClanBase, and the Electronic Sports League.
The largest online gaming network on the PC is Battle.net, used to play Warcraft and StarCraft (two of the three oldest and biggest competitive games with Counter-Strike) online. Having over 12 million active users with an average of 200,000 online at any given moment with peaks up to 400,000.
This service provided by Blizzard Entertainment is especially important for Warcraft III for which it features integrated ladders and advanced anti-cheating. The best of the one-one ladders compete in seasons stretching over a period of months, after which the top finishers gather at offline events to compete for a seasonal championship and tens of thousands of dollars in prize money.
The largest online gaming network on consoles is Xbox Live, with over 17 million subscribers.
Over a local area network
Playing over a LAN has a number of advantages: the network conditions are much better suited to playing computer games than on the Internet, and when the competitors are in the same building it is a lot harder to cheat without someone knowing (at professional events administrators will normally be present to ensure fair play). It is also a much more social atmosphere. Due to the advantages of LAN many gamers organize LAN parties or visit LAN centres and major tournaments are always conducted over LANs.
Electronic sports history
Arcade era
Video games have been played competitively since their inception. Twin Galaxies is known for keeping track of high scores on many classic arcade games, and they created the U.S. National Video Game Team in 1983. The team ran a number of competitions, including the 1987 Video Game Masters Tournament for Guinness World Records.
Nintendo held their World Championships in 1990, touring across the United States, with the finals in Universal City Studios, California. There were 90 finalists, and the champions were Jeff Hanson (11 & under), Thor Aackerlund (12–17), and Paul White (18 & over). The Nintendo championships are notable for the gold cartridges distributed to all of the finalists, which now fetch high prices on eBay.
Nintendo held a 2nd World Championships in 1994 for the Super Nintendo Entertainment System (SNES) called the Nintendo PowerFest '94. There were 132 finalists that played in the finals in San Diego, CA. Mike Iarossi took home 1st prize.
Blockbuster Video ran their own World Game Championships in the early 1990s, co-hosted by GamePro magazine. Citizens from the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, Australia, and Chile were eligible to compete. Games from the 1994 championships included NBA Jam and Virtua Racing.
The first ever televised eSports event has been noted as the Australian gameshow A*mazing, which would show two children competing in various Nintendo games in order to win points.
Internet era
Formal events have grown dramatically since the first tournament in 1997. At the "Red Annihilation" tournament in May of that year, Quake co-creator John Carmack promised his own red Ferrari 328 GTS convertible to the winner, Dennis Fong aka "Thresh".
In June of that year Angel Munoz launched his league for computer gamers, known as the Cyberathlete Professional League or CPL. Since then, the attendance and size of the venues for these events has grown and thousands of spectators typically connect over the internet to watch the final matches.
In 2005 the CPL moved to a World Tour format. The 2005 CPL World Tour focused on the one-on-one deathmatch game Painkiller and had a total prize purse of $1,000,000. The winner of the CPL Grand Finals event, Johnathan "Fatal1ty" Wendel, went home with the grand prize of $150,000, while Sander "Vo0" Kaasjager took home the MVP trophy for having the most tournament wins.
In the year 2000, the first World Cyber Games event was held in Seoul, Korea. There were competitions for Quake III, Starcraft, FIFA 2000, and Age of Empires II. The competition initially had 174 competitors from 17 different countries with a total prize purse of $20,000. In 2006, the prize purse had risen to $462,000, and the event had grown to 9 different competitions and 700 qualified participants from 70 different countries.
In 2003, the first Electronic Sports World Cup event was held, with a total of 358 participants from 37 countries, and a prize purse of € 150.000. By 2006, the event had grown to 547 qualified participants from 53 countries and a prize purse of $400,000. The event also featured the first competition with a game specifically made for it; Trackmania Nations.
The year also saw the launch of Major League Gaming, a console gaming competition. In 2006, Major League Gaming was the first televised console gaming league in the United States, with their Halo 2 Pro Series being broadcast by USA Network.
2006 saw the first season of the World Series of Video Games event, a spin off of the CPL World Tour format. The WSVG held world championships for Counter-Strike, Warcraft III, and Quake 4. The WSVG also held American championships for Halo 2, Ghost Recon: Advanced Warfighter, and Project Gotham Racing 3.
Player contracts & Professional electronic sports titles
There are a number of titles that have a professional gaming scene. The top players can make a living playing the games on the marketing value they gain as a result. Hundreds, thousands and even millions of dollars in prize money are turned out each year for competitors in these titles.
The most popular tournaments are those run by the Cyberathlete Professional League, the World Cyber Games, the World e-Sports Games, the Electronic Sports World Cup, The Championship Gaming Series and the Major League Gaming. The prize money for these events is mostly provided by the large technology corporations who sponsor the events; these companies also tend to sponsor eSports teams. A team sponsorship usually includes travel expenses and sometimes free hardware specific to that company.
StarCraft
StarCraft: Brood War – Real-Time Strategy (1vs1, 2vs2, PC)
This game has found a home in South Korea, where many play it professionally as a spectator sport. It is the most popular professionally played game due to its immense popularity in South Korea, where the best pro-gamers are seen as celebrities.
In Korea, Starcraft has leagues such as Ongamenet Starleague, MBC Starleague, and Proleague. Finals for these league attract tens of thousands of fans and are viewed on cable TV with great popularity.
StarCraft is the very first game to have been accepted into the World Cyber Games tournament and has a tournament at their events since inception. It also enjoys significant competitive popularity in the west as well.
Counter-Strike
Counter-Strike – Tactical Team FPS (5vs5, PC)
Played all around the world with hot spots in the North America and Europe, there are a few dozen professional teams that gather at just as many tournaments all around the world every year. Without a uniting body in competitive gaming many of these claim to be the game's "World Championship" tournament.
While none of them stand out enough to justify this claim, six tournament finals are generally identified as being the "biggest". The six "Major tournaments" are listed below and are led by WCG (World Cyber Games) and the CPL (Cyberathlete Professional League).
Counter-Strike is seen as the competitive game with the biggest user base with a rough estimate of players online at any given moment ranging between 120,000 and 140,000.
Examples of professional teams are: SK Gaming, wNv Teamwork, Fnatic, MeetYourMakers, Team 3D and Complexity.
Teams can be observed playing professionally in CEVO P, Cyber Evolution for cash prizes.
The defunct league Championship Gaming Series franchised teams with contracted players who played Counter-Strike: Source
Warcraft III
Warcraft III: The Frozen Throne – Real-Time Strategy (1vs1, PC)
Played professionally all around the world with hot spots in South Korea, China , France and Germany, there are a few dozen "professional" teams. The game lacks a uniting body and has no definable world championship.
Some of the biggest Warcraft III tournaments include the six "Major tournaments" listed below as well as events organised by Blizzard Entertainment, televised Korean leagues, several tournaments held in China.
Warcraft III is seen as the competitive game with the second biggest playerbase, with the number players online at Battle.net ranging between 70,000 and 100,000 at any given moment. It must also be noted that the Chinese scene, which has over three million players, uses their own clients for online competition due to a poor connection to the outside world.
In Korea, Warcraft III has significantly less popularity than Starcraft, which is the most popular.
Wiki articles about Warcraft III competitions include a historical overview of "world championships" as well as a ranking based on them and a number of player biographies such as: Zdravko "Insomnia" Georgiev, Xiaofeng "Sky" Li, Dae Hui "FoV" Cho, Jang "Moon" Jae Ho, Fredrik "MaDFroG" Johansson and Manuel "Grubby" Schenkhuizen.
FIFA
FIFA Football – Sports (PC)
FIFA Football is a part of the World Cyber Games since its beginning in 2000 and also at every regional WCG Tourney like the SEC or the Pan-American WCG. In 2003 a FIFA tournament was also held at the CPL Europe and is therefore the only sports game that has ever been part of a Cyberathlete Professional League competition.
World League eSport Bundesliga Kick-Off Event
Germany has the biggest FIFA Football community with two professional leagues (Electronic Sports League EPS and the World League eSport Bundesliga which is aired on the national TV-broadcaster Deutsches Sportfernsehen). Besides Germany, South Korea is a strong FIFA Football nation with 3 World Cyber Games titles. There are also leagues in South Korea like the Ongamenet FifaLeague that are televised. In 2006 prizes with a value of over a quarter million US-Dollar were handed out to professional FIFA gamers.
Halo 3
Halo 3 – Tactical Team FPS (Xbox)
Halo 3 has a national professional scene in the United States of America. See Major League Gaming for more information.
Quake 4
Quake 4 – DeathMatch FPS (1vs1, PC)
Played professionally in western society, there are a dozen professional players signed to a few professional teams and a number of players marketing themselves through other means. As of 2008, Quake 4 has fallen out of favor in competition for the previous game in the series Quake 3.
Four "world championships" took place using Quake 4 in the 2006 season. Most notable are those of the Electronic Sports World Cup and the World Series of Video Games as the game had a top tier status with these organizations, the game had the smallest status of all games played at the World Cyber Games and KODE5.
So far only the Electronic Sports World Cup has announced that they will be using Quake 4 again. It is generally expected that the World series of Video Games will do the same and it is also seen as a potential candidate for a top status game at the World Cyber Games.
Quake 4 is seen as the smallest of all professional games, with online users measured at any given moment seeing very fluctuating results and is generally estimated in a three number range. An undisclosed amount of those users are not players but bots, and the total user base should fall between 1/200th to 1/1000th of other professional gaming scenes.
The most well known Quake 4 player is Johnathan "Fatal1ty" Wendel, runner-up of the World Series of Video Games finals, who is ranked 6th in the Quake 4 world rankings.
Street Fighter Series
Street Fighter – Versus Fighting (1vs1, Arcade, PS2)
Street Fighter III: 3rd Strike, Marvel vs Capcom 2, Capcom vs SNK2, Super Street Fighter II Turbo are amongst those games in the series played at a professional level. Popular tournaments have taken place at Evolution Championship Series in the USA, and Tougeki – Super Battle Opera in Japan. Many smaller communities are sprouting up across the world in order to expand and develop the professionalism of the game and to form a more integrated fighting games community.
Super Smash Bros. Melee
Super Smash Bros. Melee – Versus Fighting (1vs1, 2vs2, GameCube)
Super Smash Bros. Melee has a national professional scene in the United States of America. It was sponsored by Major League Gaming from 2004 to 2006. It is currently sponsored by Evolution Championship Series.
TrackMania Nations
TrackMania Nations Forever – Racing (1vs1vs1vs1, PC)
TrackMania Nations ESWC released in January 2006, and was the first game to be conceived for a competition (Electronic Sports World Cup). The game permits players to create their own tracks. Except ESWC, the Electronic Sports League, Electronic Tournaments and the FuturTech Gaming League organize competitions on this game. In April 2008, a new version of the game, called TrackMania Nations Forever, released and added new features to the original game. The ESWC committee decided to use this new version for ESWC 2008. This game is downloadable free of charge and counts around 8,000 players at least on any moment. On esports, the game is most popular in Europe, especially in France, where the game was created.
Other competitions
In September 2006 FUN Technologies held the first WorldWide Web Games for a $1 million prize. The competition had 71 contestants and featured the casual games Bejeweled 2, Solitaire, and Zuma. The champion was 21-year-old Kavitha Yalavarthi of Odessa, Texas. Some online games can be played using a variety of peripheral input devices that require physical activity. These include game cycles, bicycles both upright and recumbent, steppers like the Gamercize peripheral and treadmills. In March 2009 a new sort of computer video game (exergaming) peripheral was launched, the FootPOWR peripheral. Until this time the majority of electronic game competitions consisted of players using the mouse and select keyboard input for game play. The FootPOWR peripheral is quite versatile since each of the nine area of the item can be mapped to specific keys or mouse functions. Like other online game competitions it is difficult for those using activity-driven (exergaming) input devices to be certain they are playing in a similar fashion as others who may be using conventional mouse or keyboard input.
Media coverage
StarCraft match televised on MBC Game
The main medium for electronic sports coverage is the Internet. Electronic sports websites generally focus on professional tournaments and the top level amateur games, leaving the other games to be covered by the leagues themselves or smaller game-specific community websites if at all.
Mainstream coverage in North America and Europe has increased, and more mainstream news websites are starting to regularly provide some coverage of the major events with occasional television coverage.
In South Korea, electronic sports and events are regularly televised by Ongamenet and MBC Game. The most frequent games in South Korean electronic sports are the real-time strategy games StarCraft and Warcraft III. The South Korean scene is often cited as an example of popularised electronic sports by those who would like to see a similar level of popularity in the west.
In Germany, GIGA Television's majority of shows are covering e-sports. ESL TV was transformed into GIGA II in June 2007 but the concept failed and ESL TV was reintroduced in autumn 2007. ESL TV features e-sports only.
In the UK, XLEAGUE.TV broadcasts on SKY channel 208, showing both features on eSports and broadcasting matches from its online leagues and tournaments, which for the purpose of television shows, are shot from its studio rather than played online.
In France, Game One propose some e-sport matches in a show called "Arena Online" and is a partner of the Xfire Trophy, an invitational tournament. They broadcasted matches on games like Counter-Strike, Counter-Strike: Source, Command & Conquer 3: Tiberium Wars, and recently Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare.
Professional Leagues
Cyberathlete Professional League (International)
Cyber Evolution (International)
ESL Extreme Masters (International)
Electronic Sports World Cup (International)
World Cyber Games (International)
World e-Sports Games (International)
Major League Gaming (North America)
ESL Major Series (European)
ESL Pro Series (In several European countries)
NGL One (Europe)
ClanBase EuroCup (European)
Total Gaming League (International)
Championship Gaming Series (International)
International Gaming Tour (International)
Major League of Gaming (International)
Pro Gaming League (North America)
UKeSA Dell XPS Premiership (United Kingdom)
National Professional Cybersport League (Russia)
Associations and Governing Bodies
International eSport Federation (International)
eSport Verband Österreich (Austria)
Belgian Electronic Sport Federation (Belgium)
E-sport Denmark (Denmark)
Deutscher eSport Bund (Germany)
Nederlandse Electronic Sport Bond (Netherlands)
Swiss E-sport Federation (Switzerland)
Korea e-Sports Association (South Korea)
Taiwan eSports League (Taiwan)
United Kingdom eSports Association (United Kingdom)
eSports Vietnam (Vietnam)
Mind Sports South Africa
