The Electronic Sport video blog

From game to competition

October 19th 1972 this is the first record of video game based competition, which was held at Stanford University.
What did they play you may ask? Spacewar, Stanford students were invited to an intergalactic space war in olympics where the winner would go home with a year subscription to The Rolling Stones.
Years later in 1980 Atari held their own competition for their game Space Invaders, which was on a much bigger scale than Stanford's having over 10,000 participants, it’s prize pool consists of a stand-up arcade machine Atari 800 computer and some gift cards.
Even though these competitions were very innovative and the following groups in gaming media thus creative was never before seen most would consider the birth of eSports be in the 1990s with the internet becoming more widespread PC gaming would find substantial amount of growth and the first real eSports competition would be seen 1997's red Annihilation tournament, which featured the game Quake the winner Thresh would be considered by many as the first eSports player and came home with a Ferrari shortly after the cyberathlete professional league also known as CBL was created which was start offering upwards of 15,000 dollars in prize money.

The pro's talk

- Never had plans to be a Pro Gamer it was you know, really no such thing. I went from just a kid playing games to being sponsored and making a hundred, hundred fifty thousand dollars ( -Dennis “Thresh” Fong).

A whole genre of eSports was created as well. The RTS Starcraft Brood War would be released in 1998 and will be a big step towards the eSports we know today RTS stood for realtime strategy and was a style of game that contrasted the often seen first person shooter.

Out of all things, it's growth in Korea was the most notable and was a kind of its own the building of broadband internet networks fall in the 1997.
Asian financial crash was most a tribute to this unique growth many people were left without work and wanted to look for something to do in their spare time, which would be supplied by the prevalence of internet cafes that allowed anyone on the street to walk in and spend the day playing by the year 2000.
You could watch Starcraft on TV in Korea with the channels 0GN and MPC game which it was by the millions and on the other side of the world people would be creating mod of Half-Life called Counter-Strike like startcraft it would become a major influence on eSports and most notably would become the primary game for 2001's CPL the game went from playing second fiddle to Quake to overtake it in only year and it was impressive for the worldwide success it had.

- Counter-Strike is different than anything else. You had to buy your weapons only a couple bullets killed you, you went and did something risky early or something stupid. You were stuck watching for the full five minutes. (- Jason “ Alchemist” Baker).

From Korea to the World

Through the early 2000s televising eSports would become a popular goal.
Both South Korea was the only country to have done this consistently. They had dedicated channels broadcasting 24 hours a day something no other country could match. This would show the Koreans cultural acceptance of playing video games for a career, which created a new breed of super star only a couple years later would another genre of game be created.

... to pro players

The middle late 2000s would produce many notable crews as well as new gaming leagues to supply tournaments the scene went from ten tournaments in 2000 to about 260 in 2010.
And with the growth new games like League of Legends would emerge even Dota itself would soon have it's sequal accessible the international a DOTA tournament, that would be held alongside the first Beta release Dota 2, which changed the scene permanently, it was the highest prize pool ever seen in eSports boasting 1.6million dollars total where the highest prize pool prior to that was only 510.000$ at the time many people even doubted the rumors that it would be 50,000 but the announcement excited everyone and attracted the best in the world to compete, but the competition would come with a twist it would be played on Dota 2 putting everyone out of their element.

-TI was on such short notice hey, we're gonna make a tournament 1 million dollars we were like okay, it's like is this real.

Only months later Justin.tv released Twitch a gaming based live streaming website where eSports would find a home and outrageous success. It was a platform that everyone could watch and didn't have to be broadcasted in a format that was very professional because it wasn't on TV.

In the same year Twitch showed an impressive growth to 8 million unique viewers after parting with Starcraft the largest competition and in the following years eSports will grow exponentially League of Legends will go from 200,000 concurrent viewers in its first season the world championship to 1 million in the next and 5 million after that today the peak concurrent viewers of Worlds 2017 would reach 80 million.
With the giant increase in community recognition almost every eSport would find growth even games like Super Smash Bros Melee that were created over a decade before it would gain new players and cheering fans.
And with all that historical moments will be created along with players becoming Legends. You'd have players like Dendi that would have a story behind them you grow up in a poor family and start playing DOTA only to become a champion and a person that the fans love to watch doing thing no one would do and adding character to seen those rare to see before. This was the case for many players from many different games and we'll make the richness the community only better.

From around 2015's now major sports teams people and anyone with a bunch of money would start to invest the eSports.
You would see teams like NRG invested in by Shaq, Echo Fox by Rick Fox, Magic Johnson would invest in Team Liquid and even Ashton Kutcher would invest in a website that allowed people to bet on eSports, but it wouldn't be until late 2017 were history would be cemented at the time the Legal Legends North American championship series had teams who could stay at the top this meant that they're only a couple teams that were able to stay in the league for many years.
In 2016 it would be announced that the championship series would be franchising in North America, which meant that there would be permanent team's new investors coming in to purchase positions a minimum set salary for the players a new schedule and most importantly an enormous amount of money.

NBA teams like the Golden State Warriors the Cleveland Cavaliers and the Houston Rockets would find their way in the league this combined with new investors in almost all the teams let the players being fought over for the upcoming season being signed to hundred thousand dollar contracts and a never-before-seen million-dollar yearly contract.
This was a historic step towards professionalism in eSports, never before had a league done this and now you can compare them even more to regular sports since that's all the history so far we decided to ask kids our school where they thought it was going:

• - Esports I'd kind of say I have to say that like if you're thinking if like the olympics as like a test of physical strength and how fast someone is or how strong someone is you can kind of think of like eSports as like a mind test like how fast someone's reaction times are and how fast they think and how will they could like communicate so I feel like eSports is gonna get bigger as like technology increases because throwing a javelin is always gonna be throwing a javelin but as computers advance more, there's gonna be more ways you can test your skills with that as well, so I think it'll get more popular.
• - For the future of eSports I think that i'ts very popular and will continue to grow and will continue to be loved by many.
• - I think in the future that there is gonna be like degrees for eSports and it's gonna be a way bigger deal. It's gonna be way more showed on the media and It's just gonna make alot of money.
  I think it's gonna get popular for certain games but not all games. It's not gonna grow as a whole is just gonna grow individually.
• - What do you think eSports is?
• - Video games.