Abstract

This paper explores the rising popularity and success of competitive video gaming—known in the industry as eSports—and the community behind the sport, and how the industry measures up to in comparison with traditional sports. To understand the fanbase behind this phenomenal growth, this paper will consider how the industry has evolved over time, and what industry strategies have played a role in shaping the eSport community. It takes into consideration how spectator motivation has factored into the popularity of eSports, and the contribution of community building as facilitated by streaming to this. It analyses the culture of this audience, with particular regard to the prevalence of two cultures; that of hero worship, and online discrimination, and how this culture compares when contrasted to that of traditional sport.

Keywords: eSports, online communities, streaming media, gender discrimination

Introduction

This paper explores the rising popularity and success of competitive video gaming—known in the industry as eSports—and the community behind the sport, and how it measures up in comparison to traditional sports. eSports is a multi-million dollar business, backed by strong industry support and attracting viewership numbers that exceed that of the United States’s Superbowl (Cioletti, 2018). To understand the fanbase behind this phenomenal growth, it is important to understand how the industry has evolved over time, and what industry strategies have played a role in shaping the eSport community. This paper will also take into consideration how spectator motivation has factored into the viewership of eSports, and how the online community of eSports fans factors into this. It will also analyse the culture of this online audience, as contrasted to that of traditional sport, with particular regard to the problem of discrimination and lack of diversity in the community.

What is eSports? A Brief Overview of the Industry

eSports, as defined by Hamari & Sjöblom (2017a, pg. 211) is ‘a form of sports where the primary aspects of the sport are facilitated by electronic systems; the input of players and teams as well as the output of the eSports system are mediated by human-computer interfaces.’ In practice, this refers to competitive gaming for a variety of video game genres; typically organised into such formats as tournaments, ladders or leagues; and played by either professionals or amateurs (Hamari & Sjöblom, 2017a). In recent years, the boom in online gaming—influenced by the widespread digitisation of gaming due to the ubiquity of the Internet and mobile devices—has spurred on the rapid growth of eSports (Hamari & Sjöblom, 2017a; Castells 2001, Miller 2011, as cited in Rosell Llorens, 2017). This culture of competitive online play has leant itself to developing into an industry. The way eSports is structured is reminiscent of traditional sport, with a similar organisation of players, teams, coaches, managers, tournaments, leagues, player transfers, college scholarships, and sponsorship deals; it also shares institutional problems such as match fixing, cheating, and gendered discrimination disputes (Jenny, Manning, Keiper, & Olrich, 2017; Newzoo, 2016; Gies, 2016, as cited in Pizzo et al., 2018).

           There still lingers an attitude towards eSport that underestimates the strength of the industry, even as the sector becomes increasingly mainstream. eSport is a highly profitable business. In 2015 the industry made over $325 million (Newzoo, as cited in Pizzo et al., 2018) which was predicted to grow to $905.6 million (Newzoo, as cited in Seitz, 2018). It is a global industry; while the sector is still attempting to reach the mainstream in the West, it is firmly established in the national sporting culture of many East Asian countries.

            While any sufficiently large competitive game can evolve an eSport scene, the most common and popular genres are those of the multiplayer online battle arena (MOBA), real-time strategy (RTS), the first-person or team shooter (both will be referred to under the umbrella term of FPS), and the sports, card, and fighting game genres (Hamari & Sjöblom, 2017a). Within these popular genres are specific games which have cultivated their own impressive followings, such as: League of Legends (LoL), Overwatch, and the FIFA games. It is on these three games—and their respective eSports scenes and communities—that provide the best case studies for eSport analysis.

eSport Supporters: The Companies Behind The Industry

The success of the eSport industry owes itself in large part to the way the companies behind the games have quickly adopted and supported the practice. There is a lot of money in the industry; not just in the form of profits made by the developers of popular eSport games, but in the financial investment into the industry made by these companies. As has already been indicated, eSports is a multi-million dollar industry, and much of this money is due to major financial backing from corporate sponsors and endorsement deals. These income streams alone account for about 40% of industry revenue (Seitz, 2018).

            In addition, purpose-built eSport stadiums have already been constructed in countries such as the United States and South Korea; for example, the latter boasts Nexon Arena, a stadium built to host events for a variety of eSport titles (Pizzo et al., 2018). These stadiums have been built both by the games companies for their own games, and by the government of the host country itself. That the industry has eSport specific venues is vital, as it gives the eSport audience a physical space in which to interact with the industry and community.

            Despite the presence of physical eSport tournaments, for the most part eSport competitions are viewed primarily through online broadcasting mediums such as Twitch.tv. eSports coverage can be found on broadcast television in some countries, but for most audiences online streaming is the only method of accessing eSports content. Knowing this, the industry has collaborated closely with these platforms. Until as recently as 2017, Riot Games—the company behind LoL—granted Twitch the rights to broadcast tournaments for free.

            Factors such as these have a multi-pronged effect: they seek to make professional play accessible, enable audiences to directly engage with the competition, and provide a shared community space for their audience.

The Motivation Behind eSports Consumption

While industry support was vital for growing the infrastructure to support the eSport industry, it was the popularity of eSports that attracted this backing initially. In order to understand how eSports as a genre became popular, it is important to first analyse why.

            People watch competitive gaming for much the same reasons that they watch traditional sports (Pizzo et al., 2018; Hamari & Sjöblom, 2017a). According to the study by Pizzo et al., (2018), the most important metrics by which traditional sports fans determined their engagement with their sport were: vicarious achievement, physical attraction and family bonding. In comparison, the study found that while they shared similar motivations, eSport audiences rated differing motives as crucial to their engagement. In particular, the excitement and athlete skill factors mattered more for those who watched eSports, in comparison to traditional sport (Pizzo et al., 2018). In addition, the strength of any particular motive was also dependent on the kind of sport; real-time strategy fans rated athlete skill as more important than a connection to a team or player, which was more important to virtual sport eSport fans (Pizzo et al., 2018).

       Community is a core motivator for audiences when deciding to participate in sports viewership—for both traditional sports and eSports. For traditional sports, which are customarily spectated through the medium of broadcast television, motivations such as family are salient (Pizzo et al., 2018). It was important to participants to bond with family members over sports viewership—this becomes a household tradition (Pizzo et al., 2018). However, eSports does not share the same viewing patterns or mediums of traditional sports, and family is not a primary motivation for eSports fans. But this does not mean similar motivations of community bonding are not an important factor in eSport viewership. Video games have always had a social aspect embedded in their culture. While a majority of eSports coverage is streamed on platforms such as Twitch, these streaming mediums allow something which broadcast television does not: an in-built space for social interaction (Sjöblom, & Hamari, 2017b). Twitch offers chatrooms with every stream; these function as ‘third places’; like the sports bars before them, this characteristic of Twitch chatrooms allows communities to grow (Hamilton et al., as cited in Hilvert-Bruce, Neill, Sjöblom & Hamari, 2018). These chats enable active participation by the community in the livestream, as opposed to the passive viewing experience of broadcast media (Sjöblom, & Hamari, 2017b).

            eSport audiences share traditional motivations behind their consumption of eSport content, but they differ from traditional sports fans as to what those motivations are, which suggests that while eSports are very much sports, they are ones governed by very different rules. 

eSports Communities: Divided By Gender

Both the gaming industry and the traditional sport industry have a diversity problem; in particular, both are well-known for their problems with representing the women in their communities. Traditional sport has made considerable progress in this regard; the industry is now more committed than ever to hosting, funding and broadcasting women’s sport. But while examples—such as the formation of the Australian Rules Football Women’s League in 2017—abound, the gender gap still remains a problem (Hall & Oglesby, 2016). The gaming industry, on the other hand, grapples with a stereotype of gaming as the pursuit of young men only, which is not representative of its audience today—and never really was (Eklund, 2016; Ruvalcaba, Shulze, Kim, Berzenski, & Otten, 2018). Thus, on first glance, it would seem to be a fair assumption that eSports, being a product of both industries, might report very low viewership numbers among women.

           While viewership numbers among women are certainly lower than that of their male counterparts (Hamari & Sjöblom, 2017a; Pizzo et al., 2018) on a community level, at least, gender diversity in eSports is not as radically unbalanced as might be believed. It certainly is a problem—statistics suggest that gamers are fairly evenly split between male and female—and the split of eSports viewers are certainly lower than this by a significant percent (Hamari & Sjöblom, 2017; Pizzo et al., 2018; Ruvalcaba et al., 2018). However, like traditional sports, the most troubling aspect of the gender divide is not found within the audience, but within the ranks of the professionals. Analysis of various metrics show that traditional sports fail to devote as much time, coverage, or resources to females player as they do male (Hall & Oglesby, 2016). This institutional problem with women in sporting industries is further amplified within eSports. Very few professional eSports players are women; when the Overwatch League opened in 2017, not one player in the competition was female. As of 2019, only one female player is currently contracted by the League (The Overwatch League, 2019). This lack of woman in eSport is further compounded by the fact that, unlike traditional sports—which are divided into male and female leagues—eSports leagues do not make this distinction.

            While eSports viewership among female audiences is not as dramatically low as stereotypes would suggest, the number of female professionals within the industry is troubling, particularly because this lack of representation can feed back into the community.

The eSport Culture

eSports culture is dominated by two factors: hero worship and discrimination. eSports is a product of the modern online gaming environment, and that environment has been marked by such things as gendered harassment for decades (Ruvalcaba et al., 2018).

            Like traditional sports, eSports cultivates fandoms around teams and players. Spectators will actively barrack for specific teams or players; of eSports viewers in 2016, 75% possessed a favourite team, while 69% had a favourite player’ (Ruvalcaba et al., 2018).

            One important aspect that facilitates this fandom culture is the role of streaming media. Many eSport fans are drawn into the industry as a result of participation by their favourite streamers in the scene. It is no wonder, then, that most players will actively produce gameplay footage on sites such as Twitch, and will continue to cultivate these streaming platforms even while competing in eSports events to boost their popularity and chance at higher financial rewards (Li & Huang, 2014, as cited in Brown, Billings, Murphy, & Puesan, 2017). Additionally, stream popularity is heavily skewed: 10% of individual streamers were responsible for 95% of views (Kaytoue et al., 2012, as cited in Sjöblom, & Hamari, 2017b). This accounts for the way individual streamers and eSports players quickly rise to the same celebrity status as traditional athletes.

            The gaming community has always had a problem with sexism and harassment. The environment of online gaming—where users are anonymous, represented only by their avatars—leads to disinhibition which then facilitates high levels of discriminatory behaviour (Suler, 2004, as cited in Ruvalcaba et al., 2017). Unlike in most online gaming environments, eSports focuses on the player as a real person—in part due to the aforementioned hero worship culture—and not an avatar. This is derived in part from streaming, where the problem of harassment is no longer mitigated by anonymous avatars, because streaming—like social media—blends the freedom of construction of identity afforded by online platforms with the desire for the ‘real’ (Van Der Nagel & Frith, 2015). Streamers are online personalities, and regularly use their faces and voices to connect with their audiences. As such, the discriminatory behaviour first popularised in these online gaming contexts finds itself capable of identifying and targeting individuals on the basis of gender, ethnicity and so on. Streamers and eSports professionals can no longer hide behind anonymity as a defence against harassment. Women in both are thus often alienated, with the term ‘gamer girl’ used commonly as a derogatory label that connotes both tokenism and a perceived lack of ability (Ruvalcaba et al., 2017).

            The culture of the eSport community features both high emotional engagement between its audiences, players and teams, as well as high levels of hateful, discriminatory behavior that alienates diverse members of the community and limits the industry as a whole.

Conclusion

eSports is a multi-million dollar industry that looks capable of overtaking traditional sport in the decades to come. The eSports scene is one of rapid growth, aided by strong institutional support from the gaming industry, corporate sponsors and devoted fanbases. Audience motivations for spectating eSports are varied and show the same amount of dedication—if not more—for the industry as can be found for traditional sports. While the industry is less divided along gendered lines than prevailing attitudes would suggest, there is a notable gap between the rates of male and female participation in eSports. The industry is also limited by its ongoing problems with prevalent discriminatory attitudes in the community, which poisons the eSports culture and alienates diverse members of the community. The eSport industry must continue to work on its strong points, and fix the more negative aspects of its community, in order to reach its potential as a global mainstream media format.

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