Article

E-sports: a true phenomenon of globalization

This article analyzes the ways in which e-sports are a phenomenon of globalization.

Pieter van Rhee

Published date

16/01/2018 - 18:07

Courses

Language, Culture and Globalization

Copyright

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License.

Read time

10 minutes

The simplest definition of e-sports is: in e-sports, video game players compete with each other to win tournament prizes. The first reaction of people then often is, ‘That sounds ridiculous, I also compete with my friends playing videogames. But that does not make it a sport. But actually, when you delve deeper into the subject, you realize that e-sports may be one of the truest forms of globalization that exists in sports.

This article will explain what makes e-sports such a true form of globalization and, by looking at some analytical models on globalization, explain what e-sports contains in more detail and how e-sports is so closely linked with globalization.

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E-sports, zones and scapes

Wallerstein (2004) explains the concept of globalization by defining a world-system where innovation over the course of history has connected groups of people and industries into a large scale network. These people and industries are defined by local characteristics and can be divided into three zones: centers, semi-peripheries and peripheries. From these local characteristics, inequalities between the three zones are created that are the driving force of Wallerstein’s world-system.

Each zone is distinguished by different aspects. Centers are zones of innovation, finished products and marketing with low labor intensiveness and maximum yield. Semi-peripheries are defined by their transit economy, semi-finished products and an automated production industry. Peripheries are based on an economy of primary materials, where labor-intensive work is central. These zones are characterized by the fact that they have different scales in size, but can also shift as they are very dynamic. Furthermore, these zones are very specific to its core as for example Jamaica can be a periphery for wealth, but a center for sports and reggae music (Wallerstein, 2004).

While Wallerstein explains globalization in a ‘hard’ way (with economy, trade and industry) Appadurai’s (1996) view on globalization is focused on the soft side of globalization, the cultural side. According to Appadurai, globalization creates transnational dimensions through which culture flows that he calls ‘scapes’.

The first dimension, called ethnoscapes, explains cultural flows through people migration between cultures and borders. In mediascapes, culture flows through the production and distribution of information through different sources like, television stations. Within financescapes, capital is distributed across borders. Ideoscapes contain the more political side of culture where certain common ideologies are spread throughout the world but in each culture with their own interpretation.

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E-sports back then

In the introduction of this article I mentioned a simple answer to what e-sports is, ‘video game players that compete with each other to win tournament prizes’. When looking for a more well-rounded definition, the one that ticked of all the boxes from researching this subject, is the definition of Cambridge Dictionary (n.d.): “The activity of playing computer games against other people on the internet, often for money, and often watched by other people using the internet, sometimes at special organized events”. But where did e-sports originate from?

Before E-sports was a thing, the concept of competitive gaming dates back to 1972 when an event was held for a game called “SPACEWAR”. Here 24 students competed with each other for the prize of a one-year subscription to the “Rolling Stone” magazine (Brand, 1972). Between 1972 and 1980 one of the more notable tournaments organized was the Space Invaders Championship by Atari, a pioneer in Arcade games and game consoles. More than 10,000 participants competed for an Asteroids table worth $2.000 (Edwards, 2013).

Fast forwarding to the 1990s is where e-Sports made a significant development (Nagpa, 2015), with proper e-sports competitions being set up for predominantly action, sports, arcade-style and strategy games while prize pools grew significantly more and more with this development.

Through to the turn of the millennium, in South-Korea, seen as one of the capitals of e-sports, the government encouraged the setup of a network of internet cafés, called ‘PC bangs’, to promote gaming. This meant that even if you do not own a computer, you can still have access to them in these hubs where people come together to play and compete. These PC bangs are supported by South Korea's broadband network which at that time was and still is the best in the world (Hattenstone (2017).

In present day, e-sports is continuously professionalizing with professional media and sports companies investing in this fast-growing industry.

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E-sports now

When researching e-sports in present day, you realize how big this industry is and how much bigger it will grow in the future. To get a good grasp of e-sports in present day, this section divides e-sports in the same way globalization was the divided.

First of all, the ‘hard’ way, e-sports as an industry. Throughout its incredible development, e-sports has grown to become a multi-million dollar industry. In 2017 the global total revenue was $696 million, with the forecast for 2020 of being a billion dollar industry with revenue growing towards $1.488 billion (Newzoo, 2017).

With the development of this industry came the professionalization of gaming. Instead of independent players or teams signing up for a tournament, players were signed to organizations, providing them with travel expenses and accommodation during the tournaments, providing players with (temporary) living and practice space and even salaries (Kolev, 2015).

But in these early stages of professionalization of e-sports, e-sports organization were limited to finding players in their own country, as it was difficult for foreign players to get them granted a visa in order to attend tournaments abroad. Though, in 2013 in the United States, where a lot of these tournaments take place, the U.S. Government officially recognized e-sports players as professional athletes, which made it a lot easier to grant them visas. Now, players from all over the world can compete in these tournaments (Tassi, 2013). These are all indicators that e-sports is becoming a global industry.

Another party in the e-sports industry, is tournament organizers. Game developers and independent businesses have recognized the growth in popularity by organizing competitions and even franchised leagues. When looking at examples, some of these leagues seem to outgrow existing traditional sports leagues in their global scope.

A recent example shows Activision Blizzard, the company that produced a game called ‘Overwatch’, which created a franchised league called ‘The Overwatch League’. Activision Blizzard invited e-sports organizations to invest in this league where teams were created linked to cities all over the world. Cities ranged from Los Angeles and New York to Seoul and London (see figure 2).

In this league, Activision Blizzard created a structure where e-sports organizations were obliged to provide their players with a minimum salary of $50.000 a year and even health insurance (Conditt, 2017). All these sources point to the fact that e-sports shows no sign of stopping.

The ‘soft’ way of looking at e-sports is looking at the culture. The biggest part of the culture of e-sports is the viewership. To give an impression of the viewership the following example can be used. In 2016 the NBA finals took place in the United States which was viewed by almost 31 million people. This was the highest viewed NBA finals in a decade. The finals of a game called ‘League of Legends’ was viewed by around 36 million unique viewers in 2015, a game that has not even been around for a decade (Walker, 2016). This example shows the sheer scope of e-sports viewership.

One party e-sports have to thank for their huge viewership is the media on which it is broadcasted. Most e-sports is broadcasted live on streaming service, Twitch. On Twitch, independent people but also organizations can stream whatever games in whatever context they want. Some live streamers (people who stream something live) show just casual gaming as entertainment, but it has become usual that tournament organizers stream their events on Twitch (Twitch, n.d.).

As Twitch is free to watch, anyone with access to a computer or mobile device with internet can watch these event anytime, anywhere in the world. Another thing that makes the viewing experience special, is the fact that you can chat with all the other viewers live with the stream. This chat is a massive interactive experience, where viewers and streamers come up with different phrases and emoticons (called ‘emotes’ on Twitch) that represent certain scenarios that happen. Combining this with reacting on these events via social media like Twitter, Facebook and YouTube, these events become a massive interactive global online experience.

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Zones and scapes in e-sports

Now that some analytical models of globalization and the development of e-sports have been explained, we can look at fitting the e-sports industry into these models.

When analyzing the e-sports industry, we can fit different parts into the zones used by Wallerstein in his world-system analysis.

When looking at centers in the e-sports industry, we can define different centers for different parts of the e-sports industry. When talking about zones of innovation, South-Korea comes to mind. They were the first to promote gaming, further than just people at home in their room, and continue to be one of the leaders in the e-sports industry. Other zones of innovation may include Sweden and Denmark, because of their pole-position in adopting an advanced digital infrastructure. The United States is also seen as a center of the e-sports industry, but more as a zone of marketing. The United States’ global appeal makes them perfect for reaching as many people as they can for tournaments, viewership and professional players
Semi-peripheries in E-sports can be seen as the zones which may not have the advanced digital infrastructure or global reach, but beginning to professionalize the industry more and more in their respective zones. Good examples for semi-peripheries are countries like the United Kingdom, France and Germany. These are countries that only recently started look more into the e-sports industry. For example, in these countries, professional football teams are signing e-sports teams and players across multiple games.
Peripheries would be the zones where there is no or very limited access to computers and the internet. As the internet is probably the biggest part of making e-sports possible, there needs to be access to this resource.

Appadurai’s scapes can be used to analyze the culture within the e-sports industry.

Ethnoscapes are really interesting when looking at the e-sports culture. Frankly, in e-sports there are no borders. As long as people have an internet source, they can interact with each other in this community. This creates a huge melting pot of different cultures.
The biggest mediascape that culture flows through is social media. Social media platforms like Twitch, that have been mentioned before, enable the boundaries in the ethnoscapes to diminish.
Financescapes grow every day in e-sports. Because of e-sports becoming more global and professionalized, both new and established organizations are trying to invest their capital.
There are some cultural aspects of e-sports that touch ideoscapes. The most common aspect is the view of e-sports as an actual sport. Many people who are new to e-sports do not agree that e-sports players should be considered athletes. The video below shows compilation of people first reacting to gaming as a sport.

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Where does it stop?

As many sources told, e-sports definitely is a true example of globalization. From the scope of the viewership to the less and less limitations for players to play all over the world, e-sports definitely is destined to become a staple of globalization.

But where does it end? Does it have an end? From the articles read and experience in the community only one answer came to mind: The end is nowhere near in sight.

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