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Electronic Sports

Witkowski, Emma

First published Apr 21st 2022, no current reviews

Esports, or electronic sports, is an interdisciplinary topic of inquiry connected to organised practices of competitive computer gaming, facilitated tournament play. This entry discusses early interdisciplinary thinking and perspectives on esports, topical areas of significance to formative esports research, the impact of sport studies on esports scholarship and the definitional underpinnings of the term.

Introduction

Formally organised competition in electronic games has existed since the late 1970s and the golden years of the arcades.1 However, electronic sport, popularly known as esports,2 only emerged as a topic of systematic inquiry since the new millennium. Interdisciplinary perspectives underpin esports' early scholarship, with concepts and research findings built on social scientific inquiry from sociology, history, computer science, economics and law.

The Term's History

As seen in other field advancements from cultural studies to sports sociology, no single research group championed esports development in these early investigations.3 Instead, periodic entries on electronic sport between 2000 and 2010 developed from expertise in the broader interdisciplinary fields of sports studies, game studies, media and communication (Reitman et al., 2019). While esports publications infrequently emerged, academics in Europe were engaging in critical dialogues beyond their solitary esports projects (Lowood, 2019).

At the 2008 International eSports Conference, hosted by Electronic Arts in their Cologne head offices, Wagner (2006), Adamus (2012), Christophers (Christophers & Schultz, 2009), and Witkowski (2009) discussed the significant topics of the day with industry and non-profit associational members—this included the growth of regional esports, the socio-technical essence of the phenomenon and the value of terminology ("how the term 'e-sports' embodied a different value globally than e-competition"—from 2008 conference fieldnotes, Witkowski).

In North America, we can trace similar academic andcommunity knowledge-sharing events led by formative contributors to esports scholarship. Henry Lowood (historian) and T.L. Taylor4 (sociologist) hosted their first esports workshop focused on "cyberathleticism" in 2009. At this first of two events, participants discussed issues ranging from the work of high-performance play to spectatorship of professional gaming, a topic of significance prior to the mainstream adoption of livestreaming (T.L. Taylor, 2016b; see also Sirlin, 2006). These early academic interchanges reveal how socio-cultural esports concerns were in the frame during the formative stages of esports scholarship and informed by community and industry practices.

By the turn of the millennium, esports and high-performance gaming terminology began leaking into mainstream culture, symbolically drawing on technological brawn. Gaming jargon of this time is perhaps best portrayed in Adidas' coining of the term "jeeks" and the market orientation towards this new-fangled jock/geek consumer (Scherer, 2007; Partin & Howard, 2021).5 Commercial leagues were already well-established and invested in the term "cyber," with tournaments such as the Cyber Professional League (est. 1997) and the World Cyber Games (est. 2001).6 But the term "esports" and how to spell it was simultaneously undergoing adoption and transformation, with disagreements based on varying organisational needs and cultural settings.7 Internationally, esports associations were looking for national recognition as a sport that would connect their organisations to established funding pools and infrastructural support (such as sports integrity processes). As such, the "sport" in esports was made to matter by those organisational members working towards the political-economic security of an emerging recreational sector.

"Esports,"8 also historically composed as e-sports, e-Sports, eSports, and the less common e-gaming9 received a formal editorial update at the 2017 America Copy Editors Society meeting (which defines entries for the Associated Press Stylebook). As a result, the stylebook announced "esport" as grammatically correct.10 With the Associated Press behind the style guide and as an authority in defining grammar for English language journalism, this decision had a global effect.

As esports solidified in gaming parlance, further explorations and published works appeared across scholarly domains during the 2000-2010 period, with strengthened claims and qualitative descriptions of esports' socio-structural relationships, directly and adjacently examined. Key themes emerged during this time, centring on political economy (Jin, 2010), gender and identity (Chee, 2005; Chee & Smith, 2005; Kennedy, 2005; Maric, 2011; T.L. Taylor, 2006; N. Taylor et al., 2009) and high-performance practices (Baek et al., 2007; Consalvo, 2007; Conway, 2010; Harper, 2010; Lowood, 2006; 2007; Møller et al., 2009; N. Taylor, 2009; T.L. Taylor, 2009a; 2009b; Trammell, 2010; Zang et al., 2007). Scholarship on esports materiality and embodiment in competitive games was quick to advance (Bryce & Rutter, 2002; Dovey & Kennedy, 2006; Hemphill, 2005; Morris, 2003; Rambusch et al., 2007; Reeves et al., 2009; N. Taylor, 2009; T.L. Taylor, 2006; 2012; Witkowski, 2009; 2012a). From this rich pool of phenomenologically informed scholarship, we capture how digital game practices were characterised under distinctly sports-like terms, descriptions and feel, including cyberathleticism (T.L. Taylor, 2016a; 2016b) and cyberfitness (Wagner, 2006).

Producing one of the earliest reflections on esports embodiment, sports philosopher Dennis Hemphill theoretically attended to a phenomenology of sports simulation games. His argument? Playing electronic games was a "cybersport," that is, it signified "alternative sport realities [...] to electronically extended athletes in digitally represented sporting worlds" (2005, p. 199). However, when Hemphill was writing, few definitional efforts were produced on esports, despite national announcements acknowledging esports as representative of sporting activity and validating governmental support. Citing a 2003 announcement by the federal Sports Ministry of China, Ma et al. (2013) capture and translate the central features involved in the early rise of esports as a nationally recognised activity:

General Administration of Sport of China list the e-sport as a national sport officially launched, the most important reason is the sport has the basic physical properties, and has developed more widely in China, there are tens of millions of fans, and also have [sic] a certain competitive level, it is listed as an official sport in order to adapt this project for further healthy development. (p. 621)

Such formal and normative theorizing on esports often followed established pathways mapped out in sporting histories. Esports were increasingly framed internationally as an activity adaptable to external purpose and national values, often under the direction of sports and culture ministries, and with youth health emphasised.11

Despite early attention to esports cultures at the nation-state level by China and South Korea, Wagner, working from the standpoint of Western European esports cultures, identified that the esports industry12 predominantly specified the real meaning of esports simply as "professional gaming" (2006).13 Such positioning offered limited social implications to considering esports' fundamental practices or principles beyond an economic transaction. Addressing this gap, Wagner developed an initial definitional standpoint. His esports perspective drew on sports history insights and, subsequently, acknowledgment of the interpretative power of sport. Following the perception that sports broadly contain cultures of human motion,14 Wagner produced an opening definition for esports early development, stating: "'eSports' is an area of sports activities in which people develop and train mental or physical abilities in the use of information and communication technologies" (2006, p. 3).15 Wagner's definitional effort was broad though potentially exclusive (limited to information and communication technologies; see Witkowski 2012a), devoid of "electronic" components16 and aligned to sports historical perspectives.17 In historical readings of sports, boundaries around movement cultures are readily recognised as shifting, including and excluding competitive movement forms such as dance, tug-of-war, jogging and even esports over time.18

As definitional efforts multiplied to include specific technological configurations and high-end physical performance,19 so too did the emphasis on institutionalisation as an essential feature of esports (see Jenny et al., 2017; Jonasson & Thiborg, 2010; Szablewicz, 2011). As an essence of esports, institutionalisation lingers as a residue of established sports philosophy introduced to esports scholarship through the vigorous attention to past definitions of the nature of sports.

Institutionalisation appears as a recurring characteristic in definitional attempts under what T.L. Taylor termed "the third wave of esports." During this wave, "esports has become not just a sports product but a media entertainment outlet as well" (T.L. Taylor, 2018, p. 4). Livestreaming opportunities of digital games expanded significantly between 2010 and 2012. Easily accessible (and free) esports tournament broadcasts were nurtured, organised, and produced at scale from traditional media institutions to third-party organisations (Pro-am teams, grassroots leagues and events).20 Perhaps most significantly here, high-end gaming performance broadcasts were also realised by independent players and content creators – amateurs and professionals. Thinking about the rise of this entertainment form, Taylor states: "Being an esports fan suddenly became much easier with live streaming" (2018, p. 4). It also became more accessible for some21 player-producers to unshackle their participation from institutionalised systems while still "doing esports." Notably, this rise of livestreaming brought with it different kinds of game genres produced as esports, achieved by both popular and otherwise less visible participants, including those outside of institutional involvement or authorisation (Witkowski and Manning, 2018).

This intense third wave of esports and the transformative practices therein reveal ongoing definitional ambiguities for "the sport of videogames" (IOC Media, 2018) as well as critiques of formal classifications. Sports philosophy provides a word of caution in this regard: how much institutionalisation and longevity is enough to warrant definitional acceptance (Meier, 1995)? Definitional propositions in esports have residual characteristics from sports; these include gendered, colonial, social class, attitudinal and ableism exclusionary foundationsthat cannot be ignored in the history of institutionalised leisure and sporting activity (Richard et al., 2021; Smith & Thomas, 2012; Sodhi, 2021; Spaaij et al., 2015; Trammell, 2010; Vertinsky et al., 2009). Here, we are reminded that certain bodies and self-serving groups have, in muscular fashion, determined the boundaries of sporting cultures through definitional efforts for centuries and continue to do so within esports (Witkowski, forthcoming).

Current Use

While esports moved into its third wave (T.L. Taylor, 2018), a conceptual progression in esports thinking was also underway. Exploring advancing media sports frameworks, Australian critical media studies scholar Brett Hutchins recognised the shifting sports and global media relationship, esports included. Here, Hutchins specified a material turn towards "sport as media (material integration) instead of sport and media (structural interrelation)" (2008, p. 862, emphasis in original). As examples of contemporary media sports, esports is a part of this turn. The material turn nudges us to observe esports as always integrated as media. Esports are embedded through software, personal networked hardware, and public internet pipelines. Such deep and diverse socio-technical infrastructures stake out that many actors are involved in the network creating, upholding and characterizing esports. T.L. Taylor, among others, has similarly argued for the place of esports as networked media cultures under the terms of the "assemblage of play" and "co-creative" cultures (2009a; see also Morris, 2003). While arguments supporting the position of esports as networked media cultures persist—and starts to pick away at singular executive ownership arguments of intellectual property rights in esports (see T.L. Taylor, 2012)—formal definitions of sports, and a familiarity with sports worlds, continue to be central to esports vocabulary, organisation and practice.

As demonstrated, vigorous debate remains on esports' philosophical claim and practical execution as a sport.22 Still, extensive peer-citation23 centres on Hamari and Sjöblom's esports definition, which warrants presentation in full:

We define eSports as 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. (2017, p. 5)

Ingrained here is an acceptance of traditional sports classifications,24 though not specified within a frame of reference, or discipline, which varies significantly in treatment from sports philosophy to sports sociology (Coakley, 2008; Meier, 1995; Suits, 2007).25 As a term of decisive importance to many people's lives and livelihoods, how can esports be read?26

Summary

The collection of esports frameworks presented thus far lends support to both thin (general) and thick (particular) versions of what esports are, at a given time, within a given society as social activities and as organised and competitive computer game cultures (see Parry, 2006). As embodied movement competition takes place on and through mixed infrastructure models, esports are situated beyond the material software where some of the rules of play reside (see T.L. Taylor, 2012). The decentring of game software in esports definitional efforts works to flatten the landscape. In decentring the digital, esports are reset as belonging to a mixed private-public game field under transformation, despite the commercial and legal structures that suggest a single (private) frame for many esports forms—though they are seldomly the only actors and practices involved in producing the essences of the phenomenon, in the past, current and future (see Burk, 2013).27

Esports are recognised, nurtured and made to matter in distinct ways, by various groups, at different times. A quote from Henry Lowood, game historian and former esports referee, offers a suggestion for how rigorous esports scholarship can be moved forward, and how we might collectively augment our esports knowledge: "fewer definitions, more stories please" (2010).

  1. Carly A. Kocurek (2015) reminds us that at the height of arcade culture (1977-1981), most visitors were average players, not competitive gamers. As places, arcades had local cultures of organised competition developed around them, especially with those arcade owners that "made a habit around hosting tournaments"—one such tournament in 1981 drew 4.000 Space Invader entrants (p. 110). Such special cases, though, are not representative of the reach of organised and competitive electronic gaming writ large (p. 162). See also Fulton (2008).↩
  2. Esports describes the broader practice, which includes various game genres (e.g. fighting games, first-person shooters, real-time strategy games), playing fields (console, mobile, LANs, online) and technologies.↩
  3. Esports research labs and groups emerged after the growth of game livestreaming (after 2012). The Centre of Excellence in Game Culture Studies (a Finnish tri-University centre) received funding from the Academy of Finland in 2018. Esports research featured heavily within the Finnish centre of excellence, with collaborations across its affiliated members and postdoc scholars, making significant contributions to esports scholarship particularly around gambling and gaming. In North America, the University of California, Irvine (UCI), augmented their student recreational and educational offerings in esports with player scholarships and an esports research lab. In 2018, UCI launched an annual industry-funded esports research and industry conference, with sponsors over time including the Moutain Dew Game Fuel energy drink (UCI Esports, 2020).↩
  4. Between 2004 and 2012, T.L. Taylor was studying the professionalisation of North American and European esports. At this time, she was a member of the Danish IT University of Copenhagen's games group, which involved a cluster of 15-20 humanities, social science and computer science academic staff teaching, publishing and contributing to the field of game studies. A northern hemisphere and western-based cluster of esports research emerged in game studies, converging around conferences such as the Foundation of Digital Games and the Digital Games Research Association.↩
  5. For Pro-am players, the sports-moniker has, for some, been affirming. For others, being aligned to "sports" is unfavourable to their everyday practice. Muscular athleticism and hegemonic sporting masculinities, which surround certain sports cultures and experiences, are the antithesis of what draws many players to a serious leisure activity in competitive gaming and various instantiations of geek gaming cultures (Kocurek, 2015; T.L. Taylor, 2012; Witkowski, 2014).↩
  6. The World Cyber Games was originally sponsored and supported by the South Korean Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism, in partnership with Samsung.↩
  7. One discussion on the challenge of "games" was held at the 2008 eSports Conference with German participants noting that "game" in English has two distinct meanings and as such would require translation, whereas sports had more global acceptance and in some cases direct translation or use.↩
  8. Within this entry, following Witkowski's scholarship, the plurality of "esports" is used over "esport" to stress esports' multiplicity and distinction in time and place across social conditions as constructed fields of organised computer game competitions and cultures.↩
  9. While less used in esports communities, by 2020, the International Olympic Committee turned to using "e-games" over esports. A clear move to claim e-games (sport simulations) as a sub-discipline of established and recognised sports such as football, sailing and cycling.↩
  10. A particularly revealing quote from a style committee member is captured here, underscoring how North American platforms and participants have shaped the conversation on esports in the last decade: "The thing that iced it for me, and I think convinced a lot of the other committee members, was when we looked at Google Trends results and saw that people were searching for 'esports' without the hyphen at a rate of like 30 to 1 over 'e-sports' with a hyphen" (Darcy, 2017).↩
  11. See also the establishment of the Korean e-Sports Association (KeSPA) in 2000 under the Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism (Jin, 2010; T.L. Taylor, 2012), and the continued focus on esports in China as a healthy and productive form of gaming participation (Yang, 2018).↩
  12. A functional reminder that esports' ongoing connection to electronic games and sports worlds is engrained in game history: Sears's initial sales contract for Atari was not with the toys division but rather with the sports division (Dyson, 2016).↩
  13. For commercial operators, using sports (labels or language) has been central to normalising and conveying the feel of play to those unfamiliar with the activity. This included suggestions such as that playing esports is like playing a game of 5 on 5 in ice hockey (Kane, 2008); that esports is—according to Blizzard/Activision—"the sport of videogames" (IOC Media, 2018); or more simply, that esports is just a "new sport" to promote and address integrity issues (Gestalt, 1999) .↩
  14. Specifically by building on a conference paper written by Claus Tiedemann (2004), whose work looks at social issues in sport and movement culture. A compelling backdrop to develop from given the existing range of philosophical and cultural research at this time devoted to defining sports.↩
  15. Underpinning the rise of esports, Wagner submits that their forms and practices mark a transitional phase in social structures and values, moving from an industrial to an information and communication society (2006 p. 2).↩
  16. As Karhulahti (2017) recognises, this omission of electronic, and insertion of information and communication, technologies in the definition "leaves space for evolutionary transformation, whilst simultaneously erecting limits that few established sports cross" (p. 44). Taking a sports studies perspective here, few would argue that technologies are not a part of high-end performance sports that have electronics, information and technology embedded and embodied in practice.↩
  17. Perhaps notably, Johan Huizinga's work Homo Ludens (1938/1949), a philosophy of play, is a part of the philosophical canon in game studies and sports studies.↩
  18. Singular or hard definitions of esports make for a risky business when read as culture. As organised and structured competitive games activities, esports are used in people's everyday lives in various ways under shifting local and global forms, regulations and social purposes. Federal governance exemplifies this (Witkowski, 2022). By 2022, the French government recognised esports first-and-foremost as digital commerce, placing esports activity under the Ministries of Economy, Industry, and Digital Affairs (Vansyngel et al., 2018), whereas in New Zealand, esports are recognised as sports and receive economic and social support. Since 2000, the South Korean government has housed esports under the Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism. In Russia, esports first attributed to a national sport in 2001, then rescinded, then regained under shifts in definitional borders and political frameworks (See also Ma et al.'s 2013 account on esports federal governance in China).↩
  19. See Karhulahti (2017) for an instrumental overview.↩
  20. See early work on this transition phase in esports livestreaming to a less niche public (here, via Twitch) in T.L. Taylor (2018), Scholz (2011), Witkowski (2012b) and N. Taylor (2009).↩
  21. Chan and Gray's (2020) work on marginalised masculinities and black men who livestream addresses issues of infrastructural marginalisation inside institutions and outside of their traditional structures.↩
  22. For more granular discussions on esports as sport, see Hutchins (2008), Witkowski (2012a) and Karhulahti (2017), while considering this reminder on the skilful, physical essence of sports from Meier, "any postulated distinction between gross and fine motor activities, as a criterion for distinguishing sports from games, is rejected as arbitrary, unnecessary, and counter-productive" (1981, p. 85).↩
  23. 857 Google scholar citations as of February 16, 2021.↩
  24. See also Jonasson and Thiborg (2010).↩
  25. Note that Hamari and Sjöblom clearly express in their work, as they are looking to solve "the looming question of what sporting activities can be defined to be either an electronic sport or 'traditional' sport [... and] what constitutes the 'e' in eSports" (2017, p. 4).↩
  26. Taking an alternative view from their research on the World Cyber Games, Hutchins (2008) expresses that "[t]he pliability of the term 'sport' appears to negate the need for a new term such as e-sport" (p. 863). Rather, esports requires more technological specificity, namely involving technology that "no sport shares: the material interpenetration of media content, sport and networked computing" (p. 864). Another close reading is presented in Jin (2010), who found that the additional powers of online gaming, commercial ownership models and a focus on "content" made esports a more complex process than established sports worlds and as such a multi-industry merger of sports-business-media (p. 61). A decade after these studies were produced, the COVID-19 live media sports lockdowns occurred. Motorsports leagues' swift transformation to online events offered a view of the material interpenetration of esports and sports, and how close established sports are, and perhaps have been for some time, to material interpenetration of networked computing in specific sporting formats, such as Formula 1 events (Witkowski et al., 2021). What Hutchins identified, early within esports scholarship, was that esports would be a harbinger of change for how we consume, produce and participate within organised and competitive gaming and competitive movement cultures writ large.↩
  27. See also arguments on decentralised games and blockchain esports.↩

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Author Information

Dr Emma Witkowski is a qualitative sociological researcher of networked game cultures, particularly high-performance game practices, esports modernisation and socio-technical relationships made within organised digital leisure activities. Her publications explore esports careers, gender and game cultures, digital lifestyles and the institutionalisation of esports. She teaches in the RMIT Game Design program (Melbourne, Australia), and consults on esports for industry, government and the education sector locally and internationally.

Citation Information

Witkowski, E. (2022). Electronic Sports. In Grabarczyk, P. (ed.), Encyclopedia of Ludic Terms (Spring 2022 Edition). URL: https://eolt.org/articles/electronic-sports

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