E-Sports : A New Stage For Gamers

There comes a time in an adolescent’s life when he/she has to make a choice about a future career. At that stage, the adolescent is bound to hear this statement an umpteen number of times - “pursue a career that fascinates you and which you are passionate about”.

They could be anything they wish to be - an engineer, doctor, astronaut, artist; the choices are unlimited and all fields hold good scope.

But what if they have a passion for gaming? Not for game designing - they couldn’t care less about how the games are made - but a passion for playing games and mastering them. Could that earn them respect, fame, power and most importantly, could it earn them a living?

With growth in competitive gaming and also the introduction of online multiplayer (which was a relatively new thing ten to 15 years ago), a new form of entertainment and indeed a new form of sport was introduced: E-sports.

E-sports involves gamers being pitted against each other in a battle to win a prize. But such casual competitive events are slowly gaining mass popularity and have started shaping into something more serious. From a competition that people participated in to top the leader board, it has turned into a fight to come first and earn money.

But e-sports was definitely not a sudden development. In fact, it was the build-up of years of development of online and multiplayer gaming, and the introduction of several new game forms like massively multiplayer online role-playing games (MMORPG) and multiplayer online battle arenas (MOBA).

In recent years, MOBAs of the likes of League of Legends and DotA (2) have especially contributed to this growth. In fact, MOBAs are one of the most widespread games when it comes to e-sports, with yearly events like DotA 2 – the international event, which promises rewards in the order of millions to the winning teams.

Doesn’t it sound lucrative? Yes, it does. Until you learn that if you don’t make it among the top few, you get nothing.

While footballers and cricketers get paid regardless of whether they lose or win, gamers involved in e-sports are paid nothing for their effort if they lose. To be honest, I think this is one of the main reasons why passionate gamers think twice before making it a profession.

Another obstacle is pressure from family and society. Let us accept that no parent would want his or her child to get into an occupation that doesn’t even involve a regular paying job. Not to forget, those points are absolutely true and any gamer who decides to get into professional gaming is certainly taking a gamble.

It’s true that e-sports has never been taken very seriously till date. But that could change, right?

E-sports is steadily gaining massive popularity. In fact, more than 60mn people worldwide follow e-sports.

What about the coming years? Do you see a future where countries have national e-sport teams to represent them, a future where friends meet up at a club to watch the finals of a gaming championship, or a future where parents wish their children could someday make them proud at the DotA 2 International finals?

Well, as a gamer who sees the potential and appreciates e-sports for what it is, I surely hope so and would advise anyone with the slightest bit of interest in competitive gaming to be aware of and to support the growth of this relatively new adaptation of multiplayer gaming.

Pranav Nair is a 17 year old whose passion is writing reviews and articles on technology and gaming. His gaming tag is Fleet Admiral. You can check out his tech vlog at: www.youtube.com/user/pranavnairtech or contact him at pranavnairtech@gmail.com