The World of e-Sports and The Culture Behind It

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What is e-Sports exactly? According to the dictionary definition, "Electronic Sports", abbreviated as e-Sports is used as a general term to describe the competitive play of video-games such as League of Legends, DOTA 2, Hearthstone and etc. 

In an article by Holden ZA, he writes "the eSports industry is growing rapidly, with regard to spectators and participants, as is the case of Riot's League of Legends (an online multiplayer online battle arena video game) that has seen phenomenal growth in spectatorship over the past 2 years." 

Despite the political, social and educational aspect of digital media, it has definitely become most used in the the entertainment aspect of it all. I interviewed a friend of mine who is a DOTA 2 gamer to see what his thoughts are on professional gaming.

Before the digital media revolution, video-gaming was just one or two players pitting gaming skills against each other. Today in the digital media age, millions of people globally connect with each other by playing DOTA 2 on the internet. As seen in the documentary Free to Play, entertainment has truly become a cultural and social experience in which people can interact with one another who share similar interests. In the case of DOTA 2, what was at the beginning a "real-time" strategy game has now become a world-wide phenomenon with a colossal cultural impact.

For one, digital media has enabled players and fans from all over the world to converge and attend huge tournaments such as the International DOTA 2 tournament and 2014 League of Legends World Championship in Seoul, Korea. Game enthusiasts come together to enact their favourite game quests, cosplay as their favourite characters in the game and even live -action role play in events. It is indeed a rising industry with huge potential in revenues to be made so much so that a movie based on World of Warcrafts (WoW) is set to release in year 2016 due to its immense cultural legacy.

So is e-Sports classified as a sport? I'd say yes in the sense that e-Sports involves strategic input, team play and training for hours just as physical sports do.