Anatomy of an E-Sport

E-Sports are starting to be something that people occasionally hear about. Big international gaming tournaments, with prizes of thousands, or tens of thousands of dollars. That's a lot of damn money for a video game. Especially if you're a top player, salaried, on a team, we ain't in momma's basement no more.

Just a couple of days ago, I was sitting in a sports bar, watching the finals of Major League Gaming's Orlando event. Dozens of other people there, cheering for some awesome Starcraft 2 players, having a couple of beers, yelling, big screen TV's, the works. This is getting big, and with the increasing emphasis of technology in the modern world, it's not going anywhere.

So what makes for a game that can be an E-Sport? We have various games to look at, Halo, Call of Duty, League of Legends, DOTA, HoN, Starcraft 2. Not all of these games seem to have much in common. From the shooters, to the real time strategy, to the Multiplayer Online Battle Arena.

The first factor they need, obviously, is a means of direct competition. A means of pitting people against each other, rather than just the game. This lets you see whose tactics, strategy, mechanics, and game knowledge is actually superior in a tangible sort of way. Team play isn't required, but it does add some depth to some games.

Next, they need little to no random factors. People don't watch professional Yahtzee, for some weird reason. Might have something to do with the fact that random chance can have too much of an adverse effect on skill. I still don't have a clue why people enjoy watching poker tournaments. Sure, there's some cool dynamics, but when the best player can be crushed by the vagaries of fate, it's kind of detrimental to enjoyment, at least for me.

Another important notion is a high skill cap. If it's easy to keep pace and do everything, it takes challenge out. This is why certain games, particularly fighters and shooters, will occasionally put limits on what is allowed in competitive play, whether it's disallowing specific weapons, characters, or anything else. This is there so that something that requires demonstrably less skill to be effective doesn't skew the competition by forcing everyone to use to stupid overpowered stuff to be competitive at all.

Also important is a certain amount of tension. There needs to be some sort of edge, a palpable means of pressure building on the players. American football has third and long, or fourth and inches, field goals, and other moments where one exceptional play can make or break a team. If the game is capable of hanging by a thread, or balancing on a narrow ledge, where it can go either way at any second, it draws in attention.

Finally, for an E-Sport to be successful, there needs to be some sort of exterior community. People gathering, whether it's online or in sports bars, at tournaments or in houses, there needs to be sufficient gatherings of people to draw the sponsors. Without sponsors, you don't have player salaries, you don't have big tournament payoffs.

There may be other factors you can think of, but this is, I think, the true essence of an E-Sport. Just about anything that combines these factors is likely to succeed.