Let's be frank , everyone in their whole life time would have played at least one video game. It might have been Farmville, Diablo, Counter Strike or any other such. Video games have made people get addicted in them by providing a "virtual" hangout to spend the leisure time or to through out their stress ( <--- I do this) . While every bit of our technology is being revolutionized , games too are being so much improved. Now games are so important that they have even made a new field called "Gamification", in which entrepreneurs implement game like environment into their business to improve their production. An example for Companies that have implemented gamification are Microsoft, Samsung and Sony. (They have added awards/Trophies and also leader boards for their employees to encourage them)
Now while all this development and technology is increasing exponentially, we as humans are getting very much lazier and....hmm....dumber (Hey I am not saying this...Einstein did!)
Hence nowadays, we are lacking time even to play or communicate with our friends. This is the main root cause by which social networking and social gaming has become an almost basic necessity !! Now you might be wondering whats all with this background story and boring history....actually these are the main founding stones of the game system called "Multiplayer". The earliest Multiplayer games were done using LAN cables
(Example Doom [1],Quake) and later these games went online ,which means they were played using the internet. The phenomenon that made multiplayer games go viral was Counter strike (A Fps game) which was released in 1999. Later strategy games like Starcraft and Warcraft introduced multiplayer modes , which became so exciting for everyone to play. Since people no longer play outside (some do I agree!) , they made these multiplayer modes competitive rather than being just for fun. Now you might ask your selves how big could such competitions be? Trust me they are Huge!! Some games are selected (Namely Counter strike, Dota, LoL, Warcraft III, Star Craft II, Halo and FiFa) and are held as world tournaments. There are thousands and thousands of people participating (of all ages) from different nations to play these tournaments (They also have very huge names as sponsors!). Some of these tournaments even continue season after season (like a chess tournament) and gamers should maintain an ELO Ranking by playing and winning games often. These leagues (Tournaments) are quite popular all over the world and are most famous in countries like USA,Europe, Japan, China and South Korea (I seriously have no idea what the North Korea guys are up to :/ ).
So back to our topic, these tournaments are named as eSports and many scientists predict this might be the future or a new era in sports (I was expecting Quidditch :(( ). Like any other sports tournament, there are many competitive and famous tournaments for gaming such as World Cyber Games (WCG) , Major League Gaming (MLG), etc. The prize money for such tournaments are also very impressive as it is from a few thousand dollars to a few MILLION! (Yep MILLION! ). As a conclusion I might say this is just a new possibility and a new field in sports (or is this even sports? ) , so let us all give it time and see how huge it becomes!! (Also, we shall wait to see if India does something to join these tournaments......gaming coaching center perhaps? )
~Kak0r0t
(Mukilan.)
Ps: In the mean time do post your comments/arguments in the comment section and also don't forget to start gaming! who knows ? you might be next World champion in gaming!! (Think about it!! ) .
Here's a good read : http://www.sloansportsconference.com/?p=5810
Recommended video for this article: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2170584/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1
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