A few years ago I used to read about this subject nearly all the time. It went quiet for a while, then in the last couple of months (in the form of interviews, documentaries and articles), I’ve seen it mentioned again and again on various e-sport related websites. Due to the lack of recent discussion and various high profile figures in e-sports commenting on it I’ve been unable to retain my excitement. The Unreal Tournament 3 Gamespy login has been down for over an hour now so I’ve decided to write this.

ESPORTS IS GOING TO EXPLODE IN 5 YEARS!

This time though, I like a few others know it is for certain. I’ve heard this said since day 1 of my First Person Shooting career in 1998. It’s interesting the word “explode” is always used and the time “5years” is always decided on.

Unreal Tournament and Quake 3 were out in 1999 and these were in my opinion 1on1 first person shooting games at their best. Another huge hit, team first person shooting game Counter-Strike came out too.

At that point it made sense for everyone to say it would explode. Clearly everyone got it wrong, otherwise gaming would have exploded between 2003 and now, but it hasn’t, so maybe they should have been saying 15, 14, 13 years encounting.

I am going to explain why it’s going to happen this time, the difference to past times and what is going to happen at the 5 year explosion.

Change

Looking at the recent changes to the scene you’ll see the introduction of online competitive console games, which are usually types of sports games (racing, football and martial arts).

On the PC 1on1 first person shooters haven’t been doing so well and team games seem to be the dominant force. This is due to a misconception people are having that games which are easy to pick up and play and put lots of people together at once (around 16 – 32 players a team), are more fun.

I personally hope that game developers will ignore the fact more complex (1on1) FPS games have not sold so well in recent years. I hope they don’t see the money generated by the success of CSS, the Battlefield series, COD4 and TF2. Maybe then 1on1 FPS will have yet another shot at being part of the explosion.

I’m not too familiar with the other game types on PC so I’ll try not to go into that as much.

BOOM Explosion

What’s going to happen in 5 years is e-sports will explode becoming more popular than today’s sports. Gamers will be “International Superstars”.

A Superstar is a type of celebrity who you normally associate with money, fame and success.

When it explodes the stereotypical athletic, popular sports guy at school will disappear. Everyone will look up to the quieter, shy, often skinny or sometimes obese guy who spent more time at the computer, getting good at games.

This will probably lead to the old school fields having covered computer rooms built on them as everyone will want to participate in e-sports at break time.

Girls will change their views (what is often considered natural selection) on which males they fancy and how they go about getting with them. They will go for the more potentially successful gamer (typically smelly, with bad hair and lower social skills), over the guys that they used meet socialising at clubs and pubs. I guess they will try and meet gamers at computer events or online.

This will also cause female e-sports to explode as to get with and be with an e-sports Superstar they will probably have to show interest in e-sports thus making more female gamers.

Current Popular Sport

On Wikipedia it say football dates back from 476 – 211 BC. Let’s say its 2300 years old and has proven to remain popular throughout this time.

I can see interest in it dying off in 5 years. Counter strike is one of the most popular e-sports. It is proving a competitive e-sport can last a long time (10 years). Most other computer games completely disappear from competitive play after 1 – 5 years or get replaced with a sequel. I know in 5 years there will be a game that lasts a century.

When this happens the football stadiums across the world could do 1 of 2 things:

1. Convert into fully covered stadiums which have a cinema style screen inside. Here huge crowds will turn up and pay to stare at the back of the heads of usually 2 – 12 players, wearing head sets with their face nearly touching their monitors. This will go on for 20 minutes, there will be a break, then carry on another 20 minutes. The action from their screen will be shown on a cinema screen above them.

2. Close down completely and then probably be demolished. This will be because of the TV coverage and high quality web streams becoming available. They will cause people to want to stay in to watch the Superstars. Replacing the tradition of going out (usually stopping at a nearby pub first), for a social gathering at the game.

In e-sports previously the money came from hardware and software companies sponsoring tournaments, leagues and teams. The big one I think of is Intel. For some reason Intel don’t seem to be as keen to support Counter strike and quake showcasing their hardware as they used to. This won’t matter when it explodes.

Currently most of sports stars income comes from ticket sales, broadcasting companies paying to cover the events and sponsorships.

E-sports stars income will soon come in the same way

Ticket Sales

When e-sports takes over other sports, fans will be willing to pay £30 to watch an e-sports match instead.

TV Programs

I remember my old favourite computer game shows on TV. Games Master and Bad Influence, they came out when the Super Nintendo and Mega Drive were massive. They were on at prime time viewing hours when most people only had 4 channels, so there was less choice of what to watch (funnily satellite TV subscriptions were on a big increase then, compared to today where reports blame the sharp decrease and lack of viewings on the internet).

With what appeared to be big budget productions I was shocked and upset to see they only lasted 4 and 6 years before losing audiences and being dropped.

History will not repeat itself though, the difference being.

People will prefer to watch the same old games being played over and over again, compared to in the past when they were only shown footage of the very latest or unreleased games being played.

It will get that big the companies will be able to do pay per view TV and web steams.

Parents will not be able to watch their favourite shows, therefore get more into e-sports, because their child will demand that they pay even more to watch the Superstars play the game they’ve just been bought on TV, instead of exploring it themselves.

If it was 5 years from now the quality show “epileptic gaming” would have more viewers than American idol. The presenters wouldn’t want to be anywhere else and others would only dream of having their job.

Sponsorship

Sports products will quickly latch onto the fall of traditional sports and be forced to focus on e-sports. Sponsorship for teams like Manchester united will be replaced by e-sports teams. I can see Nike Athletic changing to Nike Cyber-genetic.

Traditional sportswear in shops will be replaced by endurance gaming wear, trousers that absorb bodily fluid and stay comfortable at the desk for long periods of times, shirts with built in mouse or pad holders.

Sports supplements will no longer provide energy and muscle power. They will be herbal to calm down nervous gamers, eliminating hand shake.

Fast food chains and fizzy pop brands will want in on e-sports, completely changing their advertising campaigns. Instead of portraying their products as safe when combined with a healthy lifestyle. They will say the high blood pressure you get from junk food and lack of physical exercise increases your reaction time and mental edge.

David Beckham and Christiana Ronaldo will be replaced by Vo0 and Fatal1ty as the new faces of Pepsi Cola.

OUT!

IN!

It’s an advertisers dream!

Other Comparisons

Look at poker that’s similar, except for the fact it has been established for roughly 100 years, it has exploded. It is now continuing to prove interest in watching and playing a modern game, rather than sport, doesn’t fade away at all!

Another example of something new exploding in the same way e-sports will is Mixed Martial Arts. MMA got lucky and has been successful only because it exploded just before the e-sports. Evidence of modern humans dates back 164,000 years and it’s always been in our nature to fight. Couple that with the fact professional wrestling and boxing has been popular on TV since the 1950s MMA showed potential to do quite well.

I know the nature to fight is what makes gamers play e-sports. Because there is less chance of injury, psychologically people will take up e-sports instead of MMA. Everyone will then lose interest in hand to hand combat, replacing it with computer style combat (funnily modern war is turning this way somewhat).

In 5 years e-sports will be that big, if at a computer event, a fight broke out between 2 guys (or girls fighting over the gamers), no one would pay any attention to it as they would be more interested in the action on the screens.

The Superstars!

Being a gaming Superstar is better than being just a national star like for example the NFL players of America. Gamers have “A Global Presence”.

I learnt this when I was in a night club in Manchester. After 5 minutes of pushing I got through a crowd of people surrounding a guy to see what the fuss was about. His name was Andrew. He was from a semi popular British soap called Hollyoaks. He had come into the club out of the blue with an old friend from drama school he was visiting. I asked him where his friend was and he pointed to a guy sat waiting nearby.


Andrew told me everywhere he goes in England he gets recognised and loved. Suddenly he started getting emotional and said he actually envied his friend and was not content with his own national success. He said his friend (who was being ignored), was actually an international celebrity. He said the guy’s neighbours didn’t even know who he was but on you-tube, he has over 7,000 subscribers and his videos get literally hundreds of thousands of hits from people worldwide.

This made me realise NFL stars are just stars. Not like gamers, who are Superstars.

We will have players that are for example “the Michael Jordans” of an e-sport. We’ve already seen this is possible. I can think of 3 players that for a while, dominated a single game type:

1. Vo0 dominated Painkiller for 2 years.

2. GitzZz dominated Unreal Tournament for 3 years.

3. Hero has sort of almost dominated FIFA for 4 about years.

So obviously in 5 years there will be guys that come about who dominate like Michael did for about 16 years.

Acceptance

The key to this happening is the change that will take place over 5 years. I’m 23 now and because of my age I try to keep it a secret at work that I am back playing computer games again. I won’t have to in 5 years. At the moment anyone 7+ years older than me would laugh and ridicule me if I said,

“I play computer games for like 2-3 hours a day 5 days a week when I am practicing for a tournament.”

In 5 years most of these guys will be dead. Pro gamers will be able to walk into a top job interview or try to get a scholarship to a top university and when asked,

“Well what have you been doing for the last 8 years?”

They will reply,

“I didn’t work or study, I played 9 hours a day, 7 days a week often doing long boot camps with likeminded superstars. “

Instead of thinking they are a twat, for the first time ever the interviewers will be impressed by this and think they are cool.

They will know the explosion caused so many people to turn pro it made it hard for gamers to compete. A gamer making less than £15,000 a year couldn’t put much into their pension fund. Due to property prices they were most likely still living with their parents or living off their parent’s money to continue their e-sports.

There will be that much respect for the failed pros they’ll just give them the place away.

Lifespan

People won’t grow out of or get bored of computer games either. I still see a crowd of middle aged men round the pac-man arcade at the supermarket. They’ve been playing it since I was tiny. Compare that to the life span of games that came out in the last 10 years and you’ll know for sure everyone will be hooked.

If this wasn’t the case I’d probably already be seeing a generation of ex gamers from early quake3/unreal tournament, who to keep themselves entertained, would rather sit on websites or chat programs, posting useless comments about people who play.

If pro gaming wasn’t going to explode, the intelligent, successful players we consider pros would foresee there is no future in it. They would probably move away from pro gaming completely, setting up cyber cafes or endorsing computer hardware instead.

Consoles

Consoles will most defiantly be the cause the explosion. The world cup 2014 in Brasil will be called off. People will be more interested in watching FIFA 2014 on the PlayStation 4.

I’ve already heard rumours that a multiplay.co.uk gaming event known as the “i-series” is looking to host a 10,000 player LAN at Silverstone race track in 2013. This coincidently is planned for the same weekend the formula 1 would normally be on. Silverstone management have predicted the computer event to draw more spectators and therefore be more profitable. By then racing fans will prefer to watch kids play the latest need for speed on the Xbox 720 because the cars travel faster than in formula 1.

Gaming Explosion is a FACT

I’ve been to Korea twice. Gaming had already exploded there. I saw about 500 Koreans from the general public turn out to see their 2 best “National Superstar players”, in the once a year “World Cyber Games Grand Final” in 2002, less showed up in 2003 but that’s maybe down to the fact only 1 Korean was in the final. At least 14 kids lined up for the finalists signatures after the match.

Later to my amazement UK FIFA player “pacman” and I found something else that had exploded in Korea, yet goes unreported. We saw lots of Koreas in the Olympic park walking into a small stadium. We followed them to find inside you placed bets on the order in which 5 cyclists would finish after doing 4 laps of the track you overlooked. There was the same amount of Koreans here as WCG. We got told this event was held twice a week and is watched on their local TV station as much as gaming! Yet, this seems unreported to the western world?

Due to the volume at which e-sports and cycling has exploded in Korea I can only imagine their football and baseball matches now pull crowds of 10 to 20.

Government Support

This sort of explosion usually only happens when governments approve of it.

In history countries have often invested large amounts in the Olympic Games. Here a country really gets the chance to portray itself as a successful place. The idea behind it is if the government is producing the fittest, worlds best athletes they’re probably doing the right thing.

I know that when the explosion happens, England will scrap the idea of investing in the London 2012 Olympic Games and concentrate on the World Cyber Games 2012. The plan will be to demonstrate through a team of timid gamers, England now has the world’s most dedicated computer geeks.

I can see the USA really picking up on this. They will see the massive potential benefits a nation of pro gamers would have on their currently struggling economy.

I am puzzled and frustrated like the rest of you at the German government who seem to object to our games. Why does their government always seem on high alert, looking out for potential problems? It’s not like they failed to see any problems in the past. They actually pay these so called “problem spotting experts”. These “experts” then stupidly raise concern about games. Idiots!

Special Thanks

The sponsors that have made the pro gaming coverage we receive possible.

I would love to firmly shake the hand of any company director that agreed to sign over money which enabled gaming organisations to send, for example, loners like Carmac to produce his outstanding work.

These directors probably have little to no in depth knowledge or experience in the e-sport scene.

Speaking from my heart I would tell them there was most defiantly, absolutely no better way to increase revenue for their company, than what’s being done, spending £1000’s of their money, sending Carmac around the world.

I’d express my astonishment and their luck that guys this talented were never snapped up earlier, by bigger organisations than e-sports websites.

I expected them to be driving a Ferraris by now.

Finally

The current prolific figures that commentate, present and provide coverage of our e-sports in my mind, GUARENTEE IT WILL EXPLODE IN 5 YEARS!