Games - Electronic sports

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	Games - Electronic sports

Electronic sports, abbreviated e-sports or eSports, is used as a general term used to describe computer and video games that are played as competitive sports. Less popular terms include competitive gaming, cybersports and cyber athletics.

Games which are considered e-sports normally belong to the first-person shooter, real-time strategy, or sports game genres. They are played competitively at both amateur and professional levels.

Playing e-sports

Over the Internet

The easiest way to play an e-sports match is over the Internet. General online play is subject to the lessened ability to detect cheating and the more unpredictable network latency not being the ideal environment for high level competition. However, due to its convenience, even players who are used to LAN games use Internet games for fun and practice.

Usually clans will need to contact each other prior to matches. Internet Relay Chat is very popular for doing this due to the ability for each clan, league, or other gaming related organisation to set up its own chat channel on the network, making them easy to find. IRC has become so popular among gamers that the largest IRC network is Quakenet, a network originally created for players of the first-person shooter Quake and now used by players of many different games. The matches are then carried out on the server according to the rules of the leagues the teams are familiar with.

Popular online leagues include the Cyberathlete Amateur League, ClanBase, and the Electronic Sports League

Over a local area network

Playing over a LAN has a number of advantages: the network conditions are much better suited to playing computer games than on the Internet, and when the person is in the same building or room as you it is a lot harder to cheat without someone knowing (at professional events administrators will normally be present to ensure fair play). It is also a much more social atmosphere. Due to the advantages of LAN many gamers organise LAN parties or visit LAN centres and major tournaments almost always conducted over LANs.

Professional e-sports

The history of professional e-sports

Professional events have grown dramatically since the first tournament in 1997. A tournament that year, hosted by the Cyberathlete Professional League and founded by Angel Munoz, had a turnout of around 300 competitors for a single Quake tournament. Since then, the attendance and size of the venues for these events has grown greatly, and now thousands of spectators connect over the internet to watch the final matches. The prizes are also larger; in 2005, the CPL paid out a total of $1,500,000 USD in cash prizes.

The CPL have remained a pioneering force in e-sports and in 2005 moved to a world tour format. The 2005 world tour focused on the one-on-one deathmatch game Painkiller and had a total prize purse of $1,000,000. The winner of the grand finals event, Johnathan "Fatal1ty" Wendel, went home with US $150,000; the largest cash prize in e-sports history.

The most widely recognised professional tournaments are those run by the Cyberathlete Professional League, the World Cyber Games and the Electronic Sports World Cup. The prize money for these events is mostly provided by the large technology corporations who sponsor the events; these same companies also sponsor many of the teams. A team sponsorship usually includes travel expenses and whatever equipment the company produces. It is now common place for mainstream news to cover these events in some way.

Professional teams and the introduction of player contracts

In e-sports, what was once traditional clans have now grown out to be professional organizations, much like for instance a professional football club, rather than just a social group of players. By contracting players and sponsors, and facilitating for the players, they hope they leave their mark on the e-sports world and its fans. Many clubs have contracted players for multiple teams and for different games, spreading their chances and their name. This also relieves players of the managing tasks, so they can rather focus on gaming.

[ Visit the complete Wikipedia entry for Electronic sports ]

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