72 OVER THE TOP Esports
Words by Neal Romanek
Esports is real sports. The real question is what is real?
venues. There’s a pie there that people want a slice of. But the real truth is that a lot of those investors, participants, partners have no idea what all the excitement is about. GETTING HIP I like to imagine the hype around esports as being like rock and roll in the late 1950s – something that was clearly going to be huge, epoch-making and tremendously lucrative, but which the incumbent business
You’re going to sit on your couch and cheer someone playing a video game? And maybe you don’t even see the player; you only see the gameplay? You’re going to watch that? Really? Yes, really. Esports is a real thing. And there is an esports bandwagon a lot of companies are jumping on. They see big money being spent and huge audiences watching both online and in big, new, well-lit
and cultural infrastructure was absolutely unable to get their heads around. But esports goes even further. It’s not just a new genre of content. It is, in some ways, a new way of thinking about media. My first experience with esports was seeing my daughter, at about age six, watch Super Mario playthroughs on YouTube. She absolutely loved them. At first, I was confused – I was one of those music execs from 1959. My daughter had never played the game before. We didn’t even own a game console. But she was fascinated. She understood that there was a contest under way with stakes and obstacles and a goal. There were characters moving through this constructed landscape and they were obviously moving with autonomy, making decisions on a moment by moment basis according to a set of rules. It occurred to me that this was
THE DIGITAL WORLD HAS FINALLY CALLED OUR BLUFF
feedzine feed.zine feedmagazine.tv
Powered by FlippingBook