Why eSports sector is more than a game

Do the words ganking, head glitch and kappa mean anything to you? If not, it’s likely they soon will as the eSports industry continues to cast its net ever wider in the global entertainment world.

Why eSports sector is more than a game

Do the words ganking, head glitch and kappa mean anything to you? If not, it’s likely they soon will as the eSports industry continues to cast its net ever wider in the global entertainment world.

The words are a small selection of slang used in popular online games such as Call of Duty, Overwatch, and League of Legends — a vocabularyin constant parlance amongst an entertainment demographic that is well on the way to eclipsing football in global numbers.

The Insomnia Gaming Festival comes to the RDS Dublin next month, an event billed as “celebrating the culture of gaming”, complete with the latest merchandise, technology, and stage shows, plus the presence of gaming influencers and content creators.

Running in the UK for over 20 years, organisers say Insomnia has grown to become the biggest event of its kind, regularly attracting audiences of 70,000 people. The first International Insomnia took place in Cairo in October last year, in addition to a recent event in Dubai.

In its avowedly commercial pitch, Insomnia bills itself as the source that “taps into the unreachable, we are the modern-day brand for Generation Z. If you want to reach the people that don’t own a TV and who are typically ABC1, we are that audience by definition”.

Omega Events, the team behind Dublin Comic Con and GamerFest, is involved in bringing the event to Ireland for the first time.

Stuart Dempsey, director of Omega Events, claims that “the huge international growth in gaming is obvious for all to see”.

The eSports industry includes competitive video gaming, where individuals and teams face off in globally recognised games such as Fortnite, Counter-Strike, Dota 2 and Overwatch.

Gamers are watched and followed by millions of fans, tuning in online or attending live events.

Tyler ‘Ninja’ Blevins is the world’s biggest streamer, with over 12 million fans, and earning an estimated €450,000 a month.

In the same way that sports fans follow every move, Mr Blevins’ massive base analyse the 26-year-old’s moves and tactics in the Fortnite game, avidly following his kill ratios and stats.

Revenues of global eSports, or competitive video games played for spectators, will reach €1bn this year, according to analytics company Newzoo.

Juventus president and head of the European Clubs Association, Andrea Agnelli, warned that soccer would come under increasing pressure from eSports.

“When you look at supporters now, the bulk of fans are Generation X, millennials, or those in Generation Z, who are turning adult now. So you have to look at Generation Z and think that competitors of the game are eSports and Fortnite. They will be competitors going forward,” he told an industryconference.

Last month, Lero, the Irish Software Research Centre at the University of Limerick, opened Ireland’s first eSports research lab where researcherswill study the performances ofinternational amateur and professional eSports players.

Mark Campbell, director of the research lab, underlined the potential growth of the sector: “This is a massive growth sector where top professional players can earn millions of dollars per annum. However, unlike other professional sports, there has been very little application of sports science to theparticipants to date.”

The research lab will combine health science and computing to identify what makes a superior player, working on psychometric software incorporating eye tracking and brain imaging to measure the neural, cognitive and physical attributes of the most effective gamers.

In addition, research has shown that this is a sport in which female players can compete on equal terms with their male counterparts. The earnings potential of the industry was highlighted by last month’s Fortnite World Cup in New York where US teenager Kyle ‘Bugha’ Giersdorf, 16, won $3m (€2.7m).

Dubliner Joshua Juliano, 17, took home $50,000 from the same event. The prize money for eSports in 2018 exceeded $160m, and for one event reached $25m.

“Esports represent a rapidly growing billion-dollar global industry which is using innovation to push the boundaries of technology,” said Professor Mark Ferguson, the director-general of Science Foundation Ireland and chief scientific adviser to the Government.

The new Lero lab will help bring about greater levels of international visibility to the games industry, he believes, solidifying expertise across Irish third-level institutions and industry.

Already in the US, colleges and universities are actively attracting students with eSports scholarships.

In 2023, there will be an estimated €90m in scholarship money available related to eSports, with the opportunity to access these scholarships greatly enhanced when primary and secondary schools formally embrace eSports.

Aphra Kerr, associate professor at Maynooth University and author of the book, Global Gaming: Production in the Digital Game Industry, says the games industry is rapidly changing in Ireland.

“We’re seeing people with experience in game development abroad come back home to develop, and we also have students coming out of game courses with much greater opportunities than before.

"The industry has serious competition for technology talent in Ireland, with huge multinationals like Google and Facebook,” she says.

However, much needs to be done to compete with the likes of Norway and Sweden, she says.

“We lump gaming in with all the other companies, rather than recognising that this is a cultural industry, which would make a difference not only to gaming but to other industries as well.”

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