Esports is massive... and growing

[Leshma]

To me, e-sports is very similar to poker tournaments. Similar people are contestants, everything is run by some shady dudes like in poker world and people who watch one thing usually watch the other too.

Not saying physical sports are better, they became shady as fuck and pretty much only purpose for those competitions going on is money laundering through betting. But physical sport had noble roots, universities started the whole thing, even back to Ancient Greece. E-sports has been organized when it became largely popular by shady folks, universities and healthy institutions didn't help it grow. Maybe because there is no positive health effects from playing video games, and that was the main reason why universities embraced traditional sports, to improve health of their students.

[YnScN]

But physical sport had noble roots, universities started the whole thing, even back to Ancient Greece.

Dude they just didn't have computers so they thought running fast is a good idea to kill spare time.

[[ptx]]

Dude they just didn't have computers so they thought running fast is a good idea to kill spare time.

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[WITCHCRAFT]

Wow Esports, so impressive, such a display of physical skill and control.

Brb gonna go fuck my Egirlfriend, need tissues to clean the disk tray after

[Kafein]

They should def call it something else than e-sport tbh. I just like disagreeing with Heskey because I'm a professional contrarian, but there's something to the word sport "glorifying" professional gaming as something it is not. Not sure why the label e-sport should stick,  it's not a very accurate one, except for the e part. No one calls chess a "mind sport" in common parlance. Professional gaming sounds good enough to me. E-sport sounds like the brainchild of some marketing department team.

"Professional Gaming" is much too vague. It describes all sports, board games, video games etc. played professionally.

On the contrary, I think e-sports is a better term because it's accurate. If a layman reads that word for the first time chances are he won't try to make assumptions.

[Vibe]

Slight necro, but relevant.

It seems that football clubs have started entering the e-sports scene

Manchester United Football Club and Fnatic have entered a bidding war, with both organizations looking to sign the same Overwatch team

Manchester United would not be the first major soccer brand to get involved in esports. German soccer team FC Schalke 04 recently signed the EU LCS roster formerly known as Elements, Valencia CF signed four Hearthstone players and West Ham United has signed a FIFA 16 player.

[Gravoth_iii]

Slight necro, but relevant.

It seems that football clubs have started entering the e-sports scene

Thats pretty cool.

[Angantyr]

[Vibe]

Uh not sure I want to watch one hour of this when 3/4 of the comments are calling this reporter shit and that he has a condenscending attitude towards esports/gamers.

[Oberyn]

Vice has gone downhill really quickly. Any of the good stuff left is burried under a mountain of Gawker like clickbait.

[Casul]

puked after only 1 min, anyone can top this?

[Angantyr]

I watched it as a freak show. The production and presentation is horrible, as are many of the people interviewed, the whole program reminded me that large sectors of gaming culture has transformed into something I don't like and don't want anything to do with, as celebrity culture in general. This it documents pretty well.

[Admerius]

Computer gaming has some physical aspects apart from muscle memory and other non-conscious imprinted reflex responses.

Personal anecdote of the positive traits I gained from gaming:
Right hand: Improved short distance movement precision, index and middle finger mouse click speed is faster(thumb only slightly affected since I was a poor 3-button mouse owner in my early years)
Left hand: Button clicking speed which is quicker but less precise than the right hand's mouse clicking speed.

These are physical traits(muscle and nerve efficiency in the hands), it is not exclusively brain-wiring that fires neural impulses in a conditioned manner, there are real physical traits that has been trained on top of that.

My opinion on the whole E-Sports thing has much more to do with linguistics:
The S in Sports should not be capitalized, it is not a "Sport" of the type "e", it is a "sport" within "E"

IMO:

(click to show/hide)

Main category: Sport
Sub category: Electronic
Result: E-Sport or e-Sport

(click to show/hide)

Main category: Gaming(Interchange with "electronic" to get away from the reactionary cultural shaming of the term gaming)
Sub category: competitive(change to sport so it's not TL;DR TMS;DU for all the Americans)
Result: E-sport or e-sport

[Jona]

Slight necro, but relevant.

It seems that football clubs have started entering the e-sports scene

How does Overwatch even have teams that good already such that multiple companies are bidding on them? I know it had beta tests in the past, but weren't those limited to a week each or so? These nerds have only been playing the game for like a month in total and already they're poised to make bank. Meanwhile I'm just sitting here at my normal job doing un-fun work things and making a small fraction of what they'll end up with...   

[Leshma]

Slight necro, but relevant.

It seems that football clubs have started entering the e-sports scene

Not just that. Last year, young Arsenal star Hector Bellerin was taking part in some TV tournament on UK television. They played BlOps3. Club endorsed his participation, despite it being midweek two days before CL games. Arsenal has strongest Internet presence of all football clubs and you can take that as trend that is going to emerge very soon. These recent actions of football clubs are just confirming that.

Not that I personally give rats ass about e-sports but it is obviously going places.