Electronic Sports
From Baruchnewmedia
Electronic Sports
Electronic sports refers to playing video games competitively. Electronic sports are often video games played online using gaming networks such as Battle-Net, Playstation Network, and Xbox Live. These networks not only let people play video games with one another, they also serve as social networking services since players can customize their profiles, send each other messages, in addition to play games with each other. These services often have achievements and statistics each player allowing players to compare their skill level with one another.
There are often tournaments for players who play on a professional level. Such as World Cyber Games. These tournaments have been broadcasted on television or online. Like any other type of competitive tournament, there are often commentators observing the match. The commentators discuss the strategy of the the competing players, rivalries between player, discuss relevant player history, or make jokes as the match unfolds.
Relevance to New Media
There are amateur commentators where they download a replay of a video game match to create their own commentary videos and then upload them to video sharing websites such as youtube or even stream them while they are recording them. Nonprofessinal players can also stream their matches using websites such as Xfire or Livestream or post their own replays on video sharing sites like youtube.
For example here is a youtube channel that has Starcraft 2 commentary of competitive matches: Crota
New Media has allowed competitive video game communities to thrive since they can easily communicate and coordinate tournaments. And other users like to commentate and upload videos of e-sports competitions. It's fanbase is growing, and New Media may very well allow e-sports to rival real life sports in the coming decades.
