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eSports, Be Like Me

Michael Jordan, arguably the best basketball player to ever play the game, is 6'6 and weighs in at 216 lbs., which at the time of his prominence probably consisted mostly of muscle. His accolades include five MVP awards, ten All-NBA First Team designations, nine All-Defensive First Team honors, fourteen NBA All-Star appearances, three All-Star Game MVP awards, ten scoring titles, three steals titles, six NBA Finals MVP Awards and the 1988 NBA Defensive Player of the Year. He’s led the Chicago Bulls to three back to back championships and became the face of basketball, an icon that inspired a shoe and more importantly, a role model for the youth. “Be like Mike”, became the motto for young basketball players around the world. He is an extraordinary individual for certain. Driven by undeniable talent and a strong work ethic, Mr. Jordan captured the hearts and minds of people globally. Even those without an interest in the sport looked at him with admiration. But could he have reached his level of stardom if he was say, 5’7?

“Be like Mike”, a noble aspiration, but how much like Mike could someone much shorter from the average NBA height of 6’7 actually be? Emulate his work ethic and study his technique, sure, but there are inhibiting factors that make it so that no matter how hard some of us try, no amount of effort will be able to accommodate for the physical disparities caused by genetic predisposition, such as mass and height.

eSports bypass these barriers. Gaming is a competitive medium that puts everybody on equal footing, a realm where height, strength, and mass are dismissed behind the controller, the keyboard, and the mouse. Rather, the digital arena stresses quick thinking, analytical skills and quick fingers. I do not mean to say that eSports exists as an alternative to athletic sports for those who aren’t tall enough to dunk on a 10 ft. rim or large enough to take down a 200 lbs. running back. eSports is its own beast and demands, in my mind, a qualitatively equal and sometimes higher level of skill than athletic sports.

If you’re an aspiring StarCraft 2 player, you can wholeheartedly make the statement, “be like INnoVation (arguably the best StarCraft 2 player at the moment)” and follow through with an honest intention to do so.

Better yet, select a professional gamer that streams on Twitch.TV, particularly an up and comer and witness their triumphs and struggles firsthand. The video game streaming website represents a level of connectivity that exists between players and their fans that is absent in the world of athletics. The first-person perspective and the ability for fans to interact via text based chat creates a dialogue, not through what the player says via some media outlet, but one that is direct, uninhibited, and honest. It’s monumental. It’s inspiring.

Those unfamiliar to the world of gaming, specifically those who suffer from an ill-conceived notion of nerd-phobia may laugh at the congregation of geeks, but they seem to misunderstand that our community exists on an international level, one that doesn’t require a common language to garner mutual respect. All we require is a customary salutation of good luck and a unified goal to have fun and enjoy a good game.

This international community astounds me and although a segment of it is constituted by trolls, the product of internet anonymity that is honestly rather amusing at times, what you’ll witness more than anything is a level of respect and passion for the game – people don’t just like an eSport, they love it. The cadence emanating from my heart during a professional StarCraft match featuring one of my favorite players is always one in constant accelerando. Sitting is out of the question, so I pace from side to side in anticipation for the next pivotal moment to occur and when it does it’s greeted by some jumping and yelling in either celebration or disappointment.

These emotionally charged moments are attributed to eSport organizations. They are the ones predicating eSports to a state of prominence and I commend them for doing so. With boldness, they are elevating competitive gaming through a level of professionalism that competitive gaming deserves. The suit and tie eSport casters wear are appropriate. It acknowledges that even though gaming tends to the nostalgia of our youth; it remembers that many of us have reached a state of maturity and adulthood.

 So what happens to eSports 10 years from now? Well the future I envision, an overly idealistic one perhaps, is a society that supports video games in the same way that it does athletic sports. It begins with how eSports is incorporated in our education. I want my child to have the opportunity to join a high school StarCraft team, if he or she excels (which they most certainly will), they’ll have the opportunity to earn a scholarship to play StarCraft at a prominent university. Another noteworthy quality gaming has is that whether or not I have a son or daughter, they will have the opportunity to compete head to head with the opposite sex because competitive gaming leagues are not gender exclusive, a fact attributed to the dismissal of physical predispositions.

Granted all these advances and the promising future competitive gaming has - how can anyone look at the eSports movement and not be swept away by its romance? With games like League of Legends and StarCraft 2 headlining the eSports scene with the support given by respective studios, Riot Games and Blizzard and the investment by eSport broadcasting organizations, I don’t see anything that can slow competitive gaming down. eSports is a competitive medium that allows anybody to be a star, an opportunity to be the player gamers all around the world want to be.