Text/YOSHIDA HIROSHI (Associate Professor, Graduate School, Department of Humanities and Social Sciences, University of Tokyo) Translation/Li Pengfei (Assistant Research Fellow, School of International Culture, Capital Normal University)
This article is translated with permission from Fashion Talks, No. 12, pages 28-37, research journal of the Kyoto Costume Culture Research Foundation. Original titled "Reflections derived from eSports: The Present and Future of Body, Technology, and Communication"
1. E-sports as a "21st Century Sport"
E-sports is short for "Electronic Sports", which refers to competitive competitions that use computer games and console games. When the Online Game Association was founded in London in 1999, its founder, Mat Bettinson, was the first to use the term in interviews. He said: "Esports will soon be broadcast on TV like traditional sports. [1] In the United Kingdom that year, there was an incident in which the British Professional Computer Game Champion (UKPGC) wanted to be recognized by the British Sports Association but was rejected, and the debate over whether computer game competition was "sports" was also boiling. The following year 2000 was established in Korea the "Korean E-sports Association". Esports and the 21st century were born together.
18 December 2020, UNITED KINGDOM, 2020 FIA Electric Racing Car Championship Final.
However, it wasn't until 2006 that media researcher Michael M. Until the publication of Michael.G. Wagener's paper "On the Scientific Importance of Esports," there was no clear definition of the term esports. Wagner defined it as eSports based on sports science. His theoretical basis is the following definition of sports by the sports scholar Klaus Tiedemann.
"Sport is the cultural field in which human beings spontaneously establish relationships with others and carry out activities in order to exercise their abilities and achievements, especially in the field of familiar sports, in accordance with carefully set rules for not harming others or themselves, with a sense of comparing themselves with others." [2]
But such a word cannot be applied to e-sports. With this in mind, Wagner revised this definition and defined sport again.
"Sport is a cultural field in which people spontaneously associate with others and carry out activities in accordance with the widely accepted rules of observance, without causing harm to others, with the intention of competing with others." [3]
Wagner made two main corrections. First, the word "familiar movement" in Tedman's definition was deleted. Secondly, the word "cultural importance" has been added. This, of course, has a clear purpose. According to Wagner, sports science to date embodies the values of "industrial society", presenting a value concept of "physical fitness" supremacy. However, with the change of times, we must face the "rapid development of information and communication technology and the convergence of cultures" today. So what we need is no longer "skilled motor skills", but "skillful pluralistic communication due to immediate and non-immediate sound and textual information". This tendency is particularly pronounced in adolescent culture. In this way, with the development and improvement of science and technology, the concept of sports is also changing. To develop the diverse communication skills necessary to adapt to modern culture, the competition of using computers is the best opportunity to compete with others. E-sports was born. He pointed out that "the emergence of e-sports can be understood as an irreversible result of conforming to the law of development in the process of transition from industrial society to information society." Replacing the "adaptability of the body" that has been most valued in sports to date is the new "cyber fitness of electronic devices." Wagner defines esports as follows:
"E-sports is the field of physical activity in which humans use ICTs to exercise mental or physical abilities." [4]
That's how esports got its original definition. Remarkably, what Wagner is talking about is "spiritual or physical" – not "and" but "or". The reason for this is that the new concept of table games and card games that have emerged with the term eSports is also emerging as a "sport", and perhaps Wagner is also aware of this, that is, "mind sports".
A major contribution to the popularization of mind sports is the "Mind Olympiad", which began in 1997 and is held annually in London to this day. Tony Buzan, known as the initiator of the campaign and the proposer of the term "mind map," is also considered the originator of the term "intellectual movement." The mainstream in the intellectual sports world is chess, bridge, checkers, Go, mahjong, Chinese chess and other sports. Each sport has its own international organization, and the International Association of Intellectual Sports (IMSA), which is an alliance between these international organizations, came into being in 2005. The association believes that intellectual sports should be regarded as an official Olympic sport and constantly negotiates with the International Olympic Committee (IOC), and in order to build momentum and lay a good foundation, the "World Intellectual Games" continue to be held in line with the summer Olympic Games and the Winter Olympic Games. The first World Mind Games were held in October 2008 by Beijing, which had just concluded the Summer Olympics two months earlier.
In the world of intellectual sports, e-sports is regarded as a kind of intellectual sports, so there is also a trend to let e-sports enter the competition. [5] However, intellectual sports, as the name suggests, are a contest of "intellectual abilities" such as the ability to think, remember, and judge. E-sports, on the other hand, require "physical abilities" such as reflex nerves, dynamic vision, and highly accurate manipulation capabilities. The two are clearly contemporary in demonstrating the modern, fluid and diverse shifts of the concept of sport, but at their core they are specious.
2. Prehistory of Esports (1970s-1980s)
Although esports was given a clear definition in the 2000s, competition for computer games has long existed. The earliest recorded is the "Galactic Space War Olympics" held at Stanford University on October 19, 1972, so it can be said that the history of esports is as long as computer games.
Space Wars! 》
Space Wars! 》（SpaceWar！ is a 1962 game made by Steve Russell of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) on a "mini computer" called the PDP-1 (made by the American Digital Devices Corporation and released in 1960). The game uses a picture tube and multiple computer devices for everyone to play, sometimes referred to as the original computer game. Although computer games have existed since the 1940s, they must be run on large electronic computers owned by research institutes or universities. Plus, even the same game won't work on another device. Space Wars, on the other hand, uses paper tape to record and run on other computers. In this way, "the same game can be played on many machines" becomes a basic condition for eSports to be achieved. In fact, Space Wars, which originally met this condition, was the first esports platform in history.
The computer running The Galactic Space Wars is the PDP-10 owned by stanford University's Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (released in 1966 as an updated version of the PDP-1). This game is a shooter played by two players together, if you can destroy the opponent's missiles, you can win (score), but if you touch the "sun" in the center of the screen, you will lose the "deduction points". Although the score is not displayed in the game, because it is possible to clearly determine how many times a player has won within the specified time, it is also possible to objectively determine the victory or defeat. The clarity of the winning and losing criteria is also an essential element of esports. In addition, the above are the rules of the first edition of the 1962 competition, and in this "Olympic Games", a special version that can be played by up to five people is actually used. According to the records, there are more than 20 participants in this tournament, with a single round robin format of 5 players (all other players are enemies except themselves), a team game in groups of 2 and three types of individual matches. [6]
The earliest eSports competition in history, "Galactic Space Wars," was actually a small event held among friends in the lab. The origins of large-scale eSports competitions organized by companies can be traced back to 1980. It was born at a fork in the history of Japanese and American games. The Arcade Game Space Invaders (スペーススインベーダー), released by the Japanese Taito Corporation in 1978, attracted worldwide attention, and the United States ported it to home video game consoles in 1980. The porter was atari, which was sold as a cartridge for the company's 1977 Atari 2600 consoles. In order to promote and sell the game, Atari held knockout competitions across the United States. The competition was held in Los Angeles, San Francisco, Chicago, New York and other places, with a total of more than 10,000 participants. The event was also reported in newspapers, magazines and television stations, and in July 1980 in Los Angeles, the winner Bill Heineman became famous. Taking this competition as an opportunity, the video game culture was immediately widely spread in American society.
Japan preceded the United States by six years and held the Sega Video Game Console National Competition in 1974. The footage of the Tokyo final was also reported by the American industry media Vending Times (November 1974). [7] The report is the only source that has survived the tournament, and if you can accept it, Sega then selected 16 players from the winners of regional competitions held in about 300 sub-venues (presumably mainly game halls) across Japan, gathered them at hotels in Tokyo, and then started the final. Prizes prepared by Sega include color televisions, black-and-white televisions, tape recorders and semiconductor radios. Although the report does not indicate which Sega game the competition is, judging by the photos, it should be the arcade game "Table Hockey" (テーブルホッケー, released in January 1974). This competition has also become the basis for the fact that e-sports was born in Japan, and it is often said that it is noted.
In addition, the Hudson Corporation (ハドソン) held a large-scale national event similar to that held by Atari in the United States in Japan, that is, in 1985, at the height of the Nintendo home game console (FC) boom, the "Hudson National Caravan" (ハドソン国キャラバン) campaign was held. The event was held every summer for 16 years from 1985 to 2000, and the "official software" used for the first event was the company's FC game Starfighter (スターフォース, 1985). This event gave birth to Japan's first professional gamer "Nintendo Celebrity". Particularly famous is the Takahashi celebrity (real name Takahashi Toshiyuki), who was an employee of the Hudson Company at the time. [8] It is worth mentioning that the last time the campaign used a home console was in 1997, and for three years from 1998 to 2000, Hudson used card games released by Hudson and related companies. That's because Hudson was preparing to retire from the game development world and had nothing to do with the overall trend of Japanese game culture.
3. The Advent of Battle Fighting Games and Esports (Arcade Games of the 1990s)
Both nominally and substantively, esports emerged in the 1990s.
1990 was the year of the first Nintendo World Championship. Nintendo, which established a branch office in the United States in 1980, officially entered the overseas market in 1985 in 1985 to release the international version of Nintendo Entertainment System (commonly known as NES) of Nintendo game consoles in North America. In North America, Nintendo corporation, in order to promote the sales of its own game consoles, founded Nintendo Power magazine, held game contests and other marketing strategies that were different from Japan's own marketing strategies.
The Nintendo World Championship, held in March 1990, began with the Dallas division and swept 29 cities across the United States. The contest is divided into three groups according to age group, and the winner will receive trophies and prize money, as well as a full trip to Hollywood, the final venue. The winners of the United States gathered at Universal Studios in Hollywood, and the finals began. One of the more unique things about the Nintendo World Championship is that Nintendo made the NES cartridge with the same name as the competition and used it in the competition. Nintendo World Championship 1990 (ニンテンドー・ワールド・チャンピオンシップ 1990) This deck includes versions of the three games Super Mario Bros. (スースーパーマリラ ザーズ), Red Racer, and Tetris.com. The game can be switched with a toggle switch and set a time limit for the game. The cartridge was given to the contestants after the tournament ended, and now this cartridge is the rarest NES cartridge, which has repeatedly sold high prices in the second-hand market.
In Japan, in the 1990s, there was a boom in "battle fighting games", and the basic character of e-sports in battle video games also changed dramatically.
The genre of PvPour fighting games can be said to have determined the basic style by the explosive popularity of CAPCOM's arcade game Street Fighter 2 (ストリートファイター II., 1991). [9] In this game, players need to operate a steering lever (with eight directions), and three groups of six buttons with two buttons up and down each. The buttons above are punches, and the buttons below are kicks, each with three different kinds of movements (light, medium, and heavy from left to right). Combining the keys and the steering lever in a specific order can emit dazzling "must kills". The killer skills vary from player to character, which greatly enhances the game's appeal. Of course, if you want to unleash a must-kill skill, you need superb operation skills.
Street Fighter
This complex key press operation was inherited in an unexpected form from its predecessor, Street Fighter (ストリートファイター, 1987), which received little attention. Street Fighter is available in both large vertical arcade and small desktop arcade versions. The vertical fuselage has built-in air pressure buttons that can determine the strength of the press, which can issue three types of punches and kicks according to the strength of the player's press. This game was developed as the "selling point" of the game hall at that time, "somatosensory game". Some game halls asked for a smaller, cheaper version, so Capcom made a desktop arcade version. Because there are no air pressure buttons in the desktop arcade, instead there are three levels of light and medium weight punch and leg buttons. This was a very strange way of operating in the game hall at the time, but it was inherited by Street Fighter 2. In the technological innovation of video games, you can often see this interesting "place of misfortune and blessing". Although there is already a "must kill" setting in "Street Fighter", it is particularly difficult to play because the operation judgment is very strict, and the way to make the move is also written as a "secret" in the manual, making the "must kill" a "secret skill". In contrast, the must-kill technique in "Street Fighter 2" has completely become the core element, and the instruction manual also clearly writes the must-kill method of each character. Unlike previous battle games that determine the outcome of a player through a score and a number of lives, that is, "indirect" factors, Street Fighter 2 allows two players to "directly" duel, compete with each other, and compete for victory or defeat. Because of the emergence of such battle games, the battle games in video games can also be called literally "sports".
It should not be forgotten that Street Fighter 2 is placed in the public game room of the game hall. The game's versus mode (played by two) really became popular after the game was released in March 1991. The game features a computer (CPU) as an opponent, and it's also particularly interesting to play alone, but for game hall players – at least in Japan – playing side-by-side with unfamiliar "passers-by" raises psychological stress. However, when a new version of the machine, known as the "Communications Battle Platform," was introduced to the game hall in late 1991, the situation changed. A communications dock is when you put an arcade machine behind a vertical arcade machine that can be used by one player, and then connect the two arcade machines. Once the two arcade machines are connected by a line, data communication can take place. This allows the two players to play the game "face to face", but because of the barrier caused by the huge body of the arcade, the players cannot see each other's faces and bodies. In addition, it is very simple to start a two-person battle. When one of them is playing against the CPU, just throwing a coin at the opposite machine will automatically switch to player mode, and there is no need to say hello or a word to the opposite player. The emergence of this communication platform has greatly reduced the psychological pressure of players participating in the battle in the game hall. Although both sides of the contest are in the same room, they are spatially separated. The communications platform actually forms a situation similar to that of network battles. In addition to this, it is interesting that the communication battle table is not the idea of the manufacturer, but the idea and thinking of the dealer of the game hall and arcade (the practitioner who dismantles the base board and the fuselage). This is a unique Invention of Japan created by the Game Hall after observing the actions and attitudes of players for a long time.
Street Fighter 2 gave birth to the GAMEST Cup (ゲーメスト Cup), which is the starting point of Japan's e-sports competition. This is a game contest sponsored by the arcade game magazine GAMEST (published by Shinsonic from 1986 to 1999). Its first competition was held in August 1991 at Sunshine City in Ikebukuro, Tokyo, and the competition was Street Fighter 2. At this time, the communication battle platform has not yet appeared, but the organizers have already seen the value of the game's battle gameplay. There were 512 participants, and the competition was played out on a knockout basis. Gamest Cup organizers will project images of the battle to a large screen with live commentary on the spot. The imagery is exported from the game board to the screen via a converter. In other words, the basic form of the battle game competition that has driven players around the world crazy since the 1990s has been completed by this time.
The GAMEST Cup lasted until 1998, when it was discontinued due to the discontinuation of GAMEST. But the publisher of GAMEST magazine, Arcadia (アルカディア), the publisher of the arcade game magazine Arcadia (アア), began to focus on events for battle-fighting games. This is the "fighting drama" that began in 2003 (temporarily suspended after the tenth competition in 2012). The fight drama is sponsored by various game production companies, and the selection of game projects is not biased towards the games of any game company, and the popular (about 10) battle games are selected each time. In addition to the Street Fighter series, sega's "VR Warrior" (バーチャファイター) series and SNK's "Emperor of Fighters" (ザ・ キング・オブ・ファイターズ) series are used as competition events. This fight drama, which attracted many overseas expert players, became the earliest japanese e-sports competition known internationally.
The trend of Japanese battle fighting game conventions immediately affected foreign Japan. In 1996, the largest battle fighting game competition in the United States, the Evolution Championship Series (EVO), was held in California. For the first few years of the competition, only the Street Fighter series was used as a competition item, so it attracted a large number of Japanese players, including many Japanese players such as Shinya Ōsa and Daigo Umehara. Since 2018, Tokyo will also hold the EVO Japan competition every year as a regional selection competition.
4. South Korea as a Developed Esports (Computer Games in the 1990s)
In the last section we saw arcade games that have become esports due to the advent of battle fighting games, but there is another important branch in the world of esports, that is, computer games.
A pc game is a game that can be run on a personal computer. After establishing this basic concept, we can roughly divide computer games and video games into three categories. There are arcade machines played in the game hall, console games as home game consoles, and computer games that will be examined later. The proportion of these three types of games varies from country to country, and in Japan, the market size of computer games is extremely small compared with arcade games and console games. This trend became more pronounced after the late 1990s, when computer games accounted for a sizable share of Japanese game culture.
In Japan, computer game culture is in decline, mainly for technical reasons. Japan's domestic computers, represented by NEC Corporation's PC-9801 series, were overtaken by Sega Saturn game consoles (released in 1994) and Sony's PlayStation (released in 1994) in terms of performance due to the late use of 3D graphics and optical drive technology (CD and DVD). As a result, in the second half of the 1990s, "computer games in Japan declined completely except for adult games." [10] Even with the advent of the Win95 system, which saw a significant increase in Japanese processing power, the market share of the PC-9801 and Windows-enabled computers (IBM-PC/AT swaps) was reversed, and the game was not brought back to life. In contrast, countries and regions outside of Japan have steadily improved their game technology for IBM-PC, and there has been no decline in computer games like Japan. This difference also greatly affects esports. It can be argued that the downturn in computer game culture is the reason why Japan has lagged behind foreign countries in the development of e-sports.
Half-Life
In 2006, in Wagner's original paper defining e-sports, Europe, the United States and South Korea were listed as countries or regions where e-sports flourished, and their representative e-sports games were introduced respectively, but there was no mention of Japan and Japanese games. In european and American competitions, he mentioned Doom (released by id Software in 1993), Quake (released by id Software in 1996), And Half-life (released by Valve Software in 1998) as FPS (first-person shooting). game) first person shooter. In the Korean category, he mentioned "Paradise" (리니지, released by NCSOFT in 1998) and "StarWars" (released by Blizzard Entertainment in 1998). The former is a massively multiplayer online RPG (MMORPG) in South Korea, and about a quarter of South Koreans have created accounts for the game, and it holds a super record of up to 220,000 people online at the same time in South Korea. [11] The latter is a real-time strategy (RTS) game in the United States, where South Korea is said to account for half of its global sales and receives tremendous support. Although South Korea has not developed a game hall culture like Japan's, it has long popularized the "computer room" (PC방) equivalent to Japanese Internet cafes, where young people can gather to play online games. After the release of StarCraft in 1998, the number of computer rooms with only about 3,000 rooms increased by more than five times,[12] and it can be said that the game witnessed the birth of Korean e-sports culture. The e-sports competition that uses "StarCraft" as a competition item has bred a large number of Korean professional e-sports players, and the spirited and scrappy appearance of the players participating in the competition has been broadcast on television, so that e-sports has been recognized by society. Professional players received high endorsement fees and bonuses, and became the darling of the media. During this period, the Korean Electronic Sports Association (KeSPA), which was born out of the "21st Century Professional Game Association", came into being in February 2000. [13] As mentioned earlier, the term "eSports" was born the year before it, so I am afraid that this group was the first in the world to bear the name of eSports. This just shows the development of South Korea in e-sports.
In contrast, in Japan at the same time, it can be said that computer-side e-sports is completely silent. As mentioned above, the overall decline of Japanese computer game culture since the late 1990s is the biggest reason for this. As a result, the genres of games (FPS and MMORPG, RTS) that are the main esports projects in Europe, the United States and South Korea have not developed at all in Japan. There is also the issue of infrastructure. The grand situation of the Korean computer room was premised on the popularity of broadband in South Korea, and the network communication conditions in South Korea at that time were also among the best in the world. In 1995, the South Korean government announced the "Ultra-High-Speed Information and Communication Network Plan" to accelerate the spread of broadband (then ADSL) throughout the country. According to statistics at the end of 2001, the household penetration rate of broadband in South Korea was 55%, while in Japan it was only 6%. [14]
With that in mind, until the early 2000s, the term esports was unheard of in Japan. E-sports first appeared in Japanese newspapers on November 22, 2005 in the Asahi Shimbun, a report about the latest trends in Korean anime and games after the 2003-2004 TV series "Winter Love Songs" (겨울연가) became popular, namely the so-called "Korean Wave". The first international game fair "G-Star" was held in Seoul at the same time, and in order to convey its grandeur to Japanese readers, the report also introduced the "e-sports" thing that "treats video games as sports competitions" and the activities of the Korea Electronic Sports Association. For the Japanese at the time, esports was nothing more than "a rare cultural phenomenon popular in neighboring countries."
5. Organization of competitive groups and international federations (since the 2000s)
Next, I will take the relevant organizations and groups established in the major countries of e-sports as the context to sort out the development of e-sports after the 2000s. If we can understand what kind of activities are carried out by organizations and groups in various countries for what purpose, we should be able to understand the current situation and problems of eSports.
The author has repeatedly said that the most prosperous country in the world is South Korea. The South Korean government has specially enacted regulations and held events for the development of e-sports. The Korea Electronic Sports Association (KeSPA), established in 2000, and government departments have joined hands to promote pioneering work such as labor conditions for e-sports players, competition hosting, talent development, financial support for overseas participants, and improvement of etiquette and moral literacy of players.
In August 2008, esports associations from 8 countries in South Korea, Denmark, Germany, Austria, Belgium, the Netherlands, Switzerland, Vietnam and 1 region in Taiwan gathered to form the International E-sports Federation (IeSF). Since then, the number of countries and regions that have joined the organization has shown a leap forward, reaching 72 countries and regions as of July 2020. [15] Its headquarters in Busan also allows us to understand Korea's important role in eSports. The league, the world's largest esports league, has regularly hosted the Esports World Championship every year since 2009.
One of the league's key missions is to make esports an official sport for the Olympics. To this end, its first step was to join the International Federation of Individual Sports Federations (GAISF), an organization recognized by the International Olympic Committee (IOC). The agency is the world's largest sports organization, with almost all international sports groups, led by the International Football Federation (FIFA) and the International Basketball Federation (FIBA). If the International Esports Federation can join the GAISF, it can also establish the equal status of e-sports with other sports. According to the Secretary-General of the International Esports Federation, there is currently "one last step left" to join the International Federation of Individual Sports Federations (speech at TGS on 13 September 2019). [16] However, as I will say later in this article, there are several hurdles on the road to becoming an official Olympic sport recognized by the International Olympic Committee, and there is still a long way to go before it can be achieved by the International Electronics Union as an official event at the 2024 Olympic Games in Paris.
World Esports Championships
Let's take a look at the trends in Japan. The Japan Professional Esports Federation (JPeF), which was established in March 2016, joined the International Esports League in November of the same year as Japan's first esports group. The Japan Professional Esports League was also renamed the Japan Esports League (JeSF) in February 2017. In 2020, the Japanese group registered with the International Esports Federation is the Japan Electronic Sports Federation (JeSU). It was formed in February 2018 by three teams, the Japan Electronics Sports Federation, the Japan Electronic Sports Association (jespa, established in April 2015), and the Esports Promotion Agency (established in October 2015).
Japan's establishment of the esports federation was triggered by Japan's qualification to send a delegation at the 18th Asian Games in Jakarta and Palembang, Indonesia, in the summer of 2018. The Asian Games is an international multi-sport event organized by the Olympic Council of Asia, in which Asian countries and regions participate, and is known as the Asian version of the Olympic Games. At the 2018 Asian Games, e-sports was added as a performance event for the first time (in addition, the 2022 Hangzhou Asian Games has planned to promote e-sports to a formal event). In the "Pro Evolution Soccer 2018" (ウイニングイレブン2018) competition held on September 1, the Combination of Naoki Kimura and Aihara Wing of the Japanese team won the gold medal. [17]
However, this Asian Games will bring an institutional problem to the surface. That is, Japanese delegations sent by the Japan Electronics Sports Federation cannot participate in the opening and closing ceremonies of the Asian Games. The reason for this is that according to the rules of the Asian Games, the players who are eligible to participate in the opening and closing ceremonies must be sent by the Japanese Olympic Committee (JOC), and the Japan Electronics Sports Federation does not participate in the Japan Olympic Committee. This means that the Japanese delegation to the esports events at the 2018 Asian Games was not sent by the Japan Olympic Committee, but by the Japan E-Sports Federation with the help of the Japan Olympic Committee.
The biggest reason why the Japan Esports League has not been able to join the Japan Olympic Committee is that the Japanese Olympic Committee stipulates that the joining group is "the only responsible group for the competition in Japan", and the Japan Electronic Sports League does not meet this requirement. As mentioned earlier, the Japan Esports Federation integrated three esports related groups to form the Japan Esports Federation in February 2018. But then other new esports groups emerged, such as the Japan Esports League Association (JeSA) in May 2018 and the Japan Esports Promotion Association (JEF) in April 2019. These groups were all formed to compete with the Japan Esports Federation, the Japan Association of Esports Leagues touting its own unique professional qualifications and bonus system, and the Japan Esports Promotion Association aims to cultivate neutral esports players who keep their distance from companies.
The continued fragmentation of e-sports groups in Japan has created the peculiarities faced by the Japanese e-sports industry. E-sports has a high potential for development as an emerging industry, so the stakes of all parties are very complicated, especially in areas like Japan, where the game industry is highly developed, and it is more difficult to adjust.
Here we use the perspective of market size to analyze the industrial structure of e-sports.
The data based on this article is from newzoo, a professional game market research and analysis company. In April 2020, the overall related revenue of e-sports in the world is about 1.1 billion US dollars (about 120 billion yen). The detailed composition is arranged in proportions below:
Sponsorship (including advertising costs) 58%
Playback Copyright 17%
Issuance Fee 11%
Surrounding & Tickets 10%
Information data (including in-game purchases) 2%
Media Streaming 2%
Among them, sponsorship money (funds from sponsoring companies) and broadcast rights, peripheral products, and ticket sales account for most of the revenue share similar to traditional sports industries such as baseball and football. But the issuance fee is an income that is unique to esports. The so-called "publisher" refers to the sales company of the video game, and the production company of the game is called the "developer", of course, there are also companies that do both. Publishers generally hold game rights, and if an esports program wants to use an existing game, the organizer must obtain authorization from the publisher. On the other hand, for the publisher, if the company's game can be used in e-sports, it will also bring huge market benefits, coupled with the increase in game popularity, the emergence of professional players, the increase in the number of competitors and other benefits. Therefore, publishers will also go to great lengths to request esports organizations and organizers to use their own games. The cost of this link is the issuance fee.
Unlike traditional sports, e-sports are "works" in whichever type of project a particular "publisher" holds the "copyright". For example, soccer is copyright-free, but Victory Eleven, which was electronically owned by Konami. Basketball is related to NBA 2K (2K Sports) and Tennis and Tennis World Tour (Breakpoint). Therefore, which game to choose in the eSports competition will greatly affect the interests of the publisher. When e-sports are broadcast on television, TV stations must also give distributors royalties, which is unimaginable in traditional sports. This industrial structure is in conflict with the Olympic business model of the International Olympic Committee to monopolize the right to screen the games.
In addition, the presence of publishers is not only economically significant, but also creates a fundamental difference between e-sports and traditional sports. Especially in terms of "rules". The rules of sport are generally determined by the group that hosts the competition. Football, for example, is about complying with the rules set out in the FIFA Council (IFAB) worldwide. Of course, there are also peculiarities in this, and many sports activities will have a little difference in the same event because of the different organizers. For example, in the same professional baseball, Japan and the United States have differences in the size, weight, and hitting area of baseball. That's because the Japan Baseball Association (NPB) and the American Professional Baseball League (MLB) have different rules. The rules for computer games and console games as eSports projects are set by the publisher (or developer) who controls the program code. As a result, no independent group or agency other than the publisher can monitor in a neutral manner. Even if the game's program hides a black box operation that is beneficial to a particular team or individual, a third party cannot verify it. As mentioned below, we can see the difference between e-sports and traditional sports in terms of "system", and some people use this as an argument to argue that "e-sports is not sports".
Tokyo Video Game Show.
Let's go back to Japan. Considering the industrial structure of e-sports, the competitive group and the publisher must be independent of each other. The competition items adopted by the organizing committee must not be biased towards a specific developer. But let's look at the membership of the Japan Esports Federation. Representatives of Japan's major game publishers, including Sega, Capcomel, Konami, and GungHo Online (ガンホー・オンライン), are among the major players in Japan. This cannot be refuted even if it is suspected of being a "collusion" between esports groups and game companies. This is not seen in esports groups in other countries. In order to meet the conditions for joining the Japanese Olympic Organizing Committee, and to go further, to be able to send participating delegations to the Asian Games and the Olympic Games in the future, the Japanese e-sports community must have a "only responsible group in Japan". But now there are Japan esports federations formed for this purpose, and there are other organizations that have been set up against this federation, which is a unique problem facing Japan's esports industry.
6. Can eSports be an Olympic sport?
Finally, I would like to discuss the basic principles of esports. Let's start with the relationship between e-sports and the Olympics, as well as the strong opposition that e-sports are not "(Olympic) sports".
As mentioned above, the esports world has been operating from a certain point with the goal of being able to join the Olympics. In order to achieve this goal, an important step is to first participate in the regional games organized by the regional Olympic Committees. In Asia, where e-sports are developed, it is the competition held by the Olympic Council of Asia (OCA), a consortium of Olympic committees in Various Asian countries, in which the "Asian Indoor Games" and "Asian Games" have accepted e-sports.
After the Asian Indoor Games made e-sports a performance event at the 2nd (2007) Macao Asian Indoor Games, e-sports was officially contested at the 3rd Asian Indoor Games in Hanoi in 2009. The Games began to absorb the Asian Fighting Games at the 4th Incheon Asian Indoor Games in South Korea in 2013 and was renamed the Asian Indoor and Martial Arts Games. At the Games held in South Korea, the seat of the International E-sports Federation (IeSF), e-sports of course also appeared as an official event, and the International E-sports Federation also presided over the competition of e-sports events. This is the first contribution that the International Esports Federation has made to e-sports towards the Olympic Games. However, the fifth (2017) Ashgabat Asian Indoor and Martial Arts Games relegated eSports to a performance sport. This is a step backwards for the esports world.
As mentioned earlier, the 18th Asian Games in Jakarta Palembang has made e-sports a performance event, and Japan has also sent a delegation to participate. In the next Hangzhou Asian Games (2022), e-sports has also been set as an official competition.
In this context, since the late 2010s, the International Olympic Committee's views and attitudes towards e-sports have received a great deal of attention. IOC President Thomas Bach has repeatedly said that the biggest difficulty in making esports an Olympic sport is "violence." Let's look at a few paragraphs of his statement:
"We are trying to advance a peaceful, non-violent, and social society that abolishes differences. But video games full of violence and explosions and killings are at odds with our purpose. We have to draw a clear line with it. (South China Morning Post, 28 August 2017)[19]
"Those killing games contradict Olympic values, so we can't accept them. ......... Of course, all martial arts sports have their origins in human warfare in reality. Sport, however, is the manifestation of civilizing them. (AP News Agency, September 1, 2018)[20]
Of course, President Bach's "video game cognition in 1994" (from the South China Morning Post) does not represent the opinion of the IOC as a whole. Pro-esports opinions in the Olympic Committee are now also in the news. In October 2017, the British reuters news agency reported on the results of the IOC's discussions in Lausanne, and under the report titled "E-sports may become part of the Olympic experience within the range of loyalty to Olympic values", the members of the IOC made the following statement.
"We can see the rapid growth of e-sports, especially among young people in various countries, which is enough to form the basis of it becoming the Olympic movement." We have reached agreement in the talks. (Reuters, October 29, 2017)[21]
But in reality, the hurdles that esports needs to cross in order to become an official Olympic event are not just violence and (again, noted) weak organizational foundations. It also has deeper problems of principle. This has been made clear in the british sports philosopher Jim Parry's paper "Esports is not in sport." [22]
Parry treats the term "sport" as the "Olympic movement." He believes that "sport" may have various definitions, but the fact that "the Olympic sport is sport" is undeniable. He defined the Olympic Movement as "an institutionalised, rule-governed contest of human physical skills." So does esports meet this condition? The answer is no, so he concludes that "esports is not a sport."
Let's take a closer look. The definition of the Olympic Movement just proposed by Parry includes the following six elements. 1. Human; 3. Physicality; 4. Skills; 5. Competitions; 6. There are rules; Institutionalized.
Esports doesn't satisfy four of these six elements. Parry argues that "competitive computer games are competition governed by rules," that is, satisfying items 4 and 5. The question is, does esports not meet the other four elements? Let's analyze them one by one.
1. "Human"
"Motorsport" is not included in the Olympic Movement. Although sailing is an Olympic sport, yachts are not included. The reason for this is that competitions using motorized vehicles are not "human" sports. In addition, the so-called robot competition cannot be regarded as "sports", because it is a competition between "mechanical kinds", not "human" competition. The players who operate the robots may indeed have a "one-on-one" mentality, but they are not "direct competitors" but just "imaginary long-distance operators". In fact, they were just sitting in chairs. For the same reason, esports can't be called "sports."
2. "Physicality"
Chess is meant to be used, so some people may think that chess is also a "physical" sport. But in fact, chess does not necessarily need to be used by hand, and can be performed only by verbal instructions. In addition, the movement of the body when moving chess has no effect on the outcome of the game (win or loss or score). "Physical" sports mean that the movements of the athlete's body are directly related to the outcome of the competition. This is the case, for example, shooting (shooting is the Olympic sport). To borrow Jason Holt's concept, in order for the movements of the body to meaningfully act on the outcome of the game, the "field of implementation" (the field of implementation of the action) and the "field of application" (the field of obtaining the result of the action) must be consistent. In traditional sports the two are consistent, but in computer games the latter is just an imaginary space, and the two are separated. So esports is not physical (intellectual sports don't count as sports for the same reason).
3. "Skills"
Physical activity requires the physical "skills" of human beings to be exercised and developed. Not all physical activities that use the body are sports, and physical activity that does not require participants to acquire a meaningful skill level cannot be included. For example, (ordinary) walking and eating, basic repetitive training (sit-ups or push-ups, etc.) are of this category, and these physical activities cannot be counted in the range of sports competitions (competitions who eat fast, although it is a competition but not sports). In addition, the physical skills required by athletes in sports are "full body exercise". Even shooting is to have control and exercise of the whole body, and it is not only the flexibility of the hand. In contrast, the buttons and joysticks required by computer games are based on the flexibility of the hand, not the full body movement. There is a difference between hand dexterity and sports "skills". Just as gardening and instrumental playing don't become sports even if there is a game, esports doesn't become a sport.
6. "Institutionalized"
All sports are "rules-based competition", which at the same time has an "institutionalized status". The rationale for this is that the rules of sport cannot exist on their own, but must be behind them the "standards" and "organizations" that give them authority and legitimacy. The "institutionalization" of sport is achieved by a national or international group that then demonstrates its end-to-end consistency to the infrastructure (athletes) in which each competitive sport exists. Esports is also pursuing this institutionalization, but the reality is that the system is not yet sound. The reason for this is the presence of publishers (game sales companies) that is unique to e-sports. The rules of the Olympic Movement are usually set by international groups that have no interest in a particular country or organization. But the rules of computer games are essentially "program code," which is monopolized by publishers (or developers). Third parties cannot monitor the compliance of the rules of the game and its operation, and of course cannot establish impartial "referees". In addition, the competition of e-sports is also closely linked to commercial interests, which changes rapidly with the popularity of a game. This also creates difficulties in building a stable and sustainable system.
In this way, Parry's thinking changed from strict dogmatism to a clear general "view of sports". He believes that his views are only "throwing bricks and leading jade" and "welcome everyone's criticism and correction." According to his point of view, it has to be said that there is indeed a great gap in principle between e-sports and the Olympic movement. And among the many elements he pointed out—at least items 1, 2, and 3—related to the essential characteristics of computer games, cannot be changed in the future. That is, without changes to the definition and criteria of "sport" that are now universally recognized – that is, if they are not ultimately recognized by the IOC – esports will never become an Olympic sport.
As stated at the beginning of this article, Wagner replaced the most important principle in traditional sports, "the adaptability of the body," with "the adaptability of electronic devices, and identified it as the ability necessary to survive in the modern information and communication society, defined by exercising and cultivating this ability. However, Parry is tit-for-tat, redefining e-sports strictly from the point of view that "sports" is the physical skill of human beings, arguing that sports do not include e-sports. From his assertion, we can once again feel the value and significance of the culture of sports in modern society, and we must not think that this is a conservative and outdated concept of sports and should be directly abandoned. But in any case, the phenomenon of esports has given us many inspirations in many aspects of modern culture, technology, society and economy. Considering the differences and boundaries between esports and traditional sports, it is really a fundamental reflection on the way humans are physically active and communicate. I think this is already well understood by the readers of this article.
exegesis:
[1] Gestalt. “The OGA: What the Hell Is It?” （1999年12月13日）https://www.eurogamer.net/articles/oga
[2] Claus Tiedemann. “Sport (and Culture of Physical Motion) for Historians: An Approach to Make the Central Term(s) More Precise.” Paper presented at the IX. International CESH-Congress, Crotone,Italy (25 September 2004). http://sport-geschichte.de/tiedemann/documents/VortragCrotone2004Englisch.pdf
[3] Michael G. Wagner. “On the Scientific Relevance of eSports.” in:Hamid R. Arabnia (ed.). Proceedings of the 2006 International Conference on Internet Computing & Conference on Computer Games Development. USA: CSREA Press, 2006, p. 438.
[4] ibid., p. 439
[5] World Mind Sports Federation. “E-Sports and Other Games.” (8 December 2015)http://www.worldmindsportsfederation.com/mindsports/e-sports-and-other-games.aspx
[6] Stewart Brand. “SPACEWAR: Fanatic Life and Symbolic Death Among the Computer Bums.” in: Rolling Stone (7 December 1972),pp. 50-56.
[7] The Vending Times. Vol. 14 (November 1974), p. 69.
[8] ITmedia Business Online"Takahashi Master Talks: The Day Toshiyuki Takahashi Became a "Master of Takahashi" (May 25, 2016 https://www.itmedia.co.jp/business/articles/1605/25/news027.html
[9] Reference below. Zenji Ishii "What was Strike II?" from the first "Street Fighter" to the Nintendo Switch "Ultra Street Fighter II", tracing the history of the Strike II series" (4Gamer.net, May 25, 2017 https://www.4gamer.net/games/368/G036842/20170520002/
[10] Yusuke Koyama, "Analysis of the Current State of Activity in the Home Video Game Industry: From the Top 100 Data Sold from 1996 to 2004," "Information Processing Society Research Report: Electronic Intellectual Property and Social Infrastructure (EIP)" (2006) pp. 27-34.
[11] Reference below Kim Dong Yong-like order. Naohiko Norenna "Only two weeks until Death Night!?" Interview with developers about the highlights and aims of the Lineage update Wind of Clash" (4Gamer.net, April 12, 2013) https://www.4gamer.net/ games/001/G000189/20130412034/
[12] Ryan Rogers (ed.). Understanding Esports: An Introduction to the Global Phenomenon. Lanham:Lexington Books, 2019, p. 37.
[13] Dal Yong Jin. Korea’s Online Gaming Empire. Cambridge, Massachusetts:The MIT Press, 2010, p. 67.
[14] Kazuko Yuma, "Korea Surpassing Japan in Broadband" (2001) https://www.i-ise.com/jp/lecture/lect_2001.pdf
[15] International Esports Federation. “Members.” https://ie-sf.org/about/members
[16] "[TGS 2019] IESF Executive Director Leopold Chan reports on "Global esports movement: Official Sports Potential" (4Gamer.net, September 13, 2019 https://www.4gamer.net/games/999/G999905/20190913193/
[17] https://jesu.or.jp/contents/news/news_detail_180902/
[18] newzoo. “2020 Global Esports Market Report.” (April 2020)
[19] Sidney Leng. “Violent Video Games Have ‘No Place at the Olympics’,But E-Sports Are Still in the Running.” (South China MorningPost, 28 August 2017) https://www.scmp.com/news/china/society/
article/2108501/violent-video-games-have-no-place-olympics-esports-are-still
[20] Stephen Wade. “Bach: No Olympic Future for Esports until ‘Violence’ Removed.” (AP News, 1 September 2018) https://apnews.com/3615bd17ebb8478ab534691080a9a32a/Bach:-No-Olympic-future-foresports-until-%27violence%27-removed
[21] Karolos Grohmann. “E-Sports Just Got Closer to Being Part of the Olympics.” (Reuters, 29 October 2017) https://www.businessinsider.com/e-sports-gets-closer-to-being-part-of-the-olympicsgames-2017-10
[22] Jim Parry. “E-Sports Are Not Sports.” in: Sport, Ethics and Philosophy.Vol. 13, Iss. 1 (2019), pp. 3-18.38
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