Wanted to get your thoughts on this seemingly new trend. People have been gaming at a high level for years, but only recently is it being covered by ESPN now. Fortnite is the biggie right now, but i believe there was some coverage on the League of Legends Championship.
Ninja is a multi-millionaire and basically the Tom Brady/Connor McDavid/Mike Trout of this realm, with big time sponsorships, an ESPN the magazine cover and extremely attractive wife. Sound like a pro athlete to you? Sure does to me.
I think it’s finally getting the respect it deserves, but needs more big name stars. Video games, to succeed at a Ninja’s level, like pro sports, take extreme focus, dexterity, concentration, practice and just straight up talent that most of the population doesn’t possess.
Thoughts?
eSports in general is an interesting topic. It's growing and will very soon be taken seriously, but it very much feels like the "traditional" sports environment of 1900-1920 or so. The parallels are very striking. From teams taking advantage of players to match fixing issues to fragmented viewing/support to struggle to gain mainstream support, etc. It's still very much on the edge.
For myself I have heard of ninja but I know nothing else beyond on the name. I am an avid supporter of StarCraft 2 and follow a bit on StarCraft 1, and while I have occasionally watched an hour or two of Halo, CS:GO, PuBG, Madden I have zero interest in watching more or supporting it. I find the only interesting eSport to me is StarCraft, 98% SC2. With more and more games always coming out trying to enter the eSports market how to define and keep viewership/interest in one game will be one of issues going forward. Personally I will never find an FPS or LoL type interesting, I like being able to see the whole game overviewed like we get with RTS games, I don't find the viewing enjoyable from other types of games. How to overcome the hurdles of people who find only one or two types of games entertaining is just another obstacle.
I do think eventually eSports will surpass football, American football, hockey, basketball, baseball, etc, but whether that is 15 years or 50 years is still to be decided. Right now too much of gaming culture is still ingrained with the misogynistic vulgar, trolly bullshit. In starcraft you still have streamers like Avilo getting higher numbers than top pro's despite him being at best 50-100 best player in NA, not even top 500 worldwide because of his antics. Then you have the shady things going on with teams and just the free for all environment making it just too chaotic for most to follow. While I don't personally like Overwatch, things like Overwatch league I think will help stabilize the market. IIRC there is talk of Overwatch players creating a union as well which might help, but much like early days of traditional sports that might just backfire.
I guess in conclusion, I am a fan of eSports at least on the StarCraft scene. But it's still too much of a wild west environment to read into how this might progress.
