People new to competitive gaming may feel that esports has “come out of nowhere” as the activity continues to rise in popularity and make its way into the mainstream with broadcast tournaments on networks like TBS and ESPN. This could hardly be farther from the truth; esports have roots going back to the 1970s.
Esports has reached new heights with each passing decade, and the future seems even brighter. Each game needs high-speed internet. And here you can check fast internet providers in my area for better online gaming. Here’s a look at the evolution of esports from its humble origins to the multibillion-dollar business it is now.
The Beginnings of Esports
According to most sources, the first formal video game tournament was held on October 19, 1972, at Stanford University. Players were encouraged to engage in Space war, which was initially designed in 1962 and is a space warfare game. Students gathered to play in this groundbreaking game, with winner Bruce Baum gart receiving a one-year membership to Rolling Stone magazine as the top prize.
When Atari staged the Space Invaders Championship in1980, video game tournaments became widespread. Over 10,000 people attended the event, which helped push video games out of the shadows as a niche product and into the general view.
Taking advantage of the momentum created by the Space Invaders Championships
Walter Day founded Twin Galaxies, an organization that would collect and hold world records in video gaming, in1980, which was another critical milestone in competitive video gaming. Worldwide competition for the highest scores evolved with a dedicated organization devoted to maintaining these records and acknowledging the Guinness Book of World Records.
Billy Mitchell became well-known in the 1980s for his mastery of a variety of arcade games, including the iconic Pac-Man and Donkey Kong arcade cabinet games, and for setting world records in them. This mania propelled video games into television, with programmers like Star cade in the United States and First Class in the United Kingdom pitting players against one another in competitive gaming for high scores.
Competitive gaming became popular in the 1980s, but it honestly took off in the 1990s when the internet opened up a whole new universe of possibilities.
A New Era of Competitive Gaming Has Arrived Thanks to Technology
While the Atari had its day in the spotlight in the 1980s, the Nintendo Entertainment System (NES) revolutionized video game controls, visuals, gameplay, and accessibility. The Super NES (SNES) was introduced in 1991, while the original NES was released in 1985 in North America. In 1989, the Sega Genesis was released, igniting an “arms race” that saw video games improve significantly in a short amount of time.
Nintendo made video games more accessible to families all around the globe and aided the growth of competitive gaming. The Nintendo World Championships began in 1990 and toured the United States before settling down at Universal Studios in California for the finals. In 1994, Nintendo staged a new global tournament to promote the SNES. The event’s international finals were held in San Diego, California.
Toward the decade’s conclusion, events like these prepared the groundwork for far bigger video game competitions. PC gaming was on the increase, and the internet allowed players all over the globe to compete against one another.
The (CPL), the Professional Gamers League, and Quake on were among the early esports leagues in the late 1990s. The quake, Counter-Strike, and Warcraft were among the games presented at the events.
The Annihilation of the Red
The Red Annihilation was one of such Quake incidents. The Red Annihilation, which took place in May 1997, is widely regarded as one of the first actual esports events. Thanks to the internet, over 2000 people competed in Quake one-on-one matches, and the field was finally cut down to only 16 participants.
These 16 players were flow to Atlanta, Georgia, to participate in the World Congress Center’s Electronic Entertainment Expo. Spectators in person and online watch the event, which was cover by newspapers and television networks. Dennis “Thresh” Fong won the event, cementing his place in history and winning the main prize: a Ferrari 328 GTS formerly owned by Quake creator John D. Carmack.
Esports Take Off in the Twenty-First Century
In the 2000s, all components were in place for esports to take another significant stride forward. The popularity of video games and internet gaming has continued to rise. Internet cafés began to spring up all over the globe, allowing video game enthusiasts to play multi-player games on high-powered PCs that they would not have been able to purchase at the time in their own homes. As home computers became more powerful and less costly, this progressively changed.
FUN Technologies organized a Worldwide Web games Championship in 2006, with 71 participants competing for a $1 million prize. This was just one example of how esports competitions and prize pools grew in popularity in the early 2000s. In 2000, just a few dozen tournaments were stag throughout the globe; by 2010, that number had more than doubled.
Nintendo responded to the picture with the Wii Games Summer of 2010 after missing most of the esports boom it helped to generate in the 1990s. This competition lasted more than a month and drew nearly 400,000 people. It also contributed to Super Smash Brothers for Wii being one of the most popular esports games at the time.
Twitch Makes Competitive Gaming More Accessible to the Public
In past decades, esports made only rare appearances on American television. It was far more prevalent on television in places like South Korea. However, before Twitch, the whole globe has never had access to the thrills of competitive gaming as a spectator sport.
Twitch, which debuted in2011, provided esports with a platform to reach previously unimaginable heights. Previously, competitive gaming was primarily appreciate by gamers and casual spectators. Still, Twitch’s online broadcasting of tournaments and events across the globe allowed anybody with interest in the sport to participate. League of Legends (LoL) and Dota 2 have become hugely popular spectator sports, attracting millions of unique viewers on Twitch.
World Championships in League of Legends
In 2011, Sweden hosted the inaugural League of Legends World Championship. The tournament had a $100,000 prize pool, with Fnatic taking home the top prize of $50,000 in the first place.
The second LoL World Championships were contest in front of 10,000 people at the Galen Center in Los Angeles, California, in 2012. The site in Los Angeles was renovate to the Staples Center only one year later, and the finals were play in front of a sold-out audience. The top prize in all of these years was $1,000,000.
The championship was contest in Seoul, South Korea, in 2014. The Imagine Dragons performed during the competition, which attracted over 40,000 spectators.
The 2016 League of Legends World Championships drew a whopping 43 million views, with 14.7 million people watching at one time. The event in2017, which attracted over 60 million people, dwarfed these figures. Viewership totals for the championship events of two of the United States’ most popular sports leagues, the MLB and the NBA, are dwarf by figures like these.
The International (International)
The yearly Dota 2 event The International is a testimony to how huge the sport has grown commercially. At the same time. The League of Legends World Championships is a sign of the expansion of esports as a spectator sport.
On August 1, 2011, the inaugural International held. The tournament, which was the first openly webcast Dota event, was open to the top 16 teams in the globe. The competition was air in four different languages with four separate commentators, and the winner receive a $1 million prize.
In 2012, the ultimate prize was $1 million once again. Since then, every year since 2014, The International has beaten its record for the largest prize pool in all esports. In2014, the first-place award increased to$5,028,308, $6,616,014 in2015, $9,139,002 in2016, and $10,862,683 in 2017. These are simply the top rewards; the total prize pool has been more than twice this amount.
Esports in the Future
Esports isn’t slowing off any time soon. In reality, they are still rapidly expanding. The NBA 2K League and the Over watch League are two different leagues with immediate success. In2014, Amazon paid $1 billion for Twitch and has continued to support the platform’s growth as esports have grown.
The International Olympic Committee recognized the tremendous popularity of esports throughout the globe in 2017. And left open the prospect of esports becoming an Olympic sport in the future. The sky is the limit for esports as another turn-of-the-decade boom might be on the horizon. As the game continues to expand and acquire credibility as an actual sport among more globally organization’s.
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