In this month’s What’s up student Column our EUSA Erasmus+ Traineeship intern Mr Alessandro Boscherini elaborates on the topic of e-sports.

A topic of recent interest in the world of sports is the relationship between the world of sports everyone knows and the eSports world. Let’s start with a definition of eSports: eSports are generally organized competitive gaming, and the players that participate to these competitions play through the use of consoles or PCs.

Could be recognized as the first eSports tournament the one that was held at the Stanford University on the October 19, 1972. The game in matter was Spacewar, one of the first games that attract people to deal with the first consoles, and in this competition, there were 24 players. From that day, the advancement of the technologies drastically increased the number of people involved in this world, and now a days, eSports can be considered one of the most revenue machines in the sports environment.

By the way there are some aspects that are stopping the enhance of the eSports in all over the world, and there are above all the bureaucratic and laws aspects: eSports still not have an official federation recognized from the IOC (Internation Olympic Committee), so each state can manage the phenomenon of this new way of do sports in its own way. Therefore, some states are skeptic to accept at all eSports, but some other understood the incredible potential that this “sport” has.

Being eSports athlete, is a deeply difficult to be interpreted argument, so we will focus on the perception of this phenomenon from the point of view of the young generations and the social aspect that eSports had and are representing. In them, in fact, gaming in general represents an important part of their life. From the point of view of most of the people born among the late 90’ and the firsts 00’, their childhood is linked with the gaming from different aspects: it represents a huge way to make friendship, to be included in a community and also to spend some free time during the daily routine. The main consoles produced by colossus of the sector like Sony or Nintendo, are iconic for these generations, and also the game that could be played using them, became an incredible way to collect memories and unforgettable moment.

While in the end of the 00’ and the beginning of the 10’, consoles were just an offline phenomenon (so peopl can just play in the same place together but without sharing screens and gameplays), in the following years, via the use of internet and the evolution of the consoles, the gameplays start to be an online experience.

That event drastically changed the way to see videogames in general, that in fact, started to be more interactive, and an incredible way to connect guys in different parts of the world without the necessity of be in the same place at the same time.

Companies in the sector started to be more and more focused on the online aspects and thanks of that, costs raised incredibly, and the market became one of the most important in the world and also becoming a huge opportunity for new stakeholders, and an important number of new events born. These events are for the people in the generations named before, fantastic events, where they found surely fellow e-sports athletes, with the same background from the gaming point of view, but different behaviors and interests, like all the normal sports events do! In these events players used to reach the same place and participate to online competitions, with the difference of having in-person spectators in the audience. 

The last step of the evolution of the eSports started with the pandemic of COVID19, period in which in-person events became impossible to be held, so players and also content creator that were focused on the gaming world, started to stream on different platforms (the main one were Twitch and YouTube), to represent and create a new entertainment. The incredible added value that these platforms had and still keep, is the possibility to interact with the other viewer of the streaming and also with the streamer, via the use of the chat box. The sense of community so became stronger and stronger, and one of the purposes of the firsts in-person events changed is form, from a in-person social community to an online social community.

Now a days, people use to get in touch using the chat boxes, make new friendships via internet and organize social events, not just to play together, but also for meet each other for the first time in real life.

These small review on eSports world, would like to emphasize the social aspects that this world comply, because most of the time console and online world are just watched for their negative aspects, that are also clearly present. To decrease them, by the way, creators and also professional eSports gamer everyday try to sensibilize their community, trying to let them understand that inclusion is an important value, and the acceptance of the differences must be a cornerstone for the future.

The pen of this article is Alessandro Boscherini, a 24-year-old Italian guy, attending a master’s degree in Sport Management from the University of Cassino and Souther Lazium. At the moment he is doing his Erasmus+ traineeship in EUSA and joined our family from the 1st of June..

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