It will be no surprise to people who read this blog, but it may be news to your Uncle at a holiday get-together: esports games don’t always have something to do with real sports. In cases where there is a connection, the lines between traditional sports and virtual gaming are being continually blurred. This is only more pronounced following recent esports investments by traditional sporting franchises like the Yankees.
Esports, as most of you will know, is competitive gaming taken to a level not seen before in the history of video games. Esports is competitive play in a variety of classic games and franchises, including Call of Duty and Smash Brothers as with the Amit Raizada and Rick Fox eSports team. Increasingly, it’s involving games centered around real life sports teams and players.
In the early days of sports games like NBA Jam, video game developers were often not allowed to use real player names and images. Today, the replication is often all but complete. For NFL fans, players can even make decisions about the arena. Now that professional teams are catering to the needs of AAA games like Madden, it begs the question, are esports going to be the new…sports?
It’s unlikely that physical athletics will be subsumed by digital recreations anytime soon, but let’s explore some of the reasons this might eventually happen. We’re practicing speculative fiction more than actually predicting the future, but all of these observations should really make you think.
- Real teams are investing in esports. The Yankees just bought a chunk of Vision Esports. Rick Fox started Echo Fox (a company that isn’t even surrounded around basketball or sports gaming!). If this trend continues, it’s evidence that gaming is growing faster than traditional sports. Could this lead to a day when gaming is the clear leader?
- There are problems associated with real live sporting events. College teams become corrupt and the players are not paid for their hard work and risks. Professional football players have head injuries which shorten their lives. Professional athletes go broke in just a couple of years following retirement. Esports is relatively risk free. As parents are increasingly reluctant to let their kids play middle school football, it’s easy to see how sports gaming could constantly grow.
- Esports are easier. Let’s face it, America isn’t known for being in great physical shape. We’re not saying all games are unfit. But it’s true that learning to be great at an esports game is easier than learning to be as good at basketball as LeBron James. Esport success doesn’t depend on being a genetic lottery winner either. It’s based more on individual intelligence. This levels the playing field and will let a greater variety of people become professional virtual athletes.
- Esports is cheaper. It costs less to run a esports team than it does a flesh and blood team.
It’s excited to be into gaming and to see gaming transform world institutions like the NBA and MLB. We expect this trend to continue. No longer do sports fans have to be fans of real physical teams that sweat it out on a court or field.