E-Sports

With the rise of technology comes the rise in the quality of the games that runs on it. For gamers like me, this seems like a gift from God. However for my parents this seems to be nothing but a never-ending curse. It becomes easier and easier for me to be engrossed in video games while it is harder and harder for parents to deprive me of games with devices such as phones, iPads, consoles and laptops to play on. Although my parents do let me play games from time to time, I try not to play when they are home and try to play for as long as possible when they are out. 

I know that gaming is bad for me; this is especially so since I am playing one of the most addicting games of the year, League of Legends, while being in a major stage in my academic life. I should really stop and in my attempt to try and get rid of my addiction, I have started to implement harsher rules on my gaming time. However I digress.

What I wanted to blog about today is the concept of E-sports, which have begun to take a rise with the increased popularity in League of Legends. Being a MOBA game, there is much more competition involved and thus skill is more highly appreciated compared to mindless FPS games, where you shoot everything in sight. In fact, just to give you an insight on how much money is spent on E-sports, League of Legends have just reached the end of season 3, finishing their season with a competition of which the winners (SKT) received 50 000 USD.

Look at the size of the stadium and the number of people! Imagine all the money received/spent on the event!

However with the rise of E-sports comes a lot of controversy. The older generation seem to turn down E-sports. In fact, the fact that games is referred to as a sport seems to disgust them, as if it is an insult to the word. The younger generation however, seems to take this as yet another excuse to play "sports", me being part of the latter. 

Although my writing is completely biased, I find that the older generation take new trends with a look of disgust, especially when it comes to gaming. I myself is stuck in the middle as well. I may be contradicting myself due to my repulsion to the recent increase in frequency of nudity in gaming, and there are people who are of the older generation who do play games who see the same viewpoint as I do. Why are some people like that and some people not like that? 

This is an issue that I am battling with my head right now.

How about you readers? What do you say? Is the rise of E-sports a good thing or a bad thing?

Cheers,

Matthew Tan