Understanding Esports: An Introduction to the Global Phenomenon places professional Esports, a rapidly growing industry, in both the cultural and athletic landscape. This book explores how the rise of professional gaming has shaped-and been shaped by-media trends, interpersonal communication, and what it means to be classified as an athlete. Ryan Rogers has assembled contributors from a variety of backgrounds and experiences in order to provide a broad view of the history, experience, and impact of professional gaming. Scholars of media studies, communication, sports, and cultural studies will find this book especially useful.
Ryan Rogers is assistant professor of sports media and media production at Butler University.
Chapter 1: What is Esports? Chapter 2: Can Video Games be a Sport? Debating and Complicating Esports as Physical Competitions Chapter 3: The Origins of Esports: A Half-Century History of an "Overnight" Success Chapter 4: Competition Formats in Esports Chapter 5: No Time for Lag: Newspaper Coverage of Esports, 2000-2018 Chapter 6: Esport Spectator Motivation Chapter 7: The Esports Consumer Experience Chapter 8: The Motivations of Esports Players Chapter 9: Fighting Games and Social Play Chapter 10: Sports Video Games (SVGs) in the Esports Landscape Chapter 11: Not Your Average Sunday Driver: The Formula 1 Esports Series World Championship Chapter 12: Counter-Strike or Counterpublic? Audience Creation, Transnational Discourses, and the Rhetorical Legitimation of Esports in TBS's ELEAGUE Chapter 13: The Law of Esports Chapter 14: Leveraging Esports in Higher Education
Rogers (Butler Univ.) offers a practical volume to enable scholars and students of sports entertainment to gain an understanding of "esports" (electronic sports), a relatively new, billion-dollar, worldwide industry. Esports is here defined as "organized competitive gaming," a form of play as mediated by human-computer interfaces. Video games were mainly enjoyed by amateur players until the late 2000s, when a crescendo of interest in observing tournaments between professional players emerged. Professional games can now be watched by spectators through live streaming, and such activities currently represent a major sector of the video game industry. As explained by Rogers, this project took shape in 2018 as he was teaching a course on esports, and encountered difficulty with locating sufficient reading materials. The book was then quickly developed, with 14 chapters contributed by 30 authors, many of whom are experts in media and communications. . . the book provides a highly informative orientation to esports and its history, analyzing the roles of fans, players, and entrepreneurs, and identifying the principal games and genres. Summing Up: Recommended. Upper-division undergraduates through faculty and professionals. * CHOICE * Esports is a field that is emerging rapidly in schools, communities, industry, and educational research, and may well become a crucial new source of modern learning for collaboration and technology. This book is an excellent user manual for an exciting ride into uncharted territory. -- James Paul Gee, Arizona State University
