12,000 fans gathered in Philadelphia over the weekend to take in the 2019 Overwatch League Grand Finals.

Esports is a form of competition using video games. Esports often takes the form of organized, multiplayer video game competitions, particularly between professional players, individually or as teams. Esports is a growing community and has emerged as a modern day gold rush. I chose the esports community because I felt like not many people knew about it and would be interesting to observe from the outside perspective. Organized competitions have long been a part of video game culture since the mid-late 1900 it was largely conducted between the amateurs until the late 2000s, but as years went by professional gamers and spectatorship in these events through live streaming saw a large surge in popularity. By 2011 going on esports had gravitated the attention of the video game industry with many of them starting to host and find events and tournaments. 

Whether you are an amateur or professional, esports tournaments are held on many different platforms. One of these platforms is Toornament.com. Toornament is an esports platform for tournament organizers, participants, and their fans. Not only that but you can host your own tournaments. Toornament is one of the best platforms there because you don’t ever have to worry about the events being postponed because of lack of players or low prize poll, as the majority of which are packed with registered teams and participants.

This is the platform known as Toornament where you can register to play games

Another platform for esports is Gamebattles. Gamebattles It is one of the largest and longest online esports services for cash prize tournaments. Gamebattles currently has more than 10 million registered players worldwide and is growing. 

This is the gamebattles website as you can see you can access the leaderboards and the different tournaments that they have 

Rules 

As in any organization esports has rules and regulations that the players must abide by 

Some of these rules include 

• Every participant has to behave with respect towards the representatives of the ESL, press, viewers, partners and other players.
• Participants must not engage in harassment or hate speech in any form.
• All participants shall abstain, at all times, from poor, undesirable, or negative behaviour towards anybody involved with the tournament in any way.
• All insults that happen during an ESL-Match or on the ESL platform, may be punished.
• All forms of cheating in ESL matches are forbidden and will be penalized by the ESL. Players found cheating outside of the ESL may be barraged on the ESL depending on the evidence available.

Esports aims to make their community very welcoming to all participants no discrimination is tolerated and that makes the environment more safe and fun for everyone evolved. Rules are a big part of organization and esports makes sure to enforce this.

Rituals 

As competitive gaming became a real discipline in which people played to earn millions of dollars, more and more players put a lot of hope into winning a grand prize. Players usually had rituals/ routines they did before playing in the tournament. Some rituals that players tend to do before playing an esports tournament would be to pray. Some players actually pray as they feel a little more confident knowing they have lodged a pact with the Almighty. While this is a valid practice for billions of people, prayer in esports does strike as a little bizarre but it’s one of the ways people cope with pressure.

Another ritual that players tend to do is talk to themselves as odd as that may sound great players talk to themselves before an important tournament. They do this as a means to put them in the zone and prepare for the task ahead of them.

Some players also tend not to wash their clothes after winning a tournament. When I first saw this I was a little surprised but this is something that happens. There is a belief that your clothes are now your lucky charm and you can wear them again to guarantee yourself the same amount of luck.

Like any industry and profession, there is unique lingo that the members are able to communicate with. Each game has different terms, but there are generally a number of common terms that overlap.

Language/Communication 

As you may assume communication is very important when it comes to esports events. Lack of communication could be the reason why you lose a game. In esports, the lack of communication can derail an entire strategy of a team. This is the reason why you may see teams with headphones so they can communicate with one another.

-Video of an esports team communicating during tournaments.

Upon watching the video Cloud 9 utilizes two main voices. One of the leaders of the group refers to him as Smoothie. His mind works fast, and he directs the team to where they should be and what they should do. When he’s talking, you’ll rarely hear anyone else, except when an important call must be made. Leadership is a crucial part of esports and any esports team has a good leader that exhibits the same traits as Smoothie of C9.

Demographics

The esports world has various demographics of people according to the scholarly article Video Games and Esports: The Growing World of Gamers. “ Among esports fans, 1 in 3 are aged 20–25. 1 billion people from all over the world watch video game tournaments. 60% of the total esports audience in the world come from the age group 16 to 24 years old.” (maley michael, 2020 , p. 34).  A billion people watch esports and they are on the younger side of the spectrum

Esports Audience By Age

• 3% – 55 to 64 years old
• 6% – 45 to 54 years old
• 19% – 35 to 44 years old
• 38% – 16 to 24 years old
• 35% – 25 to 34 years old

Esports Audience By Gender

• 71% male
• 29% female

Reflection

I selected my online community for this assignment by thinking out the box and doing something that I think not many people did. I also selected this community because it’s something that I find interesting and something that I do during my leisure time. The process was very long and demanding because this was an 8 week assignment where I had to do a lot of research on my community and different aspects of what they compose. Some adjustments that I made was adding videos and more pictures to better enhance the reader’s experience when it came to this online community. I also added some statistics that I found would help the reader. Some interesting things that I discovered was just how big the community actually was with audience numbers reaching the billions. Some primary and secondary I consulted were scholarly articles and esports community guidelines. Some course learning outcomes that I achieved was people able to coherently write my essay and also being able to analyze different piece of texts.