The first computer games emerged soon after the first electronic computers were built. One of the first games was Spacewar! It was a two-player game where each player tries to destroy the other. Competition has always been part of computer games and when the first local area networks emerged, computer games like for example Doom took advantage of the new network to allow multiplying. With the Internet, competing in game playing is taken to a new level. Over the last few years, game playing organized as sports events have become popular.
New Technology student Georg Ólafsson wrote for the 2012 course a paper titled The future of electronic sports. From the introduction:
In this paper I will try to define eSports, what it really is and what makes it so special. I will discuss the history of electronic sports (eSports) and look objectively at the process it has gone through to in order get to the stage that it is at today. I will discuss the rise of eSports in South-Korea and look at how and why the game Starcraft became so immensely popular over there and why it took such a long time to reach the western hemisphere and gain any real popularity over here. The current state of eSports is another thing that will be researched and looked at since this sport is dependant on much more than just the players and spectators e.g. technology, game design perspectives, player-base, game genres and business models, these are all influences that I will look at and dig into so I can shine a better light on this growing new-age phenomena.
Paper is here: The future of electronic sports
Image above from Miramax Gaming (http://gaming.mirametrix.com/review/future-gaming-e-sport-coming-america/)