Once considered simply a recreational bedroom activity for teenagers, gaming has become a full-fledged, multi-million dollar industry. It even has its own name: eSports, short for “electronic sports.”
eSports have come a long way in the past 20 years. Geeks of the ’90s gaming across home-made local area networks (LAN) have turned into celebrities going to multi-million dollar tournaments around the world.
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“You can win a crazy amount of money now with some of these things,” explained Tim Cooper, who runs a gaming cafe in Edmonton called OverKlocked Gaming & Computers.
“People stream on Twitch and they get ad revenue for that and they upload to YouTube and get ad revenue from that.
“So you have some kids that are 18 years old and have a six-figure salary. It’s crazy.”
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Twitch, or Twitch.tv, is a live streaming video platform owned by a subsidiary of Amazon.
So who would willingly watch other people play video games? A lot of people, it turns out.
“League of Legends world finals, last year they sold out Staples Center in LA for all five days,” said Steve Cheverie with Edmonton Fighting Game Community.
The 2016 League of Legends (LoL) World Championship finals were seen by 43 million people, according to Riot Games, the creator of the wildly popular game. The peak concurrent viewership for the final match-up was 14.7 million people.
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The tournament is like the World Cup of video games: international teams, mainly from Europe, North American and Asia, compete throughout the year, culminating in a championship. This year’s LoL world championship is being held in China. It started last week; the final match will take place Saturday, Nov. 4.
While League of Legends is an online multi-player game, tournaments at the highest level are played in-person with computers directly linked, as even the slightest amount of lag — or delay — from an internet connection can be the difference between success and defeat.
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“There’s a lot of guys who spend hours upon hours a day training, to fine-tune their skills to be recognized on a competitive scale,” said Steven Noel.
Noel, along with two friends, owns High Score, an eSports pop-up. He says they’re the first in Alberta to do it.
“Cocktails, craft beer, food, video games and eSports.”
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Dirtbag Café, across from MacEwan University in downtown Edmonton, hosts High Score on the weekends. Noel says the goal is to have a stand-alone eSports bar.
While it’s unique in Edmonton, gaming cafes are big business elsewhere.
“With football it’s hard because you have to organize a whole bunch of people. eSports, it’s just yourself, you sit down and you’re in the game.”
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Colleges and universities are getting in on the action too, Noel explained.
“The universities are starting to hand out scholarships for people to play eSports, to be competitive gamers. It’s the same caliber as a professional athlete.”
The University of Toronto launched its first eSports-related scholarship earlier this year, joining several other post-secondary institutions in recognizing the potential in gaming.
Steve Cheverie and friend Mike Stuparyk head up the Edmonton Fighting Game Community. Their frequent tournaments — this weekend’s is hosted by High Score — highlights an appetite for a different kind of nightlife.
“There are a lot of competitive gamers in Edmonton, it’s one of the busiest cities in Canada,” Cheverie said, adding you don’t have to be great to play.
“We’re probably going to be old and grey playing Street Fighter 16. We met through fighting games. It is very, very social.”