PROFESSIONALIZATION OF ESPORTS

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The Professionalization of eSports:

What it means for Gaming Identity
Kevin Tu
ENG102
Prof. Petrides
Research
August 8, 2016

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The Professionalization of eSports: What it means for Gaming Identity

Video games have been around for countless years and have been enjoyed by
individuals of all ages, but the video games of today have evolved to become more
popular than ever. The role and purpose of video games have switched from being
solely an entertainment medium, to being careers and professions for various people.
Among these careers, those in the community of playing video games at a high
competitive level have developed eSports. It is form of competition that facilitates the
use of electronic systems such as video games. Although the rise of eSports brings
about a rise in career paths as well, gamers are struggling to be identified
professionally. The identity of a professional gamer has been challenged in many
different ways including the lack of organizational support, sports recognition, and the
backlash of traditional values that many people hold. eSports are a foreign concept for
many and the idea that someone could make a living just playing video games is mostly
unheard of, which is why there are doubts about the eSports scene.
What determines the professional identity of an individual? Where does the line
between a hobby and career start? For some, the line is drawn clearly but for others it is
not so distinct. Professionalization is known as a social process in which any trade or
occupation like playing video games, transitions to a profession or career with
qualifications. The professionalization of eSports is on the rise as more people are
exposed to the idea of playing video games competitively as a profession. With this

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professionalization, professional gamers are able to be identified as true professionals,

and with that, the title of professional athlete can be acknowledged to those that play
games as their profession.
Before anything else, what determines a good player? In most if not all, eSports
require a certain amount of skill for their players to be considered well, and the level of
professional sits well beyond that. Roland Li, author of Good Luck Have Fun: The Rise
of eSports wrote that First is the mastery of mechanics, the physical control of play
through mouse clicks and keyboard taps. In a shooting game, gun accuracy and player
positioning are essential. (Li 5). Just as Li stated, all of these skills and mechanics are
what makes a professional in their respective games. Without such qualifications, how
could one be determined as a professional in their field or in this case, a professional in
their game?
In an interview, Joey Nierva also known as Snuggz, a competitive eSports player
that competes within the game Counter-Strike: Global Offensive (CSGO) said that
There is no way to determine what a professional is, especially when it comes to
eSports. (Nierva). There are many different types of competitive games that fall under
the category of eSports, CSGO is one of those games, and it is known as a first person
shooter type game, where each player rely on their reflexes to make the right decision,
at the right time. Accuracy and judgment is an important aspect to these types of
games, and it generates a lot of pressure. It is under this pressure that Nierva excels at
playing and in turn he was named him team captain for Varix, a team that competes in
tournaments for CSGO.

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When asked about his professional status in the world of competitive gaming, he
stated that Being professional, doesnt have anything to do with titles or what people
think he adds Im a professional because this is what I do for a living; I play in
tournaments with my team, and I do it well. How I got here is with hard work and
dedication to the game that I love playing. I made my hobby my job. (Nierva). In order
to look at what a professional is in relation to eSports, many different viewpoints must
be taken. A player that does very well in the matches that he or she plays can be
considered a pro, but there is no way to tell for sure. The line between an amateur and
someone that is a professional player is very thin, one cannot differentiate between the
two without looking at credibility.
Professionalization plays a very big role in this difference as well, the information
of whether or not the player is professional is available with professionalization through
looking at what the individual has accomplished in terms of playing games competitively
in tournaments; individually or on a team.
In Raising the Stake: E-Sports and the Professionalization of Computer Gaming
written by T.L Taylor, an associate professor in Comparative Media Studies at MIT,
Taylor talks about the starting scene of eSports before the rise in popularity, and how
much has changed in terms of professionalization over the years, her insight on the idea
of professionalization is It asks us to confront our notions about what play, work, and
sport are. (Taylor 33). And that Ultimately, thinking about e-sports helps us analyze the
transition many groups face as they struggle to convert their leisure time and playful
passions into serious play, where the stakes are high, reputations built, and money
gained (and lost). (Taylor 33). Working towards that conversion between having fun into

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playing competitively is what many professional gamers are working towards to this day,
and it was not until recently that players started getting the recognition that they wanted
in terms of their profession.
The rise of eSports have pathed ways for new revenue generating not only for
the players and teams that compete, but also for entertainment companies that can
provide coverage relating to eSports tournament news, there are multitudes of different
providers for content relating to eSports, and it can be found with a simple search
online. More and more companies are starting to embrace the direction that eSports are
heading, and as such companies like ESPN or Yahoo have added eSports sections to
their broadcast schedule and websites respectively. In an ESPN article titled
Resistance Is Futile: ESports Is the Future. written by Ben Casselman, he stated that
Gaming is what every traditional sports league is desperate to become: young, global,
digital and increasingly diverse. So can it ever be a sport? Does it matter? eSports are
here. (Casselman). So with the rise of the digital platform and with the advancement of
technology, the idea of eSports is more accessible to various different companies. With
that, the coverage of these professionalized games will become more common.
With these large scale international tournaments, such as the Dota 2 World
Championship and the League of Legends World Championship players are recognized
as professionals when participating with their teams. Dota 2 and League of Legends fall
under the category of real-time strategy games and under another subgenre called
massive online battle arena. It was not until recently that sports visa were granted to
foreign gamers, and it was through the efforts of Riot Games the company that
developed and released League of Legends appealing to the U.S government in order

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to grant these visas to help further ease the process of foreign gamer to participate in
these tournaments.
The professionalization of eSports has been supported throughout the longevity
of the competitive gaming scene, and with the introduction to one of the main
organizations to provide this support; the World Esports Association or WESA is aiming
to help professionalize individuals or teams who play competitively by introducing player
representation in the form of contracts, regulations in tournament standards, and
revenue distribution for teams or players that compete in said tournaments.
Benny Evangelista, a writer for the San Francisco Gate wrote an article titled
World ESports Association Formed to professionalize e-sports. Evangelista stated
that during his interview with Pietro Fringuelli, the interim WESA commissioner and
executive board chairman, Fringuelli stated that This is a $400 million industry, but
theres not one law, one policy or one regulation that applies to all. Its grown so much
and is attracting so much interest from lots of different parties (that) we feel its time to
regulate it. (Evangelista). It is WESA that brings about a much needed regulation in the
eSports industry, many of the issues that faced professional players or teams included
the issue that some were not getting paid for what they had won, the fragmentation of
the eSports industry cause many tournaments to not always be well organized, and with
these unorganized tournaments, they seldom take into consideration the schedules for
organized play, player contracts, and sponsorships. WESA is a step in the right direction
for many eSports players to finally become more professionalized and less stigmatized
for their choices in life.

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The professionalization of those involved in eSports do not stop at the teams and
individuals who play, but also for those that work towards making these games; the
game workers. In an academic journal titled The Professional Identity of Gameworkers
Revisted. A Qualitative Inquiry on the Case Example of German Professionals which
was written by Jeffrey Wimmer an Assistant Professor at the Institute of Media and
Communication Science Ernst Abbe Zentrum, and Tatiana Sitnikova an associate of
Ilmenau University of Technology asks about the study, The lack of information about
this workforce and its professional identity makes this research object especially
interesting: What kinds of people are game workers? What is personally important to
them as professionals? What directs them during a production process? What demands
do they meet? (Zimmer, Sitnikova 2). These questions are much like the questions that
one would ask someone trying to start their transition from playing video games as a
hobby to playing it as a profession.
A lot of those that worked on videos game had already expressed early interest
before actually starting it as a profession, and in the study, some had already worked on
skills such as programming long before they started any actual game work. Zimmer
stated that it was interesting to trace connections between respondents media use and
their profession. As it was already mentioned, media are listed among the hobbies and
interests of the game workers. (Zimmer, Sitnikova 9). These interests are much like
how professional eSports players start out as well, by expressing an interest in the
game that they play, spending a lengthy amount of time practicing and getting better at
the game before deciding to compete in high level play such as participating in
tournaments, or joining a team.

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The inclusion of eSport competitions on a collegiate level are becoming more of

a trend, allowing students to participate in playing eSports for their respective colleges
against other colleges. Professionalization plays a key role in the careers of these
students, allowing them to be labeled as profession athletes for the school to be able to
compete against others.
UC Irvine launched an official eSports initiative in the fall of 2016, and Laura Rico
of the UC Irvine news published an article that was titled UCI to launch first-of-its-kind
official e-sports initiative in the fall in which she talks about the current progression of
event leading up to UCIs integration of eSports. The program serves as a way for the
school to advertise itself by being Built on four pillars; competition, academics,
entertainment and community, (Rico). said by the vice chancellor for student affairs
Thomas Parham, he adds that We hope to attract the best gamers from around the
world, and our academic programs in computer gaming science, digital arts, computer
science, engineering, anthropology, law, medicine, neuroscience and behavior create a
strong foundation for research and inquiry related to gaming. (Rico). This is the
promotion of eSports that started off the initiative for the school, allowing students and
non-students of UCI to participate in a community engaging activity.

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UCI students face off at League of Legends in the Student Center's Zot Zone.
Courtesy of The Association of Gamers at UCI. 2016.

Coinciding with University League of Legends Campus Series or ULoL in which

clubs are formed at colleges to compete against other schools within the game of
League of Legends. Other games are being played at a competitive level much like
League of Legends, games like Dota 2, and Counter-Strike: Global Offensive provide
students the opportunity to join collegiate eSports to earn prizes like money for their
school, or even scholarships for excelling at a video game played professionally.
In an interview with a former collegiate eSports player, Vitung Quach known as
Ocarina on League of Legends, states that in its current state eSports are still a new
idea in a vast world of opposition. Not everyone can consider it a profession, because
not everyone believes that a hobby should be, but isnt it true for sports like football or

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basketball? They are all hobbies as well. (Quach). When presented with a question
about the classification of an eSport as a profession, Quach responded with If you want
some 'proof' that eSports are becoming more accepted professionally, try looking
towards events that are normally geared towards traditional values of profession
accepting eSports, events such as the X-Games. (Quach). The inclusion of eSports at
a renowned event such like the X-Games is a good example of professionalization at
work. Through the qualifications of being on a formal team, or competing at a certain
level, eSport players are able to convey that the games that they play for their career
are no different from someone skateboarding or skiing for their career.
So, what does professionalization mean for gaming identity? It is a process that
many video game players that compete believe is a mandatory event for helping those
who do not understand their professions recognize that what they do is in fact a career.
Much like how other athletes rely on professionalization for their career, gamers rely on
the same principles. They have to organize formal contracts and establish organizations
in order to be recognized. Video games in nature havent changed as much as people
have thought, but more so those that play video games are developing new ways to
revitalize games for themselves, and that is through their completive play; making their
hobby into a profession.

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***
Works Cited
Casselman, Ben. "Resistance Is Futile: ESports Is the Future." ESPN.com. N.p.,
22 May 2015. Web. 10 Aug. 2016.
Evangelista, Benny. "World ESports Association Formed to 'professionalize' Esports." SFGate. N.p., 13 May 2016. Web. 10 Aug. 2016.
Li, Roland, Good Luck Have Fun: The Rise of eSports, Skyhorse Publishing,
2016. Print.
Nierva, Joey "SnuGGz" "Professionalization of Video Gaming." E-mail interview.
Aug. 2016.
Quach, Vitung Ocarina, E-Sports and the classification of a profession, E-mail
interview. Aug. 2016.
Rico, Laura. "UCI News - UCI to Launch First-of-its-kind Official E-sports Initiative
in the Fall." UCI News. N.p., 30 Mar. 2016. Web. 10 Aug. 2016.
Taylor, T.L., Raising the Stakes: E-sports and the Professionalization of
Computer Gaming. MIT, 2012. Print.
Wimmer, Jeffrey, Sitnikova Tatiana. The professional identity of gameworkers
revisited. A qualitative inquiry on the case study of German professionals Eludamos.
Journal for Computer Game Culture. 2012; 6 (1), pp. 153-169