Essay about The Rise of E-Sports in Korea

Abstract: Society is affected every day by many different kinds of sports.  These sports often govern society's way of life.  People all over the nation turn their TVs to sporting events, such as golf, during the weekends.   Scott Stossel states that "more than six million Americans enjoy watching golf on the weekends."  Parents  use sports as a teaching tool for their children.  Kids learn teamwork and discipline from team sports programs and  sports have also helped many students with their grades.  Kids who want to compete in school sports are taught to keep their grades up or they won't be able to play, but the greedy coaches and schools often look around grades to keep their "star athletes" in the games.  Adults have

Last year the League of Legends finals alone brought 40,000 people to Seoul, South Korea.(xx Pittsburgh Post-Gazette Paragraph 5) This isn’t counting the thousands at home who watched using streaming services. The teams also attract sponsors. The company DXRacer USA gave Robert Morris University a free chair which normally costs 349 dollars. Finally, eSports are one of the fastest growing sports ever. The quote, “The eSports scholarship program has been featured by ESPN, NPR, HBO’s ``Real Sports`` and a variety of other newsgroups.”, shows this. (xx Pittsburg Post and Gazette Paragraph 3) The only other sports to get this much attention to get this level of attention at the college level are men's basketball and men's football. Video games are fast on the rise in the world as the world moves toward a more technology dependent society. Estimates put video game spectators at 19.4 million by 2020.

2. Streaming video applications where numerous people want to see the same show at same time, the information is being newly generated in real time

“ Real-time (synchronous or instantaneous). These may include videoconferencing and the use of peripheral devices to enable live communication.

Though gaming has its drawbacks, it also has many benefits to cover them. If controlled, gaming is extremely useful and with the amount of gamers in the world today, it proves that it is not just for children or for teenagers. There are millions of adult gamers that understand the importance of gaming in the under the existing circumstances of the world. Individuals that have studied gamers believe that gaming in today’s

In a market currently dominated by free cellphone apps or $60 in-box games, League of Legends stands in a field of it's own. One of the key factors in Riot’s success

International studies have shown that between seven and eleven per cent of gamers show some symptoms associated with addiction. Some teens are heavy users of online role-playing games (RPGs) such as World of Warcraft and multiplayer games such as Call of Duty in which they interact with other players in real time. These teens will often neglect schoolwork and other aspects of their daily lives when they become immersed in these games. The American Medical Association has identified “video game overuse” as ‘behaviour’.

With in the last few decades, gaming has gone from something that only the nerdy kids did, into a main stream activity. More then half the people in the United States have played some type of video game. With all these people playing video games most of them are America's youth, teenagers.

Video Games cause social isolation, for example a 15 year old boy in Sweden pass out after playing World of Warcraft for 24 hours straight, he passed out because he started experiencing social withdrawal, the kid was lacking contact with other humans, and his body’s response to the problem was to pass out. On an extreme level, Ruya Cunningham, a college student spent twenty hours a week playing video games, she eventually “dropped out of school, stopped exercising, and even stopped bathing” (Marcovitz 70). Later on, Ruya Cunningham developed depression, but she kept playing video games because she was addicted to the game. When people are addicted to a game, there is a spiraling vortex sucking the gamer away from society and from sanity. As a consequence of playing violent video games, many teen gamers struggle with real world relationships, this is because they form close virtual relationships with people they meet online. A man in Wisconsin has formed a tremendously close relationship with a group of guys he plays online with, he discusses politics with them and they send each other Christmas gifts even though they do not know each other (Marcovitz 70-72). Video games can also affect the players mental and their physiological state.

Internet gaming is one of the most common problem of which many people around the globe are facing in their daily lives. Addiction, one of the serious problems with internet gaming have caused severe changes to their behavior and attitude to life. Majority of teenagers and

Last October, Riot held the League of Legends Season 2 World Championships, a tournament that brought the world’s best teams together for a week of intense matches. $1 million went to the overall champion, while a total of $5 million was spread out over the course of Season 2. Apart from the unprecedented cash prizes, the League of Legends tournament was able to bring in over 8 million “unique viewers” online, viewership that is greater than the National Hockey League’s (Heaven and Robinson). In South Korea individual e-sports events for the popular real-time strategy game StarCraft 2 bring in over 100,000 live attendants to go alongside huge numbers of online spectators (Robinson). On top of this, competitive gaming’s popularity is continuing to grow through 2013. David Ting, founder of Imagine Game Network’s professional gaming league, states that online traffic for the company’s tournaments is “doubling every six months”(qtd. in Heaven). Who would’ve thought that playing video games would turn into such a loved spectator sport?

eSports are a form of a sport that deals with video games and their competitions between professionals. eSports has risen over the years, with 2016 allowing the peak of the popularity. “Consider this year’s The International 2016 DOTA (Defense Of The Ancients) 2 Tournament,” Chris Wood says to The State Press [eSports deserve their place in the world]. “The total prize pool available to the winning teams of this tournament (August, 2016) was around $20 million dollars. In comparison, the prize money pool for the 2014 Rose Bowl was $22 million.” With winnings like this, I believe it is beyond safe to say that eSports are on the rise, and they mean business.

Playing video games for hours at a time in one day, every day of the week can lead to another major problem, gaming addiction. Youth may become obsessed with the game and think they have to beat it before they do anything else and never want to leave their rooms because they want to consistently play the game. Dr. Russell A. Sabella states in his article on Education.com that: “for most people, computer use and video game play is integrated into their lives as a balanced manner. For others, time spent on the computer or video games is out of balance and has displaced work, school, friends, even family”(Sabella). Becoming addicted to video games can cause a lot of problems in the family because some parents like to have family dinners and they have to literally fight with their kid to get

When computer games get in a student's way, nothing more will be left but tired eyes, empty pockets, and piles of school and home works unattended. What makes it worse is that they get to obsessed with these trend that it evolves into a harmful vice which pushes them until they reach the point of neglecting school and cutting classes just to go to those stations and play. These youths are apparently addicted. They are destroying their future without even noticing it.

Online gaming has grown rapidly around the world over the past several years. While many developing countries from the west have initiated much more developed and modern technology to help enhance gaming capabilities and their market, few eastern countries like Korea and China have lead the world in the developments of online games. The fast and high developments of online games in these eastern countries are so broad that it’s even part of their growing culture. Dal Yong Jin states, “Korea’s rapid growth in the online game market has been unique in terms of the growth of its domestic online game industry, the dominance of its local games in the global market, and the degree to which its youth culture is embedded in online gaming.” Not only does the gaming culture and economy in Korea benefit themselves, but also affects the U.S. and many other western countries in terms of the global game market and it’s expected rapid growth in the near future. Around 2006, the online game market was estimated to be valued around 4.98 billion dollars and has grown to as much as 11.88 billion dollars in 2011. Contributing to about half of that value was the Asian market with Korea instituting the largest and most viable market in the world. With such a rich and growing sector in the global market, online gaming has become an expanding form of entertainment that has turned from being just a leisure