eSports

I just watched the finals of Dota2 "The International" (held at the Key Arena in Seattle).  Even though I have never played Dota2, I really enjoyed watching the finals.  Dota2 is a moba-style game similar to League of Legends and Heroes of the Storm.  What is interesting to me is that the prize pool for this championship is at 18 million dollars (no joke).  I believe the winning team gets about 6 million of it and since there are 5 members on each team, it's probably going to be split to about 1 million for each person.  That is so much money to make for one person.  When people say that eSports is not a true sport, they might want to reconsider since you can make good money from it. 

So what is it going to take eSports to become more popular to the general public?  I think first of all there is a stigma that eSports is not the same as a regular sport.  Yes a regular sport involves physical activity in some way but to say eSports is not physical at all is absolutely wrong.  It takes just as much hand-eye coordination in eSports as there is in a regular sport.  Second of all, there needs to be a more accepting attitude towards professional gaming.  In North America (in particular), professional gaming is sort of frowned upon on.  Many people believe that spending time gaming is sort of a waste of time thing.  This is the attitude of the older generation (the baby boomers) who haven't played video games at all.  But as more and more people gets involved in video games (especially the younger generation), I think there will be a changing of an attitude. 

ESports is not going away any time soon.  There are many video games for people to watch and enjoy.  For example, I am going to BlizzCon this year and there are probably going to be 3 or 4 highly competitive championship games that will be shown.  I've been to past BlizzCons and these final championship games are incredible to watch.  I hope in the future, eSports will become just as popular to regular sports.  And with the money involved, I don't think it is too far off.