The Future of eSports Looks To The Past

Well, North American esports are catching up with the rest of the world in at least one respect. Like South Korea, Ukraine, and Sweden, an esports-devoted venue is going to open in Southern California.

Launching “this spring,” the eSports Arena will occupy a 13,500 square foot space formerly known as “Ramona’s Banquet Hall,” according to the Daily Dot. The esports Arena website outlines how the “unique modular facility” will allow for big tournaments in the 1,000-set arena, as well as smaller tournaments for games beyond bigger, more established esports.

“There is a disconnect between the top ‘eSports titles’ that get the large events and everyone else,” Paul Ward, the founder and CEO of eSports Arena told Gameskinny.com. “We provide a consistent and accessible platform for everyone.”

Part of this is also hosting open bracket events, which means the Arena will have PCs and consoles available for people to play against each other outside of the broadcasted planned events. Their goal seems to be a sort of esports Mecca a place that gets broadcast from so much that everyone in Southern California—or who even visits the area—drops by, at least to swing through the retail space.

“On some weekends we'll be hosting larger scale esports events, on weeknights we will be hosting leagues, qualifiers, launch events, broadcasts, and various entertainment events,” Ward told Daily Dot.

It’s not clear if the Arena gives esports another claim to legitimacy, or if the huge amount of money that had to be raised for the Arena to happen is proof that they’re already legit. Ward seemed to believe that numbers were already there in online viewing— and they are—for sponsors, but that the move into the meatspace will help erode “the stigma and ignorance” that still surrounds competitive gaming.

While I’m not sure what more legitimacy esports could want—they’ve been written about on ESPN, after all—but the more I mull over this move to get a permanent foot in the meatspace, the more I see how it could break down one prevalent stereotype of esports.

Depending on where you being their story, esports were born in the meatspaces of arcade culture in the US and Japan and in the PC bangs in South Korea. The genre of esports that maintains the strongest link to arcade culture is probably fighting games, and they’re sort of an odd-duck in the esports world in a few different ways: less sponsorship, less centralization and more diversity. In an op-ed on Polygon, Charles Pratt explained , “the fighting game community is exceptionally international and diverse. I can tell you from experience that the tournaments have a wider variety of racial, ethnic and class backgrounds than any other gaming event I've ever attended.”

The fighting games are usually played with the players side-by-side which players believe influence how the competitors relate. “If you want a serious competition, it's still face-to-face, fighting it out. And it's really interesting how that changes the dynamic, because you can't hide behind a keyboard,” Tom Cannon, a Starcraft player, who is black, said in an article on fighting game diversity also on Polygon. “It's not like the really nasty stuff you see on … famously I guess on Xbox Live, where, you know, you're a little bit different in whatever way and people will just mock you over chat because they can — people won't do that to your face."

The face-to-face civility, even as you’re squaring off, is a staple of nostalgia-for-the-arcade articles, both about America and Japan, when game acumen was a way to form real-life friendships—across other cultural lines—after virtual asskickings.

It’s a nice thing to imagine for the eSports Arena, but it seems unlikely that, even if they do successfully open a handful of venues this year as planned, they can buck the society-wide trend of more our lives being spent online and less face-to-face. It’s obviously unfair to put the burden of widening esports’ demographics on it. But if people get really into the idea of in-person gaming, or if in-person gaming’s civility bleeds back to online, it’s an exciting thought and exciting  possibility for the future of games.

If nothing else, the Arena’s existence and the reaction online seems to demonstrate just how eager North Americans players are to keep up with the South Koreans, Chinese, Swedes, and Ukrainians whose home countries already have one or more facilities devoted to competitive gaming. It’s a combination of keeping up with the Joneses, and also just being sick of being chobo.