The rise of e-sports

I choose this topic because I was once really interested in e-sports, and in how it worked and its familiar to who I am because I use a lot of time in front of the computer playing with friends, family and sometimes strangers. So I choose this topic to learn an extra thing or two about one of my main interests.

The rise of E-sports

A Little History

The concept of eSport dates back as far as the 1970s – in 1972, Stanford University held a video game competition where players competed on the game ‘Space War’. The first video game championship was held in 1980 – 10,000 players competed on ‘Space Invaders’, and thanks to the game’s mainstream popularity, the competition received media coverage. In the 1990s, the internet landed and online gaming was born, leading to the first official eSport event in 1997 – the Red Annihilation tournament. By the early 2000’s we had the World Cyber Games, the Electronic Sports World Cup, and Major League Gaming. DOTA, the first true Multiplayer Online Battle Arena (MOBA) game, hit the scene in 2003. Since then, the tournaments have grown to become huge international events, and the prize money up for grabs is sometimes in the millions.