IeSF Deputy Manager,Jay Shin
Recently, one of the main goals of IeSF is sports-wise of e-sports through affiliation to Sport Accord. However, many parties related to game industry question on this project, whether esports can certainly become a discipline of sports. It is also often asked what benefits e sports field may take from it.
The trend of world e-sports in 2012 shows a phenomenon that the tournaments directly hosted by game developers are increasing compared to past years the tournaments hosted by organizers including IeSF were ruling. Blizzard and Riot Games who are global major e-sports publishers announced that they are hosting world championships of their main titles, ‘Starcraft II’ and ‘League of Legends’. It seems that these publishers made decision that it would more beneficial to host tournament for their titles. This may reflect that the organizers of e-sports tournament have not providing benefits sufficiently. What if these publishers successfully settle down their own events as new paradigm of e-sports tournament? It will narrow down the position of organizers, and derive questions about the needs of organizers.
Then, what are the benefits that each national e-sports associations or IeSF can provide publishers? We may be able to find it in sports-wise of e-sports. The most controversial issue of publishers is perhaps negative perception toward games.
Currently, many countries recognize the industrial value of games and attempt to raise the game industry. On the other hand, it is still fact that negative perception toward games is prevalent in our society. Publishers have been continuously endeavoring to seek for solution through e-sports. Publishers and organizers have been hosting massive e-sports event, and professional teams are raised with sponsorship of huge companies as a part of sports-wise project in Korea.
These were attempts to show the positive aspect of games; however, it doubts the negative perception would diminish in spite of these attempts.
There is no such person who blame on kids who wants to be players of popular sports such as soccer or baseball, that they are wasting time instead of studying. The reason that there is somewhat dignity on these sports disciplines which may be able to be perceived as simple ball playing is authority of sports, and affiliation to ‘ Sport Accord’ is the first step of ours to make esports recognized as a sports discipline. If IeSF enters the realm of established institutions for sports, IeSF and member national associations as well as related publishers can obtain positive effects to improve the perception of people toward games. This is vision for IeSF and all member national associations as well as answer for needs of publishers which attempt to make games recognized as a leisure culture at the same time. Publishers can secure the stable market based on sports-wised e-sports, and boost up their social actions which attempts to reduce negative perception toward games.
There is no such way that a tournament or a national association can be operated without games. All e-sports activities are based on participation of fine game titles. However, the tournaments hosted by organizers in the past have been nothing but aid for promotion of publishers, and now these publishers are trying to host the tournaments on their own. The associations and federations for e-sports should no longer be the organizer of the tournaments. They should conduct things that publishers cannot do or they wants to resolve, and it is only feasible when IeSF secure the authority as an official sports body through affiliation to Sport Accord.
