Human beings love to compete. Create a competitive environment — be it a sport, a game or a quiz — and someone, somewhere will turn it into an obsession. South Korea’s fixation on StarCraft may seem peculiar, but while Koreans may be pioneering the strange concept of video games as sport, the rest of the world isn’t all that far behind.
In Britain tens of thousands of people engage in competitive, ranked video game matches every day. Most simply play with their friends for fun, taking a few hours out of their evening to fight, shoot or strategise their way to little more than a sense of victory and macho bragging rights. Several thousand, however, take things rather more seriously.
They are, predominantly, hyper-competitive young men who have turned a leisure pursuit enjoyed by millions into an obsessive quest for victory. In games such as World of Warcraft or Counter-Strike, they create teams with strict rules about attendance at practice sessions and league matches. Those playing solo in games such as Street Fighter train obsessively for hours every day.
As in Korea, few of them are over 25 — the dedication and reaction times required are near-impossible for older players.
I was never very good anyway, but my own brush with competitive gaming ended in my early twenties. I could no longer keep up with the teenagers who dominated matches. Yet the appeal remains strong — no matter what the game may be, the adrenalin rush of competition, the emotional surge that comes with victory and the camaraderie of team play remain the same.
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The crushing depression of defeat, too, is the same. Today England’s devoted fans come to terms with their World Cup exit — a reminder, as you consider the strange notion of “e-sports”, that every game has people for whom it’s far, far more than just a game.