ADVERTISEMENT

Electronic Sport

From StarCraftWiki

(Redirected from ESports)

Electronic Sports or E-sport is the definition of professional gamers, their tournaments and leagues. When tournaments are of the level that a player can get serious amounts of money out of winning games (as opposed to a free hot dog or the like), that is e-sport. Also referred to as Professional Gaming (progaming).

[edit] Korea and the World

Pro-gaming is most common in Korea, where StarCraft became a popular pastime about the same time as they had economical problems, and the IT sector was growing. Hundreds of thousands of Koreans played (and play) StarCraft and other games in PC baangs (gaming cafes). Even if most have PC at home today, they still mostly play in baangs.

As a joke, a match was broadcasted on TV, and became popular. Today, professional gamers spend all day exercising, have hired coaches, and are treated like athletes or pop stars. Young kids scream if they meet them, and they make very much money. The culture for videogames, and StarCraft in particular is similar to USA and basketball, or UK and football. Everyone does it, in hopes of be a grand master. Progaming is generally associated with Korea. If no other location is mentioned, any progaming statement usually refers to Korea progaming leagues.

For a western world person, this can be hard to understand, but the basic idea is that they value prowess of mind as high or higher as that of body. Esports are growing in the western world as well, but have not caught fire like in the east.

[edit] Measure Skills

Besides wins and losses of a player, it's also common to measure APM, which is a form of universal "handicap" for StarCraft players. APM is an acronym for "Actions Per Minute", and is an indicator of how much a player can do in the game within a minute. In most cases the player that has trained his skills to be as fast as possible while maintaining precision have better odds at winning a SC match, but it's not a given rule.