PlusHeart Issue #19 - Does esports even have a culture?
How can I feel nostalgic for a world I've never known?
PlusHeart is a newsletter about creating on the Internet, creating for passion, and the relationship between fans and creators. It explores Twitch, esports, fandoms, and other places where all these things intersect. Matt Demers writes it in between cups of tea.
I’ve been enjoying Jacob Wolf’s Substack lately, and I’m happy to see more esports people on the platform. Jacob’s beat is more B2B and industry news, but he recently had a discussion around whether esports and the gaming industry are stagnating.
I can only really go by what I feel is happening in respective industries, and I think the safest answer is to say that esports’ fragmented nature means that we have no idea how “everything is doing” as a whole.
But screw it, let’s speculate anyway.
What came to mind for me about this question is the idea of time scaling, mostly because esports’ history is extremely condensed compared to other games or sports. This is important, mostly because it puts into perspective how little time esports had to gain a particular culture or aesthetic, and how much it’s had to adapt to outside market forces trying to leverage its (meager and new) success.
We can look at the beginning of “esports” as maybe Doom/Quake tournaments in the early-to-mid 90s; we can also be a bit more conservative and think that “esports proper” didn’t really get going until the advent of Starcraft: Brood War in the late 90s or early 2000s. We’re looking at less than 30 years to get where we are, not only as a business, but as a culture.
That culture is important, because well, at the end of the day, businesses are trying to capitalize on that culture in order to make money. And if the culture isn’t strong, the culture dies quickly, and that also impacts the long-term investment into the scene as a revenue-generating source. I think that’s what’s at play when we look at whether esports is stagnating or not — things might feel stale because we’re already dealing with burning through what we’ve built.
Concurrent to the rise of esports is the rise of the streamer or influencer: a person entertaining with “their brand”, and being able to leverage those numbers into greater fame. This 20-30 years also includes the “pro blogger” or the “YouTuber” as well — all that innovation in what good practices, bad practices, and what feels real has been crunched, and we feel like the best days have already passed.
In esports’ case, we’ve already seen teams realize that the sports aspect of things is limited. Influencers end up serving brands’ needs better, because they have more time, more bandwidth, and end up being more accessible to a typical parasocial relationship than your average esports pro. Also, the need to become a “lifestyle brand” at the company level in order to secure more customer base means that the “gamer” identity gets shoved to the background. Again, this happened in an extremely condensed timeframe: five years? Seven years?
As commercialized as football is, there is still a spirit of the game that happens every time someone kicks a ball around with their friends. This is defined by hundreds of years of culture, building and soaking in upon itself to gain strength. While esports (and by extension, gaming) have that kind of communal spirit, I feel like it’s tied way too tightly into a corporate entity for it to develop to the point of self-sufficiency.
Ironically, for all the talk of esports “not needing the Olympics”, the industry may end up burning through its fuel too quickly. In order for companies to grow beyond the maximum scale for gamers as an demographic, fans may feel left behind, or the product may end up feeling hollow. The contrast of “it feels real, but it’s too grassroots to support itself” versus “it’s really big with a lot of money, but it feels very fake” makes certain titles feel like lightning in a bottle.
So, what do we do? I feel like it’s not necessarily productive to navel-gaze and doomspeak; however, I’ve found myself readjusting my expectations for the industry and not tying whether I think it’s valuable to how much money I can make off of it, or how “big” it is.
If I’m having a ton of fun on the last remaining CRT TV while someone’s hacked Wii is playing the last copy of Smash Melee, it’ll still feel like esports. If I’m going 0-2 in a tournament in someone’s basement, it’s still esports. If I’m telling my kids about when EG won TI5, it’ll mean that esports has outlived developers, marketers, speculators and gentrifiers in some small way. But that’s not exactly compatible with “fixing the industry”; I don’t imagine everyone has that luxury to disengage from the very real consequences of contraction. People have bills to pay.
But maybe that’s where esports’ best work, or the next wave of success is going to come from; a place where the pressures of “succeeding in the mass market” are gone, and where developers can create while players can play. That’s obviously a bit idealistic, and it’s also contrary to “what esports is” right now; if there wasn’t that potential for mass-market explosion and revenue, would half the esports industry be in esports?
This obviously comes back to what I keep talking about in this newsletter: authenticity is important to audiences because esports is supposed to be different than traditional sports. However, to the industry, esports is taking so many cues, practices and expectations from traditional sports that wires are getting crossed. The motivations and successes of the industry class are not the same as the what the audience finds valuable.
Are you, the reader, okay with esports not being a mainstream thing? Are you, the reader, aware of how much money you’d spend, or how much you’d participate if you weren’t going to get a ton of profit (social, or otherwise) from doing so?
I think this clash is being reckoned with right now, and will only get worse if a stagnation and plateau continues. Whether it works itself out, or moves forward in a compromised (or worse, forced) state remains to be seen. I’m just hoping for the best.
Housekeeping
Hey hey, I’m streaming twice a week now. Follow me on Twitch, because that’s always a fun time. I’ve also found a quick and easy way to post my schedule every week, so if you’re ever looking for that, it’s in my Instagram bio. Provisionally the schedule should be Tuesday evenings at 7PM EST, and Saturday mornings at 11AM EST.
I’ve also revamped my dot-com (which I mentioned last week) in order to better receive what I hope will be weekly writing instead of biweekly. This issue of PlusHeart is my first one on that schedule. I think I might have to revamp how I do Patreon rewards (usually writing comes out Wednesday there, and Friday here), but I’ll see what happens in the meantime.
Things have felt pretty good lately, and I’m comfortable admitting that I’d like to do more content, and do it well. If you’ve read this far, consider sharing the newsletter or my work, because that really helps.