Esports

[JDB]

Esports experienced strong growth over the past decade. The IOC is getting in on the action with next year's inaugural Olympic Esports Games.

I watch fighting game tournaments occasionally. Evo established itself as a major international Esports event. A famous moment from Evo 2004: Daigo Umehara (Ken) vs. Justin Wong (Chun Li)



Seven years later the crowd is bigger amd tournaments became harder to win. Even making top 16 was a big accomplishment. Daigo won the previous two years in (Super) Street Fighter IV. He failed to make it to finals after losing to Abdullatif "Latif" Alhmili.



Evo 2024 happened a few weeks ago. Checkout Ryuji "Hayao" Hayashi's flexibility.

 

[Hatsumomo]

This just makes me lament that the movie theater I used to work at was torn down to build townhouses instead of doing some minor renovations to turn it into a small-scale esports arena.

 

[KristyJ]

As someone who participates in (and now casts for as of last weekend) esports, I would be fascinated to see them grow to Olympic representation, though I'd be curious to see which games would be chosen to start.

 

[irichluck21]

Think this is awesome.

I remember the Nintendo World Championships back in the early 90s. One of my school buddies made it quite far into the tournament before getting eliminated.

So video game competition has been around for decades.