It was the ’60s, and video games were science fiction. They were not even conceived in the collective imagination, whether as entertainment or as a sport. In 1962 a guy named Steve Russell developed at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology something called Spacewar! It was a program he made with his colleagues, all of them university students, to run on a PDP-1 computer. Spacewar! was a “game,” in the absence of a better word. In it, two spacecraft tried to destroy each other without falling into the gravitational force of a star.
Exactly ten years later, in October 1972, Stanford University held a Spacewar! Competition. They called the event “intergalactic Olympics,” and attendees drank beer for free. The prize for the winner was a one-year subscription to the famous Rolling Stone magazine.
The one who germinated the seeds Spacewar! was Atari, 8 years later. In 1980 the company organized the first large-scale tournament in the history of esports. It consisted of getting the best score from the famous Space Invaders. More than 10,000 people competed from all over the United States and, given the technical limitations of the time, in-person in New York. The winner of the Space Invaders National Championship was Rebecca Heineman. She became the first person to win a national video game tournament. Subsequently, she developed a successful career as an industry programmer. How cool is that?
Pre-Esports Era
Between March 8 and 11, 1990, Super Mario and The Legend of Zelda celebrated the first Nintendo World Championship. It was held in 29 U.S. cities with Super Mario Bros., Tetris, and Rad Racer games. It consisted of different tests, either individually or in pairs. Although there was no official list of winners, this honor was later taken by Thor Aackerlund.
Parallel to the tournament, Nintendo Power magazine held a contest in which they gave something extraordinary as a gift. It was a golden NES cartridge with the three games of the competition. It’s currently valued at over $15,000. On the other hand, there was another similar Nintendo World Championship four years later, but it didn’t have the impact of the first one.
Nintendo’s Lost Opportunity
However, Pokémon fever, from 1996 onwards, prompted Nintendo again to hold competitive events. But not with the Red and Blue Editions. The trigger was the release of Pokémon Stadium in the year 2000, which gave a spectacularity never seen before in the saga. It was a 3D videogame for Nintendo 64. What made it unique was that you could use the equipment trained in the Game Boy cartridges.
That same year there were national competitions around the globe, looking for the best coaches. The Spanish champion was a young man named Sergio García Maroto, who later competed against the best in Europe. His performance was so good that he qualified for the World Championship in Sydney, Australia, where he finished third.
For things in life, Sergio would be known twelve years later as YouTuber Knekro. Fame came to him for the second time thanks to his content of League of Legends, the esport par excellence. That’s curious. But that’s another story.
Returning to Pokémon, Nintendo had a golden opportunity. As a result of that championship, esports could have been born a decade earlier. But the Japanese company couldn’t see the potential behind it all. And, unfortunately, the competitive Pokémon was relegated to the background.
Converging Parallel Stories
Pokémon was not the only example of what we might call the pre-esports era, although it was the loudest. At the end of the ’90s and the beginning of the new century, there were many others.
To cite one, there was the Red Annihilation tournament of the Quake shooter in 1997. It is considered one of the first examples of “modern” eSport. Of the 2,000 participants, the winner won the Ferrari from the game’s chief developer, John Carmack.
At the other end of the globe, in South Korea, Starcraft, Blizzard’s science fiction RTS, triumphed. This country was the first to professionalize esports competitions. Players were treated as “athletes,” and games began to be broadcast on television. The first clubs, sponsors, and players’ unions also emerged.
Present Day Esports
Thanks to Blizzard, although indirectly, the definitive boom came from the publisher of his video game Warcraft. The same users created the map Defense of the Ancients (DOTA), on which Riot would later be based on the LOL.
League of Legends has become the most popular esport, but there are many others, you might familiar with them below.
- Counter Strike: Global Offensive (GO)
- Call of Duty
- Overwatch
- Hearthstone
- Clash Royale
- Rocket League
- Dota
The list just goes on and on! Today, esports moves millions of passionate gamers around the planet and has become a lucrative and booming business. But all this comes from a specific “intergalactic Olympics” 45 years ago. So, when you hear that the phenomenon is recent, remember this: Rome was not made in a day.
Because of all this, it is common that more and more video game companies want a piece of the very moist cake with many pieces still to be distributed. There’s a lot to go around! Companies of high relevance in the history of video games such as Blizzard or Valve have internal departments dedicated exclusively to the adaptation of their franchises to electronic sports, and between them are distributed three of the five most played competitive titles today. Meanwhile, Riot Games or, once again, Valve, are in charge of organizing international tournaments such as the LCS or The International, the highest level competitions of LoL and Dota 2.
Thus, this brief review of the birth and evolution of electronic sports makes it clear that despite the sector’s rapid growth during the last five years, the end of the road still seems to be a long way off. However, it is not and will not be free of obstacles and problems to deal with and learn to overcome, thus demonstrating the maturity of the environment.
Now we think about esports and see the pictures of full stadiums up to the flag. We owe that to Riot Games and their dedication to bringing League of Legends of the most premier esport titles in the industry. Without Riot, the sports wouldn’t have grown so much and wouldn’t be what they are.
