The eSports competitive gaming industry is both fiscally and culturally one of the fastest growing mediums of professional play that exists today. It is the next and possibly the final frontier of the video game community’s journey to mainstream legitimacy. eSports is expanding rapidly year after year with massive amounts of potential for money to be made in every facet of the space, and no signs of reaching its peak.
Just last year, the valuation of the global professional gaming market was reported at $748 million. That number is projected to reach $1.9 billion by 2018. Viewership is up to 188 million. As the world steps into the social game-changing phenomenon that will be virtual reality, the industry can only become more viral and dominant in the worldwide sports conversation.
But if eSports wants to become a widely respected form of pro-competition and keep investor support from bigger players and corporate machines, the culture of online gaming on every level has to be refocused.
There isn’t a non-white male person I know, myself included, that has played a game online who hasn’t been confronted with overwhelming amounts of bigotry and discrimination from the other side of the screen. Black, PoC, LGBTQ, woman — if you can check any of these boxes (or all of them), it’s almost an expectation to be called every manner of slur you can think of in at least one interaction you have while playing.
The policing of this hate speech is not addressed enough. While some action has been taken over the life span of online play in the form of bans and blocks, the process is often extremely lenient on the behalf of the offender. Admins are sluggish in the process of exacting punishment, and more active in the practice of covering tracks than in preventative strategy to fix the culture that purports the behavior as acceptable. Even in the most progressive categories like the Fighting Game Community (FGC) there is still work to be done.
This disgusting community culture that has been festering and growing, like a mold, for more than a decade is now spilling over into the most lucrative, and attractive part of the gaming world – eSports. If no one takes real, quantitative action to remedy the issue, I have zero doubts that the social karma will rack up faster than any of these happy-to-ignore-the-problem, money hungry, negligent companies expect it to. An industry that was full of promise will sink.
The press is already getting a hold of the narrative (because we all know it takes forever for anyone to pay attention). Incident after incident, after incident, after incident is taking place and the voices are getting louder and louder, as they should. The toxicity that exists will become national conversation simply by association as the industry itself gets bigger. It is an absolute and utter shame that this is the way the problem will have to be addressed, or to hold the arbiters of conduct accountable, but it’s necessary if eSports wants to move forward without a looming shadow waiting to devour it whole.
Yes, there will always be a group of outlying individuals that take the time to be terrible. People will use anonymity to spew hatred in a way that is cowardly because of the belief their actions are irreprehensible. But eSports has to remove the stigma that this ideology in the gaming community is true and make it known that it will not be tolerated in any sense. That’s the only way to make a change to the space and the culture at its lowest level.
These are just some of the comments from a Twitch live stream that sent me back down the rabbit hole into gaming culture, due to the fact that I stopped playing online some time between college and the real world. I just naturally transitioned from a very hardcore FPS gamer into a girlfriend, and much less gaming. Those late nights on Xbox Live 360° no scoping angry adolescent white boys into racist rage felt like distant memories, but the more I read, the more it came back to me. Back then, to me and my friends, those insults were badges of honor that we wore with pride. Now, I know better. To us, it meant that we were better in skill and moral constitution than the players we deservedly annihilated every day after school. But that outlook doesn’t and shouldn’t have to realistically work for everyone — especially in the context of a professional revenue earning, public sporting event.
Terrence Miller had family and loved ones watching as hundreds of comments, including the ones in the photo above littered the feed while he played in a competition at DreamHack Austin.
In his interview with The Daily Dot, when asked about his parents’ reactions to the comments he said, “I just had to explain to them that Twitch is really immature and not what most of the community is like.” This is probably true, ut eSports and gaming at-large has to ask collectively if the minority of participants that engage in this kind of anonymous discrimination will be allowed to serve as the poster children for the whole.
His ideas about a solution to the problem are very in line with my own. Miller said, “I think if there is a solution it’s going to be very hard to find. I think a lot of it has to do with if the community wants there to be a solution. If the population as whole wants it and a minority doesn’t want it then the majority will win out.”
Since that time, statements have been released by Blizzard CEO Mike Morhaime and a representative from Twitch about making changes. Blizzard has also dedicated itself to collaborate with all the parties involved on a programming level, to make real efforts towards an actionable solution which will hopefully result in some progress. Up until this time, Twitch’s main advice in their “How to Manage Harassment in Chat” article is to “not react” and “ignore”.
Terrence and I agree again because, “just ignoring it like some people are saying doesn’t make the problem go away. It’ll just keep happening. You have to keep bringing it up and try to find a resolution.”
The real question here is, what side of history does the eSports industry want to be on five to 10 years from now? Do they want to stay on the trajectory to billions of dollars, massive endorsements, and global attention on competitive gaming? Or do they want to be remembered as the negligent business people who allowed a culture of negativity to tear down the entire industry before it ever really had a chance to get started? These are decisions that ventures like the ELEAGUE powered by Turner & WME-IMG will eventually have to make.
Gamers can make a difference, but the people betting on the industry with their checkbooks and wallets have a real opportunity to spread the message in a way that me and my buddies online could not. They can mobilize and unite the people to take a stand under one coordinated banner to change the culture. And that should be their absolute number one priority right now — if not for the sake of human decency, than to keep their industry alive before it’s too late.
Thanks for reading Strictly 4 My Blerds.
At the end of this month on May 26-29, I’ll be at MomoCon holding it down in my Tune Squad jersey. I’d like to meet/hang with as many of you as I possibly can. Let me know if you’re going to MomoCon this year, and what events and special guests you’re looking forward to the most.
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