Why do people play video games? Why do they play games competitively, pushing themselves deeper and deeper into a virtual world?
There isn’t one answer. Reasons vary greatly from person to person and you’d have to decode the fibers that make up the individual to know his or her every motivation.
Who knows what leads people to dedicate themselves to mastery of a form like this? This is a form dismissed by millions as a waste of time, enjoyed by millions more still and deeply delved into by only a select few.
Why would a person focus their energy on pushing themselves and their games beyond prescribed limits? Why would hundreds of thousands of fans sit with eyes wide, following the every move of the champion, the one who has dedicated 10,000 hours to be the best?
Let’s start from the top.
Philosopher Bernard Suits gave us the definition of play.
Playing a game is a voluntary attempt to overcome unnecessary obstacles.
Why do we do it?
"Games make us happy because they are hard work that we choose for ourselves and it turns out that almost nothing makes us happier than good, hard work," wrote games researcher Jane McGonigal.
"The opposite of play isn't work, it's depression," wrote psychologist Brian Sutton-Smith.
"When we're playing a good game, we're actively moving ourselves toward the positive end of the emotional spectrum," wrote Jane McGonigal in her book Reality is Broken.
We are intensely engaged, and this puts us in precisely the right frame of mind and physical condition to generate all kinds of positive emotions and experiences. All the neurological systems that underlie happiness -- our attention systems, our reward center, our motivation systems, our emotion and memory centers -- are fully activated by gameplay. This extreme emotional activation is the primary reason why today's most successful computer and video games are so addictive and mood-boosting. When we're in a concentrated state of optimistic engagement, it suddenly becomes more biologically possible for us to think positive thoughts, to make social connections, and to build personal strength. We are actively conditioning our minds and bodies to be happier.
In esports, as in most areas of the enormous video game industry, the social connections we have created are strengthening and expanding. More than a game, more than a sport and even more than an industry, esports is building a global community of enormous scale and intensity.
"Many of my friends would say, 'it’s just a game, John, quit it.’ Being here today, people from all over the world being together and sharing this moment is something that politics or money can’t do. It’s a miracle," said Jun Kyu "Junkka" Park in a speech delivered to a crowd of tens of thousands at the StarCraft 2 Code S finals at BlizzCon 2011.
What starts as simple fun grows and grows until you take the leap from player to competitor to contender to champion to god, through which thousands live vicariously, worship and curse.
What starts as a small group of friends becomes a global community. Despite the stereotypes of the impersonal internet and of the alienated gamer playing alone, the entire world is circled by close friends who play games and build relationships that will last a lifetime.
What starts as a small hobby becomes an international business. Wide-eyed entrepreneurs push millions of dollars this way and that, big-mouthed bullshit artists pedal phony promises on every continent, heroes and villains in suits and ties watch as the industry traverses booms and busts, starts and stops, comings and goings.
What starts as a something small becomes an opportunity for something more. The young kid feeling directionless sees the chance to inject color into his life and tries his hand at professional gaming. The young man who has spent years of his youth in the glow of the computer monitor sees his future in the globe-trotting, keyboard smashing, blink-and-you-miss-it world of esports.
How does it begin?
You and the kid next door press start on your favorite game and play for hours, two friends working and figuring every piece of the puzzle out. You introduce it to all the kids at school, start playing against each other and soon you’re fighting to figure out your friend, what makes him or her tick. You spend the day thinking of ways to outsmart, outplay, outdo your friend, your opponent.
When you don’t win, you feel it. When you do win, the rush of blood to your head pays you back tenfold. You’re hooked. Egos are fed as scores climb higher. Every success you have, every kill you make quantifies and proves that you’re moving forward, getting better. Another win, another rush that you might expect to find on the playing field. Now, you find it in the gamer as well.
Viewers see the most talented players in the world mold the games to their will like an artist and are inspired. In competition, gaming presents the ultimate level playing field. For the newbie sporting the same tools and weapons as the professionals, it’s easy to feel intimately connected to the even the greatest minds of our sports.
Great competitors seem to catalyze our awareness of how glorious it is to touch and perceive, think and solve, move through space toward goals and solutions. Granted, what great competitors can do with their bodies and minds are things that the rest of us can only dream of. But these dreams are important — they make up for a lot, wrote David Foster Wallace.
A world-class gamer does this.
Emil "HeatoN" Christensen was a 17-year-old Swedish sharpshooter at the turn of the century, a global star in Counter-Strike whose tremendous natural talent and inexplicable ability to bend the game to his will marked a new plateau in Counter-Strike. For a time, he was the face and the screaming voice of the one of most dominant franchises ever. He was also just a kid, happily playing, traveling the world, winning tournaments and building an industry before he was old enough to drink at many competitions.
Ma "sAviOr" Jae Yoon was a Korean StarCraft champion. Fittingly, he was a messiah for his fans, a man who stubbornly changed the way his game was played at just 19 years old. He won multiple championships with such command, such power that, for many of those who saw him play, Savior still sits alone on the highest plateau. Shortly following his peak, Ma Jae Yoon fell from grace and was soon convicted of throwing matches for money and banned from the game for life.
These are the famed few who have reached the top of their worlds using mental and physical dexterity to push beyond what was thought possible. The greatest competitors don’t simply win, their victories are a revelation. They blaze new paths and inspire in all the realization that our potential has not been met, not yet. We have not hit a solid wall, we can still move forward. We will still move forward.
Anyway, these games are fun.