Signs of meta-change in
second modernity: the
growth of e-sport and the
World Cyber Games
BRETT HUTCHINS
Monash University, Australia
Abstract
Media, communication and information flows now define the
logic and structure of social relations, a situation that affects
almost every dimension of cultural life and activity.This article
analyses the transformation of the relationship between
computer gaming, media and sport in the global age of ‘second
modernity’.This analysis is undertaken through a critical case
study of the World Cyber Games (WCG).This popular event
and the ‘cyber-athletes’ that compete in it cannot be explained
fully by reference to existing studies of computer and video
gaming, media and sport, media events or organized sporting
competition. It is not possible to think in terms of sport and the
media when considering the WCG and organized competitive
gaming.This is sport as media or e-sport, a term that signifies
the seamless interpenetration of media content, sport and
networked information and communications technologies.
Key words
computer games • cyber-athletes • e-sport • media
• meta-change • second modernity • sociology • sport • Ulrich
Beck • zombie categories
851
new media & society
Copyright © 2008 SAGE Publications
Los Angeles, London, New Delhi and Singapore
Vol10(6): 851–869 [DOI: 10.1177/1461444808096248]
ARTICLE
New Media & Society 10(6)
852
The extraordinary global growth of the computer games industry and
gaming activities and cultures over the past decade are representative of the
speed and character of social and cultural transformation in second
modernity. Ongoing sociological investigation of a super-abundant range of
gaming activities is necessary if we are to understand an increasingly
‘mediatized’ (Thompson, 1995) social reality as it is becoming, as opposed to
being blinded to this reality by former ways of thinking.This article focuses
on the intricate interrelationship between digital gaming, sport and media.
The case presented here is predicated on the fact that existing studies do
not account adequately for the evolution of organized competitive gaming in
digital media environments, the existence and character of this type of
competition or the increasingly publicized performances of ‘cyber-athletes’.
The World Cyber Games (WCG) – a popular international competitive
computer gaming competition which has been running since 2000 and
continues to grow in popularity each year – is a gaming, computing, media
and sports event all at once; familiar in its presentation format but unfamiliar
in its content. It is argued that the introduction of this event and its
subsequent success, as well as other established North-American competitions
such as Major League Gaming (MLG) (www.mlgpro.com; see Chaplin and
Ruby, 2005) and nascent international circuits such as the Championship
Gaming Series (CGS) (www.thecgs.com) are indicative of a large-scale
transformation in social systems and action, or ‘meta-change’ (Beck, 2005;
Beck and Lau, 2005).The WCG highlights a shift whereby the relationship
between media and sport is no longer one of structural interrelation –
respective industries and end-users serving the others’ needs in terms of
content, audiences and profit – to material integration.Various developments
highlight the interrelation of sport and media over the last 30 years, including
the escalating commercialization and mediatization of the Olympics, the
Football World Cup and the National Football League (Guttmann, 2002;
Sugden, 2002;Whitson, 1998).The WCG represents a logical yet radical
extension of this process, integrating the organizational, physical and
technological basis of competition.This arrangement has been made possible
by the information technology (IT) revolution and rapid expansion in the
availability, capabilities and popularity of interactive digital communications
technologies.
An eye to the past is required for the reader to be convinced of the case
presented here. In the long view of history, modern media and sport are
relatively recent phenomena, with origins that extend back to only the 18th
and 19th centuries. Each developed ‘simultaneously and symbiotically’ (Miller
et al., 2001: 62) with the other and in conjunction with industrialization, the
formation of nation-states, emerging notions of civil society and the founding
of parliamentary democracies and bureaucracies (Anderson, 1991; Elias and
Dunning, 1986; Guttmann, 1978; Habermas, 1989; Holt, 1989;Weber, 1970).
Certainly, both media and local-based physical pastimes existed prior to this
time. However, changes in the scale and capacity of transport and
communications technologies, as well as the interrelated standardization and
codification of pre-sport pastimes, created fundamental transformations in the
structure and appearance of both. Peculiarly modern media and sport were
born.
If the experience of earlier stages of modernity is taken as an example, it is
likely that second modernity (Beck, 2000, 2005; Beck and Lau, 2005) is
producing an equivalent range of social and cultural upheavals.The
cumulative effects of globalization, neo-liberalism, IT, biotechnology and
nano-technology revolutions and the spread of transnational networked
communications technologies are melting much of what once appeared solid
(Bauman, 1998, 2001, 2002; Beck, 1999, 2005; Castells, 2000a, 2000b, 2002,
2004a, 2004b; Sennett, 2006).As demonstrated by the impressive increase in
scholarly investigation of computer gaming evidenced in research
monographs, edited collections and journals such as Games and Culture and
Game Studies, games are playing an ever-increasing role in this process.
Significant changes in areas as diverse as art (Jenkins, 2005), education
(Arnseth, 2006; de Souza e Silva and Delacruz, 2006; Prensky, 2005), war and
the military (van de Graaf and Nieborg, 2003), the economy (Castronova,
2003, 2005, 2006), the law (Lastowka, 2006) and now sport are enabled
through communications and media systems, which constitute the symbolic
and physical environment of game production, consumption and
(increasingly) distribution (Kline et al., 2003).The influence of Innis (1950,
1951) and Thompson (1995, 2005) on this approach is apparent. Both of these
thinkers pinpoint the centrality of media communication technologies to the
organization and pattern of social interactions, as well as acknowledge the role
of media in the evolution of modern societies.This perspective is applied now
to the complex interface between gaming, media and sport.
SPORT, SPEED AND ‘ZOMBIES’
The two most useful theories scrutinizing the social and cultural interface
between the media and sport are Lawrence Wenner’s MediaSport (1998) and
David Rowe’s (2004) ‘media sports cultural complex’.The strength of the
mediasport concept is its accessibility, signifying a shift in cultural and
historical sensibilities which has resulted in a seemingly natural relationship
existing between the media and sports industries. However, its weakness is a
failure to explain little beyond a generalized state of affairs due to a lack of
substantive theoretical development. By contrast, Rowe (2004) supplies a
more comprehensive theory that bridges historical understanding, the
structuring influence of market forces and the role of cultural discourses,
Hutchins: The growth of e-sport and the World Cyber Games
853
myths and symbols in the production and consumption of sport. However,
neither Rowe nor Wenner discuss the relationship between computer gaming
and sport, and Rowe alone manages to touch upon the impact of networked
communications technologies in the sports and media industries.
This article shifts the emphasis away from the aesthetics, textuality and
narrativity of digital games towards their role in the social world, thereby
attempting to extend the shelf-life and sociological relevance of the
arguments presented about the triad of sport, media and gaming.The culture
of digital games and gaming is characterized by ‘speed and acceleration’
(Dercon, 2001), which presents a significant challenge for those attempting to
study them.The rapid growth of the gaming industry, the pace of
development in computing processor power and memory storage capacity
and the capricious tastes, fervid devotion and varying experiences of gamers
mean that ‘[w]hat is published [about games] in paper today has already been
debated to death online yesterday’ (Schut, 2006: 89). Instead of focusing on
particular texts, the approach adopted here locates gaming, media and sport
within the broader social field, using them as a window onto how social
relations and forms are produced and change over time (Couldry, 2003,
2004).An outcome of this strategy is that organized competitive gaming is
treated as much more than a passing fad; instead representing the emergence
of a new phenomenon, e-sport.
The word ‘zombie’ in the above sub-heading refers to ‘zombie categories’,
a term coined by German sociologist Ulrich Beck.This is a sensitizing
concept within his ambitious theoretical and empirical research project,
designed to alert the researcher to dated and potentially irrelevant sociological
concepts. Beck’s programme encompasses the well-known theory of world
risk society, the rise of reflexive modernization and institutionalized
individualization and the process of cosmopolitanization (Beck, 1992, 1999,
2000, 2002a, 2002b, 2005; Beck and Beck-Gernsheim, 2002; Beck and Lau,
2005; Beck and Willms, 2004; Beck et al., 1994). Running throughout each of
these themes is Beck’s theorization of global social relations in second
modernity and the desire to eliminate ‘methodological nationalism’ – a
product and hangover from ‘first modernity’ – from the foundations of the
social sciences, although questions have been raised about the validity of his
arguments on this matter (Chernilo, 2006).
Zombie categories are longstanding sociological units of perception such as
family, class, democracy and the nation-state which, according to Beck,
embody 19th-century horizons of experience (Beck and Willms, 2004). In a
world risk society, these concepts are both ‘dead and alive’:‘Zombie
categories are living dead categories, which blind the social sciences to the
rapidly changing realities inside the nation-state containers and outside as
New Media & Society 10(6)
854
well’ (Beck, 2002a: 24).The point of this label is to emphasize the reality of
the transformations – or meta-change – occurring in contemporary social
relations as a result of globalization and cosmopolitanization. Beck presents
the term ‘household’ as an example of the living dead. For much of the 20th
century this category referred to an institutionally normalized arrangement of
a nuclear family with a male breadwinner. However, emerging developments
in the structure and organization of living arrangements have rendered the
use of this term problematic.‘Household’ still has currency within the
sociological literature, despite the fact that it now refers to a vast and mobile
set of ‘patchwork families’ (Beck and Lau, 2005) and relationships, including
same-sex partners and families, mixed marriages, de facto relationships and
multi-generational living arrangements. Beck argues that in this case and
many others, the discipline of sociology is yet to reflect and articulate
adequately the changed reality of the social world.
Not immodestly, Beck is demanding the reinvention of the sociological
imagination (Mills, 2000[1959]), beginning with the conceptual building
blocks used to coordinate research and thinking.This study follows Beck’s
example, calling for a re-evaluation of the relationship between gaming,
media and sport in order that it characterizes better the reality of
contemporary social life.The evidential basis for the case presented is
observation, note-taking and analysis of the WCG over a 24-month period
through its official website (www.worldcybergames.com), news media reports
and e-sport websites, including GotFrag (www.gotfrag.com), CyberEvolution
(www.cevo.com), e-Sports Australia (www.esau.com.au), Electronic Sports
Television (www.esportstv.com) and Global Gaming League (www.ggl.com).
These sites provide a useful means of immersion in, and engagement with,
the research site (Brady, 2005;Willis, 2006), supplying a range of information,
commentary and criticism, coverage and results, discussion and debate on
blogs and bulletin boards and video footage of both in-game and out-ofgame
action and events.They also provide a means of cross-referencing some
facts and figures sourced from the WCG.The conceptual and theoretical
analysis undertaken here is part of a larger study involving an on-site
investigation of the WCG and interviews with competitors which, again, is
concerned with the broader social field in which in-game action and
competition is located.
THE WCG
The WCG shows similarly escalating levels of progress to the gaming industry
in general. Emerging from a vibrant South Korean gaming culture, the first
event was held in Seoul in 2000, attracting approximately 174 competitors
from 17 countries. Each subsequent year has seen the event grow, with
Hutchins: The growth of e-sport and the World Cyber Games
855
the 2007 WCG in Seattle,WA, attracting around 700 participants from
74 countries drawn from Western and Eastern Europe, North and South
America, the Asia-Pacific and Oceania and the Middle East (see Table 1).
The 2008 event is scheduled for Cologne, Germany. Contestants must
progress through preliminary rounds in their countries in order to qualify
for the WCG Grand Final. Organizers claim that more than 1 million
gamers worldwide now enter the national preliminary rounds (Games Press,
2008), a figure which has some credibility, given the number of qualifying
events held throughout the world and the coverage of these available
through gaming websites.The Grand Final features single and team events
played on personal computer (PC) and console games, complete with
referees. Games cover different genres including first-person shooter
(Counter-Strike), sports (FIFA Soccer), racing (Project Gotham Racing and Need
for Speed), action (Virtua Fighter) and real-time strategy (StarCraft, Command
and Conquer and Warcraft). Prize money for the 2006 event totalled
approximately $465,000, with gold medallists in each event receiving
between $20,000 and $50,000. Coverage of the event was available via the
WCG ‘TV’ website (www.wcg.com/6th/tv/tv_main.asp) and selected
reports appeared in media outlets internationally, including the Sydney
Morning Herald, BBC News and CNN International.
There is no suggestion here that an event such as the WCG means the
obsolescence of what is popularly understood about the media and sport.
Such a notion is ridiculous and would deny the effort and energy devoted to
coverage of and participation in football, baseball, basketball and the like.
New Media & Society 10(6)
856
Table 1 The World Cyber Games grand final 2000–7
YEAR 2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007
Location Seoul, Seoul, Deajeon, Seoul, San Singapore Monza, Seattle,
Korea Korea Korea Korea Francisco, Italy WA
United
States
No. of 17 37 45 55 59 67 Approx. 74
countries 70
represented
WCG 174 389 456 562 642 679 Approx. 700
participants 700
Total prize 200,000 300,000 300,000 350,000 420,000 435,000 465,000 448,000
money
(Approx.
US$)
Sources:World Cyber Games PR Committee (2005, 2006, 2007),World Cyber Games website
(http://www.wcg.com)
Rather, the WCG and the activities of cyber-athletes signal the advent of a
qualitatively distinct phenomenon: e-sport.This term has been coined and
entered into (semi-)popular usage because competitive organized gaming
represents both continuity and marked discontinuity with the established
relationship between broadcast media and sport.At first glance the WCG
appears to reproduce the form and conduct of modern sport.Teams, nations,
scores, medals and a philosophy that borrows explicitly from the Olympic
movement are instantly recognizable, drawing upon deeply-rooted traditions
traceable to the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Matches between players
and teams are televised, complete with commentators, to an audience who
watches through streaming websites. In other words, media are used to
generate a televised spectacle, which is in keeping with the coverage of sport
since the introduction of radio and television (Rowe, 1996).
However, a closer look at the WCG reveals that something new is
emanating from the structure and form of media and sport as constituted
within modernity. e-Sport is born in and of media, which alters the
parameters of competition in terms of how it is conducted – on-screen and
in digital space – and the dynamics of the ‘game-contest’ (Elias and Dunning,
1986) which, unlike football or ice hockey, is determined by a technical
interface and the programmed possibilities contained within a computer
game. In their classic socio-historical study of sport and leisure, Norbert Elias
and Eric Dunning (1986) identify and discuss the dynamics of competition in
traditional organized physical ‘sports games’ such as football, which emerged
from within the manufacturing and industrial order of the 19th and 20th
centuries. Upon reading Elias and Dunning, it is quickly obvious that the
polarity of rules, dynamics of interaction, the environment or ‘world’ in
which competition is conducted and the variables affecting choices made by
players and teams are different in a digital game such as StarCraft or Virtua
Fighter.This remains the case even in a sports simulation such as FIFA Soccer,
with gamers able to inhabit the bodies – or digital representations – of several
players in quick succession, play the game from different angles including
above the playing surface, simultaneously play and listen to ‘television’
commentators, accommodate a ‘shot-meter’ and pause all movement and
action mid-game.This is sport as media, meaning that e-sport is the product
of the logic of media, communication and information flows (Lash, 2002).
Intense competition occurs in digitally constructed environments and
matches between players and teams are indivisible from the computing
networks that provide the platform for competition.
The comparison between sports games and computer games can be
extended in terms of the commercializing impact of the media industries on
sport and television throughout the second half of the 20th century.The
demise of sporting amateurism and the pervasiveness of broadcast
Hutchins: The growth of e-sport and the World Cyber Games
857
technologies certainly produced major changes in the appearance and
structure of increasingly mediatized (Thompson, 1995) competition in
football, baseball, cricket, rugby and basketball, including time-outs,
scheduling and rule changes, new uniforms and a visual panoply of
sponsorship and advertising (Barnett, 1990; Boyle and Haynes, 2000; Rowe,
2004;Whannel, 1992). However, even with these developments, physical sport
remains steadfastly corporeal in character, structured by an often intensely
physical ‘game pattern’ (Elias and Dunning, 1986). e-Sport, by contrast, is
structured by computer code and a digital interface: put simply, a game of
football remains possible with or without a media platform present.The
WCG and e-sport are distinct from traditional sport, bearing witness to a
significant historical moment in the development of media content, sport and
networked information and communications technologies (ICTs): the
seamless interpenetration of previously distinct spheres.1
IDEALISTIC INTERNATIONALISM AND META-CHANGE
A notable feature of the WCG is its similarity to the Olympic Games. Medal
tables, national teams, opening and closing ceremonies, a cross-continental
torch relay, a players’ village, a host city selection process and an extensive
tiered sponsorship programme all mirror the organizational and promotional
strategies used by the International Olympic Committee for the quadrennial
summer and winter Olympiads.The philosophy of the WCG is of particular
interest here, emphasizing harmony, respect and the creation of peace through
gaming:
The WCG slogan,‘Beyond the Game’, means that the WCG is not just a world
game tournament, but also combines the world to create harmony and
enjoyment through shared emotions. Further, the WCG slogan hopes for peace
to emerge during its tournament, which fosters mutual respect amongst all
participants from all over the world as we strive together to build an attractive
‘World Cultural Festival’. (World Cyber Games, 2008a)
The quixotic notion of global fraternity through competition is hardly
new.The six principles of Olympism are listed in the charter of the
International Olympic Committee, an organization founded in 1894
(International Olympic Committee, 2004). Consultation with the full charter
is recommended, but the second principle captures this document’s tenor:
The goal of Olympism is to place sport at the service of harmonious
development of man, with a view to promoting a peaceful society concerned
with the preservation of human dignity.
The company responsible for promoting and running the WCG, South
Korea’s International Cyber Marketing (ICM, www.icm2k.com), has
New Media & Society 10(6)
858
appropriated the tradition of Olympism to promote a new form of
competition and entertainment.
While the philosophical objectives of the International Olympic
Committee and WCG are identical, the festival or product being promoted is
different.As a televised ‘media event’ (Couldry, 2003; Dayan and Katz, 1992),
the Olympics rely upon the global reach of television platforms to perpetuate
its popularity and cultural resonance with viewers and sponsors.The WCG,
by contrast, is conducted in and through communication technologies and
networked computing.The achievement of ICM is to invent a tradition that
naturalizes this difference. Cosmetically at least, the WCG is another sports
festival, complete with the national flags and medals that have adorned
Olympic athletes for more than a century. Matches with commentators
screened on a broadband ‘TV’ channel maintain this continuity (http://
www.wcg.com/6th/tv/tv_commentators_2006.asp).An established historical
framework of meaning works to ensure that those who come across the
WCG for the first time can assimilate the character and worth of this event
into their worldview.
The philosophy and presentation of the WCG masks the significance of
e-sport in the context of the meta-change characterizing second modernity.
John Hoberman’s (1995) assiduously researched, but infrequently cited,
‘Towards a Theory of Olympic Internationalism’ is helpful in underlining the
point here. Hoberman situates the birth of the Olympic movement at the
turn of the 20th century within a rising current of ‘idealistic internationalism’
throughout the western world, comparing it with the founding of the Red
Cross (1863), the Esperanto movement (1887) and Lord Baden-Powell’s
Scouting movement (1908).This internationalism is indicative of a critical
moment in the history of modernity, signalling an historic break and
thorough-going transformation in social systems and action.An international
frame of reference underpinned by mutually recognized nation-states begins
to define social and political awareness and action, a point confirmed by the
subsequent crises of the First and Second World Wars and the founding of the
League of Nations in 1919 and the United Nations in 1945.Although not
strictly the result of idealistic principles, the International Telegraph Union
(1865) and the Universal Postal Union (1874) are further evidence in support
of Hoberman’s case.
The WCG symbolizes a similar meta-change more than a century later.
Social and cultural relations are genuinely transnational in scope, with many
political and economic policies and decisions no longer the sole prerogative
of the nation-state.This change has resulted in the restructuring, destabilizing
and/or dismantling of established political systems and modes of governance
(Albrow, 1996; Bauman, 1999; Beck, 1999, 2002b, 2005).A key challenge for
governments and citizens worldwide has been to develop effective responses
Hutchins: The growth of e-sport and the World Cyber Games
859
to the social and economic outcomes flowing from this transformation.This
is no longer just a series of nation-states existing within an international
system, but is also a global society of markets, information flows and
communications networks. Following Hoberman’s example, there are a
number of formal public and private organizations, as well as informal
coalitions, that help to ‘flesh out’ the shape and appearance of this new reality.
Examples include Greenpeace (founded in 1971), the Group of Eight (G8)
(1975), the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (1988),Asia-Pacific
Economic Cooperation (1989), the International Telecommunications Policy
Forum (1994), the World Trade Organization (1995) and the World Summit
on the Information Society (2003). Indeed, Beck (2005) identifies the fact
that in 1909 there were about 37 supranational governmental organizations
and 176 non-governmental organizations. By 1989, these numbers had risen
to approximately 300 and 4624 respectively.A disparate range of organizations
and forums are all attempting to respond to the uncertain consequences and
systemic instability produced by meta-change; or in selected cases, trying to
leverage political or economic advantage from the structural uncertainty
emerging from this rupture.
Taken as a whole, these groups are evidence of a collective response to
emerging conflicts over the pluralizing boundaries between the nation-state
and global society, as well as technology and humans, nature and society,
science and culture and science and politics (Beck and Lau, 2005; Latour,
1993).The WCG signals a reorganization of the boundary between
technology and social activity and the emergence of a new cultural
formation, e-sport.The question of whether the WCG or many of the groups
listed above, achieve either the significance or longevity of the Olympics or
the Red Cross must remain open.The history of politics, social movements
and major events shows a pattern of fits and starts, false promise, unexpected
success and endurance. Nonetheless, the WCG and e-sport have made
impressive progress in a relatively short period of time.
INSTRUMENTALITY AND CYBER-ATHLETES IN A GLOBAL CONTEXT
By using the template of a sports festival, ICM is using the past as windowdressing
to promote the future viability of its event.The instrumentality of
this approach is revealed by a tiered sponsorship programme, another
successful idea borrowed from the International Olympic Committee.2 The
WCG are built upon a business model which contains different categories of
sponsors, the most prominent of which is an exclusive ‘Worldwide Sponsor’,
Samsung Electronics, with the association between the WCG and this
company extending back to 2000.This sponsorship highlights the centrality
of Korean culture and business to the shape and structure of the WCG, with
the strength of gaming culture in this country combining with a major
New Media & Society 10(6)
860
manufacturer of digital technologies. Nonetheless, the financial foundations of
the WCG continue to extend beyond Korea with Microsoft now a ‘Premier
Sponsor’ and Hewlett Packard (via Procurve Networking) an ‘Official
Partner’, providing major support to events in Asia, the United States and
Europe. Below this are ‘Official Sponsors’ (ATI and SyncMaster) and a
number of official suppliers and media partners.The successful attraction of
sponsors by ICM requires a framework of meaning that is easily understood.
A sponsor facing the prospect of a large investment needs to identify the
potential worth of an event easily.An Olympic-style festival achieves this
objective as it is an established and prestigious organizational model.The
WCG is sold to investors as a cybergames festival that also serves as a ‘trade
event’ for multinational ICT and gaming companies and investment capital,
with a game business conference and an exhibition included in its schedule.
This event then serves as a forum and market driver for the consolidation of
e-sport as a unique technosocial phenomenon.
The parallels between traditional sports festivals and competitive gaming
are confirmed further by the public promotion of gamers as cyber-athletes.
This strategy is evident in the WCG and other competitions such as Major
League Gaming (www.mlgpro.com), the Championship Gaming Series
(www.thecgs.com), and the decade old but recently defunct Cyberathlete
Professional League (www.thecpl.com) (Chaplin and Ruby, 2005; Herz, 2002;
King and Borland, 2003). Dedication to training, teamwork, aggression and
the precise execution of planned tactical manœuvres are signs of top-level
sporting competition. But there is little chance that the ‘athletes’ involved will
jump, run or throw, let alone suffer or inflict serious physical injury.There is
minimal physical activity during matches outside of the frenetic movement of
hands, fingers and thumbs, although the intensity of matches does see
competitors raise a sweat.
The indeterminate cultural position of cyber-athletes is underpinned by
the fact that no one existing category of social perception – sport, media or
computer gaming – can account adequately for the totality of their activities.
This inadequacy is reflected by news reports and debates over whether
cyber-athletes are actually athletes.A 60 Minutes CBS News special (Kroft,
2006) about Johnathan Wendel, aka ‘Fatal1ty’ (www.fatal1ty.com), one of the
leading gamers in the United States, and a major feature article (Battacharya,
2005) published in the Sydney Morning Herald on Matt Leto, aka ‘Zyos’, a
college dropout from Dallas, evince an ambivalent narrative and set of
responses.Wendel, a 24-year-old who lives in Kansas City, reportedly has won
more than $300,000 in tournament prize money.Wendel’s success
corresponds with Leto, who is an official ‘WCG Legend’ (World Cyber
Games, 2008b) for his performances in Halo. Leto has an endorsement deal
with Nokia, appears on MTV and is being positioned by his main sponsor,
Hutchins: The growth of e-sport and the World Cyber Games
861
MLG, as a global gaming celebrity brand. In the cases of both Wendel and
Leto, the journalists acknowledge that skill, dedication, prize money and
endorsements make them like athletes, but they are not prepared to accord
them this status definitively; neither are they completely certain whether the
games in which they compete are sport in a traditional sense.This uncertainty
is reflected in online responses to these stories. Respondents struggle to
describe competitive gaming, comparing it to chess,‘conventional sport’,
‘energetic sports’,‘physical sports’ and situating gamers as combatants in
‘virtual field sports’,‘computer sports’ and ‘cybersports’.3 The journalists and
their respondents are struggling to label both gamers and their activities
accurately and in a way that will produce widespread consensus. No amount
of qualification or explanation is able to generate agreement on what is
actually occurring here. Cyber-athletes are liminal figures, taking part in an
organized activity that is competitive but unlike traditional sport.
A solution to this impasse requires a minor change of syntax, which has
disproportionately far-reaching analytical ramifications. It is necessary to think
in terms of sport as media (material integration) instead of traditional sport
and media (structural interrelation).The term ‘e-sport’ emphasizes this change
and breaks the stranglehold of modern sport as a sociological unit of
perception. e-Sport acknowledges the continuities of competitive gaming
with sport as an historical form and organizational model.Yet it is also
distinctive, creating the space necessary to explain what is new about this
activity and those who compete in it. In other words, it is a term that allows
continuity in understanding, while helping to conceptualize the
discontinuous features of this competitive activity.
Further confirming the ‘betwixt and between’ nature of the WCG is the
fact that it is both national and global in scope.The relevant section of the
WCG slogan states:
This ‘World Cultural Festival’, which has no language or cultural barriers, longs
to embody respect for universal fundamentals based on ethical principles
without having any national boundaries in play. (World Cyber Games, 2008a).
As discussed previously, the ideal of international fraternity has long been
promoted by the Olympic movement.The WCG utilizes this ideal, but adds
an important technological layer to its expression. Gaming is conducted
through networked computers, which are designed to communicate beyond
national boundaries via the internet.While the WCG takes place in a single
location using a Local Area Network (LAN), the games played such as
Counter-Strike and Warcraft are played competitively and informally by, and
between, tens of thousands of gamers situated around the globe on a daily
basis. For example, a highly conservative estimate is that there are 100,000
people playing first-person shooter games online at any one time (Morris,
New Media & Society 10(6)
862
2004).This level of popularity supplies a ready-made global pool of potential
WCG competitors, as well as an international audience.
The WCG capitalizes on the appeal of an activity that is evolving within
digitally de-bounded space.This is a noteworthy example of ‘internal
globalization’ (Beck, 2002a), whereby local and national experiences are
inflected through globalizing processes.The experience of individuals playing
games in local contexts and within national societies is structurally bound to
the transnational communications networks that support game environments.
Indeed, the enormous popularity of digital interactive gaming makes this
experience banal. Computer gaming and the WCG symbolize the ontological
inseparability of the local and global in second modernity, a point borne out
also by the shared character of environmental risks, terrorist threats, the
activities of global capital and markets, organized criminal activity, patterns of
migration and global chains of food production and consumption (Bauman,
2002; Beck, 1999, 2002b; Beck and Willms, 2004; Castells, 2000a, 2000b,
2004a;Wimmer and Quandt, 2006).
While the WCG may utilize computing networks that can functionally
transcend national borders, the question of whether this translates into
cultural or ‘universal’ understanding between people of different ‘races’ and
ethnicities is an altogether separate issue.The Olympic movement has had
negligible impact in its determination to create ‘a peaceful and better world’
(International Olympic Committee, 2004) over the past century, with the
Games also serving as a forum for the expression of ideological rivalry and
political hostility (Guttmann, 2002).The fact that the WCG persists with the
use of national flags, teams and websites in a competitive format (i.e. there
must be winners and losers) suggests that some enmity between competitors
is inevitable.Additionally, the evenness of results between the national teams
drawn from five continents is fertile ground for cultivation of intense
rivalries.4 As with the Olympics, competition between nations and teams at
the WCG makes for an entertaining spectacle, but it also ensures that cultural
barriers are as likely to be reinforced as dissolved.
CONCLUSION: LOOKING IN THE REAR-VIEW MIRROR
The argument presented here states that e-sport is an emergent technosocial
phenomenon characteristic of a meta-change in social relations globally.
A possible objection to this case is the fact that theWCG, CGS and MLG are
presented in the guise of traditional sports events. Moreover, a diverse range of
activities is already housed under the title of sport: for example, synchronized
swimming, trampolining, dance-sport.The pliability of the term ‘sport’
appears to negate the need for a new term such as e-sport.To think in these
terms misreads the subject matter and ignores the distinctive and defining
feature of the WCG and competitive gaming, which is something no sport
Hutchins: The growth of e-sport and the World Cyber Games
863
shares: the material interpenetration of media content, sport and networked
computing.
Marshall McLuhan (Levinson, 1999; McLuhan and Fiore, 1967) helps to
shed light on why long-established modes and categories of thinking about
the social world are so resilient:
When faced with a totally new situation, we tend to always attach ourselves to the
objects, to the flavour of the most recent past.We look at the present through a rearview
mirror.We march backwards into the future. (McLuhan and Fiore, 1967: n.p.)
It is this powerful perceptual tendency that continues to breathe life into
zombie categories and obscures the significance of novel phenomena such as
the WCG and e-sport.The reflex of looking to the past is difficult to resist in
the cognition of social life, and indeed should not be resisted if we are to
learn from past experience. However, this reflex can trigger faulty sociological
analysis, creating problems in the identification and understanding of
emergent forms and patterns of activity. McLuhan’s observation is especially
useful in second modernity, given the fact that the production, control and
distribution of information and data are a fundamental source of productivity
and power, and that an expanding range of human activities are intersecting
with ICTs. Faced with this situation, the temptation is to conclude that little
has changed, except that modes of government, education, commerce, politics
and leisure are now facilitated by the internet and related technologies.This is
true to a point; nonetheless, such a conclusion denies the possibility of
established social and technological forms and activities combining to create
something genuinely new.Although it does involve a small digression from
the central subject of this article, Beck and Lau (2005) supply a useful
scenario involving professional sport and gene-based doping techniques that
helps to conclude my case.
The use of drugs such as anabolic steroids and amphetamines to improve
sporting performance has existed for almost as long as modern sport. However,
the boundary between human performance and science has been strictly
policed by regulations, testing procedures and punitive measures for drug users.
The stripping of the gold medal from Canadian sprinter, Ben Johnson, for
steroid use following his 100-metre performance at the 1988 Seoul Olympics,
is probably the best-known example of this policing regime put into action.
Beck and Lau (2005; see also van Hilvoorde et al., 2007) suggest that genebased
doping poses a fundamental challenge to this established boundary, as it
blurs the line between ‘natural’ human performance and the illegitimate use of
science to enhance performance. It is simultaneously natural and synthetic. If,
for example, gene-based doping were to become generally accepted in sport, it
would lead to an entirely new understanding of this activity.As geneticallymodified
food and stem-cell research already show, the pluralization of the
New Media & Society 10(6)
864
boundaries between humans and science marks both manifest and potential
transformations in the social order. It is no longer possible to think in terms of
either humans or science or nature, as was the case for much of the 20th
century (Beck and Lau, 2005; see also Latour, 1993, 1999).The contemporary
world demands that social and institutional demarcations be reflexively
negotiated. Citizens, policymakers and scholars must now think in terms of
humans and science and nature if they are to apprehend the reality of
institutional arrangements and social practices.
TheWCG is representative of a corresponding transformation. Cyber-athletic
competition cannot be thought of in terms of media or sport or computer
gaming.The institutional and material boundaries separating them have
imploded, leading to the creation of a new social form, e-sport. Identifying this
fact is not an easy task, particularly when, as discussed earlier, popular media
discourse remains overshadowed by the perceptual dominance of modern sport
and the company that runs theWCG presents their festival like the Olympic
Games.This conclusion also signals a pressing need to develop a sociology of
media that is sharply attuned to computer games and gaming and their intricate
and manifold social, economic and cultural effects.The shape and appearance of
the social world are changing as a result of games and gaming, and just as existing
studies have failed to account for the relationship that has arisen between sport,
media content and ICTs, so much more needs to be said about the impact of
computer games in any number of areas, including education, politics, law,
terrorism and global chains of production and labor.5 Emphasis on the ‘external’
or ‘real’ world effects of games and gaming is required, a strategy that both
complements a burgeoning range of studies concerned with the workings and
logic of in-game worlds and interaction, and acknowledges that the computer
games industry is likely to continue its upward trajectory of global economic
growth and popularity.The question of whether new concepts such as e-sport
are required to reflect this emerging reality accurately is open to debate, but it is
essential that the historically continuous and discontinuous features of social
forms intersecting with games are recognized and systematically analysed, if the
impact and significance of games media and culture is to be properly understood.
Notes
1 Another way of thinking about this process is the term ‘convergence’. However, this
term has lost some of its explanatory utility due to overuse in the popular media and a
related lack of specificity in its application. I have avoided using it here for this reason.
2 The Olympic Partnership Programme involves the sale of exclusive marketing rights
according to product category, while the Olympic Supplier Programme is directed at
athlete support and assisting Olympic activities (see http://www.olympic.org/uk/
organisation/facts/introduction/index_uk.asp).
3 Quotes from the ‘Razor’ blog, Sydney Morning Herald: http://blogs.smh.com.au/razor/
archives/computer_games/003350.html. (The website is now defunct; hardcopies of
the entries are on file with the author.)
Hutchins: The growth of e-sport and the World Cyber Games
865
4 The relative success of competitors from different countries is available at World Cyber
Games (2007).
5 For example, Jennifer Johns (2006) has supplied an instructive example of how a
‘global production network’ approach can generate insight into the historical and
economic development of the computer games industry. Johns’ study breathes
empirical life into the instruction of Toby Miller (2006) to ‘follow the money, follow
the labor’ in the analysis of computer gaming. Miller’s statement appeared in the
opening article of the first issue of Games and Culture in 2006.
References
Albrow, M. (1996) The Global Age. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.
Anderson, B. (1991) Imagined Communities. London:Verso.
Arnseth, H.C. (2006) ‘Learning to Play or Playing to Learn – A Critical Account of the
Models of Communication Informing Educational Research on Computer Gameplay’,
Game Studies 6(1), URL (consulted February 2007): http://www.gamestudies.org/
0601/articles/arnseth
Barnett, S. (1990) Games and Sets:The Changing Face of Sport on Television. London: British
Film Institute.
Battacharya, S. (2005) ‘Born to be Wired’, Sydney Morning Herald, Good Weekend Magazine,
19 November, p. 41.
Bauman, Z. (1998) Globalization:The Human Consequences. Cambridge: Polity Press.
Bauman, Z. (1999) In Search of Politics. Cambridge: Polity Press.
Bauman, Z. (2001) The Individualized Society. Cambridge: Polity Press.
Bauman, Z. (2002) Society Under Siege. Cambridge: Polity Press.
Beck, U. (1992) Risk Society:Towards a New Modernity. London: Sage.
Beck, U. (1999) World Risk Society. Cambridge: Polity Press.
Beck, U. (2000) ‘The Cosmopolitan Perspective: Sociology of the Second Age of
Modernity’, British Journal of Sociology 51(1): 79–105.
Beck, U. (2002a) ‘The Cosmopolitan Society and its Enemies’, Theory, Culture and Society
19(1–2): 17–44.
Beck, U. (2002b) ‘The Terrorist Threat:World Risk Society Revisited’, Theory, Culture and
Society 19(4): 39–55.
Beck, U. (2005) Power in the Global Age. Cambridge: Polity Press.
Beck, U. and E. Beck-Gernsheim (2002) Individualization: Institutionalized Individualism and
its Social and Political Consequences. London: Sage.
Boyle, R. and R. Haynes (2000) Power Play: Sport, Media & Popular Culture. Harlow:
Pearson Education.
Beck, U. and J.Willms (2004) Conversations with Ulrich Beck. Cambridge: Polity Press.
Beck, U. and C. Lau (2005) ‘Second Modernity as a Research Agenda:Theoretical and
Empirical Explorations in the “Meta-change” of Modern Society’, British Journal of
Sociology 56(4): 525–57.
Beck, U.,A. Giddens and S. Lash (1994) Reflexive Modernization: Politics,Tradition and
Aesthetics in the Modern Social Order. Cambridge: Polity Press.
Brady, I. (2005) ‘Poetics for a Planet: Discourse on Some Problems of Being-in-place’, in
N.K. Denzin andY.S. Lincoln (eds) Handbook of Qualitative Research (3rd edn),
pp. 979–1026.Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.
Castells, M. (2000a) The Rise of the Network Society. Oxford: Blackwell.
Castells, M. (2000b) End of Millennium. Oxford: Blackwell.
New Media & Society 10(6)
866
Castells, M. (2002) The Internet Galaxy: Reflections on the Internet, Business and Society.
Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Castells, M. (2004a) The Power of Identity. Oxford: Blackwell.
Castells, M. (ed.) (2004b) The Network Society:A Cross-cultural Perspective. Cheltenham:
Edward Elgar.
Castronova, E. (2003) ‘OnVirtual Economics’, Game Studies 3(2), URL (consulted March
2005): http://www.gamestudies.org/0302/castronova/
Castronova, E. (2005) Synthetic Worlds: the Business and Culture of Online Games. Chicago,
IL: University of Chicago Press.
Castronova, E. (2006) ‘On the ResearchValue of Large Games: Natural Experiments in
Norrath and Camelot’, Games and Culture 1(2): 163–86.
Chaplin, H. and A. Ruby (2005) Smartbomb:The Quest for Art, Entertainment and Big Bucks
in the Videogame Revolution. Chapel Hill, NC:Algonquin Books.
Chernilo, D. (2006) ‘Social Theory’s Methodological Nationalism: Myth and Reality’,
European Journal of Social Theory 9(1): 5–22.
Couldry, N. (2003) Media Rituals:A Critical Approach. London: Routledge.
Couldry, N. (2004) ‘Theorising Media as Practice’, Social Semiotics 14(2): 115–32.
Dayan, D. and E. Katz (1992) Media Events:The Live Broadcasting of History. Cambridge,
MA: Harvard University Press.
de Souza e Silva,A. and G.C. Delacruz (2006) ‘Hybrid Reality Games Reframed:
Potential Uses in Educational Contexts’, Games and Culture 1(3): 231–51.
Dercon, C. (2001) ‘Speed-Space’, in J.Armitage (ed.) Virilio Live: Selected Interviews,
pp. 69–81. London: Sage.
Elias, N. and E. Dunning (1986) Quest for Excitement: Sport and Leisure in the Civilizing
Process. Oxford: Blackwell.
Games Press (2008) ‘World Cyber Games 2008, 3 July, URL (consulted 7 July 2008):
http://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/world-cyber-games-2008-to-be-fought
-out-on-samsung-monitors
Guttmann,A. (1978) From Ritual to Record:The Nature of Modern Sports. NewYork:
Columbia University Press.
Guttmann,A. (2002) The Olympics:A History of the Modern Games. Urbana, IL: University
of Illinois Press.
Habermas, J. (1989) The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere. Cambridge: Polity
Press.
Herz, J. C. (2002) ‘Multi-player Online Worlds’, in L. King (ed.) Game On:The History and
Culture of Videogames, pp. 86–97. London: Lawrence King Publishing.
Hoberman, J. (1995) ‘Toward a Theory of Olympic Internationalism’, Journal of Sport
History 22(1): 1–37.
Holt, R. (1989) Sport and The British:A Modern History. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Innis, H.A. (1950) Empire and Communications. Oxford: Clarendon Press.
Innis, H.A. (1951) The Bias of Communication.Toronto: University of Toronto Press.
International Olympic Committee (2004) Olympic Charter. Lausanne: International
Olympic Committee.
Jenkins, H. (2005) ‘Games, the Lively New Art’, in J. Raessens and J. Goldstein (eds)
Handbook of Computer Game Studies, pp. 175–89. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Johns, J. (2006) ‘Video Games Production Networks:Value Capture, Power Relations and
Embeddedness’, Journal of Economic Geography 6(2): 151–80.
King, B. and J. Borland (2003) Dungeons and Dreamers:The Rise of Computer Game Culture
from Geek to Chic. NewYork: McGraw-Hill/Osborne.
Hutchins: The growth of e-sport and the World Cyber Games
867
Kline, S., N. Dyer-Witheford and G. de Peuter (2003) Digital Play:The Interaction of
Technology, Culture and Marketing. Montreal: McGill/Queen’s University Press.
Kroft, S. (2006) ‘Cyber Athlete ‘Fatal1ty’’, CBS News, 60 Minutes, 22 January, URL
(consulted January 2006): http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2006/01/19/
60minutes/main1220146.shtml
Lash, S. (2002) Critique of Information. London: Sage.
Lastowka, G. (2006) ‘Law and Games Studies’, Games and Culture 1(1): 25–8.
Latour, B. (1993) We Have Never Been Modern. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Latour, B. (1999) Pandora’s Hope: Essays on the Reality of Science Studies. Cambridge,
MA: Harvard University Press.
Levinson, P. (1999) Digital McLuhan:A Guide to the Information Millennium. London:
Routledge.
McLuhan, M. and Q. Fiore (1967) The Medium is the Massage. Ringwood: Penguin Books.
Miller,T. (2006) ‘Gaming for Beginners’, Games and Culture 1(1): 5–12.
Miller,T., G. Lawrence, J. McKay and D. Rowe (2001) Globalization and Sport: Playing the
World. London: Sage.
Mills, C.W. (2000 [1959]) The Sociological Imagination. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Morris, S. (2004) ‘Make New Friends and Kill Them: Online Multiplayer Computer
Game Culture’, in G. Goggin (ed.) Virtual Nation: the Internet in Australia, pp. 133–45.
Sydney: University of New South Wales Press.
Prensky, M. (2005) ‘Computer Games and Learning: Digital Game-based Learning’, in
J. Raessens and J. Goldstein (eds) Handbook of Computer Game Studies, pp. 97–122.
Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Rowe, D. (1996) ‘The Global Love-match: Sport and Television’, Media, Culture and Society
18(4): 565–82.
Rowe, D. (2004) Sport, Culture and the Media:The Unruly Trinity. Milton Keynes: Open
University Press.
Schut, K. (2006) ‘TheVideo Game Theory Reader’, Journal of Communication Inquiry 30(1):
87–9.
Sennett, R. (2006) The Culture of the New Capitalism. New Haven, CT:Yale University
Press.
Sugden, J. (2002) ‘Network Football’, in J. Sugden and A.Tomlinson (eds) Power Play:
A Critical Sociology of Sport, pp. 61–80. London: Routledge.
Thompson, J.B. (1995) The Media and Modernity:A Social Theory of the Media. Cambridge:
Polity Press.
Thompson, J.B. (2005) ‘The NewVisibility’, Theory, Culture and Society 22(6): 31–51.
van de Graaf, S. and D.B. Nieborg (2003) ‘Together We Brand:America’s Army’, in Level
Up Conference Proceedings, Digital Games Research Association, University of Utrecht,
URL (consulted July 2005): http://www.digra.org/dl/display_html?chidϭhttp://
www.digra.org/dl/db/05163.34543
van Hilvoorde, I., R.Vos and G. de Wert (2007) ‘Flopping, Klapping and Gene Doping:
Dichotomies Between “Natural” and “Artificial” in Elite Sport’, Social Studies of Science
37(2): 173–200.
Weber, M. (1970) ‘Bureaucracy’, in H.H. Gerth and C.Wright Mills (eds) From Max
Weber: Essays in Sociology, pp. 196–244. London: Routledge.
Wenner, L.A. (1998) ‘Playing the MediaSport Game’, in L.A.Wenner (ed.) MediaSport,
pp. 3–13. London: Routledge.
Whannel, G. (1992) Fields in Vision:Television Sport and Cultural Transformation. London:
Routledge.
New Media & Society 10(6)
868
Whitson, D. (1998) ‘Circuits of Promotion: Media, Marketing and the Globalization of
Sport’, in L.A.Wenner (ed.) MediaSport, pp. 57–72. London: Routledge.
Willis, K. (2006) ‘Analysing Qualitative Data’, in M.Walter (ed.) Social Research Methods,
pp. 257–79. Melbourne: Oxford University Press.
Wimmer, J. and T. Quandt (2006) ‘Living in the Risk Society: An Interview with Ulrich
Beck’, Journalism Studies 7(2): 336–47.
World Cyber Games PR Committee (2007) ‘WCG 2007 Press Kit’, URL (consulted
December 2007): http://www.wcg.com/6th/fun/presscenter/presscenter_main.asp
World Cyber Games (2007) ‘WCG Ranking’, URL (December 2007): http://www.wcg
.com/6th/history/ranking/ranking_wcgrank.asp
World Cyber Games (2008a) ‘Overview’, URL (August 2008): http://www.wcg.com/6th/
2008/overview/general.asp
World Cyber Games (2008b) ‘Hall of Fame’, URL (August 2008): http://www.wcg.com/
6th/history/halloffame/hall_main.asp
BRETT HUTCHINS is a senior lecturer in communications and media studies at Monash
University. His current research investigates popular sport media content and practices in
digital and online environments. His most recent publications appear in Media, Culture &
Society, Television & New Media, Journalism: Theory, Practice & Criticism and Sociology of
Sport.
Address: School of English, Communications and Performance Studies, Faculty of Arts,
Monash University, Caulfield Campus, PO Box 197, Caulfield East, Victoria 3145, Australia.
[email: Brett.Hutchins@arts.monash.edu.au]
Hutchins: The growth of e-sport and the World Cyber Games
869