eSports Killed Fun

If you were a PC gamer in the ‘90s chances are you played a tonne of real-time strategy games with titles like Warcraft, Age of Empires and Command & Conquer. Along with a host more, these games were designed to tell a story and be satisfying to play. Then in 1998 StarCraft was released to critical acclaim. Described by many as the quintessential strategy game of the time, it sold 1.5 million copies making it the best selling PC game that year.

StarCraft became immensely popular in South Korea, generating a pro-gaming scene around it. When something is successful, what happens? People try to replicate that success. Into the early 2000’s people tried to recreate this: I remember Relic trying to create a pro scene for their Dawn of War series which ultimately failed despite them being great games.

Then we have Starcraft II: Wings of Liberty which was designed to be an e-sport and this is the problem I have with it. It was no longer an RTS that happened to have a competitive scene it was a competitive game that happened to be an RTS. The game became all about the satisfaction achieved from winning not the satisfaction gained from playing. The feeling of winning isn’t anything special, I could get that feeling from running a 100m in 20 seconds and get the pride of winning because i’ve beaten my personal best (by leaving the house). But in order to be competitive you have to learn build orders and how to identify builds and how to counter - my hobby shouldn’t involve homework. It left me feeling like I had played Monopoly; there’s winners and people who just wasted their time.

This isn’t just limited to RTS titles, FPS have seen this happen as well. Call of Duty, a series well known for it’s depressingly repetitive multiplayer I find this sad because the series is home to some amazing single player campaigns, Call of Duty 2 and Call of Duty 4, but this was when the single player experience was the focus. Now e-sports and competitive play has become a business model in companies eyes and for some it’s working very well but in order to be an e-sport both sides require equal opportunity and so much balance that the damn thing feels so clean and sanitary - it would make a doctor’s office in Germany look filthy. I’m fine with MOBA games though, they’ve never been anything but a competition and they’re usually mods or free which means you’re not paying the price of a game just to receive the framework for fun.

The whole thing just feels lazy to me. It reminds me of my friends tricking their children into doing things like cleaning under the guise of it being a competition or a race. I’m not against games being competitive at all, I just think the main source of enjoyment should be the game. I haven’t got the time to get a masters degree in zergonomics or learn the perfect loadouts just to become an average player. I don’t want the only time I feel enjoyment to be when the match is over and the victory screen pops up.

So that’s how e-sports killed fun for me at least. I think competitive games have a place, I just wish they wouldn’t take over genres like they do. It shouldn’t be hard to find a game in the genre you like that isn’t competitive multiplayer focused.