Sports have been a major part of human history since ancient times. From the Greeks to the Mayans, humanity has been playing games competitively for prizes and glory. While most sports are traditionally outdoor activities, there has emerged the beginning of a new style of sport involving one of the fastest growing and most popular forms of entertainment today, video games. Dubbed e-sports, the competitive playing of video games is an industry that is starting to shine in the modern world.
It is debated when e-sports began, but the first gaming tournament took place in 1972. Rolling Stone magazine held “The First Integalactic Spacewar Olympics” at Stanford University. Spacewar is a game similar to Asteroids in which players control space ships and fire missiles at opposing players. While only twenty competitors took part in this event, the competition sparked the emergence of competitive gaming into the public eye.
In 1996, Quake was released, and it change multiplayer gaming forever. Quake is a first-person shooter game where players compete for the highest number of kills. A year later, what many consider the first “real” gaming tournament was held. At the 1997 Electronic Entertainment Expo, Microsoft sponsored the Red Annihilation deathmatch tournament, a competitive Quake tournament with John Carmack, one of the lead designers’, car as the prize.
Over two thousand players participated in the event. After the massive success of that tournament, several new e-sport groups began to form, the most notable of which was the Cyberathlete Professional League who held tournaments with fairly large prize pools ranging into the thousands of dollars. At a time where gaming was seen as something more for children, it was astounding th...
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...ideo gaming will someday reach the point that football or baseball are today.
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Michael Jordan once said “I will not let anything get in the way of me and my competitive enthusiasm to win”. This have help people of all ages get through their burdens and do something they love instead of doing some negative. For many people basketball has become more than a game, it’s the way of life. The American game of basketball has traveled now, it’s played by more than 250 million people worldwide.
One of the very first video games to have been developed was a simple graphical computer application used to resemble virtual Tic-Tac-Toe (Bellis). Although the game was simple in nature and basic in control, it was one of the first few innovative designs that would eventually lead to establishment of other well known video games (Bellis).... ... middle of paper ... ...
Basketball has become an international sport. People all around the world enjoy playing it with friends, or even competing for a championship. But haven’t you always wondered where it all began, who were the first people to play it, and who thought of something as simple as putting a ball through a hoop?
Abstract: Society is affected every day by many different kinds of sports. These sports often govern society's way of life. People all over the nation turn their TVs to sporting events, such as golf, during the weekends. Scott Stossel states that "more than six million Americans enjoy watching golf on the weekends." Parents use sports as a teaching tool for their children. Kids learn teamwork and discipline from team sports programs and sports have also helped many students with their grades. Kids who want to compete in school sports are taught to keep their grades up or they won't be able to play, but the greedy coaches and schools often look around grades to keep their "star athletes" in the games. Adults have been affected by sports in their bank accounts. Tax increases for funding a new stadium, golf course and even school programs have hurt the middle class Americans. Sports have taken control of small communities and soon will take control of society
When discussing why sports matter and the influence it has had over the course of history, many controversial issues have been whether or not sports have taught us to cultivate discipline. Sheed explains that sports can play an important role in the lives of people by helping them discover who they are and where they want to be. The lesson of sports goes deeper than just practicing or playing a game, they help build characteristics that will prepare you for many obstacles in life. Sheed mentions that sports were created and put into schools to teach discipline, patience, and honesty to male students. He continues to point out that sports are very competitive and that sportsmanship and discipline does not matter anymore, but instead the very need to win. In “Why Sports Matter,” Wilfrid Sheed, contends that “sports did not only outlaw cheating but drilled its participants to detect and despise it in each other”. This was a crucial lesson taught to a nation based on transactions.
Runge, Paul. “Video Games Represent the Most Powerful (and Potentially Dangerous) Era in Storytelling”. Huff Post Tech. 10/21/2013 31 January 2014
Many of the games we play today is of ancient origin and even then provided mass entertainment of fans. In the beginning, ancient sports like the Olympic Games started out as rituals to honor gods or a leader and later developed into public events with festivals that surrounded the games (Jewell, Moti, & Coates, 2012). Today festivals are still seen during the Olympics Games, pre-game and post-game activities are held for NFL games, and fan’s host parties on game day surrounding favorite sporting events. Interesting, ancient sporting events began as a way to help individuals prepare for warfare. Individuals in ancient spots competed to help prepare themselves for military fighting, t...
Sports video games, video games that replicate a real life sport, have been around ever since the first video game console was released . Magnovox Odyssey, one of the first video game consoles, consisted of a table tennis game. Atari’s Pong, another sports video game, one of the very first video games was also a replica of table tennis (Suellentrop 7). As the video games have become more realistic and more popular amongst sports fans, they have created a vast impact on the video gaming industry. FIFA, a soccer video game by EA sports, captured 10% of the 351 million video game playing soccer fans around the world (Consalvo vii). Today, sports are a popular hobby for many people, but
Whitford, Steve. "Gaming Is NOT a Sport." Do Gaming. N.p., 11 Jan. 2011. Web. 13 Dec. 2013
The sports of today have changed the way the players play the game. Starting on the professional sports level, bad sportsmanship behaviors, like the use of steroids or "throwing" a game or a match in an effort to please the sports gambler trying to get their big pay-off, has trickled down through the college level and even down to the high school level. One person recalls the days when athletes played their sport for the love of the game, because it is what they lived for. They remember when they were younger, sitting in their grandfather's lap and watching the Atlanta Braves (in the days of Dale Murphy, Bob Horner, Glenn Hubbard and other great names in Braves history) running out on the diamond every game. In fact, they quoted country artist, Collin Raye, saying [I've been] "a Braves fan even through the rotten years". Watching these games, they remember looking up at their grandfather’s face and seeing the look he had in his eyes by watching these guys play their sport from the heart. Now, years later, sports have been threatened by strikes. The athletes playing now aren't playing because they love to, but now it's more about the money and how much they can make. Sports of today are tainted and don't come from the heart. The kids today need to be taught what it was like "in the good ole' days" and how playing sports teaches an individual about how to work with other people and how to pull together as a family.
Videos games are no longer played solely for fun, but also turning into a new way to make money. There is a new, up and coming world that many people are not aware of, and that is the world of competitive gaming.
In the early 1970’s the first games like Pong, Computer Space, and Galaxy Game were released to the public. While these ...
How did sports "both reflect and influence" North Carolinian society from the late nineteenth century to the 1970s? During this era, athletics in college, basketball in particular, proved that many native-born citizens became Americans through participation in sports in which their accomplishments merited praise. Sports effectuated life lessons learned as well as cultural values, including teamwork and sportsmanship. Race and gender played an enormous role in the history of sports.