The History of Video Games

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Esports

Esports can be traced back to 1972, when 10,000 people competed in a Space Invaders tournament. In 1998, the iconic Starcraft 2 tournament on PC drew over 50 million online viewers, with 17 million of them coming from Twitch, the streaming platform. Esports grew in popularity as the decade of the 2000s progressed. The World Cyber Games and the Electronic Sports World Cup were the first tournament hosts, followed by the introduction of Major League Gaming in 2002. MLG is one of the most well-known Esports hosts in the world today. Finding success as a professional gamer, like finding success as a professional athlete in soccer, football, basketball, and other major sports, is extremely difficult. One of the main reasons it's so difficult is that most gamers have a very small window of opportunity. Guillaume Patry, a former Starcraft professional, claims that because his age, he would have no chance of competing on the professional stage. "The best players are always the young players," he says. "It's extremely competitive, and simply being a few years older slows you down." The majority of aspiring professionals start their careers in their mid-teenage years and peak in their early to mid-twenties. According to Statista, the average age of North American Esports players is between 24 and 27 years old. Now, games like Valorant, League of Legends, and Overwatch are watched all over the world. In League of Legends, the largest tournament, Worlds, had seen a 60% increase in viewership in 2021 Worlds. The 2021 Worlds had 73 million people watching which had broken the previous record of 43 million viewers. As the years go on, the esports scene will only grow in size and popularity.