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"We're following White Fox as he makes his way around the corner," comes the play-by-play commentary in the hushed-but-tense voice of sportscaster Tim 'Gunslinger' Lakin. "They really haven't had the need to go into the water-access area yet, the front door entrance is working fine." The play is quick, the players' reflexes even quicker as they adjust strategies in millisecond calculations.

They may not break a sweat, but the competitors here at the Cyberathlete Professional League (CPL) Tournament say they are the athletes of the new millennium.

And like 18-year-old Kyle "Ksharp" Miller, they may not eat anything special for breakfast, but they train all year with the intensity of a Tiger Woods. His is just one of the 100 five- man teams from more than 30 countries who gathered - in person - to play multiplayer online games. An audience of some 3,000 fellow players and fans watched on big screens, as on-air shoutcasts ( radio) provided play-by-play and color commentary. The purse? $200,000 cash (and all the Papa John's pizza you can eat on-site).

Unless you're a member of the joystick generation, you've probably never heard of the CPL games. But event organizers and sponsors are convinced that, like the X-Games before them, these are the games of the new generation. And as this group grows up, the games will grow with them. Next summer's games are already scheduled for a venue twice as large to hold an audience that more than doubles with each event.

"We're riding the crest of our culture," says CPL founder, Angel Munoz. "Right now, we're under most people's radar," says the former investment banker who organized the first games in 1997. But, says the New York transplant, league-style interactive games are like smoke on the horizon, "a sign of a huge change that's already under way."

Online games may not bring smiles to the faces of many American parents, already concerned about overweight kids who consume too much media violence. But Mr. Munoz says the games encourage social interaction with far-flung team members. "Our are in touch with people all over the globe," he says, pointing out that most teams are comprised of individuals from every part of the country.

"The CPL games," he adds, "are not limited by borders." While some may question whether online, global game play makes these competitors athletes, Munoz is unapologetic about the moniker. "Athlete," he says, "is a Greek word for competitor. We're not football players, but we're serious competitors."

CPL commissioner Frank Nuccio says, "This is a viable, play-by-play sport that is in its infancy." Like it or not, he adds, technology is the dominant mode of social interaction for the next generation. The CPL games are part of that leading edge.

Paid to play It turned out mothers everywhere were wrong: You can make a living playing video games. Mr. Miller, a college sophomore from Washington, says he trains online with his team (dubbed 3D for desire, discipline, dedication), going over the maps and strategies used in the game. During the school year, the 3D's compete in two leagues, one amateur, one pro. Thanks to the team's cosponsors, CompUSA and NVIDIA, players receive a regular salary - enough to support an 18- year-old while he's in school studying business (Miller declines to give a figure).

Electronic sports, abbreviated e-sports is used as a general term to describe the play of video games competitively. Other terms include competitive gaming, professional gaming, cybersports and v-sports. One of the founding fathers of electronic sports leagues is Angel Munoz, founder of the Cyberathlete Professional League).[1]

Games that are played as electronic sports normally belong to the real-time strategy (RTS), fighting, first-person shooter (FPS), massively-multiplayer online (MMOG), and racing genres. They are played competitively at amateur, semi-professional and professional levels including in leagues and tournaments.

Contents

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 1 Over the Internet  2 Over a local area network  3 Electronic Sports History o 3.1 Arcade era o 3.2 era . 3.2.1 o 3.3 Early PC Era . 3.3.1 Doom . 3.3.2 Doom II . 3.3.3 o 3.4 Global Tournaments Era . 3.4.1 Cyberathlete Professional League . 3.4.2 . 3.4.3 Electronic Sports World Cup . 3.4.4 . 3.4.5 World Games . 3.4.6 World Series of Video Games  4 Player Contracts & Professional Electronic Sports Titles  5 Major electronic sports games o 5.1 StarCraft o 5.2 Counter-Strike o 5.3 III o 5.4 FIFA o 5.5 o 5.6 o 5.7 Fighting games o 5.8 Starcraft 2 o 5.9 TrackMania Nations o 5.10 Dota games  6 Other competitions  7 Media coverage  8 Professional Leagues  9 See also  10 Associations and Governing Bodies  11 References  12 External links

[edit] Over the Internet

The easiest way to play an electronic sports match is over the Internet. General online play is subject to the lessened ability to detect cheating and the more unpredictable network latency not being the ideal environment for high competition; however, due to its convenience, even players who are used to LAN games use Internet games for fun and exhibition games.

Usually teams (or "clans" as they are sometimes called) contact each other prior to matches. Internet Relay Chat (IRC) is very popular for doing this, due to the ability of each clan, league, or other gaming-related organisation to set up its own chat channel on the network, making them easy to find. (IRC has become so popular among gamers that the largest IRC network is QuakeNet, a network originally created for players of the first-person shooter Quake and now used by players of many different games.) The matches are then carried out on the server according to the rules of the leagues the teams are familiar with.

Popular online leagues include the Canada-based Pro Gaming League, along with Cyberathlete Amateur League, Cyber Evolution (CEVO), FraggedNation, eCompete-Online (ECO), Major League Gaming, ClanBase, and the Electronic Sports League. competitions have referees or officials to monitor for cheating.[clarification needed][2] These video gaming tournaments also bring in fans, that either show up at the tournament or view it online[3] Video gaming has sponsorship; for example, the CPL is sponsored by , Razer, Cyber Shots Energy Drink, and Gamerail,[4] and some teams even have sponsorship from big companies such as Intel, Western Digital or even Steelseries.

The largest online gaming network on the PC is Battle.net, used to play Warcraft, Diablo and StarCraft online. These networks have over 12 million active users with an average of 1,000,000 online at any given moment with peaks up to 1,500,000[citation needed].

This service provided by is especially important for Warcraft III for which it features integrated ladders. The best on the one-one ladders compete in seasons stretching over a period of months, after which the top finishers gather at offline events to compete for a seasonal championship and tens of thousands of dollars in prize money.

Even though the PlayStation Network currently has the most individual profiles(sitting in around 28 million), it's chief competitor Live is currently the most popular and the most subscribed to console online gaming service, with over 17 million subscribers. [edit] Over a local area network Playing over a Local area network (LAN) has a number of advantages: the network has less and higher quality, and the competitors can be directly scrutinized for cheating. At professional events administrators will normally be present to ensure fair play. Because there is still a possibility of gamers using Modding to alter their hardware to unfairly modify certain aspects of the game or controller inputs to their advantage, some competitions prevent this by supplying all competitors with identical hardware for the event. LAN events also create a more social atmosphere as a result of all competitors being physically present. Due to the advantages of LAN many gamers organize LAN parties or visit LAN centres and most major tournaments are conducted over LANs. [edit] Electronic Sports History

[edit] Arcade era

Video games have been played competitively since their inception. is known for keeping track of high scores on many classic arcade games, and they created the U.S. National Video Game Team in 1983. The team ran a number of competitions, including the 1987 Video Game Masters Tournament for Guinness World Records.

Nintendo held their World Championships in 1990, touring across the , with the finals at Universal Studios Hollywood in . There were 90 finalists, and the champions were Jeff Hanson (11 & under), Thor Aackerlund (12–17), and Paul White (18 & over). The Nintendo championships are notable for the gold cartridges distributed to all of the finalists, which now fetch high prices on eBay.[5]

Nintendo held a 2nd World Championships in 1994 for the Super Nintendo Entertainment System (SNES) called the Nintendo PowerFest '94. There were 132 finalists that played in the finals in San Diego, CA. Mike Iarossi took home 1st prize.

Blockbuster Video ran their own World Game Championships in the early 1990s, co-hosted by GamePro magazine. Citizens from the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, , and Chile were eligible to compete. Games from the 1994 championships included NBA Jam and Virtua Racing.[6]

The first ever televised eSports event has been noted as the Australian gameshow A*mazing, which would show two children competing in various Nintendo games in order to win points.

[edit] Unix era

[edit] Netrek

Developed as a successor to 1986's Xtrek, Netrek was first played in 1988. It is an Internet game for up to 16 players, written almost entirely in cross-platform open source software. It combines features of multi-directional shooters and team-based real-time strategy games. Players attempt to disable or destroy their opponents' ships in real-time combat, while taking over planets by bombing them and dropping off armies they pick up on friendly planets. The goal of the game is to capture all the opposing team's planets.

Netrek was the third Internet game, the first Internet team game,[7] the first Internet game to use metaservers to locate open game servers, and the first to have persistent user information. In 1993 it was credited by Wired Magazine as "the first online sports game".[8]

As of 2010 it is the oldest Internet game still actively played.

[edit] Early PC Era

[edit] Doom

The release of Doom on December 10, 1993 introduced multi-player death match games. Doom spawned newsgroups, chat rooms and among the first known users of IRC for gaming. Players connected to each other modem-to-modem and online competitive gaming was born. A handful of Doom fan sites report the favored maps of the time being e1m4 and e1m5.

Doom was swept aside by the release of its successor Doom II on October 10, 1994. Shortly thereafter the DWANGO (Dial up Wide Area Network Gaming Operations) firm launched their services. DWANGO, charged users the cost of a local telephone call to connect to their dial-up bulletin board services. With 20+ servers scattered throughout urban locations in North America DWANGO became the early hub of competitive gaming.

Initially, online gaming was available only to those with superior internet connections. These included ISP employees, university/college students and large businesses. Early side software includes iDoom, Kali and iFrag.

[edit] Doom II

To accompany the launch of Doom II, Microsoft held the first offline tournament for PC players, '95. Deathmatch '95 (aka Judgment Day Deathmatch 95 & Dwango’s Deathmatch 95) was aimed to be a competitive offline gaming tournament featuring the most popular title of the year, Doom II. This format, with gamers attending a single location and using standardized hardware, has defined eSports competitions since.

The tournament took place in Richmond, Virginia in October and a handful of national qualifiers witnessed players from Europe flying to play in the tournament. Prior to these events many players had competed online. Early favorites for the competition included Dennis Fong and Merlin.

Dennis Fong later recalled the tournament as follows:

By virtue of having already played most of the top players around the country and beaten them, I was considered one of the favorites to win the tournament. Another player who went by the handle "Merlock" was considered the other favorite. Due to a random draw, we ended up facing each other in the semi-finals. I ended up beating him something like 10-5. Merlock got so upset he slammed the keyboard and threw his chair off-stage. It was quite the scene, particularly since LAN tournaments weren't all that common back then. Although I didn't practice the game much, it was pretty evident that most players really favored the Cleric class as it was the easiest to learn and had a homing-type weapon that seemed more powerful than anything else in the game. Since everyone expected the finals to be played Cleric vs. Cleric, I decided to go against the grain and learn the Mage class. Anyway, to make a long story short, I found a way to counter the Cleric super-weapon and ended up shutting out my opponent in the finals, beating him 8-0.”[9]

[edit] Quake

Formal events have grown dramatically since the release of Quake in 1996. At the earliest offline Quake tournament, "" in May '97 of that year, Quake co-creator promised his own red Ferrari 328 GTS convertible to the winner, Dennis Fong aka "Thresh".

[edit] Global Tournaments Era

[edit] Cyberathlete Professional League

In June 1997 Angel Munoz launched a league for computer video gamers, known as the Cyberathlete Professional League or CPL. Since then, the attendance and size of the venues for these events has grown and thousands of spectators typically connect over the internet to watch the final matches.[10]

In 2005 the CPL moved to a World Tour format. The 2005 CPL World Tour focused on the one- on-one deathmatch game Painkiller and had a total prize purse of $1,000,000. The winner of the CPL Grand Finals event, Johnathan "Fatal1ty" Wendel, went home with the grand prize of $150,000, while Sander "Vo0" Kaasjager took home the MVP trophy for having the most tournament wins.

The Cyberathlete Amateur League (CAL) is the "minor league" of the CPL. It is based mainly on play. It hosts more than 600,000 online gamers.[11] A 2003 competition hosted by CAL was played in a Hyatt Regency Ballroom. Several tables were placed together where 10 computers were set up for the professional gamers. The game was Half-Life: Counterstrike.[3]

The CPL closed its doors in 2008 and in planning on re-opening May 2010. Controversy currently surrounds the league after a leaked report that the league faked its closing.[citation needed]

[edit] World Cyber Games

In the year 2000, the first World Cyber Games event was held in , Korea. There were competitions for Quake III Arena, StarCraft, FIFA 2000, and Age of Empires II: The Age of Kings. The competition initially had 174 competitors from 17 different countries with a total prize purse of $20,000. In 2006, the prize purse had risen to $462,000, and the event had grown to 9 different competitions and 700 qualified participants from 70 different countries. [edit] Electronic Sports World Cup

Electronic Sports World Cup is an international championship held annually in France. Representatives must win their respective national qualifier to represent their country in the tournament.[12] The first Electronic Sports World Cup event was held in 2000, with a total of 358 participants from 37 countries, and a prize purse of € 150.000. By 2006, the event had grown to 547 qualified participants from 53 countries and a prize purse of $400,000. The event also featured the first competition with a game specifically made for it; TrackMania Nations.

[edit] Major League Gaming

2002 the launch of Major League Gaming, a North American professional videogame league, the largest organized professional gaming league. Competitors from 28 different countries have participated in their tournaments, while over one million participants have competed online.[13] In 2006, Major League Gaming was the first televised console gaming league in the United States, with their Pro Series being broadcast by USA Network.[14] Now Major League Gaming has put , Halo: Reach, 4: Modern Warfare,, Call of Duty: Black Ops, Super Smash Bros. Brawl, Starcraft II, and into their circuit.[15] Events are now broadcast on their homepage.

[edit] World eSports Games

The first time the World e-Sports Games took place, was January 30 through March 20, 2005 and featured Counter-Strike and Warcraft III: Reign of Chaos as main titles. Players resided in Seoul, throughout most of the tournament and matches were broadcast on Korean television. The finals took place in Beijing, . Attendees were all invited based on past performances and included the likes of Jang "Moon" Jae Ho, Team NoA and Li "Sky" Xiaofeng.

[edit] World Series of Video Games

2006 saw the first season of the World Series of Video Games event, a spin off of the CPL World Tour format. The WSVG held world championships for Counter-Strike, Warcraft III: Reign of Chaos, and Quake 4. The WSVG also held American championships for Halo 2, Tom Clancy's Ghost Recon Advanced Warfighter, and 3. [edit] Player Contracts & Professional Electronic Sports Titles

There are a number of titles that have a professional gaming scene. The top players can make a living playing the games on the marketing value they gain as a result. Hundreds, thousands and even millions of dollars in prize money are turned out each year for competitors in these titles.

The most popular tournaments are those run by the World Cyber Games, the World e-Sports Games, and the Electronic Sports World Cup. The prize money for these events is mostly provided by the large technology corporations who sponsor the events; these companies also tend to sponsor eSports teams. A team sponsorship usually includes travel expenses and sometimes free hardware specific to that company.

Although sponsorships have evolved over the years, and oftentimes only sponsoring one at a time—the first all inclusive team sponsorship was given to Team Abuse in June of 2000. Team Abuse was a well-respected Quake II team led by Doug 'Citizen' Suttles and a gamut of talented players [Toxic, Method, Lord Vader]. Upon their hosting of a grass roots event called Lansanity in Portland, OR Team Abuse was offered a complete sponsorship, setting precedence for many gamers to come. The Speakeasy sponsorship included a fully leased gaming studio in Lake Oswego, OR with a Speakeasy.net T1 connection. Additionally Team Abuse was sent to many CPL events, Quake Invitational League events, hosted Lansanity 2, and also found itself sending Marc 'pureluck' Naujock to the XSI Invitational in London as part of the Top 10 USA players vs the Top 10 European players tournament. Speakeasy paved the way for fully immersive corporate marketing sponsorship for professional gaming by applying merchandising, PR, grass root events, and a serious interest in the gaming community. [edit] Major electronic sports games

[edit] StarCraft

Main article: StarCraft professional competition

 StarCraft: Brood War – Real Time Strategy (1vs1, PC)

This game has found a home in South Korea, where many play it professionally or as a spectator sport. It is the most popular professionally played game due to its immense popularity in South Korea, where the best pro-gamers are seen as celebrities.

In Korea, Starcraft has leagues such as Ongamenet Starleague, MBC Starleague, and Proleague. Finals for these league attract tens of thousands of fans and are viewed on cable TV with great popularity.

StarCraft is the very first game to have been accepted into the World Cyber Games tournament and has a tournament at their events since inception. It also enjoys significant competitive popularity in the west as well.

[edit] Counter-Strike

 Counter-Strike – Tactical Team FPS (5vs5, PC)

Played all around the world with hot spots in North America and Europe, there are a few dozen professional teams that gather at just as many tournaments all around the world every year. Without a uniting body in competitive gaming many of these claim to be the game's "World Championship" tournament. While none of them stand out enough to justify this claim, six tournament finals are generally identified as being the "biggest". The six "Major tournaments" are listed below and are led by WCG (World Cyber Games) and the CPL (Cyberathlete Professional League).

Teams can be observed playing professionally in leagues such as, CEVO, ESEA League, ESL, and others.

The defunct league Championship Gaming Series franchised teams with contracted players who played Counter-Strike: Source

[edit] Warcraft III

 Warcraft III: The Frozen Throne – Real Time Strategy (1vs1, PC)

Played professionally all around the world with hot spots in South Korea, China , France and Germany, there are a few dozen "professional" teams. The game lacks a uniting body and has no definable world championship.

Some of the biggest Warcraft III tournaments include the six "Major tournaments" listed below as well as events organised by Blizzard Entertainment, televised Korean leagues and several large tournaments held in China.

Warcraft III is seen as the competitive RTS-game with the second biggest playerbase, with the number players online at Battle.net ranging between 70,000 and 100,000 at any given moment. It must also be noted that the Chinese scene, which has over three million players, uses their own clients for online competition due to a poor connection to the outside world. In Korea, Warcraft III has significantly less popularity than Starcraft, which is the most popular.

Wiki articles about Warcraft III competitions include a historical overview of "world championships" as well as a ranking based on them and a number of player biographies such as: Xiaofeng "Sky" Li, Dae Hui "FoV" Cho, Jang "Moon" Jae Ho, Fredrik "" Johansson and Manuel "" Schenkhuizen.

[edit] FIFA

 FIFA Football – Sports (PC)

FIFA Football is a part of the World Cyber Games since its beginning in 2000 and also at every regional WCG Tourney like the SEC or the Pan-American WCG. In 2003 a FIFA tournament was also held at the CPL Europe and is therefore the only sports game that has ever been part of a Cyberathlete Professional League competition.