Today’s millionaire digital athletes and Twitch streamers owe a debt of gratitude to the corner arcade sharks and console kings of yesteryear.
No one needs to tell gamers just how huge eSports are around the world. Competitive video gaming attracts an audience approaching 500 million people, and it is predicted to produce $1.8 billion in revenue by 2022. Today’s ecosystem of arena-size competitions and big endorsement deals, and Twitch streamers didn’t happen overnight.
But what many gamers don’t know is that eSports has undergone a slow evolution that dates back six decades.
eSports is Born
If eSports has an official birthday. It’s October 19, 1972, the date of the first recorded video game at California’s Stanford University. A pioneering collective of student gamers gathered to battle in Spacewar, a futuristic space combat game that was first developed in 1962. Bruce Baumgart, the event’s winner, was awarded a year’s subscription to Rolling Stone magazine. How about that!
The High Score Standard
Courtesy Upsplash
Competitive video gaming reached new heights by 1980 when the Space Invaders Championship tournament hosted by Atari drew 10,000 competitors. The year also marked the formation of Twin Galaxies. Founded by Walter Day, Twin Galaxies became the first organization dedicated to documenting video game world records. Day even sourced Guinness World Records to authenticate the records collected by Twin Galaxies.
Before long, gamers were racing to rack up high scores on their favorite cabinet arcade games, and Billy Mitchell emerged as the era’s arcade superstar. The fast-handed Massachusetts native scored world records in Pac-Man and Donkey Kong among other games. Early 1980s TV programs, such as Starcade in the US and First Class in the UK, brought competitive video gaming to large audiences.
The Console Revolution
The arrival of the Nintendo Entertainment System (NES) in the mid-80s ushered in an explosive age of home console gaming. While Atari put game consoles on the map with its introduction in 1977, the NES made consoles ubiquitous. Nintendo sold nearly 30 million units in the US between 1985 and 1991.
A console arms race was soon underway as manufacturers competed for space in North American living rooms. The Sega Genesis, released in 1989, brought 16-bit graphics to the masses, and Nintendo followed suit in 1991 with the Super NES console.
The number of gaming tournaments in the early-90s also soared with the rise of console and PC gaming. Notable events from the era include the Nintendo World Championships tours in 1990 and 1994, and Blockbuster Video’s World Game Championships.
Poker as an eSports Mainstay
Courtesy: Online Casinos
If one game can be considered a constant throughout the transition from the earliest video games to the modern eSports, it’s poker. Poker has a fascinating history as one of the first competitive computer programs developed by academics in the 1960s and 1970s.
The Atari console allowed gamers to play video poker from the comfort of home with games like Casino and Poker Plus. By 1994, gamers were playing online poker via Internet Relay Chat (IRC). The first competitive poker website launched in 1997, paving the way for the online poker industry to become mainstream in the 2000s.
Leagues of their Own
As the 1990s wore on, nascent eSports leagues started to form. Among the most popular were the Cyberathlete Professional League, Quakecon, and the Professional Gamers League. These early leagues showcased competitors going head-to-head in games such as Counter-Strike, Warcraft, and Quake.
Many gaming historians peg the Red Annihilation in May 1997 as the first eSports event resembling the tournament landscape of today. Over 2,000 competitors connected online to play Quake one-on-one. The top 16 players were flown to Atlanta, Georgia for the live-streamed finals at the year’s Electronic Entertainment Expo. Dennis Fong, known to gamers as “Thresh,” emerged as the Red Annihilation’s winner and took home a Ferrari 328 GTS as the top prize. That’s much better than a magazine subscription, isn’t it?
A Nod to the Past
As eSports enter the metaverse and a future marked by more VR, AR, and mobile, it’s easy to overlook the humble beginnings of competitive video gaming. Today’s millionaire digital athletes and Twitch streamers owe a debt of gratitude to the corner arcade sharks and console kings of yesteryear.
