The Divide between E-sport and Playing Games in China

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Chinese DiGRA '16
Taiwan: DiGRA, July, 2016
Number: 4
Volume: 13
ISBN / ISNN: ISSN 2342-9666


The presentation will argue that rise of the E-sport has led to persistent transformations of gaming and media, which is crowding out other legitimate forms of gaming from the public perception and media discourses. First, it will briefly describe the growth of E-sport as media and entertainment phenomenon (Jin 2010; Taylor, TL, Seo, 2013). This spectacle is created through the stylization of e-sport events themselves and equally important through secondary texts (Szablewicz, 2015). Secondly, the talk will argue that media, old and new, become stakeholders in the narrative as they create the stories of unprecedented growth in terms of profit and viewer numbers. E-sport becomes the only acceptable type of gaming. The third section will draw on ethnographic data collected from 2013 to 2015 in China and demonstrate how the discourses on E-sport and their divergence from gaming impact the rhythms of play in the everyday life of the “youxi wanjia 游戏玩家” (video game player) as well as the “dianjin xuanshou 电竞选手” (E-sport Contestant). The vocabulary of E-sport titles has penetrated everyday language and the word ‘gaming’ or ‘playing games’ have been replaced. As videogame culture becomes marginalized, principals of obligation and professionalism devour ‘play’ beyond the point of mere ‘contamination’ (Caillois, 2001). As a result, video game players, who enjoy a variety of different games, are distancing themselves from the proponents of e-sport.