Raising the Stakes: E-Sports and the Professionalization of Computer GamingT. L. TaylorCambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2012. Appendix, notes, bibliography, index. 304 pp. $29.95 cloth. ISBN: 9780262017374In Raising the Stakes: E-Sports and the Professionalization of Computer Gaming, author T. L. Taylor examines the ups and downs of a slowly emerging industry, e-sports (electronic sports). The e-sports industry aims to turn real-time video game competition into the next major professional sport-complete with franchises, broadcast tournaments, superstar players, and mogul team and league managers. Those who would make e-sports a success point to South Korea, the only country so far in which the industry has taken hold. Taylor tells us that tournaments like the World Cyber Games draw sponsors like Coca-Cola, Microsoft, and Samsung and that Korean Telecom companies, and even the Korean Navy have-or sponsor-teams. Outside of the promised land of South Korea, however, e-sports have struggled and exist as a generally small, niche industry.Taylor's book does an excellent job of examining e-sports through numerous lenses. Providing historical context, she takes us back to the roots of e-sports, delving into the early days of informal, head-to-head video game competitions around the first computer game, Space War! (1962) and the inclusion of highscore record keeping on arcade machines to arcade-based tournaments (still happening today on the old machines like Pac Man and Donkey Kong and chronicled in the 2007 documentary King of Kong) and the video game-themed Starcade (1982- 1984) television show. She then moves to the emergence of the on-line networked play of Id Software's Doom (1993) and Quake (1996) through today's current live and networked tournaments of firstperson shooters and other video game competitions. Yet Raising the Stakes is not just a historical effort. With her first book, Play between Worlds: Exploring On-Line Game Culture, Taylor established herself as a solid analyst of games as media and community.And Taylor brings those skills to bare on gaming as a sport. For example, in her second chapter, titled "Computer Games a Professional Sport," Taylor guides us through an in-depth, well-reasoned, and documented analysis. She cites the literature on the debates around computer games as play. She examines the modification of rules, and occasionally of systems, of the games themselves for tournament play, judging, and broadcast. She compares the requirements and practices of professional sports and professional athletes (mental and physical training, hours and routines of practice, preferences for specific brands and makes of equipment or insistence on the use of personal equipment) in other sports to those of professional gamers. …

Raising the Stakes: E-Sports and the Professionalization of Computer Gaming

운동발달의 이해 = Understanding motor development

eSport management: Embracing eSport education and research opportunities

Recently, the skill involved in playing and mastering video games has led to the professionalization of the activity in the form of 'esports' (electronic sports). The aim of the present paper was to review the main topics of psychological interest about esports and then to examine the similarities of esports to professional and problem gambling. As a result of a systematic literature search, eight studies were identified that had investigated three topics: (1) the process of becoming an esport player, (2) the characteristics of esport players such as mental skills and motivations, and (3) the motivations of esport spectators. These findings draw attention to the new research field of professional video game playing and provides some preliminary insight into the psychology of esports players. The paper also examines the similarities between esport players and professional gamblers (and more specifically poker players). It is suggested that future research should focus on esport players' psychological vulnerability because some studies have begun to investigate the difference between problematic and professional gambling and this might provide insights into whether the playing of esports could also be potentially problematic for some players.

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The Psychology of Esports: A Systematic Literature Review

eSport: Construct specifications and implications for sport management

Electronic sports, cybersports, gaming, competitive computer gaming, and virtual sports are all synonyms for the term eSports. Regardless of the term used, eSports is now becoming more accepted as a sport and gamers are being identified as athletes within society today. eSports has even infiltrated higher education in the form of an intercollegiate athletic sport, as two university athletic departments have made eSports an official varsity sport where scholarships are provided to collegiate eSports athletes. Thus, the intertwining of eSports and university athletics brings into question whether eSports should be considered sport by broader society. This article provides a brief history of eSports, a further developed definition of eSports, and a comparison of eSports to traditional philosophical and sociological definitions of sport. The purpose of this article is to provoke thought on the academically accepted definitions of sport and debate whether eSports should be considered a sport. Attention...

Virtual(ly) Athletes: Where eSports Fit Within the Definition of “Sport”

The electronic sports, or eSports, industry has grown into a multi-million dollar industry. The significant growth of eSports can be seen far beyond the participation numbers and spans from eSports’ events being hosted in major arenas and televised on ESPN. Most recently eSports were added to intercollegiate athletic departments. Though eSports has gained a lot of momentum economically and in popularity, academic research and study in the area of eSports is still in its infancy. This paper presents: (1) a brief history of eSports, (2) a further developed definition of eSports, (3) eSports size and market scope, (4) and provides an overview of eSports in intercollegiate athletics to date. The main goals of this paper are to create awareness around the economic growth of eSports and shed light on the potential positive implications of adding eSports to intercollegiate athletic departments. Boosting participation numbers, revenue generation, and creating diversity within an athletic department are al...

No reason to LoL at LoL: the addition of esports to intercollegiate athletic departments

Assessment. We all know the word. We understand the need for it. But we also know the difficulty in conducting quality assessment in the physical education setting, particularly at the elementary school level. The focus of this article will be threefold. First, it will address the importance of fundamental motor skills within the K-12 physical education program. Second, it will discuss the issues and difficulties that confront elementary school physical educators as they perform assessment. And third, the article will provide workable solutions-that physical educators can use to conduct quality assessment. Generally, the term \"fundamental motor skills\" refers to the following set of physical skills: the locomotor skills of walking, running, hopping, vertical jumping, horizontal jumping, galloping, sliding, skipping, and leaping, and the manipulative skills of throwing (underhand or overhand), catching, dribbling, striking, kicking, and punting. One needs only to review Moving into the Future: National Standards [or Physical Education (National Association for Sport and Physical Education [NASPEj, 1995) to realize how important it is for children to master the fundamental motor skills. The first two of the seven standards that define a physically educated per-

Assessing Fundamental Motor Skills in the Elementary School Setting: Issues and Solutions.

Substance use is much more common in individuals with body dysmorphic disorder (BDD) than in the general population (Grant et al., Journal of Clinical Psychiatry 66(3):309–405, 2005). In individuals with muscle dysmorphia (MD), a type of BDD that manifests as a pathological preoccupation with muscularity, the use of various substances that are associated with muscle building, such as anabolic steroids is much more prevalent than in the general population (Pope et al., Body Image 2:395–400, 2005). This chapter will examine the links between MD and such drug use, exploring the literature that has examined this issue, discussing treatment issues, and suggesting future research directions.

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Tracy W. Olrich

Papers

Virtual(ly) Athletes: Where eSports Fit Within the Definition of “Sport”

No reason to LoL at LoL: the addition of esports to intercollegiate athletic departments

Assessing Fundamental Motor Skills in the Elementary School Setting: Issues and Solutions.

Muscle Dysmorphia and Anabolic-Androgenic Steroid Use