A Brief History of eSports

Recently e-sports (better known as eSports) has acquired the status of a mass sport all over the world. However, his path to world popularity began much earlier than many people think. What was eSports at the dawn of its development? What is the future preparing for eSports? Read the article and find out the answers to these questions.
1980-1990: the emergence of eSports
Cybersport goes back to the very first computer games. Indeed, even in the period of formation, competition among arcade games was fierce. The competition was high even though the number of players was small, and the victory in such games brought only moral, but not material satisfaction. Some time passed and tournaments began to be organized.

In 1981, Twin Galaxies was founded, the purpose of which was to register and record the best results of players in games such as Donkey Kong and Space Invaders. However, the active development of e-sports, accompanied by the holding of tournaments for arcade and console games, began only in the 1990's.

The rapid growth in the popularity of eSports for a short period of time was marked by a number of world championships sponsored by companies such as Blockbuster and Nintendo. Then, when eSports only appeared, separate tournaments were held for children and teenagers, whose goal was to provide equal conditions for all participants. Today there is no such obvious division.

1990-2000: development of the game
In the 1990s. cybersport develops in a geometric progression: it was then that the foundations of the most popular modern games were laid. A huge number of console games was released: to this day Street Fighter 2 is very popular, and the game Doom has become a real phenomenon. First-person shooters were the first eSports games that were conducted over local area networks (LAN) to support multi-user mode.

Since the 2000's. and to this day: the beginning of the mass distribution of eSports
With the advent of the new century, the eSports industry entered a period of active development. The emergence of a number of cult games, as well as the improvement of Internet communication, contributed to the fact that people around the world can now compete with each other without leaving home.

In 2000, for the first time, the annual World Cyber ​​Games and Electronic Sports World Cup were held. These two events, whose legacy lives to this day, helped to determine the direction of the further development of events of this kind.

In 2002, Sundance Di Giovanni and Mike Sepso created the Major League Gaming. In the future it became the biggest and most successful league in the history of eSports. The League was known for including many gaming disciplines and offering large prize wins.
What is the future prepared for?
Today, eSports has reached unprecedented heights, while the number of active players is constantly growing. The number of annual events and the size of investments in eSports as a whole are increasing at an incredible rate. More and more leading companies realize their potential. In addition, last year the gaming industry has brought more money than the film industry, and this is quite a difficult task.

The audience and prize pools of tournaments are constantly increasing. The eSports industry is rapidly gaining a position of the most exciting entertainment, as evidenced by the fact that there are bars and shops of uniforms aimed at e-sports fans all over the world, and the finals of the tournaments are shown in cinemas along with the films.