Australia tentatively enters the eSports era

There’s a new, global sport that’s becoming a pretty big deal. Australia has been a little late to the party, and we’re not particularly good at it.

At least that’s my summation, following a strange discovery over the weekend just past.

Since the AFL ended what feels like four months ago, I’ve been at a bit of a loose end on Saturday afternoons. Wait, it’s only the first footy free weekend since the season finished? Sigh.

Fortunately, there’s plenty of non-footy action floating around at this time of year.

The Matador One Day Cup provides essentially one month of cricket action, with the cancellation of the national side’s tour to Bangladesh lifting the talent level to world-beating levels.

The National Basketball League is back in a big way, with an investment by Fox Sports providing a game in prime time Wednesday through Sunday. There’s the regular rotation of American sports, and the variety of other offerings presented by Fox Sports and ESPN.

I’m not normally a flicker; I like to settle in and really sink my teeth into my chosen match. This weekend was a little bit different – time was split between a replay of Round 14’s Fremantle versus Brisbane AFL game (a curiosity because of Fremantle’s Nat Fyfe and his Brownlow medal victory: he wasn’t expected to poll any votes in this game, but he received three) and an NBL match-up between the Perth Wildcats and Adelaide 36ers.

Then, I happened upon something very peculiar. Foxtel’s on-screen TV guide read “Live: eSports Counter-Strike”.

Wait, what? Counter-Strike on TV? That can’t be right.

The channel hurriedly changes, only for the end of the third round of the Presidents Cup, fading into the Hong Kong sunset, to be staring back at me.

Back to the basketball. But I checked again a little later, and sure enough, I was watching Counter-Strike being played on my television.

What is Counter-Strike? The short answer is it is a video game.

The long answer is it is a video game that pits two teams of five, one designated terrorists and the other counter-terrorists, against each other in a shooting battle of attack and defence. The two sides have conflicting goals that reflect their names, but, really, it comes down to wiping out the other team before your team is wiped out.

That’s right. It was a video game, being played by teams of five real players, in front of a crowd of a few hundred at Crown in Melbourne. It was an Australian-first eSports tournament, sponsored by CrownBet, Fox Sports and a range of computer component manufacturers.

Yes, it was a video game tournament, played in front of a live audience and broadcast on television, with real sponsors and real prize money. $55,000 of prize money, but prize money nonetheless.

I’ve played video games for most of my life, as many of my vintage do. These days, I indulge in a little bit of Nintendo platforming action – single-player games where success means navigating mean looking plants and walking mushrooms and death means falling down a pit. Sports-based video games are an issue de jour in Australia, with most media outlets publishing a piece pondering why there is not a good Australian sports game in the market.

The last time I played an online game that was competitive – playing other human beings from across the world – was almost twelve months ago. The game was called Dota 2 (an acronym for Defence of the Ancients, of the MOBA genre, which… ah forget it), and I singlehandedly cost my team victory. By the end of the game, I was being called all sorts of things by keyboard warriors, and I swore off online games for good.

But in my prime (of sorts…), I loved Counter-Strike, and while I was never the best at it among my group of friends, I was good enough to have a lot of fun. Seeing the game being played on my TV, by what look like teams of professional gamers, really tickled my nostalgic fancy.

ESports seems like a funny term, but around the world it’s becoming a pretty big deal. Computer games have come a hell of a long way since Pong, and for many are a primary hobby. But for those few that are good enough with keyboard and mouse in hand, there are increasingly large sums of money to be made.

This article from The Conversation sums it up pretty well, but here are some of the highlights:

The world’s largest tournament had a total prize pool of US$18 million;
Red Bull sponsors professional teams, that do this for a living, across more than half a dozen games;
A 2014 Championship match up of League of Legends had more eyeballs tune in than Game 7 of the 2014 NBA Finals.

It’s a big deal, and Saturday afternoon marked the first time that an Australian eSports tournament had been broadcast on Australian television.

The atmosphere at the venue was something akin to a stop on the international professional darts circuit: a bunch of Y chromosomes in t-shirts and shorts, yelling and screaming like they were cheering on Usain Bolt in an Olympic Stadium. The combatants are sitting at opposite ends of the stage, facing the crowd in front of their computer screens; everything is still, except for the occasional wrist flick or head twitch.

All of the action is beamed onto a large screen that hovers above the stage. It’s all a little strange, to be frank, but no stranger than a crowd of blokes watching two dart players throw darts at a half-a-metre diameter dart board.

Each headshot – exactly what it sounds like – draws gasps and cheers, and multiple kill ‘spraydowns’ – again, exactly what it sounds like – have the crowd in raptures.

It’s the Australian-based Team Immunity playing the European Virtus.Pro, although the crowd is hardly parochial. Virtus.Pro are at the leading edge of eSports, the fourth best Counter-Strike team in the world and with enough financial backing to be doing this full-time. That’s right: they work, but their work is playing this game.

And it shows at times. The game is played in an iterative round format, with each game taking a maximum of 105 seconds and a ‘wipe’ (killing each member of the other team) earning a round point. It’s the first to 16 over 30 games, and the first to two round wins crowned the winner.

We join the coverage at 14-14 in the first round, informed by a very professional sounding host that our game casters (code for commentators) will be Elfish Guy and MikeStar. Indeed.

There’s a insight into just how passionate the in-house crowd are almost instantly, as Team Immunity’s emagine unleashes an almighty hail of bullets, taking out two opponents only for the screen to rapidly switch to his teammate SNYPER’s view for another two quick fire kills. The punters literally lose their minds yelling and screaming, before an impromptu ‘Aussie, Aussie, Aussie, Oi, Oi, Oi’ chant breaks out.

This is sport. It’s just different.

The learning curve for the unititiated is pretty steep: the casters begin talking spraydowns, the tacting of trading frags (throwing grenades backwards and forwards), one team having a ‘good buy’ (meaning they have been able to start the round with enough money in the bank to purchase good weapons – hey, I said steep learning curve), someone being down to 22HP (that’s health points: you start with 100 health points, lose points when you are shot, and are dead when you have zero). But the action is so fast paced the viewer can just let it roll.

The standard of commentary provided by Elfish Guy and MikeStar is, surprisingly, very good. At no point do they fall behind the action or stumble over their lines, providing note perfect analysis of what’s unfolding on screen and giving viewers some insight into the depth of strategy at play.

Things move very quickly, and before we know it, the first round of the game is pushed into a 15-all overtime, which is the first to four wins.

See, there’s even overtime.

Virtus.Pro win the first game, and Team Immunity roar back to win the second, with another spraydown leading to three kills and turning the tide in the local’s favour. Virtus.Pro win the third, Team Immunity with the fourth, and we end up in a two-from-three scenario. The superior foreign team win the following two games quite easily, and take the round.

After the win, the camera switches to a shot of our hosts. Sadly Elfish Guy, while tall and glistening under the spotlights, is a homo sapiens, as are the rest of the panel that are going by their in-game monikers. In suits and ties, they seamlessly, effortlessly even, unpack the action that’s happened on screen like seasoned ESPN half-time analysts. To their credit, the panel do their best to explain the idiosyncrasies of the game, but it still comes across as another world.

Well, I guess it is another world. That’s sort of the point of video games.

The coverage has a real air of authenticity and professionalism about it, which really took me by surprise. After all, this is television coverage of a video game tournament, and the last experience I had of an online game was whatever the binary opposite of professional is. I mean, it’s not in the same league as Fox Footy, for example, but it doesn’t need to be.

Round 2 begins, and we’re informed by the panel that the game map that is being played on is the favourite map of both teams. We know this because there are reams and reams of match data collected, analysed and spat out by video games. You think the Fox Footy lab is impressive in terms of its use of data for analysis? These sports are played inside of a computer, and every movement and non-movement is captured.

While the first round was competitive and went to overtime, the second is a bloodbath in favour of Virtus.Pro.

The invaders start by winning the knife round (I’m not going to describe what happens in knife round) which is like a more visceral coin flip to decide who starts as the terrorists and counter-terrorists. They’re very quickly out to a 1-0 lead following a ‘four kill’ in the first 20 seconds by byali, and never look back.

Virtus.Pro reel off the next five round victories before Team Immunity get on the board courtesy of a very strong performance by the team’s sniper. We’re told by the colour commentator that the situation Team Immunity found themselves in was not ideal for a sniper, given there were two opponents remaining – a great example of the standard of commentary.

The score gets to 11-1, and the game is effectively over. Another excellent feature of eSports is that a highlight is never too far away. Team Immunity’s Rickeh is the last of his team remaining, and is backed into a corner with five opponents circling. He emerges from the shadow, and fires a single shot seemingly into the abyss, only for it to headshot Virtus.Pro’s byali, to gasps from both the commentators and crowd. The replay is described as disgusting, which plays well with the crowd.

Virtus.Pro are very gracious in victory. Well, as gracious as you get in eSports. Two of their players purchase the most expensive, and strangely ineffective, weapon in the game in a kind of passive aggressive show of disdain for their opponent. This kind of move is often accompanied with a lot of derogatory commentary when games are played online by individuals in the comfort of their homes – we’re left to read between the lines in a televised tournament.

The match ends 16-3, with the players emerging from their racing car chairs (oh yes) to shake hands with each other like a line of Major League baseballers. Novelty cheques are handed to the winners and losers, before some final thoughts from the panel of experts.

All in all, the standard of competition that was seen on TV was a little lopsided, given the vast majority of the overtime first round was missed due to the late finish in the gold. But for a first go, it was a very good effort, particularly by the four panellists describing the action and shepherding the viewers through the event.

It was Australia’s first taste of eSports action. And it won’t be our last. While it’s a form of sport that is never going to appeal to everyone – indeed its appeal is limited to quite a specific demographic – the rise of eSports will mean broadcasts like Saturday’s $55,000 Counter-Strike tournament become far more common in the years ahead.

For a sports fan like me, who has grown up with video games but spends many fewer hours in front of the screen than five years ago, eSports will likely end as not much more than a curiosity to fill in the time between the ball sports that I love.

But for a whole generation of sports fans, eSports might just be their idea of a Saturday afternoon on the couch.