The Asian Games is a hugely important event that features dozens of famous sports and has a history of more than 70 years. By contrast, electronic sports have only been around for 20 and their rise actually happened in the last 10. For a tournament of this caliber to include them and actually give medals to the players in front of the whole world is a big step forward for the entire industry.
The Similarity Between Esports and Traditional Sports
Just like traditional sports, esports are competitive games played in a 1v1 or a team versus team format. And hundreds of millions of people love them. Of course, this number is still only a fraction of the player base of a sport like football or basketball.
If you watch the UEFA Champions League, you probably know that in 2021, more than half a billion people watched the Final between Chelsea and Manchester City, which offered a very beautiful spectacle. The match also offered plenty of football betting opportunities. But esports, at least at this point, is nowhere near that level. The biggest matches are watched by 2 – 5 million people. However, the number is rapidly growing, thanks in part to the fact that esports usually have huge player bases, ranging from 5 to 100+ million.
The big difference between esports and traditional sports is that esports doesn’t involve a significant physical or athletic component. In that sense, they’re more like chess and Go and constitute purely intellectual battles. Although, to be fair, some esports, such as StarCraft 2, do require a lot of dexterity to play at the highest level. SC2 Grand Masters are like professional pianists. These players need to be able to pay attention to multiple things at once and have around 300 actions per minute to be effective.
Esports to Be Featured at the Asian Games in 2022
Out of more than a dozen different titles that are loved by esports fans around the globe, 8 of them got selected by the Asian Games’ Committee. These 8 titles are the following:
- PUBG Mobile (Asian Games version)
- Dota 2
- League of Legends
- Hearthstone
- FIFA
- Street Fighter V
- Arena of Valor (Asian Games version)
- Dream of the Three Kingdoms 2
Of these 8 teams, all of which are very popular, Dota 2, League of Legends, Arena of Valor, and Dream of the Three Kingdoms 2 will most likely offer the greatest spectacle. All of them are MOBA games (Multiplayer Online Battle Arenas) played in a team versus team format and their complexity makes them ideal for professional tournaments that are watched by millions.
The only problem is that these types of games are extremely hard to understand. Without excellent knowledge of RTS and RPG games, plus hundreds of hours of experience with each individual title, you will be looking at the action and not discern anything. Therefore, it’s quite likely that competitions involving these titles at the Asian Games 2022 will be watched mostly by their fan bases.
Viewer-Friendly Games
The easiest to understand games on the list are PUBG Mobile, FIFA, Hearthstone, and Street Fighter V. That’s because all of them are inspired from real life to some degree. This makes it easy to recognize their mechanisms even if you’ve never played them before.
PUBG is a first-person shooter game that uses the Battle Royale mode. FIFA is just digital football, so it’s enough to know the basics of real football (soccer) to get the idea. Hearthstone is a 2-player card game and despite its sophistication, can quickly be deciphered by anyone with a background in poker or any other card game.
Last but not least, Street Fighter is a fighting game. Every match looks the same and you can grasp the underlying goals and mechanisms simply by watching the action.
Unlike the 4 esports mentioned above, MOBA games cannot be learned that easily. There’s simply too much going on and without actually reading about each character, item, and ability, your mind gets confused really fast.
Worries
When it comes to team-based esports, the only way to have a great event is to invite the best teams in the world. If your tournament is incompatible with that way of doing things, it’s very easy for it to fall into irrelevancy without the organizers realizing what they’ve done. That aside, the Asian Games 2022 should be a great sporting event and an excellent chance for esports to become even better known around the globe. They already are hugely popular but there’s still a long way to go until they reach the level of the biggest traditional sports.
