Det er Dansk Spilråd en stor ære at kunne invitere til medlemsforedrag om nyeste forskning inden for eSport med docent og underviser TL Taylor fra IT-Universitetet i København. 

Taylor har forsket i alt fra spil og køn til etnologi i online-universer, og hun er nu i gang med en bog om eSport og opblomstringen af professionelle computerspillere. I foredraget sætter hun eSport i et større kulturelt perspektiv, og debatterer hvordan grænserne mellem sport, arbejde og leg bliver udfordret.

Hendes oplæg til foredraget lyder:

In this talk I will explore the emerging pro e-sports scene. Professional computer game play goes back as far as the early 1980's with early competitions at arcades, exhibition matches, and eventually LANs. But the current state of pro-gaming, while still having a foot in this grassroots scene, has grown.

Broadcasted matches (complete with professional commentators), contracts and managers, cross-title teams, fans, corporate sponsors, and a global competition circuit all make up a part of the current e-sports landscape. Though the last several years have witnessed a some dramatic contractions with the loss of prominent leagues and tournaments, professional gaming still remains.

Drawing on fieldwork I've been conducting in this area since 2003 I will present an overview of e-sports, tracing a bit of its history and discussing the ways participants have been actively working to professionalize computer game play. This involves not only the transformation in the ways elite players think about their gaming and practices, but the emergence of managers/team owners, commentators/broadcasters, and other assorted actors in the scene. Pro-gaming is not just a story about pro-players, but about a broad reconfiguration of leisure by many stakeholders.

While e-sports and pro-gaming may often initially strike some as a niche spectacle, I will argue its emergence also allows us a prime opportunity to explore some larger cultural themes.

At a very basic level we can witness the growing pains as a new sector seeks to professionalize itself and move beyond amateur or hobbyist models. The very notion of  computer gaming being a sport additionally goes to the heart of how we conceptualize digital play, as well as our understanding of athleticism, technology, and human action.

Pro-gaming also offers us a prime opportunity to think about spectatorship and understanding the kinds of engagement that can be found through watching others play. And ultimately the rise of pro-gaming also contributes to our ongoing cultural conversation about the relationship between work and play.

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