Esports is far bigger now than it was 10 years ago. League Of Legends and Dota 2 are far bigger than the audeinces Starcraft or Counterstrike ever generated. Tournaments are now being held on sports stadiums in the US and EU. LoL world championships last year drew 35 million viewers, and filled the Staples Center in LA. The Dota 2 International tournament this year will likely top a $7 million prizepool, and sold out Key Arena in Seattle. Esports is just getting started.
I disagree. Games like Dota 2 and League of Legends are filling sports stadiums and giving out multi-million dollar prize pools these days. If anything, at least in the United States, they are on the rise.
As time goes on the non-gamer generations die off. The gamers grow richer and their willingness to pay increase. The new generations will probably also game.
It's still fun, you just don't have the time anymore (I feel really bad if I take out a 3-hour chunk of time to play a game, or a real-time game which demands 1-hour of continuous focus).
Much as I don't play football anymore but still watch it, I also follow some games :) and so do many friends in their late 30s / 40s with families (mostly the same ones as others in the thread, like Magic: The Gathering, League of Legends, Hearthstone, etc.).
They grow out of playing video games perhaps, but there's a whole world of content for folks who still like video games but don't play them as much anymore.
The question isn't whether people will game - the question is whether eSports will continue to grow as it does now. Being a gamer and being into eSports aren't one and the same. I play a lot of games, I don't watch a lot of eSports (it doesn't interest me).
Not that I'm saying the market won't grow - on the contrary, I think it will continue to do so. It's a very small market compared to sports generally ($1 billion would barely buy you a top class sports team, let alone a network like ESPN).
I don't watch sports and I don't watch gaming streams either. But I think it's an interesting phenomenon so I've asked my friends that do why they do it. It seems to be a mix of excitement about what is going to happen and wanting to learn the tricks of the pros.
People generally seem like watching sports/esports they themself participate in.
I don't see these trends disappearing or diminishing.
Sure, but that may have been just a local peak. "e-sports 2.0" will hit really big, at the scale of social networks. We just need a killer game for the post-pc era.
