ABSTRACT
Competitive gaming was born together with the first generation of video games produced by computer scientists and electronic engineers. When commercial video games began to emerge in the United States and Japan in the early 1970s, game developers and manufacturers started to build up the link between video games, competition, and sport. Coin-operated arcade distributors and operators organized gaming competitions to promote their products and increase sales. Competitive gaming entered its first golden age in the 1980s. Video game companies and the newly emerging video gaming organizations started to organize gaming tournaments. Television became a platform for video game competition. By the 1990s, public contests had become increasingly common and online competition began to rise. Today, competitive gaming is widely regarded as a hobby, a leisure activity, a social media platform, and a new lifestyle choice in the computer age. It is mirroring the achievements of ‘real’ sports and changing the global sports landscape.
