These definitions are not mutually exclusive but stem from different frameworks for understanding esports. They have not, however, been analyzed for patterns of behavior associated with the social pressures of the virtual or social world from which they were collected. For instance, professional teams can play differently depending on whether they are participating in an official streamed match or a friendly scrimmage. While not all researchers in disparate fields will agree epistemologically, they can agree that understanding of context and discussion with converging work are vital to furthering our knowledge. These definitions are not mutually exclusive but stem from different frameworks for understanding esports. Surveys are common, but for many, the representativeness of their samples is difficult to assess. Many APIs offer massive amounts of game data but do not supply a few key statistics, like player position. Despite the fact that our corpus ends before spring 2018, this year is set to publish the most academic work around esports in history. This product could help youThe amount of work using API data also continues to grow. We review work in business, sports science, cognitive science, informatics, law, media studies, and sociology to understand the current state of academic research of esports and to identify convergent research questions, findings, and trends across fields.In short, esports are often defined as games, as sports, or as mass entertainment. Esports is groundbreaking in its use of networked technology to bring people around the world together through organized, competitive games. From 2002 through March 2018, esports research has developed from nonexistent into a field of study spread across seven academic disciplines.
The wealth of data we can capture without intervention allows for naturalistic data collection on a scale that would not otherwise be possible. Instead, current lines of inquiry in data analytics consider wide swaths of player data to be unaffected by contextual differences, and sociology relies on inherently unreproducible research. Esports is groundbreaking in its use of networked technology to bring people around the world together through organized, competitive games. Many APIs offer massive amounts of game data but do not supply a few key statistics, like player position. It means researchers involved in the early work—and those introducing the space to unfamiliar fields—have an opportunity to shape its growth. Surveys are common, but for many, the representativeness of their samples is difficult to assess. Finding solutions for industry to enable researchers to access richer data sets, though, would permit much less restricted models of player and team performance.With institutional access I can:We also note that esports research is a rapidly growing body of work.
Esports is groundbreaking in its use of networked technology to bring people around the world together through organized, competitive games. From 2002 through March 2018, esports research has developed from nonexistent into a field of study spread across seven academic disciplines.