eSports Continue To Think They're Hot Shit After More Than A Million People Tuned Into A Live Stream Of The ELeague Final
Over a million people on Twitch. Pretty sure it was broadcasted on TBS so who knows what those numbers are like. It’s all pretty impressive, yes. Have Barstool Sports [dot] com Facebook Live streams brought in at least quadruple those numbers before? Absolutely. Pretty sure at least 6 kabillion people tuned in to watch a greased up Glenny Balls get groped by potential colleagues. But a million on Twitch and however many people watched on TBS is pretty good, too. Not quite Smitty Mario Kart Challenge numbers, but decent nonetheless.
Now here’s the thing. As much as I wish I could, I can’t just get up here and start shitting on eSports left and right. Because they have the numbers to prove it’s not just a bunch of dweebs sitting in their buddy’s basement watching this shit because they didn’t get invited to Jessica’s party and have nothing better to do. It’s millions of people watching and clearly eSports is growing at an insane rate. So since it’s evident that we can’t change the fact that eSports is a real movement, we can at least try to change eSports themselves. For starters, I don’t necessarily have a problem with this particular game from yesterday.
1st person shooter games are pretty tight. It’s games like World Of Warcraft and League Of Legends that we have to put an end to. Because that shit is for the birds. Those type of games just scream “I have terrible acne and butt chug a 2 liter of Mountain Dew every night while dominating 2 full orders of Chinese food as an appetizer”. If I were to draw up a Venn Diagram of the people who play World Of Warcraft and League Of Legends on one circle, and then people who leave comments on Pornhub in the other circle… well I’m pretty sure we would essentially have one giant circle. I’m sorry but you just can’t have that demographic of people being the leading charge of your movement. 1st person shooter games? Okay. The other stuff? It’s gotta go.
Also–if you’re going to call them eSports then can we at least get some sports games going here? 1 million people tuned into watch a live broadcast of a game that I’ve never heard of before. Just imagine how many people would tune into a championship for Madden in the summer when everybody is starved for football season to start. Imagine how many people would tune into a live broadcast of FIFA on a Friday night while you’re pre-gaming. And it doesn’t even have to just be your standard major sports. Give me a Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater league and I’ll buy whatever cable package provides those broadcasts and I’ll watch that shit every single night until my eyes fall out of my head. But until there’s an EA Sports (it’s in the game) League, don’t call yourself eSports because that’s a slap in the dick to real sports fans everywhere.
Lastly–I just want to make sure that none of these nerds are getting ahead of themselves. Like I said, over a million people on the Twitch stream is impressive. I’ll give them that. But just because a million people were watching you on their phone while they were taking a shit, that doesn’t mean you get to walk around calling yourself professional athletes now. You can be professional gamers. No problem with that. It’s 2017. But you’re not athletes. Just gotta make sure we make that distinction abundantly clear. I’m not sure if they call themselves athletes or not but it’s best to nip that in the bud now before it comes an issue later.
Sidenote: Gotta love self-aware nerds.