E-Sports in Society

Anyone who stays at home and plays video games for fourteen hours a day, is heckled for it in the U.S.A. I, personally have been heckled and jeered at for playing video games. I still remember quite vividly in middle school being called a "video-game nerd" for "excessively" playing games that weren't popular with my peers. For example, I would love to play "Starcraft", a product of Blizzard and a real time strategy game. Nothing could sound more nerdy, and in general society looks down on a kid who sits at home and plays these games. Yet, little did I know, down in South Korea, nothing was more accepted. "Starcraft" was to South Korea as football is to the United States. As I stumbled across the internet and became friends with more people online, I realized there were millions of gamers similar to me. All these gamers, and of them I was probably the least skilled. Eventually, I found my brother's friends would be the ones to enlighten me as to the true scale of video games in society. I soon came to watch videos of professionals playing "Starcraft" in jam-packed stadiums, with screaming fans, and very excited commentators. It wouldn't take me long to learn that "Starcraft" was indeed the national sport of South Korea. At this very moment, a flood of ideas and possibilities broke like a flood into my mind. The best players in South Korea would be getting paid much more than the average worker there, and soon I came across other games as big as "Starcraft" in the world. I had found a group of people who believed these games to be sports, called e-sports. At first, the idea was ridiculous to me. As much as I loved these games, it wasn't a sport. Then, I learned why these "games" are indeed sports. The best player in Korea, put in fourteen hours of practice each day. He worked out, and stayed in the best of shape both mentally and physically. This player's name is Lee Jae Dong, and he was more fit than most athletes in any professional sport. I still could not comprehend how difficult the game was. Any athlete could be as fit as these men were, yet their mental abilities far surpassed anyone. These children, (commonly in their teens and twenties) were supporting their families. Their money depended on their tournament wins, so winning and losing meant everything to these kids. They would feel fatigue during every game and sensational pressure to do well, playing on a level that was insane. It became a fact that a foreigner could  not beat a Korean. Which held up approximately 99% of the time. Some of these players would top out their apm( actions per minute) at near six hundred or seven hundred. An action can be a click of the mouse or a click of the key, and every single click or key hit had a meaning. It performed another action in the giant army these players controlled.  Today e-sports are spreading everywhere. Yet, people still try to invalidate it and insist it is not a sport. Even though, these athletes put in more practice than most players of other sports. These players lose feeling in their hands, their eyes strain from staring into a bright light, and different strategies are constantly racing through their head, even when not near a game. Always anticipating the next trend, or how they're going to respond. E-sports are indeed sports, they require the practice any other sport does. The game is as much physical as any other sport, and it requires more mental prowess than any other sport. Still, the competition to be a professional is as fierce as it is in any other sport world-wide, maybe even harder. As e-sports becomes bigger and bigger in society, it is time people being to accept it and see the leagues for what they are: a true sports league.