Global esports: Transformation of Cultural Perceptions of Competitive Gaming

Description

Global esports explores the recent surge of esports in the global scene and comprehensively discusses people's understanding of this spectacle. By historicizing and institutionalizing esports, the contributors analyze the rapid growth of esports and its implications in culture and digital economy. Dal Yong Jin curates a discussion as to why esports has become a global phenomenon. From games such as Spacewar to Starcraft to Overwatch, a key theme, distinguishing this collection from others, is a potential shift of esports from online to mobile gaming. The book addresses why many global game players and fans play and enjoy online and mobile games in professional game competitions, and therefore, they investigate the manner in which the transfer to, from and between online and mobile gaming culture is occurring in a specific subset of global youth. The remaining focus identifies the major platforms used to enjoy esports, including broadcasting and smartphones. By analyzing these unexamined or less-discussed agendas, this book sheds light on the current debates on the growth of global esports culture.

Dal Yong Jin is a Distinguished SFU Professor and a Global Professor in the School of Media & Communication at Korea University. Jin's major research and teaching interests are on digital platforms and digital games, globalization and media, transnational cultural studies, and the political economy of media and culture. He is the author of many books, including Korea's Online Gaming Empire (2010), Digital Platforms, Imperialism and Political Culture (2015), New Korean Wave: transnational cultural power in the age of social media (2016), and Artificial Intelligence in Cultural Production: Critical Perspectives on Digital Platforms (2021). He has been directing The Transnational Culture and Digital Technology Lab since the summer of 2021.

This is a fantastic, much needed collection exploring the world of esports. Its focus on everything from economics and infrastructures to global cultures of competition and spectatorship make it an incredibly valuable addition for anyone wanting to better understand the complexities of competitive gaming and this emerging domain. * T.L. Taylor, Professor of Comparative Media Studies, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, USA *