In the spring of 1998, during peak puberty, I won an all-expenses paid trip to the Electronic Entertainment Expo (E3) in Atlanta, GA. I was so excited that it made Charlee Buckett’s “golden ticket” moment in Willy Wonka seem as basic as winning a small fry on the McDonald’s peel-off Monopoly game. After my parents’ very predictable knee jerk reaction of saying “no”, they were quick to realize that denying me the ability to attend E3 would result in my immediate emancipation from them. Looking back on it, letting me go (on my own) was perhaps one of the coolest (and insane) things my parents ever did for me as a kid.
I had won the trip from the now defunct online video game hub called HEAT.NET, which was created by SegaSoft. I logged countless hours playing my favorite gaming titles while also working a side hustle by recruiting fellow HEAT users into their “Foot Soldier” loyalty/pyramid program. In doing so, I acquired free HEAT.NET gear, elite chatroom marketing skills and a trip to video game paradise.
While at the Expo, I immersed my mind, body and spirit into late-nineties video game utopia. Debuting that year was SEGA’s Dreamcast, The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time and Half-Life, just to name a few. Each booth was more magnificent than the next. The big players like Nintendo spared no expense. I was too young to see the Foo Fighters perform at the big closing party, but I didn’t care (or know who they were) because for me, it was all about the games and the free goodies being given away at every stop along the floor of the Atlanta Convention Center.
There were also celebrities. At the EA Sports booth, I saw Oscar De La Hoya and Sugar Ray Leonard spar a few rounds as their video game selves to promote Knockout Kings. I also met Gillian Anderson from “The X-Files” at an autograph signing. To the Gen-X male dominated crowd, she might as well have been Pam Anderson. The whole trip was truly a magical experience and, outside of meeting my wife and having our daughter, I don’t know if I have ever been as happy as I was then. Is that sad? Because after reading that back, it sounds a little sad.
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Whatever. Back then, I was straight up living my best nerd life but my parents, much like any parents of a video game addicted child, wished I spent more time outside than glued to a screen. Yet, more than two decades later, in an ironic twist of fate, the opposite appears to be true. It seems that parents today are not just encouraging their kids to play video games but, according to The Wall Street Journal, they are now hiring their kids tutors to improve their gaming skills! For real? Yes, for real, and it’s all because they are hoping that their little darlings’ talents with the “controller” might nab them a piece of the now almost $1B eSports market.
First off, where the hell was eSports when I was a kid? I mean seriously. If you added up all the amount of time I spent playing video games at a young teenager, I would at the least have made an average professional player but, at the most, a very entertaining personality on Twitch, a live streaming platform service where you can literally watch other people play video games. *Sigh*
Secondly, I guess I was just ahead of my time but, as I think about it, haven’t nerds generally been ahead of their time? Sure, it’s easy to reference Bill Gates, Steve Jobs and John Carmark here, but what about the O.G.s like Charles Babbage and Alan Turing? These dorks were super next level and had pioneered the computer world as we know it today. Without them, there would be no E3, no Fortnight or whatever hotness the kids will take up next.
But right now, it’s eSports. Its recent explosion makes sense in that it’s smack dab in the middle of impressive computing power, sick graphics, brilliant software engineering, high speed networking and man’s dream of becoming a champion. Plus, baseball is boring af and kids these days are more entertained streaming content on YouTube than most cartoons on a Saturday morning.
Look, I’m not ignoring the fact that it took decades upon decades of technological evolution for eSports to become a thing, but let’s not also forget about all the opportunities that arose along the way. Of course, it’s too late to make your fortune on the likes of IBM, Microsoft, Apple and Intel, but what about the next big thing? Will Gen Z take eSports to the next level or will they pivot to something entirely different? I hope it’s a virtual reality/eSports hybrid but, I can tell you that whatever it is, a bunch of nerdy middle schoolers are already doing it.