Accompanying esports’ explosion in popularity, the amount of academic research focused on organized, competitive gaming has grown rapidly. From 2002 through March 2018, esports research has developed from nonexistent into a field of study spread across seven academic disciplines. 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.
Through our work studying team communication and awarenes sunder stress in elite and developing esports teams, we are building a foundation for testing the generalizability of findings between similar teams in disparate domains. Team taxonomy literature implies that findings from one domain might have implications for a team with similar characteristics in another domain. Researchers have even demonstrated that communication strategies and leadership structures can successfully transfer across fields, yet it is rare for studies that attempt to apply findings across seemingly disparate teams to discuss their results in terms of existing taxonomies.That disconnect between theoretical taxonomies and practical interventions means that even studies that successfully transfer team practices across domains are framed as case studies without generalizable implications. Here we argue for the study of esports teams to work toward generalizability with high performance teams more broadly, and we describe current work with that goal.
Hate speech, harassment, and an increasing prevalence of right-wing extremism in online game spaces are of growing concern in the United States. Understanding trends in how and to what extent extremist groups utilize online gaming spaces is vital in taking action to protect players. To synthesize the current state of extant research and suggest future directions, we conduct a systematic review of the literature on right-wing extremism in videogames. We detail our search protocol, selection criteria, and analysis of the collected work, and then summarize the findings. Important themes include how and why extremists’ targeting of online game communities began, the role of Gamergate in this process, and the industry and market context in which such activities emerged. We describe the current nature of the problem, with extremist language and ideology providing a kind of on-ramp for radicalizing disenfranchised gamers. We conclude with a summary of responses from industry and legislators.
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