Esports Research: A Literature Review

Abstract

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.

Demographics and Health Behavior of Video Game and eSports Players in Germany: The eSports Study 2019

“…While the social interest in gaming and eSports is steadily rising, academic research on those involved in the phenomenon is relatively new [5]. To date, most research pertains to the fields of informatics, media, business, and sociology [5].…”

“…While the social interest in gaming and eSports is steadily rising, academic research on those involved in the phenomenon is relatively new [5]. To date, most research pertains to the fields of informatics, media, business, and sociology [5]. Many studies focus, among other things, on whether eSports can be considered a sport [6][7][8], on the economic scope of gaming and eSports [9,10] as well as on the psychological effects of gaming on brain function [11][12][13] and character traits [14][15][16].…”

Shaping a Regional Offline eSports Market: Understanding How Jönköping, the ‘City of DreamHack’, Takes URL to IRL

“…Wulf, Schneider, & Beckert, 2018), finance (e.g., Parshakov & Zavertiaeva, 2018), and sport (e.g., Hallmann & Giel, 2018). Yet to date research within the business context has focused on players and consumers while media research has tended toward questions of the relationships between eSports, sports, and media; definitions and delimitation of the context; the methodologies for study; and the practice of live streaming gameplay (Reitman et al, 2019). While the literature has contributed valuable insights to various aspects of the context it has been difficult to identify previous academic work empirically investigating the agency of a network of actors at a grassroots level in shaping regional eSports markets.…”

“…The complexity of the media consumption experience extends to the industry itself as eSports continues to struggle with a lack of structures, regulation and governance that leads to issues with legitimacy (Koot, 2019). Currently eSports as a market is evolving and developing rapidly, the nascency of which means for researchers, there are still fundamental questions about how the field is developing (Reitman et al, 2019). The value in studying eSports at a local or regional level can be seen in that we need to understand how networks of multiple social and economic actors increasingly innovate and shape this emerging context (Seo, 2013) while there remain issues that are unique to the grassroots levels with eSports that do not occur on the professional level (Koot, 2019).…”

“…As eSports expands globally, it allows for the local grassroots level to develop and flourish concurrently, representing an important opportunity to expand our understanding in terms of both local markets and emergent innovation in media management (Cunningham, 2012). Given that eSports research is still in its nascency with fundamental questions about how the field is unfolding (Reitman, Anderson-Coto, Wu, Lee, & Steinkuehler, 2019) there are opportunities to enhance our understanding regarding regional eSport markets.…”