Computer gaming, media and e-Sport

This study calls for a change in sociological thinking about computer gaming and its relationship to established broadcast media and social forms. A major international computer gaming competition, the World Cyber Games (WCG), is used as a critical case study to help demonstrate this case. This popular event and the ‘cyber-athletes’ that compete in it cannot be explained by reference to existing studies of computer and video gaming, media and sport, media events, or organised sporting competition. It is not possible to think in terms of sport and the media when considering the WCG and competitive gaming. This is sport as media, or e-sport, a term that signifies the seamless interpenetration of media content, sport, and networked information and communications technologies. The article concludes by calling for the development of a sociology of media that is attuned to the effects of computer games and gaming in the Information Age.