Every traditional sport has a huge cultural aspect conotated to it. Mostly it revolves around a fanbase of a sport, its teams as well as exclusively every sportsman.
The passion of fans is the biggest drive for them to get involved in organizing meetings (be it even watching a game at home), making of certain gadgets like flags, customized T-shirts, mugs, writing fan songs ... and the list goes on and on.
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| Chelsea fans |
Involvement of fans is no different when it comes to so-called eSports (video games played professionaly). They get involved on the internet by writing blogs, recording video analysis of games and posting threads. However, these people cheer for their favourite players not just in front of their computer screens using streaming platforms such as Twitch.tv but also gathering in huge venues like stadiums.
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| Intel Extreme Masters, Katowice 2015 |
They prepare their own cheerfuls, posters and flags or even dress themselves up like their favourite players, as well as organize fan meetings. There are some differences however, when we compare the fan culture of traditional sports to eSports.
The latter is way more tolerant and appreciative for teams and players which aren't the ones who you cheer for. Imagine a situation where the fans of defeated football team would cheer for the other at the end of a game. It N-E-V-E-R happens, the reaction you're most likely to get from these people is booing. Whereas in eSports, even though fans' favourite team would lose, the winners would still get a round of applause or at worst silence.
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| A poster cheering for Cho "Maru" Seong Ju |
Even though eSports is a relatively new phenomenon, its fan culture seems to be developing extremely fast and most importantly in a
very classy way. At the end of the video below Polish crowd gives it up for German player Dario "
TLO" Wünsch after he's just defeated the hometown hero Grzegorz "
Mana" Komincz
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