Gaming is huge, and it’s boosting tech skills

The year 1958 marked the debut of the world’s first video game, Tennis for Two — a precursor to Pong. Developed by physicist William Higinbotham for a US government exhibition at Brookhaven National Laboratory in New York, it was one of the first computer games to use a graphical display and one of the first designed for pure entertainment instead of academic research. A lot has changed, with both technology and an entirely new gaming industry arising in the decades since.

Today, competitiveness and drive are the ethos of gaming. The industry is shedding its reputation as a solitary and unproductive activity for a new image — one centred on community, high-stakes competition, camaraderie and, of course, leveraging technology. It’s become a bona fide industry with complementary opportunities in everything from video-game designing to professional commentating on gaming.

E-sports is a combination of sport and entertainment, attracting massive and highly engaged audiences. One only has to look at the success of the annual Gamescom trade fair in Cologne, Germany, to see how large and influential the gaming industry is. Gamescom is the world’s largest gaming event, attracting more than 370,000 visitors and exhibitors from 56 countries.

In 2018, the gaming industry generated revenue of $138bn (about R2-trillion), expected to rise to $152bn in 2019. This is more than television ($105bn); for a comparison with conventional sport, last year the top 220 football clubs in Europe generated $9.4bn of combined revenue. E-sports has now become a lucrative $1.48m market in SA alone. By 2021, PwC’s “Global Entertainment and Media Outlook 20172021” reports it will be worth $4.15m.

As e-sports becomes its own economic powerhouse, it is transforming the way players train, the way fans engage and how brands approach it. This is a market in which key business drivers — from consumer engagement to technology trends and education — are converging in transformative ways. Fans, franchises and marketing do not adhere to the same models as traditional sport.

E-sports has the power to reach and engage a larger and more diverse group than traditional sports. Today, about 50% of global gamers are women, and they make up nearly onethird of the audience.

Pippa Tshabalala is one of the most recognised faces on the South African gaming scene. From high school to varsity, she chose her courses with a view to making video games.

Since her interning days at I-Imagine, a local company that made video games, she has written for the gadget news and reviews site Gearburn and for MWeb’s GameZone. She started her own pop culture magazine, Spliced, which ran for about 18 months. She gave a TEDx Soweto talk on how video games can bring about social change.

Universities are getting in on the action. More than 30 US colleges and universities now offer scholarships for gamers and are investing in e-sports arenas fitted with highend gaming technology. Gaming is bridging the skills gap in science, technology, engineering and maths (Stem) by attracting students with the appeal of learning more about cutting-edge technology. In the US, 60% of “League of Legends” gamers graduate with degrees in Stem subjects, 24 points higher than the national average.

E-sports has now become a $1.48m market in SA alone