These players, fans put the ‘e’ in ‘sports’
For many Twitch watchers, ‘Fortnite’ is the name of the game
Video games are beginning their takeover of the real world.
Across North America this year, companies are turning malls, movie theaters, storefronts and parking garages into neighborhood e-sports arenas.
At the same time, content farms are spinning up in Los Angeles, where managers now see gamers as some peculiar new form of famous person to cultivate — half athlete, half influencer.
And much of it is powered by the obsession with one game: “Fortnite.” During the past month, people have spent more than 128 million hours on Twitch just watching other people play “Fortnite,” the game that took all the best elements of building, shooting and survival games and merged them into one.
How obsessed are people? After each of their wins this season, the Houston Astros — among many other sports teams — are doing a very specific dance, their arms in the air, fingers spread, legs bent, toes tapping rapidly. It’s a “Fortnite” dance.
“Fortnite” content received 2.4 billion views on YouTube in February alone, according to Tubular Insights. So yes, people love playing video games — but people also love to watch others compete at them.
E-sports are, finally, just like any other sport.
For gaming, this is a moment of convergence of trends. Professional leagues around games like “League of Legends” are growing more popular and more serious; huge numbers of people are tuning in to livestreams to watch gamers play (“Fortnite” broke the record), and going to YouTube to get game centric content from game celebrities.
At the same time? Physical spaces around the country are being renovated into gamer bars.
Those 150 million gamers in America want to gather. They want to sit next to one another, elbow to elbow, controller to controller. They want the lighting to be cool, the snacks to be Hot Pockets, and they want a full bar because they are not teenagers anymore.
It was inevitable. Movie theater attendance hit a 25-year low in 2017, while 638,000 tuned in to watch Drake play “Fortnite” recently. The Paris Olympics in 2024 are now in talks to include gaming as a demonstration sport.
Besides, gamers already have been playing together, chatting live on headsets and messaging apps as they march through their increasingly beautiful digital worlds.
Oakland’s new Esports Arena gave a pre-opening party recently. A line stretched down the block. Nearly 4,000 people jammed into the former parking structure and onto the street around it, right in the heart of Jack London Square. The sponsor was Cup of Noodles. Inside it was cacophony.
There were game sound effects, hundreds of hands clicking on controllers, bags of chips opening and the periodic shrieks of “shoutcasters,” who comment on game play for live streams that tens of thousands watch.
Tyler Endres, the cofounder of Esports Arena, said that he had to speak at four community meetings to convince the community that it would, in fact, like an e-sports arena.
“They wanted a grocery store,” Endres said, grimacing.
And yes, the arena had trouble getting a liquor license.
“The thought was, ‘They’re 13-year-olds, they’re not drinking,’” said Jud Hannigan, 36, the chief executive of Allied Esports, an investor in Esports Arena. “But the average age is 25.”
It was a big industriallooking space with a raised floor to hide the warren of cables, designed flexibly for big stage games or for nights when more people would play. This night was a bit of both, with more than a hundred TVs and computers set up with different games.
On the glowing stage, two of the best from the scrum went head-tohead, as the audience cheered and shoutcasters on high presenter chairs narrated the play-by-play. A smoke machine blew over the whole scene.
One recent afternoon in the Hollywood Hills, the guys were tired, but the creative director needed more “Fortnite” content, and so the break-dancers kept going.
The guys were FaZe Clan, an e-sports organization. Their job is to be cool gamers. They stream game play, and they make highly shareable videos about video games. This workday goal is to leave with three to four pieces of viralready content. So they would keep filming “guess this dance move” videos.
FaZe is one of several growing e-sports teams and content mills. The FaZe Clan, probably the largest pop gaming brand, has houses in California (Calabasas and Hollywood) and Texas (Austin). Fans often show up outside and try to come in, and Vera Salamone, the director of talent, is most alarmed by the fact that their parents are driving them there.
“The Make-A-Wish kids came over a couple weeks ago, and all they wanted to do was play ‘Fortnite,’ ” said Salamone, who used to be on Kid Rock’s management team and wears a diamond on one of her teeth. She worries about what happens to the boys — the talent in the clan are all boys — as they grow up.
“They all have distinct personalities,” Salamone said of the FaZe gamers. “Jev screams all the time.”
At the corporate office, a WeWork at Hollywood and Vine, that new gamer management company is taking shape.
Lee Trink, 50, an owner of FaZe Clan, has a desk that is almost empty except for a crossbow. His last gig was president of Capitol Records. Now, he says, e-sports and gaming are the future and will eclipse movies.
“The industry is asleep at the switch,” he said. “For people my age and older who control a lot of the zeitgeist, the vibe is still ‘gamers must be nerds in their parents’ basement.’ ”
He is not alone in his thinking about the industry. Warriors’ coowner Peter Guber and Ted Leonsis, the majority owner of Monumental Sports & Entertainment, bought a clan called Team Liquid recently. (“We’ve won $19 million in prize money so far,” said Mike Milanov, the chief operating officer of Team Liquid, which recently opened an 8,000-square-foot team training facility in Santa Monica.)
Gamers are coming together for practical reasons as well as social ones. Games are so sophisticated that they can overload home connections. And cryptocurrency miners have driven the price of crucial gear — like the graphics card gamers use to amp up their computers’ processing speeds.
“We’re seeing the rebirth of social gaming,” Luigino Gigante, 27, who opened a gaming center called Waypoint Cafe on the Lower East Side of New York late last year. “It’s bringing back the community aspect of gaming again. It’s like, ‘OK, we’re still playing separately, but we’re together.’ ”
And there is an underused asset already at hand.
“The movie theater!” said Ann Hand, the chief executive of Super League Gaming, which converts movie theaters into esports arenas, and has raised $34 million from investors. “It has that thunderous sound, and it’s empty a lot of the time.”