Esports, short for electronic sports, is a form of competition using video games. Esports often takes the form of organized, multiplayer video game competitions, particularly between professional players, individually or as teams. Although organized competitions have long been a part of video game culture, these were largely between amateurs until the late 2000s, when participation by professional gamers and spectatorship in these events through live streaming saw a large surge in popularity. By the 2010s, esports was a significant factor in the video game industry, with many game developers actively designing and providing funding for tournaments and other events.
Activision Blizzard, Inc. is an American video game holding company based in Santa Monica, California. It was founded in July 2008 through the merger of Activision, Inc. and Vivendi Games. It is traded on the Nasdaq stock exchange under the ticker symbol ATVI, and since 2015 has been a member of the S&P 500 Index. Activision Blizzard currently includes five business units: Activision Publishing, Blizzard Entertainment, King, Major League Gaming, and Activision Blizzard Studios.
Livestreaming is streaming media simultaneously recorded and broadcast in real-time over the internet. It is often referred to simply as streaming. Non-live media such as video-on-demand, vlogs, and YouTube videos are technically streamed, but not live-streamed.
Riot Games, Inc. is an American video game developer, publisher and esports tournament organizer based in Los Angeles, California. It was founded in September 2006 by Brandon Beck and Marc Merrill to develop League of Legends and went on to develop several spin-off games and the unrelated first-person shooter game Valorant. In 2011, Riot Games was acquired by Chinese conglomerate Tencent. Riot Games' publishing arm, Riot Forge, oversees the production of League of Legends spin-offs by other developers. The company worked with Fortiche to release Arcane, a television series based on the League of Legends universe.
Julia Hardy is a non-binary British television presenter known for their interests in gaming, music, ESports and new technology. They are the creator and presenter of the online fitness programme Game To Train. In addition to their professional work, they are a Twitch streamer and a YouTuber.
Alodía Almira Arraiza Gosiengfiao-Quimbo is a Filipina cosplayer, model, TV presenter, singer, vlogger, actress and co-founder of Tier One Entertainment. She is also known as Senpai Alodia of the Philippines. As a celebrity endorser, she is one of the ambassadors and VJ for Animax Asia known as the "Ani-mates" and co-host of ABS-CBN's prank show Laugh Out Loud. She has been featured in various magazines, newspapers and TV shows locally and abroad. She appeared on the Filipino FHM 100 Sexiest Women poll, ranking No. 1 in 2009, No. 2 in 2010 and No. 3 in 2012; she posed as the cover girl for that magazine on its July 2013 issue. She was named by DOS Magazine as one of the Most Influential Women in the Philippines.
Anita Sarkeesian is a Canadian-American feminist media critic and public speaker. She is the founder of Feminist Frequency, a website that hosts videos and commentary analyzing portrayals of women in popular culture. She has received particular attention for her video series Tropes vs. Women in Video Games, which examines tropes in the depiction of female video game characters.
Video gaming in India is an emerging market since India is experiencing strong growth in online gaming, making it one of the top gaming markets in the world. Over the past few decades, the Indian gaming industry has gone from close to nonexistent in the 1990s to one of the top markets globally in the late 2010s. In 2019, the online gaming market in India was estimated at ₹6,200 crore (US$780 million) with an estimated 300 million gamers, a 41.6% increase from 2018. As of 2021, it is one of the top five mobile gaming markets in the world. By the third quarter of 2020 there were more than 7.4 billion mobile game downloads. The industry is projected to reach 510 million gamers by 2022.
Rami Ismail is a Dutch independent video game developer and spokesperson within the video game industry on the topics of diversity and reaching out to game developers from developing countries. He co-founded the studio Vlambeer with Jan Willem Nijman in 2010, where they developed games such as Ridiculous Fishing, Luftrausers, and Nuclear Throne.
The Cybersmile Foundation is an international nonprofit organization committed to tackling all forms of cyberbullying and digital abuse. They promote kindness, diversity, and inclusion through professional support services, education programs, awareness campaigns and corporate partnerships.
Sexism in video gaming is prejudiced behavior or discrimination based on sex or gender as experienced by people who play and create video games, primarily women. This may manifest as sexual harassment or in the way genders are represented in games, such as when characters are presented according to gender-related tropes and stereotypes.
The ESL Gaming GmbH, doing business as ESL, is a German esports organizer and production company that produces video game competitions worldwide. ESL was the world's largest esports company in 2015, and the oldest that is still operational. Based in Cologne, Germany, ESL has eleven offices and multiple international TV studios globally. ESL is the largest esports company to broadcast on Twitch.
Video games are a rapidly growing industry in Thailand, with an average growth rate of 15% per year since 2017. In 2021, the Thai games market generated over a billion dollars, making it one of the highest-profile games markets in Southeast Asia. The number of gamers in Thailand has reached 32 million according to a report by Newzoo, an international games and esports analytics and market research group.And in 2022, Thailand was ranked among the top Southeast Asian video-game markets, with a revenue of US$1.24 billion that is forecasted to reach $1.4 billion in the same year.
The British Esports Federation is the national body for esports in the United Kingdom. It was established in March 2016 to help develop the UK's grassroots esports scene and provide an infrastructure to nurture future talent.
Game Workers Unite is a worker-run, labor rights group seeking to organize the video game industry. Founded during events surrounding the March 2018 Game Developers Conference, the flat organization has grown to over a thousand members across more than 20 international chapters. Its goal is a single union for all games workers, including artists, designers, producers, and programmers. Game Workers Unite has supported actions including Riot Games's 2019 walkout over sex discrimination and social media campaigns against CEOs who executed layoffs. The British chapter of Game Workers Unite is legally recognized as a union within the Independent Workers' Union of Great Britain and is working to end crunch overtime practices, improve diversity and inclusion, support targeted workers, and ensure steady and fair wages. Game Workers Unite co-founder Emma Kinema was hired by the Communications Workers of America to organize workers in the high tech and video game industries in early 2020, the first American initiative of its kind in those sectors.
Tanya DePass, also known by her username Cypheroftyr, is an American journalist, activist and streamer. She is the founder of the non-profit organization I Need Diverse Games, which she established in 2016.
Black Girl Gamers is a company and online community founded by Jay-Ann Lopez. It started as a closed Facebook group in 2015 and aims to provide a community for black women gamers. Black Girl Gamers later became a company, run by Lopez, with part-time staff.
Meggan Scavio is an American business executive who is the president and chief executive officer of the Academy of Interactive Arts & Sciences (AIAS). Prior to leading the AIAS, Scavio worked with UBM plc for eighteen years, where she was most recently general manager for the Game Developers Conference events.
Gayming Magazine are a British, UK-based online LGBTQ video gaming magazine. They are the first video gaming website dedicated to the LGBTQ community.The site was launched in June 2019 with the aim of connecting the LGBTQ and video gaming communities, and has launched virtual Pride events. In 2021, the magazine hosted the world's first LGBTQ+ gaming awards ceremony, Gayming Awards, with the most recent event having taken place in 2022.
Afrogameuses is an international community, created in 2020, composed mainly of female gamers and streamers, both amateur and professional. This collective campaigns for a better representation and visibility of minorities in the world of video games and streaming in France, while focusing on Afro-descendant women, in order to promote diversity and inclusiveness in these environments.
