[Commlist] cfp: eSports: playing on and off the screen

Next issue of Eracle Journal will  have the title: eSports: playing on 
and off the screen.
Communication and Media Studies scholars are welcome
*No payment from the authors* will be required.



*eSports: playing on and off the screen*
*
*Electronic sports, or eSports, is the activity of playing videogames 
competitively.
Strategic videogames such as Counter-Strike: Global Offensive, League of 
Legends,
Fortnite, Starcraft, Defence of the Ancients, Arena of Valor, are played 
globally by
millions of players. Even if the sports genre has historically been one 
of the most
present in the world of videogames, since early experiments such as 
"Tennis for two",
most videogames played on eSports tournaments create entirely new 
environments and
set of rules that require prolonged sessions of play to be mastered.
Players who attempt a career in eSports typically gather in teams, 
occasionally supported
by external sponsorship, and engage in intensive and prolonged training 
sessions (Brock
2017; Kari and Karhulahti 2016). Professionally competing in eSports 
should be treated
as a form of precarious labour, and investigated through the social and 
economic
barriers that shape its communities and material conditions of 
possibility (Taylor 2012).
At the same time, eSports generate large investments and new technical 
solutions. For
example, platforms such as Twitch have largely invested in the online 
streaming of
eSports (Taylor 2018; Gandolfi 2016; Woodcock and Johnson 2019). Gambling in
eSports is a rapidly growing business, projected to generate revenues of 
$1.5 billion by
2020, with obvious implications on the professionalisation of play in 
digital
environments (Sweeney, Tuttle and Berg 2019). The League of Legends 
finals in 2019,
had over 300,000 spectators connected live, and generated over $2.2 
million in cash prize
for the winners. eSports finals have been played in live stadia and 
arenas where
traditional sports are usually played, but are also broadcasted on 
streaming platforms,
thus blurring the boundaries between physical and digital environments 
(Miah 2020).
eSports players engage with complex interfaces and in entirely unmapped 
territory of
professionalism while doing real work in virtual environments (Scholz 2020).
The recent pandemic crisis has hampered the organization of live sports 
events.
However, sports-themed broadcasters have used this occasion to offer eSports
performances to their audiences. For example, football tournaments have been
co-organised by FIFA and Electronic Arts during the lockdown (Electronic 
Arts 2020),
and the Indycar tournament season has been concluded migrating the 
competition to the
online videogame iRacing (Zacny 2020). The positive audience response 
was partly
helped by the participation of "real" sports stars taking part in the 
video game
simulations of their sports discipline. With this issue we want to 
investigate the potential
impact of eSports for traditional broadcasting economies.
eSports are a complex and multi-faceted phenomenon, involving global 
audiences, digital
platforms, transmedia broadcasting, new forms of labour, virtual 
economic transactions,
and forms of (self-)exploitation that often involve young people. For 
these reasons, it
requires a critical investigation from the fields of the social sciences.

We invite proposals that critically investigate eSports from a variety 
of perspectives,
including:
● Integration of eSports and traditional sports;
● Audience development, television and eSports;
● Training: Train eSports and eSports as training;
● eSports and sports simulation;
● eSports as a job and professional models;
● Economics and labor protection in the eSports horizon;
● eSports as forms of entertainment;
● eSports and new cheering models;
● eSports and the universe of betting: betting on eSports and betting on
simulations.

*Closing date for abstracts submission: 15 th December 2020
Notification to the authors: 30 th December 2020
Articles delivery deadline: 31 th March 2021
Articles assessment: 30 th April 2021
Final review: 30 th June 2021
Publication: September 2021*
*
*Articles can be written in Italian, English, Spanish or French and must 
be sent to the
editors and to the journal using the following email addresses:
(eraclejournal /at/ gmail.com) <mailto:(eraclejournal /at/ gmail.com)>
(emiliano.chirchiano /at/ unina.it) <mailto:(emiliano.chirchiano /at/ unina.it)>
(vdelgaudio /at/ unisa.it) <mailto:(vdelgaudio /at/ unisa.it)>
(p.ruffino /at/ liverpool.ac.uk) <mailto:(p.ruffino /at/ liverpool.ac.uk)>

References

Bittanti, M., & Gandolfi, E. (Eds.). (2018). Giochi video: performance, 
spettacolo, streaming .
Mimesis.
Brock, T. 2017. Roger Caillois and E-Sports: On the Problems of Treating 
Play as Work. Games
and Culture 12(4): 321-339.
Electronic Arts. 2020. EA Sports FIFA20 Global Series.
https://www.ea.com/en-gb/games/fifa/fifa-20/compete/overview/event-types 
<https://www.ea.com/en-gb/games/fifa/fifa-20/compete/overview/event-types>
Gandolfi, E. 2016. To watch or to play, it is in the game: The game 
culture on Twitch.tv among
performers , plays and audiences. Journal of Gaming & Virtual Worlds, 
8(1), 63–82.
https://doi.org/https://doi.org/10.1386/jgvw.8.1.63_1 
<https://doi.org/https://doi.org/10.1386/jgvw.8.1.63_1>
Hallman, K. 2018. eSports – Competitive sports or recreational activity? 
, Sport Management
Review
Volume 21, Issue 1, February 2018, Pages 14-20
Kari, T., & Karhulahti, V.-M. 2016. Do E-Athletes Move? A Study on 
Training and Physical
Exercise in Elite Esports. International Journal of Gaming and 
Computer-Mediated Simulations ,
8(4), 53–66. https://doi.org/10.4018/IJGCMS.2016100104 
<https://doi.org/10.4018/IJGCMS.2016100104>
Miah, A. 2020. Esports and the Beginning of Transmedia Architecture. 
Design Exchange , April
7th.
https://www.demagazine.co.uk/2020/04/07/esports-and-beginnings-of-transmedia-arc 
<https://www.demagazine.co.uk/2020/04/07/esports-and-beginnings-of-transmedia-arc>
hitecture/
Taylor, T. 2012. Raising the Stakes: E-Sports and the 
Professionalization of Computer Gaming .
Cambridge (MA): MIT Press.
Taylor, T. 2018. Watch Me Play: Twitch and the Rise of Game Live 
Streaming . Princeton
University Press.
Steinkuehler, C. 2019. Esports Research: Critical, Empirical, and 
Historical Studies of Competitive
Videogame Play. Games and Culture . Online first:
https://doi.org/10.1177%2F1555412019836855 
<https://doi.org/10.1177%2F1555412019836855>.
Sweeney, K. Tuttle, M.H., Berg, D. 2019. Esports Gambling: Market 
Structure and Biases.
Games and Culture . Online first: 
https://doi.org/10.1177%2F1555412019872389 
<https://doi.org/10.1177%2F1555412019872389>.
Scholz, T. 2020. Deciphering the World of eSports . International 
Journal on Media
Management 22(1).
Woodcock, J., & Johnson, M. R. 2019. The Affective Labor and Performance 
of Live Streaming
on Twitch.tv. Television and New Media . 
https://doi.org/10.1177/1527476419851077 
<https://doi.org/10.1177/1527476419851077>
Zacny, R. 2020. Indycar's Virtual Race Crashes Sparked Real-World 
Controversy Among Drivers .
Vice, May 20th.
https://www.vice.com/en/article/5dzmgn/indycar-iracing-controversy-pagenaud-norris 
<https://www.vice.com/en/article/5dzmgn/indycar-iracing-controversy-pagenaud-norris>
-incident
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