Entry 05

ESports are becoming more and more popular as time goes on. A decade or two ago, only a select few people would have ever thought about League of Legends, Counter Strike, or Call of Duty being as big as they are today in the gaming and ESport industry. I have decided that I want to discuss Counter Strike: Global Offensive, a video game that has grown into one of the largest and most well known esports in the world. Counter Strike: Global Offensive is the latest CS franchise game, and was released in August of 2012. The main point of the game is similar to Call of Duty's search and destroy mode. There are 2 teams, "Terrorist" and "Counter Terrorist", who try to attack and defend the designated bomb sites around each map. Each game goes up to the best of 30 rounds (winning the match on your 16th round win) , and can last up to a total of about an hour and 40 minutes. Nowadays, with overtime instances, these games can carry on for even longer and usually end up being series' of 3 matches.

As Sharp wrote about skateboarding culture and how "a glimpse at its history is necessary" the same can be said for CS:GO. When the game first came out, it wasn't very popular. With only a few thousand monthly players, it was just like every other game on steam and didn't catch too much attention.  It took a few years and a good amount of "Major" tournaments for it to start picking up the pace and arrive at where it is today. One of the first tournaments (and also the first one held in America) , MLG Columbus 2016, had a price pool of $1,000,000, which caught the eye of many ESport fans around the world that had not heard about CSGO until now. A few years later, we would see more and more team franchises enter the CSGO competitive world which kickstarted the large growth that CS had in 2017-2018. 

Also similar to Sharp's writing, CSGO has its own well known players and memorable moments. While Sharp tells us about Tony Hawk and Shaun White, players learning how to play CSGO hear about unforgettable players like Kenny "KennyS" Schrub, and Aleksandr "S1mple" Kostilev. People who want to be the best versions they can be strive to be as good as these professional players.

Finally,  in the beginning of Sharp's writing, we read about how promotional videos and media played a huge role in the spread of sport and culture. This is the exact same way with CS:GO. We would not get to see the amazing displays of skill without the events being broadcasted through twitch.tv, YouTube, or even television. The goosebump moments of CS history would not be as awesome without the casters behind the screen reacting firsthand to the events unfolding. The CS community would not be where it is today without each and every player and fan around the world. This is why I chose to discuss CS:GO as my ESport.