Throwback CSGO: ESL One New York 2017 - "They still don't understand"

[mOB]

So today I logged in into my Facebook, and I found some funny memories back on 12th December 2016, which is the date when Counter-Strike: ESL One New York 2017 was announced. They did a short trailer which lasts just 43 seconds, which made me think a bit.

I'll put the reference, and this also appears in the video I'll just post in a minute, 5 years ago people worldwide didn't consider Esports (let's plainly say videogames) as a sport itself. Their thinking was: how can we really compare playing videogames to watch a football match? or a Tenis match? That's crazy! The sentence: "I don't understand people watching somebody playing a computer videogame" was PRETTY common 5 years back, I promise!

Here's the video I'm talking about. Really, watch it, it's worth it:

 

For those of you who watch or even play computer videogames, you'll feel this video a lot. The first thing I did when I watched this video (back in 2016), was share it on Facebook and on other social media. Back then, when you were talking with your friends, parents, etc about videogames, you may feel like it was a weird conversation. Overall, people didn't really understand that we could treat this as a sport.

Now, we're in late 2021. Do you think this has changed? Do you think we did evolve and that now Esports are considered a sport? Do you still think that people don't accept others watching live tournaments of this? If you ask me, I think this has changed a lot. Probably the COVID-19 pandemic did a "positive" effect into The Internet world. A lot of people started watching streamers which plays games, and those of us who are "competitive" even watched more online tournaments (yeah, if you feel me, only online, as LAN's were not a thing during the last 2 years).

All in all, I think we have improved the way videogames are seen around the world. I still remember this CSGO Major announcement as it was yesterday. And dish, how things did change!

[tRv56]

This video is awesome, i get the point you said about people not understanding about other people playing games as a job.

[mOB]

On 12/22/2021 at 12:36 AM, tRv56 said:

This video is awesome, i get the point you said about people not understanding about other people playing games as a job.

Exactly! But in my honest opinion, after the pandemic people did start to understand the gaming world and it’s way more common to play video games now.

Worst thing is that the pandemic did kind of “kill” the LAN tournaments in terms of viewers (being two years without an official LAN tournament of CSGO). Hopefully the game will eventually recover all the hype that previously had.