On the Digital Playing Field

Approach

Does not the title of “e-sports” present a splendid oxymoron? How can something be an “electronic sport”? What might that be? Perhaps, it refers to happenings in professional tennis where several tournaments use Hawk-Eye technology, the ball tracking system that is called on as an electronic lines person. A reasonable guess might be a sports simulation—a digital playing field or perhaps a tournament in laser tag—where technologies not only extend the capabilities of the body but also act on the field of play (Giddings, 2006; T. L. Taylor, 2009). With the emphasis placed on the “e”, the electronic, rather than the physics of the player performing in that space, a common sense impulse might be aroused to disqualify any claim for an electronic game to be classified as a sport. Traditional sporting understandings are often imagined through a moving player, a visibly active body (Edwards, 1973; Hargreaves, 2004). Limbs moving across a court or field are the culturally recognizable form of a body in “sporting motion” (Meier, 1988; Osterhoudt, 1973). As a potential sporting activity, e-sports is likely to strike a somewhat unrecognizable chord for those who have never navigated the field of play in an FPS, or combined a series of movements, perfectly timed and positioned, in a real-time strategy or fighting game (excellent examples of e-sports/high-performance play from other genres can be found in the following literature: Harper, 2010; Lowood, 2010; Schenkhuizen, 2010; Sirlin, 2005). In an attempt to describe the state of e-sports and gain a rich description of player practices and lived experiences of play, this study draws primarily from observations and semistructured interviews with Counter-Strike players and organizers of two major pro/am Scandinavian e-sports tournaments held in 2009—The eXperience (Denmark—CSS tournament) and DreamHack Winter 2009 (Sweden—CS 1.6 and CSS tournaments). Additional observations, interviews, and photo documentation were conducted at the 2010 World Cyber Games (WCG) CS 1.6 grand finals held in Los Angeles. This last mentioned field work was conducted as a saturation check, and to assemble further video and photo records of the core themes. At these LAN tournaments, each spanning 3 to 4 days, I observed and took field notes from early round play, upper/lower bracket play-offs, and the grand-finals.

At The eXperience, 15 semistructured player interviews ranging from individual to group interviews were conducted on site. The interviews were taken from five different teams from four different countries representing professional, semiprofessional, and amateur rankings. The interviewed players and teams ranged from tournament and purse winners from the upper bracket (e.g., a fully funded franchise team) to teams that placed in the bottom bracket, taking home only the experience of play (such as a self-funded amateur team from Scandinavia). Furthermore, formal and informal interviews were conducted with the tournament organizers on site, as well as post-tournament. At DreamHack Winter 2009 (DHW), four additional player interviews were conducted from one amateur CS 1.6 team. The research undertaken at DHW was focused on observing players and teams “over-the-shoulder” and by following teams via various spectatorship options, including being seated at one of the on-site stages; via online websites (Twitter score updates/commentary and live broadcasts of events and replays); and through attendance at the DreamArena Extreme, an event hall where the CS 1.6 finals were played on stage and shoutcasted (e-sports commentary) live to 1,100 cheering spectators (with several thousand more watching the live stream online).

The CS 1.6 teams and players were involved mostly at the level of “career” or “professional” play (where many players were remunerated in some form). ¹ Of the 32 teams playing in this tournament, there were 25 “professional” teams representing 13 different countries. The tournament was further populated by the following:

13 teams that qualified through national tournaments (the most distant national qualifiers coming from Malaysia).

The main grounds for choosing Counter-Strike was its staying power on the e-sports “scene” (longevity being a “necessary condition” in traditional sports ontologies), as well as for the close connection between CSS and CS 1.6 in terms of gameplay and setup at LANs. By looking at the varied group of players and things involved in Counter-Strike as e-sports, it was expected that the study would be offered a broad perspective on how this specific activity is structured, played, and experienced. It must be stressed however, that this particular format of FPS game in play is only one of many e-sports disciplines. Many other games, game genres, e-sports setups, and certainly players participate in the discourse surrounding e-sports more broadly, carrying with them their own specific assemblage and physicality in their performances. On this note, areas for future research might look toward performances of different bodies and other sets of technologies in play, such as the real-time strategy or fighter scenes, domestic play, spectatorship as a part of play, and certainly the engagements of nonexpert competitive players (for work moving in these directions see Harper, 2010; Lowood, 2007; N. Taylor, 2009; T. L. Taylor, 2012).

Counter-Strike at e-sports Events

In the format of e-sports, CS 1.6 and CSS are traditionally played at LANs in a five-against-five matchup (See Figure 1). The game positions teams as head-to-head opponents. A terrorist team (which starts on offense with the goal of planting a bomb at one of two bomb sites) faces off against a counter-terrorist team (which starts as the defense and tries to stop the opposition from successfully detonating the bomb). Opposing teams have the objective to remove the opposition from the field of play (called fragging). Communication between players is both verbal and nonverbal. Team communication can happen by way of in-game chat (though this is constrained by different tournament rules), standardized in-game communications (i. e., transmitting a general alert or command to the team), voice communication (Counter-Strike has a built in voice channel, though third-party software is often used in practice), or from talk and gesticulations within the room. Other standards of play include the following:

Standard technologies as supplied by tournament organizers. I.e. the same model PC linked to a server, and allotted the same size playing area to work within.

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Figure 1.

The eXperience FPS LAN setup: Players on the field(s). (Photo from field work).

Each game I attended was fixed with a maximum time limit of 1 min 45 s and matches were fought out in a best of three (map) series. In general, the matches and game settings played out as follows:

There are a maximum of 30 rounds to a match.

Necessary Conditions for Sport

In his philosophical work on bodies and technologies, Ted Butryn (2002) tackles some of the “perceived naturalities” surrounding traditional sports and sports persons. In a similar vein, I suggest that e-sports push against some of the common sense understandings surrounding sports. However, exploring what might be understood as “traditional definitions of sports” requires a layout of the concepts. In mapping out various definitional efforts of sports, the commonalities and disconnections between traditional sports and e-sports might be perceived. Apart from looking at formal definitions of sports, the more descriptive efforts from sports phenomenology and sports sociology are also introduced, as they point not only to the softness of definitional boundaries but also to the sensory aspects of sports, which I suggest opens for a richer understanding of e-sports as sports, and traditional sports more generally.

In the above word cloud (See Figure 2), a visual over the key characteristics in definitional efforts of sports from sports sociologists and sports philosophers is compiled. While the method of randomly selecting and assembling definitions from Western sports studies scholars has obvious flaws (e.g., the absence of context from the chunked together collection, as well as the absence of fine distinctions in the meaning and significance of key terms, etc.), my goal here is to give the reader a quick hold of the work that this study has reflected on, and of where emphasis has traditionally been placed and contested in modern interpretations of sports.

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Figure 2.

Sports definitions from 1979 to 2009 (Caillois, 2001; Coakley, 2008; Edwards, 1973; Eitzen & Sage, 2009; Giulianotti, 2005; Guttmann, 2004; Hargreaves, 2004; Meier, 1988; Suits, 1988; Sands, 1999). Word cloud image courtesy of http://www.wordle.net/.

In the figure, four prominent characteristics in sports definitions are acknowledged.

Sports are physical.

The Player at Practice—Physicality and Technologies in e-sports

Physicality is the most defining characteristic instituted as a “necessary condition for sport” (Caillois, 2001; Coakley, 2008; Edwards, 1973; Eitzen & Sage, 2009; Giulianotti, 2005; Guttmann, 2004; Hargreaves, 2004; Meier, 1988; Sands, 1999; Suits, 1988). This kinesthetic quality is often at the hub of sport rhetoric, from international sporting bodies to philosophical and sociological descriptions, as characterizations of sport frequently point out that it is the physical capabilities and the exertion of the competitor/competitors that determine the final outcome of a sport—winning or losing (Council of Europe, 1992; Meier, 1988; Suits, 1988). Physicality has unquestionably been the Achilles heel of e-sports in terms of its sporting legitimacy. As the players and organizers of e-sports tournaments made clear in their interviews, articulating how a computer game engages the physical self is complicated. Players exhibited great difficulty in grasping just where the “sportiness” of their activity resided. Or perhaps, such reticence is just a reminder that these young men have never verbally expressed how they experience their sport as a sensuous engagement.

The challenges of placing sporting physicality is not a new phenomenon, games such as chess have made the list of recognized Olympic sports while at the same time are framed as nonphysical events (i.e., “purely” intellectual contests) in sports studies literatures (Caillois, 2001; Guttmann, 1978, 2004; Meier, 1988; Osterhoudt, 1973). Sports involving machines or animals such as NASCAR (National Association for Stock Car Auto Racing) or equestrian have also proved to be sports of contention (Butryn, 2002; Giulianotti, 2005; Gumbrecht, 2006). It is the movement performance of the human body which is placed as central to physicality in sports. That is, does the moving body contribute or shape the outcome. Whether the emphasis is on the mindful strategy or the salient technologies involved in winning or losing (and generally facilitating in the actions of play), e-sports meets some of the same challenges as other “pushed to the fringe” sports (i.e., darts) in terms of articulating “sufficient physicality” in the playing body in order to be culturally recognizable as a legitimate sporting activity (Guttmann, 1978).

In the following, the where, what, and how of e-sports player physicality is pursued. The targeted areas for discussion are those that provoke the most uncertainty toward the physicality of the players of Counter-Strike including human movement, the balanced body, and haptic engagement. This is followed by a discussion on technologies in play, focusing on the players and technologies as extended networks which create the played action and outcome, in addition to considerations on the sensuous experience of e-sports.

Player and Team Movement

Movements made by high-performance Counter-Strike players are observed as skilled (practiced) and timely. A player must navigate through a digital 3D terrain from the limited vision of the monitor. Peripheral awareness of the digital playing field is not possible, which makes character head movement (moving the field of view from side-to-side) as well as knowing where to look for the opposition, necessary movement actions in the high-performance game (Reeves et al., 2009; Sudnow, 1983). Character movement (represented in the game) is risky. At the beginning of each round, there are five players looking to eliminate the opposing team from the current field of play. As a result, movements are carefully guarded, practiced, and strategized with the team, as well as fine-tuned in the players’ bodies. The game is set up on this negotiated movement by players and teams. If a player/team is poor at moving from A to B, or at quickly and precisely targeting the opposition in their sights, or even at maneuvering about the field space in coordination with teammates (which move in various formations depending on the side one is playing, the map, and the number of players left standing) the likelihood for “failure” increases with each inadequately executed action. This account of player movement can be considered alongside of Robert Osterhoudt’s (1973) rendition of chess as an encounter that does not involve “sporting movement” (in Osterhoudt’s terms chess is a “purely intellectual contest”). ⁶ Osterhoudt presents chess as played (in the standard “nontimed” manner) in the style of a contest, which does not necessitate a body performance in that the kinesthetic movement of any piece from A to B has no effect on the outcome of that movement (Osterhoudt in Drewe, 2003). Whereas the many movement decisions made in getting from bomb site A to bomb site B has everything to do with the outcome of each in-play moment (See Figure 3). To further this idea of movement being central to the outcome in sport, Klaus Meier (1988) suggests,

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Figure 3.

The sporting movement of Counter-Strike. (Photo from field work).

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Figure 4.

A player carrying his personal keyboard, a key technological actor in embodied play. (Photo from field work).

Or perhaps movement can be conceptualized more simply in the words, “we know as we go, not before we go” (Ingold, 2000, p. 230). Social anthropologist Tim Ingold’s (2000) work on the perception of the environment helps to map out movement, he notes that “[a]s we travel from one place to another, we pass through a sequence of images, each of which is specific to—and in turn permits us to identify—a particular location along the way” (emphasis added, p. 224). Following Ingold’s description, I would argue that Counter-Strike involves players in a constant process of moving and meaning making. With each move a player makes, the opponents and indeed teammates are seeing “locations” and reacting to these changing landscapes (images, sounds, etc., which make up the momentary locations) in which every movement is crucial to the endgame state. In team games, the intercorporeality of players working together, and against opponents, adds further layers to the meaning making of the passing environment (Hockey & Allen-Collinson, 2007), as communication between teammates and the ever-changing game balance brings about movement performances that are exceptionally dynamic.

As I watch over the shoulder of an American e-sports franchise team of CS 1.6 players (a bronze medal match at DHW with a purse worth €2600 and five sponsor PCs), I hear the team captain yell out a code word which signals his teammates to bear down on a specific map position. The flurry of movements seen on the monitors’ in front of me puts me off balance, something which is even more disorienting as several screen views do 180 degree turns, each from a differing point of view. They whirl their characters around with practiced hands and weave throughout the terrain of the train yard to meet up, in step, and snuff out the last opponent in a bout of precision targeting followed deftly by left mouse button clicks (Bang! Bang! Bang!). Wright, Boria, and Breidenbach (2002) point out that in Counter-Strike, “[p]laying is not simply mindless movement through a virtual landscape, but rather movement with a reflexive awareness of the game’s features . . .” (para. 4). Drawing on David Sudnow’s (1983) notion of terrain, Reeves et al. (2009) echo this point, discerning that expert play requires players to have a handle on the terrain “at-a-glance,” as “[a]n expert knows what the implications of each action [in the terrain] are and acts accordingly”(p. 205–227). Going back to my earlier remark of the players’ whirling quickly around, both Reeves et al. (2009) and Wright et al.’s (2002) observations resonate, especially when considering the specific gameplay situation more closely. What jolted the team captain into action was the sound of a ticking bomb. Once charged, a bomb ticks down 35 s before it explodes. When the bomb is planted, the state of the game for the counter-terrorists is focused on pace and exactitude. The tempo is screwed up to resemble a foot race (to the bomb site) where timing and awareness of the other team (in this case, the final opposing player) and of one’s own team still playing on the map is crucial to the hurried decision making that inevitably plays a part in the result. In Counter-Strike, the “sporting movement”—needing to see as we move—is achieved by engaging players physically through aspects such as maintaining a controlled body while quickly navigating the environment, by moving the character proficiently with reference to the team (through intercorporeal agility such as “knowing by body” the team tempo), as well as by means of the physicality executed in the muscles and tendons of hands and fingers and in the subtle control of breathing. ⁷ What we see in such e-sports engagements is that movement is central to the outcome of every match.

The Balanced Body

Movement in Counter-Strike is something that can be experienced visually. Even the novice to the scene can pick up on the necessity of coordinated movements and locational meaning making required in order to participate. However, there are much more discreet bodily engagements involved in play. These discreet engagements are attributed to the balanced body. The balanced body can be understood as the body reconciling with the pressures of play. This manifests in two core areas. First, the physical body choices that are made in order to execute a desired on-screen action, and second, in the composure of the body as affected by the rhythms and intensity of gameplay and play contexts. The following field note offers an example of the balanced body and composure at play:

FPS games are renowned for bringing on motion sickness to players unfamiliar in navigating the space. The fast paced contest collides with an experience of vertigo for many players, being brought on by the challenge of navigating the 3D environment quickly but steadily. Such disorientation occurs in moving the physical body—leaning the torso into the same movements as the on-screen character (Westecott, 2008). A common sight is watching new players bending into the screen and trying to peer around the digitally represented corners (Lahti, 2003; Swalwell, 2008), though even seasoned computer game players (who do not regularly play in the first person view) also experience motion sickness regardless that they “know” the digital environment. None of the players I observed fell into the screen or mimicked the movements of their characters. No expression of queasiness was evoked from their movements. These players’ physical body choices are established by not falling into any unfastened movements. With straight backs, shoulders inclined forward, their energy is focused into the modulations of their poised hands and fingers—which swing between delicate and purposeful—and are visibly recognized as practiced hands (Sudnow, 1983). Hockey and Allen-Collinson (2007) refer to the corporeal choices of sporting bodies with reference to the movement and timing of the body, such as the rhythm of the arm in motion, reminiscent of the field note account of the body in motion (the sweeping motions made while manipulating the mouse), but they also talk to effective bodily control, such as controlled breathing, as a integral part of sports for many players (p. 119–120).

One specific position can be singled out for thinking about effective bodily control, it is the indispensable player that makes or breaks a line up, the sniper. As CSS player Holger explains, “the sniper has the ability to kind of divide the map in two, which basically gives the other four players a lot of room to just roam around and basically lock-down the bomb sites.” The sniper is the player that covers the positions on the map that are exposed. The exposed areas are obligatory passage points from bomb site A to bomb site B, making the skill of the sniper crucial. As I watch over the shoulders of a team lined up at a LAN, the sniper can barely be spotted on-screen. Obscured in debris and shadow, the sniper squats at the end of a long passageway, a part of the scenery. The player’s screen in front of me flicks between the weapon scope and normal view, he is poised, prepared, and waiting for a sign to act. A sniper’s job (when sniping) is not to navigate the map per se, but to make the map less navigable for the opposition. On the surface, this player in front of me looks nearly restful—slow breaths, fingers delicately placed atop of the keys, lightly sweeping the mouse to hover over the expected breach points. ⁸ In a critique of James Newman’s (2002) ergodic continuum, Gordon Calleja (2007) emphasizes that the sniper, while inanimately monitoring the terrain, is ready to act in a way that cannot be considered “less ergodic” than, for example, a moment where player input is delivered to the system (i.e., during direct combat). Calleja’s point is a keen reminder here that exciting things are happening “behind the scenes,” such as the tacit participation and control ongoing in a player’s body, far away from the visible actions (Dye, Green, & Bavelier, 2009). ⁹ The surface serenity of the sniping player in front of me is all the more mesmerizing in contrast to his teammates and opponents in frenzied voice and motion—yelling and blasting away. Then, in a flurry, the sniper’s position specialization visibly sets in. It is only a quick flash of shadow on the screen, but it has alerted the sniper to the coming action. An opponent turns into the crosshairs, exposing himself for less than a millisecond, and bang!. A screen fades to black. Enemy down. This occasion, the key play for the sniper, can last the click of a mouse. Something that sounds so simple (point and click) is achieved through detailed knowledge of the equipment on hand (what weapons the sniper bears and what the sniper sees the opposition carrying) as well as the situational terrain (such as the breach points and known strategies of the current location). But success is also, at all times, tied to focus and accuracy. Likewise, this moment of play draws in what sounds and observable things have taken place in the playing field (i.e., bullet holes on the wall, distant gunfire, or how many players are left in the game), as well as being anchored to the limits and fidelity of the technologies that are being used (e.g., the amount of hertz—which controls the cycles per second the monitor is refreshed, central to sharp shooting—a player can get from their monitor). T. L. Taylor (2012) describes the challenges e-sports players experienced at LANs when the older (but at the time superior) cathode ray tube (CRT) gaming monitors were replaced with the latest (often tournament sponsor) flat screen liquid crystal display (LCD) monitors, ultimately presenting the players with an inferior, slower, as well as unpracticed playing field. For the practiced sniper, these seemingly small things all play into the development of sensuous skills. The incoming events seen on screen at these LANs would drown the unpracticed player/team. The practiced players/teams perform in ways which are skilled (both specialized, but also highly competent across various situations) and accomplished by a “constant sensory monitoring of conditions” (Ingold in Hockey & Allen-Collinson, 2007, p. 126). And indeed, there is so much sensory monitoring going on that it is understandable why players find it difficult to articulate how play manifests in the body (other than their likening it to sporting sensations), as the multiple sensorial layers are simply too complex, to intertwined, to peel away from one another layer for layer as something distinct. In this field of play, I suggest that high-performance player’s act on (the game) and maneuver with responses from a rich sensorial network in order to perform skillfully. This indicates that the physical involvement of these e-sports players is identifiable not just in quick hands or self-control. Physicality also extends through processes of skillfully managing and engaging with multiple bodily senses and actions (human and nonhuman), which are just some of the variants of physicality involved in an embodied gaming performance.

As a final point on the sensory makeup of gameplay, the sound of the sniper rifle in game is read as a statement to the other players as it reveals some of each teams’ strategy. Diegetic sound in Counter-Strike is sensory information and it is a tool used actively by players to try and influence the opposition’s decision making. ¹⁰ Signals through sound and sight draw the action, engage the players, and show them how to perform. ¹¹ This is practiced sensory monitoring at play and, as Hockey and Allen-Collinson (2007) note, these discreet engagements of the body are things that can easily be overlooked in terms of the skilled physical engagements that make up the sporting prowess that we witness on the playing field (p. 126). While sound alone is not the strongest argument for the sportiness of e-sports, I find it nonetheless a compelling one in terms of thinking about the multiplicity of body practices which includes, sound, touch, muscle control/composure, and movement, all of which are brought forth in an activity that is commonly stereotyped as not physically engaging “enough” to be understood as a sport. ¹²

In considering e-sports, balance refers to more than what we view the body engaged in, it is also the balance of the concealed body at work. In terms of the performing players, the balanced body can also be talked about in terms of composure. Put yourself in the first field note entry which ended in a two against one scenario. As that player, you know that you are the underdog of the impending showdown. You know that your four other “sidelined” teammates are watching your moves. And you know that a perfect performance will get your team into the upper bracket and closer to the “big money.” Perhaps, the multiple pressures of this situation do not resonate as recognizable? Try then to imagine yourself in a more familiar underdog situation, perhaps a game of basketball where your team is behind by one point and you steal the ball with 3 s left to score in the game, the outcome relying on your training to manage the moment. Or perhaps you can recall the senses that were aroused during the final stages of a boss encounter in a massively multiplayer online game, where movements across the dungeon floor combined with timely spell casts made-or-broke your (and your group’s) imminent survival. That player in that moment is under extreme pressure comprising of adrenalin (what the players also noted at the beginning of the article as what motivated them to play) and the psychological battle of how to tackle the ever moving performance. Hans Gumbrecht’s (2006) writing on the aesthetics of sport adds to this consideration, suggesting that “ . . . composure in the face of gestures of destruction is the highpoint of the [sports] production . . . those who give in to mental anguish do not make it to the top of their sport” (pp. 164–166). The mental anguish that Gumbrecht refers to is a salient part of these players’ everyday experiences. ¹³ Their composure “under fire” certainly resonates with Gumbrecht’s notion of a high-performance sports person’s presentation, as CSS player Joe comments,

In Michael Kane’s look at professional gamers (2008), an interviewed CS 1.6 player adds to the notion of the balanced body and bodily sensations felt when playing by linking his experience to hunting. He emphasizes that the still moments of play juxtaposed against seeing the target (in this case a deer) is where the adrenalin rush culminates, and that all the actions following that flooded bodily reaction (as he shakes and gets disorientated) are made in a decidedly controlled manner. As the player states, “[i]t’s the same thrill in a one-on-one situation in a big Counter-Strike match. First you try and ambush. Then it’s about staying calm under fire” (p. 32). Whether it is fun or agony, composing the body is a practice required for proficient navigation and participation in this high performance field of play (Taylor & Witkowski, 2010). These e-sports players’ capture the labors of bodies engaged in high-performance sports, where a composition of movement, balance (steadiness and composure), and practice is brought together. Though these players also demonstrate in their performances the sensory understanding they have with their materials of play in the feel of what is at hand—the haptic engagement of the sporting body.

Haptic Engagement

To think of computer gaming as a sport, it is worthwhile thinking of the haptic engagement of the players. The terrain that players engage with, while it might be framed as a “virtual environment” has a feel or texture to it. When running with a rifle in the characters hands instead of a knife the game/character “feels slow.” The game itself can also feel and play fast or sluggishly, as a CSS professional notices when he recalls playing CS 1.6, saying, “I enjoy Counter-Strike: Source more, I think it’s a faster game”—William, professional CSS player (and former high-performance CS 1.6 player). When a LAN connection and machine experience lag (slower responses to input), players talk about the “speed” of the field (much like the speed of a cricket pitch, where bowlers evaluate the dirt and talk about how the ball will most likely bounce off of the playing surface of the day). The equipment in use, the network connection, and the fields of play (in the room and mediated digitally) are sensuous elements that play into the action of and between the game, the network, and the competitors (Giddings, 2006; N. Taylor, 2009; T. L. Taylor, 2009). A noteworthy sporting example, mapped out by Hockey and Allen-Collinson (2007, p. 123), is that of the football player. Players not only evaluate the field of play visually but also through touching the grass, pushing their fingers and studs into the ground, feeling the wind, and handling the ball. This act of haptic practice was demonstrated by football players at the 2010 FIFA World Cup. The official match ball (the Adidas Jabulani) caused players to alter their practiced game based on the unpredictability of this technology in the field of play. Former professional football player (as well as football shoe and ball designer) Craig Johnston (2010) commented on the sensuousness of this particular technology in play, noting that,

Just as for Counter-Strike players, the technologies are practiced by body and need to be felt to be played expertly. The importance of the touched material used in play becomes obvious when the backpacks of the participants are seen as they walk into the halls (See Figure 4): when not at play, players carry around their own personal keyboard and mouse (see more on the materiality of play in Taylor, 2012).

Consider when you put your hand on the mouse to execute a computer related task, you might not recognize the feel of the mouse pad in use—does the mouse glide over it or stick? You might not even know what the mouse wheel is used for or know the pace of manipulating it. What are the necessary dimensions of the mouse pad in order to perform the desired on-screen actions? While these questions might sound a little trifling, the answers can have an enormous influence on a player’s performance, much like the effect of setting a large box in the passenger seat of a rally car whose driver is inhibited from shifting into top gear. Players extending their field of performance with technologies have an intimate feel for the things that are situated in their hands when at play (Dovey & Kennedy, 2006). At LAN tournaments, the space of the table that each player is allotted can vary. At The eXperience, the table space could bear a player’s keyboard, mouse and mouse pad, and very little else (by comparison, at the DHW finals the table space was a large conference desk where the players could sprawl out). The table space is a compelling part of the framework of play. On my first meeting with a former professional CS 1.6 player from Norway, my first comment was on the surprise I felt in regard to his stature—he was tall, around 190 cm. None of the players I had interviewed and observed until that point had that build. In discussing the challenges of fitting his body under the tables allotted at tournaments, he noted that it was not a big issue, as one “simply adjusts” and besides, he had started late (at 20 years of age) so he had always “played big.” This dismissal of the challenges of the physical space resonates with the comments made by long-time franchise sniper fRoD. He does not complain about the chairs or the tables used at LANs in terms of their role in executing skilled play, but rather fRoD focuses on the necessity to get the correct hertz (Kane, 2008), though the noncomplaint is relevant. At the WCG, players could be seen chair stacking to create the best possible playing field. One player even brought along his undergraduate physics textbook to raise the monitor in order to gain a better body to screen position for executing play. The tables and chairs are noted in the challenges experienced at LANs, though they are just not at the top of the list of multiple technological and bodily challenges that go into disrupting a desirable playing situation. Based on the specific body that is brought to the table to play, there will be notable variations in how players accommodate the space that they engage with. Haptic engagement of the field of play thus extends beyond the “plugged in” materials. Tables and chairs, among many other mundane technologies, shape the player and thus the execution of play itself (N. Taylor, 2009). ¹⁴ Seeing how these technologies come into effect was witnessed during a team setup for a match. One player was frantic. His mouse pad did not fit into the allotted space. It ridged over onto the next table causing a visible divot in the surface, which posed a certain problem for the fluidity of his desired movements. He was furthermore bound by the tournament rules and was not allowed to physically manipulate the setup space (doing so would invoke the team’s disqualification). It became apparent that the mouse pad was a significant tool for the player and that this minute situation would impinge on the other technologies in play (mouse and keystrokes). In other words, the feel of the technologies in play, vital to the execution of the game, would be drastically changed (perhaps even as unpracticed and uncontrollable as the Jabulani ball to the football players) on the circumstance of a potholed mouse pad. With limited time left, the problem was resolved by a seat change with a teammate who used a smaller mouse pad to perform with. This type of situation resonates with the injured sports person, or playing on the “altered” playing field, such as the changed conditions of a football pitch after a downpour of rain (the landscape technologies in play—See Butryn, 2002). ¹⁵ While these examples do not point out a malfunction in tools (depending on your definition), they do highlight the importance of haptic engagement as a key element in sports production in terms of the game outcome—winning and losing. Moreover, haptic engagement highlights the variation of gameplay practices that are a result of “more than the game” per se. Game outcomes are touched by all the networked bodies and technologies that make up the gaming moment, regardless of their complexity (such as networked systems) or simplicity (such as tables or chairs; N. Taylor, 2009; T. L. Taylor, 2009).

Threading together the physicality practices of players starts to suggest the intense, yet subtle, bodily involvements and movements that are called forth during this particular setup and style of computer game involvement. The performances observed and expressed by the e-sports participants are, however, always already engaged in a collaborative setting between player and machine, or more aptly, multiple players and their many technologies. As a result, the theme of physicality has a second thread to follow, namely the sensuousness of sports technologies.

The Sensuousness of Networked Sports

The sensuous labor of bodies and technologies has been threaded throughout this article as significant to the game action and the outcome of the game. In this section, I would like to unpack one final area central to the discussion of e-sports as sports; the salience and sensuousness of the technologies in play.

As the title “e-sports” emphasizes, the electronic is a highly identifiable part of the game. In an early and compelling article on e-sports, Michael Wagner (2006) marks out a place for this particular format of play, stating that e-sports “ . . . is an area of sport activities in which people develop and train mental or physical abilities in the use of information and communication technologies” (p. 3). Wagner’s work is a valuable first step into the critical consideration of e-sports, though on exploring his perspective, we can note that the influence of various nonhuman actors is absent. Furthermore, his argument is fastened to expertise in using information communications technologies (ICTs) (as opposed to a broader assemblage of technologies and things), placing the computer as the central or dominant technology. Reflecting on my own fieldwork and the research of T. L. Taylor (2009, 2012) and Nick Taylor (2009), I am inclined to loosen the overriding centrality of the computer in this endeavor. As ethnographic research shows us, e-sports are experienced as dynamic competitions where sporting actions (and game outcomes) are tacitly and overtly produced and documented by many human and nonhuman agents or things. Considering Gumbrecht’s (2006) exploration of the tools involved in sports, we might consider these multiple technologies in play as complexifications of the sport. But they are somehow more than complex additional “parts” that enable players to extend into in the desired action, in this case, networked gaming (Gumbrecht’s work, like Lahti’s, looks at the complexifications as prosthetics). In e-sports, the complexifications are, most importantly, also “at play”. For example, through the suddenly disconnected machine or in the pace of a LAN connection altering the feel of the field. As T. L. Taylor (2009) phrases it, in the team of 40 (human) computer game players, the technology becomes the “41st player.” Considerations of nonhuman actors lean directly upon Actor–network theory, which at its most basic proposes that humans are never acting alone: the collective experiences are the outcome produced by an assemblage of human and nonhuman actions (Latour, 2005). The final theme here considers how the labor of nonhumans can be considered alongside of the notion that sports necessitate “human” performances.

Ted Butryn (2002) points out that “all elite athletes are, to varying degrees, profoundly technologized” (p. 116). From psychological training to improvements in equipment, high-performance athletes are always engaging in their sport with technologies and, more significantly, with technologies that have shaped their bodies to perform (Rigauer, 1981). This is described by Lahti (2003) as a “prosthetic memory,” where timing and movements with the prostheses in play are internalized in order to succeed in the game. Gumbrecht (2006) takes up the analogy of shooting, which is useful in thinking about the game technologies as both sensuous prosthetics in play and acting on play. The sport of shooting, he explains, offers a tool to extend an action we are already capable of, in this case the function of hitting a target (p. 177). However, I would add that the rifle itself also acts. Its weight encumbers the tired marksperson or, on a rare occasion, the bolt on a biathlete’s rifle may jam: such nonhuman actions play into sporting outcomes. Gumbrecht points to the sensuous engagement that athletes have with technologies (such as the rifle), and additionally to the embodied understanding of how such a tool works in conjunction with the game, that is, when the biathlete needs to first compose her breathing before manipulating the heavy tool that extends her desired action. In e-sports, the player adjusts their mouse pad, headset, hertz, mouse sensitivity, and recalls how to manipulate the terrain with the equipment at hand, executing correct timing and movements as well as checking their connection before entering yet another round (Reeves et al. 2009; Sudnow, 1983). Though, I also watch countless moments of players fussing and preparing a myriad of other tools, devices, and people prior to play (air blowers, batteries, mouse cord holders, keyboard frames, parents, and partners). This moment of acting with the technologies and of remembering the complexifications in situ is a sensuous one. Using Laurence de Garis’ (1999) terminology of the sensuousness of sport, sporting movements are best understood through the touch of multiple actors. While de Garis talks of the intercorporeality between professional wrestlers knowing how to move in the ring (as well as knowing the ring) through subtle clues in touched bodies, I use his notion to think about the sensuousness of play as performed by players and technologies. Ask any career basketball player and they will tell you how sports tape should feel when wrapped on a sprain for the best maneuverability. They might talk of the carry of the ball on particular court and describe the situational adjustments necessary. Similarly, e-sports LAN players talk of being prepared for the idiosyncrasies of specific event halls, knowing whether to bring a hair dryer along for a hand warmer, or to carry with them a variety of mouse pads (shape and material) to adjust to the table setup. They could tell you about their experiences of sponsored equipment; talk to how standardized tools do not necessarily fit the needs of each and every body; acquaint you with the best make-do’s and tweaks for optimal performance. While Gumbrecht points to the singular tool in play—the rifle—extending a body’s actions, I would highlight the multiple and wide-ranging tools at play (and in pre-play/practice). The things in and of play require sensuous engagement for actions to be shaped “just so,” which is apparent in the many adjustments taken in order to carry out high-performance sporting acts (Lowood, 2009; Taylor, 2006).

The complexifications of bodies and technologies laboring together are central to performances and outcomes in e-sports. In this site of e-sports, human performance is not undermined (in terms of there being no “recognizable” human performance) by the technological actions (those nonhuman acts of the 41st player), as human unpredictability is always already in effect, at all times playing into the players actions (Miah in Butryn, 2002). ¹⁶ Butryn continues this line of thought noting that,

The take home point here is that the technologies used for play in Counter-Strike shape the body personally through practice. Even though the mouse or the network, for example, is not a “cyborgian” part of our being (in Butryn’s terms, this would be a self-technology that is implemented or alters the body permanently) they do have a lasting effect on the body.