Interactive TV: eSports

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In order to better understand the foundation of e-Sports industry, a brief overview of some of the digital gaming characteristics will be presented.

Olson (2010) researched the motivation of early adolescents for playing video games on the sample od 1254 12-to-14-year-olds and identified three basic elements: socialization, friendship and the opportunity to lead other players or to learn from them. Victory and success in digital games induces the sense of pride and achievement. The obvious motivational factor and the presumption that the video game players can develop some useful skills has interested De Freitas (2006) to observe computer games as a new and attractive learning method.

The motivation is the initiation, intensity and the duration of certain behavior. It can be observed as a unique dyad of intrinsic (based on the interest of gaining skills or knowledge) and external (based on the goal achievement or avoiding punishment for instance). Although playing digital games seems attractive its effect on the motivation is not always positive. For example, if the difficulty level is too high the player frustration will increase which in turn decreases the level of self-confidence (Seery et al., 2004).

The success in digital game means moving to a higher level and mastering new competences, which results in better player performance. Additionally, the sense of enjoyment decreases player anxiety. Digital gameplay can boost self-confidence, enhance the visual attention skills, increase empathy and social behavior (Aleksić & Ivanović, 2017; Gentile et al., 2012).

Digital games are characterized by two unique characteristics – transmediality and enframing. Transmediality can be observed through the phenomena of playing games via various media (Juul, 2011). The advancement of technology made contemporary digital games narrow the gap between the virtual and the real world so the players are more often in the position to make physical interaction with virtual characters (avatars) and the environments. The enframing is correlated with the digital nature of computer games. According to Heidegger and Lovitt (1977), the core influence of contemporary technologies on human gameplay is to make a framework for the virtual world possibilities and characteristics that was created by the game designers.

The ever-growing observance for the last few decades is that the children and adolescents show extraordinary interest in digital gameplay, so digital games became the central part of youth culture. Limited gameplay shows the benefit of emotional relieving and relaxation (Prot et al., 2014). However, the lack of control can easily lead to the development of digital game addiction disorder, as was implied by the number of researchers (Aleksić, 2018; Desai et al., 2010; Lin et al., 2011; Poli & Agrimi, 2011) which stated that in extreme cases almost 15% of the gaming population became more or less addicted. Digital game addiction development is directly correlated with the environment culture characteristics (Jang et al., 2008).