Esports are competitive activities played in a digital environment. They have grown from a form of recreational gaming into organised competitive events watched and followed by millions of people around the world. Players compete individually or as teams, often spending many hours practising, developing strategies, studying opponents, and improving their performance. Unlike traditional sports, esports take place entirely within a digital environment. The players may remain seated throughout a match, but the competition itself can be intense. Decisions have to be made quickly, communication between teammates must be precise, and small mistakes can change the outcome of a match. Professional esports players train much like competitors in other fields. They practise specific skills repeatedly, study previous matches, analyse their opponents, and work on strategies for different situations. Team-based games require players to understand their own roles while coordinating closely with their teammates. Preparation is therefore not limited to playing the game; it also involves planning, analysis, communication, and continuous improvement. The competitive environment can also be demanding. Players must remain focused for long periods, respond quickly to unexpected situations, and make decisions while under pressure. A
successful player cannot simply rely on technical ability. The ability to remain calm, communicate effectively, adapt to changing situations, and learn from mistakes can be equally important. These characteristics make esports an interesting comparison with both traditional sports and robotics competitions. The playing environment is completely different, yet many of the demands placed on the participants are familiar. The difference lies not only in where the competition takes place, but also in how the participant’s skills are expressed.
7.1
A Closer Look at Esports
Esports include many different types of competitive games. Some are team-based strategy games, such as League of Legends and Dota 2. Others, such as Counter-Strike 2 and Valorant, require teams to coordinate their actions while competing against an opposing team. Games such as Rocket League combine football-like objectives with vehicles, while EA Sports FC recreates many aspects of football within a digital environment. Although these games are very different from one another, they all have defined rules, objectives, opponents, and conditions under which players compete. Players must understand the game, develop strategies, and work towards a common objective. The digital environment changes the way these skills are expressed, but the competitive structure remains clear. Among these examples, Rocket League provides an interesting comparison with robotics competitions. In the game, two teams use
rocket-powered cars to compete in a football-like match. Players control their cars to move the ball, defend their goal, and score against their opponents. Each player has to understand their role while also responding to the actions of teammates and opponents. At first, this may seem very different from a robotics competition. However, the comparison becomes interesting when we look beyond the surface. In a robotics competition, students control robots that move around a physical field and interact with game elements. In Rocket League, players control digital vehicles that move around a virtual field and interact with a digital ball. In both cases, participants must understand the rules of the game, decide what action to take, coordinate with teammates, and respond to the changing situation on the field. The difference is that the robotics team has designed and built the machine it controls, while the esports player operates a digital machine created by the game’s developers. The robotics team therefore has an additional layer of engineering and creativity. It must design the hardware, develop the software, test the mechanisms, and then use the completed robot in competition. In Rocket League, the vehicle is already part of the game. The player’s challenge is instead to develop the skill needed to control it effectively. The competition therefore shifts the focus from creating the machine to mastering its control and using it strategically. This distinction helps us see an important difference between robotics competitions and esports. Both involve competition through a machine, but in robotics the participants are also the creators of
the machine. The robot is not simply a tool for playing the game; it is itself the product of the team’s engineering, creativity, and problem-solving. Whether it is a robotics competition or an esports match, it is ultimately the scoreboard that most of us are interested in. Seeing the score change, watching a team move ahead, or waiting for the final result is what makes competition exciting. But there is another side to the scoreboard that is just as important: how are those scores decided? What goes into deciding who wins and who loses? In the next chapter, we will look more closely at some of these aspects of competition.