User Experience and Motivation of Professional Video Game Players: A Case Study of Esports in Turkey

Abstract

The digital era brought a new impulse to the gaming world as per the invention of video games, discovery of a new and unique gameplay medium and establishment of gaming companies who implemented the monetization system and initiated a business model over buying and selling games and downloadable contents. The internet age converted the games to MMOs (Massively Multiplayer Online Games) which enabled the players compete against real human opponents instead of artificial intelligence of the device and thus, planted the seeds of a new and more competitive gameplay type. Such gameplay attracted the gaming audience and consumers, of whom some intended to display their skills and mastery over games to others via digital broadcasters (like YouTube and Twitch) and suddenly this ploy turned into a show and entertainment business, named as esports. As esports spread wider, competent authorities and international governing bodies are founded and recognized such activities as a sports branch with legislative elements. When the esports player began to get paid by the ecosystem, they became professionals and chose to pursue a career within this brand-new practice. As the early modern theories that define games ostracized and rejected the possibility of receiving any material interest as a result of playing games, the gamer status of professional players was questioned, similar to the professional athletes of the traditional sports did once.

Together with considering the dynamics and policies of the digital gaming and esports industries, a new approach was needed in order to develop a model that distinguishes gambling from esports and combines esports with contemporary game definitions in the words of an updated version. For such purpose, the game definitions of prominent critical thinkers in literature were researched, examined, and compared to each other, as well as the descriptions and characteristics of traditional sports, professionalism, gambling, and esports, via the case studies and interviews conducted among professional esports players, amateur players, esports enthusiasts, esports staff, and an esports color pundit about the motives of gamers as amateur and professional esports players and handled by the means of qualitative analysis method. Findings concluded that esport is a type of sport by many aspects, it is vastly distinguished from gambling and as per the special characteristic of digital gaming business, the professional players shall not be exempted from being “gamers” in accordance with the new, contemporary game definitions, and as a result, a new, updated game definition is generated to help clarifying the purpose of considering esports just as a special type of gaming, instead of a mere profession unlike other occupations or even the professional athletes in traditional sports.