Big game hunter
The crowd stands and cheers. The exhausted, triumphant winning team is handed its trophy, which the captain lifts while the rest of the players raise their arms in victory. This sounds like the scene after, say, a basketball tournament. But it’s also an increasingly familiar tableau in the world of e-sports, where teams compete in popular online games, such as “StarCraft II” and “Counter-Strike,” in front of fans. Indeed, e-sports even has its own version of the Olympics, the World Cyber Games. “In the crowd, there is a real collective experience of spectating some kind of new digital sport,” says T.L. Taylor, an MIT sociologist who studies the culture of computer gaming. “People are fans of players, and fans of teams.” T.L. Taylor Photo: Bryce Vickmark You may not have heard of e-sports, where some contests are held in public venues in front of crowds, and others...