All for the money
On the 15th June last year, Sir Richard Branson, British multimillionaire and owner of the multinational company Virgin, arrived at the E3 video game trade show in an armoured van guarding a box containing one million dollars. Branson announced he had bought Worldgaming.com, an almost unknown website for competing in skill games, and promised to share out that money in prizes. And so, Virgin Gaming was born.
Branson’s announcement immediately led to the appearance of competitors. The Titan Gaming company bought the well-known instant messaging/matchmaking client, Xfire, and announced its conversion into a skill games platform. Bet4gamers emerged for the Spanish-speaking market. They don’t have it easy: Virgin is a huge company which owns shopping centers, mobile phone networks and even airlines, as well as having the added advantage of getting in there first. They have also received the explicit backing of Electronic Arts, which has named them worldwide partner.
All of these moves have led to great excitement among competitive gamers, who see their chances of collecting a few prizes increasing. Yet, very few people have stopped to think about the dangers of embracing the skill games model.
Virgin Gaming's website (link)
What are skill games?
"Skill games" is a legal category for referring to the activity of competing for money in a game requiring a variable degree of skill, intelligence or a mixture of both. The concept was created in some countries to differentiate it from gambling and betting, although common to all three is the player’s ultimate aim of financial gain, which is often at the expense of the other players. This is why in every country gambling, betting and skill games are reserved for adults.
This isn’t a new business. Websites such as King.com or WorldWinner.com have been up and running and awarding prizes for winning in online games such as Bejeweled, Scrabble, Mah Jong or pool for quite some time. The novelty of Virgin Gaming and its competitors is the inclusion of well-known PC and console titles, some of which have a long e-sports tradition, such as Halo or FIFA.
This is where a serious problem could arise, because if e-sports and skill games are put on par, the death of e-sports in many countries is a given.
E-sports do not exist
In most countries e-sports do not exist on a legal level. They are not recognised as a sport and they do not have concrete protective legislation. Neither do a lot of countries have legislation on skill games, but being popularised by businesses such as Virgin Gaming could lead to laws being created for them which, through ignorance or interest, will also end up being applied to e-sports. If this happens, there could be devastating effects.
As I said, the legal debate tends to put skill games on a par with betting and gambling. Its model is very similar to that of online poker: a player bets his money directly against another player or the money is added to a jackpot where the winner usually takes all. Therefore, if legislation exists for skill games, this will impose a series of restrictions: prohibition for minors, requirement of tightly controlled exploitation licences, special charges, etc.
...we must keep insisting that e-sports are not skill games and that the ultimate aim of the players is not just the financial gain...
This is why we must keep insisting that e-sports are not skill games and that the ultimate aim of the players is not just the financial gain, but that more importantly, there are sporting values which differentiate us, because the application of such a restrictive law on e-sports would involve the immediate and devastating death of this scene in countries where the organisations are small and weak, such as my own country, Spain.
Reasons to worry
I will not be the one to deny the importance of money prizes in sports. After all, at the end of each ATP tournament, a juicy check awaits the winning tennis player. The difference between skill games and e-sports does not lie in the prize, but in how both of them approach the competitive experience. While the satisfaction of the immediate profit is pursued in skill games, e-sports emphasize values such as effort, discipline, learning, the will to overcome oneself's limitations, teamwork, structured competition, respect for the rules and opponents, community, etc. - all of which are in the sporting tradition.
This difference might seem abstract, but it is fundamental and is the reason why only a few games are being accepted as true electronic sports. In contrast, any competitive game can be a skill game: Bejeweled, Cake Mania or Trivial Pursuit, to name a few real examples.
Personally, I have nothing against skill games. Or against betting or gambling. They are all activities which a responsible adult should be able to practice freely. The protection of minors, however, must be a priority and these businesses have quite substantial problems in avoiding their infiltration, in particular skill video gaming platforms.
The protection of minors must be a priority and these businesses have quite substantial problems in avoiding their infiltration...
It is common knowledge in Spain that several underage members of the FIFA scene are competing on Virgin Gaming and some clubs have even promoted their activity, which points to an immense lack of responsibility on the part of these organisations. An extreme case: a famous FIFA player alerted me to the fact that the winner of ESWC 2010, Astank, at only 13 years of age, was not only playing on Virgin Gaming but that he also holds several fake accounts. Sure enough, the profile of a French player with the nickname Astank and club mythiX tag does indeed appear on the Virgin page. Of course it could be a different person posing as him, but it's still worrying.
To be fair, Virgin has a difficult task in verifying the identity of its players. After all, this is the internet, where lying about one’s own identity is inherent to the medium. But as an e-sports lover, the prospect of serious problems being caused in the e-sports scene through the popularisation of the skill games model really frightens me. We have all been met with incomprehension at some time whenever we explained that playing a certain video game can be a sport. Having to justify in addition that we have nothing to do with gambling or betting is just a bit too much.
Afterthought: Reasons not to worry
Applying the skill games model to competitive titles such as FIFA and others shows a fundamental flaw: everybody thinks they might win a hand of poker, but almost nobody would bet their money against a NesTea in StarCraft 2 or a cooller in Quake. So in the long run, this business model is irrelevant. Publishers be warned.
Sergi "Sir_G" Mesonero
