E-sport, phenomenality and affect

Abstract

This essay takes as its focus the phenomenality of broadcast professional videogaming, or electronic sport (e-sport) – understood as how complex processes in high-level gaming are organised as to become accessible to viewer consciousness through the technologies and techniques – or technics – of broadcast. I argue that the technics of broadcast e-sport creates the capacity for viewers to discriminate subtle variations in play and as such, become affected in particular ways through watching. This fleshes out current understandings of e-sport as a significant part of modern gaming’s “attention economy.” Through the description and analysis of four examples, I contend that the technics of broadcast e-sport work to channel affect: ordering our understanding of the temporally fine-grained and complex moments of expert play, as well as shaping viewers’ own embodied states in watching particular matches.