Traditions and culture through the lens of innovation
The two main passions of Arab men are horses and falcons. Falconry is an integral part of Middle Eastern culture. Today, the cost of such a bird is from 50 thousand dollars. In modern realities, innovative ones are added to traditional entertainment — esports and drones, whose control resembles flight control of a falcon. Saudi Arabia is becoming the Mecca of cyber-tourism. At the opening of the international esports tournament, the audience was presented with a large-scale show featuring 2,000 drones. About the current development of the industry in Russia and the Middle East — Elena Skarzhinskaya, Head of the Department of Esports at Synergy University, Candidate of Pedagogical Sciences
Mikhail Novoselov
Expert, creator and head of the program on a unique method of teaching control of FPV drones, RUS GTSOLIFK :
In Russian esports, there is an official sports discipline «Technical Simulator», where competitions are held on a drone simulator. Fine motor skills are important here, so esports players learn drone control twice as fast, especially FPV drones, which have a dual purpose: sports racing and solving combat missions in the army and law enforcement agencies.
The Department of Esports at the Russian University of Sports GTSOLIFK has developed a unique training methodology for FPV drone operators. The Russian Ministry of Defense is sending military personnel, including those from its military, to train operators using this technique for 21 days, 108 hours. Since 2024, a new bachelor’s degree program «Sports training in the sport of drone racing» has been opened in the framework of the sports direction.
How is esports developing in Russia?
— Russia is the first country in the world to officially recognize esports as a sport. In addition, Russia is the first country in the world to launch an undergraduate education program for the esports industry back in 2014. For ten years now, Russia’s leading sports university has been producing such specialists.
Our country has a special way of developing the sports part, which is the tip of the iceberg of this industry. In my opinion, the media hype surrounding Alisher Usmanov’s $100 million investment in Virtus Pro in 2016 held back the development of Russian esports. There has been talk that the esports industry is an attractive area for investors and soon esports will earn more than classic sports, once you have time to invest money and wait for a profit. But in reality, the biggest revenues in the esports ecosystem, of course, are from video game developers and publishers, because this is their business.
What types of ecosystems can be distinguished in esports?
— There is no single e—sports in the world — it is a combination of publishers’ marketing strategies. All video game developers in the context of esports can be roughly divided into three large groups.
- The first group (and it is quite numerous) are IT companies that develop video games for leisure and do not develop games in esports disciplines, that is, they do not add a special opportunity to compete on equal terms.
- The second group includes companies with a mixed strategy: the main business and a key share of their products-
They are also leisure video games, but they also write sporty games. Ubisoft, in particular, can be attributed to this category. In the pool of its products, only Rainbow Six and Just Dance can be called esports games. In addition to leisure games, Valve also develops and publishes the esports games Counter-Strike and Dota2, which are the most popular in Russia. And the main business of this company is built not so much around games as around the site where they are held — the digital distribution service for Steam games and software. - And the third group includes companies whose business is based on esports. They are the ones who produce only sportized games. They not only develop and publish video games, but also organize esports tournaments, that is, they fully build ecosystems. An example is Riot Games, the creators of League of Legends and Valorant.
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What is the main fundamental difference between esports and gaming?
— An esports game is a game where a person with a person or a team with a team can compete on equal terms. The key difference is that the game must have a balance at the level of the program code. In pure esports, a player cannot come to a competition with some of his game items pumped in advance, and the level of randomness must also be minimized. Of course, esports games are more difficult to write than simple leisure games.
Can esports be classified as intellectual games?
— I am the person who introduced the conceptual block «intellectual sports» into sports science in 2005, 20 years ago. These are the types where the result of sports activity is determined by solving a problem (the rules of this sport) with the predominant use of intelligence and is carried out through «mental action with the dominant role of the conscious over the unconscious.» My dissertation was called «Organizational and pedagogical aspects of the development of creative abilities through intellectual sports,» and it touched on esports in fragments. At that time, everyone wanted to throw tomatoes at me, but then the international federation of intellectual sports was created, which today includes about a billion players. Intellectual sports are recognized in the world by those sports that are included in the program of the World Intellectual Games. Since 2008, these have been coordinated by the International Mind Sports Association (IMSA). Initially, the program of these Games included four sports: chess, checkers, go, and sports bridge. Today, their membership has expanded significantly.
I began to study computer sports more closely later. From 2010 to 2014, together with Mikhail Novoselov, the current head of the Department of Theory and Methodology of Computer Sports and Applied Computer Technologies at RSUFKSMiT, we conducted scientific events with the active participation of the Russian Computer Sports Federation. In 2015, she participated in the creation of documents on the recognition of computer sports as a sport.
I didn’t come to esports for money or high-tech-
pom has rather become a logical continuation of my activity, because all intellectual sports have begun to be digitized. When my son was little, I wanted him to be a chess player, but I saw CS 1 constantly on the screen.6. There were two ways: to ban or to study. By choosing the second one, I realized that esports is the sport of the information society and is most developed in those countries where the digital economy has been created. As I immersed myself in the process, I saw that there was a training process, teamwork, a community, and I saw the content and social interest.
We have developed a definition of esports, the conceptual block that is currently represented in the Rules of this sport: «Computer sports is a type of competitive activity and special practice of preparing for competitions based on computer and/or video games, where the game provides an environment for the interaction of control objects, ensuring equal conditions for human-to-human or team-to-team competition.»
The IOC recently announced a partnership with the National Olympic Committee of Saudi Arabia to host the first Olympic Esports Games in 2025 in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. How has the interaction between esports and the Olympic movement developed?
— For the first time, in 2009, at the 13th Congress, the IOC drew attention to the video game industry, noting the importance of partnering with it to promote the international Olympic movement.
In 2018, a major esports forum was held at the Olympic Museum in Lausanne, after which the IOC and the Global Association of International Sports Federations (GAISF) created an Esports and Games Liaison Group (ELG). In the following years, it was ELG that determined which technical developments could be integrated into the Olympic movement. In 2020, ELG provided recommendations to international Olympic sports federations on cooperation with gaming communities, focusing on digital replicas of Olympic sports and simulators. Thus, the IOC, having studied the global trends in esports, chose those video games that can be conditionally classified as sports simulators. At the same time, conditions were created for testing sportized video games on various technical platforms, from PCs to touch controller technologies, which made it possible to record physical activity indicators in a competitive environment.
In 2021, the Olympic Virtual Series (OVS) was held, which includes competitions in five sports based on video games. The marketing and production of OVS was handled by the DreamHack esports organization, and the competitions were handled by the relevant international sports federations.
Olympic Esports Week 2023 was held in 2023. The experience of holding these two events was successful and the IOC started developing a project for a separate event, the Olympic Esports Games.
Thus, video games have become part of the Olympic movement, although popular esports disciplines such as Dota 2, CS2, LoL and others have not yet entered the IOC’s orbit.
How is the esports industry developing in the world today? Which countries can be called leaders in this field today?
— Arab countries can certainly be mentioned as leaders. Abu Dhabi Gaming, a state—owned company, is actively developing its activities in the UAE today. They have created very good conditions for organizations that develop video games, and almost all the leading and even small teams have gone there. Abu Dhabi Gaming provides excellent business conditions by actually creating a hub. Everyone is in the same place and there is a «cross-pollination» of their products.
But another Gulf country, Saudi Arabia, has taken the path of developing esports itself and global leadership in this field. Less than a year ago, the two largest international esports federations, IESF and GEF, announced cooperation and created the Esports Leadership Group (ELG), headed by IOC Vice President Ng Ser Miang.
Two different World Championships will be held in Saudi Arabia in 2024.:
- World Esports Championship, Riyadh, Saudi Arabia (among the disciplines of Counter-Strike 2, Dota 2, eFootball, Mobile Legends). Features: The program will also feature women’s Counter-Strike 2 competitions and the newly created MLBB Women’s League. Participants: representatives from 130 countries).
- Esports World Cup, Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. This is club esports in 19 esports disciplines, which provides for the allocation of financial resources for multidisciplinary esports clubs. In fact, preparations are currently underway for the first-ever World Club Championship, and professional esports clubs that will receive financial support have already been identified.
So leadership is already defined in principle. As a country with great scientific potential and experience in esports, which I mentioned, we can be useful and cooperate by offering methodological and scientific developments. We have a very good expertise.
We can do scientific research, we can do the coolest educational programs in the world. Despite the fact that everyone believes that money is earned through tournaments, not through educational programs, education today is also a business. Let’s say the Saudis have created the entire infrastructure, but they do not have the content of educational programs or methodological support. They don’t have any training process support either. Science, it is absolutely applied, it can bring money. And we are really the best in the world at this, because we have been studying these processes for 10 years and we have the most expensive equipment and the best potential of scientists. And in general, Russian sports science has always been the best in the world.
I am currently working at Synergy University as the head of the Department of Esports at the Faculty of Gaming and Esports, which has 1,019 students. By completing their theses (final qualification), students prove by objective criteria that both infrastructurally and service-oriented Russian computer clubs have no competition in the world. It is also worth noting the unique ecosystem of Langame, which is a software for automating the work of computer clubs, and the largest aggregator of verified data. That’s why we know exactly the number of visitors to computer clubs, their social profile, and the size of the market as a whole.
There are also companies in our country that are engaged in media production in the esports and entertainment industries, creating unique products. For example, the Electronic Mushroom company has implemented a new technological solution — a virtual stadium in the metaverse format. This technology has proven itself well at various international events, including in the framework of the Games of the Future.
How do you see the future of Russian esports?
The situation in Russia has been difficult over the past few years. Esports, at the level of top-level sports, is developing as a club sport. But there is no growth in the number of professional clubs and, consequently, there are few places for professional employment, esports players are looking for alternatives and are leaving the sport. There is no system for holding regular competitions, but a huge number of commercial ones are held. There is no normal periodization of the training process. There are also difficulties with selection and team selection.
But I see prospects in connection with some legislative innovations. Recently, the State Duma approved in the first reading a bill granting autonomous status to professional sports leagues and ensuring their independence from politically biased decisions of international federations. Perhaps very soon, professional esports teams will start appearing in those regions that figure it out first.
What financial model can be used? Local sponsors + PPPs. Local businesses would be happy to finance the team if they saw interest from the governors. In three years, this will become the norm, I have no doubt.
There is no single e—sports in the world — it is a combination of publishers’ marketing strategies.