Video games are being seen in a different light with the new phenomenon in competitive gaming known as e-sports, where games are played and at a competitive level and watched by the masses without leaving the comfort of their own homes.

There is a new medium that is changing the way that fans are approaching video games as a whole with the ever growing popularity of live streaming websites, the most notable of which being twitch.tv. Recently the phenomenon has grown to a new echelon with the current popular competitive online game League of Legends.

In League of Legends players are on teams of five and the basic objective is to win the game by destroying the opposing team’s base.

There are details that complicate that simple premise of course, including over 100 in-game champions for players to choose from that fit into different roles that can make or break a solid team composition. The game has a number of diverse ways to tackle strategies that make it interesting to watch and play as well as demanding a great degree of player skill, which alone can turn the tide of games.

The game has grown on the professional side to garner worldwide attention, with tournaments for millions of dollars fought for by organized teams that, with corporate sponsorships, go to such lengths as living together in order to practice the game night and day together.

Recently the most popular North American squad, Team SoloMid Snapdragon, picked up 17-year-old wunderkind Søren “Bjergsen” Bjerg from Europe to join their team. The break of this news shot to the top of popular general interest site Reddit in under three minutes — faster than Barack Obama’s Ask Me Anything post during last year’s American presidential election.

After the announcement of his move to North America, Bjergsen took to Twitch and set up a livestream of him playing League of Legends, something many pro players do, gaining up to 80,000 viewers at once.

This session is just the most recent example in what has been an evolution in how people look at entertainment. People could easily be playing the game themselves but instead join in to watch a high-skill player stream for up to 14 hours a day.

There is more to enjoy from games than just simply playing them — similar to how amateur basketball players often watch the NBA for the increased excitement of seeing a seasoned pro take the court.

However, there is more to the streaming culture of video games than the professional competitive side. There are plenty of people who will watch all kinds of other games from Super Mario Bros. to World of Warcraft for a variety of reasons.

One central aspect is the personality provided from the voice-over of the person playing. Instead of just being a walk-through of the game, these playthroughs become their own form of entertainment. The player dictates how entertaining the viewing is by either turning it into a comedy show of sorts, like the popular YouTube series Game Grumps, or by looking to the player for information that is otherwise not well known regarding the game.

Some people will go to the streams just to see a game played by an interesting personality because they don’t play but are still interested in the hobby.

This is especially true for games from the horror genre, which people watch to see the player’s reactions. Often these viewers look to streams because to play the game themselves would be too much to handle yet they’d still like to experience it in some way.

Gaming is opening itself to a whole new realm of people, who will sit down to watch a game of League of Legends like any other sport without having any prior experience with the game. There are plenty of reasons to watch rather than just playing and, with Twitch’s 44 million unique users, people are certainly hopping aboard this new entertainment form that is unlike any other. For streamers it is becoming a full time job, with high viewer counts and ad revenue providing financial support to do what they love.

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Graphic: Cody Schumacher/Graphics Editor