Esports, competitive video game tournaments, have risen to prominence. You can watch an Apex Legends tournament on television and the commentary might make you dizzy, with the jargon and the rapid pace, but there is no denying the skill.
Twitch and Mixer are overwhelmingly dominated by Fortnite, a loot and shoot game, to such an extent that online groups went into spasms when Fortnite took itself offline for two days (via an asteroid, which even blew up their Twitter feed) to generate some buzz for the new season. And it was already huge after Kyle "Bugha" Giersdorf won the $3 million Fortnite World Cup this summer.
Apex is rolling out Halloween characters for its upcoming event, Dracula and the Wicked Witch, among others.
This switch has been touted since the 1980s and one other prediction has come to pass - "eSports" have become the great equalizer for participants who can't play in real life.
On CNET, Jackson Ryan profiles The Quad Gods, who aren't just playing to win (though that is a driver for many), they are playing as therapy. Using the belief that since the brain doesn't need to exert control over numerous regions in the body for quadriplegics, they think they can develop unreal levels of motor control in others and beat other players without having use of their hands.
He tells the story of Sergio, paralyzed from the neck down, who used a mouth stick to produce stunning paintings using control of his facial "beyond that of a mere mortal."
Ryan has many examples. My Xbox controller won't even let me use my headset to talk into it and send chat messages, look at what this one does:
What will be interesting for the future is if this leads to ways to tell who might be similarly gifted. We now know enough science to recognize that I'll never run as fast as Usain Bolt no matter how hard I try, but could he play guitar, draw, or write as well as I do? I was a competition martial artist, but prior to those I was a barely competent wrestler and baseball player. It took time, effort, and disappointment to keep moving to different things in a hunt-and-peck fashion, but I lived in a town of 200 people (no cable, one TV channel) so I was motivated to do every sport. How many just give up because they don't know what they're good at?
Researchers helping in this effort want to get as much potential out of the nervous system as possible and that will benefit everyone, but it will also show how some can be elite in ways they never dreamed. Imagine getting "pwned" by someone using only their tongue in a video game and having to console yourself that you got beat by someone who is the Usain Bolt of League of Legends, so skilled they can outplay you with their tongue.
