Hyper Jam is a game about action sports.
Esports is a form of competition using video games. These days it's a multi-million dollar industry, many different games to play in many different genres, gigantic money pots, major corporations partnering with this or that team for this or that reason. That kind of thing.
The biggest problem esports faces are that it is lame. Point blank. I get a lot of hate for saying that as I have been involved in esports for twenty years in some form or another and no one likes to be told that their kid isn't pretty, but here we are. I believe esports as we know it exists in a timeline where Dogtown never showed up to an event. Let me back up.
In the mid-seventies skateboarding was where esports was in the early 2000s. In the sixties, skateboarding had taken a sharp turn in popularity from being a thing surfers did when the waves were low to being a novelty thing kids did on the weekends who could afford a skateboard and was brave enough to ride it.
By the seventies, skateboarding had become a full-blown phenomenon. Parents didn't understand it but it had the youth market on lock. Business was making money on the mass creation of boards, media was making money on the coverage, and the local infrastructure was making money on direct sales.
The problem was that everyone making money were parents, who as I mentioned earlier didn't understand skateboarding. They just understood it made money, which is all that mattered. So the question became, "How do we make more money?"
The answer was competition, and for you young ones getting into marketing take note that whenever you are in a meeting focused on how to drive sales of any product, the laziest person in the room will always pitch a competition. It's the easiest way to get all potential consumers in the same place, spike sales, drive brand, and control the narrative.
The problem with pitching competition is that if they don't naturally compete for your product then it is not worth fighting over, but if they are engaging with your product there is a reason they want to. It's marketings job to understand why, not to fabricate why.
But this was the seventies and business ethics wouldn't exist for another two hundred years so skateboarding businesses said:
"Ok, well skateboarding looks like a sport. It is definitely a physical activity, anyway. Problem is there doesn't seem to be any rules to it like Baseball and Football. It looks like the kids just get on the board and flippy-floop around for no other reason than just to do it. Let's create a set of rules, and uniforms, and rankings, and structured tournaments. Let's pull them out of our ass. But let's also offer lots of money to keep the children interested and validate the activity for parents. Who dosen't care about money?"
The tournament system was a flop that neutered everything fun about the skateboarding. The rules they made up only allowed certain movements to count, the uniforms were copied from professional sports at the time, garish jerzeys with numbers emblazoned on them so announcers could tell the audience that #24 did a flippy-floop, and their tournaments were mechanical affairs that did not contain any semblance of the raw energy or creative freedom that made skateboarding what it was. The system made skateboarding, lame. Such is life.
Then one day a crew of skaters from southern California showed up to one of these tournaments. When the tournament organizers asked who they were and who their coach was they responded that their crew was called Dogtown and their coach was a guy by the name "Eat a Dick."
They were offered jerseys to wear, to which they replied, "Nah, we good. They look itchy." When it was their turn to compete they went out there and did wild moves that were illegal but looked dope as shit, they utilized terrain that wasn't even part of the official course, and basically just did whatever they wanted to do.
They got disqualified until the organizers noticed the crowd going wild, then they won the tournament. Go figure. From that moment on skateboarding was allowed to grow organically. Business accepted what they didn't understand but could still profit on, and over time Skateboarding was allowed to figure out who it was.
Turns out it was never a competition, but an expression of self, using the environment as a canvas.
So yeah, esports exists in a reality where the Dogtown of esports never showed up, where the business was never proven wrong, and where the young talent outsiders were all driven away because the machine never gave esports a chance to prove themselves on the big stage or to grow up young and wild.
Tony Hawk was a second gen member of that Dogtown movement, he is fifty+, he still skates at a pro level, has a son named Riley Hawk that rips out of his mind, and just taught his daughter to drop into a pipe. Years after skateboarding's wild phase, it grew up and is doing just fine.
But who knows, maybe the Dogtown of esports is right around the corner. Time will tell.
Shouts to information, love is here hate is over there, be over here. Rip TB rip TC rip Tall-T. Get out there and do the great thing that makes you happy, you, specifically. We got your back. Also Jobs.
The Protoculture Mixtape: Issue: People: Spur
