Cape Town - If you ever thought that Esports is not an actual sport, think again.
In March, groups will be making their way to China to participate in the World Electronic Sports Games (WESG). Yes, it's a thing. And yes, it's harder than it sounds.
What makes this year's WESG more interesting and exciting for South Africa, is that there will be not one, but four teams who will represent our country at the games. Each team will represent a game (one for Counter Strike CS:GO, one for Dota, one for Starcraft and one for Hearthstone.
WESG is a bit like the FIFA World Cup for football, the Rugby World Cup for rugby, Tour de France for cycling or Wimbledon for tennis. However, there are a few differences.
"Esports works differently in the sense that international tournaments don’t recognise the team as a country they represent but more the players on an individual level," said Barry Louzada, from Mettlestate.
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Mettlestate is a local tournament organiser and Esports production house who were asked by world-renowned Alisports to run the African qualifiers for the competition.
South Africa has represented in Esports before but not of this magnitude. And if you think it's all about furiously tapping at a keyboard, I have news for you. Esports tournaments have their fair share of challenges too.
"Our teams performance on the international stage is hampered by a few things that make it really hard for us to be truly competitive, one of those things is latency which is the amount of time it take for the information to be sent from your machine to the game server and then to the players playing on the other side."
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Contrary to what one might think, South Africa has a large Esports following and it's recognition is just as important as any other conventional sport. It's like any other sport and career: effort, time, blood, salt - I mean, sweat - and tears go into these tournaments.
WESG promises to put Esport professional and casual players on the map. The prize pool for this tournament is $5.5 million (about a staggering R66 million).
The sponsors that will be bringing WESG to life are international companies such as Alibaba Group, Logitech, ASUS ROG to name but a few.
If placed in the top five at WESG, SA teams stand a chance to win big. And by big, I mean anything from $8000 to $800 000.
However, why pay attention if Esports is not your thing?
"I think for someone that doesn’t care about gaming to not sit up and pay attention would be the same as saying you have no interest in watching the South African Springboks or Bafana Bafana compete at the world cup. It is more about national pride and wanting to get behind our teams competing on the international stage. I’d like to challenge those that say they have no interest in gaming: in your family whether it is your child, brother or your sister, your boyfriend or girlfriend or husband or wife - someone enjoys playing games or has played games at some point in their life. Why not watch and see what it is all about try and open yourself to the possibility that this could actually be something that a loved one could make a career out of and not just from the competitive aspect of playing in these tournaments."