A lot of the discussion we've had regarding the meta has been in the context of games commenting on and impacting games, but I feel like with regards to e-sports the opposite is a lot more interesting.
One of the more interesting aspects of E-Sports for me is the personality inherent to aspects of the game by nature of its presentation. In football, the ball itself doesn't really have any defining character trait, you don't associate players with the ball. This isn't true of E-Sports. In a lot of competitive games, the tools (characters) that competitors use have a significant existence outside of the context of the competition, context that can come to define competitors. I think some of my favorite examples of this are Tokido, one of Japan's gods of street fighter and his character Akuma and CaptainZack, a top smash player from Georgia. Both players have come to have their personalities and presence outside of the game intrinsically linked to their character.
A lot of iconic moments in competitive gaming come from the game itself. After finishing a set with Akuma's super, raging demon, Tokido posed like the character as the game ended. CaptainZack had a short burst of fame for doing the taunts Bayonetta does in game after winning matches. In both cases, characteristics of the game imprint themselves on real life in a way that can't happen in any other medium. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UMnQA4028II https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w4FnFJ7GbSc
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