Don’t Hate the Player: The World of E-Sports

Summary

On this episode of Darts and Letters, we took a personal journey into virtual sport. Listen in as guest host (and regular lead producer) Jay Cockburn gets ready to enter the world of e-sports, with a lesson in Super Smash Bros from a top player and professional coach. Find out why he won’t make it (spoiler alert: he doesn’t have that reaction time he used to); but also, find out why he might not want to make it. Unfortunately, e-sports have many of the problems that ‘real’ sports do, and some are even worse. E-sports have lower pay, more stringent IP regimes, singular corporate control, and less labour organizing. However, could things be changing? Jay talks to Alexander Lee, esports and games reporter at Digiday. He takes us through the booming world of esports: the good, the bad, the repetitive stress injuries, and what to do about it.

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Your Host

Jay Cockburn

Jay Cockburn is the lead producer on Darts and Letters. He's also produced for 99% Invisible, Spotify/Gimlet Media and before he moved to Canada he worked as a director, producer and engineer at the BBC in the UK. Jay fancies himself a writer and has a book on podcast production out, but really he just wants to write poorly researched science fiction novels and geek out on urbanism.

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