Rituals and Stereotypes

Esports is a relatively new part of popular culture. While gaming has been popular since the early 80s, esports have really just started to come around in the last decade. This does not mean that it doesn’t have its share of rituals and stereotypes however. As far as gamers go, there are plenty of stereotypes, then even more specific ones once you get into the realm of esports.

Rituals of esports would include things like live streaming and performing for an audience. Most people who are good at games such as League Of Legends or Starcraft 2 are incredibly popular streamers who have on average 30,000+ people watching them every time they get on to stream. The most popular site for streaming is Twitch.tv a website dedicated to epsorts and gaming streams.

Another ritual you will find among the better players in esports is mastery. Mastery refers to mastering whatever aspect of the game you are good at or specific characters in that aspect. Take Legue of Legends for example. There are five different roles to fill: Carry,mid-lane, support, top-lane and jungle. There are many different characters that can fill any of these rolls. Someone who has mastery of any of these roles knows every aspect of it and how to react to anything that would happen in that role. Dandy for example, is the jungle player for this years world champions Samsung White. He has completely mastered the role of jungle and is the best in the world at the role.

Stereotypes are going to be present wherever you go. Everything is stereotyped for something. One major stereotype of esports is a racial one and that is that Koreans are the best at the games. This isn’t the only stereotype but it is the most prevalent in esports. The thing is however, its not exactly wrong as the four teams in the League of LEgends world finals where all Korean teams,

Icons

For my three contemporary icons I have chosen Zombies, Marvel, and Playstation. These are three things you see everywhere today. Marvel movies are some of the biggest blockbusters out there. Playstation is one of the three major consoles in the gaming market. And Zombies, you just can’t get away from zombies today. All three of these are huge in today's popular culture.

Marvel, one of the biggest comic book publishers and now one of the biggest and best movie studios. They pump out multiple amazing releases every year. One of their latest films, Guardians of the Galaxy, is one of my all time favorite movies. Each year they bring in major dollars from people flocking to see their newest movie.

Playstation is one of the three major gaming consoles on the market today. The other two being the Xbox one and the Wii-u, as long as you don’t count the PC as a gaming console. Gaming is getting bigger and bigger each year with more people playing games now than ever before. The playstation 4 alone has sold over 10 million units and does not show any signs of stopping any time soon. as a huge gamer myself, I see this as one of the biggest Icons out there.

And then we have zombies. Where to begin with zombies, they are just everywhere in popular culture today. It seems every shooter game has some kind of zombie mode put into it, even if it doesn't fit the game. We have comedy movies about zombies such as Zombieland and Fido or more serious ones like 28 days later. Even one of the most popular TV shows today is about zombies in The Walking Dead. You just can’t escape the zombie apocalypse no matter what media you look at.

Popular Culture Artifact.

      Popular Culture is a very broad term. It refers to anything that is popular or well known during any specific time. By definition, popular culture is the combined tastes of ordinary people, not the educated elite. Take today's pop culture, some of the most popular things today are shows like Game Of Thrones, Breaking Bad or The Walking Dead. Weather or not you like to be a part of pop culture, it is always relevant to you.

      In business, you need to know about what is trending. If you don't, you will be far behind your competition. I am going into the video game industry once I'm out of college and if I don't keep up on popular culture then I stand no chance. While it is not always the case, it helps to know what is popular and why. If certain mechanics in a game are becoming more and more popular, its probably because people like them. For example, the Batman: Arkam series combat system has been seen spreading to more and more games recently. It is an incredibly fun and responsive system. Of course, in the game industry you can't just take a mechanic and expect no one to call you out on it, you need to take it and change it a bit, make it yours through innovating it in some way. Shadow Of Mordor did this by making it seamless to transition between range and melee combat, making everything flow smoothly.

    A pop culture "artifact" is a symbol of something popular at the time. It is something most people will recognize on sight without being explained. Twitter, Facebook, Google, these are things everyone knows and can identify just based on their logos. I chose something that is still incredibly popular, but not quite as high as those. I went with the Heisenberg drawing from Breaking Bad. Breaking Bad was a massively popular show during its run and I still see people who are going back to watch it or just starting to watch it now that its all on Netflix. I chose this because Breaking Bad was huge to my friends, family and myself. The show was one of the most popular shows of all time and it has been referenced and parodied over and over again both in media like TV shows and commercials and on the internet on forums or art sites. It such a recognizable part of the show that I felt it makes for a good pop culture artifact.