EP50: Don’t hate the player (ft. Alexander Lee)

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.

——————-FURTHER READING AND LISTENING——————

• Check out Alexander’s work at Digiday, including his take on holding companies as the future of esports and the competition between traditional and esports. Also, be sure to read his piece in The Nation on endemic exploitation within e-sports.Plus, visit his website to see more of his work and his media appearances.
• Learn more about Jay’s Smash Bros. coach, Dabuz, and book a coaching session with him at Metafy. And check out his YouTube channel and team.

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—————————-CREDITS—————————-

Darts and Letters is usually hosted and edited by Gordon Katic. This week, our lead producer Jay Cockburn hosted. Our managing producer is Marc Apollonio. David Moscrop is our research assistant and wrote the show notes.

Our theme song and music was created by Mike Barber, our graphic design was created by Dakota Koop, and our marketing was done by Ian Sowden.

This episode had support from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council. It is was part of a wide project about the emerging politics of video games housed at UBC with advice from Lennart E. Nacke at the University of Waterloo.

Darts and Letters is produced in Toronto, which is on the traditional land of Mississaugas of the Credit, the Anishnabeg, the Chippewa, the Haudenosaunee and the Wendat Peoples.