The intention of the CBS News story

Question 2 of the exam set asks you to analyze the material “The competitive world of eSports” focusing on the intention behind the CBS News story and including references to the topic, attitude, argument, and receiver.

“The competitive world of eSports” represents a video news story issued by the American network CBS News on December 14, 2014, and presented by TV anchor John Blackstone.

The topic of the story is eSports, as John Blackstone tries to track the development of the video gaming industry and the growing popularity of video games competitions among the public in South Korea and the US. The report features interviews with fans of video games competitions, organizers of the competitions, sponsors and video games players.

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John Blackstone's attitudes to eSports

First, we will look at the different attitudes. The anchor, John Blackstone, displays a curious and skeptic attitude in the way he questions those involved in eSports, or his comments regarding the growing popularity of video games competitions:

But would this Asian phenomenon translate to America? Last year, the League of Legends championship was held in Los Angeles at the home of the L.A. Lakers. It was a sellout.
[John Blackstone said,] “I think I’m too old to understand what’s going on in online gaming now.” (ll. 15-17)

“I can understand people watching a golf game,” [said Blackstone.] “I can’t understand people watching somebody play a computer game.” (ll. 20-21)

“At some point somebody came to you and said, ‘We want you to start working with gamers.’ Your guys work with Olympic athletes. Did you say, ‘Hang on a minute here’?” (ll. 60-62)

Notice how the above quotes suggest that the anchor cannot view eSports like real sports and fails to understand why they are so popular. This leads us to the conclusion that the anchor’s intention (and of the whole story) is to be slightly critical of the growing popularity of these video games competitions. Other elements

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eSports-related people's attitudes to eSports

What is also interesting to observe is the difference in attitude between John Blackstone (who is a skeptic) and those he interviews, who are somehow connected to eSports and whose arguments and attitudes are for the video gaming industry.

Fans compare eSports competitions to Super Bowl (l. 3) and consider them a sport (l. 6).

Paul Sams, COO of Blizzard, a company producing video games, argues that eSports competitions create new types of celebrities and are a good investment because they are so popular: “These people are following all these young kids that are playing videogames, and they’ve got these huge followings, and they’re signing autographs.’ And it became really evident to us that this was the beginning of something big.”” (ll. 12-14)

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