Esports athletes gear up for Commonwealth Games

Gamers have flexed their finger muscles and grey matter in the battle to find New Zealand’s first Commonwealth esports athletes.

The final round of qualifying for the EBlacks national team played out online on Thursday night from homes around the country and a purpose built Auckland studio inside Sky Tower.

Esports will be a pilot event at the 2022 Commonwealth Games in Birmingham with aspirations to becoming a full medal discipline at the 2026 Commonwealth Games.

Three different esports titles will be contested by eight nations at the International Convention Centre in Birmingham in a showcase of the rapidly expanding discipline.

There will be eFootball an online version of a football match; Dota 2 a battle arena game in which teams destroy the opposition’s structures while protecting their own; and Rocket League a point-scoring game that is a combination of football and cars.

Under-30-year-olds were the main spectators of esports and E-Sports Federation New Zealand chief executive officer Jonathan Jansen could see why the traditional sporting events wanted to be aligned.

Fans fill an esports arena.
Photo: (Flickr user BagoGames CC BY 2.0)

“It’s not necessarily very important for esports to be included in the sports world I think probably more the contrary is that the Commonwealth and the Olympics need esports more than esports needs that ecosystem,” Jansen said.

There will be an open category and a women’s category for each title at the Commonwealth Esports Championships.

Amateur players, who game outside of their day job, and those who get paid to play will do battle side-by-side.

Jansen said the new pathway, that also looked towards the 2032 Olympics, was not just about the athletes.

“It’s actually more important for their parents and the public to see esports for the first time in a realm they are more familiar with.

“For esports athletes this isn’t the pinnacle event, they each have their own individual disciplines with their own world championships that they all aspire to but this is a rare opportunity for them to compete to represent their country.”

Aidan Young grew up playing rugby before switching to football after playing the game online.
Photo: 123rf.com

Former Otago age-group rugby representative Aidan Young, also known as Azylu is one of New Zealand’s top eFootball players.

The 22-year-old last night went head-to-head with Josh King, as known as JMKKing, in a small soundproof room at LPL studios on the second floor of Sky Tower – in a final watched on television by thousands.

The AFC Bournemouth fan only started playing football in real life after first giving it a go in gaming.

Young has been playing competitive esports since he was 16 but never imagined he would be on the cusp of representing New Zealand.

“I didn’t think it would get this far and I’m kinda glad it did because [esports] is something that does engage people. Not everyone is built for sports not everyone can play sports whether that be if you have a disability or you just don’t enjoy it or you’ve just got other passions.

“People love computers, people love video games and I think it’s beautiful that they’re adding this component because if chess is a sport why can’t esports.”

King, a 22-year-old from South Auckland, grew up playing on a football field but switched to the online version of the game.

He had a tip for those who would be new to watching esports when it was part of the Commonwealth Games.

“Don’t try and think of it as actual sports, I know that’s the comparison that always gets made, try and see it as its own thing and keep an open mind when watching along.”

For all of the differences between esports and traditional sporting codes – there were parallels.

F1 drivers and esports athletes are said to have a few things in common.
Photo: PHOTOSPORT

Jansen likened gamers’ reaction times to that of a Formula 1 driver and the hours of practice put in the same as any other sport.

High Performance Sport New Zealand is backing the country’s first esports high performance programme to help better understand what makes an elite esports athlete.

“For the last 100 years we’ve been refining exactly what an elite rugby athlete looks like but for esports we’re really at the beginning of that journey which is exciting for us because you look at the 1920 Olympics and you compare any event to the current day Olympics and it is just night and day in terms of the performance a lot of that is due to high performance structures,” Jansen said.

“What the high performance programme is going look like for our athletes this year is starting to take baseline psychometric testing and understanding what sort of skills do you need to excel in esports.

“They’re needing to be able to be accurate within pixel perfect, which is the width of a human hair, and so being able to make a decision quickly, react and then have that mind muscle connection to move to the particular part on the screen, how important are all of those things controlling your heart rate, breathing, adrenaline, there’s a lot of physiological aspects to high performance esports which we’re wanting to explore.”

E-Sports Federation New Zealand president Conor English said there were a number of informal players in New Zealand, who game at home and with friends but now those players were becoming aware of the pathways they could follow.

The Commonwealth Esports Championships on 6 and 7 August will build momentum for esports, according to English.

“Having an EBlacks team at the Commonwealth Games should raise the awareness and excitement of the whole esporting opportunity that there is for New Zealanders and I think we’ll get even higher participation rates and particularly high participation rates in competitions that we run across New Zealand.”

But before Birmingham, the New Zealand athletes will take part in global online qualifiers – and if they can place in the top eight teams or top 16 individuals they will make it to the Commonwealth Esports Championships.

English was cautiously optimistic about how New Zealand will rank on the world stage.

“We’ve got some very good players, there is a bell curve of players if you talk to someone like me, I’m totally and utterly hopeless at esports. What’s great about having the international competition at the Commonwealth level we are going to test ourselves against the other countries.”