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Professor Lu Zhouxiang has written a highly informative and accessible account of how what we today call "esports" has emerged at the intersection of digital gaming cultures, streaming media and traditional sports. The global international reach and the full variety of video gaming is for the first time combined into a holistic, historical overview on these carefully researched chapters. Any reader, from a student to an expert, will find something new to learn from this book – including accounts of gaming technologies, as well as of the social, cultural, commercial and legal developments that have been underlying the explosive growth of the competitive gaming scene.

- Frans Mäyrä, Professor,

Director of the Centre of Excellence in Game Culture Studies, Tampere, Finland

Lu Zhouxiang provides a comprehensive history of competitive gaming, from the early days of video game history and such things as the Intergalactic Spacewar Olympics, TV Powww, and the Gremlin Girls, to the global, high-stakes, multi-billion-dollar eSports world of today and the obstacles and challenges it faces. Zhouxiang traces how eSports arose after decades of gaming contests and championships, revealing the roots of competitive gaming in the 1970s and 1980s, its blossoming in the 1990s, and its formalization into the eSports organizations of the present day. An indispensable book for anyone interested in the growth of competitive video gaming, and highly recommended.

- Mark J. P. Wolf, Professor,

Concordia University Wisconsin, USA

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