Masters of Disruption: How the Gamer Generation Built the Future [33]

Part IV: Player Vs. Player, the rise of eSports.

This post is part of a yearlong project I’m serializing exclusively in my newsletter, Disruptor. It’s a follow-up to my first book, Masters of Doom: How Two Guys Built an Empire and Transformed Pop Culture, and it’s called Masters of Disruption: How the Gamer Generation Built the Future. You can find the table of contents, as it unfolds, here. To follow along, please subscribe below. Thanks!

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Hello there Disruptor readers. I hope you’ve been enjoying my Masters of Disruption series here in my newsletter. So far, we’ve traced the evolution of the Meh-taverse, spent some time John Carmack talking about his “shortcuts to the future,” and followed the promise and perils of virtual reality.

Today, I’m starting Part IV, which is devoted to the birth and boom eSports. I’ve been writing about this since the mid-90s, and it’s mind-blowing to see how far the culture and industry have come. In the coming weeks, I’ll revisit some my earlier pieces and catch up with some of the key players. Next time, I’ll be back with my first story ever on eSports from way back in 1997. Today, enjoy this vintage clip of the late Ralph Baer (subject of my next graphic novel with artist Koren Shadmi, Easy to Learn, Difficult to Master) as he inadvertently invents the Rage Quit.