Construction on the site in South Philly— a stone’s throw from where the Flyers, Phillies, and Eagles play—will start this summer, with an expected 2021 opening date. Fusion Arena will mainly be home to the Fusion’s year-round recruitment, training, and competitions, but the arena will also host occasional outside events.
5 comments:
Getting to the end of the general description of this arena did in fact make me think that “this as an unnecessary shrine to a niche subculture”. I have never understood why people find so much enjoyment in watching other people play a video game that they could also just play, but I guess you could ask the same question to regular professional sports. And if 250 million people are watching events like this, you might as well meet the demand and design an arena for esports. And it seems that the people designing this venue have really researched what their audience will want and need. I would not have thought of sound proof gamer spaces or making sure that the audience can live stream the event. I think it is also good thinking making the venue versatile for other events besides esports, because although there are hundreds of millions of participating people, going to watch these sort of events is still pretty new in the US, so it might take a bit for this arena to be put to use for its intended event all the time.
One person don't have to be an expert of the certain kind of sport to differentiate good and bad game showing techniques. In fact, Esport is not all that special comparing to other sports like baseball or hockey. Just like all the other sports, Esport has its own unique requirements to the arena that it is being held. I am a hardcore gaming fan myself and I surely see how hardware in a studio or arena can effect audience experiences in a great scale. Currently there were quite a few good long standing stadium and arena specialized in holding Esport finals, most of them are in European scene. Adding one in Pennsylvania would definitely helps driving the local commercial potential and opens even more jobs. In a long run, Esport is an ever growing kind of sport and it is going to stay quite a while in a foreseeable future. The investment seemed much wise to me.
The industry of esports is completely foreign to me, but this article provided interesting insight. It’s interesting how the video game entertainment industry is usually a personal affair as far as I know it and arena’s like these are able to expand the world of the game to an in person event. I wonder if this will lesson the common narrative of video games as an anti social sport. Personally I think it would be really interesting to see an event at one of these arenas because of the immersion effect highlighted in this article. It seems like the difference between seeing a concert and listening to something on spotify. I like how every little thing was thought of down to the soundproof glass separating the players from the audience. I wonder if the audience can still see the players. If so I wonder what has been done to minimise distractions to the players.
This seems like such a strange idea to me and one I thought the e-sports community wouldn't take part in. I know I don't understand e-sports or the appeal that well but I personally as a sports fan find it as a harder and harder thing to understand as all these new stadiums are being built. I'm an Atlanta sports fan through and through and in the past 3 years we have had two new stadiums built and one arena go under major renovations. All I've found is that arenas have been trying to make the game-day experience more comfortable and more like home then it already was with classic stadiums. While i do see e-sports moving into popularity and promince in American sports I don't understand the appeal of it being something watched in person. They could benefit through growing their league electronically and online so that viewership gains. I just really wonder what the pageantry is like in the arena.
Being someone who is not necessarily a fan of video games, it gets extremely hard for me to fathom the amount of popularity that esports recieves as a mode of entertainment, yet it is absoultuely undeniable to fcator them as a viable and convenient form of entertainment.
One thing I beleive that espots does enable people to do is to get access to playing competitive games while being at home or other convenient places, which I feel is a huge impetus in the popularity that the concept receives. I beleive that this popularity is a direct influencer in the decision to create the afore mentioned structure.
The fact that such a structure is being built is an example of how video games are gaining ore momentum than they already possess, probably because of their ability to entertain people with very little physical work, which I feel like is a huge plus point when people think about esports.
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