1/ Esports will not overtake physical sports anytime soon.

2/ Worth noting the biggest crossovers are those that replicate "sports" - especially those that are visually indistinguishable - and are popular because are are no "sports"

3/ COVID will have a profound impact on the ability for "esports" to access funding, brand partnerships, distribution deals, new fans

4/ But NBA 2K + NASCAR are nearly indistinguishable, required no viewer learning (and are easy anyway), and *substitutes*

5/ CS:GO is fairly simple to get, but still requires education, clearly non-real, and isn't super easy to follow. League of Legends is very hard to understand, very fantastical, very hard to appreciate

This is very important RE: timing because future of esports isn't simulacra

6/ One of the ongoing problems is camera and production. This is often reduced to idea you can control the camera angle, but consider that watching CS:GO is like watching baseball via a helmet camera.

Even the idea there *are* camera angles is vestigial

7/ As we begin to "watch" esports in engine, you'll have the ability to just wander all over the field, not to mention find way to be consequential (e.g. Hunger Games, American Idol).

This sounds weird or bad, but mostly because our reference frame IS physical competition

8/ I mean this literally, per DMs. You will be able to just wander and track behind live players, but without them or anyone else able to see you. Whether this is appealing to you is not the point, rather, it's all the weird stuff we can do outside digital facsimile sports

'Friend' DM: "Don't use simulacra and facsimile in your tweetstorms you absolute nit"