Gardens, not arenas: E-sports and the Narrowing of Videogame Culture
There’s a strange sort of dissonance in the way we as a society talk about videogames; in both the watercooler moments, the newspapers and in the policies we craft. For a medium that spans genres, aesthetics, and experiences —from quiet and introspective narrative experiments, to chaotic sandbox worlds where you strap a rocket to a cow— the public discourse has seemingly narrowed to a single point: e-sports. Competitive, performative, and relentlessly optimized, e-sports have become the de facto shorthand for what games «are» and the lens which society views gaming through. And that’s a big problem.
This isn’t a critique of e-sports as practice; just to be clear about that. There are positive and wholesome aspects to e-sports. This is not about that. This is a critique of e-sports cultural dominance, how it has become a teeny tiny behemoth that casts a shadow thrice or even four times its size. In reality, while e-sports are merely a sliver of the gaming landscape, it has become the face of gaming in media, policy, and public discourse. The result is a flattening of what games can be, and who games are for. It reduces games and what games can be. It reduces who the player can be.
Your grandma plays
The majority of people who play games don’t do so competitively or in an e-sports setting. They don’t train for tournaments nor stream their matches. The majority of people play to relax, to connect, to explore. They play alone, or with their friends, or with random matchups online. They play to feel something, they play to distract themselves from what they are feeling, and they play because they’re bored while waiting for the washing machine to finish. But when e-sports become the default «idea» of what playing videogames is, these forms of play are become invisible; less legitimate, less serious, less real. Just… less.
This narrowing isn’t accidental. It’s part of a broader sportification of games, one that imports the values of traditional sports —competition, hierarchy, masculinity— into a medium that once promised something more. E-sports culture often mirrors the worst of sports culture: toxic behavior, exclusion, and especially a fetishization of performance. Not to mention the commercialization and capitalist mindset that follows sports, be they physical or digital. This all closes the gates to those who don’t, or won’t, or can’t play by those rules. Playing games becomes something that only has value when you place at the top of the leaderboard. It is not something you do for its own value. It becomes sport.
What gets lost by this is, well, everything else that games can be. Narrative. Ambiguity. Care. Games that don’t ask you to win, but to witness, to “be”. Games that don’t reward mastery, but vulnerability. Games that don’t perform, but rather invite to quiet reflection
We need to reclaim the full spectrum of play. That means opposing the idea that games must be competitive to be meaningful. It means making space for games that are slow, strange, and unmarketable. It means recognizing that the future of games doesn’t lie in stadiums and championships, but rather in livingrooms, subwayrides, basements, and browser tabs.
E-sports isn’t the enemy. I want to be clear about that. But it isn’t the whole story either. Not by a longshot. And if we let e-sports define what games are, we lose the chance to imagine what they could be.
Couches, pizzas and unwinding
And yet, most of the play that happens in so-called “e-sports games” isn’t e-sports. It’s social. It’s cooperative. It’s messy and unstructured, it’s casual. Think of couch co-op sessions, late-night raids in Destiny 2, or the digital friendships and bonds of an MMO guild. Think Ibelin and Starlight, and realise that **that** was the polar opposite of e-sports. These are not performances. They are shared experiences. They are play in the fullest sense of the word.
Johan Huizinga, in *Homo Ludens*, described play as a voluntary activity, outside ordinary life, imbued with meaning. And Roger Caillois warned of the dangers of agon—competitive play—dominating other forms of play like mimicry, chance, or vertigo. E-sports, in its current form, is pure, unfiltered and uninhibited agon. It’s play stripped of ambiguity, of softness, of imagination.
The big picture
The cultural dominance of e-sports is not just a matter of visibility—it’s a matter of framing. When institutions, media outlets, and even schools and government make out e-sports as the be all end all of gaming, they devalue other forms of play. This has real consequences. The whole house of cards is built around performance metrics and the idea that being skilled is all that matters. Public understanding of games becomes synonymous with the sports-spectacle. And in that process... the quieter, the stranger, the more intimate aspects of gaming are pushed even further into the shadows.
This is particularly troubling when we consider the huge diversity of players and playstyles that exist outside the e-sports sphere. Games been a refuge for those who don’t fit into traditional boxes for ages; queer players, neurodivergent players, those who find joy in exploration rather than domination; the list goes on. When the dominant narrative becomes one of competition and conquest, these players are left out of the story. Or worse, they are told that their way of playing isn’t valid; They're not true "gamers".
There’s also a troubling gender dynamic to consider. E-sports, like traditional sports, often reinforces a narrow form of masculinity. The aggressive, stoic, dominant alpha male. The strong men of sports. This creates a culture where toxicity is not just tolerated, but seen as part of the game. Hell, sometimes even celebrated. It’s no coincidence that many of the most visible e-sports communities have struggled with harassment, gatekeeping, and exclusion. When games are framed as arenas, it’s easy to forget that they can also be gardens, stages, libraries, or even sanctuaries. Playgrounds rather than octagons.
Hope at play
But it’s not all bleak, there is hope. The rise of indie games, narrative experiments, and community-driven projects shows that alternative visions of play are not only possible, they’re thriving. Games like Journey, Night in the Woods, and Spiritfarer offer experiences rooted in emotion, connection, and reflection. They remind us that games can be about care, not conquest, about presence, not performance. It’s just that these games tend to drown in the static and noise of the e-sports centered discourse and the AAA games’ promotional machinery that throws money at every problem.
Even within the realm of multiplayer games, there are countless examples of social play that resist the e-sports mold. Just think of the collaborative chaos of Overcooked, the shared storytelling of Dungeons & Dragons-inspired RPGs, or the quiet solidarity of a Destiny 2 fireteam. These are games that target cooperation, collaboration, not competition. They build bonds rather than aim for the leaderboards, even if there are elements of agon involved.
As I’ve said, it’s important to recognize that e-sports is not inherently «bad». For many, it offers community, purpose, and even joy. The problem arises when it becomes the only story we tell about games. When every game is evaluated by its competitive viability, we lose sight of the medium’s full potential. We forget that play is not a monolith—it’s a spectrum.
The Plurality of Play
Huizinga’s concept of the “magic circle” reminds us that play is a space apart from ordinary life, governed by its own rules and meanings. When that space is taken over by market logic and performance metrics, it stops being play in the fullest sense. Caillois warned us of this too: when agon takes over, when competition becomes the only mode of engagement, play loses its plurality. It becomes one-dimensional.
To reclaim that plurality, we must broaden our discourse, the way we talk about games, gamers and gaming. We must celebrate games that are slow, strange, and subversive. We must support creators who challenge the status quo and aren’t affraid to experiment (and fail). And we must make space for players who find meaning not in winning, but in wandering.
This isn’t about rejecting e-sports. It’s about opposing the idea that e-sports is all there is. It’s about insisting -about fighting tooth and claw- that games are so much more than digital arenas. They are poems, rituals, conversations. They are messy, emotional, and infuriating. And that, too, is play.