A couple of weeks ago I was invited to attend a NVIDIA sponsored Counter Strike: Global Offensive tournament in association with 99 damage at the Berlin Game Science Center.
CS:GO is an amazing team based sport where five terrorists try to set and explode a bomb on a bomb site (you can see sites A and B marked on the maps) while counter-terrorists try to prevent the bomb placement or defuse it. Players need to have a combination of mechanical aim/shoot skills combined with tactical insight at an incredibly high tempo. The difference between life or death in any of these games rests in a fraction of a second combined with an awareness of what is happening around the entire map. Esports are sports that are just as demanding mentally and physically as any other.
You don’t have to watch the entire video of the Dreamhack finale below but it can’t hurt to watch a couple of matches with the commentary (The walls are transparent for spectators. They aren’t for players.):
The culture around this particular game is its own and somewhat different from people who for instance play SC2 or MOBAs. Attending this tournament was a lot of fun and I got to see some high level play as well as a demonstration of case modding by a company with its own branded energy drink.