Participatory Culture in E-Sports Communities in Russia and CIS

The work is devoted to the eSports industry and the communities that are developing around it in Russia and the CIS. The popularity of e-sports is growing every year, prize pools are increasing up to several million dollars, sports teams are opening e-sports units, attracting new investments from areas not directly related to either e-sports or the gaming industry. The Ministry of Sports of the Russian Federation in June 2016 recognized eSports as the official sport.. Now the industry is in the process of transformation from concept of the leisure gaming to the professional gaming. The work considers how entertaining computer games are reincarnated into the practice of "serious game" and sports activity. This process does not go in an easy way. On the one hand, e-sports can be attributed to an unusual branch of the game culture, where there is only a small group of people. However, the growth of this group claims the opposite. Electronic sport is based on the complex interrelationship of many actors. E-sports cannot be fully described only through title games, descriptions to games, or only by watching the participants, cannot be based on formal, institutionalized parts. The essence of e-sports is only through the analysis of the relationship of all of the above.