What's in a Name? Reflections on my Irrational Mistrust of the Online Persona

Xbox Live, harsh but fair.

Usernames, gamertags, SteamIDs, whatever you want to call them, the online pseudonym has been around since Alexander Graham Berners-Lee first tied two soup cans together and invented the internet (I think that's how it went, anyway). I'm hardly a stranger to them, mainly because you just can't do much on the net without having one, especially with the ubiquitous connectivity of today's gaming platforms. For some reason, I've always felt uneasy about the idea of being referred to or known by an internet nickname, and I can't fail to notice that others online take a very different tack on this. I thought I'd write a semi-comprehensible post here to explain my username Luddism, self-critique a little bit and give my co-bloggers the opportunity to tell me what it's like on the other side of this fence I'm pretty sure I just made up.

eSports, Can they truly compete?

These past few months I have really got into watching various eSports events on Twitch. No matter what it is, no matter whether I play the game myself I just love watching competitive gaming and it turns out that I am not alone. At any one time there will be hundreds of thousands of people viewing thousands of different channels on Twitch and various other streaming sites.

Single events consistently hit the six figure mark and it was reported by Valve that the recent Dota 2 International hit over 1 million views. This figure may have been even higher when taking into account viewers watching via TV. Competitive eSports are clearly becoming more popular as a spectator event. However, can eSports continue to grow, and will their popularity ever begin to rival that of the more conventional sports?