The project « Towards an ethical and inclusive practice in esports » (Esports Centers & Social Inclusion - eCSI) consists in a European collaboration supporting the development, experimentation and diffusion of an innovating territorial concept in the emerging field of esports. Esport correspond to the competitive practise of video gaming. It is sparking an extraordinary level of enthusiasm in Europe and around the world. Several key figures allow us to establish the scale of the phenomenon in Europe: 77 million regular viewers, 24 million competitors, a turnover of 209 million euro/year, 35% of rate growth for the market, ten of the largest European contests drew 784,000 viewers in 2017, and approximately 20,000 European gamers are professional gamers. In numerous European countries, esports rank among the first two activities chosen for competition, and have already gone beyond tennis financial stakes. Coming from South Korea, esports represent a dynamic industry which raises as many questions as it stimulates European societies on a cultural, sports, educational, and economic level. Nevertheless, outside national isolated initiatives, there seems to be no such things as an academic complete approach on this multidisciplinary issue, nor any coordinated actions towards an ethical and inclusive control of esports. The project is going to explore these different issues through cross research, local experimentation, and exchanges with socio-professional organisations. The project is based on three concrete commitments : 1. To write a European charter managing professional and amateur organisations (associations, clubs, or educational institutions) with a view to contributing to an ethical, inclusive, and sustainable practice of esports. 2. To create educational material within the field of esports, and to promote skills throughout a MOOC on raising awareness about esports, a pedagogical resources bank, and a game skills base. 3. To create a European university network about multidisciplinary research in esports. Spanning over thirty-six months, this project is going to mobilise around fifty participants - including students, teachers, researchers, learning engineers and professional associations from the private or public sector relating to esports - who will represent the variety of European-level dynamics and customs of this practice (Spain, Finland, France and the UK). Throughout the unfolding of the project, this task force will share its activity and make it visible thanks to eportfolios. Participants will benefit from collaborative and multidisciplinary training with four workshops organised around the following topics to enable a better grasp of the project complexity. • How do we build social bounding in the European area? • What is esports in Europe? • Esports faced with the educational values embodied by traditional sports and the issue of skills • What facilities for an ethical and inclusive practice of esports? The richness drawn from peer-learning workshops, case studies, serious games and flipped classroom will enable participants to build unprecedented knowledge on the subject – which will establish a preliminary basis for the first European scientific community on the question, as well as the production and diffusion of a corpus of educational and technical material for players, their families, clubs, local governments, educational institutions, but also professionals from the sector. The promotion of best practice, added to the objective of raising awareness about risks, will be accompanied by a certification scheme for esports centers and skills recognition via an open badge system. Throughout the production and diffusion of open-source, high-quality academic resources in multiple languages and under the form of teaching scenarios dealing with esports related questions, the project aims at contributing actively to making Europe a reference area for these emerging practices, especially regarding critical education, inclusion, regulation thanks to the promotion of best practices, or equipment sustainable management.
The project « Towards an ethical and inclusive practice in esports » (Esports Centers & Social Inclusion - eCSI) consists in a European collaboration supporting the development, experimentation and diffusion of an innovating territorial concept in the emerging field of esports. Esports correspond to the competitive practise of video gaming. It is sparking an extraordinary level of enthusiasm in Europe and around the world. Several key figures allow us to establish the scale of the phenomenon in Europe: 77 million regular viewers, 24 million competitors, a turnover of 209 million euro/year, 35% of rate growth for the market, ten of the largest European contests drew 784,000 viewers in 2017, and approximately 20,000 European gamers are professional gamers. In numerous European countries, esports rank among the first two activities chosen for competition, and have already gone beyond tennis financial stakes. Coming from South Korea, esports represent a dynamic industry which raises as many questions as it stimulates European societies on a cultural, sports, educational, and economic level. Nevertheless, outside national isolated initiatives, there seemed to be no such things as an academic complete approach on this multidisciplinary issue, nor any coordinated actions towards an ethical and inclusive control of esports. The project has explored between 2018 and 2021 these different issues through cross research, local experimentation, and exchanges with socio-professional organisations. The project was based on three concrete commitments : 1. To write a European charter managing professional and amateur organisations (associations, clubs, or educational institutions) with a view to contributing to an ethical, inclusive, and sustainable practice of esports. 2. To create educational material within the field of esports, and to promote skills throughout a MOOC on raising awareness about esports, a pedagogical resources bank, and a game skills base. 3. To create a European university network about multidisciplinary research in esports. Spanning over thirty-six months, this project has mobilized around one hundred participants - including students, teachers, researchers, learning engineers and professional associations from the private or public sector relating to esports - who represented the variety of European-level dynamics and customs of this practice (Spain, Finland, France and the UK) and impacted around 3,500 people in Europe and around the world. Participants have benefited from collaborative and multidisciplinary training with four workshops organised around the following topics to enable a better grasp of the project complexity. • How do we build social bounding in the European area? • What is esports in Europe? • Esports faced with the educational values embodied by traditional sports and the issue of skills • What facilities for an ethical and inclusive practice of esports? The richness drawn from peer-learning workshops, case studies, serious games and flipped classroom allowed the participants to build unprecedented knowledge on the subject – which has established a preliminary basis for the first European scientific community on the question, as well as the production and diffusion of a corpus of educational and technical material for players, their families, clubs, local governments, educational institutions, but also professionals from the sector. The promotion of best practice, added to the objective of raising awareness about risks, has been accompanied by a certification scheme which benefited around 200 people and by skills recognition via an open badge system. Throughout the production and diffusion of open-source, high-quality academic resources in multiple languages and under the form of teaching scenarios dealing with esports related questions, the project contributed actively to making Europe a reference area for these emerging practices, especially regarding critical education, inclusion, regulation thanks to the promotion of best practices, or equipment sustainable management.