I really enjoyed Taylor’s book. A lot of her discussion on the growth of e-sports reminds me of some of the growing pains experienced by baseball in the late nineteenth century, especially some of the difficulties that come with such a decentralized format of sport. For all of the regimentation that comes with bureaucratic leagues, bodies like the KeSPA seem to be fairly necessary to grow a decentralized, ad hoc sport into a viable, moneymaking enterprise. Her first chapter is titled “Playing for Keeps,” which is also the title of a groundbreaking book about the professionalization of baseball in the late 1800s. I don’t know if the use of the same title was intentional, but if so, it seems apt.

Taylor convincingly argued that competitive gaming falls under the definition of “sport.” While an individual’s position in this argument probably mostly depends on his or her definition of sports, Taylor’s identification of the complexity of players’ interactions with their equipment and the computerized game structure stemming from their own bodies was quite convincing for me. As she states: “In the same way that basicas like dribbling or throwing a ball have to be ingrained into the very physicality of the sports player, computer games similarly require a deep internalization of moves, and their mastery, for the highest-level play to occur” (p. 39).

I also enjoyed Taylor’s identification of public arcades as a crucial component of the fighting game scene. That the arcade scene supported lower barriers of entry, much like Asian gaming cafes, seems to have been crucial in the development of a “more racially and ethnically diverse set of players” (p. 131). This seems to raise questions about potential changes to the fighting game scene now that arcades and other public gaming spaces have largely disappeared from the U.S. (At least I assume they have, but perhaps someone can correct me if I’m wrong.)