Project Limitations and Future Research Ideas.

LIMITATIONS

• I can only read/watch literature and content written/spoken in the English-language. There is an ridiculous amount of quality eSports content (both academic and entertainment-related) created in other regions that I would have liked to include in this project to allow for more comprehensive, comparative review.
• There is a lot more eSports literature that I did not have the time to read, given that this project was developed as part of an experimental six week research program. There is an excellent bibliography aggregated by eSports scholar T.L. Taylor that includes most North American eSports academic literature up until 2017.
• Along the same lines, every other competitive region also experiences labor issues and unchecked competitive rulings. Those regions and their regulatory bodies (for example, the competitive region in Southeast Asia [SEA] is ran and regulated mostly by Garena, a different gaming platform) likely have differing issues and deserve the same attention as Riot Games and the (NA) LCS.
• There have not been any court cases related to labor rights in eSports within the U.S. yet, meaning this project is generally based on speculative research and legal scholar forecasts. It is impossible to know exactly how a CA court would rule in any LCS contract disputes until litigation arises.

Future Research Ideas

• As eSports are a branch of gaming and "gamer" culture, there is an extensive amount of gender-based discrimination, male gender-coding, and heteronormativity/implicit homophobia within eSports spaces. If you are unaware of any of the social issues that plague gaming, briefly read up on "Gamergate" and the portal titled "Why LoL and Riot?" on this website for some quick examples. A perfect example within League of Legends eSports is the treatment of Maria "Sakuya" Creveling (previously known as "Remilia"), the first woman to play at the LCS-level and one of the most successful female eSports professionals of all time. Her career was littered with transphobic and sexist comments from the LoL community, documented in this book on "Queerness in Play" from pages 225-243.
• My reading involved looking at tons of legal eSports literature about issues from anti-trust law to copyright. Intellectual property, according to many legal scholars, is extremely complex and problematic for ownership in eSports and requires more examination. Developer IP ownership was powerful enough in court to allow Blizzard Entertainment to prevent South Korean eSports regulatory body "KeSPA" from broadcasting content despite its level of jurisdiction in the country (it is recognized by the South Korean government). If you would like to learn more about the complexity of copyright within U.S. eSports, here are two articles with excellent analysis (albeit slightly outdated): OWNING E-SPORTS: PROPRIETARY RIGHTS IN PROFESSIONAL COMPUTER GAMING and "E-SPORTS AS A PRISM FOR THE ROLE OF EVOLVING TECHNOLOGY IN INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY"