Refining esports: A quantitative cartography of esports literature

While esports has received growing scholarly attention from diverse disciplines, there is no consensus of what esports is and its fundamental elements, which may potentially hinder the accumulation of its scientific knowledge. This study conducted a quantitative review of 327 peer-reviewed esports publications. By analyzing the keywords, identifying research themes of those keywords (i.e. communities), and plotting these communities on a strategic diagram, this study found evidence that esports research is in its infancy and is highly interdisciplinary. The year of the earliest esports publications and the strategic diagram demonstrates that research in esports has not matured. The analysis of the communities demonstrates that many of the research themes were related to more than one discipline. Finally, this study refines the definitions of esports by identifying its central components based on the co-word analysis and comparing it to the esports literature. Esports is a form of competitive gaming on digital platforms, involving cognitive and physical efforts from athletes and delivered through media platforms, which shares similarities with traditional sports in its evolution, including institutionalization, industry involvement, and contingent problems.