Esports March On: Nike Jumps In With Glitzy Ad While Forbes Ponders If Esports Will Be Our New Pastime

from the game-on dept

Esports continues to march down the path toward greater adoption. As we've detailed over many posts, esports had already become a cultural thing heading into 2020. But if anyone expected a regression back to IRL sports, the COVID-19 pandemic essentially cemented the cultural adoption of competitive video gaming. With even greater adoption by IRL professional sports leagues, and with many widely used social media platforms getting in the game and accelerating all of this, esports have continued to hit impressive milemarkers that showcase just how big this is all becoming.

It's not slowing down. Signs of that acceleration can be seen first in a glitzy advertisement Nike has put out as it too jumps further into esports gaming.

The shoemaker has released its first-ever esports ad, coming out of Nike Greater China, showcasing how these esports athletes get their minds and bodies prepared for the challenge.

The ad shows gaming superstar Uzi – who was recently the first esports athlete to be signed by Nike – completely a rigorous (and highly entertaining) training camp. According to Nike, the ad is a reminder for these gamers to remain active and healthy in order to stay on top of the challenges of gaming – which can see top players putting in 16-hour days six days a week.

Nike jumping into this is no small thing. And, while this is an ad for the Chinese marketplace, it would be quite surprising given esports' trajectory if we didn't see this sort of thing in the West before long.

Along those lines, Forbes has also come out with an article asking if esports will soon be America's chief pastime.

Compared to America’s most popular pro sports, football, basketball and baseball, Esports is small, but it now ranks with popular sports entertainment like wrestling. In 2019, according to esportsobserver.com, over $211M was awarded from over 4,000 Esports tournaments, an increase of 29% from 2018’s $163M prize pool.

...

Gaming is universal. The rules of the games are simple. It is simply the essence of competition. When produced for television, broadcasters can support the action with commentary, stating objectives for the game on-screen. Like golf, knowledge of the games might not be necessary at all as a games player base might be large enough to sustain eSports broadcasts, making non-player spectators a bonus, learning rules as they watch. Segments can support rules and strategies and highlights.

Will esports reach the vaunted levels for America's attention that baseball, basketball, and football have achieved? It's certainly on that trajectory. And the fact that publications like Forbes are even asking this question of a sport that has existed widely for less than two decades is telling. What esports really has to avoid is becoming the new World Series of Poker, where the fad fizzled out after a few years and is now relegated to niche status, albeit still popular.

But as the post points out, gaming is becoming universal. It's already overtaken other forms of entertainment as the dominant force among young people. Why that wouldn't translate into even further spectatorship of esports tournaments, now propelled by major brands and funding, is a question I cannot answer.

Filed Under: covid-19, culture, esports, pandemic, pastimes, sports
Companies: nike

US Patent Boss Says No Evidence Of Patents Holding Back COVID Treatments, Days Before Pharma Firms Prove He's Wrong

from the say-again dept

A week or so ago, the head of the US Patent and Trademark Office, Andrei Iancu, who has been an extreme patent maximalist over the years, insisted that there was simply no evidence that patents hold back COVID treatments. This is a debate we've been having over the past few months. We've seen some aggressive actions by patent holders, and the usual crew of patent system supporters claiming, without evidence that no one would create a vaccine without much longer patent terms.

Iancu was questioned about how patents might hold back life-saving innovation and he brushed it off like this was a crazy question:

Iancu said while it is necessary to ensure that critical treatments are widely available to the public, intellectual property rights "must always be respected," especially during crises like COVID-19.

Without adequate protections, Iancu warned that companies would lack incentive to invest substantial time and money in developing treatments for the next global health crisis.

Again, that makes no sense. The "incentive" to invest is in the demand for the product itself. Governments around the world are going to pay for any vaccine because it's necessary and the boost to any economy is going to be well worth making the developers of a vaccine very, very wealthy.

Iancu also shot down the idea that patents might be used to limit access to a vaccine:

Dorian Daley, who asked the agency director to address concerns that intellectual property relating to COVID-19 might "create a barrier to access that would be problematic."

"Where is the evidence of that?" Iancu countered, though he noted that the U.S. has "tools at its disposal" — such as the "march-in" rights under the Bayh-Dole Act, which allows the government to invoke rarely used powers to override patents — in the event that additional access is needed.

Of course, historically, the pharma industry flips out any time anyone mentions march-in rights, which is why the government basically never ever uses them.

But just to highlight how ridiculous Iancu's statements were, just days later, Pfizer, Regeneron, and BioNTech -- all working on COVID treatments (including the antibody cocktail that President Trump took from Regeneron) -- were all sued for patent infringement for their COVID treatments.

Allele Biotechnology and Pharmaceuticals filed two lawsuits against the three drugmakers on Monday. The San Diego firm alleges that Pfizer and BioNTech, with its investigational COVID-19 vaccine BNT162, and Regeneron’s REGN-COV2, were developed using Allele’s mNeonGreen fluorescent protein without the company’s permission.

So, it certainly appears that patents are getting in the way of some COVID-19 treatments.

And then to make an even stronger point, pharma company Moderna -- which had been facing a ton of questions about how its patents might delay COVID-19 treatment -- has announced that it will voluntarily agree not to enforce the patents during the pandemic.

Moderna Inc. said it wouldn’t enforce its patents related to Covid-19 vaccines during the pandemic, in an effort to not deter other companies and researchers from making similar shots.

“While the pandemic continues, Moderna will not enforce our Covid-19 related patents against those making vaccines intended to combat the pandemic,” the company said in a statement on Thursday.

This is a welcome surprise, but it still underlines two key points: yes, absolutely patents can and will get in the way of important life-saving innovations, and the idea that these companies "need" patents to develop these drugs is clearly bogus. Indeed, as KEI points out in a blog post about Moderna's statement, it's good to see the company admit that even after the pandemic is over, its patents may get in the way of important life-saving innovation, and pledges to make sure that it will be more open to licensing its patents after the pandemic:

It is notable that Moderna has addressed both the pandemic and the post pandemic period, stating “to eliminate any perceived IP barriers to vaccine development during the pandemic period, upon request we are also willing to license our intellectual property for COVID-19 vaccines to others for the post pandemic period.”

The key point: even if Iancu pretends otherwise, people actually in the space know that patents can and will get in the way of life-saving innovation, rather than acting as an important incentive.

It's long past the time we recognized how damaging patents are for innovation in many different industries, including pharma, and having a Patent Office boss who simply denies reality is fundamentally unhelpful and anti-innovation.

Filed Under: andrei iancu, covid-19, innovation, patents
Companies: allele, biontech, moderna, pfizer, regeneron

Collaboration Houses: How Technology & A Pandemic Have Created Entirely New Ways To Go To College

from the fascinating dept

There has been plenty of talk about how technology has impacted how we live during the pandemic, but it's interesting to see how that's impacting things beyond the most obvious -- including some interesting cultural changes. Over in the NY Times, reporter Taylor Lorenz, who always has her finger on the beat of the most interesting cultural changes due to technology, has an article about college collaboration houses. That is, because so many colleges are remaining in distance learning to start the school year, thanks to the ongoing pandemic, students are recognizing that just because they don't need to be on campus, it doesn't mean they need to stay at home either:

Two groups of students at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, for example, have rented large houses in Hawaii for the fall semester. Six rising seniors at Columbia University will be living in a house in Portland, Ore. Several rising seniors at Harvard are renting property in Montana. There are at least seven large houses that have been rented in the greater Salt Lake City area alone, filled with students from different colleges.

While these may be modeled on the idea of so called "hype houses", in which social media stars rent some crazy mansion and live together while creating attempted viral content, this seems a lot more practical. And while my initial reaction was that this sounded like something only the most privileged students could do, as the report highlights, in many (though certainly not all) cases, the opposite is true:

Well-off students have pursued expensive rentals in premier vacation locales including Lake Tahoe, Calif., and Aspen, Colo. But for other students, college collab houses are a way to save money. “Costs have been a major factor in our decision because some of us are on financial aid,” said Phillip Pyle, 20, a rising junior at Williams College who is planning to rent a house with six friends in Maine or Massachusetts.

Hanah Jun, 19, a rising sophomore at Yale who is from Queens, just finalized plans to move to Barbados in the fall with three friends. She said that her family’s financial instability and lack of reliable Wi-Fi have made completing her studies from home nearly impossible. “I’m on full financial aid,” Ms. Jun said. “In terms of financial privilege, there’s a lot of students from alternative backgrounds looking to do this.”

In other words, for at least some of the students, doing a collab house is actually cheaper and better than (a) being on campus or (b) staying at home. Obviously, for some, their options for which houses they could "join" were impacted by their economic situation:

Morgan Margulies, 20, is a rising junior at Columbia University who will be doing his online classes this year from a house in Santa Cruz, Calif., with nine friends from other colleges, including state schools. “I am a first generation, low-income student and this is my cheapest option,” he said. “For a lot of people at Columbia, money is not an issue. They’re moving into places and they invited me and told me the rent, but it was not a realistic thing I could do.”

Apparently a lot of these students are using Airbnb to rent out homes -- and getting extreme discounts because they're renting them long term at a time when some Airbnb renters were finding it harder to find short term tenants.

It seems noteworthy how this is a somewhat emergent solution to deal with ongoing issues thanks to the pandemic, and a clever use of technology at the same time. Because you can do remote learning from anywhere (while acknowledging time zone differences can be an issue...), doing the schoolwork from home might not be the best option. And getting together with a small group of college friends can allow students to create a much smaller pod that is safer to weather the pandemic, and an online service like Airbnb helps make it more economical for many.

There are also some interesting cultural situations at play as well. We've discussed ICE's attempt to require foreign students attending US colleges and universities remotely to stay in their home countries, and while that's been scaled back somewhat, it appears that this has helped create scenarios where students are remaining in their home countries, but forming local pods to recreate at least some of the college experience:

More than 30 students from China who attend American universities plan to create a college collab courtyard in Beijing. Wendi Yan, 21, a rising sophomore at Princeton, is organizing the group. The students, from colleges including University of Pennsylvania, U.C. San Diego, Brown, Duke, Stanford and Middlebury, are planning to live in several apartments that face each other so they can somewhat recreate the American college experience remotely and study and socialize together.

“It feels like China and the U.S. are trying to split people apart, but because I’ll have these people, I think it will help tremendously,” Ms. Yan said.

Of course, they note that trying to do remote learning from China creates its own challenges, given the Great Firewall blocking so many US websites.

And, yes, obviously, getting college kids together creates risk of COVID-19 spreading, but keeping a much smaller group together -- if they take precautions and don't break out of that group too much -- can certainly help limit the spread (and, yes, I also remember being in college and recognize that not all college kids will be good at keeping in a small group or following restrictions, but contrary to the popular narrative, not all college kids are so bad).

Several college collab houses have created detailed spreadsheets outlining plans for what happens if residents fall ill. Others specifically chose destinations that were close to large cities or major hospitals.

“We have the largest Google doc,” said Merel Timmermans, 20, a rising junior at Grinnell College, who is renting a house in Utah with other Grinnell students. “There’s a Covid safety plan, all of our meals, a roommate contract, a ‘how things work’ guide, information on how we’re going to do chores, cook meals, and we have summaries of all the house meetings we’ve had over Zoom. We made a house Spotify playlist. We’re all filling out medical forms so we have them in case of emergency.”

There's a lot more in the article, and the whole thing really is fascinating to see how technology and culture are creating these new scenarios in the midst of a pandemic.

Filed Under: collaboration houses, covid-19, distance learning, education

Has The Pandemic Shown That The Techlash Was Nonsense?

from the hopefully dept

There's an excellent piece over at RealClearPolitics arguing that COVID-19 killed the techlash. It makes a fairly compelling argument, coming at it from multiple angles. First, there's the question of how real the "techlash" ever was. It's long appeared to be more of a media- and politician-driven narrative than a real anger coming from people who make use of technology every day:

In 2019, more than 600 news articles explicitly mentioned the techlash, so it is not surprising that many of us accepted it as reality without ever really asking, does it exist outside of a narrow echo chamber? 

While there was clearly anger about tech in general, people’s actual opinions of tech firms were overwhelmingly positive. A survey by Vox Media/The Verge in December 2019 found that Amazon, Google, YouTube, Netflix, and Microsoft all had favorability ratings in the high 80s to low 90s. Even Facebook and Twitter, the two most frequently maligned tech firms, had 71 percent and 61 percent favorability ratings, respectively. 

And that was before we all became even more reliant on technology, in these lockdown pandemic times. The narrative flame has been fanned by politicians "seeking the limelight" and media organizations more than willing to run with that narrative. As the article notes:

News organizations are not disinterested observers. Indeed, as Professor. Ramsi Woodcock has argued, the media has  an incentive to amplify those complaints. Newspapers never succeeded as businesses  by selling news, they sold advertising based on their regional monopolies on the distribution of information. Those local monopolies are not coming back. In response, there’s a push for new revenue streams — some legitimate and innovative, like a shift to subscription for increasingly niche expertise, others less so, such as seeking regulatory favors like an antitrust exemption. 

I don't think it's the reporters, necessarily, who are doing this, but we've certainly seen that newspaper ownership has been eagerly pushing this narrative -- from fake "free marketer" Rupert Murdoch whining that Google and Facebook need to be regulated, to Heath Freeman, the hedge fund boss, whose been buying up tons of local newspapers, strip mining them for parts and cash, and now whining about how Google and Facebook are the "real" problem.

And once a narrative takes hold, it can be hard to stop the momentum. It becomes almost self-fulfilling.

And yet, at the same time, the pandemic has shown that many of the claims about the techlash are overblown.

For most of us, new technologies are nice things to have. Sure, having instant Prime delivery, FaceTime and all the information in the world at your fingertips is convenient but in the wake of the pandemic, technology has become essential.

Consider telemedicine — it is no longer a niche benefit for rural or disabled Americans who cannot easily access a doctor. These remote services provide a desperately needed way to reduce transmission risk by using software to remotely enable patient diagnosis, referral, and treatment. Virtual contact reduces the overall strain to our health care system by providing quality care to people, while shielding both patient and provider from unnecessary hazard.

And it goes beyond that. It's not just the "big" internet companies that have become so critical. Contrary to the claims that there are monopolists who dominate everything, we've seen other companies succeed against the big guys during the pandemic:

The rise of Zoom illustrates this perfectly. For all of the criticisms of the company, it has become a household name and provided 200 million people a day with an easy-to-use platform that keeps workers connected.

The article doesn't even mention the fact that Zoom has become so successful while competing against Google, Facebook, Microsoft and others which all have competing products.

I've also seen some fairly amazing new markets spring up. Here at Techdirt we're going to be doing some virtual events in the coming weeks and months, and when I started researching back in May, I was stunned at what a vibrant, competitive market there is. Every time I talk to more people about it, they name some other company I've never heard of. At one point, I found three different "top 10" lists of companies in this space that had no overlap in names. There are dozens of companies in the space, and none has run off with the market yet. There's lots of competition and different approaches.

And, so, perhaps the whole narrative of techlash was overblown and the pandemic has made it even more clear to people how useful the internet is in their lives:

Claims about the techlash’s reach were overblown before the pandemic. Americans have moved on to focus on more important topics. Recent polling shows 38 percent say their view of the tech industry has become more positive since the start of the coronavirus outbreak. 88 Percent reported having “a better appreciation” for tech’s positive impact on society than before the outbreak.  

Does that mean that the techlash is over? Or that COVID-19 killed the techlash? That... might be going too far. Narratives, once they take hold, seem to live on quite a while. So the techlash may still exist -- but the question of whether or not it's warranted should be put to rest. It's reasonable to complain about this or that bad move by this or that company. But the idea that there needs to be an industry wide "reckoning" seems quite overblown, and we should try to leave it behind.

Filed Under: covid-19, pandemic, techlash, technology