Where’s Precious?
Southern Oregon University Professor Explores Esports Landscape in Estonia
Currently on sabbatical from her regular teaching commitments at SOU, Precious Yamaguchi, an associate professor in Communication, Media & Cinema, is researching the unprecedented technological and cultural developments in Estonia over the last few decades, particularly esports.
A small country in Northern Europe, Estonia might not be the first place that comes to mind when you think of innovation in technology.
But Precious Yamaguchi’s interest in the study of esports began in the mid-2010s with a game called DOTA 2, which, at the time, had the largest prize pool in gaming at 18 million dollars. After following DOTA 2 for a while, Yamaguchi became fascinated with the international community of esports players, particularly teams featuring players from smaller countries.
“I started to be curious about how players from countries such as Malaysia, Ukraine and Estonia were using esports as a way to leverage themselves within their society, whether it was financially or through social hierarchy,” said Yamaguchi. “It’s like soccer, where you have different soccer players from countries that might be either developing or in a transitional phase of finding their identity, markets, or exports. Esports became one of these pathways of gaming global access.”
Estonia’s recent technological emergence is due to its relatively new status as an independent country. After being occupied by Germany, Sweden and Russia for over 700 years, Estonia gained independence in 1991. This has led to an unprecedented level of country-wide redevelopment and excitement for Estonian culture and technology.
“It’s players from countries we don’t think of as major, significant players within the global market that, through esports, or just soccer, become famous,” Yamaguchi said. “There are great players that are really popular from India, Malaysia, Ukraine, Estonia.”
On her first trip, in late September, Yamaguchi planned to attend Gaming Summit, an esports event in Tallinn, the capital of Estonia. However, it wasn’t until she was already in the country that Yamaguchi received an email that the event was canceled. Yamaguchi began searching for something else to research in the realm of technology and esports.
Soon after, Yamaguchi discovered an Estonian robotics company called Starship Technologies. Launched by the creators of Skype, Starship focuses on the production of food delivery robots, which are commonplace in the capital city of Tallinn. These robots serve a similar function to Instacart or DoorDash, only without the delivery driver.
After posting a selfie with one of the robots, Yamaguchi connected with the company on social media and set up a meeting to visit Starship’s headquarters. There she met with the mechanical engineering team lead, Siim Viilup, and connected with employees working in photography and marketing.
Setting out on a second sabbatical trip, Yamaguchi once again hoped to research Estonian esports, this time at the Game Wave Festival. Unfortunately, she experienced yet another gaming conference cancellation. These misadventures inspired Yamaguchi to explore the broader story of Estonia’s technological and cultural developments over the past 30 years. While there’s much newfound enthusiasm for startup culture and new technology in Estonia, Yamaguchi believes there’s a missing link.
“I think that’s actually part of this story of technology and maybe gaming is that there’s an enthusiasm and a surge forward to have gatherings of esports and gaming,” Yamaguchi said. “So I think that they’ve created these different types of festivals and conferences, perhaps kind of at the last minute, but didn’t invest maybe in marketing and didn’t have the registration that they needed so they’ve been postponing it.”
Despite this, Yamaguchi remains optimistic about her upcoming third trip, where she hopes to focus on her original goal of researching esports. “Even though I won’t be able to go to the postponed events, hopefully in 2023, I’m able to go to one of these esports showcases.”
Story by Ripley Pierotti, Community Manager for the Communication, Media & Cinema Program at Southern Oregon University.
