Negotiating Legitimacy and Strategy in a Maturing Esports Ecosystem: Introduction to the Esports Minitrack
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HICSS59_Intro_Esports_Minitrack.pdf (331.2 KB)
0000-0002-1644-5915 Date
2026
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University of Hawaii at Manoa
Abstract
Esports research continues to expand rapidly, integrating perspectives from multiple academic disciplines and employing increasingly sophisticated theoretical and methodological approaches. For HICSS-59, we received high-quality submissions covering diverse topics such as the cultural and institutional legitimacy of esports education, the systemic persistence of toxic behaviors, AI-driven human–machine collaboration in gameplay, and advanced generative AI methods for strategic modeling. These studies, while varied in scope, share a common concern with how legitimacy, strategic complexity, and socio-technical systems interact to shape the present and future of esports. This introduction reviews the accepted research and situates it within broader scholarly debates on legitimacy negotiation, cultural framing, and the role of AI in competitive gaming.
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Siuda, P., Hedlund, D.P., Darvin, L.E., Witkowski, E. (2026). Negotiating Legitimacy and Strategy in a Maturing Esports Ecosystem: Introduction to the Esports Minitrack [in:] Proceedings of the 59th Annual Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences, HICSS 2026, Hyatt Regency Maui, January 6-9, 2026, Maui, Hawaii, USA, (ed.) Tung X. Bui, Honolulu, HI, pp. 4276-4277.