The First Esports Tournament Wasn’t CS or LoL — It Was Spacewar and a Bit of Beer

Imagine this: it’s 1972. Computers are the size of wardrobes. Super Mario doesn’t exist yet. And somewhere in the basement of Stanford University, something groundbreaking is happening — the world’s first-ever esports tournament.

Its name? The Intergalactic Spacewar Olympics. Sounds like a joke? Not at all. It was a real competition centered around Spacewar, a 1962 game where two rocket ships — The Needle and The Wedge — tried to shoot each other down while avoiding a gravity-wielding star in the center of the screen.

This game wasn’t flashy. It didn’t have ray tracing or ultra HD graphics. But it had something more important: tension, movement, strategy, and just the right dose of chaos.

The Champion of the Galaxy

The winner of this cosmic showdown? A 33-year-old Stanford graduate student named Bruce Baumgart. His reward? Not a million-dollar prize pool, but something far more era-appropriate: a subscription to Rolling Stone magazine... and a beer. Modest? Absolutely. But at the time, it was the ultimate badge of nerdy honor.

The Visionary Behind the Madness

The event was organized by Stewart Brand, a journalist and cultural visionary who saw more than just circuits and code in early computing — he saw the future of culture.

In his Rolling Stone piece, he described: “Reliably, at any nighttime moment (i.e. non-business hours) in North America hundreds of computertechnicians are effectively out of their bodies, locked in life-or-death space combat computer-projected ontocathode ray tube display screens, for hours at a time, ruining their eyes, numbing their fingers in frenziedmashing of control buttons, joyously slaying their friend and wasting their employers’ valuable computertime.”

And honestly? He was right. Everything we now associate with esports — from Twitch streams to global championships — can trace its lineage back to that chaotic, glowing screen and two pixelated ships trying not to crash into a star.

Oh, and the Photographer?

This legendary moment in gaming history was captured by none other than a young Annie Leibovitz.

Yes, the Annie Leibovitz — who would go on to photograph John Lennon, Queen Elizabeth, and countless other icons.

So, no — esports didn’t begin with CS:GO or League of Legends. It began with rockets, gravity, and a bit of beer. And it all started in a dusty university basement with a handful of dreamers and a vision of what games could be.