[Esports] The Beginning

People have been playing video games competitively for a long time. From competing with your friend, or sibling, to hanging out in an arcade, spending your quarters on one more match of Street Fighter, gaming competitively has been around for a while. However what a lot of people don't know is that there is an entire industry emerging built around this competitive play. A lot of people aren't aware that there are games that are fun to watch, and players that play for money. But most of all what goes unnoticed is that the market is getting bigger every year. From Quake, to Brood War, Counter Strike, Smash Bros, Halo, and now Starcraft 2 and League of Legends, eSports is showing it's potential.

 Commonly seen as the first real esports tournament  was the Microsoft sponsored Quake competition at E3 '97. However also in '97 CPL (Cyber Athlete Professional League) hosted it's very first tournament "The Frag". A year later, however CPL wasn't that special. There had been many tournaments similar to "The Frag" by the time "The Frag 2" rolled around. This was also around the time that online events were picking up with events like Clan Ring T3. This was also the second year of Quake Con and the first year that they held the Quake World Tournament. The conventions was much much bigger then the previous year. PGL was formed this year as well.

It wasn't until the year 2000 that esports really started to become big though. Up until now it had been mostly smaller events and none of the players were really remembered, however in 2000 a gamer by the name of Jonathan "Fatal1ty" Wendel claimed $102,000 in prize money. Around this same time a Canadian Starcraft player wins the first OSL tournament with "Starleague" actually in the name. To date he his the only foreigner to win a Korean Brood War tournament. This was right after KeSPA (Korean e-Sports Players Association) was formed. The World Cyber Games Challenge also took place in 2000.

ESports success continued into 2001 when BoxeR won his first Starleague trophy. At this time BoxeR was considered to be the best Korean Brood War player, but it would take several years before he became a public figure. The first actual World Cyber Games has a prize pool of $300,000, features 430 players, playing 6 games. The games were Counter Strike, Quake 3, Unreal Tournament, Age of Empires 2, FIFA 2001, and Starcraft: Brood War. However, despite the recent success of eSports, it had a recession at the end of 2001. As the dot-com bubble bursted most eSports organizers were forced to host less tournaments, the only company that continued to grow was CPL, hosting two major events a year. The CPL World Championship 2001's flagship game was Counter Strike.


This is where I am going to end this first article, as this was the beginning of the eSports market. In the next article I will talk about MLG, Halo 2, and the rise of eSports to the professional level.

I would also like to thank the writer of this for having the most organized, clean write up of eSports I have ever seen. It wasn't my first stop for research, but most of the things I found out happened to be written there anyway.

[E Sports] Dota 2 Versus League of Legends

I am going to start this off saying that I am only 'decent' at LoL and have only play a total of 5 matches of Dota 2. That being said I would like to take a moment to talk about these two games.

 

Dota 2 is a remake by Valve of the original Dota mod that LoL was based off of. The hired the latest lead developer of the mod, and a gave him a team to re create the game in the Source engine. After playing it, and reading about it online a lot, I have found that it is a pretty faithful recreation. I like that you just get all of the champions for free, and the menus are very streamlined and easy to use.

With that, I dislike the game a lot. I have been spoiled by LoL, that much is certain. I have taken the time to know the champions, played enough matches to know the game, and actually feel alright at the game. In Dota 2 I have a hard time with almost everything in the game. I don't know any of the champions, I find the controls to be not as tight as LoLs and I haven't figured out how to lock my camera to my character at all (which makes me think that you just can't but I don't know.) I guess what I am getting at more then anything is that the learning curb in Dota 2 is much higher then it is in LoL despite the games being so similar.


I have enjoyed League since my first game almost six months ago. I was bad, I didn't know the champions but I knew that I liked the game, and as such, I stuck with it. When I played my first match of Dota 2 all I knew was that I sucked. My team was telling me to stop feeding, I barely knew my champion, and I kept dyeing. To give a comparison, in LoL my average match I get about 5/3. I have yet to get a single kill in Dota 2. It amazes me how different the two games are able to feel even though they are so similar.


Now, I'm not saying that Dota 2 is a bad game. I am just saying that I found that it wasn't for me. If I were better at it, I'm sure it could be amazing. The game is very high quality, and I kind of wish I were better at it. I will probably still get the urge every once in a while to fire it up and play a few matches (kind of like SC2). However my game of choice is LoL. For the same reason it presided over Starcraft for me. I'm decent at it. I'm bad at Dota 2 and SC2, I'm decent at LoL. So I am going to play LoL because I can actually get kills and don't just die.

                               

In a summery, here is my verdict, I like LoL because it is a streamlined, easier version of the original Dota mod. It is very "pick up and play" and pretty addicting. Dota 2 pretty straightforward in nature being a remake of the original mod, keeping the more hardcore atmosphere, and requires a lot of time to become even decent.

Starcraft 2: Heart of the Swarm

Blizzard has been surprisingly quiet with news regarding their upcoming Starcraft 2 expansion, slaving away on it in secret at the Blizzard headquarters in Irvine. However at the latest MLG tournament they had a lot to show off, even letting the contestants play with the new units. According to a recent interview with them Heart of the Swarm is actually about 99% finished. They are in polish mode, and expect to be done soon (tm). Until then, you can enjoy these videos!

New units

MLG Footage, where they got to play Heart of the Swarm