Showing posts with label Growth of eSports. Show all posts
ESPORTS AND IT'S HISTORY
"Professional Gamer" sounds good huh? Well, many people are actually making career out of gaming professionally, to be exact they are making names in eSports professional gaming. Today eSports are getting more and more popular all over the world, it rises in a phenomenal growth. This led eSports to have a big events, competitive leagues, thousands of fans worldwide and lucrative prizes.
Do you know where eSports started? So, if you're unfamiliar with the history of eSports here is the brief summary of its history.
The Beginning:
1980's: Ever since the video gaming is invented, competitive gaming has existed along with video games. Even the earliest arcade games inspired some competition, competing along with friends to beat high scores.
By the 1990's, gaming tournament becomes popular and starting to get a bit mainstream. The tournaments for arcade and console games had increased, with the companies like Nintendo, Blockbuster Video and GamePro magazine sponsoring world championships. At that time eSports cannot be considered as money-makers for several more years.
The Rise Of The PC
1990's: The rise of PC gaming and along came with the first true eSports competitions. In general PC games and internet in particular open up a new ideas for competitive gaming. PC games could be designed for team play, while arcade games focused on skills and score for a single player. In a new level of gaming, team play games allowed for whole teams of players to compete against others and soon it became the backdrop of the eSports as we know today.
Followed by the year 1997 Red Annihilation tournament of QUAKE one of considerable gaming instance in eSports drawing 2,000 participants. The winner will received a Ferrari owned by John Carmack the lead developer of QUAKE.
Then, in 1998 Counter Strike burst onto the scene when Half-Life received over 10,000 hits for Counter Strike within first two weeks.
That time, most eSports focused on fps, sports games and arcade style games, but in the late 90's real-time strategy (RTS) released. It is the breakout of the hit series "StarCraft: Blood War"
Unlike any other games, rts require careful thought, long-term planning and have been compared as modern version of chess. StarCraft almost nearly limitless strategic potential has become one of the driving forces of the eSports world.
The Phenomenal Growth of Esports
2000's-Present: Just like any other sports, eSports truly become popular, it draws a big crowd of fans, admirers and talented players. With the rise of both tournaments and games now become the back bone of the eSports world.
Major League Games (MLG) was launched in 2002 and it is now the largest and successful of all eSports leagues, featuring numerous games in a different types of genres, like fps to rts games.Other major leagues includes in the recent years is an eSports tournament at Dreamhack, a massive Swedish computer festival with the attendees from all over the world. The Global StarCraft II (GSL), a South Korean League considered to be most admired StarCraft II competition.
Then, a relatively new comer to world of eSports is the MOBA or Multiplayer Online Battle Arena. Based on the fan made Defense of the Ancients (DoTA), a mod for WarCraft III, another game from Blizzard Entertainment, the developers of StarCraft franchise.
Currently, the three biggest stand alone MOBA are Heroes of Newearth (HoN), Defense of The Ancients 2 (DoTA2) and League of Legends (LoL).
The most popular MOBA is LoL, released in 2009, claiming that LoL is the most played video game in the world and with over 30 million players worldwide, tournament has been established and attracted thousands of viewers and offer million prizes.
2011 LoL tournament at Dreamhack is reported to had over 1.6 million viewers worldwide and by the following year, 2012 The LoL Season 2 World Championship Series attracted eight thousand live viewers and over 900,000 worldwide viewers and a prize pool of over five million dollars. By this year 2013 The LoL Season 3 World Championship will be held at Los Angeles, Staples Center, October 3. Over 10,000 people are expected to attend the final match and over 8.2 million spectators online. Riot the developer of League of Legends is boasting that the summary of total prize pool is $8 million with $1 million going to the championship team.
This, in turn, enabled gaming leagues to grow larger and more popular in which made gaming itself more and more competitive. As push-pull of this eSports industry, all of them worked on each other to create the eSports and professional gaming environment we know and we love today.
The Recognition
"Athletes" that's right, as of mid of July, 2013 professional gamers are now recognized officially as athletes by the U.S. government and with this recognition, international players can now play and participate in the U.S. tournaments without having trouble getting their visas.
And now with that big wall has been removed and tournaments are getting bigger and better every year, who knows what might the future holds for professional gamers and the eSports Community? With so much money on the line, maybe someday eSports will earn a place like baseball or basketball as beloved sport and maintsream national pastime.
