eSports Update – 10 Things You May Have Missed!
ESL Expo Barcelona Starts This Weekend, starting on the 19th of February and ending on the 21st February.
RankR eSports look to position themselves as the new home of eSports, stating, “Our mission is to make RankR esports a foundation on which esports can grow, thrive, and become more accessible to players and fans around the world.”
The NBA is the latest sports league to jump into the growing eSports arena, following the NFL and FIFA through Electronic Arts’ Madden NFL and FIFA video game franchises.
Rocket League developer Psyonix has discussed its ongoing efforts to establish its soccer-with-cars sensation as a competitive esport.
Catch up on these stories and more below.
The trials of a female eSports champion
Hafu Chan is a legend. For the past eight years, she’s been a star in one of the most popular sports in the world: competitive video gaming, known as eSports. And she’s done it while facing an incredible amount of sexism and hostility from others in the male-dominated eSports world.
How the NBA Will Impact the Bigger Battle for ESports
The NBA is the latest sports league to jump into the growing eSports arena, following the NFL and FIFA through Electronic Arts’ Madden NFL and FIFA video game franchises.
Through the NBA’s licensing partnership with game publisher 2K (a division of Take-Two Interactive, NBA 2K16: Road to the Finals has kicked off a cross-platform competition on Sony’s PlayStation 4 and Microsoft’s Xbox One that will run through May 8. Gamers can form NBA 2K Pro-Am teams and compete online in any of 16 events. On May 21, the 16 winners on both the PS4 and Xbox One will go head-to-head in a single-elimination tournament. The winners will then face off in the $250,000 championship in June at the NBA Finals.
“The popularity of competitive gaming continues to grow around the world, and NBA 2K16’s Road to the Finals is a great way to bring passionate gamers together,” says Matt Holt, the NBA’s vice president of licensing.
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ESL Expo Barcelona Starts This Weekend – Preview
Starting on the 19th of February and ending on the 21st, the live Spanish crowd and online Counter Strike audience will have the pleasure of enjoying top international competition battling it out in a rather quirky format – a format previously used at IEM Gamescom – for a grand total of €75,000.
The teams in attendance will be the invited Fnatic, Team EnVyUs, Astralis and G2 Esports. In addition to the invited teams, qualifying through the European qualifiers are Vexed Gaming and Team Dingitas. Joining them will be Spanish representatives, qualifying through the Spanish qualifiers; e6tence and gBots.
The format:
The format used at the Barcelona CSGO Invitational will see each team starting the tournament with three lives. Losing a best of one game will result in a life loss. In addition to €1,000, the winning team will also have the choice of which two teams face off against each other in the following match. The only team with lives remaining by the end of the tournament wins the event and secures themselves €22,000 as well as an extra €1,000 per victory and per life remaining.
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RankR – The new home of esports?
One issue with the esports scene to date is that it’s disjointed. One reason for this is that unlike traditional sports the individual games themselves are owned by companies meaning determining rights, access and coverage becomes a more complicated situation.
Many don’t realise the extent to which esports is an umbrella term, and that games within it can be as distant as basketball and football, with the only similarity the fact that it’s a video game. This unsurprisingly means that whilst there is extensive coverage and fan bases, these are often focussed on particular titles especially the more popular within the community at large such as League of Legends and Dota 2.
Step up RankR Esports. This is a new hub for competitive gaming tournaments, rankings, and news which covers any esport regardless of platform, publisher or genre.
The new online community will also include an events calendar, global rankings, and a team-builder function with a chat function that will allow players to group up and play games.
Read the full story here
2016 World Championship hits North America
The 2016 World Championship starts with the Group Stage in San Francisco, before moving to the Quarterfinals in Chicago, and then onto the Semifinals in New York City. For the epic conclusion of Worlds 2016, we’ll return to the Staples Center in Los Angeles to crown our new World Champion.
From coast to coast, each city will mark a new milestone on the teams’ competitive journey toward the final battle for the Summoner’s Cup. We’ll be revisiting iconic stadiums along the way, including Madison Square Garden and Staples Center, and bringing live League of Legends action to fans in new destinations.
- Group Stage: September 29-October 2 + October 6-9 at the Bill Graham Civic Auditorium in San Francisco, CA
- Quarterfinals: October 13-16 at The Chicago Theatre in Chicago, IL
- Semifinals: October 21-22 at Madison Square Garden in New York, NY
- Finals: October 29 at Staples Center in Los Angeles, CA
Read the full story here
eSports Will Happen In Las Vegas, And It Might Stay Too
The spring season champions of the North American LCS for League of Legends will be crowned this April in Las Vegas. As ESPN noted, the spring final has never taken place in a city other than Los Angeles. The grand final will be held on Sunday, April 17 at the Mandalay Bay Events Center at noon local time (3 Eastern). The third-place match will take place on Saturday, April 16.
The event also allows teams to compete for circuit points that can qualify them for the 2016 World Championship. The regular season for NA LCS is going on now.
The winner of the NA LCS heads to the international Mid-Season Invitational put on by Riot Games, to meet the winners from other LCS regions around the world, including China, Korea, Europe, and Taiwan.
Another, arguably more intriguing, possibility was raised via a report from J.D. Morris that Chinese gaming powerhouse Ourgame – parent company of the World Poker Tour – is in the early stages of developing a permanent eSports arena that would likely be housed within a Strip casino.
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Razer Puts Gamers First With ESports, Virtual Reality and Hardware
Top-notch video game weaponry is as fundamental of a desire as a battle-ending kill. For over 10 years, blood-thirsty gamers and the like have learned to love the arsenal of artillery, technology and gadgets Razer has introduced to the market. One constant has remained since Day 1: putting the best interests of gamers first.
Razer CEO and co-founder Min-Liang Tan joined [a]listdaily for a wide-ranging interview to discuss the company’s latest products, and ventures into eSports, virtual reality, and more.
What has the response and reception been like to the products unveiled at CES this year?
The responses have been incredible. We went into the show as the only company in the nearly 50-year history of CES to win five straight official ‘best of’ awards. We made it a six-year streak this year with the Razer Blade Stealth. We designed this system as an Ultrabook for gamers, but it went on to hit a chord with editors who hailed it as the ultimate laptop in its class and an industry game-changer. The Blade Stealth’s innovative design, screen resolution, chip set and portable form factor make it a beast of a machine on the go. Its price (starting at $999) left people speechless. We’re talking about a state-of-the-art computer that is hundreds of dollars cheaper than lesser models, even the big PC makers and Apple.
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Rocket League Dev Explains New Esports Drive
Rocket League developer Psyonix has discussed its ongoing efforts to establish its soccer-with-cars sensation as a competitive esport. Speaking on a podcast with Larry Hryb, Psyonix exec Jeremy Dunham said it is pushing ahead with its esports strategy, which it believes will be “very good for the game.”
“As we’re talking about this there are certain things afoot that we can’t quite discuss yet. We think they’re going to be very good for the game going forward in general and trying to expand ourselves into esports further.
“We’re really excited about the prospects there and the fact that people really latched onto our game. We never went in with the intention of specifically being a successful esport. We knew we had the chops for it, that we had the groundwork, but it’s all about the community and players and whether they deem you worthy of being one.”
Dunham also highlighted the strong community Rocket League has developed, and indicated that Psyonix intends to continue supporting the game with new features.
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Mortal Kombat X aired on the CW this Monday
This is the third season of Machinima’s ongoing esports documentary. The first five episodes were hosted on CW Seed, CW’s hub for digital exclusive content, but the finale will mark the first time the CW has put esports content on primetime television.
Machinima, which is primarily known for its eponymous machinima and fictional cinematic content, has been involved in esports since its launch of MachinmaVS back in 2012. The first two seasons of Chasing the Cup, which covered players and teams in the League of Legends scene, were hosted on Twitch and YouTube,
Based on the success of Chasing the Cup and the growth of the gaming market in the past year, the CW partnered with Machinima to produce a third season focusing on the Mortal Kombat scene.
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Shoutcasters: Meet the voices of gaming
If you’ve ever watched professional gamers lock horns at big competitions then you’ll know just how skilful they are.
Regardless of which game is being played the action is often fast and frantic. What a shoutcaster does is make sure what’s happening on screen is understandable to the fans watching at home or at an arena. Chris Tunn is one of them and he tells us: “look at a football commentator, we do the same sort of thing but for eSports.”
Chris told Newsbeat: “I used to play Call of Duty a lot when I was 16 and 17.
“I was at an event and one of the shoutcasters had to go home, and the owner of the event said ‘does anyone want a shot at shoutcasting?'” “I said ‘I’ll do it’ and five years down the line I’m still being roped into doing it!”
In those five years eSports have grown massively with more professional players, more money, more exposure and more fans.
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