Image by Jakub Wells. Used under a Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic License.
THE YEAR OF ESPORTS
SAMUEL MCCOSH
E
sports has seen a
massive rise in global
popularity over the last
15 years. It is almost
unrecognisable in the
growth seen from the
more humble origins
of professional gaming witnessed way back
in 1972 Spacewar at
Stanford
University’s
'Intergalactic Spacewar
Olympics'. The winner
took home a year’s subscription to Rolling Stone
- adjusted for inflation, a
£65.73 prize.
2015 has only pushed
the bar even higher, with
live appearances on television, team and player
prize pools growing. The
International 5 (DOTA
2’s annual championship event) offered
$18.5 million in prizes
with over $6.6 million
going to the winners. Audience participation has
increased at all these
events, with The International 5’s prize pool being eclipsed fourfold by
ticket and merchandise
sales. Twitch viewers for
ESL One: Cologne gathered over 37.1 million
for the week of events
from the multiple games
and channels.
The 2016 SMITE
world
championship
takes place this month,
from January 7th to 10th
in Atlanta, Georgia. 10
teams representing the
EU, China, Latin America, Brazil, Oceania and
North America will compete on PC with the Xbox
One version having both
invitational and web
based tournaments. The
PC prize pool is already
at $1 million and with
a cosplay prize pool of
$20,000 for attendees
too, it should be a heck
of a way to start the new
year.
This coming year the
prize pools are likely
to increase, especially
in events with sales of
merchandise to the ever
growing team fan bases.
Rising numbers of those
enrolling to compete
and paying fees will of
course directly increase
them too.
"Just as 2015
was great,
2016 might be
even better"
With the release of
new team and solo competitive games slated
for 2016 including (but
not limited to) Street
Fighter V, Rocket League
on Xbox One, Pokkén
Tournament, Overwatch
and the next iteration of
games like FIFA and Call
Of Duty, there’s much to
be brought to the competitive scene over the
next 12 months.
International 5 in
2015, run by Valve, was
held in Seattle, Washington, for the 4th year
in its 5 year history. The
sixteen team event was
comprised of ten professional teams, and
four graduating from regional qualifiers; CompLexity Gaming from the
Americas, MVP.Hot6ix
from Southeast Asia,
EHOME from China
and Natus Vincere from
Europe. CDEC Gaming and MVP Phoenix
rounded off the teams as
wildcards, qualifying via
knockout. with two other
teams.
By this August, when
the tournament should
take place again, there
are two new DOTA 2
heroes slated for release. Pit Lord and Arc
Warden are the last two
heroes from the original DOTA Warcraft III
mod yet to see release.
A date and location for
the tournament are yet
to be set, although it will
be exciting to see if they
can break the prize pool
record yet again.
There were more than
just big LANs and online
competitions run over
the past year. Hundreds
more international, national, regional, and
even Varsity tournaments took place daily,
as they continue to do
now. With many games
such as CS:GO, League
of Legends, DOTA 2 and
many more having public events to join, there’s
no shortage of options
if you reckon you’ve got
some skills and want to
give it a go.
With great contests
both big and small, and
no end of new games
coming out, it seems that
just as 2015 was a great
year for eSports, 2016
might be an even better
one.
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