The game that educated me on the matter of eSports wasn’ t Starcraft. It wasn’ t League of Legends either. It was a game many people love( to hate): FIFA. The game, that everyone who doesn’ t play it likes to describe as“ a cheap rehash of the previous version”, the game that would probably set a record for broken gaming peripherals and the best selling sports video game of all time. I love FIFA. But I hate the fact that it’ s barely relevant in the world of eSports. Luckily, this is about to change.
My first eSport experience started in the winter of 2012. Having played and won against all of my friends, I decided to compete in FIFA’ s online mode“ Ultimate Team”. And despite running a team that wasn’ t upgraded by spending real money, I managed to claim the Division One title. Out of ten games, nine wins and a draw were needed to achieve this. Nine subsequent wins and a tight draw due to a late goal of Mario Götze, I managed to grab my greatest online multiplayer achievement to date. I wasn’ t pro. But I was pretty damn good at the game.
From then on I started to play against streamers to win players or prizes, competed in small tournaments and made very little amounts of money. But any money was massive, due to two reasons: I was 17 years old, and I didn’ t even know you could make money playing videogames in the first place. That was also around the time I got introduced to League, started to watch EU & NA LCS, my first Worlds, good times. That’ s my story of how I got into eSports- by being pretty good at a game I liked. This story isn’ t too uncommon. The problem? I was almost on pro level, but there was barely any ways for me to test my abilities.
Sure, I could’ ve just go on and play in the highest Division over and over again. Which I did. But that didn’ t get me anywhere. There was no reward for being good except a little bit more of ingame currency, no special rewards, no tournaments either.
This has changed since. In FIFA 17, EA introduced the Weekend League Mode, a mode where you can not only measure yourself against the best of the best, but one that also includes a functioning leaderboard that tracks your placements over time and puts you in a Top 100 list, if you’ re good enough of course. There are local leaderboards as well, and there already have been tournaments announced for those that do manage to place in the Top 100 spots. Finally,