Tag Archives: eSports

League of Legends World Championship

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Recently the world of eSports has been getting a lot of press. This month, the Philadelphia 76ers became the first North American profesional sports organization to acquire an eSports team when they bought both Dignitas and Apex. Dignitas is a well established franchise and Apex is a startup. However, both will operate under the name Dignitas now. Both of these teams are in the League of Legends Championship Series which is the North American regional league. However, neither of these teams are good enough to compete in the League of Legends World Championship that began on Thursday, September 29. This tournament is the largest in the world, comprised of the best teams from every region, and is comparable to the FIFA World Cup.

If you’re looking for an entertaining tournament to get invested in, this is certainly the one. Personally, I don’t play League of Legends, but one of my roommates plays and has gotten me to watch a few matches in the tournament. Only four days into the tournament and there’s already a lot of drama. INTZ e-sports from Brazil defeated the highly favored EDG from China and Counter League Gaming defeated the number one seed in South Korea, ROX Tigers. The tournament goes until November. If you decide to get involved the League of legends e-sports website can be found here and the streaming services on Twitch TV can be found at this link. Or if you would just like to know more about the 76ers acquisition, the article can be found here.

The Growth of eSports

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As a lifetime gamer, I’m finding myself spending more time spectating games over the last few years on websites like twitch.tv. Most of my friends and colleagues, even ones that play games often, find this idea of watching other people playing games strange on one end of the spectrum, and dumbfounding on the other end of the spectrum. As I think about what makes spectating eSports so compelling, a few things come to mind:

The technologies that enable spectating. Twitch.tv is a lot like watching television with a live chat. For me, it’s not very compelling, but based on the volume of chat during popular events that certainly seems to be a draw for some. I find the experience of watching a game like DOTA 2 through the game client very enjoyable, as I have much more control over the viewing experience compared to being a passive viewer (like TV). I can control the camera, and decide which players I want to follow. I can pull up various types of graphs and charts to dive deeper into the game, and see specific trends or key moments that changed momentum of the game.

A second aspect of eSports I find fascinating is that, in many instances, the announcers are more popular than the players. People know specific announcers, and recognize their voices when they dial into various streams.  A possible reason for this is that many announcers are ex-players, and they often have their own very popular streams on Twitch.tv.

Lastly, we’re starting to see eSports on ESPN and other major networks. Below is a (hysterical) clip of Robert Flores trying to cover DOTA 2:

I think it’s fairly obvious that we’ll start to see more eSports on TV, but will the opposite also be true? Will services like Twitch.tv start to broadcast professional sports? Even more interesting, will regular people like you and me be able to syndicate a stream of a professional football game (as an example), and put our own commentating on top of it, for anyone in the world to listen? Also, what would it look like if the viewer had the ability to cut between different camera angles in real time, while watching a professional game on TV? I think we’ll see a lot of interesting cross-pollination as eSports grows that will create innovative and compelling new viewing experiences.