A Beginner’s Guide to eSports: Everything You Need to Know

Known as electronic Sports, competitive games are hardly new. Their history goes back to the early days of video games, in the smoky streets of the 70s and 80s, where crowds bet on the best local players. As the game industry matures, so does its competitive side. In the late 90s, leagues and leagues formed around first-person shooters like Quake and Unrealand people won real money and achieved real fame.

Those early years were marked by a certain kind of fragility, not much different from the formative years of any sport, from baseball to arena football. Tournaments arose, then folded, then were replaced by other leagues, which folded in turn. TV channels will awkwardly flirt with industry broadcasts, only to succumb amid poor ratings.

However, over the past half-decade, the industry has experienced a renaissance. Viewership is skyrocketing — with more than 73 million people, for example, up to 2021 League of Legends World Championship Finals. More and more players flocked to the game; League of Legends, easily the most popular e-sport, boasting over 100 million players per month. And everyone from advertisers Venture capitalists are pouring millions of dollars into the industry.

Meanwhile, thanks to advances in video streaming technology and Internet broadband, esports is more accessible than ever.

It’s a great time to get involved. But for outsiders eager to try e-sports, or even casual players, the industry presents a tough front. For most games, no single league, like the NFL in football or the MLB in baseball, includes the majority of active players and games. Without ESPN or equivalent Monday Night Football weekly, providing fans with a dashboard, guaranteed time and channel to watch the top teams perform. Above all, eSports is a genre of its own; There are many types of e-sports like traditional sports.

Instead, eSports matches take place continuously, streamed directly from a gaming star’s home PC. There are also year-round tournaments run by various organizations around the globe. Though numerous, these are often not agreed upon in any kind of formal structure.

But beneath that appealing exterior lies a captivating simplicity: The fact is, once you’ve found the game to follow, you’ll never have a problem finding a match. You just need to know where to look. So let’s start there: What games are worth your time?

Basically, any game that can be played competitively has the potential to become an e-sport. Below, we provide a quick introduction to each tournament, as well as a few clips of typical tournament play.

Game

League of Legends

Compete League of Legends is played between two opposing teams of five whose goal is to destroy the opponent’s main base, known as the Nexus, while defending their base. To win, they must fight their way across a map littered with players, enemy turrets, and waves of computer-controlled minions.

The battlefield is divided into three separate lanes through which the waves travel, and a neutral area between the lanes known as the jungle. Players select unique champions early in the game and can increase their chosen champion’s power by choosing abilities as they gain experience and level up, and purchase items with earned gold obtained by killing enemy players, minions, or structures. With five players and three lanes, there is always a power imbalance across the map, and strategies often revolve around abusing that imbalance with high mobility and area control. Games usually last between 20 and 40 minutes.

Dota 2

Original Dota The game pretty much invented the multiplayer online battle arena genre, and the massive popularity of the indie game helped propel the Valve-produced game. Dota 2 to the height of the stratosphere, where it is now directly behind League of Legends on the totem pole of the MOBA. As the ancestor of MOBA games, Dota 2’s the game functions are the same as the function of League of Legends, features teams of five fighting each other on a great battlefield, likewise divided into three main lanes. Along the way, they battle defensive towers and computer-controlled minions, gathering experience and money that they can use to level up and buy items. The goal is to eventually destroy the opponent’s base, aka “ancient”.

Dota 2 features some of the most complex mechanics of any video game today, including express delivery of items between the player and the store, complex jungle mechanics such as “stacking” and counting Unique “denial” ability, where you can kill minions, towers and heroes to deny your opponent’s gold and experience. Each match takes an average of 25-45 minutes.

Counter-Strike: Global Offensive

The latest version of the classic Fights back The franchise may have some unique quirks, but it’s still pretty reminiscent of its predecessor. Built around the “Detonate” game mode, the two teams perform the different roles of Terrorist and Counter-Terrorist. Compete on unique maps promoting different play styles, each played as one of the 30 best, with each round ending if all players on both sides are killed in the game. duration 115 seconds or if the Terrorist succeeds in detonating the bomb.

Since each weapon has its own set of damage and accuracy, the game requires a lot of individuality. Players also earn coins for each round they win and detonate/detonate bombs, as well as kill opponents — this allows players to buy better weapons and equipment at the start of a round. Maps usually take 20 to 40 minutes.

Overwatch

Overwatch is a team shooter similar to Valve’s Fortress Team 2. With a total of 32 heroes, each being part of a specific role, allowing specific team compositions to be built in competitive matches. The four roles are Attack, Defense, Tank, and Support.

Overwatch features teams of six who must make the most of their hero’s abilities as they attempt to win a variety of game modes. The most popular game modes are called Control, Assault, Escort and Payload, all of which have a unique objective that each team will have to complete. Controlling is reminiscent of standard chess scenario capture, while Escort sees a team having to clear the way for the payload through three separate checkpoints. Maps usually take 20 to 30 minutes.

VALUABLE

VALUABLE, Riot took on the tactical shooter genre, drawing many similarities with CS GO. As one of the latest games to invest heavily in esports, VALUABLE has become something of a phenmonmen both in and out of competitive gaming. It’s a five-on-five character-based shooter where precise gunplay meets unique agent abilities.

Each of the 18 dealers currently available offer something different to the game. Compete on several maps, with players assigned to either the offensive or defensive team. Each player starts with a standard pistol and one or more signature ability features. They also have access to a shop where they can purchase abilities and weapons, including secondary weapons, submachine guns, shotguns, machine guns, assault rifles, and sniper rifles.

The first team to reach 13 rounds wins the game. A round victory can be achieved by wiping out the opposing team, planting a spike (bomb) and defending it until it explodes or melts it. Maps can take 20 to 40 minutes.

There are plenty of other e-sports out there that don’t quite reach the popularity of the big three. But they’re all fun and worth your time. For example, Super Smash Bros, the hugely popular Nintendo brawler, depending on which one best video game documentaries ever has created a cult hit in the field of e-sports.

Along those lines, Street fighter experienced a resurgence with the release Street Fighter 4 in 2008, and now has a huge and passionate fan base — it also represents a continuation of an honored esports tradition. Back in the 90s, Street Fighter 2 was one of the first games to attract an international audience of competitive players. If brawlers are not your thing, you can try first-person shooter games, such as the popular console series Call of Duty or Halo.

And then, of course, there are indies, games created by small groups of heavyweight enthusiasts that attract a large following.

Where to watch?

There are really competitive games anytime is happening in the field of e-sports, and you can watch any of these matches you want. That’s thanks to Twitch, the streaming company that dominates video game streaming. To anyone on Twitch — from a drunk guy playing Halo in his basement for the top esports players in the world — can stream their games to anyone else, anytime. The site is easy to navigate, as its main classification scheme focuses on the games themselves. Want to see one League of Legends competition? Just click on the giant League of Legends image on home screen, will upload some games sort by popularity.

Once you’ve invested enough in esports to start rooting for specific players or teams, you can also follow their channels live on Twitch. The site may be the biggest player in streaming gaming, but it’s not the only one. You can also stream on YouTube as well as several other sites.

Tournaments

The lifeblood of eSports is the causal streams you find on Twitch and its competitors. However, watching these games is like watching a basketball game between a few NBA stars. So to a certain extent this type of game lacks the heart-pounding excitement of real competitive gaming where real money is on the way and real reputation is at stake. The best place to catch that kind of action is at the professional tournaments, scheduled throughout the year and run by a variety of teams, from the game developers themselves to independent organizers.

The best way to think of an eSports season is to compare it to golf or tennis, where the top players or teams move from event to event, over the course of a year. In esports, the closest parallel to these traditional sports tournaments is the LCS, an annual competition where teams compete on a weekly basis, culminating in the final tournament near the end of August.

However, for most games, there is no master league that tracks player progress. Instead, at the end of each year, the best indicator of a team or player’s success is simply their prize pool, which is carefully recorded at the site. EsportsEarnings.

In South Korea, where e-sports has become a mainstream indulgence for more than a decade, the country’s richest corporations line up to advertise at events that can attract more than 100,000 fans. The present of Korea is the rest of the world’s future. The industry may be young, it may be fragile, and it may not always be easy to map out, but it has always proven to be resilient. As the Internet and video games become more and more in our lives, eSports will only grow. What we offer here are just the thinnest windows through which a glimpse of eSports can be seen. There’s a whole, incredibly exciting universe out there. Why not go explore?