Archive for Esports

Once more ESPN is partnering up with esports and Major League Gaming, again at a venue for the X Games. After the successful MLG debut at this year’s June X Games where Call of Duty: Ghosts was the game, this time the showcase for esports will be Counter-Strike: Global Offensive.

Both X Games and MLG executives were thrilled with June’s turnout and used that success to parlay this new venture. Tim Reed, senior director of X Games content strategy was quoted as saying:

We took a big step in creating a broader experience for our fans in Austin, with the new gaming event, the music festival and other interactive activities and content on site, and now we’re working to extend that to Aspen.

MLG President and co-founder Mike Sespo echoed a similar sentiment, telling ESPN

Our fan base was really electrified with the idea of having MLG competitions at the X Games and having our pro players earn X Games medals in Austin, where it was a tremendous success. We’re thrilled to announce that Austin wasn’t a one-off.

The 2015 Aspen X Games will take place from January 23-25 and will feature eight different qualified CS:GO teams. The original version of Counter-Strike debuted in 1999 as a Half-Life modification and different versions of the game have been in global competition since the early 2000’s.

After personally played CS 1.5 and 1.6 at a decently-high level, I can say I am thrilled to see CS:GO continue to gain steam. Despite being out for over two years, only recently has Global Offensive began to meet the previous high water marks in popularity of the Counter-Strike 1.5 and 1.6 — early-to-mid 2000’s — heyday.

If you plan on being in the crowd at Aspen, there is one downside: the esports section will be the only non-free admission area. The limited seating forces a premium to view CS:GO in person, however live streams will be available at MLG.tv as well as highlights on ESPN and ABC broadcasts. Tickets are currently available and the $100 price tag includes benefits such as reserved seating, a behind-the-scenes-tour and a gift bag full of MLG goodies. For a three-day weekend of live esports action, the price isn’t outlandish.

Continuing the merge of MLG and X Games events could very well continue, as Sespo told reporters

This is a dream partnership and we’ve always thought MLG and X Games would be a really good match. Austin was a very successful experiment where we learned that these sports play well together and that we can dramatically open up the audience on both sides of the partnership.

Over the years MLG has proven to be a stable platform for displaying esports to a greater population. The continued support of ESPN and the X Games will extend MLG’s reach even further.

(Header image via Piotr Drabik)

Between esports scholarships and ESPN previously showing the Defense of the Ancients 2 — or DotA 2 — on their ESPN3 stream, the “worldwide leader” is continuing their foray into esports. Yesterday ESPN announced their intent to broadcast the League of Legends — commonly shortened to LoL — World Championship finals on ESPN3 this Sunday, October 19 at 2:30 am Eastern, 11:30 pm Pacific. The finals are being held in South Korea, almost inarguably the esports capital of the world.

The announcement came as a bit of a surprise given not even a month ago ESPN President John Skipper didn’t mince words on his thoughts on the esports as a sport debate at the Code/Media Series: New York:

“It’s not a sport — it’s a competition. Chess is a competition. Checkers is a competition…Mostly, I’m interested in doing real sports.”

The signals may be getting mixed, as according to some sources, ESPN execs were “delighted” with the viewership numbers from their DotA 2 stream. While there may not be any other DotA 2 events in the near future for ESPN, it is clear the network is interested in esports.

Athletes are getting on the esports hype train too. Gordon Hayward of the Utah Jazz recently tweeted his affection for LoL while simultaneously challenging LeBron James. Hayward, no stranger to esports has previously mentioned StarCraft II and even joined a StarCraft II tournament.

Regardless of whether professional athletes join the ranks of professional gamers, ESPN has clearly found the previously little niche genre of esports is rapidly growing. Between the streams available on Twitch.TV, YouTube and ESPN, plenty of LoL action will be viewable this weekend. While we aren’t at the point of tailgating for esports, we’re getting awfully close. As more and more companies realize the viewership potential, ad revenue and product placement opportunities, expect the contrast between esports and sports continue to fade.
(Header image via Riot Games, makers of League of Legend)

Robert Morris University has been in the news lately for its League of Legends team. Its scholarship League of Legends team.

That’s right. A scholarship for video game players. How both delightful and terrifying. And I don’t really know why either emotion strikes me, much less both simultaneously. Perhaps I’m terrified because — much in the way my grandfather, born in 1901, became dismayed at the increasing popularity of the NFL in the 1970s — I am witnessing an irrevocable change in the universe of sports. Esports — or electronic sports — are going mainstream. They’re going NCAA.

Well, not necessarily NCAA, but they’re getting legit like crazy. Actually, the video game tournaments themselves are already legit. Consider pro gamer Nadeshot’s discussion about the team roster around the 2:50 mark in this interview. He makes it very clear how the players inside the industry already see themselves as brethren to the pro athletes of traditional sports. Students of the history of pro sporting leagues (or perhaps just anyone who’s seen the first two episodes of Ken Burn’s Baseball documentary) will no doubt suffer from deja vu at this juncture: Players rapidly jumping from one team to the next; the league lacking clear regulation; the popularity outpacing the structure.

I doubt the world of esports and gaming will ever have a business model identical to the NFL, Premier League, or any other stadium-based sports league, but at the same time, the models of these leagues are changing rapidly, too. The proliferation and growing demand for services like MLB.tv, NFL Rewind, and similar streaming services suggests that an online broadcast would not only be successful, but well-positioned for the next decade of broadcasting trends.

So esports happens to be an activity that people care about. It makes sense, then, that good esports players could make a living doing this popular thing makes sense — that’s how all our current pro sports leagues came into existence. Jim Creighton got paid (under the table) to play baseball, and he got paid with the money from the ticket booth. And when radio coverage started making the sport more money, tickets, hot dogs, and toothpaste commercials lined Babe Ruth’s wallet.

Now, Peyton Manning makes the heft of his income from television. Gate receipts for an NFL game represent only a fraction of the NFL’s revenue. But a guy like Manning also makes a great deal of money in non-NFL advertisements. And this is another piece of the economic puzzle that is pro game.

SK Gaming, one of Germany’s premier gaming teams, has sponsorship deals with Intel, Medion AG, and previously Adidas. As recently as 2008, the 85% of the team’s funding came from sponsorships.

The other side of this inquiry is the question: Is this a sport? Should gaming be considered athletic? Are the Robert Morris gamers student-athletes? I think the answer is probably yes. Maybe it has to be yes. If NASCAR, with it’s heavy reliance on mechanical and electronic components, is a sport, then so is gaming. Like racing sports, gamers cannot survive on intellect alone — so it is unlike a chess or board game tournament. Esports have a very specific, very real physical component to their execution — the rapid maneuvering and manipulating of the hands and fingers; the ability to communicate reflexively and across multiple mediums (with the headset and, say, on-screen flares).

Of course, if we don’t consider pro racing athletic (and I think there’s semantical room to argue that), then we can easily paste that same conclusion on the Robert Morris students. But I’ve digressed.

I would like to point out another similarity of the pro sports and pro esports worlds: Rapid player obsolescence. Whereas the pro tennis, basketball, football, soccer, or baseball player has finished his or her career by age 40, the 30-year-old gamer is an equally rare sight — which is especially surprising since video games have been around for nearly 40 years. But gamer fatigue appears just as real as NFL running back obsoletcence — though with far fewer life-altering concussions to worry about.

So from a collegiate perspective, I think a gaming scholarship is perfectly rational (assuming any sports scholarship is at all rational). It is a sport that could draw attention and attendance to the school; it nurtures an ability that can — though unlikely — result in a lucrative pro career; and it is a topic that is relevant to the interests of many students’ and many in the coming generations.

I say: Well done, Robert Morris. You may have broken the sports and esports barrier, and I think we can all agree that’s delightifying.

(Header image via Piotr Drabik)

Allow me to start off by apologizing. Thus far I have done two game reviews here at TechGraphs, Madden 15 and FIFA 15, and didn’t have a working capture card for either. Worry no more, dear readers, as from now on I have a smooth running Roxio HD Pro.

There is no shortage of various capture cards, both Amazon and NewEgg have hundreds of search results, however I chose the Roxio brand for a few reasons. Now I’m a fairly technologically-inclined person — I’m sure you’re shocked to hear this — so I don’t shy away from something that could be described as having a difficult installation. Of course, just because I can do something doesn’t mean I want to struggle and get frustrated. One of the biggest selling points for me when deciding which card to get was ease of installation. The only parts I needed to get the Roxio HD Pro up and running on my Xbox 360 were a pair of HDMI cables that ran me about nine bucks.

The instructions contained within the Roxio HD Pro packaging wasn’t at all what I expected. They looked much longer and more intricate than what I planned on.

Then I realized I had been looking at the PlayStation setup. The setup guide for the 360 is literally one sentence plus three bullet points for troubleshooting tips.

The first thing I did was to make sure my Xbox was off. Next I plugged the USB/power cable from my laptop to the Roxio itself. I then unplugged the AV cable and inserted an HDMI to the 360 and the other to the Roxio. Step three was simply taking the other HDMI cable and plugging it into the other side of the capture card and the back of my TV. The next step was putting the installation CD that came with the card into my computer and installing the necessary software. And that’s it. basically five steps, including just double checking my 360 was turned off.

The whole point of springing for the HD Pro version of the Roxio (other than the ease of installation) rather than the standard version for me was two fold: capture footage in 1080p — only 480p is available on the standard model — and the ability to live stream directly to either a YouTube or a Twitch.tv channel. I don’t play competitive console games (though once Halo: Master Chief Collection comes out that my change…), however the option to stream in real time to viewers all over the world is a pretty cool thing to have ready to go.

Really, that is what video games and to a certain extent sports are about: the thrill of winning, and winning in public fashion. Everything from bragging rights, smack talk to whatever you’d like to call is all part of competitive culture in sports and esports alike. Capture cards give you the ability to grab every moment of action so you never miss a highlight. The free software with the Roxio HD Pro allows for editing — it isn’t Sony Vegas but it is quite nice given the price tag — like changing speed such as slo-mo, adjusting the lighting, frame-by-frame trimming and voice over commentary is great for creating montages.

If you can have video evidence of you crushing your friends 6-1 in FIFA or dropping consecutive 3-pointers on them from just across half court, it’s all part of the fun. I’ve already had a blast just tinkering with the editing options. Perhaps in the coming days I’ll upload more gameplay to my YouTube or Twitch channel, maybe even some footage of me getting stomped by pre-teens on Xbox Live while they hurl insults at my parents. But for now, enjoy me playing as QPR against Fulham:

(Header image via Roxio.c0m)

These days it should come as no surprise when a sports team or college build a brand new facility. Be it for games, training, coaching or anything else, a new building or facility can help bring in recruits/free agents. The new Yankee Stadium cost an estimated $1.5 billion. The football facility at the University of Oregon was $68 million. The list goes on and on as when it comes to sports as sometimes spending up front yields long term results.

The continuously-emerging realm of electronic sports, or esports, is no different. Arguably the largest esports league in north america, Major League Gaming (MLG) announced their plans to open a 14,000 square foot state of the art venue in Columbus, Ohio. The building will sport soundproof booths, broadcast platforms for the play-by-play casting and seating for hundreds of spectators. MLG has been hosting live events since 2004. They’ve been around longer than other north american esports league and have added, removed and sometimes re-added various games to maintain strong viewership numbers.

Currently MLG is mostly a console gaming league, however they have included computer games such as StarCraft II (SC2), League of Legends (LoL) and Defense of the Ancients 2 (DotA 2). At the MLG Anaheim event this summer a total of $142,500 was awarded in prize money for various games. In a separate non-MLG event earlier this year, DotA2 set a record for the largest prize pool in esports history, an incredible $10.9 million for The International 4.

This recent news is another sign that esports aren’t going anywhere. With the recent purchase of the streaming platform Twitch.tv by Amazon for $970 million and the popular Minecraft developer Mojang being bought out by Microsoft for $2.5 billion (yes, billion) video games are no longer a child’s hobby or simple entertainment. It’s a business and now we’re seeing the infrastructure being put in place to grow said business. From existing corporate sponsorship to future endeavors like this new facility in Columbus, Ohio, a new era of big business and esports has arrived. Look for the venue to make its debut at the MLG Columbus event spanning October 24-26.