Esports - Is gaming becoming a sport?

"esports is still an unknown quantity to most people – but as the world gets more tech-savvy, more people will accept it as sport."

In my mind the quote I found has hit the nail on the head, well kind of. Gaming has gone from sitting in your room (people still do it that way), to packing out sporting arenas around the world. I think whether people like it or not gaming has become a massive thing now and it will only continue to grow, but will it be accepted as a sport? Could we see it sitting a long side Football (soccer), Basketball and Baseball?

Lets look at how big it is at the moment, you would have had to have been living under a rock for the past 8 years not to of heard of Call of Duty. The series has sold roughly 175 million copies to date, on average one sold every two seconds. At the end of March the COD Championships took place in Las Vegas with the winning team banking a lovely $1 million, not bad for just sitting about playing games!

Yeah...this wasn't an actual match

 So we know the prize money is there, what about viewers/fans? League of Legends is an online arena battle type strategy game in which two teams of five champions battle it out. in 2013 the LOL championships attracted 32 million online viewers, that was double the viewers of the baseball world series and beat game seven of the NBA finals. The following year it attracted 40,000 to Sangam stadium in Seoul, the same stadium hosted a FIFA world cup semi final in 2002.

League of Legends Championship, Seoul 2014

I am starting to get the idea that professional esports teams are like Formula 1 teams. Teams can train up to 14 hours a day, working on strategy, technique and the opposition, this is then put in to action in regional leagues and tournaments. Individuals are earning past the £1 million per year and with more sponsors investing this will surely grow.

Now the more difficult part, while doing my research I saw a lot of people making the claim that gamers are athletes. There is no doubt in my mind that the top pros work incredibly hard to get to where they are today but an athlete, for me, is someone who takes part in a sport which requires great strength, speed or endurance (or a mixture of the three). 

I also believe that we don't need to compare though, gaming is so big now it has grown into its own world.  

"esports has earned the right to be whatever it wants to be. It doesn’t matter how people want to define it, it is simply a remarkable phenomenon."

Regardless of peoples views, esports is here and I can only see it getting bigger. Who knows, we may find events televised soon. Whatever happens, the future is bright for esports and for gaming as a whole.

@Joe_Copson

Games and their unique game play

I spent the last week finishing off Max Payne 3, which really is a great game (I also got it for a lovely £4 on Steam). Very good story line and pretty much constant action, Max even turns into John McClane for a portion of the game! What I had the most fun with though was the 'Bullet Time' slow motion game play effect.

This got me thinking last night, with the gaming world constantly changing and new ideas being thrown around, where did some of these unique game play effects start? And which games have made the most use of these effects? Lets take a look.

Yippee ki-yay!

Max Payne (Series) - Bullet time

I will start with what I just finished. Max Payne pretty much revolves around bullet time, in simple terms, slow motion. When activated time slows down to the point where the player can see individual shots fired at them and also enables Max to go on the offensive. The advantage is that even knowing time is slowed, Payne can still aim in real time giving you the chance to get those satisfying head shots. To add the the effect, when you down the final enemy in the area you are treated to bullet camera which shows your winning kill.

The Matrix films were famous for using the slow-mo effect but in the video game world Requiem: Avenging Angel was one of the first to use it. You can get a glimpse of it here (starts about 2:45).

Gears of War (Series) - Cover system

GOW, released in 2006, was I think when the cover system really got its acclaim. The games selling point was its cover based combat game play, you can easily jump behind cover at the touch of a button and used it to tactically take down the Locust horde. You could pick enemies off by peaking from cover to get a well aimed shot or use the non risky blind fire approach. This was improved for GOW 2 thanks to an improved Unreal engine when cover would take damage from gun fire.

The cover system was used well before Gears of Wars time, you could go right back 1986 when 'Rolling Thunder' was released to get your first glimpse of cover based game play. 'Kill Switch' was the first game to base its game play on cover, you also have the first two Metal Gear Solid games and Uncharted: Drakes fortune which used the system just before Gears was released.

Mirrors Edge - Free running

Mirrors Edge really is in a league of its own when it comes to uniqueness. It is based on Parkour and truly is a first person experience, the use of cameras and being able to see Faith's limbs while performing sprints and big jumps helps create the feeling of performing free running moves. The game also uses 'Runners Vision' which highlights pieces of scenery you can interact with to perform your moves. 'Bullet Time' also features in a slightly different variance, 'Reaction Time' slows time down to enable the player to plan our the next move without losing speed and momentum.

Like I said, Mirrors Edge really is one of kind. The only game that kind of comes close is 'Prince of Persia' for his ability to run along walls but even that is really clutching at straws.

Those are the three that jumped at me while thinking about this, there are probably loads more examples out there. If you can think of any then please feel free to comment below. Meanwhile, I will sit back and wait for the next game to utilise or possibly even revolutionise a new game play mechanic.

@Joe_Copson

DLC, Expansion packs, Pre order bonuses and all that s**t

Gaming is an expensive hobby, fact. Console games now cost £49.99...but that isn't the final cost for most games anymore. If you're relatively young DLC is probably the norm for you but us slightly older ladies and gentleman remember a more simple time. Let us go back in time.

Late 1998 I was introduced to one of my favourite games of all time, Baldurs Gate on the PC. At the time I believe it cost me about £30, If I was being truly honest my PC wasn't good enough to run it so I played it at a friends house. I won't go into detail about the game but it was engaging, difficult, full of things to do and had a decent sized campaign. This was my first introduction to an expansion pack (I guess early name for DLC), Tales of the sword coast was released in April 1999 and added roughly 30 hours extra game play to the original game. The key point I want to make here is that it didn't directly impact the main storyline/campaign.

Fast forward to 10th April 2015. Evolve was released to absolute uproar when DLC was available the day of release. Gone are they days games cost only the amount you pay for the actual game. At the time of writing, buying Evolve with all add-ons and passes would cost you a massive £68.68 (two and fraction a Baldurs Gates for you budding mathematicians!). Almost £70 for a game that, if truth be told, isn't technically finished. Are developers under too much pressure to meet a deadline that they throw out an unfinished product? Or do they know we will lap up everything they throw at us and see the big £££ signs?

I can't just pick on Evolve, pretty much all new releases do it now. Battlefield: Hardline has been released with a standard and a deluxe edition, the latter giving you access to more equipment. Mortal Kombat promises you bonus characters if you preorder and has DLC ready to sell on release date.

I don't necessarily have a problem with new content but some games now push for you to buy the content by locking parts of the game down, my previous article about Destiny is a key example. Call of Duty gives us maps from previous games, Rock Band/Guitar Hero bleed us dry with extra songs.

The way things are going it seems to me that if you don't get the content you put yourself at a huge disadvantage. Not just because you miss out on new features but in some games spending more money gives you an advantage over the competition.

Whichever way you look at it DLC is here to stay and will more than likely keep growing in price but what can we do, stop playing games in protest?

@joe_copson

Destiny - BAFTA game of the year 2014?

So, it's been a while (May 8th 2014!) but I have finally found some time to start up again.

September 9th, 2014. I shot home from work hoping that my copy of Destiny was in my mail box. To my obvious delight it was there and from then on I thought I had found the next game to keep me company for months on end...or so I thought.

I will admit I was hooked, played it every day and night at every spare moment I got. I loved the premise, looked great and sounded great. So where did it all go wrong?

Getting to Level 20 and the constant searching for legendary and exotic gear was quite addictive at first but once that was achieved you were forced to do the Daily, Weekly and Nightfall Strikes.This became disgustingly boring once they started to recycle them over and over again. Even the Crucible became repetitive with the low number of maps and game modes.

Still I stuck with it thinking the first DLC (Ergh, I hate that word) would burst new life into a stale story. My friend and I refused to buy it at first, we wanted to wait until we had maxed out our levels...but then this hit us

Wow, we were pissed. It pretty much forced our hand to buy the DLC otherwise we had to wait a week for the missions to recycle. We were addicted at that point, they had won this round!

It took us a matter of days to finish 'The Dark Below' extra story missions. After that I slowly stopped playing. If you missed a few days you fell behind, missed out on doing Raids etc. You then missed out on better equipment, which then got you shouted at when doing a Raid with more experienced players!

In conclusion, I though it had mega potential and you never know it might fulfil it one day but I have come away disappointed. It was named BAFTA game of the year and has roughly 13 million active players so it is doing something right....isn't it?

Ps here is my scientific Destiny enjoyment chart

Feel free to comment below

@Joe_Copson

How Excited Do We Get For New Games?

With the release date for Watchdogs 19 days away, I am slowly getting excited about immersing myself into a single player campaign once again. Apart from GTA 5 and The Last Of Us, I don't think I have looked forward to a game release for quite a while.


With franchises releasing new games annually now, do we still get that same excitement we used to for new games? Don't get me wrong, I love Assassins Creed, FIFA, COD and Battlefield (I like both! Get on that fan boys) but knowing a new instalment is coming once a year kills my buzz for them a bit.

World record for the longest cuddle

I remember having to scan through official magazines (before YouTube kids) for the next big thing. I camped out on 15th November 2000 after school for three hours waiting for my friends dad so we could buy WWF No Mercy. Donkey Kong 64 was also huge for us too, maybe just for the opening rap scene!. We would plan out months in advance exactly how we would play the game and read articles about them over and over again.


I think with the Internet being so big now, you can feel like you have played half the game before you actually own it because of the hours of game play at our disposal, we could even go as far as saying we don't actually have to play the game because websites can tell us an entire plot line the day of release. Gone are the days we went to school excited about sharing what happened last night in our own little world.


Online multiplayer also plays a massive part too. There is a massive market for them now that getting online is so easy, just look at the success of first person shooters and MMORPG's. It is so much easier to turn on your console/PC and and jump straight into the action rather than sit through the cinematic scenes of a single player campaign (Looking at you here Metal Gear Solid).

I know companies must spend hundreds of thousands on advertising now, creating snap shots to tease us about their upcoming IP but even that can spoil it (The Point explains this brilliantly). Do we want to know too much now before we buy? Maybe the mystery that used to surround a game gave me that buzz feeling I am now missing.


What games are you looking forward to? What memories do you have of buying games?


Feel free to comment below.

@Joe_Copson

Joe Copson - Google+

Are video games too competitive?

The thoughts and ideas of this subject have been floating around in my mind for a few months now, mainly after finishing up on my console for the night in that 20-30 minutes of peace you get in bed before falling asleep.

Do we take gaming now too seriously? Has it got the point where we don’t play games now for the enjoyment but play because we want to be better than someone else?

My earliest memory I think is playing FIFA International Soccer on the Sega mega drive, Janco Tianno and Matt Webster banging them in for the EA all-stars against a lowly Qatar because you wanted to win 8-0. If I wind forward to 1998 when FIFA 99 was released, an old friend and I spent a whole day of our summer holidays using the instant replay function as we were adamant Bergkamp was struck by lightning.

Yey, synchronised goal celebration!

The point I want to make is that playing these games was great fun and I didn’t really care about the score when playing against a friend. We were far more amused by the fact that if you put in a horror tackle on FIFA International Soccer you could spend the next five minutes running away from the ref to avoid a yellow card. Win or lose we enjoyed it.

Fast forward 21 years to FIFA 14 and something has changed, yes I know I have grown up and it isn’t just about the taking part (sorry kids!), but do I get that same enjoyment? Probably not….unless I win. For example, playing online seasons I was on a really stinky 6 match losing streak (this is where I had my light bulb moment), Do I play again because I want to? Or because I want/need to win? The last thing I wanted to do was to play another 15 minutes and get endlessly frustrated and annoyed when I concede an 89^th minute goal, followed by opposing player spending the next ten minutes celebrating and watching the replay from every possible angle!

'Ssshhhh, If I am quiet no one will notice me at the back post'

Call of Duty is another fine example, I have recently stopped playing multiplayer because I just stopped having fun. I know what you’re thinking and yes I am your average Joe type of player, I have good games and bad games. Here is that light bulb moment again though, I started to worry about my K/D ratio rather than play and enjoy the game itself.

I am not trying to say let us all boycott multiplayer, not at all. I still die in the opening seconds in Team Death Match and still concede 90^th minute goals on FIFA. I just want you all to strip back all of the stats and trophies and remember why you put that game in your console in the first place. Enjoy!