The Evolution of Competitive Gaming: With a Focus on “League of Legends”
In this paper I will discuss the advancing role that competitive gaming is playing in the popular gaming community. It will explore the history of said genre since its emergence in mainstream gaming, its impact on the gaming market, trends among players, and the expanding role of Esports (with a focus on analyzing games such as League of Legends).
Did you know there are always at least seven-and-a-half million people playing League of Legends at one point internationally? Insane, right? What makes League of Legends so incredibly popular?
Well, to talk about that, we need to go back to the beginning, when competitive gaming first arose in popular culture. The first Esports event took place way back in 1972 on the campus of Stamford University. In this tournament, “students competed on the video game Spacewar. The grand prize for the winner was a year long subscription to the Rolling Stones magazine” (Bountie Gaming). So this was the first example of an “official” gaming competition on such a scale that was fought for an actual prize of value. This was also the beginning of the Golden Age of Arcade Games. This age extended all throughout the 1990s in full, and arcade competitions are still around today, though on a more localized scale.
However, the first “official” video game competition didn’t happen until 1980, whereby the Space Invaders Championship had an attendance of over ten thousand participants. This tournament received an overabundant amount of media attention, and soon Space Invaders (which was the name of the tournament) became a household name in that early age in gaming.
That was only the beginning, however. Later, in the 1980s, we saw the “rise of several companies that recorded video game high scores” (Bountie Gaming). Twin Galaxies, for example, is a company that promoted video games and proceeded to publicize scores and records on published works, one of which being the Guiness Book of World Records. Then, in the 1990s, when the internet came into mainstream usage, gaming “connected gamers through the web so that online competitive gaming was made possible” (Bountie Gaming). Furthermore, this newfound internet connectivity allowed for the growth in popularity of PC games and companies (Nintendo and Blockbuster, for instance) who began sponsoring championships for video games worldwide. This form of online gaming eventually took us to the legendary version of Esports that has taken the world by storm today and has become a multimillion dollar economy unto itself.
The 1990s was when the stakes turned up, though. At that time, “we began to see bigger prize monies, such as the [fifteen thousand] prize money by CPL for one of their tournaments” (Bountie Gaming). The game for this tournament was Starcraft and its expansion Brood War. This game was a popular choice in competitions and tournaments at the time because its real-time strategy gameplay set it aside from other high-demand games. Its successor game, Starcraft 2: Wings of Liberty, continued to uphold these competitive standards while also presenting the players with new available strategies.
This time also saw the uprising of another legendary title in arcade gaming history: Street Fighter II, a game that was credited “with beginning a renaissance in the world of fighting games, along with leading the boom of fighting games in arcades in the 1990s” (ESPN). Street Fighter II was a major success, and sold more than sixty thousand cabinets over the world, and this type of success was completely unheard of until then. At this point, Japanese fighting games were not necessarily “new,” but Street Fighter introduced the combat, secret moves, and novel characters that we still know today in fighting-games. “This game is credited with being the first to cause a shift in how competitive video games were played” (ESPN). Before it was officially released, the highest scores on arcade machines were how the best players were actually determined.
But just what makes a game popular, in the end? To answer this, let’s analyze League of Legends, which is the most competitively-based game (in terms of viewership and pay grade) worldwide, currently.
Firstly, “when League of Legends was first released in 2010, its model was completely different to all other games on the market” (Richard Heimer 1), and definitely different than any MMO that was currently out there. In what way? Well, to begin, such games were traditionally to be bought for a flat fee, or possibly exerted an annual, monthly, or weekly subscription fee. Either way, it was typical that such intricate, strategic, and large-scale games as League were not free to play. “Some games would release paid DLC, but it was a foreign concept to give a game away for free” (Heimer 1). As such, this is one of the reasons for the success of League of Legends, even among all the other “free-to-plays” that were on the market, most of which were mobile games, a genre of play that was rapidly expanding around 2010.
“Mobile games were starting to become big around this time, and games like Candy Crush [claimed] to be ‘free-to-play’ but actually fell under the ‘pay-to-win’ category” (Heimer 2), which meant that players would put actual money into the game, allotting them an unfair advantage against players that didn’t pay. However, “to make League of Legends popular [its] team ensured that players would not gain an advantage by putting money into the game” (Heimer 2). The League currency is consisted of Riot Points, which can technically be paid for, but all unlockables are able to be potentially achieved through actual gameplay.
In essence, this is why League of Legends has become so popular. The pure ease of starting to play. If you decide you’re bored and want a new game to try out, League is easy to download and play for a while. This eases the burden on people who are hesitant to start playing a new game. “With League of Legends, people can play a few matches to see if they like it or not and then share it with their friends without pressuring them into buying it” (Heimer 3). And so, this eliminates the fear in players that their own money will be wasted on a game they won’t enjoy. Reflecting on this, think back to the old days, when you needed expensive consoles and arcade machines to play games. Compared to that, the ease of starting a game like League of Legends is absolutely nothing.
“Another reason League of Legends is so popular is due to its ranked mode, and although it has a harsh reputation people seem to keep going back for more” (Heimer 3). The game is meant to awaken the competitive side in people, whether they be playing themselves or watching others play. Competition is addicting, and the League team capitalizes on it with tournaments and world championships to incite adrenaline in its community. “Climbing the ranked ladder feels like you are actually achieving something, [that] you are being rewarded for improving as a player” (Heimer 3). Also, with the ever-rising popularity of Esports, players can root for their favorite pros and their favorite champions, and since characters are always being refined there is no end to the development of strategy in game.
Now, not all competitive games are structured economically or dynamically in the same exact (or even close to) manner of League of Legends. Though games such as Dota II are somewhat similarly constructed, there are others that are not so; Counter Strike: Global Offensive, FIFA, Super Smash Brothers, and Overwatch, to name a few titles. Many of these operate uniquely to their own style, and cannot be compared logistically to League, though the general strategy is the same, which is to draw in players (which games like CS:GO are able to do influentially through means such as the Steam Marketplace), fuel the adrenaline within the player, and then completely addict them and make these players care about the politics surrounding the game (such as leagues and tournaments). “We are seeing a professional element develop, and we are continuing to see the gamers” (Garry Cook 1), and this development has persisted continuously since the creation of Esports.
Another factor that also draws in players, and is a huge reason behind the popularity of ESports, is the fanbase. Now, spectators such as you and me are not only watching Mario or Kirby, but we’re rooting for the professional player behind the character. This is because we grow attached to personalities and skillsets, both of which the professional is exhibiting during his or her streams. By getting to know the player, we become more invested in the game, the politics of the game, the players’ lives (in the same, and sometimes even closer, way that people follow the NBA, for example, and know the players), and through this we become even more invested in the game itself and are more motivated to play it by watching the pros totally kick ass. As a result, the Esports community grows larger and larger. Market research firm Newzoo forecasts the Esports economy will grow to $905.6 million within the year and $1.4 billion by 2020” (CNBC).
Just like regular sports, such as football or baseball or soccer, you also have a lot of memorable moments in competitive gaming that help to advertise certain games and players. The so-called greatest of these moments that competitive gamers still reference today occurred on the campus of Cal Poly Pomona during the Evo (The Evolution Championship, an annual Esports event that centers around fighting games) of 2004, when Daigo Umehara and Justin Wong faced off in Street Fighter III, when Daigo won the match with his famous “Daigo Parry,” therein engraving him into the history books. Well, not really. However, that moment “is seen as the most iconic moment in competitive gaming history” (ESPN). Just like we remember special in-game moments of sports players such as Michael Jordan or Babe Ruth that remain legendary and unforgettable to this day, we remember special moments in Esports, as well as the players who created them.
(Clip of the parry — https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xSGW7CwD5GM)
In addition, fans do a lot of the work when it comes to promoting games. When a certain game company or franchise has established a pre-existing fanbase, there are almost no limits on the amount of work that fans will do to hype up a new title, or even to recommend games to other people. Dota II, for example, initially began as only a community mod of Warcraft 3, the latter being an already-popular game, and CS:GO, as another example, is the third of the popularized Counter Strike series, so fans came in willing to give the game a try.
This overall sense of healthy competition and political relevance is what makes Esports so exceedingly popular, and is the reason for why the market for Esports will only continue to rise.
Sources:
- https://medium.com/@BountieGaming/the-history-and-evolution-of-esports-8ab6c1cf3257
- https://www.unrankedsmurfs.com/blog/why-is-league-of-legends-so-popular
- https://www.cnbc.com/2018/10/03/esports-pro-video-gamers-are-making-millions-by-age-30-and-retiring.html
- http://www.espn.com/esports/story/_/id/17391663/daigo-jwong-legacy-street-fighter-moment-37
- http://www.espn.com/blog/statsinfo/post/_/id/131719/street-fighter-iis-place-in-video-game-history
