League of Legends: How “It’s just a Game” turned into “Sports”
Do you love video games? Do you spend hours playing with your PC set-up? Game Development has evolved into a multi-billion dollar industry over the last two decades. And with a number of people buying games, apart from the consoles, this industry has seen tremendous growth. Coupled with the advancement in computing technology, games have evolved a lot from the black and white games of the 70’s and early 80’s. Today, games are a lot more interactive and created using all the latest graphics, and real looking images and scenes. So much so that certain games do not look animated anymore, but seem like an extension of real life. This has increased the demand for more creative games, based on highly interactive and creative plots.
With over 27 million players a day, League of Legends — a multiplayer online battle arena that was released October 27, 2009, by Riot Games defined the gaming era furthermore. Most of the people see the game as entertainment for children but if you look very closely, you can learn a lot of very important life lessons from it. It enhances cognitive ability, increases their capacity to think critically while under pressure and also improves overall intelligence playing as a team. Since the year 2011, LoL e-sports (also known as League of Legends electronic sports) take the form of organized game competition. Just like other sports, players are drafted and teams are sponsored by companies to play each annual season that is divided into two splits, spring and summer and conclude with playoff tournaments. At the end of the season, the winner of the split, the team with the most championship points, and the winner of the gauntlet tournament in each league is qualified for the annual League of Legends World Championship.
A team of 5 with 1–5 substitutes, coaches, and analysts are placed in a million dollar gaming house to practice for 10 or more times a day. Some are countries away from home and some left school to pursue their career. These professional players work hard for three main reasons — to win the cash prize of over $18,742,145.79, to be popular, and to make loved ones proud.
The World Championship is held in different locations throughout the globe with different stages namely the Play-Ins, Group Stage, Quarterfinals, Semifinals and Finals. A total of 24 teams participate in the tournament: 3 teams from South Korea, China, North America, Europe and Taiwan/Hong Kong/Macau; 1 team from Brazil, Latin America North, Latin America South, Japan, Oceania, Turkey, Southeast Asia and CIS/Russia; and 1 team from the Wildcard region with the highest rank finish at the 2017 Mid-Season Invitational.
Korean teams like SK Telecom and Samsung Galaxy are the most feared region of every opponent faced their whole gaming career. They ’ve been known to win 5 championships (3-SKT; 2-SSG), 1 for Taiwan (Taipei Assasins) and 1 for Europe (Fnatic). Every finals are watched by over 60 million people throughout the world. The tournament caught the eyes of fans for its high quality of plays over the years, amazing ceremonial performances and talent features while receiving worldwide attention for its dramatic and emotional series. They say “It is just a game”, but for gamers, it’s a brand new world.
