And the Winner Is…
The 2018 Esports Awards were held earlier this week and served as a reminder of all that has gone on in the esports world this year. There were definitely some surprises and others that were locked-in well before the awards were handed out. Here are some of the winners from the biggest categories.
PC Player of the Year- Oleksandr “s1mple” Kostyliev (Na’Vi CS:GO)
S1mple has had the year of his career in 2018. He is regarded as the best player in the world by nearly every caster and analyst, and it’d be unthinkable for HLTV to award their Player of the Year to anyone other than the Ukrainian.
Esports Game of the Year- Overwatch
This was probably the shocker of the night. Most expected EPIC’s Fortnite to take this award. The fact that the battle royale hasn’t really set up many tournaments, with qualifiers, seeding, and other things associated with organized esports probably contributed to the game being slightly overlooked.
Team of the Year- Astralis CS:GO
This was probably the least shocking winner. Astralis has been the most dominant team in CS:GO in recent memory. They’ve won 7 tournament this year, including the FaceIt Major in London and they continue to blow teams out of the water. They are unbeatable on Nuke and have probably the deepest map pool professional CS:GO has ever seen. The most impressive thing about Astralis is that they don’t have any full-on superstars. You could argue that dev1ce is near that level, but each of the players on the team is capable of taking over on any given map.
Organization of the Year- Cloud 9
An unexpected CS:GO Major in Boston, becoming the first NA team to reach the LoL semis in seven years, and the winners of the first season of Overwatch League= Organization of the Year
If Fnatic has been slightly more successful in CS:GO or had won the LoL Worlds, they would have been in with a chance. But, they did neither, so Cloud 9 walked away as deserving winners.
Personality of the Year- Ninja
My mother asked me if I knew about Ninja a few weeks ago. My 58 year-old mother. Asked Me. If I knew about Ninja.
He is the first gamer to appear on the cover of ESPN the Magazine. He was on, and now regularly interacts with, Ellen. He’s played the game that shot him to superstardom, Fortnite, with Drake, Marshmello, JuJu Smith-Schuster. He’s in Samsung commercials promoting their newest phones. Ninja was Personality of the Year and it shouldn’t have even been close.
PC Rookie of the Year- Gabriël “bwipo” Rau (Fnatic LoL)
Fnatic’s 6th man proved to be more than just a suitable substitute for sOAZ when he was out with an injury. He stepped in as the top laner for the European Championships earlier this year and helped Fnatic to a 3–0 victory over runners up, G2. He also helped the team to a 2nd-place finish at Worlds, where they fell just short against Invictus Gaming in the final.
Live Event of the Year- Overwatch League Grand Finals
In its first season, the Overwatch League was a massive success. Teams have been lining up to pay the multi-million dollar franchise fee to get a roster into the league. In the Season 1 Grand Finals, nearly 11 million people tuned in during the 2-day event. ESPN hosted the event on its network, in prime time, which is a first for any esports title.
2018 was a year to remember as we were introduced to Fortnite, and Overwatch became a top-tier esport. Ninja was an unstoppable force and became a household name. Some of the winners were a bit surprising but, overall it’s hard to argue that any of the winners weren’t deserving. Or maybe it isn’t. Comment on who should’ve won but didn’t.
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