Tag: esports

PawN wins the Mid-Season Invitational

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

I’ll eventually post pictures and share some additional thoughts about MSI at another time, but I wanted to write about this while it is still somewhat fresh on my mind.

Edward Gaming as a team might’ve won the first-ever League of Legends Mid-Seasonal Invitational, but really, the true winner of the whole shebang was their mid-laner, PawN.

I’ll be honest, I’m not really that keen on PawN.  I think he’s kind of petty, arrogant, envious of those more popular than him, and I really dislike the fact that he’s a Korean national who plays for a Chinese team.  All that said, there’s no denying that he’s easily one of the best LoL players in the world, and frankly after MSI, has legitimate claim to being the best mid-laner in the world.

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Screwing players is where eSports bridges the difference gap to athletic sports

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Impetus: Former AD carry for European team Fnatic, “Rekkles” rejoins Fnatic after being on a shitty team during 2015 spring split.  Fnatic cuts “Steelback,” the AD carry that contributed to Fnatic winning the 2015 spring split outright.

Normally, I try to remain neutral when it comes to the argument of “should eSports be classified as real sports,” because there are multiple parts of all arguments that I agree and disagree with.  But this is a story that upon reading it, makes me realize that eSports are very much capable of acting like athletic sports, when it comes to asset management; assets being the players themselves.

Personally, I think this is a really shitty scenario, in which ultimately, a good player is screwed and cut, on account of a supposed better player being available, and being immediately scooped up to replace him.  This is a similar situation that I’ve seen in all major athletic sports, be it baseball, basketball and football, and makes me feel the irony in that screwing players, is where eSports really can bridge the gap between themselves and athletic sports.

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EA Sports presents eSPORTS ’14

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That’s right. A video game about people playing video games. And why the hell not? As long as eSports are being recognized as professional sport, why shouldn’t they be able to have a game made out of it?

Think about that for a second. Imagine creating a character that plays video games, but not just any video games, but other EA sports video games. There’s a repeating image kind of redundancy about it, but that’s what professional gamers do for a living sometimes; why shouldn’t EA try and capitalize on that, and make the players in the game play other EA video games? In fact, they should make the capability to make their players play other EA titles as egregiously priced downloadable content, so that they can make even moar moneys!

But back to eSPORTS14. There’s so many directions that a game like this could be developed. Like FIFA, you could choose a nationality; the Koreans and the Chinese would be stupidly overpowered in talent and capability, but have single digits in charisma, marketability and personality. Europeans would score high in charisma, marketability and arrogance, and South American nations would have a 99 in trolling ability, and nothing else except maybe FIFA. And since North America is pretty much EA’s stomping ground, they would be given a fairly balanced kit to work with.

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Chinese being sore losers? Inconceivable!

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

(video set to play at sweet ending)

I know that I’m really critical when it comes to the topic of eSports and “professional” online gaming, but when I read on some LoL site about how the Koreans at a recent LoL tournament went all Hulkamania and annihilated all of the competition, I still felt that cultural pride, that even in something as silly as pro-gaming. Perhaps the old hat jokes about Koreans being the best at Starcraft and Counterstrike can take the backseat to something that I’m actually interested in like League.

Anyway, I came across more information about the tournament about how in the finals of this tournament, the Koreans not just beat the Chinese team, but absolutely owned them. 2-0 in a best of three, and it apparently wasn’t even close. Since I’m familiar enough with the game mechanics to understand what I’d be watching, I took some time to watch the deciding game just to see for myself just how badly Korea whooped up on the Chinese, because I’m sadistic and petty like that.

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Imagine eSports playing sports games

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Yeah, I know I take a lot of time and use a lot of words to criticize professional gaming, but really it is very silly to me, and I have a hard time grasping that it’s become so big.  It’s watching people, playing video games; sure it takes talent, but I could watch people playing video games in lots of places.  And based on the frequency in which I see ads for “whatever regional world championship tournament” when I’m playing LoL, it’s hard to imagine that any one particular title has any meaning.

But the funniest thing for me is when I see pictures of the tournaments, and they’ve got these pretty grandiose graphic treatments, and they try to present the matches as if they were like an actual sport.  Out of all of the live graphics that they use, none of them stands out more to me than when a LoL tournament goes to the effort to present a startling lineup card, much like it would be in an NBA or an NCAA game, since it’s five starters.

And then it got me thinking about how LoL positions would compare to basketball positions.  I would use the analogies as such:

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This is kinda why I’ll never take e-sports seriously

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When Kobe Bryant dunks a basketball or hits a three-pointer, typically it involves having succeeded in the face of a fervent defender, who’s trying to use body positioning, superior footwork, or simply sheer physical strength to prevent it from happening.

When Tom Brady throws a touchdown pass, typically it involves locating an eligible receiver within the span of five or fewer seconds while there are anywhere from five to six 270 lbs+ linebackers and tackles who want nothing more than to sit on him, and he actually has to succeed in throwing the ball in a place to where the receiver can catch it.

When Miguel Cabrera smacks a base hit, typically it involves hitting a little white ball that’s 2 7/8” in diameter, traveling at him anywhere from 79-94 miles per hour, and is sometimes coming at odd angles or irregular curving motions.  He has to put the bat in a position to where not only will it make contact, but send it into a patch of field where an opposing fielder cannot catch or corral it.

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Professional gamers LOL

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

One thing that has been absolutely hilarious to me lately is the raging that people do when it comes to arguing over professional gamers as if they were professional athletes. The story is a little old now, but about a month or so ago, there was a “professional” League of Legends player who was given a one-year ban for being what most 22-year old mouth-breathing internet-dwelling socially inept male virgin gamers are: a dick. In the midst of this all, there’s a pathetic little internet verbal battle royale about how it’s right, how it’s wrong, and then there are the people that just show up to troll for the sake of trolling and other dickish behavior because most of the people involved in these barbs are just like the guy that was banned in the first place: dicks.

Throughout all of this, I can’t help but take some steps back and look at the scenario in context: many people arguing over the banning of a guy who plays video games that managed to go so overboard with his toxic conduct to where someone of authority actually did something about it.

Take a few steps more back: many people are arguing over a kid who plays video games.

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