Despite video games at the time being offline and lacking the massive multiplayer functions that we take for granted in our favourite titles today, the medium found a way to rise to popularity.The earliest recorded esport event, which were labelled under more amusingly creative names such as “Intergalactic spacewar olympics”, took place in 1972 at Stanford University, California. Our readers from United States should check out Claim a 50% deposit bonus up to the value of USD $250
There are dozens more amazing video games with competitive esports scenes attached to them, some still growing, some forever niche, and others on the steady path to the big leagues. Perhaps the biggest sign Heroes of the Storm was on its last legs as an esport came with the announcement the Heroes Global Championship was cancelled, effectively signalling the end of the professional scene.
Its main tournament, The International, is organized and sponsored by game developer and publisher Valve, who regularly fund prize-pools of up to $1.6 million in the annual tournament to make it the biggest competitive gaming event globally.Released annually as a single-player and multiplayer holiday shooter, the long-running FPS franchise is well known for its incredibly competitive gaming communities, with professional esports tournaments organized by series publisher Activision in partnership with multiple other sponsors and groups, including Electronic Sports League, Major League Gaming and PlayStation.
The massive success of the industry in the past seven years has led to more games across more genres being developed with a potential esport sub-culture in mind.Despite esports’ continued advancement into the mainstream consciousness, it can be quite overwhelming for anyone new to competitive gaming or video games in general to try and dive into even just one of these highly passionate communities.
There barely goes a week when some potential esports game is released and pumped up by its developers.
Copyright © 2019 Fortnite is among the top few esports games in both popularity and by prize money in 2019, with over $20 million USD handed out. There is no need to explain why eSports has shown great growth results in the past years. Over 50 video games across consoles and PC spread are considered to be esports, with professionally organized leagues and tournaments offering millions of dollars in prize money for the very best players around the world to win.
The top esports games literally have millions of players online at any one time, while there are various competitions, tournaments and leagues set up surrounding the most popular games. Competitive gaming has been a popular pastime for decades, but the money and industry around the top esports games is a relatively recent development. Its structure is extremely similar to PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds, which released in the same year and introduced the ‘Battle Royale’ sub-genre to the mainstream and competitive gaming crowd. It started life out as a standalone sequel to a WarCraft 3 mod called Defense of the Ancients and now records over 10 million concurrent players every month.
PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds, or PUBG, was released in 2017 as an early access title and launching as a full retail release at the tail-end of that year, PUBG is an incredibly influential multiplayer online battle royale game developed and published by PUBG Corporation, a subsidiary of Korean video games publisher Bluehole Inc. Pitting 100 people against each other on a large island, the last man standing sub-genre exploded in popularity with PUBG’s debut and has influenced countless other video games, both esports and non-esports, into introducing ‘Battle Royale’ game modes into their titles.