I just want to talk about eSports. I love it. I would be doing a great injustice in just providing a brief description as to what eSports is. Just Essentially eSports is electronic sports, comprising of competitive play of video games. Now just by describing it like that it sounds silly and sad. There's definiting more to it than that. I mean is it as silly as scrabble, and chess tournaments. I mean chess is an olympic sport, so eSports can be considered a type of sport as well. I suppose you don't require to have that much physical exertion, but there is defintiely a mental capacity, test of dexterity and hand eye cordination. Regardless if you're just pressing buttons, it does require speed and reflexes in reading the game.
The video game population is obviously massive, but it's not all competitive gaming. Also you will have to seperate the community in terms of genre, such as fighting, first person shooters or real time strategy. Yet even though they're serperated by game genre they are collectly still together as part of the large community.
My first experience with competitive gaming is Streetfighter. And seeing crowds around arcades, having mini competition. I was only a small child, but I was just there watching. I love my streetfighter like any other gamer, it's great pick up and play as well in providing a lot of depth for the competitive scene. For me I only need to know a few special moves and a basic combo and you're well on your way to start competiting with the casual gamers too. Later on in the dawn of the internet watching some clips of some games of higher skill level and you can appreciate the skill involved. The Diago vs Justin Wong is the eptime of that the eSports environment is like.
Every tiny input is deliberate by the player, I mean when I play there's a bit of button mashing, or at times I end having to input the command moves to special moves a few times before it will take effect.. These guys can do it quickly and effectively. Regardless you normally have to play the games to appreciate what is going on. Fighting games are quite good in that you can see exactly what is going on at it's most basic level. Two characters on screen fighting each other to the death, with lots of flashy moves, simple for the casual viewer.
What I have gotten into, in the past year is a game called Starcraft 2. This is a real time strategy game, in the likes of Command & Conquer, Age of Empires etc. However the difference being that Starcraft 2, provides a very in depth game, that is also a great for specatators. The games can really vary, the worse type of game normally is when both players are slow to build and are not agressive until they reach a large army size, but even then it's a slow burn, because you know eventually they'll have to do battle, so it can be interesting to see how the battle that decides it turns out.
It's like real time chess, but you start off with a pawns, and you have to mine resources to pay for better units, and the board is large terrain, with high and low grounds, chokes points and open spaces.
Well saying all this MLG happened this weekend and a Korean Terran called MKP AKA Marine King Prime, beat a Zerg player DRG, Dong Rae Gue in the finals. It was a great series showing high skill of play. Even though MKP won quite convincly it was still amazing to watch. What increased my viewing experience, was watching it with my friends.
I had shown a lot of enthusiasm amongst my friends that it increased their curiousity, so now I somehow got them into it too. So on Saturday night we went round our mates house and watched a few games together. It was quite a laugh, then for championship Sunday, we watched the stream whilst on mumble chat. Then we actually played some SC2 inbetween games. It was a lot of fun.
Definitely getting back into the game again, after taking abit of time off from the game due to other commitments as well as GF at the time, studying, Skyrim and Mass Effect 3, of which I will talk about at some point. The pro gaming scene, really puts some inspiration into the playing the game again. A friend got the starter edition, which is free, but you're limited to playing Terran and only allow limited maps in multiplayer. still it's great to have the option and we had a blast. Played quite a few 2v2 games we forgot about MLG was going on. He's now thinking of buying the full version. hehe.
Having not played it in a while, it's pretty good feeling again. I still remember quite abit and was always staying active which was great. I remember the quick roach build, it's mainly used for rushes, but I use them to be safe. Although one game I decided to rush with them, and we pretty much won the game from there. My friends are not great, but it's a lot of fun and laughs.
I've been off racing as Terran, until my friends get a bit better, also I think it'll be good to get decent as Terran as they're strong in team games, at least I think so. The ability to be able to wall off and be strong in the early game is very important when I believe a lot of team games are rushed. However my friend seems to struggle with Protoss so I'm going to give Protoss a go to see where he's going wrong.
I also really enjoy watching the replays afterwards, seeing how the other people play decisions they make etc, it's very well implemented by Blizzard the game makers, all they have to do now is be able to sync replays so a party can view it at the same time. I will probably record a replay at some point with mini commentary. It would be to show the rest of my mates and see what they are missing out on, and who knows maybe I'll get them interested too.
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