The Latest European eSports News: Some of the Most Recent Headlines for eSports and Competitive Gaming
The Esports Economy Will Generate At Least $465 Million in 2017
Wargaming, World of Tanks and Taiwan: a look at eSports in Asia
It might have one of the largest and most demographically interesting communities in Australia’s virtual landscape, but beyond the military enthusiasts, legions of older gamers and fans of Wargaming’s accommodating free-to-play model, World of Tanks is grossly misunderstood.
The misunderstanding has been particularly virulent in Australia’s competitive gaming environment, a scene with a penchant for myopia and tone deafness towards change, even for its own good. This is despite World of Tanks’ impressive figures: peaks of 1 million concurrent players in Russia, 200,000 in Europe, another 150,000 in China, 6,000 in Korea and, in Australia, 16,000 players.
How could a game with such a following, a developer funding tournaments worth hundreds of thousands of dollars, a demographic of competitive gamers so diametrically opposed to so many of the fundamentals strewn throughout professional gaming, be so absent from the fabric of Australian eSports?
I put the same question to Wargaming. Their response was to put me on a plane: to Taiwan.
The easiest way to digest World of Tanks, both the game itself and the size and scope of the community, is through raw numbers. As of August last year, there were more than 100 million registered World of Tanks accounts. The Russian server alone hits peaks of around 1 million concurrent players, while the Chinese server sees highs of around 250,000 concurrent players. The Asian server has a peak of around 22,000 concurrent players, with around 16,000 of those hailing from Australia, Wargaming says.
Source: http://www.abc.net.au/technology/articles/2015/04/10/4214141.htm
JXE Training Day: What is ‘League of Legends?’ An expert explains
Engadget will be your guide into this world of competition. If you don’t know what eSports are, what a MOBA is or what a League of Legends may be, then we have a show for you. JXE Training Day is a regular eSports show for beginners, introducing competitive games and how to look at them. Our first series begins with an extensive, bi-weekly look at League of Legends.
Our very episode of Training Day will go live at 3PM ET today on Twitch.tv/Joystiq, Engadget.com/gaming, and right here in this post. Come meet our host Loc Tran, a League of Legends tutor and captain of San Jose State University’s ClickAway - Dream Team, as he explains precisely what League of Legends and what a MOBA actually are.
Dig Training Day and all of our streams? Follow us on Twitch.tv/Joystiq. You can also follow Loc on Twitter, Twitch, and Facebook.
Source: http://www.engadget.com/2015/04/10/jxe-training-day-episode-1/
MLG.TV Kicks Off 2015 With 253% Growth in Viewership
Major League Gaming (MLG), today announced first quarter results for MLG.TV, its premium broadcasting network, which has seen viewership increase by 253% year over year and ad revenue jump by 482%.
Video viewership is on the rise for MLG’s 16-month-old live broadcast platform. MLG.tv now has a 70% quarterly growth rate and in the first 90 days of 2015 has already surpassed the number of hours viewed for the prior two quarters – from July through December 2014.
“We launched with a premium, highly-curated programming strategy and the result is a fast growing, engaged millennial audience of millions,” said Mike Sepso, President and cofounder of MLG. “We invested heavily in our ad solution and focused on mobile and OTTV distribution and the results have been amazing for both our advertisers and our broadcast partners.”
Could Cambridge be the next city to host an eSports arena for competitive video gaming?
So could Cambridge be the next place to open one of these arenas? Jason Fitzpatrick, curator of Cambridge’s Centre for Computing History, thinks there’s no reason why not.
“The success of platforms like Twitch [an online streaming service for players] shows there’s a demand from gamers to watch other gamers,” he said.
“People might think it doesn’t sound interesting, but there are a lot of others out there, especially kids, who do. And if seeing someone play remotely is good, then it’s a thousand times better live - it’s like the difference between watching football on the television or in the stadium.”
Ideas enjoys the odd first-person shooter, but as much of our time is spent falling down holes or getting eaten by alien head-crabs, we suspect the demand for tickets to watch us would be minimal.
New Report Details How eSports Is An Effective Engagement and Marketing Tool
Data from EventBrite show that attendees at eSports events dramatically increased their interest in the game. This could be turned into purchases for developers or sponsors. 74% of players play the game more frequently after an event with 86% having more enthusiasm for the game overall. 47% of fans buy more in-game content while 38% buy products from the sponsors during the event. Benefits of eSports to games include audience engagement and marketing for games that are designed to have long lifecycles such as DoTA, Counter-Strike and Hearthstone.
Esports Demographics: Fans skew male, spend more on games
New report from analyst firm EEDAR shows the breakdown of eSports spectators and competitors. The report was generated from surveys involving 2,000 respondents who have bought or played an eSports title within the previous year. The gender breakdown of fans is 75% male with 10% more likely to be male out of the general videogame population. The most popular game surveyed was League of Legends with the Multiplayer Online Battle Arena (MOBA) genre leading in popularity. One surprising figure showed that 40% of eSports fans are unlikely to attend a real-life eSports event despite their interest in the games.
Logitech goes all in with eSports, partners with ESL
Logitech-G signs on with ESL as an official partner for 2016. Logitech will be conducting product sales and demonstrations at ESL’s numerous eSports events including: SL CS:GO Pro League, ESL One Manila, ESL One Frankfurt, ESL One Cologne. The impact of such partnerships allow ESL to increase its cash prizes at the ESL Pro League prize pool by 50%
Source: http://www.tweaktown.com/news/50129/logitech-goes-esports-partners-esl/index.html
How Tom Clancy Just Entered the eSports Arena
Ubisoft wishes to become a major player in the esports phenomenon. They have recently partnered with ESL and Microsoft to launch “Tom Clancy’s Rainbow Six” Pro League. The new global competition will occur at Intel Extreme Masters in Katowice, Poland in March. Each league will have an initial $50k prize pool and players will compete individually through Xbox One and Windows PC. Alexandre Remy, brand director at Ubisoft says that using players from both consoles and PC, the program has the potential to reach a larger audience and engage more members of the Rainbow Six community.
Source: http://fortune.com/2016/02/03/tom-clancy-esports/
SMITE Developer Hi-Rez Studios opens new European Office
Hi-Rez Studios announces the opening of its new office in Brighton, UK. The office was created to better serve Hi-Rez Studio’s rapidly growing European consumer base. Veronique Lallier, formerly Vice President of Digital Publishing at Warner Bro.s Interactive Entertainment International, has been appointed the Vice President of European Publishing. The new European office will focus primarily on community management, localization and marketing operations for Europe.
What to expect from NVidia Earnings
As a testament to the growth of the eSports market, Nvidia, known for its graphics cards, has experienced growth of gaming revenues up 44% year for year. In general, Nvidia’s first quarter showed a 26% earnings per share above the current consensus.
Source: http://247wallst.com/technology-3/2016/02/17/what-to-expect-from-nvidia-earnings/
Gfinity to Host Vainglory Championship in Super Evil Mega Corp Deal
Esports company Gfinity PLC has secured a partnership with multiplayer online battle games arena developers Super Evil Mega Corp, to host the finals of the Vainglory Winter Championship. Eight finalist teams in Europe will battle to compete for the prize money pool of $25,000. The Championship will be held on 18-20 March at the GFinity Arena in London and will be the first event played at the arena on mobile devices.
Valve is preparing ‘Team Fortress 2’ for eSports
To add to their eSports portfolio with CS:GO and DotA2, Valve is going to prep Team Fortress 2 for eSports gaming potential by releasing a beta competitive matchmaking mode. The mode will be open to select players from their Competitive Beta Steam Group in the upcoming weeks. Valve will also host limited-time stress tests in larger member games. TF2s current competitive gaming is largely unofficial and has been held back by lack of proper matchmaking and ranking systems.
Source: http://www.engadget.com/2016/02/19/valve-is-preparing-team-fortress-2-for-esports/
Danish backers invest big in competitive gamers
Investment fund Sunstone Capital and Danish Entrepreneur Tommy Ahlers invest millions of Kroner in a team of five competitive Danish Gamers. The team, named Astralis, competes competitively in Counter-Strike and their activities will be organized under a new company, Astralis ApS. Astralis has previously taken the top prize at five international tournaments. The investment represents the largest of its kind in the Danish esports community.
Source: http://cphpost.dk/news/business/danish-backers-invest-big-in-competitive-gamers.html