Should Gaming Tournaments be Taken more Seriously?

People! EVO (Evolution Championship Series) Starts TODAY.

Smash Bros. Melee, Ultra Street Fighter IV, BlazBlue, Tekken Tag 2, Killer Instinct, King of Fighters, Injustice, and Marvel vs Capcom 3 will be Streaming heresoon! With these Tournaments offering around a total of $46,000 for the Prize Pool (if not more)

The Fight is On My Fellow System Warriors and next Week is THE BIG one, DOTA 2 International Tournament with a whopping $10,000,000 prize pool that is up for grabs.

People look at this, Two of the Biggest Video Game Tournaments are happening Back to Back. The Hype is so real here and Here in System Wars we're talking about that Consoles will take over PCs....

Come on people some REALLY exciting stuff is happening in the Gaming Medium, Chances are These tournaments will see BIG outcomes this year with Twitch gaining more popularity thanks to the integrations with Xbox One and PS4 as well as games like DOTA 2 and League of Legends. We can no longer ignore these types of Tournaments now. Gaming is growing and these Tournaments are starting to get serious. So much that they've started giving out Visas for League of Legends players.

Gaming has come a long way since it's up bringing back in the 70s. These Tournaments are like our Wimbledon, or The NBA Championships, or the Super Bowl. I think it's high time we start treating these events as such.

What do you guys think? Should Gaming be treated like any other sport when it comes to these Tournaments? or should we keep putting these types of Tournments away from the general media?

I personally think these tournaments should see the spotlight like Fifa or The Masters does. EVO and The International have players that train daily on their game to ensure that they have the skills and abilities they need to WIN. Just watch "Free to Play", those players aren't just casual people that decide "Oh I want to play in a tournament." They THROW THEIR LIVES away just for a chance to win in these types of tournaments, that's the kind of passion you would see in a certain other sporting event that happens every 4 years.

That's my take on it, and I hope to hear what you guys have to say about this.

fgc is poverty but I find funny that blaz blue has the least entries but the highest pot with $35k.

As for opinions on e-sport, don't even waste your time asking. This board is just a bunch of jelly closed minded herms and it has been like that for year now. SW doesn't believe in e-sport as a sport nor as entertainment either. And I think the fact that some people makes a living out of playing games competitively pisses them off even more.

evo and fighting game tournaments are niche genres in video games. The dota/ lol prize pool were upped based on public donations right?

i personally love evo and fighting games, but unless something major comes along and changes how fighting games are played or a game that revolutionizes the genre, its going to stay niche...well in the west at least.

there is actually a bigger following in the east. they actually show fighting tournaments on tv and i enjoy super battle opera tourney or japan vs korea

It seems more like the World Series of Poker or maybe the World Scrabble Championship to me. But, the NBA? The NFL? FIFA World Cup? Nah.

I Dont know what tournaments you're watching but LoL, DotA and SC2 tournaments are pretty serious.... Millions of viewers, million dollar prize pools, sponsored players with their own ads and everything.

No. You can raise the "Skill" argument all you want but in the end it's "I can press buttons better than you" Woopty doo

Are they big? Yes

Should be treated as a sport? No

Enjoy them if you like them, i enjoy watching the lol championship, but hell no, how are you going to compare a professional athlete with someone who spend their whole day playing lol or dota.

I have no idea where you've been in the past years of SW. But, PC has serious DIGITAL SPORTS... Look at LoL and Dota 2 they are by far the most popular esports supported games out there...

the scrub is just a butthurt peasant that doesn't miss any chance to relate anything with pc gaming and show how butthurt he is because he can't afford one.

Just not sure how many viewers they'd get if they put it on actual television, or if there'd be enough breaks for advertisement

They are taken very seriously. The guys literally step into a ring and sit on their asses, and battle it out for a good amount of cash. Soon they will have theme song intros, title belts and drama.

I was thinking about this recently.

so how do you feel about professional chess players or poker players?

They are already taken pretty seriously. But you also gotta understand that most of these tournaments require you to be familiar with the game in order to appreciate it, unlike sports like baseball and football and shit, where you actually have an immediate physical understanding of what's going on, even without knowing how the teams score points and stuff.

I really, really enjoy watching professional DOTA 2 matches. Sometimes players impress me so much with plays that I actually gasp or laugh ect. and that NEVER happens with anything else that's on a computer screen, for me.

These tournaments are enjoyed by those that play the games being played, that is almost a requirement. It will remain a niche for a very long time, regardless of huge multi million prize pools.

the sport part hasn't been brought up by the TC.

Its fair enough to have Sport and E-Sport separate, they do not mean the same thing after all.

The standard oxford definition includes "Physical Exertion" and Skill.... but in terms of e-sport its down to the "skill" side of things.

Not that I think the level of physical and mental skill it takes to do some things in some games is anything to scoff at.

Difference is there are so many games out there compared to sports..... getting 1 or 2 unified games that are understandable by everyone on the same level of regular sports is a nightmare. in DoTa/LoL you have to know what every 100+ characters do and their items and the specific mechanics involved, current balance ect ect.

Football? learn the basic rules, watch the athletes do impressive feats of strength/skill.... you don;t need to use your head much. or know a lot upfront. its far more accessible.

chess is a known and accepted sport, if not a physical one, comparing chess with moba or fighting games is just....lol

Poker is not a professional sport, they have their tournaments just as gaming has theirs.

There is already plenty of drama within most e sports teams. Players are pretty much the same as players from actual recognized athletic sports, they stay in a team but might change due to issues with teammates, some players might say controversial things. Drama is absolutely already a reality in e-sports.

Also I believe Starcraft players have song intros in Korea... or something. lol

No, it's not. Reaction times, game knowledge, intelligence, multitasking are all important aspects. You're making it seem like playing video games is just a monotonous act of physical repetition, but it isn't - it's a demonstration of the players intelligence and skill, not of the size of their finger muscles.

correct me if im wrong,but if poker isn't a sport..why is it shown on ESPN? I brought up chess because it's a game of strategy which i think can be compared to SC2.

does espn decide what is or not a sport? poker has never been recognized as a sport, if espn shows it that's their problem, as for comparing chess and starcraft, it's a joke. I like tournaments, i watch every now and then lol tournaments and the world championship, but comparing something like starcraft to chess is just wrong.

You're late to the party. PC already has an entire country dedicated to gaming tournaments and competitive play.

http://www.esportsearnings.com/

Consoles don't compare.

I can see you've never played a competitive title. Stick to Last of Us.

How is comparing video games to chess "just wrong?" You're on a forum, can you not articulate a bit why you feel so?

You are right, the sheer variety and complexity of strategies of Chess would outclass Starcraft.

They need Nidhogg included into these tournaments :P

lol at these stupid console gamers claiming PC's don't have esports...

LoL sells out Staples Center in under an hour

@blangenakker said:

**** that game needs to be a serious esport

To be honest I never count this as a sport and proboly never will.

Clearly you haven't been to Asia lol. On Chinese dating shows, a serious criteria women have is whether or not the guy plays DOTA.

In Korea, Starcraft players are celebrities with their own endorsements and sponsored teams. Can't find the source but one time, before a big South Korean football (soccer) match, Korea SC2 players actually came out to motivate them, because the SC2 players were the soccer players hero's.

As someone who finds competitive gaming to be interesting, I would certainly like it if it got more attention.

I don't see that happening anytime soon however.

clearly im living in the wrong country.

I could not care less about gaming tournaments. Watching people play games seriously is boring as hell to me. Plus, its just sad how some of these teams live together and just play the same game 15 hours a day every day.

I'd love for it to grow that big.

The one and only problem I see isn't the format or the interest, but that gaming changes a lot and there are many games so it's very fragmented. The amount of sports on TV seems only a handful that I know of, and they are very static.

Have to agree with the bold

No. No. No. No. No. No.

PC ftw

Gamers wonderful inspiration.

@LegatoSkyheart: "Gaming has come a long way since it's up bringing back in the 70s. These Tournaments are like our Wimbledon, or The NBA Championships, or the Super Bowl. I think it's high time we start treating these events as such"

They are already treated like that, by those who give a damn.

@Jankarcop:

That's true. I still remember Thresh and his Ferrari back in 1997.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dennis_Fong

He's the kind of gamer I like to see. A gamer that's knowledgeable and with business savvy.

Then is the World Series of Poker really "I get dealt better cards than you"?

Starcraft 2, played at the professional level, is an extremely challenging game just from the required mental exertion. They're some damn smart people.

Hear, hear! Luckily the gaming industry seems to be moving forward with its embrace of Evo, as we have recently seen the addition of high-profile companies like Nintendo to the mix, and let us not forget the success of Killer Instinct and its road to Evo.

As a follower of Evo for quite a while, I just love the excitement of it, the passion that the players exhibit there. Every time I watch a few fighting game matches at Evo, it gets me pumped & I feel like playing the game myself. It injects a lot of enthusiasm in the genre and it's great to see it still doing so well today.

and neither is classified as a sport, so?

Games are games, just because some nerds play a lot of the game they shouldn't be asking games to be classified as sports, it's pathetic.

i like to play, not to watch people playing, thats why we are gamers and we're not watching soccer

but to give up our ability to play instead of watching and go watch people play games is another level of stupidit

Top 2 games are PC oriented e-sport games. The fun part is KZ: SF a PS4 exclusive is doing a special tournament and "Putt-Putt goes to the moon" has more viewers than this game.

Wait........they aren't?

I think they are great at those games but I don't call them athletes. Especially poker. I have seen guys in those tournaments wearing sunglasses. That is BS. I play poker for fun admittedly but part of the game is reading each other so I don't think a player should be allowed to hide behind shades.