Welcome to The Lower Case S where I plan on taking a level headed yet opinionated look at various esports through the lens of a fan, gaming industry "professional", and employee hopeful. So let's go into who I am some more. First and foremost I'm a fan of esports and of gaming. I grew up on games like Outlaws and Descent in my early childhood, was a part of a Battlefield 2 community that had hundred player custom servers and wars every weekend in high school, founded my college's League of Legends club, and hit legend a few times in Hearthstone. I've worked on two shipped games, Agents of Mayhem - developed by Volition, and Overload - developed and published by Revival Productions. I worked QA at both studios and community management at Revival. I've acquired insights on benefits and shortcomings of AAA and indie development and while I could spend a lot of time talking about these insights, that's not really what this blog is meant to be about. I'm mostly presenting my industry experience as someone who understands development cycles, why developers patch, and what they choose to tell their player base. I'll try to draw conclusions as to why developers of the games I'm looking at make their decisions when that input is needed.
So let's move on to games I have a high interest in and what I'll likely be talking about in this blog. I'll start with the bigger names that I follow - Overwatch, League of Legends, and CS:GO. These three are undeniably giants of esports (not to say they're the only giants, just the most relevant to my interests). They all run their respective leagues or events differently and while there is obviously carry over of fans from one game to another there's quite a difference in fan bases and in each game's history. This can (and likely will) be its own post so let's move on to other games and events. Hearthstone will likely be a topic of discussion often, as it's my most played game in recent memory, mostly because it's so easy to just get a game or two in on my phone at any point in the day. Do I consider this mobile RNG-fest an esport? You better believe I do! The scene is probably my favorite of all, the community's memes are truly dank, and the amount of pro insight is fantastic as a consumer and aspiring legend-level player. With the new expansion coming up and Global Games continuing on, expect to have a bunch of posts on this.
Other games and events worth paying attention to and that I'll write about
from time to time are... well let's just list them out in no specific order. Dota 2, PUBG, Fortnite, Clash Royale (hey, Vainglory has a scene, mobile esports can be a thing), Starcraft II, Heroes of the Storm? (eh, maybe not so much), Evo (and fighting games in general), Rocket League, whatever F2P game every streamer is playing for some $100k tournament.
Finally why the name "The Lower Case S"? The more esports becomes a thing the more it has to have its identity questioned and the more vocal everyone gets about it. Perhaps it's because Redeye is so vocal on Twitter all of the time or that we've gone through so many iterations of whether it's eSports, e-sports, electronic sports, an X game, an Olympic digital sport, a team competition, some horrible crap like "new sports", or whatever your grandma calls it. I think it's nice that we found the best name for the industry and I think it's fun as a community to defend it and be proud of it. In the end I hope I've sparked your interest and look forward to writing more.
Thanks for reading
-Bammer
So let's move on to games I have a high interest in and what I'll likely be talking about in this blog. I'll start with the bigger names that I follow - Overwatch, League of Legends, and CS:GO. These three are undeniably giants of esports (not to say they're the only giants, just the most relevant to my interests). They all run their respective leagues or events differently and while there is obviously carry over of fans from one game to another there's quite a difference in fan bases and in each game's history. This can (and likely will) be its own post so let's move on to other games and events. Hearthstone will likely be a topic of discussion often, as it's my most played game in recent memory, mostly because it's so easy to just get a game or two in on my phone at any point in the day. Do I consider this mobile RNG-fest an esport? You better believe I do! The scene is probably my favorite of all, the community's memes are truly dank, and the amount of pro insight is fantastic as a consumer and aspiring legend-level player. With the new expansion coming up and Global Games continuing on, expect to have a bunch of posts on this.
Other games and events worth paying attention to and that I'll write about
from time to time are... well let's just list them out in no specific order. Dota 2, PUBG, Fortnite, Clash Royale (hey, Vainglory has a scene, mobile esports can be a thing), Starcraft II, Heroes of the Storm? (eh, maybe not so much), Evo (and fighting games in general), Rocket League, whatever F2P game every streamer is playing for some $100k tournament.
Finally why the name "The Lower Case S"? The more esports becomes a thing the more it has to have its identity questioned and the more vocal everyone gets about it. Perhaps it's because Redeye is so vocal on Twitter all of the time or that we've gone through so many iterations of whether it's eSports, e-sports, electronic sports, an X game, an Olympic digital sport, a team competition, some horrible crap like "new sports", or whatever your grandma calls it. I think it's nice that we found the best name for the industry and I think it's fun as a community to defend it and be proud of it. In the end I hope I've sparked your interest and look forward to writing more.
Thanks for reading
-Bammer
Comments
Post a Comment