Okay, so maybe folks want to pay attention to e-sports because e-sports is becoming a financially viable industry where people other than the game developers can make a living. Games like Counter-Strike: Global Offensive, Call of Duty, Super Mario Smash and Melee, the Street Fighter franchise, and DotA 2 have drawn huge followings and present young gamers with talent the chance to earn a living doing something they love. These games present incomes for the competitors, either with tournament prizes or salaries from professional match circuits.
The king of e-sports, right now, is League of Legends.
Why?
Why is League so incredibly popular in such a crowded field of e-sports genres?
A few simple points serve to demonstrate why League can be termed the flagship program for e-sports, starting with:
1. Ease of access - League of Legends is free to play. Truly. A casual person with a computer and an internet connection can go to the League of Legends website, download the client, install the program, and start playing within one hour (depending on the computer's specs and internet speeds, but that's another story).
2. The game-play element - The primary goal of any League of Legends match is to destroy your opponents' nexus, or base if you prefer. Another way of looking at the goal is to liken it to a game of Capture The Flag. The game also contains elements of territory and invasion games such as rugby and American football in digital form. However a person may choose to view the basic idea behind League games, the primary goal itself is easy to understand.
3. Big plays - League offers players all around the world the opportunity to make big plays in any match they play in. From the mundane (pulling off a Warwick ult at the right moment to avoid dying and getting a kill in the process) to the truly phenomenal (the original inSec Lee Sin ward-hop ult), players of all calibers can come up with some truly amazing plays.
4. More than a game - Just like the Lord of the Rings and the Harry Potter series drew audiences into worlds with their own settings, quirks, oddities, and moments of hilarity, League of Legends does the same thing. Just like Lord of the Rings and the Potter series, much of the hype around League is fan-driven and fan-created. Everything from incredibly elaborate costumes to champion plushies to team jerseys to the ever-intriguing memes, League offers e-sports players and fans an immersive experience in the game culture.
5. 24/7 broadcasting - If professional matches aren't being held, someone in your time zone is probably streaming (broadcasting) their match live over the internet. If there's no streams in your time zone, there's matches being streamed from another time zone. If that's not the case, one of the game networks is playing a rerun from a previous tournament. In essence, this is League's era of ham radio broadcasting, where people with access to a webcam and microphone can reach an audience on the web, large or small.
6. YouTube-ready - Everything from professional matches to highlight reels to instruction and strategy guides has been recorded and posted on YouTube. Don't feel like watching a live stream? There's plenty of funny moments, failed attempts, and big plays all featuring a person's favorite League personality or team, ready for a person's viewing pleasure at the click of a button.
While League is certainly not the only e-sport out there, the game has built a massive following worldwide for these reasons and many more besides. The main reason why people stay is because League is never a static quantity which doesn't change; game patches which change certain aspects of the game are always coming out, new champions are being introduced, old champions are being reworked, and new gameplay modes are rolled out for the casual players to try something new (hello, URF mode).
Will League remain this popular? I doubt it. Will League's popularity be sustained over a long period of time? There's every reason to think so.
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