The Esport through League of Legends

Sports in video games ? Yes, you can find this. Playing video games is not for idiots and can be very sportive with competitions, coaches, and hard training. We call this Esport !

You can never have heard the word “Esport”. Esport for electronic sports is the professionalisation in the video games just like the professionalistion of the football, tennis, volley … If the first competitions of video games are done with harsh conditions, today the development of Esport keeps increase. There are structures with teams in different games, professional players paid by this organizations, coaches and lots of fans who follow the competitions behind their screens.

They are different points of view about the begining of Esport. But there are games which have a big impact to the development of Esport. As much the playing conditions of pro players as the visibility and the place in the society of the video games. In this games we have Counter strike with this usefull life and a very mechanic games. But if there is one game that mark Esport this last decade is the most popular game League of Legends as known as LOL.

I will talk about League of Legends, this game was developed by Riot Games a group of developers which come from Blizzard known for their games World of Warcraft, Starcraft. It came out in october 2009, it’s free moba, “moba” what is this ****. A moba, Multiplayer online battle arena, is a game where two teams of five players come face to face and each team has to destroy the ennemy base. This principle simple and the fact that you don’t need to pay to play brang lots of players.

League of legends is simple to begin but hard to master and this concept brang competitions on this game. In 2011 a competitive tour began won by the european team Fnatic, a structure extremely popular in Esport against Against All Autorithy a.k.a AAA a french team, detail not important but just chauvinistic. Fnatic win 50 000 dollars and the event was followed by 1.6 millions people, the begining of a great story.

In 2013 Riot Games decided to create championships in Europe, North America, South Corea the country of Esport and other regions. And the 14 best teams finished in a worldcup with a cash prize of 1 million dollars won by the legendary Corean team SK Telecom Team 1, SKTT1, with is star player Faker, the model for all the gamers. He is the Lionel Messi of League of Legends, known for his mechanics and his prize list.

Nowadays League of Legends is followed by hundreds of millions, with many competitions during all the year, championships in lots of regions and lots of teams. Riot Games is very invested in their game, they try to give innovations, to develop the playing conditions for pro gamers, or casual gamers. In 2019, they did a partnership with Louis Vuitton, they filled the Accord Hotel Arena for the finals of the Worlds. They are lots of fans everywhere in the world which follow the competitive scene of this legendary game.

League of Legends relates the development of Esport. At the beginning, Riot was a group of indepant programmers. The competition was organized by the fans of the game, players or casters. But buzz touched the game and Riot Games throw theirselves in the competitive scene. Lots of new players joined the game, League of Legends and his competitive scene became popularized to mainstream. A cult of the personnality and teams like in traditional sports began to settle down. Nowadays, everybody plays with better conditions, professional gamers are reconized and paid very well at top level and lots of tradional organizations are interested and invested in this environment like Louis Vuitton, Kia and other labels.

Now, you know more the concept and the evolution of Esport, I will tell you why I have choosen this subject. Prevously, when I was young, I loved sports and video games and I was a competitor, I played to win, and lose is not possible. I discovered Esport in 2014 with League of Legends and I was charmed by this concept. Then, I started to watch all the competitions and try to be the best but I realized that pro gamer wasn’t for me. After this, my goal was to worked in Esport so I started to discover other competitive videogames. I try to follow lots of video games, and I was charmed by all the audiences, fans who just want emotions when they are watching matches. But I fell in love of some video games : League of Legends was my first tryhard game, overwatch because it’s very impressive with many showmen and then super smash bros for the investment of all fans. I was lucky enough to watch the final of the european League of Legends championship at the Accord Hotel Arena. And this point is very important because my favorite aspect of Esport is passion, emotions sharing of all fans. And I wasn’t disappointed !

Esport is still unknown of mainstream and deserves more visibility. I hope the evolution will stay in the good way. Labels start to understand that Esport is the futur but I also hope Esport will save his authenticity with its beautiful fans. I continue to watch Esport and I always have many emotions, I cry, shout of joy and stress when my favorite team is in difficulty. And I will continue to watch it for better or for worse!

I hope to see you soon on a esport stream !

It was Vincent !