Dozens of those players are now in Seoul, at the fourth world championship. On Oct. 19, the finals will be held in a stadium built for soccer’s World Cup, with 40,000 fans expected and many times that number watching online. Last year, Riot Games says, 32 million people around the world saw a South Korean team win the Summoner’s Cup, along with a grand prize of $1 million, in the Staples Center in Los Angeles. That’s an audience larger than the one that tuned in to the last game of the N.B.A. finals that year.
I play League of Legends, and the sheer size of the game and everything related to it still baffles me. I, too, watch the World Championships live, I play almost every day, watch other people play on live streams and youTube, and I’m still enjoying it. Quite the phenomenon.
Yet it is decreasing heavily in usage in favour of the clone “dota”. What strikes me as odd is that this type of game even have a following at all.
It is almost a one map version of warcraft3 (where it started btw) and yet nothing interesting has been added except micor transactions for “cheats” or characters that initially is good but gets progressively worse as inflation of the hero supply increases.
edit:
And for a game that is supposed to be balanced, the red win rate of only 44% is disturbing. Either the algorithm for assigning teams is flawed, or the one and only map (except for the training map) that makes up the entire game is very flawed.
Edited 2014-10-11 01:04 UTC
That’s a lot of ignorance packed into one comment.
> Yet it is decreasing heavily in usage in favour of the clone “dota”.
How is “dota” the clone? Dota 1 came out and people who are now with both Riot and Valve were instrumental in making it a success. Some of them went on to Riot and made LoL, some went to Valve and made Dota 2. LoL and Dota, while being from the same genre, have a different flavour similar to “Call of Duty” vs “Battlefield”.
> What strikes me as odd is that this type of game even have a following at all.
If you find it so shocking, you should rather look inwardly to figure out what your problem is, and why you can’t see what’s enjoyable in a game that millions of other people clearly have an interest in. Most played game on Steam for Dota 2, and even more people playing League of Legends.
> It is almost a one map version of warcraft3 (where it started btw) and yet nothing interesting has been added except micor transactions for “cheats” or characters that initially is good but gets progressively worse as inflation of the hero supply increases.
Ugh. It plays nothing like Warcraft 3. There’s no base building, you control one unit, the progression and tempo of the game is totally different, you’re playing on a team with 4 other people, there are computer controlled autonomous units on your team. Yes, it was built with the Warcraft 3 engine. Counter Strike was built with the Half-Life engine, that was a modified Quake engine. They’re not the same game.
There isn’t some conspiracy that makes older champions progressively weaker, they’re still used all the time in all levels up to competitive play. Go to a site like http://www.lolking.net/champions/ and sort by highest Win Rate. See the top champions? Released in 2009. You see the one at the very bottom? Released most recently.
Edited 2014-10-11 01:46 UTC
By the same logic 1-Direction and Nicki Minaj makes really great music.
I’m not saying you have to enjoy it yourself, I’m saying you should be able to understand why other people enjoy it even if that doesn’t do anything for you. That applies to Nicki Minaj, 1D, Nickelback, Justin Bieber etc as well. Same as technology with Windows Phone, iPhone and Android (depending on which phone you currently have). PS4 vs Xbox One vs PC.
Understand what people like about something that’s popular, rather than having your first thought be that there is nothing good about a product and that all the other people that like it are just a bunch of idiots.
Should I be glad that I never even heard of them? (and would have to search/Google them or smth, which I don’t intend to do)
I can’t see how people take games like this so seriously, but I guess I have the same disconnect with pro-sports in general. Playing some sports can be physically exhilarating, it can also be fun to go see sporting events now and then in person. But I find it difficult to feel “attached” in the way I perceive others to be.
One thing I’m wondering is if cheating is a big problem? It happens in pro sports frequently enough, but with online gaming how would they even know? As long as it’s not too blatant, the risk of discovery seems low.
Apparently in the 2012 world playoffs, one team was fined when a player collected intel from the big screen, something they could get away with at home.
http://www.gamespot.com/articles/riot-fines-league-of-legends-cheat…
“sport”…
Eh, I’ve seen video game tournament on sports channels.
I’ve seen eating contests on sports channels but that doesn’t make eating a sport :p
E-sport.
Chess is a sport too. Deal with it.
Sorry but Chess is not a sport. Sport is a competitive physical activity and neither chess nor video games is a sport. They’re both competitive games though.
Don’t even get me started on “cyber athletes”….
The IOC recognises chess and a few other non-physical activities as sports, but yeah, I obviously get your point. That’s why I like the term “e-sports”. It makes it clear we’re not looking at a traditional, physical sport, while acknowledging all the similarities with traditional sport.
Hmm..really? I find that rather odd actually. Do they also recognize Checkers, Mahjong, Poker and Risk as sports? Because in all fairness those are just as much of a sport as chess. On the other hand, I’ve never seen Chess being part of any Olympic games so maybe what IOC thinks about it doesn’t matter all that much.
Not fond of e-sports really. Just call it a competition or contest because that’s what it is but maybe that doesn’t carry the clout that professional gamers (oh god, did I just write that? What’s next? Professional risk players?) seems to be so fond of.
On the other hand, driving a car around and around and around and around and around on an oval track is apparently a sport so what the heck, why not? Maybe playing video games can be an “e-sport”.
Formula 1 is hard. You need physical resistance. Pilots can lose 4-5 kg in a race.
High level chess competitions are exhauting. Some years ago I watched a documental about Kasparov and he had an intense physical preparation.
Last time I checked F1 doesn’t run on an oval track so that’s obviously not what I was referring to.
Quite apparently coming from someone who hasn’t even driven a go-kart. They don’t “drive around and around on an oval track” like you drive to the shop to buy milk and cookies, you know. Go visit a hobby-karting circuit some time and have a drive or two, and then get back to us on that “…is apparently a sport…” thing.</ot>
Who’s talking about go-karts?
I was. You were implying that racecar driving on an oval track is as easy as driving to the shops and back to do the weekly grocery shopping. I was trying to get through the idea that it isn’t nearly as easy as you make it sound. And was claiming that even go-karting would demonstrate that it ain’t as easy as it looks, and bigger open wheel racers like F1 or IndyCar or Sprint Cup cars (that are not open-wheel, but do race on ovals) are magnitudes more difficult than even simple go-karts.
So…pretty much like video games then?
The IOC also recognises curling and synchronized swimming as sports. They may as well recognise “strolling in the park” and making sand castles as sports.
What like Darts?
Think of it as chess at a very high pace…
I don’t like calling games like DOTA e-sports because unlike chess those games require a proprietary client and server. Chess can be played on a board and anyone can make that board. You can play it on the internet too with any client and server created by anybody. I would call it e-sport if the communication protocol was public and you could play it on alternative servers with alternative clients.
The issue may not seem important but I think it is. Our culture is defined in large parts by the words we use. The word sport entails a lot of cultural heritage and conveys some values that are important in my opinion. When we are writing a word we are writing history. E-sport is a neologism and we are still trying to find a meaning for this word. I believe the correct way to use it is to define something that is more universal than being a customer of some brand of games that are played on the internet. I think those games don’t deserve a new word. They are online games, not e-sports, because they are proprietary. Football, cricket or chess are sports because anyone can play it without being a customer. I believe hacking is an e-sport, playing chess on the internet is an e-sport, DOTA is an online game. Freeciv may be an e-sport.
Edited 2014-10-13 09:40 UTC
That’s actually a really good point. I don’t think anything else we consider a sport is proprietary to a single vendor.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sport#Etymology
At least chess needs skill and brains unlike games like league of legends.
False. The amount of past practice is the overwhelming predictor of chess ability. Most chess Grand Masters have average intelligence and exhibit no special skills except in chess playing. There is no reliable evidence linking intelligence and chess ability.
Brains mean thinking as you are getting nowhere in chess if you can not think ahead and try to predict your opponent.
Sure you can randomly move pieces around and lie to yourself you are playing but to really play chess you need a plan and to pull that plan, you need distraction to turn your opponents focus to somewhere else.
league of legends is just about get all 5 persons together and not much more. Simple tower protect games need only little or no thinking at all as only need farm and make sure enemy will get no kills. Most people fail just because they only run after kills when whole game is not about kills and they are only bonus. Game is actually won by destroying buildings and not killing things.
Stating LOL needs strategy is crap and even mentioning tactical game is insulting the tactical part of the name. Reminds me of a Warcraft 2 where you only needed mass produce huge amount of ogres and then just roam the map with bloodlust. After that the game lost its charm as there was no point building many of the things and it was just a race for most ogres.
This is the biggest drivel I’ve read in a long time. Games like LoL and Dota2 are hugely strategic, cooperative team games that require and insane amount of information processing and quick reaction times.
Consider this: computers can reliably beat the best chess player in the world. Computers cannot best even low-level LoL players, because unlike chess, LoL is highly unpredictable and has infinitely more possible permutations than chess.
Thom Holwerda,
I assert that if computers can’t beat humans at this game, it’s because the challenge hasn’t been given the serious attention of hard hitters from the computer science community. The same was true for chess, doing that took a lot of horsepower and a highly sponsored team of researchers – the result (computer winning) was inevitable.
Humans are relatively slow, quick reaction times typically give computers the edge. The starcraft AI bot matches show just how quickly a computer can react. With sufficient processing power a computer can focus on the entire map all the time, whereas Humans are unable to do that. However you are right regarding strategy, a poor strategy can give away the game.
As far as LoL, if the bot was teamed with other humans, that could pose very interesting challenges. How would the bot interact with human strategies? I think it would probably be easier to build a AI that controls the entire team.
Computers are absolutely hopeless at playing the extremely simple Chinese strategy game Go despite many years of work by brilliant researchers.
Modern chess software requires very little horsepower (a Core 2 is ample) because psychology and neuroscience researchers discovered how to beat humans. Humans rely mostly on memory rather than strategy or calculating power to play chess.
unclefester,
Funny, I was going to mention this game in my response to Thom, but I wanted to keep it brief. The reason Go is difficult is because go game combinations are vastly higher than the combinations in chess. Chess has a smaller board, far fewer opening moves, and the game pieces are highly constrained by rules. A 19×19 go board has 361 opening moves, with some handwaiving regarding captures we might approximate the combinations as 361-factorial, which is astronomical. This makes simple look ahead strategies less effective.
Go, has received much less attention than chess; I hadn’t even heard of the game until several years after university. To me, the question isn’t whether computers can beat humans at go, it’s how much computational power we’d need to make it happen. I don’t think a company like IBM would spend the resources it would take to tackle go. It just wouldn’t garner the same levels of public interest as chess and jeapordy did.
Engineers have the benefit of “cheating”, they can scale up specialized technology arbitrarily until it’s powerful enough to beat the human mind in solving a problem which the human mind was never designed to do. It’s a true testament to us than our generic brains can compete so well against racks of machines.
BTW, anyone who hasn’t seen IBM’s watson on jeopardy, it’s a must watch!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yJptrlCVDHI
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3G2H3DZ8rNc
Edited 2014-10-13 12:33 UTC
Top level chess players don’t really ‘think ahead’. They mostly ‘replay’ past games and successful strategies from memory. The highest ranked Grand Masters can recall up to 300,000 board placements. [Most chess software also relies heavily on preprogrammed plays.]
There is some evidence that a very high IQ is negatively correlated with chess ability.
Wrong. World class chess players rarely plan ahead. They certainly don’t calculate every possible move. They play a reactive game. They quickly scan the board and ‘see’ a ‘winning’ solution(s) based on many years of chess playing experience. [Basically the same way a highly experienced doctor diagnoses a disease.]
unclefester,
Maybe it’s a combination. The more you play (and can remember), the better you’ll get at avoiding past mistakes. It is also possible to avoid future mistakes by predicting a few moves ahead, otherwise a chess master wouldn’t be much better than chance on combinations he’s never played before. I would think there’s more to skill than the number of games played, but it would be an interesting hypothesis to test.
Humans earn by feedback loops with negative consequences having a far stronger influence. In other words we learn mostly by past experiences rather than by careful planning
The hypothesis has been tested numerous times with the same results. Chess skill is based mostly on memory. The problem is that most chess players won’t accept that chess is not an intellectual activity.
The evidence is that playing chess or classical music improves any aspect of intelligence is simply non-existent. This is obvious to anyone who has studied any neuroscience. All activities develop a skill set that is specific to that activity with few if any benefits in other areas.
unclefester,
On the other hand, I’d argue that that past experiences are NOT ONLY about memorizing the best moves to make, but experience ALSO helps us develop neurons for careful planning in specific knowledge domains. In other words, it’s not strictly one or the other.
The difference is pretty significant, it’s like having students memorize a formula and be able to use it versus having students understand a formula and how to derive it on their own. In the end, both students will be able to use a formula on an anticipated test, but some will have a far deeper understanding of how it all fits together and how to modify it to fit new & un-experienced scenarios.
You will need to cite the source to give me the benefit of understanding exactly what it is you are talking about.
I never claimed chess players were more intelligent and I actually would not expect playing chess to *cause* higher IQ, although a *correlation* wouldn’t surprise me. Anyways sources would help a lot to establish what evidence you are talking about.
Edited 2014-10-14 13:49 UTC
While I might be on the fence with regards to if it’s a sport or not saying that games like LoL doesn’t require skills and brains is rather ignorant.