[Mayo]

Interesting article with no factual evidence but "Sponsors are sponsoring LoL"

http://kotaku.com/5893136/league-of-...ium=socialflow

Although, 225k spectators for the IEM Grand Final was absolutely astounding.

It says in the article that LoL is replacing SC2 in tournaments. Does anyone know what tournaments this is for?

[Snx.Mufasa]

'this is the age of the casual gamer'

[Champi]

the fact that the word 'replacing' is the most worrying thing for me.

i think LoL is a piece of shit genre PC game personally, but theres no harm in being included with sc2 in tournies... why does it have to REPLACE sc2? =(

Quick Comments

	ToRDjvillian:
	ToRPandarine:
	FvRsolis:
	Mayo:	Why brand a game like that. People like it for a reason.
	krycek:

[TAEdgE]

They mention it replacing SC2 in the current scheme of things but it's the new Brood War I think (the initial huge eSport)

[Daboo]

I think it should say replacing bw, but anyway,Lets see:
Good relations with the biggest e-sports channel in korea.
Did not get involved in controversial law suits with the governing organization.
Riot's responsiveness to the community( thats what I'm told).
Tons of features that attract casuals, and easy to pick up and play.

Quite frankly, watching it is so boring. Blizzard had their opportunity with sc2, but they sort of blew it with some things.
The kotaku article apparently contained many translation errors, the value of the tournament was 180,000 not 1.8 million.
Translation of the article from TL

With the establishment of an official league, LoL looks to challenge [BW] for the e-sports throne.

Many are speculating that esports affiliated entities are shifting focus to LoL from SC2 as well. For the first time in Korean e-sports history, a European media company is the official sponsor for the league, and with that it seems e-sports is branching out towards the foreign scene. According to the numbers, on the March 14th GameTricks, a PC-bang analytics provider, said LoL now occupies 12.45% of total playtime, close behind Aion which holds the title at 15.35%. LoL surpassed games such as Sudden Attack, BW and Fifa Online2, which have kept pace with Aion, over the course of four months.

Public opinion is that LoL is the most successful foreign game since Blizzard's WoW, and is now threatening BW for the throne of e-sports. According to reports from the end of 2011, Starcraft 2, which was once ranked at 12th in total playtime, is now down to 18th.

On the 14th, OGN held an announcement for the commencement of the official LoL league, and introduced its sponsor. Azubu, its sponsor, is a media group based in Germany, and has signed a joint-partnership with OGN on January 27th. The partnership plans to provide live streaming in both Korean and English, and VoD service.

Robert Sheik [No idea how it's actually spelled lol], representing Azubu, said "We hope to provide high quality e-sports content with this sponsorship and develop a solid infrastructure for the global gaming industry.

Starting on March 21, the league plans to cast matches biweekly, in which 16 teams from not just Korea, but NA and Europe will participate. The total prizepool will be 0.2 billion won (~$180,000) and starting from this fall, four seasons of tournaments are planned to be held.

Currently whether LoL will usurp BW for the e-sports throne is a hot topic of discussion. LoL has been registered as Kespa's 42nd official progaming title, and the producer of LoL has also shown great support in e-sports-ifying LoL. In the midst of events such as MBC game shutting down and the general decline in interest in the e-sports scene, LoL has garnered popularity from both native and foreign fans, and the question of whether it will succeed as an e-sports is gathering much attention.

[ToRVenom]

DAM IT! i dont like the idea of this! ... The League of legends community is trash! i dont usually like bad mouthing other gaming communities but surely anyone who has played LOL knows that it has issues. so the reason i ma saying this is that it is so stupid that something so basic ... so silly might even have a chance of replacing SCII or BW

[Bash]

didnt live on three talk about this?

[xpaperclip]

The Kotaku article is pretty poor quality. StarCraft II has never been the darling child of Korean e-Sports. Until now, that has remained Brood War.

However, I think the main contention of the article is the perception that a LoL tournament, The Champions, has displaced (I won't use the word 'replaced', yet) the next season of OSL, which is also reportedly having difficulty finding sponsors. Many people see this as confirming that BW is on its way out. Coupled with some BW pros saying they will switch to LoL instead of SC2 when this happens, this has led to the (possibly correct) belief that the next big thing will be LoL.

Quick Comments

Mayo:

[Xeen]

Title should be 'new SC'.

SC2 was never big there.

Quick Comments

	inFeZa:	...
	Ruscour:	evening this one out, he's right. SC2 was never anywhere near as big as BW or LoL in korea

[Fourby]

The fact that LoL is has expanded to this extent has really frustrated me. This game is such a joke compared to SC skill-wise. (and I'm not just one of those guys who played like ~10 games and was like yeh this game is bad- I have played over 2,000 games [yes, f*** my life right?])

Don't get me wrong, I like the game, but its a casual game and the fact that its going pro so fast and hard is just ridiculous to me.

But the fact is what can you do? With a player base of over 50 Million, it results in a MASSIVE fan base (as shown in IEM viewer counts), and most sponsors couldn't care less which game is harder to play, they just want the best exposure.
So even if sponsors did love SC more, deep down in their hearts, League of Legends being viewed by 10 times more people will still be the far greater investment of choice.

Quick Comments

nGenLight:

lol i love u

[CyniX]

I like to casually play LoL but to think that SC2 would just be dwarfed in comparison to LoL in terms of recognition and support makes me uneasy #Bias. I think of SC2/BW as such an art. Which takes so much dedication and training to learn and adapt to the metagame, more so than I feel for LoL because of it's lower requirement of multitasking and higher emphasis on micro.

SC2/BW just feels more mature and has such a legacy whereas LoL seems more casual and childish to me. It'd be sad (because I'm a bias prick) to have people new to eSports think of a game like LoL instead of Brood War or SC2 when they think of eSports.

Quick Comments

Fourby:

only bias to the truth

[ToRSpartaz]

This was interesting considering DaNoSauR and I were discussing this last night. LoL = skillless.

All the players not only pro players for Sc2 have considerable skill and amazing mechanics in such a diverse and amazing game. I really dislike LoL its a rip off of Dota imo.

[TCPKiaSu]

omg srs? i like LoL but like sc2 way more. LoL is waaaaaaaaaay too easy I mean cmmon my first game I got 5 legendarys -.-

[iM yang]

That's like saying I went into 5 custom games on SEA and won 5-0, you can't judge a games competitive aspect from pub stomping randoms.

Quick Comments

Fourby:

the truth has never been so yAAANg

[syfMiley]

Originally Posted by TCPDeathWing

omg srs? i like LoL but like sc2 way more. LoL is waaaaaaaaaay too easy I mean cmmon my first game I got 5 legendarys -.-

The game actually matches you up with people starting the game as well you know that right? Don't judge a book by it's cover.
Smurfing in LoL though is quite the experience I must say.

[ReverseCure]

doesnt the fact that the article got the prize money wrong , put 1.8m instead 180k ( lol ) show that this article is biased and probably inaccurate ? 180k is nothing compared to the current prize money in brood war

[ToRPandarine]

IMO games like LoL, DoTA and HoN are games that are just too casual. which is why it has such a massive fan base. I've had friends who tried to play SC2 after starting off with DoTA or LoL and they have just too much trouble getting into SC2 (not to mention this one jackass I though was a friend who said he wanted to get SC2 but blatantly declared LoL the better game. never have I ever wanted to hurt a person so badly)

SC2 or any RTS of equal quality requires a form of dedication to learn, perfect and master it. its like art not a lot of people want to put so much time in. if there's a game that they can pickup and play in the next 10-15minuts if it, to them it is good. the idea that it is the next E-sports games staple is a big joke and i seriously believe that games like these shiuld be left at home.

but that's just my opinion course.

[Rockstar]

Counter-strike was free... LoL is free... CS was pretty much the pinnacle of e-sports for some time. Coincidence?

For the life of me I don't know why companies like google etc. haven't jumped on the free game/advertising opportunity yet...

Create a viewer friendly game, make it challenging with a moderate level of difficulty to play (so anyone can pick it up) couple that with a high skill ceiling, (meaning you can always improve) make it free to play/DL and then make every load screen a 30 second advertisement coupled with tournament modes which have half time ad breaks etc. etc. Generate in-game billboards etc. etc. Charge companies for the advertising.

[TCPLemminks]

It's a shame that Blizzard doesn't support their eSports games as much as Riot games does.

However you do have to consider the fact that Blizzard are spending a lot of their resources making new games like D3 and HOTS, LOTV, whereas Riot games has only made LoL and are spending a lot more into growing it as an eSports (I'm pretty sure the IEM tournaments were slef sponsered by Riot games, where as the only SC2 tounraments sponsered by Blizzard are the Blizzcon invitationals and Blilzard Cup).

To be honest it will be a shame if people think LoL when they think eSports because as people have said, the online community is utter crap.

[yongming]

game companies create games. people create esports.