Guitar Hero

Guitar Hero is a rhythm game in which players match notes on the screen with a plastic guitar controller. Guitar Hero was developed by Harmonix Music Systems and RedOctane. Dominic Arsenault said that upon its release, “at the 2006 Canadian Game Studies Association symposium. In a room filled with friends and strangers, I laughed and head banged relentlessly, madly clawing at the plastic buttons of the attractively-shaped special controller that would soon become ubiquitous among gamers both casual and hardcore. The game's contagious appeal had begun to spread, and I was infected” (2008). He describes the appeal of Guitar Hero that took the gaming world by storm. As with many popular games Guitar Hero soon became an e-sport.

The first Guitar Hero did not immediately hit it off as a competitive e-sport. It took till the third installment of the series to get it noticed by the e-sports community. The third Guitar Hero was the first video game to surpass one billion in sales. With this much popularity a game is sure to attract many hardcore fans. WCG picked up Guitar Hero 3 in 2009. This is significant because many other companies have tried to latch onto the popularity of rhythm games that Guitar Hero had spawned.

There is a problem with the continuation of the Guitar Hero franchise. In recent years the sales have been slipping. The genre of rhythm games as a whole has subsided. Many believe this is because of such rapid release of new expansions and clones of the Guitar Hero games. People aren’t as willing to shovel out hundreds of dollars every year to get the newest game and newest instruments. But the overall love of the game has not diminished. Guitar Hero is still a part of WCG this year and will continue to be even if the sales are not at their peak.

References

Arsenault, D. (2008). Guitar hero: not like playing guitar at all?. Retrieved from http://journals.sfu.ca/loading/index.php/loading/article/view/32/29

Mark, M. (2008). Guitar hero III sales top $1 billion as genre sales slip. Retrieved from http://www.dmwmedia.com/news/2009/01/13/%2526quot%3Bguitar-hero-iii%2526quot%3B- sales-top-1-billion-genre-sales-slip

League of Legends

League of Legends was developed by Riot Games and released in the fall of 2009. League of Legends is better known as LoL in the gaming community. LoL was inspired by the Warcraft III mod called Defense of the Ancients. Dota was created by Icefrog back in 2002. In Dota players choose a character who has access to four different skills and your goal is to destroy the opposing teams base. Ellen Hedin describes Dota, “The six steps of a usual Dota game are block creeps, go lane which means to lasthit and deny, farm in the woods, gank by gathering your team and attack your opponent, more farming and finally push to win” (2008). LoL has the same game play ideals behind it. Lasthits have been removed thus making the game easier for newer players.

As an e-sport League of Legends has done very well. Dota was considered an e-sport before LoL came out. Since many of the Riot staff used to work on Dota it advertised itself to the same Dota hardcore crowd. This allowed LoL to quickly rise up to an e-sports level. Already this year the World Cyber Games has hosted LoL as an official e-sports. Riot games specifically tailors its game to the pro gamer scene. They knew not to release updates for their game while WCG was happening. They know that to be considered an e-sport you cannot release updates that interfere with large tournaments.

League of Legends has a strange business model as well. Riot Games knew that players would be hesitant to spend money on a game so similar to Dota. So Riot released the game for free. Players can download the game and never spend a single penny. But Riot offers points that you can purchase in order to unlock different characters faster. Also you can buy different skins for your favorite characters. With this business model Riot can get many people to try their game. The more popular a game becomes the more likely it will remain an e-sport.

References:

Hedin, Ellen. (2008). Through the looking glass into the world of computer games. Halmstad, Sweden: University of California PressHalmstad University.

League of Legends. (n.d.). Retrieved from http://www.leagueoflegends.com.

Team Fortress 2

We will examine whether or not Team Fortress 2 is a good choice as an e-sport. Team Fortress 2 was released by Valve in 2007. Team Fortress is known as a class based shooter. Each class in the game has unique stats, guns, and abilities. This presents a complex game which must be finely tuned in order to be playable at a high level. If the game is not balanced for such high level play it stagnates. Since the game has so many classes, leagues have to put bans on how the game can be played in order to keep it fair and interesting. Team Warfare League has set a specific number on the playable classes in TF2. Each team can only have two scouts, two Pyros, one Demoman, two Engineers, two Heavies, one Medic, two Snipers, and two Spies. Also they limit which weapons can be used. Many weapons are too powerful or too weak to be considered in competitive play.

Besides the difficulties imposed by TF2 being a class based shooter it has another problem. Valve puts out constant updates and new weapons. While this is a good idea to keep up interest in their game, it is bad for a competitive scene. With so many new guns and stats being put into the game the leagues have to constantly reevaluate their ban lists. This leads to different ban lists for different leagues. This makes adding TF2 to the World Cyber Games more difficult because the rule-set is hard to agree upon. But Valve is a company that is very much in tune with its community. Valve remains dedicated to strengthening the ties between the modding community and the games industry (Kücklich 2005). Valve has the tools in place which allows for servers to set which items are available for use. This allows each league to have its own mod in place so that servers are forced to run in order to stop players from using banned items.

These problems have not stopped TF2 from being played at a competitive level. But TF2 tournaments have been fewer and farther between than many other e-sports games. Many people express their opinions on various TF2 forums that it cannot function as an e-sport on the same level as other games such as Counter Strike or Quake. While TF2 is a great game I do not think that it is fit to be an official e-sports game.

References

Kücklich, Julian. (2005). Precarious Playbour: Modders and the Digital Games Industry. fiberculture.org.

unknown (2010). TWL: Rules. Retrieved from http://www.teamwarfare.com/rules.asp?set=Team+Fortress+2+NA+League#4-3

MMO Games

A massively multiplayer online game, or MMO, is a game in which thousands of players can play at the same time. The majority of these games are played on a computer because they are social games and it is easier to communicate using a keyboard. One of the first MMOs to hit the computer gaming scene was Never Winter Nights. The game was developed by Strategic Simulations Inc, and supported by AOL. It ran from 1991 till it shut down in 1997. This game helped further MMO games as a genre. It lead to the creation of more successful MMO games. EverQuest came out in 1999 and was developed by Sony Online Entertainment. This game increased the popularity of MMO games. It was not made into an e-sport but set up the model that many MMOs still use today. 

 

Although there are many types of MMOs, there is one particular genre that has become immensely successful in comparison to the others, and is considered the true version of MMOs: combat simulations(McManus 2008). World of Warcraft was developed by Blizzard Entertainment in 2004. This game defined the MMO genre and took them from a niche place in the market to one of the most profitable games to make. World of Warcraft has over 10 million players and made up around 62% of the MMO market. With a game this popular it is not surprising that it has been made an e-sport as well. The Arena system in WoW is a player versus player death-match. Tournaments can be held digitally or in person at Blizzards fan convention they hold annually. At the global invitational championships of the 2010 World of Warcraft Arena Tournament, the winning team will take home the impressive sum of $75,000. The second-place team will win $30,000, and the third-place team will be awarded $15,000.

Another MMO that worked itself into an e-sport for a short time was GuildWars. GuildWars was developed by ArenaNet in 2005. ArenaNet put a lot of focus on making GuildWars a viable e-sport. They held various tournaments and even payed for players to be flown to Germany for the finals. They offered over $100,000 in prize money.

References

1. McManus. (2008). PERFORMANCE WITH A PURPOSE: MEN AND ONLINE GAMES - Commodification of MMORPGs. Retrieved from http://patrickryanmcmanus.com/web1.pdf

2.World of Warcraft. (n.d.). Retrieved from http://www.worldofwarcraft.com/pvp/tournament/index.xml

3.GuildWars. (n.d.) Retrieved from http://www.guildwars.com/competitive/gwfc/productpage.php

FPS games

First person shooter (FPS) games made computer gaming what it is today. Before games like Doom, people thought that video games were only on the small box that you hooked up to your television. Doom was created by ID software back in 1993. Doom has been accredited with popularizing not only FPS games, but also promoting gaming on the personal computer. Doom made the way for multiplayer gaming because of its innovative networking. This game standardized the controls that gamers still use today to navigate the online world. Players use the term WASD to describe this control scheme. W moves the player forward, A left, S back, and D right.

 

Following their success with Doom, Id software released Quake. It was released in 1996. Quake like its predecessor became wildly popular which spawned a whole culture. Quake invented bunny hopping and rocket jumping which are terms still used in games today. Games like Valves Team Fortress 2 deliberately copy things like rocket jumping from Quake. Because of the games spastic movement and fast shooting, the game quickly became an e-sport. It is considered the first e-sport and in 1997 tournaments were already underway. Quake has spawned sequel which are still played in the e-sports community today.

Out of the Quake frenzy, came many other games that hoped to emulate it in order to be as successful. Unreal Tournament was created in 1999 by Epic Games. It like Quake became a major game in e-sports. Unreal Tournament has been played in the World Cyber Games starting in 2001.

Now that FPS games have been established as a staple in the e-sports community we can discuss the king of FPS games. Counter-Strike (CS) was originally a modification on a Valve game called Half-Life. The influence of the mod Counter-Strike on other (tactical) FPS games as well as its influence on entertainment industry’s decisions, are significant (Nieborg 2005). This mod became so popular that Valve hired the creators. CS is one of the most popular games still played today. CS was released in 2000 and its sequel Counter-Strike Source was released in 2004. Many gamers argue whether CS or CS:S is better. Both are played at a competitive e-sports level today.

References

Nieborg, David. (2005). Am I Mod or Not? Ultrecht University, Netherlands.

Fighting Games

In the 1987 one of the first fighting games 'Heavyweight Champs' was released by Sega. You played a boxer named 'Kid Crusher' as you fought against AI to become the world heavyweight champion. These early types of fighting games included titles like Karate Champ, Super Punchout, and the many WWE games. Most of these games placed the player against AI controlled fighters. That said, it is a common complaint of gamers that the game AI behaves either in boring ways or is too strong or too weak to provide interesting and entertaining game play (Graepel, Herbrich, & Gold, 2004). This sentiment is the reason newer games such as 'Street Fighter' became the ultimate in e-sports fighting games.

As arcades grew in popularity so did fighting games. But now players wanted to fight each other not the AI. In 1992 'Mortal Kombat' hit the arcade scene. The game was a huge hit. Players had the chance to master more moves than just kick or punch. Secret combos that let your character unleash super moves as finishers caught many peoples attention. Also the Entertainment Software Rating Board (ESRB) was created as a response to 'Mortal Kombat'. The games single player allowed you to fight a series of AI that grew in difficulty but the real attraction was the player versus player combat.

Street Fighter is the mainstay of e-sports fighting games. Street Fighter hit it big in it sequel Street Fighter II. This game had blocking, throwing, as well as different combos such as the famous Hadoken. The second game was more noticed by competitive gamers because, in SD I, competitive play was a built in bonus. For II, players turned head-to-head combat into the primary game mode (Rus McLaughlin 2009).

With the newest release of Street Fighter IV, this genre is still thriving in the e-sports community. Many other fighter games are played as well. The Marvel vs Capcom series, Tekken, Super Smash, and Mortal Kombat are still going strong. But Street Fighter is still the most dominant in the e-sports community. 

 

References

Graepel, Herbrich, Gold. (2004). Learning To Fight. Cambridge, UK: Microsoft Research Ltd.

McLaughlin, R. (2009). IGN Presents the History of Street Fighter. Retrieved from http://retro.ign.com/articles/954/954426p1.html

Real-time Strategy

Real-time strategy games are war games where a player controls a variety of units and resources.  A typical real-time strategy game (RTS) consists of a player gathering resources, building a base, then raising an army to defeat his opponent.  In an RTS game players do not wait for incremental turns to take place but both players play simultaneously.  RTS games became popular with the introduction of a game called Dune II.  This game was the first wildly popular RTS.  It popularized the use of an interface as well as gathering resources.  Dune II was released in 1992.  Since then many other RTS games have come forward.  Warcraft, Company of Hero’s, Warhammer 40,000, and Command and Conquer are just a few of the more famous titles.  Each game brings something unique to the table and each game had its own following.  But none of these games have come close to the superpower of RTS games that is Starcraft.



 
Starcraft was released in early 1998.  Starcraft is a real-time science-fiction strategy game by Blizzard Entertainment, Starcraft practically gave birth to large scale competitive video game play.  It has been designated a “cultural phenomena” in Korea, where professional video game players are more celebrated than soccer stars (Bremen 2007).  In a decade the game had sold over 9.5 million copies.  Most of these copies were sold in Asian countries, namely South Korea.  Starcraft is the most televised sport in South Korea, with two major TV stations, Ongamenet and MBCGame, dedicated to Starcraft.  Starcraft is a major part of the South Korean economy.  The gaming market is expected to be worth $5.5 billion this year with a 17 percent growth rate, according to the Korea Creative Content Agency (KOCCA).  Starcraft fills stadiums with avid fans, which in turn attracts major advertisements and prize pools.  Major companies like Samsung, SK Telecom, and Korean Air.


 
Starcraft is still a growing e-sport even though its release was over a decade ago, and with the new release of its sequel, it is expected to gain even more world wide popularity.  The game was release only two months ago and already tournaments have been played giving gamers thousands of dollars in prize money.  But with the sequel, Blizzard Entertainment, the creators of Starcraft have held on to the broadcasting rights.  They understand the potential their game has to create money even after its release.  They are selling the rights to companies in Korea to broadcast Starcraft II.

 


References
1. Bremen. (2007). Game Over? - Commodification of MMORPGs. Retrieved from http://benjamin-haller.eu/projects/mscThesis/mscThesisBenjaminHaller.pdf.

2. KeSPA. (n.d.). Retrieved from http://www.e-sports.or.kr/KeSPA07Eng.kea#rank

3. Stout. (2010).  StarCraft II shakes up S. Korea's 'national sport'.  Retrieved from http://www.cnn.com/2010/TECH/gaming.gadgets/07/27/south.korea.starcraft/index.html