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