What makes a good esports game?

Hey, users & admins of UGAME.net lets dive right in.

What makes a good esports game?

There are many things that makes a great eSports title, in my opinion the first thing that creates a brilliant eSports game is the users. You need a community to succeed in making the best eSports title possible, many oraganisations try and force game titles on a community to play them in eSports and are usually forced to compete using those games, two of the biggest examples here are WSVG (World Series of Video Games) & theCGS (the championship gaming series) they both tried to force games onto a community that didn't want to play them. WSVG started off well with their first tour they started with games such as Counter-Strike 1.6 and Quake 4 both very popular games at the time and still are, it was a hit. Everyone wanted to play in WSVG either under the title Counter-Strike 1.6 or Quake 4 but both of those titles not as TV friendly as others or so they may think. WSVG in their second tour tried to force games such as Guitar Hero 3 and Fight Night on the community both of these titles had no where near the same popularity as Quake 4 & Counter-Strike 1.6 and this was part of WSVG's downfall trying to push a circle into a square slot.

To create the perfect eSports game is balance, you need balance in a game so everything is even in whichever way you look at it a prime example is the Counter-Strike series. If you take a closer look into CS you can see that everything has been so finely tuned that it makes it the best fitting eSports game in the world. The buy system works wonders and all guns and maps are attuned to how rounds usually play out and what the other team needs to do to get that win over the other team. Games such as World of Warcraft are constantly tuned by Blizzard but it really isn't enough to keep it an even fair eSports games things such as Rogue Mage Priest combo's dominate most WoW tournaments and makes it a very biased structure to the game.

(SK-Gaming @ WCG 2008)

Team work and the desire to win, this plays a huge part in eSports. If you're working with a team you feel much more motivated when you pull of the shots or the moves that are going to win you a game, it gets you going it gets your team going and you feel like a unit. Ask most professional gamers, what drives them to keep playing? it's not that they enjoy the game as much as they do when they first started the it's the desire to win that keeps them going, professional cs players will hardly ever play public because it doesn't get the adrenaline pumping like it does when they pull off some amazing shots against the best teams in the world and compete for thousands of pounds.

What does eSports need to push forward in the future? communication. Companies and organisations need to listen to the community, game developers and current professional gamers. Nobody knows more about eSports than the players themselves, there is no point in mindless corporations pumping money in dead end games that no one wants to play but only play them JUST because of the money involved and CGS is a huge example of this.

I hope i've shared as much as I can in this blog and I hope you all understand my opinions and have had time to read this properly. I originally wrote this from the motivation of "OMG PRIZESZ!?!" but i've enjoyed writing this and I hope you've enjoyed reading this.

Samuel Bateman