Poll

Do you think LoL should be an eSport?

Strongly believe LoL shouldn't be an eSport.
4 (17.4%)
Somewhat believe LoL shouldn't be an eSport.
0 (0%)
Somewhat believe LoL should be an eSport.
1 (4.3%)
Strongly believe LoL should be an eSport.
6 (26.1%)
Neutral / Uncertain / Don't Care
12 (52.2%)

Total Members Voted: 23

Author Topic: Should LoL be considered an eSport?  (Read 4309 times)

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Offline Nakura

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Should LoL be considered an eSport?
I've always been big on eSports, but I find it hard to classify League of Legends as an eSports game. In my eyes, the game simply lacks the balance and depth needed to be a true eSports game and the eSports community simply pales in comparison with Dota and Dota 2. By no means am I saying League of Legends is a bad game, because it's a fun casual game to play when you're bored, but to call it a competitive game just seems like a stretch.

I've spoken with pro-gamers and other eSports enthusiasts about this and they all agree, but I'm interested in what you guys think. Should League of Legends be lumped in with longstanding competitive games, such as Counter-Strike, Dota and StarCraft?

 

Offline Scotty

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Re: Should LoL be considered an eSport?
Does it have a competitive league/tournament/championship series?

The answer is yes, and I'm pretty sure the answer to the OP is yes.

Which is just totally leaving aside the fact that if DOTA/2 is an eSport, leaving LoL out of the definition is absurd.  Lacrosse isn't not a sport simply because Soccer blows it out of the water in terms of viewership and competitive presence.

 

Offline Nakura

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Re: Should LoL be considered an eSport?
Does it have a competitive league/tournament/championship series?

The answer is yes, and I'm pretty sure the answer to the OP is yes.

Which is just totally leaving aside the fact that if DOTA/2 is an eSport, leaving LoL out of the definition is absurd.  Lacrosse isn't not a sport simply because Soccer blows it out of the water in terms of viewership and competitive presence.

The question is more one of whether or not it should be considered an eSport, which many people believe it shouldn't.

The problem is that eSports sold out a long time ago and many organizations began accepting games, solely because their publishers have been throwing money at them. It's ruining eSports and a lot of players have gone into retirement because of this. I hope to revive eSports someday by forming an eSports organization that won't sell out.

 

Offline Droid803

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Re: Should LoL be considered an eSport?
This is a misleading topic.
Whether something is a "sport" (electronic or not), is a definition. Belief doesn't factor into it.
I'm going to link a rather well written article that covers essentially all of the commonly accepted definitions for eSports: http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/general/335391-the-definition-of-an-esport
I'm not intimately familiar with the League Pro Scene, but I'm pretty certain that it'd meet the criteria for at the very least definitions [2] through [4] in the above article.

Funny little universe you live in where DotA/DotA2 are eSports and LoL isn't. They're both just onehand noskill MOBA trash that should die in a fire, but apparently people love to play and watch that ****, it sells, and can feed progamers, so sure, they can be eSports too.

tl;dr, i think that if people play it competitively at a professional level, and people watch it, it's an esport. The feeling I get from your post is that you're insecure, and want to feel some sense of superiority over the lol-playing-plebians as the dota-playing-master-race. Pardon me if I'm wrong but it sure came off that way.


RE: Selling out

err wtf? I don't see how any corporation willing to inject money into the scene is a bad thing. it pretty much needs to happen for heck, any sport to be viable. If noone was willing to throw money at it to sponsor events there wouldn't be prizepools etc. In the end, if the game's a flop and nobody watches it the "problem" will sort itself out anyway, wouldn't it? The very fact that they can continue to do it is attributed to some success somewhere - something's going right, no?
« Last Edit: April 21, 2014, 11:03:52 pm by Droid803 »
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Offline SypheDMar

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Re: Should LoL be considered an eSport?
It's absolutely an esport in the sense that there's a big competitive scene for the community to exist. Riot Games has been immensely helpful in promoting esports to the mainstream while still allowing a casual scene to coexist.

For the record, I am VP of a student organization that's sponsored by Riot Games, Valve, MLG and other companies in my school. The student organization hosts esports tournaments and uses the money generated to give into STEM causes.

Funny little universe you live in where DotA/DotA2 are eSports and LoL isn't. They're both just onehand noskill MOBA trash that should die in a fire, but apparently people love to play and watch that ****, it sells, and can feed progamers, so sure, they can be eSports too.
Wait, what? Up until this point, everything you posted was perfectly legitimate. Why hate on MOBAs and not, say, quick scoping CoD or some other bull**** game like Smash Bros. (which I love dearly)

 

Offline Nakura

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Re: Should LoL be considered an eSport?
This is a misleading topic.
Whether something is a "sport" (electronic or not), is a definition. Belief doesn't factor into it.
I'm going to link a rather well written article that covers essentially all of the commonly accepted definitions for eSports: http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/general/335391-the-definition-of-an-esport
I'm not intimately familiar with the League Pro Scene, but I'm pretty certain that it'd meet the criteria for at the very least definitions [2] through [4] in the above article.

Funny little universe you live in where DotA/DotA2 are eSports and LoL isn't. They're both just onehand noskill MOBA trash that should die in a fire, but apparently people love to play and watch that ****, it sells, and can feed progamers, so sure, they can be eSports too.

tl;dr, i think that if people play it competitively at a professional level, and people watch it, it's an esport. The feeling I get from your post is that you're insecure, and want to feel some sense of superiority over the lol-playing-plebians as the dota-playing-master-race. Pardon me if I'm wrong but it sure came off that way.


RE: Selling out

err wtf? I don't see how any corporation willing to inject money into the scene is a bad thing. it pretty much needs to happen for heck, any sport to be viable. If noone was willing to throw money at it to sponsor events there wouldn't be prizepools etc. In the end, if the game's a flop and nobody watches it the "problem" will sort itself out anyway, wouldn't it? The very fact that they can continue to do it is attributed to some success somewhere - something's going right, no?

There is no agreed upon definition of eSports, your thread lays that out pretty clear; not that we should use a poll on a StarCraft forum as the end-all, be-all source of definitions to begin with.

I have no problem with sponsors, in fact, many sports have sponsors. A problem arises when the publisher pushes a game that has no place in eSports, forcibly into the eSports community, through the use of bribes and manipulation. Take a look at how Riot Games has been effectively bought out the ESL and other competitions. They offer tournaments millions of dollars and their game gets into the tournament in return.

eSports games used to be chosen based on their inherent worth, not artificially inflated. Why do you think Doom and Quake effectively started eSports in the 1990s? They were competitive games that were very well balanced and could be played competitively. StarCraft and Counter-Strike quickly followed in suite, putting balance and competition first and foremost.

There's a big difference between Intel sponsoring a tournament and offering a cash prize and Riot Games throwing money at tournaments that they wouldn't otherwise be able to get their game into, because it doesn't meet certain standards that the eSports community has held for decades.

 

Offline Droid803

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Re: Should LoL be considered an eSport?
Funny little universe you live in where DotA/DotA2 are eSports and LoL isn't. They're both just onehand noskill MOBA trash that should die in a fire, but apparently people love to play and watch that ****, it sells, and can feed progamers, so sure, they can be eSports too.
Wait, what? Up until this point, everything you posted was perfectly legitimate. Why hate on MOBAs and not, say, quick scoping CoD or some other bull**** game like Smash Bros. (which I love dearly)
T'was a joke, and mainly there as "I'm not a LoL fanboy." (In fact I've never actually played LoL).


eSports games used to be chosen based on their inherent worth, not artificially inflated. Why do you think Doom and Quake effectively started eSports in the 1990s? They were competitive games that were very well balanced and could be played competitively. StarCraft and Counter-Strike quickly followed in suite, putting balance and competition first and foremost.

There's a big difference between Intel sponsoring a tournament and offering a cash prize and Riot Games throwing money at tournaments that they wouldn't otherwise be able to get their game into, because it doesn't meet certain standards that the eSports community has held for decades.
Hold on a second here.

I wasn't aware that the "esports community" had a "standard" for judging a game's "inherent worth". I highly doubt there was ever anything remotely as concrete as you make it out to be.  Who gets to be the judge whether a game "rightfully belongs" in a competition? Is there some super secret eSports Illuminati council that judges games to be worthy or unworthy based rigorously based on select criteria? I didn't think there was. You keep throwing these terms like they're facts, but simply - they aren't. There's never been anything remotely as cohesive as that would suggest - there tends to be communities around each specific game far more so than one for esports in general.

Why would Riot offer tournaments millions of dollars to feature their game if they didn't get something out of it? They're a corporation. They do it because it apparently makes them money somehow, which means there has to be an audience for it, surely. Which means that some people find it to have entertainment value as a competitive game.

Why shouldn't Riot be able to do that, just because you think that their game doesn't meet some arbitrary standard of difficulty, balance, or competitiveness that you set? Besides, it's not like balance can't be tweaked. It'd make more sense to criticize LoL as an eSport on a more fundamental lack of complexity and/or depth, but I don't exactly see how it has any less of that than any other MOBA?
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Offline Spoon

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Re: Should LoL be considered an eSport?
Droid803 is right.

/thread

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Offline Fenrir

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Re: Should LoL be considered an eSport?
As someone who's only played League and hasn't bothered to get into DotA, I do feel like LoL has a number of issues that are so ingrained in the design of the game that they will probably never be fully resolved. But there is still enough to the game that there are clear differences between those who actually know the ins and outs of it competitively vs the folks who just log in just to chill and play a videogame for a few hours at the end of the work day.

 

Offline NGTM-1R

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Re: Should LoL be considered an eSport?
I frankly think the world would be a much better place if Wargame was the esports powerhouse, but pretending either of the big MOBAs is somehow categorically inferior to the other is untrue; they're both incredibly toxic communities who hate anything and everything newbie, built around games that are constantly being rebalanced but have some glaring basic issues.
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Offline Dragon

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Re: Should LoL be considered an eSport?
Yeah, I'd watch Wargame matches. I haven't played it much, but from what I know of it, it's well balanced, diverse and does get visually impressive at times, too. And most of all, it requires thinking, not just button-mashing to win.

 
Re: Should LoL be considered an eSport?
And most of all, it requires thinking, not just button-mashing to win.
True, but I believe reducing competitive games (possibly excluding fighting games) to "button-mashing" is not quite right, as most of them have more layers than that :)

 
Re: Should LoL be considered an eSport?
I frankly think the world would be a much better place if Wargame was the esports powerhouse, but pretending either of the big MOBAs is somehow categorically inferior to the other is untrue; they're both incredibly toxic communities who hate anything and everything newbie, built around games that are constantly being rebalanced but have some glaring basic issues.

Wargame might be fun to play but watching it doesn't really hold the same appeal for the casual punter as Starcraft or DOTA. I don't think it's a coincidence that the most successful e-sports all have the same camera perspective and gameplay scope.
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Offline Hades

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Re: Should LoL be considered an eSport?
And most of all, it requires thinking, not just button-mashing to win.
Yeah, you try being a 'master' of button-mashing and you'll get horribly outplayed every game, since MOBAs require quite a bit of thinking to know where you should be (positioning), how you should approach a lane/situation/etc, how you use your combos, when to use them (and abilities), harrassing, zoning, whether or not the team should be aggressive or defensive, etc etc. You also need to have good reaction times, as well.

So yeah, you try playing a MOBA without thinking and you'll get obliterated.
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Re: Should LoL be considered an eSport?
Quote
So yeah, you try playing a MOBA without thinking and you'll get obliterated.

If Wargame is the esport's equivalent of Chess, then a Dota-clone seems like the esports equivalent of boxing.

  

Offline General Battuta

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Re: Should LoL be considered an eSport?
Neither really fit since chess is a symmetric perfect information game.

 

Offline SypheDMar

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Re: Should LoL be considered an eSport?
Funny little universe you live in where DotA/DotA2 are eSports and LoL isn't. They're both just onehand noskill MOBA trash that should die in a fire, but apparently people love to play and watch that ****, it sells, and can feed progamers, so sure, they can be eSports too.
Wait, what? Up until this point, everything you posted was perfectly legitimate. Why hate on MOBAs and not, say, quick scoping CoD or some other bull**** game like Smash Bros. (which I love dearly)
T'was a joke, and mainly there as "I'm not a LoL fanboy." (In fact I've never actually played LoL).
Oh, okay. Makes sense now. Thought you were hating on the genre. I don't really enjoy playing MOBAs because the learning curve is too high.

 
Re: Should LoL be considered an eSport?
I've always thougt MOBAs, shooters and RTS games like StarCraft or WarCraft are popular eSport games because their gameplay is fast paced, the matches are not too long and not too short, they offer a wide variety of tactics and at the same time don't overwhelm the audience with too much complexity. (A Paradox grand strategy game will probably never be considered eSport...)
So, a game is an eSport if enough people think it is and companies feel it is profitable to invest in them. That's all there is to it.

 
Re: Should LoL be considered an eSport?
Yeah, 'eSport' has always been an economic classification anyway. Asking whether game X 'is' an eSport is pointless; it's not a property of the game itself.
The good Christian should beware of mathematicians, and all those who make empty prophecies. The danger already exists that the mathematicians have made a covenant with the devil to darken the spirit and to confine man in the bonds of Hell.