The world of Massively Multiplayer Online Games(MMOs) is often one of excess. It seems like a new MMO pops up every few weeks, and most of them never garnish a player base large enough to keep it alive for very long. On top of that, every MMO is compared to World of Warcraft, which is majorly unfair for newer contenders. Along the same lines, most MMOs primarily come from eastern markets, many originating in Korea(and their bootleg spawns in China, but that’s a separate topic). The massive amount of structure an MMO needs to have at launch, and the continual extension of that content is a very large undertaking. Oftentimes, people will use Final Fantasy XIV’s disastrous launch and buggy release as an example when talking about this topic. While they’ve certainly cleaned up their act and made an entirely new game in the background, while also updating their buggy copy to retain their fan base, it’ll still take some time for their reputation to recover. Most other MMOs aren’t lucky enough to be backed by huge gaming companies that can cover their losses in such a way, and many are starting to switch to mobile games rather than full releases on PC.
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Part 1, Communication basics here.
Just like with traditional sports, eSports are played on a specific playing field that players are confined to. Some maps do this with invisible/impassable walls, and others with cliffs or insta-death locations. Games have very defined out of bounds areas due to the nature of video games, which means there’s no need for out of bounds rules that traditional sports like soccer or American football utilize. If players find a way to exit out of these zones, more often than not, they’ll fall through the map eternally, resulting in many games using a death floor in order to prevent infinite falls/loops. Competitive games are usually in a state of “perpetual beta” much like internet browsers are, constantly evolving and changing to meet the needs of the fan base.
Part 2: Knowing your playing field here.
Unfortunately for the introverts out there, communication is an absolute must in team oriented competitive games(which are often the biggest eSports due to the dynamism provided from having multiple players working in conjunction). While there are certainly games that don’t require having a partner/teammates such as real time strategy(RTS) games like Starcraft, fighting games like Street Fighter/SSB Melee, or even speed-running, most big eSports titles will involve communication in some way. Most professional teams in eSports are starting to adopt coaches to make communication as efficient as it can be. South Korea has a leg up on the rest of the world in this regard. Their background in eSports from the Starcraft era, along with their infrastructure and cultural appeal for eSports, has come to fruition in the modern day.
So what is communication?
While competitively playing is all well and good, nothing beats playing games casually with friends. Whether you meet them online because they were a cool person in-game, or you just play with your real life friends to keep in touch when you can’t make plans, casual gaming is an extremely important part of the development of the digital and electronic market and, by extension, eSports. As such, games that focus on the casual market and have enough content to keep them interested(whether through DLC, updates, bug fixes, new characters, artwork, videos, community interactions, etc) tend to do quite well in the digital age.
What are eSports (also written e-Sports, or electronic Sports) you might ask? In a nutshell, eSports refers to competitive video gaming. While many would agree this simple description doesn’t even scratch the surface, we’ll begin with using that for the purposes of this blog.
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