Posted
on December 30, 2015
Today
is the birthday of “eSports” hero Danil Ishutin, aka Dendi.
If
you've never heard of Dendi, you might not live in the Ukraine AND
you might not be into Dota 2. But you might be impressed to
learn that Dendi is the 24th highest earning professional
gamer in the world. Just 26 years old today, he has earned more than
$600,000 U.S. dollars from various tournaments.
Dendi
was one of the three Dota 2 players featured in the documentary Free
to Play, and his YouTube stream is pretty famous.
Okay,
so what is Dota 2?
Dota 2
is a free-to-play MOBA.
And
a MOBA is a multiplayer online battle arena video game.
Dota 2
was created by Valve Corporation. It is a sequel to DotA,
Defense of the Ancients. And DotA is a mod
(modification) of a video game called Warcraft III: The Frozen
Throne.
And
Warcraft III: The Frozen Throne is an official expansion pack
to Warcraft III: Reign of Chaos.
(I
hope you're taking notes. There will be a test at the end of the
post.)
I've
heard of World of Warcraft (WoW), the most popular MMORPG in the
world, and the highest grossing video game of all time. (MMORPG means
massively multiplayer online role-playing game.) Well, World of
Warcraft is the Warcraft game that follows Warcraft III: The
Frozen Throne.
Ahhh....there
are people who play video games...for money?
I
mentioned that Dendi was an eSports hero; eSports are competitive
video gaming, also called pro-gaming. Most eSports competitions are
organized multiplayer video games – real-time strategy games,
first-person shooter games, and of course MOBAs. (Apparently, many
fighting game players shun the eSports label.)
Nowadays,
many eSports tournaments provide live broadcasts of competitions and
provide prize money and salaries to the competitors.
Competitions
have been a big part of video game culture since the beginning, but
pro-gaming has become way more common and popular now. As a matter of
fact, many video game developers now create the games with features
that are especially designed with such competition in mind.
The
biggest games in pro-gaming are MOBA games Dota 2 and League
of Legends, the real time strategy game StarCraft II.
Shooting games like Call of Duty have had some success as
eSports—but not to MOBA or StarCraft levels.
The
biggest nation in eSports is apparently South Korea, which has been
officially licensing pro-gamers since way back in 2000! In contrast,
it was just a few years ago, in 2013, that the first American
pro-gamer received a special “Internationally Recognized Athlete”
visa – a sign that the U.S. is finally beginning to recognize
eSports as sports.
So...this
is really a thing!?!
In
2013, more than 71 million people worldwide watched competitive
gaming. By this year (2015), eSports have reached 134 million people!
This is bigtime growth! Check out Superdata's report on the
growth of eSports popularity.
If
you want to know more, check out Twitch.tv – one of the most
popular streaming media platforms – and Major League Gaming
– the professional eSports organization.
Um...where's the test?
I was just kidding about the test. But I noticed that there are a lot of names and acronyms when discussing eSports. Like anything else, video gaming has its own vocabulary!
Also
on this date:
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ahead:
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