-
October 22, 2021
Esports is a term that you might not have heard in the 2000s but in the past decade, it has become a full-fledged billion-dollar industry with millions of gamers all over the world. Moreover, the industry has also been boosted with the help of coverage provided to it by mainstream and social media. This is why you can see a lot of gaming channels on analog and digital cable, YouTube, Twitch, and other streaming platforms.
If you don’t have a lot of knowledge about esports, let us put your mind at ease by telling you that it is another term for professional gaming. It involves games where players compete in tournaments, battles, and competitions to win money. It also involves live streaming gameplay and getting sponsorship offers from brands, but let’s not get ahead of ourselves.
What is Professional Gaming?
Professional gaming, or pro gaming, is like a sport, only it involves video games played by professionals, who are involved part-time or full-time into this industry.
-
March 22, 2016
In a huge new sponsorship deal, OpTic has teamed up with Pepsi to bring a brand new energy drink to the market. Aimed at gamers looking for the best fuel to power up their own game, the new drink is called Brisk Mate. The Mate in Brisk Mate is pronounced mah-tay and is based off of a South American leaf that is used in the drink that has the same pronunciation at the end of it's name. The drink is an iced tea that comes in a range of different flavors and also comes with a range of other benefits you'd hope to see in an energy drink.
The Brisk Mate drink has been described to give players a "smooth, energizing spark" and as well as using the sponsorship deal to showcase their new drink, Pepsi will allow the OpTic teams from different games to drink the drink at events - we'd expect there to be enough Brisk Mate to last the entire OpTic organisation for an entire lifetime.
Perhaps the coolest thing to come from the new sponsorship deal, at least for us viewers, is a number
-
March 18, 2016
After a beautiful display of games over the course of last week, CLG has managed to take home the cup for the Halo World Championship and have bagged themselves the biggest single cash prize in all of FPS eSports history. In fact, CLG's $1 million win over Team Allegiance has set them to be the first team outside of Dota 2 to win $1 million in a single event.
Even eSports titles like League of Legends and Counter Strike: Global Offensive haven't seen prize pools as large as the HWC and as you can imagine CLG are pretty chuffed about their win. In the grand finals, CLG (Or Counterlogic Gaming) went against Allegiance and CLG absolutely crushed the competition.
The first game was Capture The Flag on Coliseum, which ended in a tie with CLG's Frosty taking one flag and Allegiance's eL toWin's taking another. Because of the tie, the first game was replayed and this time CLG crushed Allegiance with a 3-0 scoreline. SnakeBite managed to capture 2 flags whilst Royal 2 captured another
-
December 05, 2015
A huge issue that was present in the Rainbow Six Siege beta was team killing and player griefing. It was too easy for trolls to ruin a game and at the time Ubisoft were doing nothing about it. Fortunately Ubisoft has spoken out to reveal that Rainbow Six Siege will have some features added soon that will stop trolls, team killing and most game-ruining griefing.
When asked on Twitter about trolls, Ubisoft simply mentioned, "Yes. We have a plan in place to handle them. It will not be tolerated at launch!" via their official Twitter account
Unfortunately Ubisoft did not explain exactly what measures would take place at launch but there's likely to be some kind of kick or penalty system for team killers. In other multiplayer games, players are often kicked for team killing. In some competitive titles, such as Counter Strike, repeated griefing behaviour or trolling can lead up to a 7 day ban on all competitive servers.
Hopefully Ubisoft has a system in place that works just
-
May 15, 2015
Battlefield 4 has already had a season pass but DICE aren't quite done with developing content for the game just yet. However, instead of charging players extra on top of all the other additional DLC costs already tied onto Battlefield 4, DICE has made the noble choice to release all of the future DLC content for free.
Whilst previous DLC will still cost players the same it does today, any new content created by DICE and released for Battlefield 4 from this day forwards will be absolutely free to all players.
So far there are a lot of details that haven't been shared by DICE, but we do know that they are working on some new maps, including night time maps. The night maps should be variants of previously released maps. So far we already know that Siege of Shanghai, Zavod 311, and Golmud Railway will be receiving nighttime variants. A new community-made map is also in the works and should be released for free in the not too distant future.
A new patch is planned for this
-
April 04, 2015
Some new playlist changes have gone ahead in anticipation for the launch of the April update for The Master Chief Collection. The playlist changes include the introduction of Team Doubles, as well as a few other changes across the board.
Team Doubles is a pretty popular playlist that has been around since Halo 2, and it includes a variety of different game modes that can be played with 2 players on each team. The new Team Doubles playlist in The Master Chief Collection will include Halo 2 Classic, Halo 2 Anniversary, Halo 3 and Halo 4 maps.
Other changes include small tweaks to team sizes. For example, Combat Evolved team games now have 2 players on each team, instead of 2-3 players. 343 Industries have also been clear about their playlist plans for the future. The development team has revealed that they would like to add more playlists that give players a battle rifle at the start of the game, and they've expressed their interest in more team objective style playlists.
-
February 28, 2015
So far, Halo 5 is actually looking to be a monster of a game, and thanks to Aaron Greenberg's latest comments in the Inner Circle podcast, we can get a better idea about just how huge the game is shaping up to be.
"Halo 5 is gonna be huge. It should be one of the biggest entertainment releases of the year if we do our job right. I think what we've got with Master Chief and Locke is a marketer's dream. The game is just super-innovative. I think this is a title that 343 has dreamed of making, and they're innovating in ways that our jaws are dropping."
"It's such a deep story. To me it's like the closest thing to playing in a real movie, you know. I love campaign. I play multiplayer and I enjoy it, but I just love to get deep in the campaign and co-op you know, and Halo was kind of the birth of that, and also at the same time has innovated the multiplayer, so I'm excited with what they're doing with Halo 5, and we'll be revealing more soon."
Interestingly, Greenberg spent
-
January 14, 2015
At long last, the PlanetSide 2 beta is finally making it's way to the PlayStation 4. Announced before the console was even released, PlanetSide 2 is a free to play FPS sci-fi shooter that features huge open world battles between three different player factions.
Each faction must work together to call out strategies in an attempt to take control of different areas of territory within the open world. As a player works towards capturing territory and defending faction outposts, experiences and credits will be rewarded.
Experience will go towards unlocking new items, whilst credits can be used to purchase the items. As you can imagine, there is a third currency that players can earn by spending real money on the game.
The in-game currency can be used to fast track players towards better equipment, but everything, besides cosmetic items, can be earned by simply playing the game. It does, however, take quite a long time to accumulate enough credits and experience to purchase
-
September 22, 2014
Respawn Entertainment, the developers behind Titanfall, have just announced details for their third and final DLC pack for their recently released FPS. The new DLC pack will include three new maps that explore unseen places of the Titanfall universe.
The next DLC pack for Titanfall has been called IMC Rising, so it's likely that the maps will focus on IMC created facilities and locations, as opposed to the previous map packs, Frontier's Edge and Expedition, which focused on scenic areas and Militia mining areas.
On Frontier's Edge, players were given Dig Site, one of the smallest maps in the game, Export, an interesting map that comes with a "black market" feature that allows players to buy and sell burn cards with in-game currency, and finally Haven, an open map perfect for objective based games.
Expedition came with Swampland, a map focusing on an alien world's scenery, War Games, a map that took another look at Titanfall's pilot training simulator, and Runoff, a
-
August 09, 2014
Deep Silver have a lot planned for this year's Gamescom, but perhaps the most exciting thing to come from the developer is a hands-on look at Dead Island 2. Those visiting Gamescom will have the chance to play Dead Island 2 for themselves, marking the first time Deep Silver have let the game go public.
Whilst we may not get a fully featured official gameplay showcase of Dead Island 2 at Gamescom 2014, we can expect to see a large amount of gameplay content hit the internet as soon as the world gets it's hands on the Deep Silver game booths available at the event.
In total, Deep Silver will have 150 different PC and console gaming stations scattered around Gamescom 2014, which should be enough to give a large amount of players a chance to experience Dead Island 2 over the days the event is held.
Dead Island 2 has been set for a release in Early 2015. Unlike previous titles in the franchise, Dead Island 2 will be developed by Yager, a team that has not previously worked