⚔️ World Fir$t
The “Race to World First” is a World of Warcraft event that explodes on Twitch for a few days every year. The publisher, Blizzard, has done absolutely nothing about it since their understanding of community is insignificant.
Because of that, WoW teams are the main source for an audience to watch the race. Therefore, the people at Team Liquid were like “bruh… since the publisher ignores one of the biggest events in gaming, let’s purchase a big team and own everything”. “No but sir, Microsoft is about to buy Blizzard and they might do something about it”, “shut up pleb, we have been in conversations with Limit Guild for too long, we are buying them”. So they did.
Long live MMOs.
📗 Daddy Microsoft
Just a reminder that Xbox now owns Diablo, World of Warcraft, Call of Duty, Candy Crash, Starcraft and... Overwatch.
💣 New Games & Trailers
📖 Reads of the Week
Once Upon a Time, Sony Gave Players the Power to Create, by J. McCarty.
A Brief History of 3D Graphics on the Game Boy Advance, by J. McCarty.
🏫 High School Perspective
Look, High School and esports is a difficult relationship and we just need to be realistic about this one. The problem is that parents and most teachers ain’t fucking with the idea of their kids having an option to play video games instead of enlisting for sports, and if we don’t get kids playing games as teenagers in a structured environment, competition will be harmed.
Chris posted this example in Japan about a High School that is going all in on esports, and I wonder what do you think about it? Genuinely curious to know your thoughts.
My opinion is that League of Legends, Valorant and Rocket League will be the norm for high school and college students to aspire for an esports career. Just like football players dreaming to go to Ohio State, Alabama or LSU, kids will search for those establishments focused on esports. But the connection between pro and college is nowhere near to where it should be.
If most games can’t be relevant for more than 5 years, franchises continue to run out of a dirty loss and the lifespan of an esports pro is shorter than any other competition… then the only people that we are making happy are those 22 y/o just graduated lazy students who grabbed an esports coach position in a small town in the midwest in exchange for a shitty MBA.
That’s the problem. People at the top think that since High Schools and Universities lack esports structure, then less kids are playing their games, but did you ever think that the actual students don’t give a shit about going pro since the path has so much friction? Even if they have the structure, I don't think they will be like "yeah, let's go for esports".
I don’t know, I feel like publishers will have to make a much deeper study on this. It’s a difficult one to solve.
🏆 Esports Highlights
🤑 Do or do not. There is no try.
EA, on the game side of things, did things, but on the business side of things, really did things. Respawn Entertainment will continue to work on new Star Wars titles.
- EA bought Respawn for $455M in 2017.
- Launched Apex Legends to 100M+ players in 2018.
- Launched Star Wars: Fallen Order to 20M+ players in 2018.
- Both titles grossed $2.5B+ combined. Hummmm… damn.
🎮 Vintage Vibes
We love the old stuff. That’s why I want to bring RetroArch to your attention. They will bring emulation to the next level.
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