This week in eSports, Twitch Rivals hosted a Launch tournament for Riot Games’ latest title VALORANT. This free-to-play, First person shooter by the makers of League of Legends has been in development for a while now, and many were anticipating its release towards the end of the summer. Then, roughly around May, Riot confirmed that it not only would be launching soon, but that to commemorate its launch there would be a global launch tournament to help advertise the game. The tournament was broken up into several regions, and each region had its own prize pool and held the competition independently. There were 7 regions, separated as Europe, Korea, Brazil, Latin America N, Latin America S, North America, and Japan. This tournament offered a unique view of the competitive gaming scene because A) it commemorated the launch of a new title for everyone to play and B) it allowed viewers to tune into their favorite streamers associated with any team and have a more personalized experience watching the tournament take place. From the Viewers standpoint, they could join a community of players and viewers to root for their favorite players and get a feel for the intensity of the tournament. From the competitors perspective, I imagine it was a much looser feel than your average tournament, but having a personal crowd of support vs an audience of spectators must’ve been a completely different experience.
In the North American bracket, the tournament started on June 6th, considered the Group Stage where teams compete with one another to earn their spots for the playoffs. It concluded on June 7th, with the top teams from the previous day competing in a playoffs event. The prize pool for this event was different than normal as well, with $42,000 in total prizes broken up between Round Robin and Playoffs. In the round robin, you earned $750 per win or $250 per loss, totaling at $24,000 available day 1. The remaining $18,000 was earned in the playoffs, with the #1 team earning an additional $8,000 on top of their Round Robin wins. 2nd place earned $5,000 and 3rd-4th earned $2,500 each. The winners of the North American bracket were called Team Brax, and ended up taking home a total of $10,250 in prizes (to be split into 5 since it's a team of 5). Second place went to Team Myth, earning $7,250 and the 3rd-4th place teams, Team Mendo and Team Sh0ts, earned $4,750 each.
The tournament finished off with the Japan playoffs on June 7th, and overall was a huge success. Many streamers have begun playing the game now that it’s available, and if you’re interested at trying your hand at it, you can download it from the official webpage for free! The game feels like a fascinating mixture of Overwatch and Counter Strike: Global Offensive, so it will be interesting to see how the game develops and improves as it grows with the community. Personally I feel the game simply doesn’t bring enough of its own personality to the competitive scene, and some of its animation and particle effects could use some updating and adjusting, but it has potential to be a great game.
No comments:
Post a Comment