Showing posts with label video game leagues. Show all posts
Showing posts with label video game leagues. Show all posts

Friday, November 19, 2010

XBox 360 League - The Primary Organizations And Games

Video game leagues have grown in popularity over the last decade and have now become fully-fledged tournaments and competitions with vast numbers of prizes, both in item and monetary form. In some countries, gaming tournaments are amongst the primary forms of entertainment and large sums of money are not only given to the winners, but placed in bets as well. It's become a lucrative business and it's a chance for many individuals who think they have the skills to perform against some of the best players in the world. There are dozens of leagues for different kinds of gaming, such as PC-only or an Xbox 360 league. Some mix and match platforms, hosting only the latest or most competitive games to truly distinguish the champions.

MLG

Founded in 2002, it's the foremost in video gaming leagues. It provides annual tournaments for people to compete in, usually with six major games. The most recent of the Halo series is always present with the latest tournament using Halo 3 and Halo: Reach. Furthermore, if the game is not exclusive to a single console, but instead present on at least the PS3 and any other one, the PS3 version will always be used. The tournaments take place both online and offline, with many live events held all over the world. However, these live events sometimes only apply to specific games, consoles or players.

Halo, Gears of War And Call of Duty

Halo is the mainstay of many gaming leagues and the MLG is no exception. It provides close-quarter maps and large maps, both of which focus on twitch-based gameplay and either free-for-all matches or objective-based ones. This allows Halo to be one of the most flexible games in the tournaments and along with its massive player-base, it's perfect for most gaming leagues. Call of Duty is another game of exceptional popularity and has also been used in several iterations. Modern Warfare provided a good deal of competitive gaming and features realistic scenarios in contrast to the sci-fi Halo. The gameplay is still somewhat unrealistic, however, and is still very much twitch-based. Modern Warfare 2 has also been used and the upcoming Black Ops is expected to debut next year. Gears of War is strictly an Xbox 360 series, but has proven that good gameplay beats any limitations. Unlike the previous two entries, Gears of War is a cover-based third person shooter and revolves around players working either alone, in a pair or as a four man team trying to kill their opponents. It provides a high degree of competition and is perfectly suitable for such gaming leagues.

Cheating

The rules of any video game league are not unlike sports leagues. Cheating, however, is a very subjective system for video games. While obvious cheating such as manipulating the game to provide an advantage will clearly result in an immediate disqualification, there are other types that occupy a grey area. Some controllers, for example, provide macro buttons that allow the player to simply press the button once and it will play out a prearranged combination of buttons at any speed the player wishes. This provides an inhuman advantage, but is hard to monitor and can be considered cheating in some courts.

Thursday, November 18, 2010

Video Game Leagues, The Main Societies, Processes And Regulations

It's become a fantastically popular dream to become a member of a professional gaming league. It allows you to play your favorite games at the toughest opponents and potentially make a good profit from doing so. Living your life playing games is somewhat of a Utopian fantasy for many, but outside of the savvy fans, there is little information in circulation. To gain some understanding about the video game leagues, you need to consider many different aspects of it. There is practically a league for every console and every one contains numerous games. For the most popular ones, there is usually an entire league dedicated to them and the participants might sometimes take part as individuals or as parts of teams.

The Main Leagues

There are several influential gaming leagues. The Cyberathlete Professional League (CPL) has been around since 2004 and has distributed over million in prizes. It's considered somewhat of a veteran and is where many go to compete in first-person shooter (FPS) games. The World Cyber Games are yearly events to dish out a serious amount of prize money ranging between 0,000 and 0,000. It features dozens of game types, so it's not strictly limited to a single genre. The Pro Gaming League (PGL) is also a primary contender though primarily in console games, unlike the previous leagues, and offers less prize money.

Competing

Like all sports, gaming leagues follow a set process to filter out the losers from the winners. Essentially, the competitors and challengers fight it out, either with or without the champions, until only two are left. If the champions were not involved, this is where they join in, as either the last competitors faces off against the champions or the remaining two challengers compete. The last remaining player or team is declared the ultimate winner. Once a team have beaten the champions or the champions have retained their throne, then the prize money is awarded. Sometimes it's money, but it's also commonly dished out as items worth the same amount, such as graphics cards, computers, etc. The events are then arranged for the following year with the new or old champions being written in to defend their titles.

Rules

A considerable offense, cheating will obviously mean instant disqualification of you and your team if you're part of one, unless it's proven the team had no awareness of the player's cheating. If they are allowed to continue, then they may be able to seek a replacement player or have to remain handicapped. Cheating can be present in a number of ways, such as manipulating in game data or exploiting glitches in the game to provide a distinct advantage to themselves. Recently, hardware has come under scrutiny as well, since hardware has come a long way since standardization. It's possible to purchase controllers that provide macros, which allows the player to press a button once and have that button repeated faster than is humanly possible. Furthermore, it's easier for such macros to reduce large combinations of keys into a single button press. These have been banned from gaming leagues due to the obvious advantages provided.