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Far Cry 3 And The Stranger In A Strange Land The International Dota 2 Championships will be held during this year’s Penny Arcade Expo, Aug 31 to Sept. 2, the organiser and Dota 2 publisher Valve just announced.
I almost flunked uni because of Mortal Kombat on the Genesis. (Yes, that’s how old I am.) Classes skipped, papers turned in late and reading assignments left barely skimmed, all because I was trying to perfect my Scorpion technique. And while the undead ninja from the gory fighting series is a favourite of mine, he’s not the favourite. That honour goes to Lei Wulong, the occasionally drunk kung-fu cop from Namco’s Tekken franchise.
The World Cyber Games, or WCG, for a long while regarded as the pinnacle of the e-sports movement, has all but given up with news that it’s dropping all support of PC and console titles and switching to competitive…mobile gaming.
The local competitive fighting scene in Australia is a burgeoning beast, and we tend to punch above our weight as a result. Part of that is thanks to events like Shadowloo Showdown. The announcement trailer for Shadowloo Showdown 2012 has just been released and it’s, for want of a far less played out word, epic.
Men and women have been going to bars to watch sports since the beginning of TV time. But e-sports? Aren’t we supposed to be couped up in bedrooms, two feet from monitors watching crappy streams? No, says Barcraft! We watch Starcraft in bars, the way sport is supposed to be watched. We drink and be merry!
Television is an odd medium. It is traditionally designed to appeal to the widest range of people, the greatest common denominator. It’s no surprise, then, that the televised competitive playing of video games hasn’t taken off worldwide. Gamers, as a whole, fancy themselves wise to the tactics of most marketing ploys and thus carry around a certain amount of cynicism, a cynicism that advertisers don’t find all that alluring.
Melbourne was the epicenter for sports fans this weekend, with the AFL Grand Final taking place alongside a slightly different kind of sport – one involving arcade fighting sticks instead of footballs. Pro-gamer and tournament event organiser in the fighting game community, Daniel “Berzerk” Chlebowczyk, was there, and he served as the eyes and ears of Kotaku.
Fighting game enthusiasts should head down to Melbourne this weekend to watch more than 300 players (including some of the best in the country) battle it out in Australia’s end of year fighting game finals: BAM (Battle Arena Melbourne).
Professional gaming is nothing new, but it is slowly coming out of its niche shell. Leading the way is StarCraft II, a game that is perhaps the most current example of competitive gaming at its peak. Last weekend I headed to Blizzard Entertainment’s South East Asia/Australia and New Zealand Invitational Tournament to see the region’s top eight players battle it out.
Eight of the Asia-Pacific region’s best StarCraft II players will be competing for a prize pool of $13,000 as well as the chance to represent Australia at the StarCraft II Global Battle.net Invitational held at BlizzCon later in October. And the best part? You can stream their match live as they go head-to-head to see who’s the best.
