Where Are Sports Video Games in the American eSports Explosion?
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MAR 31, 2016 @ 09:13 PM
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Where Are Sports
Video Games in the
American eSports
Explosion?
Jonathan Delozier,
CONTRIBUTOR
I discuss sports with just a dab of pop culture
and millennial angst. FULL BIO
Opinions expressed by Forbes Contributors are their own.
Curiously absent in the recent and
gigantic uptick of eSports enthusiasm in
America, are sports video games. League
of Legends' world championship sold
out Staples Center and drew more
viewership than The Masters in 2o13,
but games such as Madden, FIFA and
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Where Are Sports Video Games in the American eSports Explosion?
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NBA 2K have not yet begun to approach
that level of attracting spectators.
The scene at the 2013 League of Legends world
[+]
You would figure that SPORTS games
would be the easiest ones to transform
into eSports attractions. Madden
specifically, enjoyed a period of massive
mainstream appeal in its competitive
scene before eSports was even a word,
with the Madden Challenge — a huge
tour that stopped in all 32 NFL cities to
host a massive tournament, and even
inspired an ESPN reality show that
lasted four seasons. The event eventually
had the wind taken out of its sails by less
than stellar quality from Madden as a
game in the mid-late-aughts, and a
divide in gamer populations between the
Playstation 3 and XBOX 360.
Despite EA Sports recently reviving the
Madden Challenge on a smaller scale
and announcing a specific eSports focus,
the road to establishing a spot for
Madden and other sports games with
the League of Legends and DOTA 3's of
the world is still a long one. I recently
had a chance to speak with Kevin
Mamouzette, who goes by KOACH K in
the competitive Madden community.
Mamouzette owns and runs
compete4ever.com, or C4 for short — a
New York based operation that hosts
some of the largest in person Madden
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competitions in the country, as well as
online leagues populated by top
tournament players.
"Madden’s competitive scene has the
potential to explode beyond what
anyone thought was possible. As with
other eSports genres, though, publisher
support is crucial for a thriving
competitive scene," said Mamouzette. "A
little more than a decade ago, we had the
32-city format Madden Challenges that
really gave a boost to the Madden
competitive scene. Since then, EA Sports
partnered with MLG and Virgin Gaming
for major Madden eSports series, and
then we had a period of about three
years where there was a lull in initiatives
for Madden. Those three years were
tough for the scene, but it also presented
an opportunity to develop our
community on a grass roots level. With a
strengthened grass roots base and EA
Sports unprecedented new commitment
to eSports, the sky is the limit for
growing Madden as an eSport as well as
the overall sports gaming eSports
genre."
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Where Are Sports Video Games in the American eSports Explosion?
While stores such as Best Buy and Gamestop still hold
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[+]
I then asked Mamouzette what he thinks
has been preventing Madden and other
sports games from climbing the eSports
ranks, including the notion that sports
games sometimes do not meet the
competitive balance level set by realtime strategy and fighting games.
"As a start, I think competitive balance
issues in sports video games can be
addressed by well thought out rule sets
that are practical to enforce," he said.
"One thing we have been seeing more
and more of, especially in Madden NFL
16, is a strengthened commitment from
the developers at EA Sports to make
sure that competitive balance issues are
actually patched within the game’s code
itself. This type of commitment from EA
Sports will definitely help grow the
eSports footprint of Madden. Games like
League of Legends are created from
scratch for eSports purposes, and its
creators are committed 100% to
patching competitive balance issues
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within the game code. This can only help
to grow a game’s eSports footprint."
KOACH K believes that returning to the
PC arena could also play a vital part in
expanding sports gaming's eSports
fanbase. There has not been a PC
version of Madden published since
2007.
"I like my shiny, new game every year,
but, I think the option of having sports
games such as Madden brought back to
the PC with a two or three year
production cycle, along with it being
fully customizable outside of gameplay
and having regular updates for rosters
over that cycle has potential. Bringing
sports games to PC would also help in
growing it’s footprint; everyone owns a
computer."
With streaming services such as Twitch
and YouTube's newer offerings
continuing to grow, passionate
organizers like Mamouzette and the fact
that this generation of consoles is the
first to have built-in streaming
capability, the door for Madden, FIFA
and NBA 2K to become global eSports
phenomenons has never been more wide
open.
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