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Rod Breslau: I have tried to stay cautious during the enormous growth and success of competitive gaming in the last five to six years, trying to keep that optimism in check to lower the expectation rate for not just the industry, fans, and myself. But every year following, gamers and the industry has not only matched but surpassed the predicted trajectory for the sport.More stadiums, theaters, and event halls were full of eSports fans than ever before this year, and the League of Legends World Championships in Berlin had its largest-ever audience, even with an unfavorable finals match-up. So while 2015 may have been another big jump up from 2014, I see no reason based on past examples that 2016 won't be on another level. People watching other people play video games professionally has no ceiling in sight.
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The beast that is the International and its $18 million dollar prize pool has made it difficult for other games to match, but the plateau hasn't been hit yet. More important than the prize purse or even fluctuating viewership is that things as a whole are more stable and consistent for leagues, teams, players and the sponsors involved. The money will not only continue to come in but will likely be here faster than ever in 2016.But I don't think money is paramount in attracting the mainstream media, and Riot's League Championship Series is a perfect example. The prize money for winning the LoL World Championship is "small" compared to the prize pool at TI and other Dota events combined, but LCS and their World Championship has gained the most amount of "mainstream media" attention in eSports. CS:GO has had a "Major" event system supported by Valve with only $250,000 in prize money, but the events still had more than a million people watching at once. In 2016, CS:GO will be on mainstream US TV more because of the fandom than the prize money.
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2016 will be the year of the FPS. CS:GO had a great 2015, but next year will be pinnacle of all the success the game and community has gone through over several years. Competitive Call of Duty's return to Twitch has been a big boom for their community, and the large-scale circuits for both CoD and Halo have energized the console FPS crowd going into next year.There's a multitude of first- and third-person "Hero" or "MOBA" shooters coming next year, and into 2017, that have similarities to Team Fortress 2, such as Overwatch, Paladins, Paragon, Law Breakers, Battleborn and Battlecry. As Valve never really took care of the competitive TF2 community, and deathmatch giants of old such as Quake and Unreal Tournament have not been able to recover, there's a large swathe of gamers out there who would rather play an arcade-y FPS game than a realistic shooter.
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With StarCraft's Lee "Flash" Young Ho now retired, I would say that there's a good argument to be made for Lee "Faker" Sang-hyeok to be the current star. He's now won his second League of Legends world championship, has been voted MVP and player of the year, and re-signed to SK Telecom for an unknown sum but likely in the high six figures, making him one of the highest paid eSports players in the world—and that's before revenue from endorsements, sponsorships and streams.
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Will we see less burnout amongst players in the coming years? I feel that we have to ease the pressure on some of these guys, if eSports is going to stay healthy. What else needs to change in the "culture" of eSports, for it to be a welcoming place for newcomers?Related, on Motherboard: What Will It Take for 'Netrunner' to be Played Like Professional eSports?
I believe so, and hope so for the players' sake. There's a lot of players quitting, retiring at young ages, in their mid 20s, right now. Much of that has been due to not being able to make a sizable amount of money from playing professionally. As the industry continues to bring in outside sponsorship and the leagues and teams become more stable, I expect free agency to raise player salaries. This combined with an increase in prize money and endorsement potential alongside streaming and YouTube should make playing games professionally a longer career than what we see today. I think it's not so far-fetched to see many compete into their 30s, if they can hold up.
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Nearly all competitive games within eSports have a heavily skewed male to female player base, so when you have a trickledown affect to the .000001 percent of people who will become professional players, there's a very slim chance that there will be many women. Even when a highly skilled women's player moves up the ranks, she can face obstacles such as male players not being confident in her skills simply because she's a woman, or the griefing that all competitive gamers get online, but that women receive especially harshly and usually with sexual undertones. These issues can be overcome, but the fact that there simply aren't enough women proportionally playing eSports games compared to men makes it tough.
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We're probably a few years away but by late 2016 or 2017/2018, I'd like to see what VR developers can do in creating an in-game stadium-like viewing experience. Oculus' John Carmack has already spoken about it this year. Or a Microsoft HoloLens match viewer experience. Boy, would I love to be in a virtual arena, watching these games. Make it happen, folks.Follow Rod on Twitter here, and VICE Gaming hereMore from VICE Gaming:'Yakuza 5' Is the Reason To Turn Your PlayStation 3 On AgainBritish 'Street Fighter IV' Pro Problem X Wants To Push the Scene ForwardThe Top 20 Video Games of 2015, According To VICE