eSports stands for Electronic Sports, or competitive gaming, and it was a pretty big thing in the early 2000’s with all the hype from Counter Strike 1.6, Starcraft, and Warcraft III, but it died for a couple of years due to poor management, high taxes, and gamers struggling to get a pay check – professional gamers that is.
In the last 5 years or so, eSports have taken the podium once again, with more and more gaming fans tuning in to watch matches – whether it’s from their comfortable home via Twitch.tv and also ESPN, or going to an actual event like the annual League of Legends World Championship; this is partly due to Twitch.tv that offers a great streaming service that is designed for gamers, but it doesn’t limit to that, and because MOBA games like LoL, Dota 2, and HoN are immensely popular now . In some circles, you are actually considered uncool for not playing MOBA’s. Why didn’t this trend start 10 years ago?
Free to play games that don’t suffer from the plague that I love to call microstransanction hell are catching really quick to the public. Take for example Team Fortress 2, it was a great game that I bought, but after a few years it went free on steam, and its user-base increased substantially. Sure, you can buy hats, and dyes to colour your gear, but they don’t affect the game in any way.
Pair free to play with catchy, and fun game mechanics, give the community the ability to buy whatever they want in the game as long as it doesn’t affect matches – as in skins for champions, cool new hats, announcer packs, dyes that colour your weapons purple, or maroon, name tags that change your title to Waldemar the Unconscious Hobo – and you have the perfect recipe to strike gold.
That’s what League of Legends did, and it’s the most played video-game in the world. In January of 2014 Riot Games, the company that developed LoL has shocked the world by announcing that 27 million gamers play LoL on a daily basis, and 67 million players monthly.
There are beginners that play the game for fun, there are those who do so only to win a match called tryhards – who relinquish every bit of fun just to taste gold; and there are those pro gamers that constantly come up with new tactics, new ways to dominate and climb the ladder.
No wonder there are so many people playing the game that want to become pro and attend championships – if you and your team win the LoL Championship event, well, let’s say you don’t have to work for a couple of years. First place consists of a $1 million prize, and the second one is $250k. Sure, you’ll think that the money is going to be split into 5 ways, but what you don’t take into consideration is the fact that eSport teams are being sponsored by huge companies like Intel, Kingston, AMD, Nvidia, ATI, Razer and other tech behemoths.
Although it’s a pretty big community now, it doesn’t have the respect it deserves, and this is were the League of Legends documentary comes in. You may know Patrick Creadon for documentaries such as Wordplay, I.O.U.S.A, and If You Build It – Patrick is one of the few filmmakers who released films that ranked within the Top 100 highest-grossing documentaries of all time, and that’s no easy feat to do.
” eSports teams don’t have the respect that they so badly crave,” Patrick says. “These North American teams are not unlike the 1980 United States hockey team going up against Russia [in the Olympics]. Our movie really captures a similar story.”
All Work All Play is the name of the documentary that chronicles the Intel Extreme Masters torunament of 2014/2015. It focuses more on the team-based game LoL, rather than the solo affair Starcraft 2. And it tells the story how eSports are currently being dominated by South Korean teams.
” You’re not watching the game or playing a game on a PC; you’re going to an arena!” says Patrick. “That’s more than half the fun: seeing it with other people who are like you that love this thing that you also love.”
And he couldn’t be more right. You gather your friends, and you go watch the event in a huge arena with other gee- err gamers like yourself, everyone rooting for a different team. Or you could huddle up at a buddy’s place, buy a ton of beer, order some pizza, and have an excellent Sunday.
It’s not a documentary that points the camera at people and just gets footage and edits it, Patrick set up his own account and played the highly loved MOBA, he interviewed countless pro gamers, he attended events, and he poured his heart and soul into this doc, and go figure, it was well received at the Tribeca Film Festival.
It’s not a documentary about gamers, it’s a documentary about humans that love their hobby. After the first screening at the Tribeca Film Festival, a woman fromt he audience had an half-hour long phone call with her younger brother who absolutely loved the game. Creadon says that the women stated she didn’t have almost anything in common with her younger sibling, and it was always hard to find common ground, but after seeing the movie she suddenly realized who he is. “She said the movie really made her feel closer to her brother,” Creadon says. “At the end of the day, eSports is really just about people and [the movie] is really a human story.”
That’s the beauty of it, but it truly saddens me that we, gamers, aren’t respected for our hobby, unlike footballers, golfers, and other major sports. I got some pretty hideous snide remarks last week when I met with some friends that brought some people with them that I didn’t now. Somehow we started talking about gaming, in general, and how they considered gamers to be the scum of the earth, a plague to society, and how they should all just get a job and grow up.
All Work All Play is a must watch to gamers, and non-gamers alike.
Other documentaries that also dwell in the gaming industry, and are worth a watch are…
- Free to Play: The Movie
A documentary that follows 3 professional gamers on their quest to compete, and win the million dollar prize in the first Dota 2 International Tournament. It’s produced by Valve and it showcases what gamers sacrifice in order to achieve such a feat, and what challenges face them on their path to e-glory.
- Looking for Group
Created by Blizzard Entertainment, it tells the tale of how World of Warcraft was developed, and how it become one of the most beautiful, and played MMORPG’s in the past decade. How countless friendships have been made, and even how people met and formed a relationship, eventually leading to marriage. I won’t forget that day when after clearing for the first time Black Temple, my guild leader who was playing from South Africa, proposed to his girlfriend of 4 years. I still talk to them from time to time – they have a baby daughter now, they bought a new house, and their planning on visiting Europe this summer.
World of Warcraft was one of the first games to get World Events right – like how realms where supposed to complete daily objectives, and gather items to open the Gates of Ahn’Qiraj.
All Work All Play will be available on :
– July the 21st in North America ( US, Canada, and Mexico), and Central and South America
– July the 28th in Europe, and Russia
There is no official release date for the Blu-Ray.
