Can Next Generation Consoles Hold Their Weight?

The competitive world wasn't too excited about the next generation consoles coming out. None of them seemed too great on supporting the eSport world. Matt "Nadeshot" Haag America's favorite gamer definetly wasn't. He expressed in many of his youtube videos that he didn't know how the turn-out of the Xbox One would be. It didn't seem to support much of the competitive world like the Xbox 360. But have their opinions changed? The 2014 Call of Duty Championships are to be played with the Xbox One's. Why would they do that though if all the qualifiers are with the Xbox 360? They are having all the teams looking to qualify for CoD Champs, qualify on the Xbox 360 but expect them to play the event on the new generation console. It is Call of Duty, and Microsoft's way of gliding the new Xbox One into the competitive world of gaming. So yes, Microsoft when making the Xbox One did intend on letting it be compatible for all competitive gamer's in the Xbox franchise and regular gamer's.

What is Sony doing with their Playstation 4? Well at the beginning of Black Ops 2 there was no competitive seen for Playstation players like there was before and that is MLG's choice. Unless Sony does something that interests MLG, it will still be off the competitive side of games. Only the future will tell on how the competitive world will be with the new generation of consoles being brought into the hands of the gamer's.

Where To Watch eSports Live!

If you are interested in seeing how eSports is evolving and want to have a first hand account of what games are shining. There are many websites you can go to and see what pros are playing what. First and fore most, the best site to see what professional games are being played and where the biggest viewer base is, is on twitch.tv. On twitch you can browse every game that is being live streamed known to man. There are tips and tricks streams, pro streams, etc., on every single game that you can find on twitch. Also on twitch, if you sign up you can talk in the chat to ask any question you want, and 100% of the time you will get a answer that is fact, and will help your understanding. Go ahead try it out and look for the game that you have once played before. Youtube.com is another great website that the majority of people already know, you can search anything you want. If you want help with gaming on there, go ahead and search whatever you'd like to that could help you with your gaming. Strategies, tips, etc. The last website that is very helpful is majorleaguegaming.com, this website is the home of all competitive gaming and if you go to its streaming website, mlg.tv, you can see live professional scrims of games going on and even learn straight from those. I hope this blog post on learning competitive gaming helps with a better understanding of how you can get better at video games!

Call of Duty Championships March 28-30

Call of Duty Championships are just around the corner for all the teams who are going to attend. On March 28 the day starts of who will make it through the open bracket and make it into the championship bracket to compete for the $400,000 first place prize. But what teams will statistically be predicted to win? Well there are a couple. If you look back at Black Ops 2 to the top 3 teams at the event. Fariko Impact won the whole tournament with EnVyUs taking second place and OpTic Gaming taking third. But you can't look at those being the teams anymore because they for one, aren't all the same rosters, and it isn't the same game. Then you have to look at who has the most championships under their belt. Well, compLexity Live is the current and record holding Call of Duty Champions. But where was compLexity at the last Call of Duty Champs? They weren't there because the team wasn't formed. Fariko Impact was thought to be the team that could never be beaten because they did exactly what compLexity is doing now. They won every event and couldn't be competed against. Well Fariko Impact is no longer a team, but 3 of the original 4 players are on Curse Las Vegas together, and they are hungry to win a championship. But what about compLexity? Are they willing to give up that easily on their champion belt? I don't think so, with them taking MLG Columbus at the beginning of the CoD Ghosts season, and UMG Philly, they are showing no signs of stopping. But, tK Gaming has been runner-up to them in every single event. Being only rounds away from beating compLexity tK is ready to finally take the belt and defend it themselves. Is tK Gaming the only ones though? EnVyUs is looking strong with their new pick up of Seth "Scump" Abner and coming only rounds to compLexity and tK in online scrimmages. Remember though, we can't all forget compLexity's fall to OpTic Gaming at MLG Champs last year for Black Ops 2. Even though OpTic Gaming hasn't been as strong as they were in Modern Warfare 3, OpTic Gaming has always been a championship caliber team and is never underestimated at LAN events. There are many options to who is going to beat compLexity, but the reality is, which team will fulfill the destiny of becoming champions, and reign as the new kings of the game.

Red Bull & eSports

Red Bull is an energy drink company as most of you know. You might also know that they spend a lot of time sponsoring some of the best athletes in the world to wear their product as advertising, and in return giving them benefits that only they can get from Red Bull. Now I have said that they, "sponsor athletes". You would never think that they are sponsoring video gamers because its not an athletic field one bit, not to anyone in the world. Well everyone is right, it's not athletic but they are still looked at as athletes. E-Sport players are players who play certain video games professionally and only the best of the best are sponsored by Red Bull. They are looking to expand the horizon of the gamer and help people realize that gaming isn't what everyone thinks it is. They want to show people that eSports is something that can be a heavyweight contender in viewership with a lot of sports in the world. Right now, at the start of 2014 there are only 8 gamers sponsored by Red Bull and among those 8 have more personal views on twitch.tv, than a lot of sports do on some of their biggest events. Do you like Red Bull? I know I do, but not just because of the drink, but because of all the extensions in the world that they are reaching out to in order to show everyone that the "norm" isn't the norm in the world anymore because now pro gamers are now making just as much money as a lot of pro sport athletes. Professional gamers are indeed, at the same level as professional athletes all over the world.

What Are The Facts?

What are the facts behind eSports? Is it REALLY growing or is it not what people are all hyping it up to be Well here is where you find out. eSports is the number 1 growing community in the world right now. For three years all the competitive platforms that are associated with Major League Gaming have increased in online viewership by 1557%. Online viewership has increased from 3 million viewers an event to 54 million viewers per event being watched online. Those are exponential numbers to have in a community that is new to the world. With these statistics being released by MLG itself, they also pointed out how much more supportive of the players the community is by how much advertising has been watched. The industries standard of completion percentage on ads is 74%. The average number of people watching the full advertisement on MLG players streams or event streams is 90.7%. 16.7% MORE, than what all industry standards are for all T.V. ads being aired. Major League Gaming is rising to be just as popular as some sports in America. How many of you watch NCAA March Madness? A lot I assume. Well In one weekend of an MLG event, there was 14 million more hours watched then there was the whole month of the NCAA March Madness tournament. More hours viewed that Americas favorite college basketball tournament? That is impressive if you ask me and it has the statistics to back it up. E-Sports is on the verge of a new era, and the stereotypical gamer will be looked at, as the equivalent to athletes, superstars, etc., because that is what they are becoming. 

Complexity The Reigning Titans for Good?

Since Black Ops 2 compLexity Live has been winning every single tournament they have been playing in. Being the longest reigning Call of Duty champs in history of Call of Duty, they are showing no sign of slowing down. Their roster consisted of Aches, Crimsix, Teepee, and Clayster. But now with Clayster gone will compLexity still be able to win like they have done before? They are showing that they can. After dropping Clayster they picked up DKarma as their new fourth. Since then they have been winning all online matches and are even shutting down their demi-god opposites with ease. tK Gaming and EnVyUs are so far the only teams to show any resistance to compLexity but can't seem to find that breaking point. Only time will tell if this almost God like team will continue to be unbeaten and remain champions or will these young raw talented teams coming into the scene be able to stop them? Or will these seasoned veterans be able to put a halt to compLexity's terror and start a new entrance into the world of competitive Call of Duty? We will see how this year unfolds in 2014.

A Rough Start For OpTic Gaming

The month of January has been a rough month for OpTic Gaming at the start of the 2014 season. Will OpTic be able to keep a steady roster for CoD Champs? Well lets see here. At the beginning of the month of January OpTic had dropped Jordan "Jkap" Kaplan from the roster and picked up Ricky Stacy. He made a great addition to the team when going into their first event of the year UMG Philly. Going in looking strong at the event, OpTic took a hard loss to FaZe Clan and fell directly into the losers bracket. Then in the losers bracket they faced the defending champions compLexity and took a hard loss. Placing 9th in the tournament not many people were happy with another tournament loss. Sunday night it was confirmed that Seth "Scump" Abner had left the team and joined EnVyUs with Will "BigT" Johnson retiring and becoming the coach of OpTic. They needed two spots to replace. They then picked up Clayster and Parasite as their 3rd and 4th players but that didn't last long. After only a couple days of playing Ricky and Parasite both left OpTic to join up with Curse Las Vegas reuiniting themselves with Killa and Miraculouz. Now OpTic Gaming was looking once again for two new players to fill the 3rd and 4th spots on the OpTic roster. After a long search on who they should pick up, OpTic decided their roster for the 2014 season will consist of Nadeshot, MboZe, Saintsss, and Clayster with BigT as the coach. Now everyone is thinking will this roster last? Well there is no arguing between the teammates like there was with Parasite and Ricky on the team and their matches are going much more fluent with more scrimmages being won and a lot more chemistry being easily built between the players. But all of us as a community can only sit back and wait to see how well this team really is and how well they perform at CoD Champs in June!