Competitive gaming and eSports are not a new phenomenon.
The act of playing games for sport has been growing in popularity since the mid 90's. From Doom 2 deathmatch, NetQuake and Descent, to Warcraft 2 on Kali, Diablo and Ultima Online PvP—to say nothing of going down to the local arcade to spend your quarters and wait your turn on Street Fighter 2—people have loved playing each other in video games.
Although eSports has only reached new heights largely due to the growing number of competitive players at organized tournaments like Major League Gaming's Pro Circuit and GOMTV Global StarCraft II League, there is a rich, detailed history of events from the past 15 years.
The vibrant, passionate, competitive communities across several games and genres are, arguably, the backbone of some of the largest developers in the world. Blizzard, Bungie, Infinity Ward, id Software, Valve, Capcom, and Epic all have, behind them, strong competitive gaming fanbases. Players have dedicated their entire lives to being the very best, with skill ceilings you couldn't stick ladders to get to. For those who don't like to watch other people play video games, give the best moments in eSports a shot. You may very well start.
Here is a compilation of some of the best competitive matches of all times...
10. Grubby vs Moon – Warcraft 3 - World eSports Games Semifinals – 2006 - Hangzhou, China
Many would consider Jang "Moon" Jae to be the best Warcraft 3 player of all time. He was nicknamed "The Fifth Race" by the community for his innovative and dominant play with Night-Elf. He signed a three-year, $500,000 deal in 2009. Many would also consider Orc hero Manuel "Grubby" Schenkhuizen to be the best western Warcraft 3 player of all time, having won the most titles and recently started his own personal brand, very much in the vein of the most accomplished western professional player of all time, Johnathan "Fatal1ty" Wendel.
By 2006, both players had dominated the Warcraft 3 scene, taking 16 titles combined. Grubby's streak included western events ESWC 2005, DigitalLife 2005 and BlizzCon 2005. Moon had been cleaning up against harder competition winning two seasons of WEG and three seasons of MBCGame. They had also never met each other in an official match before.
The fandom and passion for Warcraft 3 in China is rivaled only by Korea's zeal for Starcraft, leaving no better stage for such a matchup than the World eSports Games Semifinals. Although both players were at the peak of their play, anyone you asked had Moon as the favorite going into the match. At the time of play, Moon had gone an undefeated 28-0 in televised play against Orc players. During the 2006 era of play, Night-Elf's Druid of The Talon/Claw was so difficult for Orc players that Grubby was quoted in a pre-event interview saying "if you want to be good vs NE as an Orc, you need like one month full concentration on this match-up and that means you can't practice anything else, making u worse vs Orc, Human, and Undead." That quote was also in reference to Moon whom he was happy not to face – in the group stages.
SPOILER – THE RESULT
(de_Nuke, No commentary, first map only)
I hope some people will come away from this with a greater understanding of eSports, and to have felt what all of us do when we watch these games. Big thanks to Duncan "Thorin" Shields and Tony "Ponder" Cannon for their vast knowledge and expertise within this field.
Rod "Slasher" Breslau works for Major League Gaming as well as co-hosts and produces a Live On Three, a live podcast about all eSports. Major League Gaming's next Pro Circuit competitionis being held at the Anaheim Convention Center July 29-31. It will feature StarCraft II: Wings of Liberty on PC, Call of Duty: Black Ops on the PlayStation 3, and Halo: Reach on Xbox 360, all of which will be streamed online throughout the weekend. Follow MLG's Twitter for updates. Live On Three airs every Wednesday at 7 PM EST on the One More Game website.
(Top photo by Adrian Turner /ECL X-Series | Flickr)