SXSW is having their awards show pretty soon. They have an award for E-Sports Game of the Year. The description being “Awarded to the online game that has the best competitive scene, or the ability to grow one, and most entertainment value.”
The nominees being…
Call of Duty: Infinite Warfare
Gears of War 4
Overwatch
Street Fighter V
Killer Instinct - Season 3
I will be watching these awards kinda closely on my own. If, by some miracle, SFV wins this, i will be scared of the future for gaming. And id believe someone got bribed too. Course, it’d be awesome if KI won it, but i cant say its a stronger candidate than Overwatch and i dont even play it. I feel, based on the guidelines for the award, though, KI is far and away superior to SFV, even if you only count S3. (By the way, when are they going to start putting that caveat in with SFV and judging based on a season?)
But when i say scared? SFV winning says they have the correct idea and that game did not meet hardly any expectations. Im not even sure it met hardcore gamers expectations. But to let THAT game go as “best” would be a real bad look…
Overwatch is pretty much guaranteed to win, both in terms of actually meeting the category requirement and in terms of “lets just give the award to the most popular game.” But the fact that KI got nominated alongside those games is pretty impressive.
I would hope it doesn’t win. Overwatch has had a lot of issues with developer meddling as far as the esports scene goes. Worst offender imo is events with map pools picked by blizzard that frontload bad maps and push the good ones to later rounds that may not ever happen.
Thats surprising to me. I thought and usually regarded Blizzard as a relatively good company dealing with E-sports. At the very least one of the front-runners going back to their Starcraft: Brood War days.
Then again, i didnt follow them much after the transition to Starcraft 2, so maybe they’ve gotten more George Lucas-y with their baby…
That is so dumb. Stop worrying about an award it doesnt mean anything to you at the end of the day and it will not impact your life. If sf5 wins great if ki wins great if others win great. It should not matter, whats wrong with people.
Imo, SFV will not win this.
By his past, hsi failed patchs and his whole pack of complains from players, I don’t think he can win this.
SF has legacy. That’s it.
Same for Call Of Duty: IW.
The Launch was desastrous. He has the same problem than SF.
He has only his legacy on his side.
Gears of War 4 has some Online Tours and some events, but he’s still nothing compared to SFV/.
KI is a great game with a great netcode/community/dev’s.
But his lack of advertising compared to the others titles could be problematic
At least Overwatch is a good game and has a dedicated community and esports scene behind it. It’s pretty fun to watch, you can learn from it, and it’s exciting, too. KI has all of those, and the fact that it is even up for nomination is humbling enough for me. I wouldn’t mind if either game won. Love them both.
Granted my vantage point is very limited and I don’t play Overwatch beyond one weekend when it was free (pretty fun, but not really my thing). But it’s really tough to recall a game being so widely in the consciousness of gamers and generating the kind of buzz and excitement that Overwatch has over the last year. In the spirit of the award I suspect this will win.
As far as KI, I think it’s the best game in the list. But is it the best esports game? It’s hard to make the case.
It will be Overwatch or COD. The FPS community it alot larger than ours, and that will matter. I would bet Overwatch out of the 2 though. Overwatch had gotten alot of love considering it is the first of it series, unlike COD which makes a new one every year.
