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Published:
April 28, 2020

Esports For Dummies

Overview

Discover the path to the big leagues

It's time to prove all those people who said “video games are a waste of time” wrong. Esports has rewarded top gamers with prize money, glory, and even college scholarships. Want to get in on the action?

This book puts you on the path to get your share of the growing world of esports. It helps you figure out the gear you need to be competitive, the games that drive esports, how to break into competitive play, and how to use online platforms to get

attention. Written by the esports program director at the first Division I university to field an esports team, this book defines and demystifies the complex world of competitive video gaming.

  • Get the gear for your first esports battles
  • Gain recognition for your skills online or in tournaments
  • Discover the path to earning scholarships in esports
  • Build your online identity

Get the insider tips you need to make your name in the esports universe.

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About The Author

Phill "DrPhill" Alexander is a professor at Miami University's Armstrong Institute, teaching courses on esports and game design. He is also co-founder and director of Miami University's varsity esports program, the first of its kind at a school with Division I athletics.

Sample Chapters

esports for dummies

CHEAT SHEET

Use this Cheat Sheet to help you as you enter the world of esports. Here you can learn some of the key esports lingo, find out about some professional teams worth watching, and see how to get started playing a mobile esports title, Clash Royale. ©Gorodenkoff/Shutterstock.comEsports LingoOne of the most confusing elements of entering the esports world is getting used to the language.

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Articles from
the book

In contrast to football esports, several games have the full license of the National Basketball Association (NBA) and NBPA to produce video games. Amid the sea of titles that include EA’s NBA Live and an arcade-style two-versus-two-game called NBA Playgrounds, no basketball game has found the following and competitive dedication of the NBA 2K series by 2K.
When it comes to streaming games and esports, the most important element to your overall presentation is the quality of your source material. Playing well and being charismatic are important, to be sure, but how entertaining or engaging your stream is won’t matter if your video quality is bad, your sound is muddy, and you are uploading at a speed that causes your stream to hiccup and time out.
Use this Cheat Sheet to help you as you enter the world of esports. Here you can learn some of the key esports lingo, find out about some professional teams worth watching, and see how to get started playing a mobile esports title, Clash Royale. ©Gorodenkoff/Shutterstock.comEsports LingoOne of the most confusing elements of entering the esports world is getting used to the language.
Historically thought of as highly competitive games, racing games have little representation in the esports landscape. Players mark this as a commentary on the skill-to-luck ratio in playing racing games, and most manufacturers still see racing games as suitable for living room play, and not as much for major competitions.
Fighting games have a fascinating ecosystem. A massive number of titles have been created, and modifications and advancements have been introduced in various games during the 30-plus years that fighting games have been a part of the gaming world. The following criteria are essential to competition and are true of almost every fighting game: Two characters appear on the screen, each controlled by a single player.
Unlike some other esports genres that have relatively few titles, the fighting-game genre includes literally hundreds of titles. Not all of them see regular competition in the esports world, though in the most technical sense, any fighting game could be an esport. This section takes a look at the big names so that you know what to expect if you want to dive into the most popular esports fighting-game titles.
Esports gamers have used numerous Voice Over Internet Protocol (VoIP) services over the years, from Ventrilo to TeamSpeak. A VoIP is a service that allows numerous people to speak via vocal chat over the Internet. The most pervasive, and most functional, VoIP option mixes voice communication with a clean chat interface.
To be an active esports streamer, you need to know and work with three sites: Twitch, YouTube Gaming, and the newest streaming site, Microsoft’s Mixer. Here, you see how to set up an account at Mixer and how to gather the information you need from Twitch and YouTube so that you can get started streaming to your audience.
Twitch is the name most often mentioned in esports spaces, surpassing even Twitter. Co-founded in 2006 by Justin Kan and his partners Emmett Shear, Michael Seibel, and Kyle Vogt as Justin.tv—which livestreamed Justin's life 24/7—and relaunched as Twitch in 2011, Twitch.tv was born from the idea of streaming media live.
Since it started in 2005, YouTube has been ever present as one of the most popular sites on the Internet, usually second only to Google in network traffic. You no doubt know what YouTube is, and the role of YouTube in esports is exactly what you probably think it is: Gamers upload videos (and sometimes livestream).
John Madden Football debuted in 1988 as an Apple IIe game (see the following figure). The game didn’t gain wide recognition until 1990, when John Madden Football was released for the Sega Genesis and Super Nintendo consoles. In 1990, the Madden game for Genesis was considered the first “killer app” for that generation of the console wars, ranking as one of the highest-rated and highest-selling titles for the life of that console.
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