I'm not trying to start an argument, but I'm interested to know what you LoL players think of Dota's International and the prize pool etc.
Do you think it's good for eSports seeing the interest showed by ESPN and T-Mobile sponsoring EG?
<3 from a fellow MOBA player
I hope riot lets us do something similar (the prize pool thing). I really like to see companies/developers helping and putting money towards their game esports wise. Blizzard didn't do it well and thats one reason why SC2 is kind of a flop in comparison to other games.
I didn't even know espn had anything to do with TI as I haven't watched it at all. As for tmobile thats not exactly something surprising to me, but we also don't know how much they're going to be providing. I mean it could be as little as giving the team phones and saying they are are a sponsor. But looking at korea they have samsung and sk telecom helping teams. If you didn't know SKT is huge and provides like half of the mobile service in south korea.
Yeah, the whole prize pool thing is really a shout out to just how much people fork out on Valve games in terms of barbies/hats etc. The compendium which funded the prize pool gives players a lot of benefits, and as much money as Valve makes off it all, I think in the end it benefits the players. The attention that the tournament gains just eans valve will appreciate how much people like the game, and do even more to developing it.
ESPN2 did a feature on it on Friday I think (?) and it's being broadcast on ESPN3. Not that it really needs to be with all the different streams on Twitch. And who knows how much T-Mobile will help out. I've not seen what they've given the teams, but their announcement really leaned towards an understanding of the game, and hopefully it will mean more large corporations will join in on the hype of eSports.
I would agree in part about the SC2 thing, as it's still massive in Korea, but it's popularity elsewhere isn't great, mainly because Koreans are just too damn good at it.
