Fortnite world tournament distributes millionaire prizes and makes eSports visible
July, 30; 2019. By Arscodex
These days it has been known that the world tournament of the successful multiplayer video game called Fortnite, developed by Epic Games in 2017, has distributed a lot of money in prizes to their winning contestants. In particular, the 16-year-old boy Kyle Giersdorf has won the succulent figure of three million dollars in the star award of the championship.
Fortnite tournament in its main modality (called Fortnite Battle Royale) takes place as follows: plays of about 20 minutes are organized in which 100 players try to stay last in a game space or arena that keeps reducing to encourage the clash between participants. Thus, Kyle Giersdorf has been winner in this game obtaining those three million dollars commented.
To begin with, everything has been an orchestrated and thought-out American-style marketing operation, that is, very well executed: a game that generates millions and millions of dollars annually can afford to allocate about 5 million dollars in prizes (being the first of three, which exceeds approximately fifty thousand euros the most succulent individual sports prize in the world, Wimbledon, according to some sources) to distribute them and generate expectation and news as has been the case. On the other hand, eSports or retransmitted online games are becoming, also thanks to this past event, interesting milestones for the general public.
The problem with all this is that video games have a function, for the general public, associated with childhood and youth for the most part, that is, the act of playing games. And most video games do not contribute anything other than spending time, that is, being an empty content entertainment, in some cases with a lot of violence (as with Fortnite), so from this means of communication we can only be spectators of this phenomena without mixing too much with it. On the other hand, for eSports to take off and cease to be a niche, it is necessary that the retransmitted games be effectively visible by a non-adolescent third party; that is, the games are going so fast and so many reflexes are required to play; this is transmitted to the viewer and this can give us a slight -or important- headache to all those who are not supporters or players of videogames. In short, video games still have a long way to go to become ubiquitous and not be a niche, succulent and large niche, but ultimately a niche for teenagers, as we say.
On the other hand, all this conflicts with traditional sports, that is, one of the main competitions for this modality is traditional football, and it remains to be seen whether the attendance and televised enjoyment of these electronic sports will be generalized or not. In any case, eSports are one more step to the well-known world of The Matrix that has already been presented to us in film.
Fortnite tournament in its main modality (called Fortnite Battle Royale) takes place as follows: plays of about 20 minutes are organized in which 100 players try to stay last in a game space or arena that keeps reducing to encourage the clash between participants. Thus, Kyle Giersdorf has been winner in this game obtaining those three million dollars commented.
To begin with, everything has been an orchestrated and thought-out American-style marketing operation, that is, very well executed: a game that generates millions and millions of dollars annually can afford to allocate about 5 million dollars in prizes (being the first of three, which exceeds approximately fifty thousand euros the most succulent individual sports prize in the world, Wimbledon, according to some sources) to distribute them and generate expectation and news as has been the case. On the other hand, eSports or retransmitted online games are becoming, also thanks to this past event, interesting milestones for the general public.
The problem with all this is that video games have a function, for the general public, associated with childhood and youth for the most part, that is, the act of playing games. And most video games do not contribute anything other than spending time, that is, being an empty content entertainment, in some cases with a lot of violence (as with Fortnite), so from this means of communication we can only be spectators of this phenomena without mixing too much with it. On the other hand, for eSports to take off and cease to be a niche, it is necessary that the retransmitted games be effectively visible by a non-adolescent third party; that is, the games are going so fast and so many reflexes are required to play; this is transmitted to the viewer and this can give us a slight -or important- headache to all those who are not supporters or players of videogames. In short, video games still have a long way to go to become ubiquitous and not be a niche, succulent and large niche, but ultimately a niche for teenagers, as we say.
On the other hand, all this conflicts with traditional sports, that is, one of the main competitions for this modality is traditional football, and it remains to be seen whether the attendance and televised enjoyment of these electronic sports will be generalized or not. In any case, eSports are one more step to the well-known world of The Matrix that has already been presented to us in film.
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