Category Archives: esports

True Sight is so damn good, TI9 edition.

Valve might have not published a game in a few years and their recent shifts in how their official competitive scenes might not be entirely to your liking, but they have always spent their resources on creating some of the best content in the business. True Sight is no exception.

I’m about halfway through this latest release and it just confirms how great Dota 2 is as an esport. The conversation Valve showcase in this feature strikes the balance between candid exchanges between teammates and the representation of the stakes of what has been biggest game of the year for nearly a decade.

And those animations? Icing on the cake.

Watching the CDL hurts my brain.

I just tried to sit down and watch some of the Call of Duty League stream from this weekend’s opening festivities in Minnesota and hoo boy, I dunno.

They’ve brought over the color scheme design ATVI’ve tried previously with Overwatch and while it works in a game set in an alternate future in the pretense of an ongoing battle between good and evil, I’m not sure that highlighting the colors during the gameplay is the ideal way to approach overcoming the catchability problem that CODXVI has.

I will never understand how they’ve allowed the game sets to include deathmatch-influenced game modes where, presumably, the random roll of where the spawn is going to put you or the randomness of the hardpoint location actually influences the match.

This is a battle for the soul of the FPS that I will freely admit to being on the losing side of.

The layout behind the stream makes a lot of sense. The info boxes on their perpetual rotation at the top of the screen is a nice touch, but they’re missing the point of giving us statistics on player performance. How about a running accuracy percentage? What about a small icon next to their name representing which of the four guns in the game they’re allowed to use that they’re actually using? I mean, at least it all looked slick.

Also, they’re promoting non-ATVI games during ad breaks? How hard up are these guys for money? Was YouTube’s exclusivity payoff not as flashy as Twitch’s from OWL’s debut?

Ahh, well, I admit I’m being slightly grumpy about the whole thing, but from what I could see, it was a solid start.

All except that part where they threw the amateur teams out in a parking garage for their tournament. Yeah, someone fucked up for not thinking through the idea that a parking garage was going to be a good venue to hold a tournament at, let alone a parking garage located in Minnesota in the middle of winter.

I suppose I was too optimistic about that MTG/CSPPA joint statement.

So yeah, I suppose I was too optimistic about that MTG/CSPPA joint statement.