eSports Weekly Update – Stories you may have missed!

This week we ask; is the Call of Duty re-master going to be worth the hype?

Moreover traditional sports training is coming to esports, with talent management agency IMG launching an esports academy—and one iconic esports organization is already at boot camp.

With the Overwatch Beta opening up to all this week, we take a look at how the game is being received by gamers and how it will shape up as an eSport.

Also a petition asks the White House to officially recognize eSports as a “legitimate sport” so that gamer athletes may  obtain a P1 Visa.

IMG debuts esports academy, with compLexity the first team attending boot camp

A staple of traditional sports training is coming to esports, with talent management agency IMG launching an esports academy—and one iconic esports organization is already at boot camp.

IMG Academy is a training institute for professional athletes based in Bradenton, Florida, that focuses on sports training and education. Notable alumni and trainees includes tennis players Andre Agassi and Maria Sharapova, football quarterback Cam Newton, soccer player Tim Howard, and basketball player Amar’e Stoudemire.

CompLexity Gaming’s players are the first in esports to take part in the IMG Academy program, flying into the institute on Wednesday night for two days of training.

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Three ways eSports can become an even bigger business

Video game tournaments are a $500-million global business, but they have a long way to go before they can justify the big investments game-makers, team owners and others are making in them.

That’s because it’s not yet clear how video game competitions, known as eSports, will take shape compared to traditional sports. Executives from leading eSports companies including streaming app Twitch and “League of Legends” developer Riot Games made that clear during a panel discussion at the Milken Institute Global Conference on Wednesday.

Attracting women to eSports, fostering amateur competitions and striking more licensing deals are among the major initiatives that need to be undertaken for the industry to realize its potential, they said.

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7 Secrets of being a Successful Esports Manager

This isn’t clickbait. The secret is your people: staff, management, and players.

We’ll review a few key points that are key to your success  (with major emphasis upon employee satisfaction) in no particular order. Self-reflecting, retrospectively, I guarantee you that one of these key points apply to you, the reader, as I have noticed all of these have applied to me at one point or another. Whether you’re a manager or not, these points are the key to having a successful organization, as line staff are the lifeblood.

Being a manager, it is usually impossible to perform all the tasks of an eSports organization; this is where your staff (we’ll call them employees from now on) comes in.

I am of the opinion that a manager needs complete dependence and trust in their subordinates to be successful, including players. Whether it be an eSports organization owner, or an individual game’s coach — one cog or spoke in the wheel, subordinates are key. They are the grunt-workers, the voice, body, and soul of an organization that make the cogs turn, performing daily tasks, such as reaching out to sponsors, posting on social media, making videos, etc.

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P1 VISAS IN ESPORTS: A CRASH COURSE

Many of you are probably familiar with President Obama’s We the People Petition Initiative.  Anyone can go to the White House website , draft a petition on any topic, and if the petition receives 100,000 signatures, the White House must formally address it.  This has, of course, led to some abuse. However, this process can address, or at the very least bring attention to, some very real and important causes.

One recent petition will be near and dear to the eSports community. Specifically, this petition asks the White House to officially recognize eSports as a “legitimate sport” so that gamer athletes may   obtain a P1 Visa.    P1 Visas permit “internationally recognized athletes” to enter the United States for a period of up to 5 years for individual athletes, 1 year for a team, and 1 year for “essential support personnel,” e.g. coaches.   For years, athletic organizations have relied on P1 Visas to allow their participants to enter the United States. Because of P1 Visas, such sports are more diverse and more competitive.

The United States Citizenship and Immigration Services office (USCIS) only recently began to recognize eSports players as “athletes” for P1 Visa purposes.  This is in large part thanks to the efforts of Riot Games and, as you would expect, many of the P1 visas continue to go to LCS players. That is not to say that a P1 Visa is exclusive to LCS athletes.

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Dolby sponsors $10,000 Overwatch tournament at Esports Arena

Just days after the game’s official release later this month, Overwatch fans will have a major esports event with a big name sponsor to look forward to.

California’s Esports Arena will be hosting the first major Overwatch LAN event following its release on May 24, with $10,000 on the line. The event will be sponsored by American audio equipment manufacturer Dolby, in the company’s first move into the world of esports.

The event will feature some invited teams, with the list of invitees not yet announced, but the tournament is also open to the public and all teams will start from the same point.

Two of the early pioneers in Overwatch broadcasting, Josh “AskJoshy” Sutherland and Ben “FishStix” Goldhaber, will be on hand to cast the event.

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Is Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare Remaster Actually Worth the Attention?

If you ask any player who has been playing games for longer than just nine years which Call of Duty title they believe is the best, most of them are likely to answer with ‘Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare.’

It was indeed the first Call of Duty title that abandoned the excessively repeated World War 2 recreations and jumped into the modern era of warfare, where information, fast weapons, and clever espionage were an essential part of combat.

Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare also had arguably the best campaign in any of the CoD games, perhaps alongside the first title (if you’re old enough to have played and thoroughly enjoyed it).

Now, after a few leaks on reddit that not only confirm the existence of the next Call of Duty (Infinite Warfare), but also confirm the existence of a remaster of Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare, it seems we’ll be able to relive the ground-breaking title with better graphics.

The first reaction is excitement driven joy, but if you ponder over some of the details and whether a remake was actually required, it’s not as simple as jumping for joy.

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