Trip to Vegas on offer for Cork City gamers

Next Sunday, Cork City FC will play in a final for a chance to win €20,000. If they are victorious, the team will then travel to Las Vegas for an international showdown. We can’t wait for click-off.

If you’re a little confused, bear with us. This isn’t a league game for Cork City – it’s a League of Legends game. On Sunday, May 13, an eSports team representing City will travel to Dublin to take part in the Three Ireland’s Estars final, arguably Ireland’s biggest eSports event to date.

The event promises to be huge, with YouTube stars and Ireland’s top competitive gamers mingling under one roof.

As part of the marketing drive, each of the teams will represent an FAI soccer club from across the country, but the connection to football ends there.

League of Legends is one sport where sitting on the bench is exactly where you want to be. The final is the culmination of a league campaign in which each of the ten teams played nine games. ‘Shamrock Rovers’ came out on top of the league with eight wins, but everything is still up for grabs in the final on Sunday.

The event, which takes place at the 3Arena, promises to be something special, with some top YouTubers joining the fray to commentate and play alongside the Irish competitors.

Included among those YouTube stars will be Sjin and Turps, from the Yogscast. To put their success in context, the Yogscast have 88 employees and the main channel along has 3.7bn video views.

I think it’s great that people are being encouraged to play games competitively, so that hopefully one day they can make that their profession,” says Mark Turpin, otherwise known as Turps. “South Korea dominated most competitive eSports because it’s very socially accepted there to become a competitive gamer. It’s something we haven’t done as well in the west, so we’ve fallen behind.

“To see people being backed and talent-spotted here and given a chance to become better players is just exceptional,” Turpin continues. “We’re really excited to be involved in Three Ireland’s Estars - I’d much rather watch this than people kick a football round a pitch.”

Turpin acknowledges that some people won’t feel the same, but he thinks there’s room for both kinds of sports.

“I know some people will prefer traditional sports and not give eSports the time of day, but the landscape is changing I think. Just look at Blizzard in the US, who are running an Overwatch league with huge sponsorship that wouldn’t be out of place in the NFL. The Overwatch league is watched by millions.”

Sjin, whose real name is Paul Sykes, makes the point that traditional sports don’t offer anything new anymore.

“There are no new traditional sports coming out,” says Sjin.

There’s always going to be football, rugby, snooker, what have you. But there are emerging genres in gaming now. League of Legends is similar to DOTA, for example, but then you also have Battle Royale games like Player Unknown’s Battlegrounds and Fortnite. These kinds of new genres are coming almost yearly.

It remains to be seen whether eSports can ever compete with traditional sports for money and fame – but events like Three Ireland’s Estars will only get more frequent and popular in coming years. If you want to see what all the fuss is about, tickets to the Estars final are available at Ticketmaster from E46.65. Along with the finals themselves, there will also be performances by dance crew Prodijig and football skills freestyles F2. Come on City!

Gaming Scholarships

US colleges are now giving scholarships for Fortnite, the Battle Royale game that spawned from Irishman Brendan Greene’s game Battlegrounds. Ohio’s Ashlands University have announced that beginning in the autumn 2018 semester, the ‘Ashland Eagles’ will be conducting open try-outs for current and prospective students, offering scholarships of up to $4,000. Applicants will be assessed on the basis of the player’s skill and academic history. The program will also include coaching for Counter-Strike, League of Legends, Overwatch and Rocket League.

If players want to boost their chances, maybe they could play as Thanos, from the recent Avengers movie. Directors Anthony and Joe Russo are such fans of Fortnite that they arranged to have the Titan god become a playable character, if players collect the infinity gauntlet as a power-up during a match.