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Starting TODAY, Sanitarium.FM is going to be committed to bringing you news, opinion and coverage of the best eSports has to offer. eSports is a massively growing section in gaming, and it offers us the chance to sit down and watch top tier players compete in some amazing competition. League of Legends, DOTA 2, SMITE, Starcraft II…these are the biggest games on the scene, and we’ll be working to cover them and do our part to grow awareness of eSports as well as share our love of competition and just plain awesome gameplay.
What You Can Expect:
Tournament Coverage
Patch Notes Breakdowns
POSITIVE Coverage (We don’t like negativity. Unless it’s EA. Then we really don’t have anything else to report….)
Embeds of streams so you can watch from the comfort of Sanitarium.FM
A shiny new forum for you to talk it up about eSports. Its your community, make the most of it
A few surprise guests
Whos Going To Be Involved:
Our two biggest eSports junkies are Digmbot and Novindus. Expect plenty of analysis and news from them. PredictedCyborg may pitch in from time to time, as well as Lonesamurai. Even Crimsonshade might get in on the act when he’s not busy beating the servers about the head to make them cooperate. And…maybe some surprise guests.
You Keep Saying That About Guests:
Yes. Yes I do. Better keep a close watch on this section.
Thats the basic intro folks! Keep it locked here for more in the coming days!
In the midst of the Bukkit episode, it didn’t seem possible for another shockwave to hit the Minecraft community. But it has, and from a completely unexpected direction in some ways.
The Wall Street Journal is reporting that according to “a person with knowledge of the matter” Microsoft have been in some serious discussion with the makers of the sandbox game, Mojang with the intent to acquire them for themselves.
The deal, said to be worth around $2 billion could be signed as early as this week. It comes as a bit of a surprise given what else has been happening recently though.
Minecraft is undoubtedly a very popular game and it’s easy to see why Microsoft would be interested. However, Mojang founder Notch has always been fairly wary of venture capital and big business and even once criticised Microsoft’s Windows 8 as being very bad for indie gaming.
All I can say is that the idea of a Microsoft-owned Minecraft makes me feel very… uneasy.
The people working on the Sims are currently working to implement a small update to remove something that has already gotten a few fans annoyed about their latest game. Quite simply, the real-life people simulator known for its acceptance of all types of relationships currently considers any reference to homosexuality “forbidden words”.
The issue was highlighted in a recent video from Youtuber ‘WhyStuffIsGreat’ entitled “The Sims 4 – What’s up with the “Gay Filter”?” in which it is demonstrated that using words such as ‘lesbian’, ‘gay’ or ‘queer’ in a Sim’s description or name brings up the warning “contains a forbidden word”.
EA have been made aware of the problem and are now working on the fix blaming an automated word filter that was still set to its default list. (More evidence of the game being somewhat incomplete upon release?)
The published said about the issue “The Sims has a long history of supporting stories that players want to tell, irrespective of gender preference… We are aware of [and] have been working on a fix, which will be out soon.”
Following on from the DMCA filed against CraftBukkit and Bukkit that took down the popular mod from the Internet and set the community asking questions about just what was happening, the situation surrounding Bukkit’s future seems to be growing ever grimmer.
Yesterday and tomorrow saw many of the prominent contributors and forum staff quit the project, some citing Mojang as being the chief reason for them no longer wishing to be involved with the project. In other news VuBui of Mojang posted a few days ago to attempt to calm the uproar on the Bukkit forum in which he explained that finding themselves having to take more charge of the project meant that they were trying to figure out how to fit it into their current work schedule.
“Deciding how we can best help Bukkit and the community is going to take time, patience and some further investigation into the Bukkit project as a whole. We are only just starting to get our heads around all of this but we are committed to doing so and ultimately we anticipate that the result will benefit all those involved.” he wrote in a topic on the Bukkit forum.
As of writing CraftBukkit has not yet been restored for download, nor has Mojang confirmed that the project is completely dead. Currently though, it isn’t looking good for its future.
eSports. Its blown up in the past few years as games, players and teams become ever more popular and high profile. Tournament attendance, online stream views and prize pools have exploded with I5 recently packing out a massive arena, drawing millions of online views and paying out $10 MILLION in prize money. Despite all that, ESPN says eSports isn’t a sport. Its a competition. Nevermind the fact that the word sports is right in the name: e”SPORTS”.
At Re/codes Code/Media Series: New York conference, ESPN president John Skipper was asked to comment on the recent Amazon acquisition of Twitch. His response was as follows:
“It’s not a sport—it’s a competition. Chess is a competition. Checkers is a competition. Mostly, I’m interested in doing real sports.”
While there is clearly a lot of room for this quote to be taken out of context, the overall tone is pretty dismissive when you consider the fact that The International Dota 2 world championship tournament was carried on ESPN 3, ESPN’s online channel. Of course, ESPN probably won’t have a huge impact on the growth of eSports, as recent estimates report that 2.4 billion hours of eSports were viewed during 2013, and the eSports market is estimated to be worth #300 million annually by 2018.
And, on a more interesting note, the United States Government officially recognized League of Legends players as professional athletes last year, thereby facilitating their ability to obtain visas.
So, while the definition of sports currently states that it is a physical competition, maybe its time it was changed to just “competition.”
What do you think? Are eSports “real” sports? Sound off in the comments below!
