It’s practically been a year and a half since I wrote my
nostalgic article, “The E-sports Scene: Now and Then” that featured my history
with the MLG Halo scene and the LoL scene at the time. On Tuesday was the release of The Master Chief
Collection, the masterful release of the four original canon Halo games; Halo:
Combat Evolved Anniversary, Halo 2: Anniversary, Halo 3, and Halo 4. The Master
Chief Collection comes equipped with all of the multiplayer maps of each game
with the ability to change game-specific maps to another game’s maps on the
fly.
On November 5th, 343 Industries announced the
Halo Championship Series, or HCS, which is the premier Halo eSports League. The
HCS will be hosted by ESL and other tournament organizers to run a circuit much
like Starcraft’s WCS and League of Legends’ LCS. The circuit will run from November
until March 2015 and will showcase only Halo 2: Anniversary. The HCS has already
kicked up tremendous hype over the past weekend with their preseason Master
Chief Collection tournament. The tournament featured legendary teams such as
Halo 2’s Str8 Rippin, Halo 3’s Believe the Hype and the legendary players
themselves, Heinz, Ogre2, Flamesword, Pistola, Ace, Snipedown, APG, Ninja, Hysteria,
FearItSelf, Naded, Gandhi, Tsquared, Roy, and coaches Walshy and Elamite
competing for $20,000.
After the tournament, third place team Shoot to Kill (StK), was
received by professional League of Legends team, Counter Logic Gaming. Now CLG
Halo, the team consists of Heinz, Ogre2, Royal 2, and Snakebite. Ogre2 is said
to become the coach of the team.
Ogre2 is one of the most dominant players in the entire Halo series
from the start with Halo 2 team Team 3D, which would later become Final Boss.
Ogre2 has also won 40 tournament titles. Heinz played for teams such as
Triggers Down and Dynasty while Royal 2 and Snakebite played Halo: Reach for
Warriors (2011) and Status Quo (2012).
Halo saw increase play and viewership in North America through
Major League Gaming when they first showed the original Halo in 2002 and only expanded
until the end of Halo: Reach when MLG dropped the series. With the arrival of
Halo: Reach, more fans tuned out of Halo for Starcraft or stopped watching
because Reach changed many mechanics to the meta-game, such as reticule bloom,
which made the player wait a second to shoot accurately or take the chance of
missing the shot, and the sprint option that changed CTF gamemode and the pace
of Team Slayer.
One of the main concerns the Halo Championship Series might
have for the future of eSports is the infrastructure of foreign teams. Like
League of Legends and Starcraft 2 Championship Series, they feature tournaments
within their circuit for different regions: North America, Europe, South Korea,
and for League of Legends, China. Teams and players compete within their region
and the highest ranking teams at the end of the season compete in the World
finals brackets. If the HCS can feature a regional circuit final it can
possibly regrow the competitive scene within the first few years up to peak
viewership such as League of Legends, DotA2, and Counterstrike: Global
Offensive.
With CLG already acquiring a team, there might be hope that
big names will also get into the HCS, such as the foreign names of Ninjas in Pyjamas,
SK Gaming, Fnatic, and Meet Your Makers. Local teams might consist of CompLexity
Gaming, Optic Gaming, Cloud 9, and Evil Geniuses.
