Rage Quits!!!!

This will explain all your doubts about the topic of 'Rage Quitism'. I am sorry for it being so bad but it was made by my younger brother.

The Growth of e-Sports!!

In South Korea, there has for a long time been a major interest in gaming of all varieties, Role-playing, Shoot-em-ups and Strategy games. I have experienced a wide variety of all these genres, but my favourite (at least for the moment) has to be RTS (real time strategy) games. In Korea, there are many sponsored, and successful gaming tournaments and teams, that can live purely off playing a game, and working as any other sport. However in Europe, America and basically every where else, there has not been so much interest, until more recently. This week, the NASL nasl.tv (North American Star League) was released, this is a tournament of selectively chosen Starcraft 2 players from around the world to compete in the highest level of play. To watch it in HD quality, you must spend money, much like any other sport, you buy a pass and then can watch the games live at high quality for as much as you desire. Additions like these tournaments are causing gaming to grow dramatically in the rest of the world. Now, professional gamers can live off gaming and very successfully much like other sportsmen or the Korean gamers who can earn up to $400,000 annually.

Other smaller tournaments are being held weekly or more often. Over the internet tournaments include the Craft Cup, Zotac Cup, Competo Cup, GO4SC2, SCVcup, and many more that I cannot spend hours writing out. However, LAN tournaments are also being set up, often with better prize money and gaming mice/keyboards and the such as well.In my clan, Delusive Gaming delusivegaming.co.uk (we renamed from Strategists' Union) we are having a tournament that is coming up quite soon, and are also planning more tournaments both internal to our clan and also open to everyone.

We are seeing tournaments being sponsored by many companies, including gaming hardware stores, computing parts stores, monitor stores, and many others. This is a good sign, because it shows that tournaments are being watched enough for a business to have profitable advertising in them. This therefore leads to a larger prize money and the attraction of more players, leading to growth of gaming. An example of this is the recent Dream Hack invitational in Sweden, many companies sponsored it, they are SteelSeries, Eizo, Sapphire, Intel and AMD.

The Grandmaster league was released on Wednesday, this is the top 200 Starcraft 2 players from each region (Europe, North America, South America, China, South-East Asia, Russia, Korea) This is good for Starcraft, because it gives more drive and incentive to be better, bringing more players in.

Streaming is becoming more and more easier to achieve, with the addition of free streaming software like XSplit, which i use, and site on which streams can be created for free as well, justin.tv (my website of choice) ustream.tv, duckload.com (a site that sponsors players, helping the e-sports grow), own3d.tv, sc-streams.com, and many more.

Professional players are even going on normal TV channels, LiquidJinro was on Sweden's largest TV channel recently, e-sports is spreading, fast.

Streaming is becoming more and more easier to achieve, with the addition of free streaming software like XSplit, which i use, and site on which streams can be created for free as well, justin.tv (my website of choice) ustream.tv, duckload.com (a site that sponsors players, helping the e-sports grow), own3d.tv, sc-streams.com, and many more.

Professional players are even going on normal tv channels, LiquidJinro was on Sweden's largest TV channel recently, e-sports is spreading, fast.

Finding, Storing and Sharing Information

We now live in a day and era where we have access to all sorts of technology and information. In the past information was harder to come across and you had to rely on asking your parents and if you were lucky you would have access to an encyclopedia.

Nowadays it is much easier to come across information with the internet. We can use search engines such as Google or a specific website such as Wikipedia which has information on just about anything. 

We can store information on a computers hard-drive, or we can use cloud computing. This is when your information is sent to a large storage database that you can access from anywhere around the world with an internet connection because you access the information from the internet.

People can share information easily today thanks to social networking sites such as Facebook and twitter, these can be used simply for sharing among your friends. If you wanted to share to a broader audience you could write a blog on the topic or you can make a wiki or edit an already existing one.

In conclusion we live in a day and age where we have access to countless technologies that give us more access to information and ways of distributing information all around the globe.

FIFA 14: Game Review

 

As usual, I had to buy the newest and supposedly best FIFA yet. As usual I was initially hugely disappointed and warmed to it slightly later. The graphics are much the same and the crowds are still typically awful. The main game-play features that have changed are the way you control the players. You now have to spoon feed them the nitty-gritty of playing football making the run in the exact direction of the ball or aiming the pass perfectly. However, the feature that has incensed me the most of all, is the extremely annoying and time-consuming way of buying players in career mode. I know it is more realistic and all that but it is so boring and has got rid of all the excitement of transfer deadline day as you don't have enough time to scout, scout further, negotiate fee and wages. Another point that is really concerning is that headers are way too effective. It is easier to score from a corner than a penalty now especially on online. Chips have been way too overpowered as well. Before they required skill, instinct and quick decision-making whereas now they are really quite simple to score.

However, bar the list of points mentioned above, there isn't a lot wrong with the game. I really do like the Sky Sports studio presenter speaking before the match and other features such as swerve and the keeper standing still when he has no chance. Ultimate Team is now even more fun with the increased seasons to 10 divisions. It is also much easier to search for certain items and the use of chemistry styles gives the user an interesting choice. This makes the same players somewhat different and can make the games more unpredictable increasing enjoyment for the gamers. It isn't a perfect game, yet it isn't an awful game. My assessment in one word would be, 'meh'.

GTA V: Game Review

Simply stunning!

Rockstar left nothing to chance making GTA V the best done game ever. The graphics are good but the map is what stands out for me. It isn't in reality that big but it feels huge because of the totally different looking places within it such as the city and the beach or the desert. The car chases and the shootouts were realistic and enjoyable. The missions were very clever and had large variety. Moreover the story mode is very long allowing you to enjoy the game for longer. The characters are very different adding another level of beauty to the game as you can dip into the lives of three different people and see how they interact. The ability to change characters within missions makes them more fun as you can experience everything. The music chosen is catchy which contributes massively to the overall enjoyment of getting from one place to another.

The Online mode is also good although initially I was skeptical as there were problems with the servers. In addition, I failed to see how Rockstar could make the online mode work at all. They decided to use NPCs and even though this is sometimes not liked by gamers, in GTA the combination of NPCs and human controlled avatars was almost perfect.

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