These companies have experience in large competitions, transmissions and cloud services, especially in traditional sports, and are supported by companies such as DAZN or ESPN to provide more data and certainty to this type of encounter.
This game with comic book aesthetics has grown significantly in the region, especially in competition, and the Challengers format allows developing teams to measure skills, structures, and players in highly demanding formats.
Cases such as 19esports, owned by Rodolfo Landeros and Miguel Layún, or Reta e-sports, owned by fellow soccer players Raúl Jiménez and Jesús “Tecatito” Corona, are examples of how videogames permeate general popular culture. As investments of the so-called “non-endemic brands” they can coexist in the same ecosystem of the teams that were born with the scene such as 6 Karma or Infinity and find new audiences and ways to connect with more fans.
VCT’s 2022 season finale managed to break its own records surpassing 1.5 million people at its peak viewership and an average views during the broadcast of 1.2 million people. While still a long way from its sister brand LoL, which surpassed 5 million people in last year’s final, Valorant’s numbers are among the highest in esports.
Valorant and its community
Riot has always privileged giving context to its games, in the same way that LoL champions are created, in Valorant each agent has a story, an environment, which allows us to empathize with the character we choose. That skills are part of the strategy, but especially the fans, they may have emotional reasons for their choice.
Maintaining the so-called “lore” of the video game, or the story, and balancing the game with modifications to the characters has become essential for the company, so that the strategy prevails beyond simply choosing the most powerful player.
These updates have become constant in recent times, due to an increase in 3 issues that the community itself is concerned about, toxicity in communications, hackers and “smurfs”: players with a lot of experience, who create new accounts and compete in very low levels, generating that it ruins the experience of the less experienced or the recently arrived.
Although these are general gaming problems, a study carried out by LDM showed that machismo, psychological violence and abuse is more common in the gamer world than in everyday life and where women are the main recipients of this “toxicity”. . The competitive nature of the game can exacerbate these situations, especially in Ranked matches, where winning or losing directly impacts a player’s score.
In terms of hackers, it is increasingly common to see live broadcasts where hacks are clearly being used that allow enemies to be seen through walls or even with aiming assistants to avoid missing shots and that are broadcast without restrictions within platforms. like TikTok or YouTube.
As long as these problems are addressed and the community focuses on following up on tournaments of the magnitude and quality that Challengers promises to be, there will be no doubt that it will be able to follow in the lucrative and fan footsteps that the League of Legends phenomenon has achieved.