Image from Esports Illustrated

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Looking to get into esports as a new hobby either as a player or a viewer? It’s a sub-niche of the gaming market that has grown extraordinarily quickly over the past decade and boasts hundreds of millions of viewers across a handful of huge titles. As major organizations and networks look to get their foothold into esports too, opportunities are growing seemingly daily. 

As a player there are huge opportunities from tournaments and local events even for hobbyists, for viewers, there are always free cosmetic giveaways and prizes, and sites like Cloudbet offer a huge esports betting market across all major games too, so there are plenty of options to choose from.

This article will take a look at some of the biggest games in esports and help explain which may be the best for you, whether you’re looking to start playing in a competitive way or start watching as a fan. 

Counter-Strike is the esports grandfather

Despite the latest title of Counter-Strike 2 only being a few months old, the franchise is one of the oldest in esports, having first risen to prominence in the early noughties with the 1.6 version of the game hosting huge events. 

As a player, it’s a title with an enormous skill ceiling but quite a smooth learning curve. There are different fundamentals new players can focus on one by one to improve over time. The core fundamentals of the game are also extremely easy to understand, but much like many other esports titles, it’s a game that rewards players who put in the hours. 

As a viewer, Counter-Strike is often regarded as one of the best viewer experiences even without prior knowledge of the game. This is partly down to the fundamentals being very easy to understand but also because visually, there isn’t much clutter, so a fantastic game for first-time esports viewers.

Valorant, the popular new kid on the block

The latest big esports title to emerge, and probably the most popular esports game in the world currently. Developed by Riot Games, it is the only FPS title to compete with Counter-Strike in a big way by capturing great core fundamentals with some additional mechanics on top. 

As a player, it does feature some of the core fundamentals of Counter-Strike and, for that reason, can be great to get into, the major difference is that different agents in the game have different abilities that change the game in quite a substantial way. For many players, however, these agents create a very unique way to play the game and something that’s often praised.

As a viewer, the game can be much harder to follow for newcomers. There are a lot of abilities, flashing different colors, and sometimes a lack of clarity to what’s really happening on screen. Whilst it’s a fantastic viewer experience for fans who know what it is they’re watching, the viewing experience has something of a learning curve within itself, and is not the easiest to follow at first.

League of Legends still pushing strong after a decade

Once the most popular esports title in the world, viewership has waned in certain regions in recent years but still boasts a huge player count. The MOBA genre, in general, has been suffering for a decade on top, but there are still some fantastic experiences to be found as a new player or a new viewer. 

As a player, it’s considered the easiest of the MOBA titles to get into with the smoothest learning curve, it’s visually quite simple to follow until major team fights, and there are plenty of features that a great for players learning the game for the first time. The downsides come from just how enormous the champion pool is, with 168 champions and 672 unique abilities, that’s a lot of data to take in all at once.

As a viewer, the experience has been so well curated over time with great production value that even for those who don’t understand the game, it’s often explained very well and can be very clear what’s going on. With some of the bigger events boasting hundreds of thousands of viewers too, chats on the live stream and viewer interaction is at an all time high leading to a very unique experience too. 

These are just a few of the many options, DOTA2 is another huge MOBA similar to League of Legends and a preference for some, Rocket League has an enormous skill ceiling but has been making waves in the esports market in recent years, and enormous games like Fortnite has become a staple too.

Ultimately it’s down to the player and what style of game is the most enjoyable, but there has never been a better time to get into esports either as a viewer or as a player as the market continues to rapidly grow.

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