When Doom was released in 1993 it became a phenomenon and sparked a whole new way of gaming. Players connected to each other using modems and with the addition of newsgroups, chatrooms and IRC competitive an early form of competitive gaming was created. This was fermented in 1995 when Microsoft held Deathmatch ’95, an official offline PC tournament showcasing the newly launched Doom II.
The year 2000 saw the first World Cyber Games in Seoul, Korea and featured Quake III Arena, StarCraft, Fifa 2000 and Age of Empires II. This event saw 174 competitors fighting for a total of $20,000 prize money across all the games available. In December 2012 the WCG had 500 of the top players from 40 countries, watched by 111,000 spectators, 400 journalists and more than 85 million online viewers.
With the growth of competitive gaming and esports came the birth of league gaming and 2002 was the year the largest organised professional gaming was created: Major League Gaming. It was 2009 when the UK got their own league in the form of the Warped Gaming League (WGL). With its focus on matching teams by skill level, rather than just picking the best, the WGL remains the largest online Xbox league in the UK.
Various leagues, as well as individuals, gather together at LAN events across the world to fight it out for titles and cash prizes. In the UK the record for the largest LAN is held by Multiplay, who organise the Insomnia events. Insomnia, or iSeries, events happen in Telford three times a year and they offer gamers a chance to get together and play competitively.
This March will see i48, the 48th Insomnia Games Festival, and will be full of the usual competitions and tournaments that have made the iseries name. From Call of Duty: Black Ops 2 to Minecraft, Xbox to PC, there is something for everyone to compete in or enjoy watching others play.
“Insomnia is a gaming event for all ages, where gamers and industry leaders alike come together to celebrate games in all their forms.
For many gamers in the UK, and indeed Europe and beyond, the Insomnia LAN is now a British institution and staple part of the gaming calendar, with the event playing host to some of the biggest eSports tournaments in Europe, and annual host of the UK qualifiers for the World Cyber Games.
In the last 14 years we have ran over 120 LAN events, given away over £420,000 in prize money and welcomed over 85,000 gamers through our doors! In the Winter of 2011, our insomnia 44 video coverage of the event topped 2.2 million views!
Back when the series was first launched, the emphasis was very much on the low latency aspect of gaming. Now of course, low latency is no longer the primary reason to attend a LAN, and the social and indeed competitive aspect of the events have become much more at the forefront of why people attend, evolving the LAN into a Festival that celebrates gaming in all its forms.”– Stevie Ward, Community Manager
The team at Multiplay have generously given us a pair of BYOC tickets for the whole weekend of i48, a value of over £180! All you need to do is answer the simple question below.
What is the name of the human faction in StarCraft II?
a: The Protoss
b: The Terran
c: The Dotas
Entries close on Feb 22nd 2013. Good luck! Now Closed!
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