Professional PC and video game leagues has taken off in other parts of the world, particularly in Asia, but in the US it has always been something of a niche market. We have seen more than one pro gaming league fall by the wayside in the past few years. Now the live streaming video company Justin.TV wants to change that. Venture Beat reports that the company is currently hiring people to help build a site specifically for e-sports tournament videos.
The article chats with Justin.TV's chief technology officer Emmett Shear about the company's e-sports plans. Shear said that the plans were first conceived about six months ago, saying, "We’re all a bunch of gamers and we like the gaming content, and if you looked at the trends it was growing quickly already and it was really interesting content." In fact the gaming portion of the company has become so popular that Shear says, " ... for the first time in a while, we’re really strained, pushing to get out new servers for the demand."
The new e-sports efforts will launch sometime in the next few months, according to Shear. He also believes that e-sports could be as popular as it currently is in South Korea where the RTS game Starcraft is practically a national sport. He states, "E-sports can be really exciting. If you’ve ever watched golf, it’s kind of boring. I’d rather watch Starcraft. If golf can be the size it is, there’s absolutely no reason that Starcraft shouldn’t be bigger than that as sports." He believes that it will take two things to make e-sports popular in the US. One is more support from game publishers and the other is a good spectator mode. Shear believes that current first person person shooter games don't have a good way for others to view the action. He says, "The first FPS game that does that well will win e-sports."
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