Tabletop games will always be a thing. Incentivizing more people to play tabletop games should continue being a thing as well.
Sometimes, it’s as simple as throwing a bunch of money into a tournament involving a game, such as Ascension. Sometimes, it’s adding premier players from other games, such as the Epic World Championship. Either way, it’s healthy for gaming in general.
Esports has been at the forefront of pretty much any and every topic involving competitive gaming, and for good reason. Magic has pretty much held it down when it comes to analog games, but even then, we’ve had the aforementioned Ascension and Epic, plus many more like Yugioh and even Scrabble with big money tournaments around the country. This is very healthy for not only the respective games, but for bigger platforms, such as major conventions hosting said events. We see it all the time, with recent ones being Super Smash Bros. events at PAX. Incidental exposure on a smaller scale is great, but that can easily turn into large scale exposure if the attention is noteworthy. Next thing you know, Twitch coverage and advertising will help make it a main attraction, and the snowball rolls from there.
There are obstacles that must be overcome that esports games don’t have to, however.
The lot of traditional games are, quite frankly, pretty hard to follow if you know nothing about the game. When you’re watching a game like Overwatch or League of Legends, you really don’t have to understand the intricacies of the games to know when something exciting happens. You don’t have to know what a flick shot is to know that an insane shot was made. With most traditional style games, this is near impossible to follow. I feel that Magic in particular has tried to remedy this by making the game a lot more streamlined. You know when a game is going in someone’s favor nowadays, especially when the game state gets a little bit crowded. That said, it still struggles to keep up in the coherence department. Even Hearthstone has trouble, but it’s often easier to keep track of the important things, such as Legendaries, powerful effects, and the like.
The ability to make the game easy to understand to someone watching it for the first time, while also making the game deep enough for the most experienced players to dig into, is the biggest challenge among traditional games. I’d even go as far as saying that that’s the reason why traditional games have taken a bit of a step back before. I think the future is bright, however, and platforms to showcase these games will always be available to give them the opportunity to shine.
Anthony has been competing in games for the better part of his adult life and is dedicated to improving his game, improving his community, improving himself as a person, and most importantly having fun and enjoying himself while doing so. You can check out his stream to find out which video game is the latest to catch his attention.