Tonight on ESPN 2, sports fans across the world were treated not to the NBA playoffs or the burgeoning baseball season, but to live footage of college students playing Heroes of the Storm.
Yep, thanks to a partnership with Blizzard, the flashy MOBAāor Multiplayer Online Battle Arena, a genre that also includes the worldās most popular game, League of Legendsāgot a solid 2+ hours of air time on national television, complete with a live audience and professional eSports commentators. While Kevin Harlan and Reggie Miller called the Rockets/Mavericks game on TNT, Artosis and Day9 called the Heroes of the Storm game on ESPN 2. (Of course, this isnāt the first time ESPN has aired video game tournaments; Dota 2 made it to national TVlast year.)
The stakes are very realāthis is part of a Blizzard-sponsored tournament called Heroes of the Dorm, and the winning team will snag themselves full scholarships for the rest of their time in college.
As you might expect, a whole lot of people flipped out over all this. Reactions to the tournamentāwhich, thanks to the nature of MOBAs, was rather inaccessible to people not familiar with the gameāwere incredible, ranging from salty to hilarious. āESPN 2ā trended on Twitter for a few hours, too, and scanning through the reactions is really entertaining. Because this is ridiculous.
Hereās a sampling of some of my favorite tweets about tonightās festivities:
My personal favorite:
And of course there was plenty of salt. Hereās just a small sample:
ESPN analyst Michelle Beadle probably had the best tweets of the night:
Youāve gotta wonder: wouldnāt ESPN 2 be better served to show a more accessible eSport for casual audiences, like, say, Smash Bros., or Halo? Of course, Nintendo and Microsoft arenāt dishing out cash like Blizzard is. And hey, itās pretty damn cool to see video games on national TV.
You can reach the author of this post at [email protected] or on Twitter at @jasonschreier
