1) Starcraft II Heart of the Swarm, this is easily one of the greatest games ever made, and clearly one of the greatest E-sports as well. What makes this game so great? It has a great single player campaign for casual gaming, as well as an amazing multiplayer experience for people who are competitive gamers. The joke is that the only good Starcraft players are Korean pro gamers, but there are many great American and European players as well. I used to follow all the pros. My favorites include MarineKingPrime(Terran), Scarlett(Zerg), Rain(Protoss), Jaedong(Zerg), Innovation(Terran), Maru(Terran), Flash(Terran), and Forgg(Terran). That's MarineKing in the picture, my favorite pro gamer. I used to play competitively but I ended up losing heart and giving up for about almost a year, which is where I'm at now. The highest I ever got in the online ranking system is top 8 Gold League. The rankings are Bronze, Silver, Gold, Platinum, Diamon, Masters, Grandmasters. I don't think it takes much to progress but it does take a lot of skill to be in Masters and Grandmasters league, in my humble opinion. The cool thing about Starcraft is that there's humans (Terrans) and two alien races(Zerg and Protoss), and they all play very differently. All my current California friends said that "its not my type of game", but we all know that they just say that because they know they won't be great at it. Anyways, this would be my number one game I wish I could be a pro at. Could you imagine a pro Black American player going up against Koreans in Korea? It would be amazing and life changing in the E-sports community, like when Scarlett(a transgender girl) was going up against Koreans in the pro tourneys. I watch a lot of pro starcraft Korean tournament streams-like almost every night. My dream in life is to be a musician but sometimes it feels like my dream is to be starcraft II bonjwa(a player that dominates an era, winning a number of titles).
2) Super Smash Brothers 4 for Wii U and 3ds, I chose Sm4sh over Melee because I haven't played Melee since I was in high-school. Let's face it;Sm4sh is just the better game. I feel like there are too many Melee fanboys who just haven't realized that its a dead game. I still love the game but I think Sm4sh has it all: more and better characters, better stage recovery, less edge guarding, better graphics and music, and dlc that patches the game as well as adds new content. Its the perfect Smash game at the moment. I'm a super competitive player and I main Fox, Zero Suit Samus, Sheik, Shulk, and Diddy Kong. I'm reaching that point where I'm getting better than my friends because I play it more than they do, even when we're not hanging out. I'm even going to be starting to go to weekly tournaments to test my skills. My win rate ain't amazing but its sitting at a cool 50% right now, which my friends say is good, but I've seen people online with like 67% winrate, which still isn't amazing but I think that's really good for just playing online in the ranking system called For Glory. My friends are still a good challenge for me at the moment but the more I play without them, the better I will get, and eventually I'll surpass them. Maybe I can even start placing at tournaments. I would say for me that right now, Sm4sh is my favorite game. It's only been out for a little while and I feel like the pros haven't figured out everything in it, so its a game that I have a chance at being great at. I have a bunch of favorite pros like ZeRo and M2K. This is my favorite game out right now.
3) Heroes of the Storm, this is Blizzard's newest game, and arguably one of their best games ever made. I love how competitive it is, and how it lacks items, because that's mainly how it differs from other MoBa's like League of Legends and Dota 2. Another thing that makes it different is that experience is shared rather than just your experience that you get from killing minions and players. It's pretty nifty. You'd think these ideas would make for a rather casual experience but once you get to level 40 you can unlock ranked matches, which is super competitive. I would say winning in this game is an art and takes a lot of teamwork to make things happen. You can't really solo anything in this game. It's not like in League where you can solo lane stuff for ten minutes. The main thing I love about this game is the characters that come from World of Warcraft, Diablo III, and the Starcraft universe. It's awesome seeing characters like Nova, Thrall, Raynor, Kerrigan, and Illidan all fighting in the same game-almost like a Super Smash Brothers mash up, they probably got the idea from Smash. Blizzard has done it again! They've made another great game. Did I mention this game is free to play?
4) Marvel Vs Capcom 3, this game is just one of those all time classic fighting games. It improves upon Marvel Vs Capcom 2 (which I have for Playstation!, its a collectors item), because of enhanced graphics, and different/more characters. Also, the specials are a lot easier to perform in the third game, especially on Xbox360(which is what I have it for). I bought this game maybe a year ago and first I did was try to play it online. I got schooled. Once I realized I would have to work at it to get good I kind of put it down, only playing it with friends. One of my good friends is really good at it and wrecks me and my other friends mercilessly. When it comes to fighting games I know that once you know combos with one character you kind of learn how to do them with other characters very easily, but I still haven't gotten over that first learning curve. I really like this game because of the triple fighter teams. I usually go Ryu, Chun-Li, and Akuma, because I'm a big Street Fighter fan. Speaking of Street fighter.....
5) Street Fighter IV Ultra, this is a game I bought on a whim because I was in Gamestop and my friend recommended that I get it over the regular Street Fighter IV game, because it comes with like 44 characters as opposed to like less than half than that. What can I say about this game? It's not like MvC3 at all because you only play as one character and when you die, you lose the fight. Specials are more complicated too. In fact, I have some trouble doing the specials in this game. I usually end up playing Ryu most of the time, but I also like Chun-Li and Ken. Again, I've only really played this game with my friends and we've had a blast playing it. I know its a super competitive game at tournaments and stuff. The graphics in this game are super up to date with current last gen consoles like ps3 and xbox360. I'm really bad at this game but I still find it amazing. I think eventually I will start playing it more, and as I get better I'll play it vs people online.
6) Call of Duty Advanced Warfare, Black Ops III (coming out in November), and Ghosts, CoD is just one of those games where its do or die. You kind of either have it or you don't in shooting games in my opinion. But I do think that even if you are terrible at first, you can practice and become great at it, but you'll have to work at it everyday. In Advanced Warfare, I got to a point where I was doing extremely good, like getting first and second place in online ranked matches.The thing that's cool about CoD is that you can do all kinds of trickshots, quickscopes, hardscopes, and go ham with just about any kinds of guns that you want. Plus, the game is so unrealistic that it's just plain easy to shoot the guns, because basically they have no recoil, unlike other fps games where it feels like you're shooting something more a kin to a real gun. This is probably my favorite fps game franchise and I will definitely be getting Black Ops III this November. Right around that good ole time for turkey dinner!
7) Counter-Strike Global Offensive, this game is also one of the biggest fps games, and one of the biggest E-sports. As it should be. Cs has been on the scene in pc gaming like since I was in highschool, so this goes back to 2004, maybe even before that with the original Counter Strike Source I believe. This game plays much faster CoD, has no aiming down the sights or scopes(except when using a sniper rifle), and maps created by the players. Another thing I like about this game is that the characters run around faster than in Call of Duty, there's no sprinting at all and it has a faster flow to it. There's a lot of big money in this game as an E-sport too, same with CoD. The most fun I've ever had playing this game is setting and disarming the bomb game mode. It's pretty neat.
8) Speed running games, there isn't really any E-sports potential for speed running games but there is a lot of skill and people will watch your stream if you are a great speed runner. Games that I think that would be cool to speed run are the usual suspects: Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time, Majora's Mask, Final Fantasy VII, Megaman series, Sonic the Hedgehog series, Earthbound, Final Fantasy I,II,II,IV,V,VI Chrono Trigger, Xenoblade, Xenogears, Xenosaga series, Tales of Fantasia, Super Metroid, Super Mario World, Super Mario RPG, Mass Effect series, Halo series, and Zelda A Link To The Past. I have a lot of mainly Super Nintendo(quite possibly my favorite system even though I never owned it) stuff I want to play.
Lastly, that concludes all the games that I wish I was pro at. There's a lot of them. Technically speaking, if I wanted to be a master at any said one of them I would have to focus on one, two, maybe three of them at the most. Any more than that and I would be going straight into filthy casual territory, if you catch my drift. I don't think Starcraft pros play League of Legends(a game that didn't make the cut for this list) and shit like that. I think they focus on Starcraft for the most part to keep up their skills. It's like doing anything really, you do it a lot and often enough, and you become very good at it. Right now I would say I'm focusing on Super Smash Brothers 4, but I'm also playing a lot of Heroes of the Storm. Some people I know have said that they don't think competitive gaming could ever be considered a sport. To them I say they're wrong. E-sports has already proven itself to network companies, the internet, and in some aspects the world (because of the internet:Twitch, YouTube, HitBox, etc). Plus, there is big money to make in gaming because of E-sports. Without pro gaming we wouldn't have people who have quit their 9-5's just to dedicate all their time to streaming video games. And without the great fans of E-sports there would be no money for all of this. This has become one of the biggest subcultures, this being gamers. Being a gamer today isn't considered as nerdy as it used to be say in the 1980's. I think the influence of video games on movies, mass media culture, and the internet is very obvious. If only I could find work in the gaming industry doing something regarding E-sports, being a pro gamer, or working with pro gamers, that would be where it's at. Hell, I would even settle for working at a company like Blizzard. Here's a funny little video for ya-https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CH4w7UZV3NA.
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