Head of Esports at Riot Games Says Fortnite \u2018Has A Long Way To Go\u2019 To Become an Esport The boss of North American esports at Riot Games says battle royale games like Fortnite are on his radar, but have a long way to go to become esports. Chris \u201cRiotChopper\u201d Hopper, who heads up the NA LCS and esports division of Riot Games, discusses the viability of games like Fortnite and PUBG, and if they are threats to League of Legend\u2019s dominance. League of Legends is, arguably (depending on the metric you use), the biggest esport in the world, with established franchised leagues, guaranteed player salaries and much more. But, as ESPN notes, back when it first started out it was seen as \u201ctoo casual\u201d to become a proper esport in comparison to the likes of Starcraft II \u2013 the biggest esports game at the time. And of course a very similar criticism is being made of Fortnite currently, and so despite its massive viewing figures on Twitch and YouTube, which is an imperative for any esport, many think it isn\u2019t fit for the competitive side of things. Hopper, speaking to Forbes, says he does not currently see Fortnite, or PUBG for that matter, as a \u2018threat\u2019 to the current dominance of League of Legends, saying it has a long way to go. \u201cAs a gamer, I love to see new titles like [Fortnite] which explore and push the boundary of genres like FPS or survival, but in terms of their viability as an esport, I think it\u2019s yet to be proven. Some early tournaments have certainly been exciting, but there\u2019s a long way to go to turn a title from a Twitch favorite into a permanent esport. To be clear, there\u2019s nothing wrong with a title throwing a few tournaments and burning bright before failing to establish a sustainable esports scene, and it\u2019s yet to be seen whether or will be able to make that step. But until they become consistent, accessible, sustainable leagues, they\u2019re more on my gamer radar than my esport radar.\u201d Developers of Fortnite, Epic Games, are majority owned by Tencent \u2013 the same company which owns Riot Games, developers of League of Legends. Tencent recently invested a massive amount of money in order to bring Fortnite to China. Half of the \u00a5100 million ($15.8 million) investment will be used on \u201cpushing the game as an esport\u201d. With Tencent\u2019s experience with League of Legends, they can undoubtedly take such a popular game like Fortnite and with the right planning and investment, it could be the next LoL.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Head of Esports at Riot Games Says Fortnite \u2018Has A Long Way To Go\u2019 To Become an Esport The boss of North American esports at Riot Games says battle royale games like Fortnite are on his radar, but have a long way to go to become esports. Chris \u201cRiotChopper\u201d Hopper, who heads up the NA […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-66653","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dejan.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/66653","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dejan.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dejan.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dejan.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dejan.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=66653"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dejan.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/66653\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dejan.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=66653"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dejan.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=66653"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dejan.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=66653"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}