eSports Yearbook 2010 released
The 2010 eSports Yearbook has finally been released. Begun last year, the eSports Yearbook is collection of articles, photos and essays pertaining to eSports events and trends that occured over the calendar year. This year's edition touches on a number of topics, some of most prominent being the rise of StarCraft II as a global eSport and the continued growth of eSports as professional business.
The book is published by Julia Christophers, the Game Head Coordinator at Turtle Enterainment - the company behind ESL, and Tobias M. Scholz. The written articles and essays included in the book are volunteer contributions by a variety of individuals across the global eSports community. ESFI contributor and ESL SEA head, Jasper Mah was gracious enough to contribute two pieces to this year's edition.
Although not available for print yet, those interested can download the book via eSportsYearbook.com. Here you can find an excerpt from the book's Preface:
Another year has passed, and what an incredible year for eSports it was! Starcraft II appeared in the beginning of 2010 and like a whirlwind it changed and intensified the scene all over the globe. We realized that we are were in love with eSports all over again. The dedication of players, casters, journalists and league operators is phenomenal and makes this viewer-broadcast-league-player network a beautiful thing to behold. And what is going on with League of Legends right now? Have we ever had so much streaming and viewing going on as we have now? In the eSports Yearbook 2011, DotA 2 will surely be an interesting topic and people will watch it a lot, at least that is what we believe right now.
However, after having been part of the scene for more than 10 years, we are not convinced that people will one day refer to 2010 as the most exciting year in eSports history. In 2010, many people have learned what competitive gaming means for the very first time. They have stuck their curious noses into the ESL Intel Arena, they have visited Gamescom, they have seen Dreamhack on national Swedish Television. Old eSports games such as Starcraft, Quake and Counter-Strike are ideal to explain tactics and competitiveness to the public. Let’s hope for a new star to be born, a title as balanced as CS and as tricky as Starcraft. Something that will be able to satisfy the CS 1.6 players as much as many Broodwar players were statisfied with SC2. Counter-Strike: Source split the community in two strong halves, but will there be a title to rejoin them?
Source: eSportsYearbook.com
