Taking place in a designated VIP area beneath the exhibition area, The Do Gaming League Championships will take place at the rAge expo from 4-6 October. This year, more gamers are taking part, with more cash and prizes up for grabs – 600 gamers will be vying for R800 000 worth of prizes.
During the DGL, 4200 of South Africa’s eSports hopefuls competed for a spot in games including Dota 2, Call of Duty: Black Ops 2, StarCraft 2 and FIFA 13. This will all culminate at the beginning of October when the top 600 come together to compete for top spot.
While the league games were all played online, the Championships will be in a LAN environment. The breakdown of teams are:
- Battlefield 3 sponsored by EA & Alienware: 8 teams
- Call of Duty Black Ops 2 sponsored by Megarom Interactive & Alienware: 16 teams
- Call of Duty 4 sponsored by Telkom: 8 teams
- Counter-Strike: Global Offensive sponsored by Telkom: 8 teams
- Dota 2 sponsored by SteelSeries & Alienware: 20 teams
- FIFA sponsored by Telkom: 48 players
- Quake Livesponsored by Telkom: 8 players
- League of Legends sponsored by Razer & Alienware: 16 teams
- StarCraft 2 sponsored by Coolermaster & Alienware: 24 players
- Gran Turismo 5: TBA
- Forza 4: TBA
Okay, I’ve got to say, it’s fantastic to have these events and they certainly raise the profile of eSports in South Africa. However, there is a fundamental problem in the way these games are organized and presented.
My primary gripe is with spectatorship. The DGL press release explains:
The DGL Championships will also be covered extensively on the Do Gaming portal, South Africa’s largest gaming portal with results of matches and interviews with top gamers being posted by a dedicated team of journalists at the event.
Great, but what about people who actually enjoy watching the games? How about showing the Dota 2 games live on Twitch? The DGL is a great first step, but without opening things up, it becomes very difficult to support or even follow what is going on.
I’m not expecting the Championships to be covered at the same level of The International 3, but the least the DGL could do is show the games on standard streaming channels – Telkom is bragging about laying a dedicated line of 140 MB for the Championships, use it to show off what’s going on to the rest of the world.
[Update]Do Gaming League has confirmed with us that games will be streamed from the event. We’re just waiting for details on said streams, and we’ll post more details about them.
Last Updated: August 27, 2013
Matthew Holliday
August 27, 2013 at 10:35
eh?
no twitch? no youtube?
Id be interested in seeing the bf3 and blops 2 games on twitch
but i probably wont watch silly DG portal
dota 2, well, il just watch from Congos dotatv
sofar, the LAN segment of RAGE already looks better than last year
Lardus-Respect the beard
August 27, 2013 at 13:47
“i think its ridiculous that LAN isnt supported anymore” – wish I could give more than one upvote!
Gerhard Davids
August 27, 2013 at 11:59
I wodner if there will be casters for the matches if they do go up on twitch and DotaTv for example
Matthew Holliday
August 27, 2013 at 13:51
OC had Congo and Noxville casting the dota games at the lan a month or two ago, if RAGE doesnt arrange something similar, it will be a huge mistake.
Robert Infy Hart
August 27, 2013 at 15:02
rAge wont arrange anything because they are not involved in the organising of the DGC. rAge is just DGC’s selected venue.
Matthew Holliday
August 27, 2013 at 15:09
Do gaming then, you know what I mean.
Robert Infy Hart
August 27, 2013 at 16:50
Do Gaming is sponsoring flights and accommodation for Congo and Noxville. They have been heavily involved in the DGL all year long 🙂
Matthew Holliday
August 28, 2013 at 09:17
thats what I hoped for, I know how busy those two have been this year
as I said, this years rage is looking to be a good one.