How the rise of esports will affect the game industry

It’s an esports world, and we’re just living in it.

It might have seemed liked hyperbole to say this a few years ago, but it’s become impossible to ignore the mammoth impact esports have left on gaming. Game developers can’t shrug about esports now that finals of last year’s League of Legends world championship pulled in 36 million daily views across the globe and distributed $6.3 million in prize money. Market researcher Newzoo predicts the esports gaming market, which grew to $493 million last year, will hit $1.1 billion by 2019. Given this monumental attention media-wise and economically, as well as a 100 percent viewership growth rate over the past few years, it’s only natural that we’ll see development ideas championed in the esports arena creep into other genres of the game development space as they seek to capture these eye-popping numbers for themselves.