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This championship series has sold out the Staples Center and Madison Square Garden, but if you’re not a male between 13 and 30, you may have never even heard of the game being played.

On Saturday, thousands of fans will flood downtown Los Angeles and tens of millions more will watch online as the most popular video game competition in the world, the League of Legends World Championship, closes out its finals at Staples Center.

You may have started tuning out at “video game” and you maybe scoff at the idea of “eSports,” but last year, 36 million people around the world watched the finals for League of Legends. That’s more than tuned in for World Series, the NBA Finals and the Stanley Cup Final.

Released in 2009 by Santa Monica-based Riot Games, League of Legends has rapidly become one of the most played video games in world. While the majority of its 100 million a month players live in Asia, plenty of players reside in the U.S.

“I think eSports are the future of competition,” said Mark Deppe, acting director of the University of California Irvine’s eSports program. “Riot Games saw the value of eSports and video game competition before most people and they embraced it at a high level. Once League of Legends hit a critical mass, when it became a thing that everyone played, it just exploded.”

Those playing the game include professional teams funded by the Philadelphia 76ers and athletes like Rick Fox and Shaq.

Top players’ salaries can run in the millions, with many professionals making six figures at least. Most are high school or college age.

WAIT, WAIT, HOLD ON. LEAGUE OF WHAT?

League of Legends is a video game that falls into the category of “multiplayer online battle arena” or MOBA.

Legends pits two teams of five players against each other on a standardized field or map. Played from an aerial perspective, the fantasy game’s objective, to put it simply, is to break through the other team’s defenses, beat up their heroes and ultimately destroy their “Nexus,” a glowing crystalline structure at the center.

Each player picks one “champion,” a character with unique abilities, to control during the game. The abilities often counter other characters in what amounts to a complex version of rock, paper, scissors. Bonus objectives and the outcomes of “team fights” — brawls between all ten players — can create additional advantages. Throughout the game each “champion” grows more and more powerful. Some start the game extremely weak, but become nearly unstoppable by the end of the game if played properly.

The sudden shifts are part of the charm, says Tom Sloper, a lecturer in the University of Southern California’s Information Technology program and the faculty member for the school’s eSports club.

“It can turn around and go the opposite way of what you thought,” Sloper said. “I think there is a lot of suspense right up until the last minute and that’s a thing that makes it really interesting for viewers.”

Sloper watched the Season 2 finals at the Galen Center on campus and recalled how the crowd went crazy over those game shifting plays, much like they would for traditional sports.

WHAT ARE THEY DOING AT THE STAPLES CENTER?

Following a series of qualifying and elimination matches over the past month, the top two teams, SK Telecom T1 and Samsung Galaxy — both Korean teams – will go head to head Saturday for a $1 million prize and the title of world champion. In case you’re wondering, the qualifying North American teams never made it out of the quarterfinals.

Teams can have less rabid followings than individuals in part because the teams that don’t perform well are disbanded, UCI’s Deppe said.

On Saturday, the player everyone will love to love or love to hate is “Faker,” or Lee Sang-hyeok, a 20-year-old South Korean player. A member of SK Telecom T1, Faker is considered one of the best players in the game.

League of Legends benefits from the high skill required to play it well. The difference between a great player and professional one can be the same as the difference between a high school pitcher and Clayton Kershaw.

“There’s a pretty big gap between the truly elite best players in the world,” Deppe said. “Individuals can become incredibly powerful by the late game if you’ve done everything right. There’s just these epic hero moments, where one person can kind of take over and become the Lebron James of the game.”

WHY IS IT SO POPULAR?

Starting in 2011, Riot Games began to throw its support behind eSports, at that point a still mostly grass-roots movement where players organized the competitions. Today, it’s a professional industry with full-time announcers, custom arenas and millions and millions of dollars in merchandising, both in game and out.

Part of it is the participatory aspect. Fans often watch matches through streaming services, like Twitch.tv, where they can chat live with other fans. In South Korea, where League of Legends is even bigger, matches are shown on television.

And it’s catching on here too. ESPN now covers eSports, including League of Legends.

Games are also short with most matches lasting less than a hour. At the competitive level, the professional teams tend to play for the best of three.

Another big reason it’s so popular right now? It doesn’t cost anything. Most of the matches are shown for free online and players don’t have to spend a cent to play the game.

Riot Games, now majority owned by Chinese internet company Tencent through a reportedly $400 million deal, makes its money by selling in-game items, like “skins” that change the appearance of the “champions” without increasing or diminishing their abilities.

The developer frequently updates the game, changing heroes and adding new ones. Players can buy the newest heroes with money or in-game currency earned by playing. The changes are often enough to keep the game fresh, without driving away diehards.

While eSports have evolved and matured over the years, there’s still growing to do.

Earlier this year, Riot Games’ directors of eSports Jarred Kennedy and Whalen Rozelle laid out plans to further support professional League of Legends. That includes using revenue from in-game purchases to support the Championship’s winning team and offering team branded merchandise for the other teams across its 13 leagues.

“We want these partners to have permanent stakes, to be invested in a stable future and to profit from the continued success of the sport,” they wrote. Want to watch? The match-up will be live streamed at www.twitch.tv/riotgames starting at 4:30 p.m. Sautrday.

Source: Los Angeles Daily News