2024 has come to a close which means another year of growth in the gaming community. In December of 2024 The Game Awards took place with dozens of categories. One category that stuck out to me as a fellow gamer was the top 5 best esport games of the year.
Esports is a form of competition through video games, multiplayer games specifically. Teams are organized through each game’s company and host events where you can actually watch in person.
The nominees for this category were:
- Counter-Strike 2 (A free first person shooter game published by Valve.)
- Dota 2 (A multiplayer online battle arena game developed by Valve. This game is a sequel to Defense of the Ancients.)
- League of Legends (A multiplayer online battle arena game published by Riot Games. This game was inspired by Defense of the Ancients since Riot wanted to make a stand alone game in the same genre.)
- Mobile Legends: Bang Bang (A mobile online battle arena game developed by Moonton.)
- Valorant (A free multiplayer first person tactical hero shooter video game published by Riot Games).
League of Legends ended up winning for best esport game of the year!
I think the win was mainly because the esports teams recorded a total of 2,199 champion kills and 132 matches taking place. Additionally, the show Arcane (two rival characters from League of Legends that come across conflicts from magic technologies) had recently released its season two a month before the award show. Many fans LOVE this series and ended up playing League of Legends due to this.
In my opinion, I thought Valorant should have won the best esports game of the year. I watched many of their competitions this year and it was super entertaining. The game also released many new agents in 2024 that were showcased in these events. On top of that, many of the competitions take place around the world like Madrid, Spain and Seoul, Korea. The arena’s decoration plus the crowd (in person and livestream) really brought the community together!
I am definitely curious to what esports game and game in general will win best of this 2025 since I feel that the gaming community has been in a bit of a slumber for the past few months.
