Good Luck Have Fun: The Rise of eSports

Description

A Close-Up Look at the Global Phenomenon of Competitive Video Gaming Esports is one of the fastest growing-and most cutthroat-industries in the world. A confluence of technology, culture, and determination has made this possible. Players around the world compete for millions of dollars in prize money, and companies like Amazon, Coca Cola, and Intel have invested billions. Esports events have sold out Los Angeles's Staples Center, Seoul's World Cup Stadium, and Seattle's KeyArena. Hundreds of people have dedicated their lives to gaming, sacrificing their education, relationships, and even their bodies to compete, committing themselves with the same fervor of any professional athlete. In Good Luck Have Fun, author Roland Li talks to some of the biggest names in the business and explores the players, companies, and games that have made it to the new major leagues. Follow Alexander Garfield as he builds Evil Geniuses, a modest gaming group, in his college dorm into a global, multimillion-dollar eSports empire. Learn how Brandon Beck and Marc Merrill made League of Legends the world's most successful eSports league and most popular PC game, on track to make over $1 billion a year. See how Twitch pivoted from a video streaming novelty into a $1 billion startup on the back of professional gamers. And dive into eSports' dark side: drug abuse, labor troubles, and for each success story, hundreds of people who failed to make it big. These are the stories of the rise of an industry and culture that challenge what we know about sports, games, and competition.

Roland Li is an Oakland-based journalist whose work has appeared in the Wall Street Journal, New York Times, New York Observer, and Interview magazine. He was born in Beijing in 1988. After briefly being a pre-med major, he studied journalism and history at NYU and spent eight years in New York before moving to the West Coast in 2015. He has been gaming since Warcraft: Orcs & Humans was released in 1994, and his favorite DOTA 2 hero is Visage.

"An in-depth look at electronic sports . . . Li successfully explores a number of gaming issues." Publishers Weekly "Debut author Li delves into the burgeoning industry of eSports. . . . [Good Luck Have Fun] will be of interest to ardent gamers readers interested in the genesis of a new sport." Booklist "Having been a part of the industry for over a decade, Good Luck Have Fun was nostalgic and took me on a trip down memory lane." Stephen "Snoopeh" Ellis, former League of Legends LCS player and current eSports adviser "Good Luck Have Fun is a comprehensive and compelling archive of the birth and growth of eSports. With insight and stories from founding giants and legendary players, it's a must-read for fans and newcomers alike." Paul Tassi, writer for Forbes and author of the Earthborn trilogy "Good Luck Have Fun offers a fascinating collection of stories from the frontline of the emerging world of eSports." T.L. Taylor, professor at MIT, author of Raising the Stakes: E-sports and the Professionalization of Computer Gaming "An in-depth look at electronic sports . . . Li successfully explores a number of gaming issues." Publishers Weekly "Debut author Li delves into the burgeoning industry of eSports. . . . [Good Luck Have Fun] will be of interest to ardent gamers readers interested in the genesis of a new sport." Booklist "Having been a part of the industry for over a decade, Good Luck Have Fun was nostalgic and took me on a trip down memory lane." Stephen "Snoopeh" Ellis, former League of Legends LCS player and current eSports adviser "Good Luck Have Fun is a comprehensive and compelling archive of the birth and growth of eSports. With insight and stories from founding giants and legendary players, it's a must-read for fans and newcomers alike." Paul Tassi, writer for Forbes and author of the Earthborn trilogy "Good Luck Have Fun offers a fascinating collection of stories from the frontline of the emerging world of eSports." T.L. Taylor, professor at MIT, author of Raising the Stakes: E-sports and the Professionalization of Computer Gaming