In front of a rapt audience in a Los Angeles film lot, Krepo hooks an enemy with his scythe and harvests virtual souls with a signature move called a “death sentence.”
The grim scene played out time and again as Krepo and his Evil Geniuses team battled to victory in a League of Legends computer game match broadcast to viewers around the world.
After the triumph, Krepo — a 23-year-old Belgian whose real name is Mitch Voorspoels and plays the game as the dreaded character “Thresh” — was swarmed by fans hungry for autographs and photographs.
Welcome to the booming world of “eSports,” where seemingly sun-starved players compete with their wits and a few mouse clicks.
“Professional gaming has been trying for years and years to catch on and now it is suddenly spreading like wildfire,” said long-time game analyst Scott Steinberg, now general manager of Phoenix Online Publishing.
“League of Legends draws a die-hard crowd, constantly hungry to learn more,” he said.
League play with characters such as mages, assassins and marksmen is so visually compelling and action-packed that it is a natural for online viewing, according to Steinberg.
League of Legends is the king of the hot trend in videogame play as a spectator sport, complete with sold-out stadiums and fans camping all night for tickets to matches.
“Playing League has earned us a bit of celebrity status,” Voorspoels said after stepping away from a sea of adorers. “I don’t think that is something any pro player dreamed of at the start.”
Voorspoels began playing League while at university in Belgium because it is free, and online bouts — in which teams of five players each battle to capture opponents’ bases — last about as long as a decent study break.
“Basically, it is a 30-to-40-minute slaughter of people trying to kill each other to get to the other base,” Voorspoels said.
“On the best level, it becomes a chess match — you want to outsmart your opponents,” he added.
The diversion from studying engineering became a priority. Voorspoels quit school to play League for a living.
His team’s sponsors include Monster Energy drinks and high-performance computer gear maker Razer.
Coca-Cola recently became a backer of the League championship series run by Riot Games, the company behind the eSport sensation.
“Some games are like movies, and some are like amusement parks,” Riot Games co-founder and chief Brandon Beck said in a statement. “League of Legends is like a sport.”
Last year, the US Department of State began letting League players train and compete in the US under the same type of work visas provided to athletes in soccer, baseball and other pro sports.
Voorspoels’ international team lives in a house on the Los Angeles coast, not far from the headquarters of Riot Games. A live-in coach keeps them battle-ready.
“The first years, it was rough, a risk, but as time has gone by it has exploded,” Voorspoels said of going pro.
League seasons culminate with top teams from North America, Europe and Asia fighting for the crown and a top prize of US$1 million.
Players and fans depict the South Korean teams the best at eSports.
CONFRONTATION: The water cannon attack was the second this month on the Philippine supply boat ‘Unaizah May 4,’ after an incident on March 5 The China Coast Guard yesterday morning blocked a Philippine supply vessel and damaged it with water cannons near a reef off the Southeast Asian country, the Philippines said. The Philippine military released video of what it said was a nearly hour-long attack off the Second Thomas Shoal (Renai Shoal, 仁愛暗沙) in the contested South China Sea, where Chinese ships have unleashed water cannons and collided with Philippine vessels in similar standoffs in the past few months. The China Coast Guard and other vessels “once again harassed, blocked, deployed water cannons, and executed dangerous maneuvers” against a routine rotation and resupply mission to
GLOBAL COMBAT AIR PROGRAM: The potential purchasers would be limited to the 15 nations with which Tokyo has signed defense partnership and equipment transfer deals Japan’s Cabinet yesterday approved a plan to sell future next-generation fighter jets that it is developing with the UK and Italy to other nations, in the latest move away from the country’s post-World War II pacifist principles. The contentious decision to allow international arms sales is expected to help secure Japan’s role in the joint fighter jet project, and is part of a move to build up the Japanese arms industry and bolster its role in global security. The Cabinet also endorsed a revision to Japan’s arms equipment and technology transfer guidelines to allow coproduced lethal weapons to be sold to nations
Thousands of devotees, some in a state of trance, gathered at a Buddhist temple on the outskirts of Bangkok renowned for sacred tattoos known as Sak Yant, paying their respects to a revered monk who mastered the practice and seeking purification. The gathering at Wat Bang Phra Buddhist temple is part of a Thai Wai Khru ritual in which devotees pay homage to Luang Phor Pern, the temple’s formal abbot, who died in 2002. He had a reputation for refining and popularizing the temple’s Sak Yant tattoo style. The idea that tattoos confer magical powers has existed in many parts of Asia
ON ALERT: A Russian cruise missile crossed into Polish airspace for about 40 seconds, the Polish military said, adding that it is constantly monitoring the war to protect its airspace Ukraine’s capital, Kyiv, and the western region of Lviv early yesterday came under a “massive” Russian air attack, officials said, while a Russian cruise missile breached Polish airspace, the Polish military said. Russia and Ukraine have been engaged in a series of deadly aerial attacks, with yesterday’s strikes coming a day after the Russian military said it had seized the Ukrainian village of Ivanivske, west of Bakhmut. A militant attack on a Moscow concert hall on Friday that killed at least 133 people also became a new flash point between the two archrivals. “Explosions in the capital. Air defense is working. Do not