Esports is without doubt one of the fastest growing—and most cutthroat—industries on this planet. A confluence of technology, culture, and determination has made this conceivable. Players all over the world compete for millions of dollars in prize money, and companies like Amazon, Coca Cola, and Intel have invested billions. Esports are now continuously played live to tell the tale national TV. 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, writer Roland Li talks to one of the most biggest names in the business and explores the players, companies, and games that have made it to the new major leagues.
Follow Alex 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 the right track to make over $1 billion a year. See how Twitch.tv 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. With updates on contemporary developments,
Good Luck Have Fun is the essential guide to the rise of an industry and culture that challenge what we know about sports, games, and competition.
