Call of Duty Championship: Promotion or eSport?

by PJ Oxendine on February 24, 2013 in Uncategorized with 689 Comments
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With the Call of Duty Championship online qualifiers coming to an end, many teams are still grinding on the in hopes of being one of the top 8 teams selected in order to secure there spot in the one million dollar Call of Duty Championship.

With Season 3 coming to an end, many of the Pro Teams and Players have been illustrating their place on the leader board and claiming that this is the top 8 list for the Qualifier. However, Treyarch Multiplayer Lead David Vonderhaar replied to one Paul “EGO” Megna head of http://360icons.com/ in recent tweets stating:

This Statement has sparked the community, despite the Call of Duty Championship torment Qualifier stage being in it final hours there are numerous questions regarding how the Call of Duty Championship tournament Qualifiers will work. Since the beginning of the event many of the top teams and players have been reaching out to Activision seeking clarification details including: event age requirements and top 8 team selection. We reached out for a statement from David, asking for detail on how many Sub Divisions there currently are for the Masters Division, his response was informative if short:

 

Many of the top pro teams including Dare, Icons, Complexity and Quantic, have all been battling it out in the same division for the last 25 days. Teams have been logging in roughly 300 hours of gameplay in order to stay on top of the first and oldest Master Division Leaderboards. We have also seen top teams such as Optic Gaming dropping out of the online Qualifier after deciding that they did not have enough time to compete and stay at the top of the competitive leader boards.

Finally, after drawing attention from some of the top eSports community members including Ryan “Fwiz” Wyatt, Rod “Slasher” Breslau and Scott “SirScoots” Smith, who were debating the lack of transparency during the course of the qualifiers, Vonderhaar made the following statement which highlights how Activision views the Call of Duty Championship:

 

With the lack of transparency and communication with the community in regards to Activision and their first attempt at turning Call of Duty into an eSports title it’s clear that Activision has a long way to go in understanding the eSports community and working with them to make their title a successful as an eSport. The question now remains, is Activision is truly interested in supporting eSports or is this whole eSports movement a promotional/marketing campaign for the series?

PJ Oxendine
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