Professional Hearthstone competition

People playing Hearthstone at Gamescom 2015

Blizzard Entertainment's online collectable card game Hearthstone: Heroes of Warcraft became played professionally quickly after its release in March 2014. The game is played as an eSport, with high-level tournaments such as Blizzard's official World Championships featuring prize money of up to a million US dollars, and livestreamers make a living of playing the game on Twitch.tv.

History of Hearthstone competition

2014

The first Hearthstone tournament was held at Blizzcon on 2013-11-8, only a few months after the release of the game's closed beta and several months before the official release of the game on 2014-03-11. Blizzard selected eight prominent Hearthstone players to compete at what they titled the "Hearthstone Innkeeper's Invitational". The tournament was won by Artosis, who was subsequently crowned the "Grandmaster of the Hearth".^[1][2] After the official release of the game, more Hearthstone tournaments followed, including events at EGX Rezzed and DreamHack Bucharest.^[3][4] Blizzcon 2014 featured a Hearthstone tournament with a $250,000 USD prize pool, the largest up to that point, and players from the Americas, Europe, and Asia qualified for the event through winning regional tournaments.^[5][6]

In June 2014, the organization of Assembly Summer 2014, a Finish qualifying tournament for the International e-Sports Federation's (IeSF) World Championship, sparked controversy when it was announced that tournament would be open for men only. The cause was that the World Championship was also slated to have an all-male line-up, and its qualifying events were subject to the same rules. According to the IeSF, rule was set in place in order to "secure traditional sports status" for esports. The forced gender division was abolished a few days after it was announced for Assembly Summer when the IeSF switched to an "open for all" format.^[7][8]

June also saw a cheating scandal when Radu "Rdu" Dima won first prize and $10,000 USD at DreamHack Summer. During Rdu's final match against AmazHS, he got a Battle.net message stating the content of his AmazHS' hand. Though the information was no longer relevant in the game, Rdu was upset about the unsolicited help and tournament organizers called for a 20 minute break in which Rdu's "friend list" was deleted, though they decided the round was won fairly. Though AmazHD gave his support to Rdu afterwards, he stated that DreamHack should have been better at organizing the tournament and implored Blizzard to implement game modes in which such forms of cheating are not possible.^[9][10]

In Hearthstone's first year, a total of 52 tournaments and series awarded $1,000 USD or more to individual players. Over the year, over $1,000,000 USD worth of prize money was awarded during 2014, large tournaments being the World Championships and the World Cyber Arena. James "Firebat" Kostesich was the most successful tournament player, winning a total of $105,650 USD. Fifteen players made above the United States federal minimum wage through tournaments alone in 2014, and many players make more through livestreaming their Hearthstone games.^[11]

2015

In March 2015, Red Bull's Jon Partridge stated that Hearthstone was "emerging as one of the world's top eSports." Technology company Nvidia held a professional Hearthstone tournament series that spanned eight weeks, from the end of March to the middle of May, with a total prize pool of $25,000 USD. The tournament, which was split up in Professional Division of 16 high-level players and an open world-wide Amateur Division, was a qualifying event of the 2015 World Championship.^[12][13][14]

Blizzard's official 2015 Heartstone World Tournament was held at Blizzcon 2015. Sixteen players qualified for the event by improving their rankings at Blizzard-sanctioned tournaments. Four players per region eventually qualified for the World Tournament by improving their regional rankings, the regions being Europe, North and Latin America, China and "Asia-Pacific".^[15][16] The tournament had a prize pool of $1,000,000 USD, four times as much as in 2014.^[17]

2016

In November 2015, Blizzard announced a change in the Hearthstone season structure, where the game's eSports calender would be split into a Summer, Fall, Winter, and Spring season, each running for three months. At the end of each season, a major tournament is held in three of the game's regions. The winners of each tournaments qualifies automatically to the World Championship. Through this setup, 12 players qualify for the event, while Blizzard appoints four players from China in some other manner.^[17] The 2016 Hearthstone World Tour features over $1,900,000 USD in prize money.^[18]

Streaming

For many professional Hearthstone players, rather than tournament earnings, livestreaming is their main source of income.^[11] In 2014, Kinguin project coordinator Giovanni Varriale stated that Hearthstone was one of the most popular games on Twitch.tv, with "thousands of people spend[ing] hours watching the best players in action."^[19]

Game design

Hearthstone is a digital and online card game, comparable to traditional collectible card games such as Magic: The Gathering.

Expansions

The game features a large amount of inherent randomness as calculated through a random number generator (a property referred to as "RNG"). Some cards may have excessively random effects and may be able to completely sway a game through RNG. Various fans are worried about the future of the game's competitive scene due to unbalanced cards being introduced in new expansions. In an interview with Polygon, Hearthstone associate designer Dean Ayala stated that newly introduced cards can add to the strategy of the game, and that expanding Hearthstone is "all about finding the balance with what is ok and what isn't ok." Ayala explained that a large part of adding new cards to the game is trying to view each card through the lens of each possible type of player and how the card may be used.^[20]

Culture

The practice of "win trading", where players forfeit games in order to help other players gain in ranking, can be used to reach Legend ranking without the need of skill. However, win trading is considered cheating, and Blizzard gives out permanent bans for people who indulge in the practice.^[21]

In 2014, professional coaching services became popular, where high-level players discuss strategies with their clients and give tips for improvement. Nathan 'ThatsAdmirable' Zamora stated that the work is his main source of income, and that the service is useful for players that have plateaued and are unsure on how to change their play style.^[22]

In August 2014, competitive Hearthstone player Ryan "Realz" Masterson was hired by Blizzard in order to help with the balancing of the game.^[23][24]

References