XBox 360 League - The Largest Tournaments And Challenges

Some individuals go through life doing very little with their spare time. They work, come home and watch TV and play games. While others have hobbies, you're intent on winning the next big video game. Fortunately for some, this isn't as unproductive as you might think. While you'd have to be exceptionally good, there are plenty of opportunities to make money and win prizes with your honed video gaming skills. There are various leagues all over the world with varying levels of games, players and rewards, including an Xbox 360 league. If you think you're good enough and you want the time you've spent playing any one of the Halos to mean something, then you could consider entering a league and trying to qualify.

MLG

Major League Gaming (MLG) is considered one of the largest gaming leagues in the world and provides yearly tournaments in some of the latest games available. However, they put competition ahead of new games and may even utilize older games due to the high-level of competitiveness they instill. Major League Gaming utilizes the Playstation 3 consoles if the game is available on all the platforms, but if they do use other consoles if the game is exclusive to those machines, such as Halo or Gear of War. MLG has been known to hold events all over the world as well as online events.

What Games Are Used?

Halo is the mainstay of many gaming leagues and the MLG is no exception. It provides close-quarter maps and large maps, both of which focus on twitch-based gameplay and either free-for-all matches or objective-based ones. This allows Halo to be one of the most flexible games in the tournaments and along with its massive player-base, it's perfect for most gaming leagues.

Call of Duty shares top place with Halo in terms of players as it has reached phenomenal levels of popularity over the years and provides the same pace and competition as Halo. Both Halo and Call of Duty are both utilized in their latest forms, with Halo 3 and Halo: Reach being used as well as Modern Warfare 2, though next year will likely see Black Ops being used. Call of Duty is a prime example of both team-based competition and free-for-all competition.

Strictly an Xbox 360 series, Gears of War takes a detour from the usual first-person shooter genre and instead provides brilliant third-person cover-based shooting. With both Gears of War and Gears of War 2 providing a lot of support for team-play as well as mass free-for-alls, it's a tremendously competitive game and serves as a primary game each year.

Rules

Cheating isn't favorable in any sport and video game leagues are no exception. While it's somewhat easier to do, cheating can become very subjective. There are controllers with macro buttons that allow the player to simply press once to dispatch a prearranged set of keys or combinations. This provides the players with an inhuman advantage, but as it's sold legally and not banned by online governing bodies such as Microsoft, many consider it to be fine, while video game leagues are gradually banning such devices.

Video Game Leagues, The Main Companies, Procedures And Rules

For some of us, playing games is a way of life and many of this demographic may often wonder at a life where playing games is actually productive. It would come as surprise for these individuals, then, to learn that there are, in fact, almost a dozen major video game leagues that have hundreds of attendees and competitors every year. Millions of dollars of prizes are given away annually to the winners, meaning it's not just a passing fancy, but a completely viable way of life, provided you're the best of the best. These leagues utilize some of the most competitive games around, not all of them new, and people from all over the world compete, both in person and over the Internet. The participants can take part as either teams or individuals, depending on the league and game in question.

The Major Leagues

Competitions are generally set up by several major competition-holders, but these generally don't hold official game-specific leagues. For example, there is no official CounterStrike league. The Cyberathlete Professional League (CPL) is the big one and the one who has dished out over 3 million dollars in prizes over 6 years. Venerable, this big hitter provides competitions primarily in the area of first-person shooters (FPSs). The World Cyber Games (WCG) is considerably bigger than the CPL in that it offers up to 500,000 dollars a year and features dozens of games of varying genres. The Pro Gaming League features gaming on consoles, rather than personal computers, but offers less prize money.

The Process Of Elimination 

Video game competitions function like most major competitions. The competitors face off against other competitors in a bid to challenge the reigning champions. Once the competitors are weeded out and only the best remain, these then face off against the champions. If the champions defend their title, they are rewarded with the prize money, as are the competitors if they win. There are variations in each tournament, such as champions being consider competitors and facing off against the teams until only one team remains.

Once a team have beaten the champions or the champions have retained their throne, then the prize money is awarded. Sometimes it's money, but it's also commonly dished out as items worth the same amount, such as graphics cards, computers, etc. The events are then arranged for the following year with the new or old champions being written in to defend their titles.

Cheating

A considerable offense, cheating will obviously mean instant disqualification of you and your team if you're part of one, unless it's proven the team had no awareness of the player's cheating. If they are allowed to continue, then they may be able to seek a replacement player or have to remain handicapped. Cheating can be present in a number of ways, such as manipulating in game data or exploiting glitches in the game to provide a distinct advantage to themselves.

Hardware can also provide unfair advantages. For example, some controllers designs come with a macro button, which allows a series of button presses to programmed to a single button press. This allows players to do more within less time, usually more than is human possible. This is yet another form of cheating and these controllers are generally banned from such competitions.