ESGS 2015: The country’s biggest e-sports and gaming convention

E-sports and gaming is one of the fastest growing industries in the world and the Philippines with a fast-growing community of passionate players and fans. And nothing showcases that locally than the e-sports and gaming Summit which is undoubtedly the country’s biggest annual gaming convention. The event, already in its second year, was held last October 24-25 at the SMX Convention Center in the SM Mall of Asia Complex in Pasay City. The event was co-presented by PLDT Home and GameX.

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ESGS 2015 played host to many of the biggest e-sports tournaments from both the professional and amateur scene. Major tournaments like the Mineski Pro Gaming League held the Grand Finals of their MPGL Class S Dragon Nest series, the Finals of their MPGL Class G Dota 2 Series, and a 64-man Hearthstone Open tournament which was the country’s first and biggest open Hearthstone tournament. Mineski’s collegiate tournament series, the National Cyber Collegiate League, also held the Grand Finals of their NCCL Crossfire Season 4 series at ESGS.

Even the local fighting gaming community was massively represented at ESGS with an event called Brawlfest—a community-organized multi-game tournament co-organized by Imperium, HotSeat, ArcSys, PinoyPS, Playbook, PinoyVersus, Smash Philippines, and Rumpus Room. The tournament showcased 14 different console fighting games and was undoubtedly the biggest combined, community-organized fighting game tournament in the country.

Many of the country’s biggest gaming companies and publishers were also present at ESGS to showcase their latest and most popular games. Level Up! PlayPark showed off their latest mobile game, Garena held a live viewing of the League of Legends World Championship, Wargaming.net let players try out both World of Tanks and World of Warships, Synergy88 showed off their 3D motion capture technology and let attendees experience being captured in 3D, and X-Play showed off their new game, NBA 2K Online.

Sony PlayStation was also present at ESGS 2015 to showcase one of the PlayStation 4’s latest games, Call of Duty: Black Ops III, which attendees were able to try out at the event. Sony PlayStation also hosted the country’s first Call of Duty: Black Ops III tournament which had teams and players coming in from not only around the country but also around the world to compete in the tournament.

ESGS 2015 also played host to the first Indie Arena, Independent Games Showcase, which was co-organized by PLDT Home and GameX. The Indie Arena brought together various local and international independent video game developers to showcase their games to the public during ESGS 2015. Other than the Indie Arena, other bigger independent developers also showcased their games at their own respective booths at ESGS 2015.

Lastly and probably the most exciting, TV5 was also in attendance at ESGS 2015 as they launched GG Network, the company’s new network that focuses on gaming and e-sports. GG Network is positioning itself as the country’s first true gaming media network. The launch of GG Network by TV5 is a big step in bringing gaming and e-sports into mainstream local media which in turn may bring more awareness and support for the fast-growing industry and community.