MONTREAL -- Some of the world’s top Rainbox Six: Siege players were in Laval to shoot and blow each other up for a coveted championship title on Sunday.
Thousands of e-sports fans gathered in Place Bell to watch the tournament. Rainbow Six: Siege, which was developed by Ubisoft Montreal, is played by 55 million people worldwide, becoming one of the most watched e-sports in the world.
Player ‘Griefdrums’ was among the spectators, though his YouTube channel boasts almost 50,000 subscribers.
“The fact that people have travelled as far as they have… I’ve met Australians here, I’ve met people from the United Kingdom, there’s a couple of people from South Africa and for them to travel to Montreal in February says a lot about the community,” he said.
Unlike many popular first-person shooting games, Rainbow Six: Siege has become known for gameplay that focuses on tactics and teamwork rather than all-out gun blazing.
“Rainbow Six is very unique because it’s focused on competitive play,” said the game’s e-sports director Wei Yue. “For those who don’t know, there’s no real single player mode. You always play with other people.”
With the rise of popularity of e-sports, Ubisoft e-sports director Francois-Xavier Deniele said game developers are taking spectators into consideration.
“With e-sports you have more and more people watching a video game and not playing,” he said. “It’s completely different than the pest so the production team is working more and more on how they can make a game very easy to understand for someone watching.”
