XBox 360 League - The Companies Leagues 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.

Major League Gaming

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.

Halo, Gears of War And Call of Duty

Halo has been the mainstay of the tournaments since the start with Halo: Combat Evolved. It's a first person shooter with many non-realistic elements, which means it's very fast paced and focused primarily on twitch-based skills. The close-quarter maps amplify this and it is considered an exemplary competitive game. Over the years it's been updated and Halo 2, Halo 3 and Halo: Reach have all made their debut.

Call of Duty has also seen tremendous hikes in popularity over the past few years. While the current generation of Modern Warfare 2 is soon to be ousted by Black Ops, the original Modern Warfare saw its own use within many major console gaming leagues. As they all provide high-quality gameplay and are FPSs, they're a perfect complement to the Halo series. It's likely Black Ops will replace Modern Warfare 2 in the next leagues. 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

The rules of any video game league are not unlike sports leagues. Cheating, however, is a very subjective system for video games. While obvious cheating such as manipulating the game to provide an advantage will clearly result in an immediate disqualification, there are other types that occupy a grey area. Some controllers, for example, provide macro buttons that allow the player to simply press the button once and it will play out a prearranged combination of buttons at any speed the player wishes. This provides an inhuman advantage, but is hard to monitor and can be considered cheating in some courts.

Video Game Leagues, The Main Organizations Competition And Regulations

A dream amongst younger individuals and maybe older ones, the thought of making a living simply by playing video games is usually a dud one. There are many possibilities, such as video game testing, but the reality behind that is that it's terrible hours, terribly boring and only a small chance of promotion. However, for those who wish to look further afield, video game leagues might provide the reality to your dream. Allowing players to compete against other challengers, these leagues offer serious sums of prize money and items to those that win said leagues. It is, however, a very difficult process, as you will be competing against the best and most serious gamers the world has to offer, either in person or over the Internet and on your own or as part of a team.

The Major Leagues

There are several major leagues that dominate the world of competitive gaming. The first is the Cyberathlete Professional League (CPL) has been around for six years and has awarded over three million dollars worth of prizes. It primarily focuses on the first-person shooter (FPS) games and is a venerable option. The World Cyber Games (WCG) provide annual events with tremendous amounts of money varying between four-hundred thousand and five-hundred thousand dollars. They provide dozens of gaming genres from strategies to FPSs. The Pro Gaming League (PGL) also stands with the larger leagues and focuses on the console gaming sector, though offering less prize money.

Competing

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. These new or retaining champions are then awarded the prizes or prize money. The prizes are generally items of considerable worth, such as graphics cards, consoles or computers. The following year will see the champions coming back to defend their title.

Rules Against 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 has also come under flak, as it can provide players with the ability to do more than they're normally capable of. For example, some controllers provide a macro button, which, when pressed, pressed a series or combination of buttons, preventing the need for the player to do so. This translates as the player performing tasks usually impossible.