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League of Legends
An Established Favorite
League of Legends launched in 2009, marketed as a combination of the Real Time Strategy and Role Playing Game genres. Fast forward a decade, and the game is still going strong as one of the leading eSports on the market. Following the free to play model, the game is enhanced for players via microtransactions. The small payments ($0.99-$5 generally) unlock various customization aspects of the game, but the core program is available without any purchase.
Players work as a team to complete various objectives, with the most popular map and game mode involving three "lanes" across which players battle both each other and AI forces. The winning objective is the destruction of the other team's "Nexus" (the base). The game involves three game modes, however, each with varying objectives.
Nothing at which to LoL
If there's one thing that sets League of Legends apart, it's the backstory and lore behind the game. To describe it in specific terms, it's what you would get by drinking twelve Monsters, cranking up Space 1992: Rise of the Chaos Wizards by Gloryhammer, and downloading the entirety of the Elder Scrolls lore directly into the pleasure center of your brain. In simpler terms, it's Star Wars meets Lord of the Rings but if everyone was on some sort of intergalactic steroids and cocaine combo drug.
Regardless, League has two things which set it apart: the Space Fantasy Fever Dream of a backstory, and a fully supported and recognized group of eSports teams, divisions, and leagues all over the world. Players from every continent (except the really cold one) compete in various levels of competition, from local tournaments to a World Championship.
Most important of all, however, is the potential for Universities to get in on the action. League of Legends has a fully equipped collegiate division, where college players gather to test their skills. At present, with the exception of a few scattered universities in America which actually support their eSports teams, the United States does not take advantage of this. With a decade of success and a player base of 67 million monthly players, League is bigger than Overwatch even without the mainstream hype, and played by a more mature and serious audience than Fortnite.
If a university were to provide a state of the art gaming center for dedicated players on campus, as well as the funding to travel for competitions, the potential to gain thousands of applications from serious competitors would be significant. Plus, the marketing campaigns for admissions would write themselves. Not that you'd need to worry about that. That's why you have us.
