Paris (AFP)

Released a few weeks ago, the Valorant video game, the latest in tactical shooting games, is already arousing the enthusiasm of professional teams and players, attracted by the Riot Games label, a token of expertise in esports.

Ten years after the League of Legends (LoL) phenomenon, which has established itself as the champion of esports, the American publisher officially launched its new free PC game in early June. If it succeeds in reiterating the success of LoL, the game could compete with other successful shooting games like Counter Strike (CS) or Overwatch.

A sign of the enthusiasm it generated and the appetite of the esports world for Valorant, many clubs have already announced the signing of players, while no official competition has yet been announced.

In Europe, G2 has for example formalized the recruitment of Mixwell, former pro player of Counter Strike. In the United States, Cloud9 or FazeClan have also created their team, just like T1 in South Korea, to name a few.

"In terms of gameplay, sensations, it's a great game, it's very dynamic and at the same time very based on the capacities and individual skills of each player. It's really a great discovery", believes Fabien Devide , the owner of Vitality, the main esports club in France.

- "La patte Riot" -

On paper, Valorant presents the usual ingredients of a shooter: two teams of 5 who compete to put down a bomb or defuse it.

The recipe is very similar to that which made the success of CS, flagship game of esport for twenty years. "Our first competitor is Counter Strike, it's a great game, our creatives have been playing it for a long time. It was a great source of inspiration", recognizes Guillaume Rambourg, general manager of Riot Games France.

But unlike its model, Valorant allows players to choose from a variety of characters who evolve in a more fanciful universe. "These are differences that are inherent in the Riot leg. We have characters with skills, which add tactical depth to the game and make it more creative," he adds.

All these innovations have in any case been very well received by the community. The test version of the game, released in early April, has accumulated 470 million hours viewed on the Twitch platform and reached 1.7 million simultaneous viewers, the second historic record for the platform.

Enough to lay the foundations for the game to become a success on the esports scene. Especially since it will benefit from the expertise of its editor in the matter.

For Fabien Devide, "the Riot Games buffer as an esports ecosystem and the way competitive teams are treated, it is necessarily very reassuring and it is an additional asset."

- "Expected success" -

With League of Legends, "they have a record track of a game that has 10 years of experience, which is only progressing (...) If Valorant is the expected success, we are convinced that Riot Games will be able to do it evolve and keep that expertise, "he adds.

For the moment, the publisher has not yet announced a structured competitive scene and prefers to go through an "incubation" phase, leaving it to third-party organizers to organize the first tournaments.

"We will learn a lot and try to create an interest in the game and a relationship over time" with our community, explains Guillaume Rambourg. "We are really in the discovery phase and when we have found the perfect recipe, we will start."

A healthy approach according to Eva Martinello, journalist specializing in esports.

"Rather than taking an aggressive strategy as is often the case today, Riot Games is trying a bit to copy what they had done on LoL at the time, that is, to leave the competitive scene to be assembled alone ", she analyzes. "It's interesting from them because that's how esports started at the base."

© 2020 AFP