Major League Gaming considering development of e-sports FPS

The CEO of Major League Gaming has expressed interest in developing a first-person shooter specifically for the the e-sports network.

Speaking to the Penny Arcade Report, Sundance DiGiovanni claimed that MLG's experience working with publishers on existing games has highlighted the qualities required of a good e-sports shooter. With the network rapidly growing, DiGiovanni believes that it is only a matter of time before MLG develops its own game.

"One day we will," he said. "We've had people approach us about it. Right now we want to focus on partners with games like PlanetSide 2 and help them broaden out and take advantage of what we've built. But we can also take advantage of their understanding of the game mechanics.

"We've done this with folks at Bungie, with folks at Activision, we've done it with lots of studios. We've done that enough times to have the understanding to take to our own title, eventually."

DiGiovanni pointed to Quake as the model e-sports shooter due to its emphasis on simple, fast, focused combat. "It's like basketball: score, score, score, score," he added, "where a lot of games we have are really drawn out. Which is also fun, but I like those quick engagements and being able to have those things exist in our universe. There's nothing out there right now that does it. A few things that are close."

Organisations like MLG have turned e-sports into one of the fastest growing parts of the industry, with Riot Games' League of Legends the most popular game by some distance. Leading products like Battlefield and Call of Duty now support live-streaming and commentary, while forthcoming titles like Nadeo's Shootmania are being developed specifically for the e-sports market.