Before I watched the Apex Legends Global Series Split 1 Playoffs this past weekend, I didn’t really get competitive Apex. Battle Royales are filled with randomness. Even if you start every game at the same point of interest on the map, you never know what gear you’re going to find or where the circle is going to move when the battlefield gets smaller.
That kind of variance is what keeps Apex fresh and exciting to play, but variance can also be detrimental to the game as a competitive sport. In games like Counter-Strike, Overwatch, and Valorant the best players win because they’re the most skillful, not because they happened to find the best gun. You have to be very goodandlucky to win in Apex Legends, which isn’t the best recipe for competitive play.
After attending this past weekend’s ALGS tournament, I’m singing a different tune. The ALGS Split 1 Playoffs were held at the Galen Center at USC in downtown Los Angeles over the past week, culminating in the Match Point Finals event on Sunday afternoon. I didn’t watch any of the group stage or bracket stage matches during the week, and I knew very little about the teams and players competing, and I still found the finals to be one of the most engrossing esports events I’ve ever seen.
It’s the match point format that makes the ALGS so exciting to watch. In the finals, 20 teams compete across a series of matches, earning as many points as possible in each match. Each kill rewards one point, and final placements in the match reward additional points:12 points to the winning team, nine for second place, and so on down to tenth place. The goal is to accumulate 50 points as quickly as possible. Once a team has 50 points they’re then on ‘match point’, and if they win the next round, they win the tournament. If they don’t, play continues, giving more teams an opportunity to catch up and battle for the final win to become ALGS champions.
This format creates interesting dynamics that you don’t see in other esports. While matches in a typical competitive series tend to get repetitive and all blend together after a while, ALGS matches all build on each other. Storylines naturally emerge without any additional context needed as new dynamics between the teams emerge from round to round. Point totals and standings have a huge impact on how teams approach each game, and it’s fascinating to see how the battlefield evolves from round to round as teams inch closer and closer to victory.
One of the storylines that emerged in the finals was a beef between teams 07 and Elev8 Gaming. In the first round, 07 dropped on Elev8 and wiped them just as the round was starting, putting Elev8 at an early deficit. Rather than give up their POI to 07, Elev8 continued to drop in the same place, and round after round found themselves getting wiped by 07 within the first minute of the game. Each time they killed Elev8, 07’s players Gnaske, Zaine, and Amphy would jump out of their chairs and celebrate. It quickly became clear that 07 wasn’t trying to win, they were just trying to make sure Elev8 lost.
In professional Apex, each team claims a POI that they plan on dropping into. This is merely a gentlemen’s agreement between players and isn’t enforced in the rules, so if another team wants to drop on you to try to get an early point advantage, they can.
07 ganked Elev8 five games in a row, but on the sixth, Elev8 successfully fought back and survived the attack. The team went on to take out two of the three members of Darkzero, the top-ranked team that was one of only two on match point going into game six, which helped ensure there would be a game seven. Elev8 ended up winning round six with 18 kills and 30 points, setting a new record for points earned in a single ALGS finals match. Even though Elev8 Gaming finished 16th overall, their comeback felt like a victory in itself.
There were so many more hype moments in the finals, especially among the top teams. At the end of round five only two teams were at match point: 2022 world champion DarkZero Esports, and Reject Winnity, an APAC org made up of Korean players based in Japan that skipped last year’s ALGS. After a hair-raising game six where the entire lobby fought tooth-and-nail to take down these two teams two games in a row, five more made it to match point, including both Disguised Toast’s team, Disguised, and Not Moist, the Australian team owned by MoistCr1TiKaL that was nearly barred from entering the country to compete.
Attending esports events in person is always exciting, but having covered a wide variety of competitive shooters, I was particularly impressed by the ALGS audience. Every team had fans there supporting them and repping their merch, but every big play and exciting moment was celebrated by the entire audience, no matter which team it was. Even 07, who had established themselves as the villains of the tournament right from the start, earned the respect of the crowd when it secured a victory in round seven. The camera panned across the entire arena to show the whole crowd standing and saluting - a reference to 07’s logo.
The best testament to the ALGS’s success is how hyped the crowd got every time a match point teamdidn’twin. When round six ended and neither DarkZero nor Reject Winnity was able to secure the win, the whole arena erupted. The only moment the crowd got louder than that was when both teams got eliminated again in round seven. It wasn’t that people were rooting against DarkZero and Reject Winnity, per se, they just wanted to see more Apex. After four days of competition and dozens of games, even late into the evening on Sunday night, everyone was excited for the tournament to continue into game eight. I think they would have been even more pumped for game nine, had Reject Winnity not been able to secure that match point win, becoming the Year Four Split 1 ALGS Champions.
Apex Legends doesn’t seem like it should work as an esport, but Respawn has found a brilliant tournament format that makes it one of the most exciting games to watch. Even in-universe Apex is styled as a televised competitive bloodsport, and that theme translates so well into live esports events. If you’re not watching the ALGS already, you’re missing out on some of the most exciting competitive gaming around.
Next:“Opposites Attract”: How NiceWigg And Greek Made Competitive Apex Legends Fun Again
