Short for electronic sports, esports is a type of competition that involves the use of video games. It’s a booming global industry that more than 380 million people watch worldwide in person and online. Esports turns online gaming into a spectator sport.
In addition, it usually occurs as organized, multiplayer video gaming competitions which are held between professional players, whether as individuals or teams. If you also want to play on esports betting sites, you can find an esports bookmaker online. In this industry, there are various video game genres.
Some of them include multiplayer online battle arena (MOBA), battle royale, first-person shooter (FPS), and real-time strategy (RTS) titles, among others.
You’ll find the popular esports games under these categories, but in this article, we want to review the top 5 not very common ones.
Best 5 Not Very Common Esports Games 2022
Here are the top 5 titles that esports players don’t play frequently:
Smite
Tekken
Killer Instincts
Tribes: Ascend
Quake
Some of these titles aren’t free on esports sites, so you’ll need to make a deposit to play. Let’s now discuss each of these games in detail:
Smite
Compared with major titles like Mobile Legends: Bang Bang, League of Legends, PUBG Mobile, Apex Legends, it’s less common to find Smite on esports betting sites. Smite is a free video game in the third-person MOBA category. It was created in 2014 by Hi-Rez Studios.
This company also published the title for Xbox One, Microsoft Windows, Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4, and Amazon Luna. On Steam, 7582 players are currently playing it now, with a 24-hour peak of 15257 and the all-time peak of 31169 two years ago.
Further, this title has multiple esports tournaments. One of them is the Smite World Championship, an annual million-dollar event. In 2015, this tournament had a $2.6 million prize pool, the third-highest in esports at that time.
The prize pool only trailed Dota 2’s The International and came just a bit ahead of the League of Legends World Championships. COGnitive Prime, one of the teams from North America, won the first-place prize and was awarded a little over $1.3 million.
Tekken
Tekken is a Japanese media franchise that focuses on a range of arcade and fighting video games. The developer of these games was Bandai Namco Studios, while its publisher was Bandai Namco Entertainment.
Tekken featured in esports news headlines for being among the first fighting games then to make use of 3D animation. On Steam, 4068 players are playing the game right now, with a 24-hour peak of 5438 players.
The major games in this series in esports betting are centered on the events of the King of Iron Fist Tournament. Mishima Zaibatsu was the host of this tournament, in which players take control of a variety of characters with the object of winning the competition and gaining control of the firm.
In Tekken, gameplay is all about hand-to-hand combat with your opponent, whereby the gameplay mechanism includes throws, blocks, ground fighting, and escapes.
Killer Instincts
Killer Instincts isn’t highly rated when it comes to ranking the most popular esports games. It’s a series of video games in the fighting genre and was developed by Rare. The publishers of the series are Microsoft Studios, Nintendo, and Midway.
Additionally, this series got rebooted due to Killer Instinct (2013) release for the console Xbox One. On Steam, 25 players are playing Killer Instincts right now, with a 24-hour peak of 34 players.
The reboot of the series was developed by Double Helix Games supervised by Ken Lobb. The first game in this series with Microsoft Studios as the publisher hit the markets as a launch title for the console Xbox One in late 2013.
On the heels of Amazon’s acquisition of Double Helix Games, Iron Galaxy Studios gained control of content development after the launch.
Tribes: Ascend
Created and published by Hi-Rez Studios for the OS, Microsoft Windows, Tribes: Ascend is a free-to-play FPS title. Released on April 12, 2012, it was published for the Microsoft Windows OS as one of the games in the Tribe series.
In esports matches involving this title, you’ll notice that it has aspects from former games in the Tribe series like skiing and jetpacks.
Hi-Rez introduced a Game of the Year Edition to the market in February 2013 that unlocked all weapons, classes, perks, and equipment in just one package.
In mid-2013, Hi-Rez Studios stopped the design of Tribes: Ascend to concentrate their attention on other games, but in August 2015, a team of a few members resumed its design. The maker released a patch for the title in December 2015 that introduced new changes in the game.
As a result of the patch’s nature, Hi-Rez reverted all in-game purchases previously made. For unknown reasons, Tribes: Ascend was delisted on Steam and also expunged from its maker’s website.
Quake
This title is the first game in the Quake Series. Quake is a video game in the FPS genre and was developed by id Software. GT Interactive was the publisher of the title, which is the successor to the Doom series, also developed by id Software.
Multiplayer Quake was among the first games considered as a form of electronic sport. As per VG Insights’ stats, 167 active people are playing it right now. It registered a 24-hour peak of 666 players. Its remastered version is available for Microsoft Windows, Xbox One, Nintendo Switch, and PlayStation 4.
Esports Betting
The esports betting industry features both conventional sports-related titles like FIFA and NBA2K and popular games like League of Legends, Dota, and Counter-Strike. In esports games, individual players can do self-streaming while playing to make money or join bigger tournaments to slug it out with other players for fantastic cash prizes.
Our Final Say
Esports, also called electronic sports, is a kind of competition involving the use of video games. It’s a booming global industry that more than 380 million people enjoy watching all around the world in person and online on various sites.
In this article, we’ve reviewed the top 5 not very common esports games. While pro players and newbies play these titles occasionally, they’re less popular than big names like League of Legends, Dota, and Counter-Strike.
