From the Press Release
Move over StarCraft II and League of Legends – Ubisoft’s upcoming PC online multiplayer first-person shooter ShootMania Storm will join the tournament line up at IPL 5, the next major tournament event of the IGN Pro League (IPL), taking place November 29-December 2 at The Cosmopolitan of Las Vegas.
The prize pool for IPL 5’s Shootmania Storm tournament will total $100,000, with online qualifiers beginning Monday, October 1st. Leading up to the event, there will be four open online qualifiers for North America and two online qualifiers for Europe, with a best-of-three format throughout. The winning team for each qualifier will earn free flights and hotel stays for the event. The online qualifiers will be covered via live stream at http://shootmania.ign.com. IPL 5 will also feature the top League of Legends and StarCraft II players from around the globe battling for world domination and prize pools totaling more than $200,000. The addition of a first-person shooter into the IPL 5 tournament mix marks a return to the roots of competitive gaming, which originated with iconic first-person shooters like Quake and Unreal Tournament.
“IPL is looking to build ShootMania Storm as the FPS standard for eSports,” said David Ting, General Manager of eSports and Vice President of Research & Development at IGN Entertainment. “With the addition of a first-person shooter game, we’re taking IPL 5 to a whole new level.”
”We’re excited for ShootMania Storm to be part of IPL’s line-up,” said Tony Key, senior vice president of sales and marketing, Ubisoft. “The team at Nadeo has done a tremendous job in creating a fun and competitive game and players in the upcoming IPL tournaments will validate ShootMania as the next big tournament-tested shooter.”
Developed by Ubisoft’s Nadeo studio, ShootMania Storm follows the footsteps of TrackMania, Nadeo’s successful arcade racing game, to present a new dimension in first-person shooter. As part of the ManiaPlanet system, ShootMania Storm puts players at the center of their gaming experience. To date, players have created more than 15 game modes and, already, more than 20,000 maps have been created by players using ManiaPlanet’s proprietary map editor.
The title has already received acclaim on the competitive gaming circuit, with appearances in many tournaments, most recently at the 2012 Electronic Entertainment Expo, DreamHack Summer and Gamescom. ShootMania is currently in beta phase and available for pre-order on http://www.ShootMania.com giving instant access to the beta.
The IGN Pro League, the professional video games league presented by IGN Entertainment, has become a major contender in the North American eSports market since its launch in April 2011. Its last major tournament event drew in more than 10,000 spectators and logged a record-breaking 346,000 concurrent online viewers. With the IGN Pro League franchise, IGN's goal is to help legitimize video gaming as a profession that can produce the next generation of sports celebrities.