Why R6S is Growing Faster than Other Esports
Rainbow Six Siege is a relatively new FPS Esport in the landscape. Compared to CSGO and COD, it is practically a baby. However, despite its youth, R6S has taken the Esports world by storm and quickly carved out a niche for itself among the FPS player base.
In this day and age, FPS Esports actively see a dip in players and viewers, with Overwatch being pretty much stone dead, COD losing its old-school fans, and CSGO maintaining a slightly downhill trend in viewer figures.
While all this is going on, R6S is skyrocketing. Their World Championship this year was the most viewed event for the game in history, and both the average viewership and player base is continuing up and up.
Why, though? Where every other FPS Esport is fighting for survival, why is R6S doing so well? It's a hard question to answer, but also one that we think is so simple it's genius, and that's because of gameplay.
The gameplay is the core of what makes a good FPS, as we've seen with Overwatch, you can have all the style and grace you want, but without good gameplay, your game is going to fail.
Call of Duty and CS both have great gameplay, but it's repetitive. People have been playing the same two bombsite search and destroy meta for countless years now. R6S uses this formula as well, except this time around it's been spiced up, which has made all the difference.
Instead of a handful of grenades to open up a bombsite, R6S goes a million miles further, making opening up bombsites a core feature of its gameplay premise. The environment is destructible, and the selectable characters all come with their own unique gadgets and gameplay that allows them to interact with that environment.
Instead of throwing a smoke in a doorway, you can literally come busting through the wall with a sledgehammer like some terrifying cool-aid man. You tell us which of those two sounds more entertaining.
It mixes up the formula without compromising anything. The characters are not gimmicks, and each fits into the flow of gameplay impressively well for such a wide roster, and because of the routine addition of new characters, the meta is constantly evolving without the need for massive and controversial buffs and nerfs to mix things up.
The game is also more stylish then COD and CS, with each character having a distinct look and personality that has garnered each a cult following online. This is arguably where Call of Duty has gone so wrong in recent years, with the operators that game features being personality vacuums.
R6S, despite this troubling time, and despite the declining popularity of FPS games, remains a sole golden beacon of hope in the landscape. It is an excellent game, with an excellent team behind it, and well worth carrying the trust of the FPS faithful.
If you haven't tried R6S out yet, we recommend you do so straight away. You can get the game on PS4, Xbox, or PC, and it's usually on sale. Also, on the weekends of some Majors, Ubisoft makes the game free-to-play, so you can try it out then, too.