Unlike traditional sport, the popularity of eSport titles fluctuate. No eSport title lasts forever, and only a handful have lasted more than five years. Esports is fuelled by the playerbase, and its viewership, and when that shifts to a newer game, so does the eSports mantle.

Not that it's easy to dethrone incumbent eSports, or to gain traction as an eSport. For a game to succeed as an eSports title, it's not enough for it to be designed to be competitive, to reach its financial goals as a product, but it needs to attract the attention of millions of gamers to be on the same level playing field as incumbent eSport titles. League of Legends for example, has a 100 million active players per month, with 13-14 million peak concurrent players. Dota 2 has around 13 million monthly active users and peak concurrent players of around 1.1 million. The hottest eSport prospect, Overwatch, just surpassed 30 million copies sold. Needless to say, the numbers get ridiculous.

Aside from the playerbase itself, however, the basic elements that make a videogame an eSport are its competitive design (the map layout, game balance, competitive nature of the game), accessibility by players (free to play games such League of Legends are able to get a huge number of players), viewer-friendliness, player progression elements (Counter-Strike's skin marketplace is a great example), and innovation in game elements (Rocket League, need I say more?).

With the above in mind, the following are the yet unreleased video-game titles (including those in a beta testing phase) that, in our opinion, have the best potential to become eSports.

10. Armored Warfare

Armored Warfare is a vehicular shooter game inspired by World of Tanks. It was originally developed by acclaimed developer Obsidian Entertainment (Fallout: New Vegas, Neverwinter Nights 2), and more recently by My.com (Jungle Heat, Warface) using the CryEngine. It involves players battling it in teams of 15 with a huge selection of tanks and other armoured military vehicles in fully destructible environments. It's completely free-to-play, but one can pay for certain upgrades. We don't believe this will ever become a massively popular title like LoL or CS:GO, or be featured in live events with hundreds of thousands of viewers, but may very well develop its own niche, in the same way World of Tanks did. It also includes co-op and PvE elements that may keep players interested. The beta phase for the game as been going on since 2015.

9. Battalion 1944

Battalion 1944 is a multiplayer FPS title, the alpha version of which is due to be released in May 2017. The reason why it has fans talking, is because it's a World War 2 shooter replicating design elements from the beloved Call of Duty 2 and Call of Duty 4 games. In particular, the WW2 setting provides familiarity in weapons (Kar98k anyone?) and locations, while popular elements from CoD4, such as sprinting are also being implemented. It already has the local scene, together with its strong CoD pedigree, wagging tails about this game's prospects. And with former pro gamers on board, the developer will definitely have eSport high on the priority list, and this is excellent news, as the lack of an inbuilt competitive mode was always the achilles' heel of CoD1, CoD2 and CoD4. Unfortunately, doubts remain as to whether it can attract shooter fans from games like CS:GO and Overwatch, especially considering the size and experience of the companies behind those two games.

8. Marvel vs Capcom Infinite

The newest (6^th to be exact) iteration of Capcom's hit series will surely have fighting game enthusiasts salivating. The development of fighting games as an eSport have truly been given a boost in these last couple of years thanks to a number of quality titles, and events, and Capcom better not shy away from it. The game is scheduled for release towards the end of 2017, and promises new gameplay elements, such as the use of infinity stones. Even with the massive IP behind it, it like won't unseat the likes of Street Fighter and Tekken.

7. LawBreakers

LawBreakers is an FPS title directed by the former Epic Games director Cliff Bleszinski, legendary for his role as game director for the Unreal franchise and the Gears of War series of games. LawBreakers will be a free-to-play shooter which promises fast-paced, class-based combat, and interesting movement concepts. It's not a team-focused game in the way that Overwatch is, but is more similar to other arena shooters such as Tribes or Quake Champions, where despite the different classes, individual skill is still the most important factor.

6. Diabotical

Diabotical is an Arena FPS game inspired by the likes of Quake and Unreal Tournament, and is being developed by The GD Studio, a company formed by the infamous 2GD – a Quake pro turned caster and host turned game developer. It's financed through Kickstarter, and has exceeded the target, having collected almost £170,000 so far. Diabotical promises to return competitive FPS back to its roots: extremely fast-paced, maps with weapons, power-ups and armour/health pickups and built from the ground up for eSports. In fact it includes inbuilt tournament systems, custom skins and in-game ad spaces for teams and sponsors, tournament viewing as well as a cosmetic reward system (of and modding support and map editor!). A game truly designed for eSports.

5. Unreal Tournament

The 9^th instalment in the franchise that made Epic Games one of the most important game development companies in the industry. Unreal Tournament has an eSport heritage dating back almost two decades. However, unlike any other game, Unreal Tournament is crowdsourced, meaning that its development is open to the public. Unreal Tournament is a fast-paced Arena FPS, very much on the same vein as Quake. Epic Games' openness for the public to use its highly acclaimed engines also meant that it has developed the strongest following from the modding community, and several fully fledged games such as Rocket League, Red Orchestra, Alien Swarm all started out as Unreal Tournament mods. Because of its unique setting, it's unclear whether eSport will play a huge part in the life-cycle of this game. What we do know, is that there is the potential, and certainly the tools for it. The question will be whether Epic Games will be providing adequate support for it to become an eSport title, and whether it can coexist with the likes of Quake Champions. You can already play the in-development version of the game for free, but unfortunately the beta version hasn't had much traction in competitive circles (such as the cups organised by ESL).

4. Gigantic

Gigantic is a MOBA title with several twists: it's played from a third person perspective rather than top-down (as in the case of existing MOBA titles such as LoL, Dota 2 or HotS), there are no towers or lanes, or even the same type of creeps, and no 'nexus' or 'ancient' to destroy. Rather, your performance fuels your team's guardian, a gigantic (pun intended) creature, and once at full power, it will attack the enemy's guardian, giving you a shot at defeating the enemy guardian. Even the combat is innovative for a MOBA, allowing for the possibility of combos across the various unique heroes, jumping as well as dodging. It's hard for a new MOBA to topple the likes of LoL and Dota 2, but Gigantic's innovative approach definitely makes it a strong contender. It's currently in open beta, and free to play of course!

3. Paragon

Although Epic Games may not be pushing Unreal Tournament's eSports pedigree too much, their other in-development title, Paragon, seems to have been designed specifically for it. Using the cutting edge Unreal Engine 4, Paragon is a MOBA game with third person action game elements. The map itself will be very familiar to LoL or Dota players, with lanes, towers and a jungle, but there's such a thing as high ground and underground tunnels. As a third person action game however, the player can dodge, jump (and of course, shoot whilst jumping!), whilst offering impressive visuals. Instead of buying items, customisability of characters depends on a pre-selected deck of 'cards' that can be upgraded during the game. There will also be cross-play across the PC and console versions (like Rocket League). Beta is currently available to play.

2. Call of Duty: WW2

eSports was not a priority for Call of Duty's earlier iterations, with PC players having to use mods such as PAM and Promod in order to play competitively on the PC. This obviously meant that the competitive aspect of these games was highly inaccessible. In the more recent iterations, all of which are a lot more popular on consoles rather than PC, the developers have been giving a push for the resurgence of the competitive element of the game. In fact, competitive Call of Duty rides on the back of very strong support by Activision, including the organisation of the Call of Duty World League Championship, featuring an enormous prizepool to the tune of $2 million. One could say that the competitive CoD scene is indeed doing well, but it is not in the same league of eSports such as LoL, Dota 2 or CS:GO yet, and one of the main reasons for that is that it's restricted to console only, and eSports is still largely dominated by the PC platform. Call of Duty's return to its World War 2 roots has a lot of veterans hyping it up. After all, there's nothing as delightful as Kar98k reflex shot. It remains to be seen whether the PC version will be given attention at all, but it will probably still thrive on consoles.

1. Quake Champions

The coming years will undoubtedly see the rise of an Arena FPS as a premier eSports title, after a decade of absence. In fact, this list features no less than 4 such games. There is clearly a thirst for the genre, and we believe Quake stands the best chance to take that crown. For one, Quake has the biggest name in eSports arena FPS. Quake 3 Arena was the number one eSports title between 1998 to the early 2000s. Quake Live also generated significant interest later on, as opposed to any other Arena FPS. Secondly, the developer, id Software, is riding on the back of a very successful re-launch of Doom in 2016. Thirdly, they promise new gameplay features, such as character classes and abilities which will add another layer to the game, whilst retaining the elements that made Quake so popular back in the day, including the weapons, the movement and the maps (oh, and I guess the lore too). Arena FPS also makes an excellent spectator eSport for players who don't play the game, something that MOBAs or games such as Overwatch often struggle with, Whilst I personally believe Arena FPS still won't generate the interest of games such as LoL, for the simple reason that a primarily individualistic game cannot recreate the 'community' feel the way a team-based game can,  and thus the fanbase will inevitable be smaller, there is definitely a space for it in the industry.