This Weekend in Esports: What to Watch from September 28-30

Welcome to This Weekend in Esports, a brief overview of what to watch in the world of competitive gaming for the coming weekend.

For this weekend, Heroes of the Storm rounds out its BlizzCon field and Gears of War esports comes to San Diego.

HGC NA Playoffs - Phase 2

Game: Heroes of the Storm
When: September 28-30
Where to watch: Twitch.tv/BlizzHeroes

The Heroes of the Storm regular season has come to a close. With a first place finish in the standings, HeroesHearth Esports advances directly to BlizzCon. This weekend will determine who joins them. The plucky squads of Endemic and LFM Esports will kick off the weekend gauntlet, but whoever emerges victorious will not have an easy road forward.

Sunday's match will be the one to watch, because whoever's still standing between the aforementioned two teams, Team Freedom, and Team Octalysis will have perennial Heroes powerhouse Tempo Storm standing between them and BlizzCon. And with Fan Yang leading the way, Tempo Storm has its sights set high for this year's biggest stage.

Gears Pro Circuit San Diego Open

Game: Gears of War 4
When: September 28-30
Where to watch: http://live.gearsofwar.com

Gears of War esports is going on strong, with the latest major tournament touching down on the San Diego shore. There's a hefty $250,000 prize pool up for grabs, as the game's best teams continue showing their mastery of Gears of War 4 en route to the upcoming Gears of War 5.

The Green Wave of OpTic Gaming continues to show its dominance in the world of console shooters. They'll be among the favorites competing this weekend. They sit in a pool with OpTic Mexico and Simplicity, but a tournament like this is particularly unpredictable given the nature of the Open format. On Friday, the field is open to all registered teams, which could potentially open the door for an unknown to turn the entire tournament upside-down.

What will you be watching this weekend? Join the conversation and let us know in the comments.

Ozzie Mejia

Senior Editor

Ozzie has been playing video games since picking up his first NES controller at age 5. He has been into games ever since, only briefly stepping away during his college years. But he was pulled back in after spending years in QA circles for both THQ and Activision, mostly spending time helping to push forward the Guitar Hero series at its peak. Ozzie has become a big fan of platformers, puzzle games, shooters, and RPGs, just to name a few genres, but he’s also a huge sucker for anything with a good, compelling narrative behind it. Because what are video games if you can't enjoy a good story with a fresh Cherry Coke?