I like to think that I “grew up” with a decent amount of video game exposure. Both sets of grandparents had Atari systems and I spent many visits playing Frogger, Pac-Man and Night Rider. I very clearly remember our first console (Intellivision) that pre-dated our Nintendo days and then eventually progressing through the latest and greatest gaming consoles (due to my brother) until I eventually went to college and interest waned. (Instead I took interest in a certain gamer…but that’s a story for another day.)

It is very clear that my boys’ gaming exposure has already eclipsed my own and to some degree, my gaming knowledge and skill level. Ethan already knows more about Riot’s game League of Legends (LoL) than I will probably ever know. It’s amazing how he retains information and stats on the champions (game characters) and anything else game-related.

Ethan was able to attend both the LoL playoffs last weekend and the World Championship yesterday with Eric and me. He was so into it…well, until he grew restless a few hours into it (because that’s what 5-year-old boys do).

Here’s the scoop from our in-house LoL gaming expert and Riot insider:

We had the equivalent of the Super Bowl for gamer geeks last night here in LA…the League of Legends Season 2 Finals.  It was a pretty cool event…we packed the USC Galen Center (USC Basketball Arena) full of nerds (well, not everybody was a nerd, but I’m sure you can imagine).  I believe we already have the Staples Center (Where the Lakers play) reserved for next year. At it’s peak, over 900K folks were watching the event live (streaming via the internet), not including South Korea and China (which those places alone could double or triple that as they actually have dedicated cable channels to “eSports”). We’ve received a lot of cool press over the past week, including the links below: http://www.nbcnews.com/technology/ingame/taipei-assassins-triumph-league-legends-world-finals-1C6448579 (watch the first embedded video to get a better idea of the event). We released our latest numbers this week (which actually are from July and we’ve already blown past them) indicating we are now in fact the most popular video game in the world (players clock in over 1 billion hours per month, globally).

So yeah, the finals were really cool to experience in person and attending gave me a much better appreciation for how huge this phenomenon is across the globe.

But here’s what I think is even more valuable for Ethan and Max: They will grow up seeing their Dad get to do what he truly loves. And I think that is priceless.