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Many users here look at SC2 as the game to finally break e-sports into the mainstream here in the Western world, or just anywhere outside of Korea for that matter. Here's why I think it won't happen.
The biggest factor I see in making a sport, or in this case, an e-sport successful is accessibility. A better word would probably be "popular." There is a distinction. The game has to be amazingly fun and balanced and just a kickass game overall, but that's how it succeeds as a game. To be a popular, successful, and known e-sport, StarCraft 2 has to be accessible.
How many of you were like me, spending endless hours on StarCraft as a kid playing around with each unit (cheats on and off) clicking through to find their hidden speeches and massing each unit just to witness how each one will cause an awesome wave of destruction. Well, realistically that may be a bit overboard, but I'm sure everyone on this board has a very good feel of what each unit is capable of, at least on a very solid level. I'm not talking this in a "making valkyries viable in modern play" way, but more of a "mass of siege tanks will mess you up" in a sort of way. Each unit carries it's own "oomph".
So we stumble upon TeamLiquid or get into watching the professional leagues in another way. Even though we may or may not have a good understanding of the strategies the pros use, when we see the massive hydralisk army move out, we know shit is gonna go down. From there, we learn more, going farther into mechanics and strategical depth from our base knowledge.
Now back to what I was saying before. Accessibility is KEY to making StarCraft 2 successful as a competitive e-sport. I'm sure many of you have tried to get your friends and family to watch one game of pro-StarCraft and just tried to explain everything and what each unit is capable of, because let's face it, not everyone we know understands the basics of this game. They just haven't played it.
A quick basic recap of why the South Korean SC scene exploded. The economic downturn and social turmoils in South Korea during the 1990s caused many South Koreans to turn to cheap and accessible PC cafes, an industry that exploded due to the government subsidizing Internet ventures. StarCraft, being able to run on anything except pencil and paper, became extremely popular.
Many people cite StarCraft's fun and balance as the reason why it is the best e-sport around right now, but they always neglect the crucial factor of accessibility. This game can run on any modern machine, and it ran on any machine that was constructed years ago. I mean it's commonly accepted that there is something wrong with the computer if it can't run StarCraft, instead of the other way around. This being said, it also takes seconds to get into a game and start playing. No loading, no hardware/software issues, just get in and play.
StarCraft is basically a board game. You don't open up Monopoly and pray you don't get a hardware issue or cry fowl when there is a graphical glitch, you just play. (btw Orange Streets are IMBA)
With StarCraft 2 on the horizon, my biggest concern is how well my computer will play it. I trust Blizzard will optimize it to run on as many computers as possible, but it's still a more graphically intensive than even WarCraft 3. I've defended Blizzard's "Steam"-like approach to Bnet 2.0 and even was complacent with the removal of LAN, but to be honest this will definitely cut out a huge audience who could get into the game. No matter how you cut it, the niche of gamers who know how to upgrade a computer or buy a computer that can and will run SC2 is too small an audience for StarCraft 2. Also, it's difficult to spread the scene merely by "word-of-mouth" when it requires $50 to purchase the game along with a decent computer to run it.
But that's not even the biggest problem. Another thing to consider is how our PC cafes/LAN centers compare to those South Korea. It is dirt cheap to play in a PC cafe in South Korea, even after the exchange rate. I attend a university where the nearest center charges $3 an hour to play, and the LAN center near my home is $4 an hour. Yeah, no. Very cheap access to a game that runs on anything is a formula for popularity in South Korea, and it will be the same here, if anyone can recognize that. However, since StarCraft 2 will be another graphically intensive game, I hardly see the PC cafe scene changing here.
Do you think that everyone you see in the proleague audience has a $1000+ supercomputer or even know why video card you'll need to run SC2? No, because they've all just played StarCraft because it just runs on butter.
Without the accessibility that StarCraft had, StarCraft 2 will not take off in the states as an e-sport. I'm not saying it won't be popular, because the UMS games will be amazing fun, but I think we learned from WarCraft III that UMS games can definitely overshadow the competitive game. And that's not even counting DotA.
There are many reasons that will and will not contribute to StarCraft 2 is a viable form of spectator sport in the West. This is just my take on a more social and national scale, rather than the technical aspects of the game.
Now for my personal input an already personal rant. I live in Southern California where there is a more concentrated Asian population, so the influx of Korean pop culture is not unheard of. Attending university, it was pretty crazy to meet random people who knew about the StarCraft pro scene, but it's still a small niche of individuals. However, a good majority of people have played StarCraft, whether or not they know about the professional scene. The hype of StarCraft 2 still only extends to the point that it is StarCraft 2, not "a possible hope of western e-sports."
But who knows? If Blizzard makes a big enough push for a competitive scene it could become viable despite all I've said. Social phenomenons just happen, that's why they're phenomenons. This blog just came off of how I saw so many games trying to market themselves as a sport, but just failed in terms of reaching a mass public.
I'm eager to hear your thoughts on this issue. How can StarCraft 2 be viable socially?
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With its flashy interface it will cause serious problems to people with vision and/or cognitive disabilities.
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5/5 i can't agree more. sc2 is graphically too good, thus requiring higher end computers to really get the most out of the game. since i'm one of those ppl, who easily gets irritated by any lag issues in the game, i don't know if i'll enjoy the game as much as i do with sc on my desktop with AMD 3700+ CPU, 1gb ram, and 256mb geforce 6800gs. 
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6/5. I think SC2's graphical requirements at minimum should be WC3 level, because i can play that and not buy a new computer (in tough economic times like these... lol its like a commercial).
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United States47024 Posts
On August 26 2009 07:36 CapO wrote:5/5 i can't agree more. sc2 is graphically too good, thus requiring higher end computers to really get the most out of the game. since i'm one of those ppl, who easily gets irritated by any lag issues in the game, i don't know if i'll enjoy the game as much as i do with sc on my desktop with AMD 3700+ CPU, 1gb ram, and 256mb geforce 6800gs.
Do we eve know how low the settings go at this point? The feeling I got is that they always show off the highest end settings they can, because that's what wows people.
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I've been thinking a bit about it too- however I've been thinking about the viability of SC2 in general in Korea (as I'm sure many have) since blizzard has been restricting all of these important features (such as LAN) that make eSports so sucessful (outside sources running their own shit)
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maybe im old-school, but i like sc1 graphics, snes, even nes graphics as well. i dont like all this 3D stuff. maybe if sc2 had an option to set it to weaker graphics in exchange for smoother running (kinda like changing the resolution in CS), then more people can play it
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Orange streets being IMBA made me laugh. (Although in my experience, Pink/light blue combo cannot be stopped...CORNER OF DOOM)
Anyways, very great read...and I agree that a game has to be accessible for it to be competitive. I do however think that SC2 will be more successful than any other title has been in the Western World of Esports. With Blizzard pushing it and sites like this, I think it will come a lot further along than we think.
I know it isn't what we would want, but I can picture tournaments being held on TV stations such as G4 or some other cheap station like that. It isn't perfect, but it is a start!
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On August 26 2009 07:36 CapO wrote:5/5 i can't agree more. sc2 is graphically too good, thus requiring higher end computers to really get the most out of the game. since i'm one of those ppl, who easily gets irritated by any lag issues in the game, i don't know if i'll enjoy the game as much as i do with sc on my desktop with AMD 3700+ CPU, 1gb ram, and 256mb geforce 6800gs.
The game will scale to lower graphics settings just fine. On low, for example, all the fancy graphical physics effects are turned off. Blizzard is also continually improving performance in the game; the build at Blizzcon this year ran just as smooth as Starcraft 1, whereas it had some performance issues last year. Blizzard knows that a huge portion of their games' popularity is due to low system requirements. World of Warcraft has 11 million players because it'll run on virtually anything, and Blizzard isn't going to forget that when setting the system requirements for SC2.
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my windows 3.11 who-knows-what-the-fuck couldn't run starcraft
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eh, i doubt sc2 will have too great a system requirements. Blizzard have always been good at coding efficiently. Also i think sc2s good campaign and more friendly bnet interface will attract it to the mainstream gamers.
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I never understood people who said StarCraft has shit graphics... I think the graphics are friggen awesome even when the 640x480 screen is scaled to 1400x1050... I don't think I would ever compare 2D to 3D, as they're completely different.
I remember my first 3D RTS, C&C, was a horrible experience for me... tons of glitches everywhere and nothing ever ran smoothly. Multiplayer was a huge nightmare. People trying to run the game on a cheap box with integrated graphics turned the game into a slideshow. Half the time due to lag the game would literally desync and it'd auto-exit.
StarCraft II, from the battle reports and the demos I've seen, looks a lot better graphically than C&C, but I'm afraid that it will be very demanding hardware wise. I personally run a system that could probably run SCII fine (20,322 3Dmark06), but I would hate to have the fanbase limited because of the system requirements.
Even when StarCraft came out in '98, I'm pretty sure everyone and his/her grandma could run it because the requirements are were so minimal. Today, in the world of cheap intel graphics solutions, I don't see the level of versatility that was achieved with the original StarCraft as being a real possibility.
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United States47024 Posts
On August 26 2009 10:28 Loser777 wrote:
Even when StarCraft came out in '98, I'm pretty sure everyone and his/her grandma could run it because the requirements are were so minimal. Today, in the world of cheap intel graphics solutions, I don't see the level of versatility that was achieved with the original StarCraft as being a real possibility.
Given the number of people out there who play WoW on absolute junk, I beg to differ.
Anyone who worries about the accessibility of SC2 on different hardware just need to look at WoW to see that Blizzard really hasn't lost their touch at scaling games to different hardware.
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United States22883 Posts
I don't know how familiar you are with other competitive games, but no one uses good graphics settings. The question is really how low is the bar Blizzard will set, and I assume it'll be fairly low so they can attract more people.
FPS and clarity are always more important in competition, so I don't forsee anyone using high settings even if they have a computer to handle it. The shader effects look nice, but I'd imagine that they're too flashy and make it difficult to discern what's going on, compared to using the bare minimum.
If you load a pro player's Q3 config, you'll see that it looks totally different than the normal game. Yes, it looks awful but it gives them constant max fps and it helps their reaction time because there's less points of detail. If it were legal, we'd all prefer 1x1 textures.
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Orange streets being IMBA made me laugh. (Although in my experience, Pink/light blue combo cannot be stopped...CORNER OF DOOM)
I believe people land on Orange the most, but lightblue is def broken.
Even when StarCraft came out in '98, I'm pretty sure everyone and his/her grandma could run it because the requirements are were so minimal. Today, in the world of cheap intel graphics solutions, I don't see the level of versatility that was achieved with the original StarCraft as being a real possibility.
I did take into account that WoW runs on basically anything, and I imagine SC II will still run on a broad range of computer specs. But yes, the Integrated video card business definitely poses a problem. However, I did manage to run WarCraft III on a laptop of mine with a trashy Intel card so I'll see if Blizzard can pull another one out with their next release. It definitely wouldn't be a bad thing!
This is my first post in Blogs, so I'm glad many of you like it!
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i agree about the graphics. if it cant run on my 3 year old laptop i doubt SC2 will succeed. part of SC's immense popularity was it's accessibility, I hope they keep that in mind with the minimum requirements for SC2
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Alright, while everything you said makes sense to me i'm going to have to disagree. There are according to blizzard 11 million people playing world of warcraft, that means 11 million people fork up 15 bucks every month and have a computer that is at least $800+, Starcraft only ever sold 11 million copies.[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_best-selling_PC_video_games], considering these two facts i believe their is a large enough audience for starcraft 2, I think sc2 will make a great e-sport and will kick fuckin asss =D
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I was going to make a big post with my random thoughts concerning e-sports, but I'm going to keep it simple.
I think e-sports viability has more to do with culture than accessibility. Starcraft is a part of Korean culture, whereas gaming evokes negative stereotypes in the US. accessibility obviously helps increase fanbase, but culture helps create social acceptance to do things like watch people play games or spend grotesque amounts of time playing a game.
SC2 e-sports viability in the US might last 1-2 years because of Blizzard eventually releasing 2 additional expansion packs and the likelihood that SC2 will be the most viable RTS for e-sports.
after that, I think Western interest will wane, and we're going to have to depend on Korea again for SC2 e-sports (assuming they actually replace BW with SC2, which they may not).
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Crap now I want to play monopoly..
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On August 26 2009 14:43 udgnim wrote:
I was going to make a big post with my random thoughts concerning e-sports, but I'm going to keep it simple.
I think e-sports viability has more to do with culture than accessibility. Starcraft is a part of Korean culture, whereas gaming evokes negative stereotypes in the US. accessibility obviously helps increase fanbase, but culture helps create social acceptance to do things like watch people play games or spend grotesque amounts of time playing a game.
SC2 e-sports viability in the US might last 1-2 years because of Blizzard eventually releasing 2 additional expansion packs and the likelihood that SC2 will be the most viable RTS for e-sports.
after that, I think Western interest will wane, and we're going to have to depend on Korea again for SC2 e-sports (assuming they actually replace BW with SC2, which they may not).
I think the views are shifting in the Western market. With the advent of "casual games," video games has shifted from "gross nerds" to "oh those silly boys." Gaming is starting to be less and less an unknown form of entertainment and more recognizable and possibly acceptable.
However, this only pertains to that casual game market. The fact that people compete for titles and money in more "hardcore" games like StarCraft and Counter-Strike is still a bit more foreign to people, so in that sense StarCraft 2 will have a tough job in trying to break out as a premiere e-sport.
What's interesting is how games like Dungeon Fighter, that cart racing game (Kart Racer?), and Tetris have spawned their own professional leagues. StarCraft might have had that "casual niche" early in before the advent of these games. Again, they're a great example of accessibility because they're essentially free online.
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