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Since I heard of MBC Games winding down their coverage of Starcraft Brood War in favour of more K-pop (and from watching some of the GSL finals ceremonies I can only assume they are deeply intertwined). Really hope the MSL can keep going in whatever format, but haven't heard much talk of that, so I've been thinking more of the loss of coverage.
I've been giving a lot of thought to the concept of RTS games on telly. As I've said before I was never that aware of a community around Starcraft Brood War, so firmly consider myself a child of the SC2 community, but I think we should all be able to see the loss for all concerned in no longer having such a foothold in television. It's a difficult situation but Starcraft always seemed inherently difficult to fit onto TV, as matches can go on from ten minutes to 40 minutes. With this in mind other Korean television stations must be wondering how to fill the gap in the market left by this unfortunate loss. I'd like to solve all their problems, with one word: Poker.
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/WWx3G.jpg)
No, I didn't mean this, but it would make almost as good television as a Plott brothers UFC match.
I think it would be pretty interesting to see how a Starcraft game plays out in a way that's similar to how poker is televised. If you've ever watched a live stream of poker you'll know about 60% of the time nothing happens, a televised game is much more action-packed, focusing on the hands that matter and really focusing on the elements that make a player's individual style. It would be excellent to see what a talented editor who knew the game could do for a game of Starcraft, and commentary would become so different, driven to be more dynamic based on the player's styles. It is a huge challenge to capture the nuance of macro play and the like, but I'd love to see someone experiment with it, it might be the next big way for television to play host to Starcraft, with full games online, or it might be a good way for a caster to make a name for themselves. Sure if nothing comes of it we can always get a Tasteless Vs. Day[9] cage match!
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/3w8V9.png)
Starcraft Fight Club, I imagine it'd be like chessboxing, alternating rounds of Starcraft and beating the hell out of each other.
 
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Nope.. the real fanbase would never watch nor care about not seeing an entire game... the real fanbase is what will watch at first if SC2 is on TV so if you lose them you lose your entire market
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I definitely agree with what you're saying. Streaming on the internet is one thing but I think if you were going to go to television with SC2, you couldn't do it live. There is just too many variables and too hard to schedule. As we all know, technology is the vehicle of ESPORTS so if you were live on television and Bnet decided to crap out, SC2 probably wouldn't get another shot at TV for a long time.
But, if you had a tournament and you hand-picked a lot of sexy games and series, you could easily get an hour or 2 of really tight content to put on the air.
edit: yes along with the above post, you couldn't crop sexy part of games, you'd have to include entire sexy games or that's just terrible. We want the nba finals game 7, not the sportscenter recap the following morning.
This is entirely under the assumption that getting on TV would do anything for ESPORTS. For now it is amazing on the internet and that is fine by me 
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I'm pretty sure if they made SC2 on TV like poker, no one on TL would watch it, and they would all be outraged. In poker, each individual hand is a miniature game in and of itself... that's not true for Starcraft 2. I think that casting games like you're suggesting would completely ruin all of the reasons why SC2 is fun to watch.
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On July 29 2011 01:35 Mattchew wrote:
Nope.. the real fanbase would never watch nor care about not seeing an entire game... the real fanbase is what will watch at first if SC2 is on TV so if you lose them you lose your entire market
I think it's a different format that hasn't been developed and could well attract new people. As I say, hardcore fans can stream live, but imagine a GSL show, an hour per day worth of tightly constructed content with accompanying casting. Would love to see what could be done with that, love watching the GSL fully, but there is an entirely different pace, the first two/three minutes of any match are always about the same, in the same way 60% of poker is players folding before the flop. Just a thought
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On July 29 2011 01:39 ClysmiC wrote:
I'm pretty sure if they made SC2 on TV like poker, no one on TL would watch it, and they would all be outraged. In poker, each individual hand is a miniature game in and of itself... that's not true for Starcraft 2. I think that casting games like you're suggesting would completely ruin all of the reasons why SC2 is fun to watch.
Well that's sort of my point, if you watch a live stream of poker most of the hands are folding, unless there is a particularly agressive player. Well editted it looks like each hand is a game, but smart players don't play most of their hands. In Starcraft there is a lot more that needs to be shown of course, but it would be interesting to see what could be done structuring the content to a time limit. And of course most will prefer streaming online, but it couldn't hurt!
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to create new fans you have to have a base audience to build upon... this format would not appeal to the base and nothing on TV is going to stay on TV if noone watches. TV does not devolp new shows/sports it simply builds and exponentially grows them.
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On July 29 2011 01:41 UltimateHurl wrote:Show nested quote +On July 29 2011 01:35 Mattchew wrote:
Nope.. the real fanbase would never watch nor care about not seeing an entire game... the real fanbase is what will watch at first if SC2 is on TV so if you lose them you lose your entire market I think it's a different format that hasn't been developed and could well attract new people. As I say, hardcore fans can stream live, but imagine a GSL show, an hour per day worth of tightly constructed content with accompanying casting. Would love to see what could be done with that, love watching the GSL fully, but there is an entirely different pace, the first two/three minutes of any match are always about the same, in the same way 60% of poker is players folding before the flop. Just a thought
If we're thinking of ways to dumb it down for the sake of casuals, I suppose you could fastforward to the 6 min mark or whenever the first confrontation is and just be like oGsMC opened 1gate fe into this and NaDa opened CC first into that and you can pretty much get what happened up until that point.
This brings to mind those little snippets they sometimes have inbetween GSL games with the 2 korean guys casting a game and they're yelling at each other every time something happens and they put their faces on the screen going kakakakakakaka :D That stuff is really funny and they do a pretty good job or skipping to the "exciting" parts. Obviously this method doesn't appeal to people who follow SC2 already. We're talking about selling out here
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Ha, honestly I don't think SC terms like 1 gate fe sit well with casual people  IT's sort of a double-edged sword, it's really unfortunate that Starcraft is disappearing from a medium like television, but then again I haven't seen much work to try and make it conform to that medium, which is really difficult. It's sort of hard to completely write off any approach that might help, or at least really self-defeating.
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I don't think there can ever be such a thing as a casual fan of Starcraft. Enjoying what is shown on the screen and understanding what is going on hand in hand in this case.
Also, this sort of ideas promote the kind of growth I really dislike. It's like a forced, artificial growth. I'm sure that once (and if) SC2 gets to the point where it truly has a global fanbase, a way to show it on TV will be developed in order to satisfy what that fanbase needs and wants to see. Providing that anybody even cares about regular TV at that point.
On the other hand, "pushing" Starcraft everywhere in order to artificially grow it is something that I see having more negative effects than positive in the long run. The way in which the game is shown has to be adjusted to conform to the standards, the way the game is presented and explained has to be adjusted to appeal to people who barely know anything about the game, the ACTUAL fans won't like any of those adjustments at all and if the experiment fails (which is always the more likely outcome for something like that) people are only going to be more reluctant to pick it up in the future.
It's just not the right time yet.
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Well I kind of mentioned it as a way to keep Starcraft on TV, as it's quite clear that a lot of people like Starcraft on TV, so it's not a matter of trying to artificially push anything, just make it profitable as well as popular. In that context it's a lot more understandable to be able to offer a new format, which wouldn't detract from anything currently on offer.
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EPT
