EPT“Creedo micros the destroyers back, paladin out of position, and he is SILENCED! THERE IS NO INVUL POT ON IT! COIL NOVA AND.. THE LVL 8 PALADIN IS DOWN! AND SKY TYPES GG! THE CROWD GOES WILD. THIS STADIUM IS SHAKING, ALL 50000 FANS ARE ON THEIR —“
My alarm clock rang. I frantically looked around; nope, I wasn’t WCG champion yet, it was another dream.
This is something I’ve begun admitting to people around me. Not necessarily the scopes of my ambitions, merely the fact that I take gaming as a legitimate form of competition rather than a hobby hardly worth pursuing. When I signed up to help run the WCL, one of the premier amateur leagues, I began wondering about the future of E-Sports.
There is no denying that E-Sports has been moving forward swiftly over the past 10 years, but for the most part, the progression has been concentrated in small isolated areas rather than a gradual sweep across the world. I was in awe watching the live streams from the World Cyber Games in 2009; over 10000 people crowding to watch Counter-Strike, Starcraft, and Warcraft. In 2007, the Seattle crowd seemed anemic watching the Warcraft Grand Finals between Creolophus vs. Sky, one of the best series I had seen in a long time.
What accounts for this difference? Perhaps the population difference between China and America has some impact on the number of spectators, but it doesn’t explain why China, a country where only one-third of the population has Internet connection (compared to the USA where close to 80% have access) seems to be accepting gaming as a legitimate way to make a living while in America, it is close to taboo. Its close proximity to Korea is not an answer either; Japan’s location does not seem to have had the same influence on their gaming scene.
The problems with gaming are many, and somewhat connected. While we all enjoy gaming in general, the topic has become so subdivided it becomes impossible to create a mass movement. Europe loves its FIFA, America loves its Halo, and Asia loves its Starcraft. How can we create momentum for gaming when our energy is so focused on bringing our own games to fame? While I may prefer Warcraft to Starcraft, or quake to counterstrike, it becomes more and more obvious that I must support the scenes, which are becoming the most popular. Heading into 2010, it looks like those “gateway games” will be WoW part 1000, Halo 54, and of course, Starcraft II.
Starcraft II in particular creates amazing opportunities for the advancement of gaming. There is no better time to establish the scene for a game than at it’s release. People who have never been exposed to gaming will try their hand at SC, and thanks to blizzards new ladder system, the poor newbs will not quit immediately due to being pwned and shunned by the elite, enclosed communities that surround Warcraft and Starcraft. This in turn will create more interest in professional league play, and perhaps even create a college league scene, something I see as vital to the development of gaming.
However, even if the potential for a Starcraft college league league makes college football look minor, there is still one major hurdle in the growth of professional e-sports: the business model of the people who own the games. They are looking to make the biggest profit possible, and the old school way of doing that with video games has been to make and sell as many commercially successful games as possible. However, this model directly conflicts with the goal of establishing such a scene; how can we create a thriving business when companies can essentially change the rules whenever they please, or release a new version when more money is to be made? Consider whether basketball would have continued past the YMCA if they kept making a new version where you stood on your hands, or used your head or had a boxing match after every foul shot? By forcing the pros to continue on another learning curve, the scene itself will never be stable.
Therefore in order to keep the scene successful, companies like blizzard need to moderate their releases, without major change to the game structure, much like how they are doing with WoW. They need to maintain careful balance changes, and allow 3rd party servers when hackers overrun their own public servers. They need to stop focusing so much on how many WoW subscriptions they can sell. Ideally, they would eventually surrender the rights to the game.
In return, they would begin focusing on the growth and development of league play. Groups like the MLG would receive heavy investment to begin developing a gamer’s channel, include other more popular games, and create more online tournaments. Any 3rd party developed servers would be pc and Mac compatible, as well as any systems designed for ease of play or tournament matches so that a growing group of computer users aren’t as isolated. Consolidation and competition would be the cornerstones to the new enterprise.
There is a big question; what incentives would major gaming companies have to initiate this transition? As of now, none. And this is my final, but biggest problem with the development of the gaming scene. Companies all live by the free market; where there is demand, there is opportunity for growth and expansion. Unfortunately, demand outside of our sheltered communities is extremely lackluster, and pockets of gaming areas on the global market are not enough to entice investment.
The reason for this lack of demand is simply the generalization of the gamer; being a professional gamer in Germany, in Korea or in China gains you respect and fame equivalent to being an NBA superstar, with a scene that is so hospitable to the most talented players, it is no wonder that America seems stagnant and in the dark.
Some people may argue I am being unfair to the American gaming scene; the MLG is one of the largest attempts to create an organized system by which professional and semi-professional teams can be recognized, but to compare the MLG to Korea’s OSL (Starcraft) or Germany’s WLSB (FIFA) is ludicrous. Both the latter gaming leagues have regularly televised matches on prime TV channels; the MLG is lucky to have their finals broadcast by G4 or Spike TV.
But how can we expect anything more? In America, the popular notion of a pro-gamer is an often obese man with poor social skills who spends long periods of time staring at a computer with no other life outside the virtual world (for more information, see Pure Pwnage). How can we expect a vibrant gaming scene with so much prejudice against the notion?
We can do it by breaking the stereotype; when I had to leave my friends for a clan war, I used to avoid answering why I had to go. I have a suspicion that for many gamers in America, this is a normal occurrence. It often feels like there is a wall between our gaming lives and our normal lives. So how best to incorporate the two than by tearing down that wall? From now on, I tell my friends exactly what war I’m playing for what game; I’m not afraid to leave an away message on AIM about how I’m training my UD v NE matchup. This is something we must all embrace if we ever want to see gaming get off the ground. How better can people realize that gamers are normal people than by having gamers take pride in their work? If Barack Obama admitted he followed the Counterstrike scene, regardless of what would happen to his popularity, you would see a surge in Counterstrike sales in America. While Obama probably does not follow the gaming scene, many other successful individuals do, and they should take part in creating a hospitable scene for the strongest gamers.
This is not a transformation that will take place overnight, but as this season begins, perhaps we should think about what we want for E-Sports in America. I would like to see gaming increase, and perhaps become just as popular here as it is in Europe, or dare I say Korea. And by giving gamers faces in the community, we may find that stadiums full of people watching video games isn’t as distant as it seems. After all, basketball, baseball, and football all had far more humbling starts, and needed to overcome much greater obstacles than gaming ever faced. There is no reason we cannot follow the same route.
So obviously I counted MLG out slightly prematurely, but I think for the most part, this is the route gaming has taken. In close to 2 years, gaming has become way more mainstream, way more defined, and way more serious. The Collegiate Starleague has demonstrated a serious collegiate interest in Starcraft. Bar-crafts have shown there is some sense of white/blue-collar interest in the online battlefield as well. Recent academic articles and books have demonstrated intellectual interest in the scene and the game as something to be studied and analyzed for social, economic, and scientific purposes. And I would argue a lot of this is because people have become, as Day9 put it, "Proud of their passions." You guys are all awesome
