EPTEsports, Past and Present - Page 3
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Damnight
Germany222 Posts
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Ricjames
Czech Republic1047 Posts
On April 29 2012 12:53 Chef wrote: What I want to know is how many of the games in 'esports' today really have a right to call themselves a sport. At this point I'm not even sure I would call the current state of Brood War a sport. The word sport has a necessarily subjective quality to it in this context, but I think a sport necessarily has to transcend itself from being an advertisement to even begin to be up for consideration. It has to be taken seriously. It's hard to take something seriously when you don't expect it to be around for much longer (that's not a commentary on Brood War though, which I think will be around for awhile yet at least as a matured hobby). ESPORTS is a bit of a mockery of the word sport. We took the idea of video games being a sport for granted because BW had been such an incredible success, but now I think it's worth reevaluating. Unfortunately i could not read the OP as it is quite long, but i've seen your comment Chef. I gotta say I agree with you 100%. Sport is something that does not dissapear within 20 years or so. Sport is something that is enjoyable forever and people do it repeatedly cause it is fun and they enjoy it. Sport is something where you develop your skill at least 10 years to be even considered good at it. ESPORTS are really lacking all these attributes and basically can not ever attain them. There will always be someone who claims he has developed better game with better graphics and all shiny etcetera. Brood war was for me as close as it could get to be called a sport. For instance many people claim that very high APM is stupid and not needed to be implemented in an RTS game (incl. Blizzard obviously). Well, let's approach it from the different side. Having very high apm in Brood War took years of practice and that was for me an sport-like attribute. The crazy keyboard bashing was a skill that only small amount of people have developed thanks to very serious and intense practice. The same as very limited amount of soccer players learn to make a perfect shot, pass or trick with a ball executed to the highest level. Frankly, i am tired of the word Esport as gaming is far away to be even considered sport at the current state. Having multiple tournaments and business evolving around it does not make it SPORT. | ||
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OpticalShot
Canada6330 Posts
I agree with the some of the replies here, the word 'eSports' is used much too easily nowadays. You get a little competitive game together and maybe a tournament, and all of a sudden everyone calls it an eSport. I may not be the best scholar on the history of eSports, but there were times when some measures of ratings and popularity in Korean media placed the Korean SCBW scene at almost the same level of professional baseball, which has been the most successful professional sport in Korea for long-time running. I don't think an activity has to necessarily rival the size that of an existing professional sport to qualify it as a sport itself, but such popularity and acceptance in culture are some of the qualifiers that should be implied with the word eSport. That being said, I think the current market has great potential for certain games to grow into legitimate cultural activities. Salary-based professional players and well-established (and sponsored) teams must become the cornerstones on which a stable scene is built. Due to the evolutionary nature of the business (and fast cycles of gaming trends), transition between games should be handled better (an example of a terrible transition process would be SCBW -> SC2 in Korea). Teams and players should be ready to transition - teams should pick versatile and talented players. I've been iterating this forever, but for various games to be legitimized internationally in tournaments, there needs to be a central governing body to set the pillars and the backbones and hammer down some of the rules to avoid silly situations. Community involvement needs to increase - instead of thousands of viewers watching a monitor, there should be more activities where fans can meet their idols in person, have a little chat, and maybe even a friendly match. If I sponsored and owned a progaming team, and if practising 12 hours a day gave us a 60% winning ratio and 8 hours a day made us a 55% winning ratio, then I'd go for the 8 hours a day then spend the other 4 in community involvement. Good results can draw fans, but I believe great personality and personal connections can draw even more fans. Maybe SKT should have a weekly "PC Bang Invasion" activity where a number of players go chill at a random PC Bang, play a couple of friendly games and sign some keyboards. Perhaps Samsung can have an open-house day where randomly selected fans can join in the practice, meet and watch their favourite players, and even win some electronics via raffles. Not too long ago there were news of STX players helping out the community (Calm being the #1 nanny), and I thought it was a fantastic event. I know that teams have regular fan meetings and summer camps and stuff like that, but I'd certainly like to see more. | ||
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Crushgroove
United States793 Posts
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Dknight
United States5224 Posts
On December 02 2004 01:59 Spirit-Rapide- wrote: If like 100 people pay 4$ dollar each to play the 2 weeks ladder and wgtour takes 20% for payment of servers and webhosting/domain it still would make a nice money prize for an online event. 320$ is like 160$ to winner, 110$ for runnerup and 50$ for third. Can't see anything else outside korea even being close to those prizes How far we've come. | ||
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OrD_SC2
United States247 Posts
Thank you for the footnotes (and the time invested in the post!) - the whole time I was reading I was curious where the info came from. :D | ||
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DreamOen
Spain1400 Posts
Expanding it , if at the end we in e-sports reach a point were we converge with the games development, we tend to end as it ended for game development and a video to ilustrate the issue . So, it rests on our hand to decide what to buy , and what to play competitive. WE the player at lest have some power. | ||
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paddyz
Ireland628 Posts
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CPTBadAss
United States594 Posts
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13k
Brazil16 Posts
1. Maturing of business model by game developers The current predominant model (the fast-food model) of selling game boxes must shift to the newer, fast paced, more flexible, iterative model, similar to what happened to software in general with the advent of the "web 2.0". Continuous delivery, incremental changes, rapid cycles, dynamic and constant evolution with real evaluation of feedback, it all must be there embedded in the game development cycle. This would require avoiding the traditional mindset of having seasonal, one-go, disposable game titles. Games would need to be designed right from the beginning as something that would become an ecosystem, not as a single monolithic piece of experience. Game developers would need to invest heavily for this to happen. Moreover, they would need to actually erase their short-term, volume selling goals and create a new service-oriented, consumer engaging, community building thing. Again, in the software universe, I only see this happening for small, young, modern startups (these being Blizzard and Valve analogs in game industry). I don't expect to see Microsoft, EA, even Sony doing this right now, they will only follow if they see financial reasons to do so (either they losing money or others outgrowing them). [I don't need to say that these big dogs need to jump over for esports really take off.] 2. Maturing of the gamers This has been said in answers before mine and I'd like to agree. Gaming is becoming a regular activity for the majority of the people. The next generation will probably be strange to the concept that there are people that play games and people who don't. "Gamer" should not anymore be a personality or group defining adjective. But, as much as it would go that way naturally, we can't know that if the pace would be enough. Efforts in this direction as in "spreading the word" is probably going to make the chances of esports actually exist much higher. Demand is always a higher pressure area that can get things flowing. Barcrafts are actually a damn good idea to begin with. | ||
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Ricjames
Czech Republic1047 Posts
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Felvo
United States124 Posts
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.Carnage
United States99 Posts
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JieXian
Malaysia4677 Posts
On May 01 2012 19:08 DreamOen wrote: To be completely honest on the matter of evolution, I would rather die in hell than play easy games that get even easier with the time. Expanding it , if at the end we in e-sports reach a point were we converge with the games development, we tend to end as it ended for game development and a video to ilustrate the issue http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W1ZtBCpo0eU . So, it rests on our hand to decide what to buy , and what to play competitive. WE the player at lest have some power. Once upon a time games weren't made to be sold like pop music is..... Shit I'm supposed to be young but I feel so dam old already. Forget about any other game, I see angry bird products more often than images of pop stars over here... === edit: Don't know if it's been said before but Chess survived the endless new cooler board games with better graphics. (though it was never really mainstream, but still.) | ||
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Valithor
South Africa6 Posts
I feel I must add and use an example... I have been an avid MTG player for ages now, even in my locale of Mpumalanga, South-Africa (literally the back end of nowhere) small registered events are still held and registered DCI judges still continue to feed the funtastic experience, regardless of sponsors. It is such that sponsorship does play a huge role in which direction things will go for eSports at the moment, and what would happen if all the SC2 sponsors looked at interest / income and decided to back a game like LOL 100% instead (just ballparking here) Would it mean the demise of the SC2 era? The reason I refer to MTG is this: I have been playing MTG for the past 12 years now and I have competed in many registered events hosted locally. At each event I had to pay money. Me, the player had to pay to compete, or I had to pay to enter the hosted event and view games. The word I would most likely choose to define it would be an "Expo" where more than one game was played. At that time it was the table top Warhammer 40K and Dungeons and Dragons also being played. MTG does not carry the immense sponsorship costs of such local hosted events, and they were at the time hosted by a group of Uni students and DCI judges not for the money but for the sake of gaming. This is the key isn't it? In order to grow an industry one must start building it from the upstarts and then once you have a solid foundation you need to rethink distribution. I believe if companies like Blizzard and Riot etc. change the method in which tournaments are hosted and players are given access to their products that we might be able to see an immense increase in users and popularity. MTG employ judges to a strict code of rules (I know as I am applying soon) and they are the beacon who carry the product MTG supplies and transforms it into the amazing fun that it is. In addition it is also highly competitive and most tournaments I played in boasted some nifty prizes or prize money for the top 3 - 5 placed players. Not to mention that there were also qualifiers for regionals etc. Technology is ever-changing and advances in graphical/computing speed/coding will allow unending changes to be made and new products to enter the market. But does this not share the same release schedule of MTG? Every season features new releases and innovations in gameplay, and yet millions of player cough up the required cash, make the investment and learn the new set of abilities and soon pull off sick combos with decks, all for the love of the game. I believe that if the product is good in its essence (as the titles referred to are) that there should be no problem in generating an astounding player and fan base... As for distribution; I firmly stick to my belief that if distribution and access to these products are re-thought that one would see an immense increase in followers and interest. Imagine being able to host a SC2 South-African tournament complete with judges and casts at the RAGE Expo, or any event for that matter. Where the avid fan who does not have access to all the international levels of gaming can also compete and share in the experience in a local capacity. Where income generated will somehow be paid back to Blizzard or Riot for supplying local servers. Where judges will need to invest and study to become qualified to host/judge such mathes. Along with this you will see all the relevant sponsors creeping in quickly endorsing their products/services and thus it could make for a good return on an investment. I believe it to be something to look into... Please do comment Thanks | ||
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theqat
United States2856 Posts
If anything, now (in the formative years of the category) is the time to carve out what esports are in comparison to normal sports, and if that means embracing the ever-changing games that esports professionals play, then so be it. The same skill sets by and large continue to apply over the course of new games in a given genre, so it's not like the players are going to become totally irrelevant as new games in their genre are introduced | ||
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Ricjames
Czech Republic1047 Posts
On May 03 2012 22:14 theqat wrote: Just because it contains the word "sport" doesn't mean esports have to carry all the same characteristics as sports. It's a different word, after all! If anything, now (in the formative years of the category) is the time to carve out what esports are in comparison to normal sports, and if that means embracing the ever-changing games that esports professionals play, then so be it. The same skill sets by and large continue to apply over the course of new games in a given genre, so it's not like the players are going to become totally irrelevant as new games in their genre are introduced Well that is correct and i would support that, but there is one big problem. The new games are becoming bigger and bigger crap. They are being made that even little kids can play it and it is simplier than elementary grade math. The quake 2 video above was pretty much showing my concern. As 26 years old who played games since his very childhood and have seen the evolution of games and gaming, it makes me really sad. I played Elder Scrolls Daggerfall (huge complicated world) when i could not even speak english and i had to use dictionary to even understand what is my quest and so on. Was i crying this game sucks, it is too hard and whatsover...no i actually enjoyed it quite a lot and it's one of the best gaming experience i've had. If the developers start to make decent games again, I am all for the innovation, but at this moment i don't really see any step forward. The Esports would be much easier to praise, if the games were made to be decent instead of new shiny graphics and all kind of shit you can think of in your head and then you find out you can't even set up stuff that you really want to have customized. I don't even want to mention Bnet 2.0. | ||
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awha
Denmark1358 Posts
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how2TL
1197 Posts
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RaiKageRyu
Canada4773 Posts
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