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Hong Kong9179 Posts
On October 16 2012 22:40 wozzot wrote:
Let's take arguments that apply to commodities subject to physical scarcity and misuse them to describe digitally distributed products with negligible marginal cost yeahhh
Because the amount of human beings and their time and attention and money is not subject to scarcity, right? That's the market here, not the video games; read the OP. Even if the market was video games here, marginal cost is not negligible in any serious analysis of their market.
On October 16 2012 23:38 docvoc wrote:Show nested quote +On October 16 2012 21:47 T0fuuu wrote:
Damnit i thought it was as simple as having 16 drones for minerals and 6 for 2 gas :| This thread just got infinitely funnier haha, wp wp. I was reading and it was so serious, then I read this and lol-ed  To the OP, I disagree slightly, I don't believe that having many tournaments like we do is a detriment since most pros don't participate in the small ones, (ZEEK etc.) but rather only participate in large tournaments that tend to have a lot of sponsorships and viewers. Also we cannot increase the size of the scene without increasing the amount of tournaments, that is how the fighting games scene stays alive, lots of regional tournaments that have some of the talent at each, and all the talent at the country/worldwide ones.
I never claim that it is a detriment. I said that others claim that it is a detriment, and that they are wrong. Re-read the actual OP. I do agree with you in that the fighting game scene is an example of a scene 'doing it right.' They do not cry out for collusion and artificially restricted supply, but rather focus on increasing the scene as a whole instead.
On October 16 2012 21:42 killerdog wrote:
I think this is assuming that demand is going to rise linearly. My personal opinion is that starcraft is a game that requires significant investment (timewise) to be able to reach a playable level where you understand the game enough to watch it. Very few people who watch starcraft have never played it before, meaning your viewerbase is limited to people who have played the game. Starcraft has an image of being a game which requires a lot of skill to be able to play, and is a game designed for very competitive people, with little to no support for "casuals" compared to a game like league of legends or something like that.
This means that your potential audience is also limited to the "hardcore" gamers, or at least competitive people with casuals not really ever taking the leap to learn the game when there are much more attractive options available if you only want to play maybe a few games a week with friends. This could imply that starcraft is never going to reach the levels of viewers that more mainstream sports are because it is only a specific slice of the population who is "eligible" to become a serious viewer, meaning your demmand curve is incredibly skewed with a steep slope.
Just a point of view :p
This is valid on the level of just looking at StarCraft. I'll submit that because we only have a small percentage of the population currently involved with competitive gaming, it should at least be tried because the potential audience out there is vast and because the alternative is worse and probably made illegal through antitrust regulation. The goal of it all is to grow ESPORTS out of passion and not monopolistic concerns, if we suddenly think it's impossible just because have reduced viewership then the goal is lost.
It must be understood though that my analysis here isn't strictly limited to StarCraft competition; it takes the entire ESPORTS economy and analyses it as a whole. It is interesting to note here, a point which came up in discussing this with a friend before I published this here: that the growth of other competitive gaming titles and especially a tournament event series like IPL investing in League of Legends makes it substantially more feasible for them to run a StarCraft II tournament alongside a League tournament because of the reduced cost of running production for a multi-game event rather than a dedicated StarCraft event. Growing the ESPORTS scene as a whole improves the viability of potentially all of the other existent titles, up to a point.
On October 16 2012 23:35 andrewlt wrote:
The economy is sluggish but that should little affect a market whose main target demographic is unemployed, anyway. And you can't grow the market beyond this current demographic if fans continue to insist on tournament structures that are very unfriendly time-wise to anybody holding a full time job.
Fixing these tournament structures might be part of the investment made. I've actually sort of blogged about this previously here: On Tournament Design.
On October 16 2012 19:51 Lorizean wrote:
I was a bit confused sometimes by your use of "increasing/decreasing supply and demand". Sometimes you are talking about curve shifts (the classical meaning of an increase and decrease) and sometimes you are talking about movements along a curve (i.e. increases in quantity demanded and supplied). Also, when you talk about decreasing production you have a shift in the demand curve - which is wrong. (or are you talking about a "maximum price" model and are just showing the overall effect?)
I think a tl;dr would be that, assuming a classical economic model and ceteris paribus, there is no point in making any regulations at all - a classic free market argument (basically, if people were actually supplying too high a quantity, their product wouldn't be met by quantity demanded and they would go out of business anyways).
The only way I can see an economic standpoint behind a "restricting the supply" argument is that somehow an increase in supply (meaning a shift in the curve) reduces the demand (meaning ceteris paribus no longer applies) - a standpoint which I find hard to get behind.
Sorry I'm a bit rusty. I'm showing the overall effect after people who cannot consume the good at that price level drop out of the economy or enter a black market.
I never say that "restricting the supply" is a good thing. I agree that it makes no sense, but it is what people in ESPORTS want to do.
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Great read, thank you!
Can't say I have much to add.
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Good blog, but I can't help and point out that, at least in my case, seeing multiple tournaments that have a similar size (in viewers, production level, quality players) going on at the same time just makes me feel like not caring much about any of them to watch, which explains why I only watch the premier tournaments, sc2 would lose it's magic if I did otherwise, not sure if many think that way, it's kinda like it would feel if we had flash or mvp streaming regularly, it would make watching almost any sc2 content mundane and uninteresting.Of course this doesn't mean that I believe in oversaturation, nonetheless, perhaps there's a need for change in how the system works, watching a lot of the same except at a different url just doesn't work, despite how hard it is to be unique.
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I expected a blog about whether 17 workers or 25 was a horrible mistake that people should be punished for... what I read was instead far better, and quite thought provoking.
So long as the demand exists for tournaments, they will exist.
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Sorry, I´m not a native english speaker and you as writer failed to meet my particular demand to make things understandable.
It´s probably really nice you got some economics or statistics classes, but I can´t be arsed to read through 10 pages of wikipedia to read 3 pages of text(your text minus the pictures).
That oversaturation is bullshit as you can´t force tournament organizers to just stop is self evident. The problem is more or less the saminess of the tournaments. But it doesn´t matter, I couldn´t follow your very verbous discursion on the scientific aspects of oversaturation.
User was warned for this post
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This article is amazing! I will offer my own insight once I have a chance to fully digest it all. This sort of article requires at least 2 reads!
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I think the point being made is that scarcity is relative, and in terms of people in the world... not particularly a limiting factor.
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Hong Kong9179 Posts
On October 17 2012 03:29 Froadac wrote:
I think the point being made is that scarcity is relative, and in terms of people in the world... not particularly a limiting factor.
Even on a smaller level, like say getting the gaming audience interested in competitive gaming as opposed to the hostility they exhibit currently, demand-side increases are very meaningful. We are still a subset of a subset of a subset of the population. This shouldn't be used as an excuse to engage in supply-side restrictions because 'the scene is too small,' but it should rather motivate us to expand the scene and the audience instead.
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On October 16 2012 18:49 itsjustatank wrote:Show nested quote +On October 16 2012 18:44 Fyodor wrote:
1) There are 14 competing tournaments in Starcraft 2
2) We need a single tournament so good that everyone will tune in!
3) There are 15 competing tournaments in Starcraft 2 And your impact to this is.. what exactly? If you imply it is bad, what I've written serves as built-in offense against this. Supply collusion in restraint of trade is a market failure. Increased competition within any market can only be a benefit, unless you are a monopolist.
This is just an assertion based on unarticulated assumptions. First of all, what is beneficial and to whom? (I'm not trying to argue about free markets, let's focus on esports.)
A better product at a better price produced more cost effectively would be a benefit. Larger market would be a benefit. So far competition has done little if anything to affect these things. These things were happening anyway due to the vision and passion of content producers. Most consumers seem to feel like meaningful improvement has stagnated, and that's as "competition" has increased.
Maybe it's just a phase, but I don't see economic competition as a driving force. The things underpinning esports are passion for the content and a vague promise of a larger market at some point in the future. Esports is a hobby pretending to be a business because it's the best way for it to prolong its existence as a hobby.
(Like you say elsewhere, this value statement doesn't change any of the calculations but tell me I'm wrong.)
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Hong Kong9179 Posts
On October 17 2012 03:50 EatThePath wrote:Show nested quote +On October 16 2012 18:49 itsjustatank wrote:On October 16 2012 18:44 Fyodor wrote:
1) There are 14 competing tournaments in Starcraft 2
2) We need a single tournament so good that everyone will tune in!
3) There are 15 competing tournaments in Starcraft 2 And your impact to this is.. what exactly? If you imply it is bad, what I've written serves as built-in offense against this. Supply collusion in restraint of trade is a market failure. Increased competition within any market can only be a benefit, unless you are a monopolist. This is just an assertion based on unarticulated assumptions. First of all, what is beneficial and to whom? (I'm not trying to argue about free markets, let's focus on esports.) A better product at a better price produced more cost effectively would be a benefit. Larger market would be a benefit. So far competition has done little if anything to affect these things. These things were happening anyway due to the vision and passion of content producers. Most consumers seem to feel like meaningful improvement has stagnated, and that's as "competition" has increased. Maybe it's just a phase, but I don't see economic competition as a driving force. The things underpinning esports are passion for the content and a vague promise of a larger market at some point in the future. Esports is a hobby pretending to be a business because it's the best way for it to prolong its existence as a hobby. (Like you say elsewhere, this value statement doesn't change any of the calculations but tell me I'm wrong.)
Concerted restriction of supply on an industry-wide basis and limitation of entry into the market, which is what people who point towards oversaturation want, is a market failure and also illegal.
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I think that people are taking the feeling of "wow, there is so much content!" and because it is unfamiliar and perhaps uncomfortable territory, turning it into a negative. There are definitely some inefficiencies that can be smoothed out, but in general terms a supply side restriction is not the answer.
I think that you have accurately knocked the support out from under the Oversaturation argument, thank you.
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On October 17 2012 03:58 itsjustatank wrote:Show nested quote +On October 17 2012 03:50 EatThePath wrote:On October 16 2012 18:49 itsjustatank wrote:On October 16 2012 18:44 Fyodor wrote:
1) There are 14 competing tournaments in Starcraft 2
2) We need a single tournament so good that everyone will tune in!
3) There are 15 competing tournaments in Starcraft 2 And your impact to this is.. what exactly? If you imply it is bad, what I've written serves as built-in offense against this. Supply collusion in restraint of trade is a market failure. Increased competition within any market can only be a benefit, unless you are a monopolist. This is just an assertion based on unarticulated assumptions. First of all, what is beneficial and to whom? (I'm not trying to argue about free markets, let's focus on esports.) A better product at a better price produced more cost effectively would be a benefit. Larger market would be a benefit. So far competition has done little if anything to affect these things. These things were happening anyway due to the vision and passion of content producers. Most consumers seem to feel like meaningful improvement has stagnated, and that's as "competition" has increased. Maybe it's just a phase, but I don't see economic competition as a driving force. The things underpinning esports are passion for the content and a vague promise of a larger market at some point in the future. Esports is a hobby pretending to be a business because it's the best way for it to prolong its existence as a hobby. (Like you say elsewhere, this value statement doesn't change any of the calculations but tell me I'm wrong.) Concerted restriction of supply on an industry-wide basis and limitation of entry into the market, which is what people who point towards oversaturation want, is a market failure and also illegal.
...? This doesn't address anything I said about competition.
I don't disagree with you about the proper way to proceed, but that's not what I was talking about. But if you want to take it there, I don't think you can evaluate the economics of esports as though it were a generic commercial enterprise. I would refer to established sports industries if you want to talk about it.
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Hong Kong9179 Posts
On October 17 2012 04:32 EatThePath wrote:Show nested quote +On October 17 2012 03:58 itsjustatank wrote:On October 17 2012 03:50 EatThePath wrote:On October 16 2012 18:49 itsjustatank wrote:On October 16 2012 18:44 Fyodor wrote:
1) There are 14 competing tournaments in Starcraft 2
2) We need a single tournament so good that everyone will tune in!
3) There are 15 competing tournaments in Starcraft 2 And your impact to this is.. what exactly? If you imply it is bad, what I've written serves as built-in offense against this. Supply collusion in restraint of trade is a market failure. Increased competition within any market can only be a benefit, unless you are a monopolist. This is just an assertion based on unarticulated assumptions. First of all, what is beneficial and to whom? (I'm not trying to argue about free markets, let's focus on esports.) A better product at a better price produced more cost effectively would be a benefit. Larger market would be a benefit. So far competition has done little if anything to affect these things. These things were happening anyway due to the vision and passion of content producers. Most consumers seem to feel like meaningful improvement has stagnated, and that's as "competition" has increased. Maybe it's just a phase, but I don't see economic competition as a driving force. The things underpinning esports are passion for the content and a vague promise of a larger market at some point in the future. Esports is a hobby pretending to be a business because it's the best way for it to prolong its existence as a hobby. (Like you say elsewhere, this value statement doesn't change any of the calculations but tell me I'm wrong.) Concerted restriction of supply on an industry-wide basis and limitation of entry into the market, which is what people who point towards oversaturation want, is a market failure and also illegal. ...? This doesn't address anything I said about competition. I don't disagree with you about the proper way to proceed, but that's not what I was talking about. But if you want to take it there, I don't think you can evaluate the economics of esports as though it were a generic commercial enterprise. I would refer to established sports industries if you want to talk about it.
Established sports industries have statutory exemptions to antitrust law built over decades of lobbying effort and billions of dollars paid. I'm also not treating this on an individual company (microeconomic) basis, but rather putting a macroeconomic perspective on things.
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On October 17 2012 02:36 Mataza wrote:
Sorry, I´m not a native english speaker and you as writer failed to meet my particular demand to make things understandable.
It´s probably really nice you got some economics or statistics classes, but I can´t be arsed to read through 10 pages of wikipedia to read 3 pages of text(your text minus the pictures).
That oversaturation is bullshit as you can´t force tournament organizers to just stop is self evident. The problem is more or less the saminess of the tournaments. But it doesn´t matter, I couldn´t follow your very verbous discursion on the scientific aspects of oversaturation.
User was warned for this post
its ok
im really stupid and I can't read it either, but I'm a native speaker
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Not many people get to put their first macroeconomics to such good use. Nice.
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I just read through your replies and your other thread about tournament design. To me, it highlights the problems the industry is facing rather than solving it. The considerations are too academic, where tournament design focuses more on winning a forum argument on who the best player is rather than focusing on something that will get more spectators hyped up to watch. Similarly, the assumptions made on the demand here is more for the simplicity of capturing people in graph form rather than trying to figure out how people act on real life.
Let's take a mainstream sports league like the NFL as an example. The NFL has a 17-week regular season. After taking into account both the preseason and postseason, the offseason lasts for almost half the year. Yet the NFL is now the most popular sport in the US and has the most valuable teams, outstripping competing leagues like MLB, the NBA and the NHL, leagues that have a much larger international fan base than the NFL.
What the NFL does better than the other leagues is creating must see TV. Your team only has 16 regular season games each year lasting a little above 3 hours each. That takes a smaller time commitment than watching 162 baseball games. The schedule is fan friendly. Your team either plays on a Sunday (a weekend), a Monday (ease the doldrums of starting a work week) or a Thursday (happy hour). Neither the schedule nor the playoff format is the fairest. But it is easy to understand, simple for casual viewers to join in and ensures even fans of the weaker team have reasons to tune in and hope.
In contrast, let's take the GSL, the most prestigious SC2 league in the entire planet. This may not be completely accurate as I don't follow the league as much anymore. Two to three times a week, during the round robin stages, we have four Bo3 series. Because of the variability in game length and results, it is difficult for fans to know precisely when their favorite player will start their games unless their player is first in line. And since these marathon sessions can last more than 6 hours, it is difficult for any employed person to watch the entire thing, even if they live in Korea.
The other tournaments suffer from some similar problems but also have their unique problems. MLG consumes an entire weekend, starting from Friday. The Dreamhacks do something similar. The NASL post pool play tournament that I followed back in the day did the same thing. It's impossible for busy people to plan a time in advance for when they can tune in and watch their favorite player(s).
Oversaturation is a problem not just in terms of the amount of tournaments. It's also a problem in terms of the sheer number of games many tournaments have. There's no way the average working adult can follow so many games. It is difficult to jump in and out of spectating without feeling totally lost. When that happens and when tournaments happen very often, it is very easy for someone to just skip a tournament with the justification that another one will be around the corner anyway. It's how current fans can easily become detached from the scene as they keep finding reasons to skip a tournament rather than tune in.
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Hong Kong9179 Posts
On October 17 2012 06:12 andrewlt wrote:
I just read through your replies and your other thread about tournament design. To me, it highlights the problems the industry is facing rather than solving it. The considerations are too academic, where tournament design focuses more on winning a forum argument on who the best player is rather than focusing on something that will get more spectators hyped up to watch. Similarly, the assumptions made on the demand here is more for the simplicity of capturing people in graph form rather than trying to figure out how people act on real life.
Let's take a mainstream sports league like the NFL as an example. The NFL has a 17-week regular season. After taking into account both the preseason and postseason, the offseason lasts for almost half the year. Yet the NFL is now the most popular sport in the US and has the most valuable teams, outstripping competing leagues like MLB, the NBA and the NHL, leagues that have a much larger international fan base than the NFL.
What the NFL does better than the other leagues is creating must see TV. Your team only has 16 regular season games each year lasting a little above 3 hours each. That takes a smaller time commitment than watching 162 baseball games. The schedule is fan friendly. Your team either plays on a Sunday (a weekend), a Monday (ease the doldrums of starting a work week) or a Thursday (happy hour). Neither the schedule nor the playoff format is the fairest. But it is easy to understand, simple for casual viewers to join in and ensures even fans of the weaker team have reasons to tune in and hope.
In contrast, let's take the GSL, the most prestigious SC2 league in the entire planet. This may not be completely accurate as I don't follow the league as much anymore. Two to three times a week, during the round robin stages, we have four Bo3 series. Because of the variability in game length and results, it is difficult for fans to know precisely when their favorite player will start their games unless their player is first in line. And since these marathon sessions can last more than 6 hours, it is difficult for any employed person to watch the entire thing, even if they live in Korea.
The other tournaments suffer from some similar problems but also have their unique problems. MLG consumes an entire weekend, starting from Friday. The Dreamhacks do something similar. The NASL post pool play tournament that I followed back in the day did the same thing. It's impossible for busy people to plan a time in advance for when they can tune in and watch their favorite player(s).
Oversaturation is a problem not just in terms of the amount of tournaments. It's also a problem in terms of the sheer number of games many tournaments have. There's no way the average working adult can follow so many games. It is difficult to jump in and out of spectating without feeling totally lost. When that happens and when tournaments happen very often, it is very easy for someone to just skip a tournament with the justification that another one will be around the corner anyway. It's how current fans can easily become detached from the scene as they keep finding reasons to skip a tournament rather than tune in.
Fixing bad tournament procedure is not the same as constricting supply in restraint of trade. It's simply putting out a better product.It would be good for tournament event series organizers to think up of ways to make their events more understandable and enjoyable, and this is part of my argument for shifting the demand curve to the right. Making it more accessible will allow for more people to enter the market and consume.
The problem is that people who point towards oversaturation do not do this. They don't care about the long term growth of the economy. Rather, they point towards oversaturation and use it as an excuse to establish market failure in the economy. A monopolist or cartelist view would sacrifice a larger market simply to have an artificially smaller yet more 'stable' market where they have unrestricted pricing power because of market share and restriction of supply.
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i thought this blog was about oversaturating your mineral lines
but i did read the whole thing before posting 
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Hell yeah, chemistry! Supersaturated solutions!
Summary with my thoughts: Let the market decide how many tournaments go on and give the (1) audience a choice of what tournaments they want to watch and (2) the players a choice of what tournament to go to. It forces quality from the tournaments when they have to compete for viewer eyes, and gives more availability for players to get some respectable finishes when they choose a smaller tournament with less big names in it. You bring up a nice (3) of multiple games competing to engage an audience and get them hooked on watching. So boost the demand for the best players competing in the most well-run tournaments, and less moans about how the supply is so high.
On October 16 2012 21:47 T0fuuu wrote:
Damnit i thought it was as simple as having 16 drones for minerals and 6 for 2 gas :|
Even then, saturation according to our adjusted definition proves you dead wrong. There's a colloquial definition here that conflates the term to almost meaninglessness. At the risk of garnering responses that go completely off topic, I will explain. Supersaturation is more solute that the given solvent can dissolve. Worker saturation is more workers than the mineral patches can be mined from. Aka., extra workers do not increase the minerals mined in a given time frame, but function as undissolved salt in the bottom of the glass, a supersaturated solution. From obtained graphs, this occurs at 24 workers. Adding on workers after that gives no increase in the mineral mining rate for that base. The perversion that happens now a days is in regards of marginal efficiency. The point when adding on an extra worker gives you not the same increase in mining rate as the previous one. This occurs right around 16 workers. So all these gamers and casters talk about over-saturated bases that are undersaturated but in a 16-24 region of low marginal efficiency. Kind of a case in point in people misusing the term oversaturated so the definition becomes conflated.
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On October 17 2012 04:46 itsjustatank wrote:Show nested quote +On October 17 2012 04:32 EatThePath wrote:On October 17 2012 03:58 itsjustatank wrote:On October 17 2012 03:50 EatThePath wrote:On October 16 2012 18:49 itsjustatank wrote:On October 16 2012 18:44 Fyodor wrote:
1) There are 14 competing tournaments in Starcraft 2
2) We need a single tournament so good that everyone will tune in!
3) There are 15 competing tournaments in Starcraft 2 And your impact to this is.. what exactly? If you imply it is bad, what I've written serves as built-in offense against this. Supply collusion in restraint of trade is a market failure. Increased competition within any market can only be a benefit, unless you are a monopolist. This is just an assertion based on unarticulated assumptions. First of all, what is beneficial and to whom? (I'm not trying to argue about free markets, let's focus on esports.) A better product at a better price produced more cost effectively would be a benefit. Larger market would be a benefit. So far competition has done little if anything to affect these things. These things were happening anyway due to the vision and passion of content producers. Most consumers seem to feel like meaningful improvement has stagnated, and that's as "competition" has increased. Maybe it's just a phase, but I don't see economic competition as a driving force. The things underpinning esports are passion for the content and a vague promise of a larger market at some point in the future. Esports is a hobby pretending to be a business because it's the best way for it to prolong its existence as a hobby. (Like you say elsewhere, this value statement doesn't change any of the calculations but tell me I'm wrong.) Concerted restriction of supply on an industry-wide basis and limitation of entry into the market, which is what people who point towards oversaturation want, is a market failure and also illegal. ...? This doesn't address anything I said about competition. I don't disagree with you about the proper way to proceed, but that's not what I was talking about. But if you want to take it there, I don't think you can evaluate the economics of esports as though it were a generic commercial enterprise. I would refer to established sports industries if you want to talk about it. Established sports industries have statutory exemptions to antitrust law built over decades of lobbying effort and billions of dollars paid. I'm also not treating this on an individual company (microeconomic) basis, but rather putting a macroeconomic perspective on things.
I appreciate that, I do. But I'm confused by your responses. Are you dodging me because you don't want to be wrong? Do you think this isn't worth discussing? Or do you not understand what I'm saying?
Competition is not in effect in an appreciable way.
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EPT
