Intro: I'm a big football fan. My team is the 49er's. This post isn't about football or the 49ers. What I'm going to talk about is fan involvement. It's talked about a lot in football, but you don't hear about it as much in Esports.
How fans help win football games One of the great things about football is the level of fan involvement the live audiences in stadiums get. The noise level of cheering fans can greatly help your team, and I'm not talking about the intangible stuff like "pumping them up", which I'm sure does help. Let me explain.
To those of you who don't know football; when a team is on offense they have a limited amount of time to get a play off. To get a play off, most team's will huddle up, and then the quarterback will tell the rest of the offensive players the play they're going to run. Then the offense lines up on the line of scrimmage in front of the defense. The quarterback will look at how the defense has lined up against him and call audibles. Audibles are minor or major adjustments to the offensive play or formation that the quarter back yells out before he hikes the ball, and starts the play. Now they have to do all this in 40 seconds, or take a delay of game penalty and get pushed back five yards.
40 seconds sounds like a long time, but its not when the opposing teams home crowd is yelling so loud your players can't hear the quarterback in the huddle. Then by the time you finally let everyone know what play they're doing, the can't hear audibles and there's no time to call them.
The Seattle Seahawks are one of the greatest examples of this, in the NFL. The Seahawks finished the regular season 11-5 which was enough to get them into the playoffs. Now their record at home was 8-0 while away they were only 3-5. The Seattle Seahawks stadium gets so loud down on the field when their on defense that you can't understand someone shouting from over 5 feet away. This lead's to delay of game penalties and bad offensive plays because the opposing team doesn't have time to adjust or miss hears what they're suppose to be doing.
It's an undeniable fact that the Seattle Seahawks fans have a very real part in helping the team get into playoffs this year. That's why they're called the "12th" man on the field.
How this applies to Esports In Esports sound proofing is big on the player booths, and I agree you shouldn't be able to understand what the crowd is saying. It would be an unfair advantage if a player can hear someone shout proxy Stargate right above you. But players should and are able to hear the roar of the crowd.
If someone is proxying against your player, scream as loud as you can. He won't know what's happening exactly but, he'll hear the roar and maybe play a little more cautious thinking something might be up.
And it goes the other way too. If your player is proxying against someone be as quiet as a mouse, don't let the other player get any idea that something out of the norm is happening.
There's plenty of situations where the crowd can help out there favorite players. This increases crowd involvement and makes it more fun to spectate Esports live. I think that crowd involvement is essential in the growth of Esports when its so easy to just watch games on your computer.
How the casters can help encourage this Now it's important for casters to remain impartial, they can never say something like "Let him know whats going on." to the crowd. But they can let the crowd know its helping. "Wow this crowd is really letting Puma know something is up." Saying thing's like that will help make the crowd feel more involved and encourage this kind of behavior.
Conclusion All professional sports exist because of the fans. If you look at any major professional sport in the world, they will have fans that feel they are a part in their favorite teams victory. This needs to happen in Esports for it to grow to that level. Don't get me wrong buying a team's merchandise and watching their streams is a huge help to them being able to practice and win. But I want to be able to tell stories about how I lost my voice this weekend, but it was worth it because Stephano won!
I guess what I'm trying to say is; let's bring the home field advantage to Esports.
This doesn't work because fan favorites will get a huge advantage. Unlike the NFL, teams play half home games and half away games so things even out. Imagine if the NFL schedule had some teams playing 12 home games and some teams playing 12 away games.
I'm happy with the way that StarCraft matches are going right now. It's just a strategical game between two great players with no outside influence. I'd actually like to limit outside influence completely, if possible.
That's why people want LAN and the like, so the two players have as fair a game as possible.
Let me give you one reason from other experiences in sports.
I used to play paintball professionally back when the main formats were 7man and 10man. In these days, the game was all about the smart players who could understand the field so well that they could do things that seemed impossible, like using multiple barricades to create blind zones for them to move through to eliminate the other team. Although speed was at a premium, the intellect players still had a heavy role.
About 5-6 years ago, the community was convinced by a new league that had formed to adopt a new 5-man format, where pretty much everyone in the surrounding area(coaches,other players, spectators, the hot dog guy) could shout to the players. What this meant was that as people got comfortable to this, the "intellgent" side of the game washed up. No longer could you ghost through dead space in order to make a game-changing run through the team, because the opposing coach just says "xxx look here" and you die. It changed the game to 100% be about speed and how you listen to someone telling you what to do, instead of relying on well-learned knowledge and experience to be able to hear/see who was shooting where. Also, it was intended to make the crowd interact with the game; but what quickly happened is that the players/coaches realized that there is a reason the crows is IN THE CROWD not on the field, because they dont know jack ****, and would end up making incorrect calls or even counter-coaching(shouting misinformation to confuse the team). So players started to only listen to their recognized sideline coaches(which defeated the purpose of these rules entirely). 5 years later and after we have seen the sponsorship go out of the sport in an appaling way, the whole community is realizing the damage that has been done to the integrity of the sport and amendments are on way.
I post this because any side of "coaching/assistance" will dramatically unbalance and de-interest the competition. Part of the excitement of a proxy/exciting sneak play is "will the opponent scout it"? Entire championships have been decided because players with a certain "starsense" per-se, just can tell when something big is up, other cannot. I would hate to lose this from the game just so we can "involve the fans more".
Fans would just give up too much information. Drops/ Proxies and hidden bases become pointless if the opponent knows about it as opposed to them discovering it themselves. Not mention the fans giving up information about opponent builds. The same problems could be applied to providing misinformation.
Fan support outside the actual game is okay but during the game, it would be too much of a hindrance.
I'm here because I watched the 49ers at Seahawks game, wow what a collapse by the 49ers and you're right, the fans really made a difference because noone on the field could hear Kaepernick's calls!
Anyway, I don't think it would be good for eSports... in a way, the homefield advantage is already built into the game. It exists both in the maps that are played on (i.e., x map is good for Terran, y is good for Zerg) and in the idea of "defender's advantage."
Ignoring the fact that the replacement refs are the reason why the Seahawks are in the playoffs this year, not the fans, this idea is bad and you should feel bad.
On January 03 2013 04:34 BisuDagger wrote: This is horrible. I'm at a loss for words.
On the other hand, why doesn't everyone just scream there ass off at random times during the game to scare the crap out of the players playing then.
Something similar sometimes happens at middle school basketball games, where opposing fans will countdown a fake shotclock and confuse inexperienced kids. It's definitely a dick move.
The difference between SC2 and the NFL is incomplete information. There's trick plays in American football, but you're not actually hiding things the way you do in an RTS or MOBA. Disrupting people with noise isn't the same as giving away secret information, imo.
I think this happens more then you guys think. I remember an MLG where Huk rushed Mothership. The crowd cheers and Huk says "Don't worry that's Halo." Both players heard the crowd cheering, and I can't remember who Huk was playing, but as soon as he heard the crowd scream like that he knew something was up.
I'm not saying they should be able to understand what the crowd is saying. I'm saying that the crowd needs to realize the impact it can have by just making noise.
People definitely can scream at random times, it's just more crowd involvement, and this also already happens at tourneys like MLG. Other games are being played on stages close by, so I'm sure sometimes the cheers from other stages can be heard by the players.
The crowd cheering isn't suppose to be a surefire tell, the player will just hear the cheer and maybe try harder to scout, or throw up an extra spine crawler or cannon.
On January 03 2013 04:34 BisuDagger wrote: This is horrible. I'm at a loss for words.
On the other hand, why doesn't everyone just scream there ass off at random times during the game to scare the crap out of the players playing then.
Something similar sometimes happens at middle school basketball games, where opposing fans will countdown a fake shotclock and confuse inexperienced kids. It's definitely a dick move.
The difference between SC2 and the NFL is incomplete information. There's trick plays in American football, but you're not actually hiding things the way you do in an RTS or MOBA. Disrupting people with noise isn't the same as giving away secret information, imo.
1. Agree with first part, same thing with pickup games in the gym when someone not on your team calls for the ball... dick move.
2. True, I would elaborate and say that noise like the OP wants in SC2 is akin to telling the defense what play the offense is running.
On January 03 2013 07:10 Zektgn wrote: I think this happens more then you guys think. I remember an MLG where Huk rushed Mothership. The crowd cheers and Huk says "Don't worry that's Halo." Both players heard the crowd cheering, and I can't remember who Huk was playing, but as soon as he heard the crowd scream like that he knew something was up.
I'm not saying they should be able to understand what the crowd is saying. I'm saying that the crowd needs to realize the impact it can have by just making noise.
People definitely can scream at random times, it's just more crowd involvement, and this also already happens at tourneys like MLG. Other games are being played on stages close by, so I'm sure sometimes the cheers from other stages can be heard by the players.
The crowd cheering isn't suppose to be a surefire tell, the player will just hear the cheer and maybe try harder to scout, or throw up an extra spine crawler or cannon.
...And how is this supposed to be good? I DT rush in a PvZ. I sure as hell don't want the crowd to scream so that my opponent becomes more cautious. WTF this is a terrible idea.
How about if we told the spectators exactly what play the QB is calling in the huddle so they can yell it out and the defense would know exactly how to line up?
EPT
