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When I first found out about starcraft II, I was learning chess. It was fun, it has some similarities to starcraft. While I was messing around with chess, I got into watching some professional games. If I wasn't trying to improve, I'd say chess games are boring as hell. To watch a chess game if you are not trying to understand why and what is happening is one of the most boring tasks in the world.
Now, again, I think a similar thing happens in starcraft. I personally don't like watching starcraft games, I watch (or used to) to improve. I don't know about you guys, but I'm pretty sure you feel the same (jugding by the number of viewers on twitch).
If a game is boring to watch, it means less money involved, which means less players playing it professionally. I never got into the chess scene, but I highly doubt there are many players getting paid to play.
If watching boringcraft wasn't enough, we have another problem: blizzard wants us to pay to play their game. I can play soccer/baseball or basketball without paying anything. A ESports game should be of public ownership, I don't think a game will evolve if it is owned and manipulated however a company wants.
Now if we take a look at dota and league of legends, these games, even though I don't think they are, are much more entertainable to watch. People can cheer for a team, they don't know what the heck is going on, yet they keep cheering. The game isn't as square as chess and SC2, there are as many strategies in dota as there is in football. It's a game with many variables, you can't write what you are going to do in dota/soccer on your notebook, like sc2 and chess build orders. Thus, making it fun to watch.
TL;DR: I think StarCraft II will never be as big as DotA, because it is only fun to watch if you are learning (like chess). For the casual viewer it is boring. Plus, we have to pay blizzard if we want to play SC2. I don't have to pay fifa if I want to play soccer casually.
  
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United States10213 Posts
starcraft 2 is already bigger than dota imo... BW was bigger than any other video game at the time, at least in korea. it was the biggest WCG event as well.
i think you are trying to make your comparison to something like league of legends, then yes. MOBA games? yes. but not DotA specifically.
also the player thinks SC is boring because it is just a difficult game to master. LoL skill cap is miles below that of SC. viewers are thus much more drawn to LoL because they can just copy what that player does and get better. its almost impossible to instantly get better at SC just by copying someone. you need their mechanics as much as their game sense and style of play.
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What are the numbers on SC2 players (not viewers) these days?
Just curious because Dota2 has 3.5Million "unique" players every month 
I put unique in quotations because I think that that probably includes people with multiple accounts.
E: I believe max concurrent players is around 1/10 of that, a bit less. Over 300,000 though.
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Hardcore game will never be as big as casual game and sc2 has tried to casualize it's hardcore 1v1 mode but removed the actual casual things casual players play
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I don't think it has something to do with the difficulty to master, I'm as good in sc2 as I am in dota, but I don't think watching starcraft is fun unless I'm trying to improve and playing it competitively. I could sit down and watch a dota match, as for starcraft, now that I stopped trying to get to GM... its not as fun.
Do koreans use pirated broodwar copies? I know for sure that dota is big in china, brazil and russia because of the piracy rates, which are very high.
Another point proving that paid esports game = bad for the game, good for the company.
I think blizzard is being greedy but I gotta give them some credit, blizzard world editor created so many new genres. Tower defense and hero arena are the ones that I'm pretty sure got popularized (and probably invented) by the world editor.
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On June 11 2013 04:07 rauk wrote:
Hardcore game will never be as big as casual game and sc2 has tried to casualize it's hardcore 1v1 mode but removed the actual casual things casual players play
I agree with that. Even though I think dota is more competitive than LoL for X reasons, I still think DotA is more casual than SC2, because a newbie can have fun on his first DotA 2 game. As for starcraft, it doesn't get fun until you know what you're doing.
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dota 1 + dota 2 easily surpasses sc2 in numbers.
Personally, I got bored of sc2 after a few months, but continued to watch for like a year.
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I disagree that watching sc2 cant be fun.
- Sure u need to be somewhat skilled (lets say platinum ) to understand it, and recognize skill if u see it
- I think you need to be somewhat into the scene to know some progamers and be able to cheer for them
OR just watch it for the protoss tears
Thats about it i dont think you need more to enjoy some starcraft
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I do watch fewer and fewer games these days. Heck, the reason I started watching Dota2 and LoL was to learn about them. These games might sound simple, but they really aren't. There's a lot more to them than meets the eye and this kind of stuff wasn't meant to be mainstream to begin with.
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On June 11 2013 04:04 Sn0_Man wrote:What are the numbers on SC2 players (not viewers) these days? Just curious because Dota2 has 3.5Million "unique" players every month I put unique in quotations because I think that that probably includes people with multiple accounts. E: I believe max concurrent players is around 1/10 of that, a bit less. Over 300,000 though.
You're saying the average dota 2 player has 10 accounts? What what whaaaaaaat?
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On June 11 2013 04:47 jrkirby wrote:Show nested quote +On June 11 2013 04:04 Sn0_Man wrote:What are the numbers on SC2 players (not viewers) these days? Just curious because Dota2 has 3.5Million "unique" players every month I put unique in quotations because I think that that probably includes people with multiple accounts. E: I believe max concurrent players is around 1/10 of that, a bit less. Over 300,000 though. You're saying the average dota 2 player has 10 accounts? What what whaaaaaaat?
No, I'm saying over the course of the last month 3.5 Million players have played dota 2 (although I think this particular figure is mildly inflated by secondary accounts etc).
The MOST players on Dota 2 at a specific instant in the last month was somewhere between 300,00 and 350,000.
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Ya but if you want to play soccer and basketball you still have to pay for shoes a ball and you need a court to play on with a basketball hoop. Granted there are costs to playing sc2 and Bw you can't say playing soccer and basketball is completely free
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Also i think hots is a huge step into the right direction i see no reason to quit starcraft right now in my opinion its more fun to watch and play then ever before.
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I watch StarCraft 2 the same way as what I would watch a rugby match. I don't watch rugby because I want to get better, heck, I don't even play rugby. It is just fun to watch. Same with StarCraft, I watch it because it is fun to watch, not to get better. I watch tutorial video's to get better.
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If a game is boring to watch, it means less money involved, which means less players playing it professionally. I never got into the chess scene, but I highly doubt there are many players getting paid to play.
There are about 2 million competitive chess players in the world. The average earnings of a professional chess player is $35,000, according to SimplyHired.com
See, I find dota and soccer boring to watch. It is a difference in taste.
SC2 probably is not for you, and how it sounds, chess might not be your cup of tea either. You are right that the masses prefer a form of entertainment where they can put their brains on hold, because this is the state they are used too.
blizzard wants us to pay to play their game. I can play soccer/baseball or basketball without paying anything.
Because baseballs grow on trees, well baseball bats actually do, but they still charge me everytime in that friggin store. Must be an awesome place where you live.
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On June 11 2013 04:47 jrkirby wrote:Show nested quote +On June 11 2013 04:04 Sn0_Man wrote:What are the numbers on SC2 players (not viewers) these days? Just curious because Dota2 has 3.5Million "unique" players every month I put unique in quotations because I think that that probably includes people with multiple accounts. E: I believe max concurrent players is around 1/10 of that, a bit less. Over 300,000 though. You're saying the average dota 2 player has 10 accounts? What what whaaaaaaat?
Yes actually, I have like 12 or so. I have about 60 invites and every now and then I just decide to start a new account and work it in to the higher brackets. Most of the less casual dota players i know have multiple accounts, usually to avoid low prio or chat bans.
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On June 11 2013 03:48 DW-Unrec wrote:
TL;DR: I think StarCraft II will never be as big as DotA, because it is only fun to watch if you are learning (like chess). For the casual viewer it is boring. Plus, we have to pay blizzard if we want to play SC2. I don't have to pay fifa if I want to play soccer casually.
You try walking in to a shop and taking a copy of FIFA 13 out of it without paying...... I promise you that you will suddenly find its not free.
If you play in any organised soccer league in the world, the team you play for has to PAY to play in the league, most of them charge their players a small amount every week to cover the costs of running the team, hiring a training ground etc. I consider playing soccer for a team, playing casually, and you have to pay for it. Now if you just want to go to a field and kick a ball about, thats free, except for the football boots and the football itself. If you want to just have a mess about in SC2 with your friends, thats cool but you have to think about the game client as the ball..... you can't play football without a football, someone had to pay for that. You can't play starcraft without owning starcraft, you can however watch it for free..... there isn't much football you can watch for free. Most of it is on subscription only channels, if you want to watch the premier league, you HAVE to pay or get it illegally, you dont have to do so for starcraft, especially since they just release SPAWNING
Yeah, basically you have no idea what you are talking about. Spawning allows you to get access to the full game FOR FREE when in a party with your friends who have purchased the game. So basically, to play football with your friends, someone had to pay for the football, to play starcraft with your friends, someone had to purchase starcraft... hang on..... I think thats the same thing!
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Have you tried watching Dota or League?
Boring as hell...the point is that ANY game is going to be boring unless you are significantly invested in it. I used to go to football games and yawn myself to tears. Nothing in it for me. But as soon as I started to learn the rules the game became significantly more interesting to me.
And almost always the things that excite me the most are the nuances. Learn to love the mechanics of the game and appreciate clean play and there are endless things to look for.
If you really want to know why the matches seem boring, it's because of a lack of storylines.
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On June 11 2013 04:14 Incze wrote:
dota 1 + dota 2 easily surpasses sc2 in numbers.
Personally, I got bored of sc2 after a few months, but continued to watch for like a year.
He's talking about viewership, and I don't see any dota 1 streams. Streamwise, I'm pretty sure sc2 surpasses dota 2.
As for the OP, I've only watched SC2 for entertainment, never for study.
I also find LoL boring to watch (and I've played a decent number of games in LoL, maybe a little over 100). People are entertained by different things, and for many, SC2 is obviously entertaining.
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On June 11 2013 04:11 DW-Unrec wrote:Show nested quote +On June 11 2013 04:07 rauk wrote:
Hardcore game will never be as big as casual game and sc2 has tried to casualize it's hardcore 1v1 mode but removed the actual casual things casual players play I agree with that. Even though I think dota is more competitive than LoL for X reasons, I still think DotA is more casual than SC2, because a newbie can have fun on his first DotA 2 game. As for starcraft, it doesn't get fun until you know what you're doing.
This is exactly right as far as using casual in this term. OP did not even realize his own bias when describing the issue and tried to make some other explanation fit his inherent enjoyment of one thing over another. I enjoy watching high level sc2 and chess, and Im not trying to improve at either. (to be fair im competent at both, though Im around 2200~ in chess id say im barely 1500~ in sc2 elo lol, i still enjoy watching both equally)
You have to understand what's going on to enjoy something. It's almost trivial to understand what's going on in a dota game, sure there's alot of depth that isnt directly observable but it's still pretty easy to enjoy with very little knowledge. But imo you have to be at a higher relative level of understanding to enjoy something like sc2 (but that's just my opinion and other people could see it different)
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Starcraft 2, DotA, LoL, Warcraft 3 and Chess are all pretty good games if you ask me.
The competition and population of Starcraft 2 however, is constantly growing and it's a good sign.
I used to dislike Starcraft 2 a lot before (I played mostly Warcraft 3 and DotA then) because I thought it was boring, but after watching a few games and Husky I started to love Starcraft 2, and even saved up lunch money just to get Wings of Liberity.
As a DotA player for 7 years (And counting), I find that Starcraft 2 has a lot of excitement in it even in simple matches, because of the fact that even 1 mistake can easily cost you the entire game (For team games, 1 mistake/death from 1 player is still costly, but in Starcraft 2, 1 wrong move and it's thousands of dollars gone), something that's pretty rare to see in many games. Also, the skill level required in a Starcraft 2 game is simply amazing, and what better way than to see players duke it out in a 1v1.
Comparing Starcraft 2 to DotA is very much like comparing two different things in my opinion.
Comparing Starcraft 2 To DotA Is Pretty Much Like Comparing Two Completely Different Things:
DotA: Controlling 1 Hero and possibly some extra Units
Starcraft 2: Controlling all 'Heroes', all Units, all Creep Spawns, Income, etc.
Both games are quite awesome though, they just have different aspects.
Just like the time I started watching Warcraft 3, it looked boring at first, but after a while it actually became more interesting than watching other types of games.
That's probably what drawn me to the Starcraft 2 too, plus it helped improved my DotA skills.
PS: My friends and I watch a lot of Starcraft 2 streams almost daily, compared to other streams so it's pretty much the other way around for me.
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I kind of agree, but i don't think it's a problem, that's the nature of a triple A rts and starcraft 2 i a damn good one.
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You can play football without purchasing a ball, now thats impressive.
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United Kingdom14103 Posts
lol I find both SC2 and DotA incredibly interesting to watch.
I've also been watching both SC2 and DotA since before I knew how to play Edit: actually started playing properly (watching TI 1 and watching earlier MLGs and BW).
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Personally, I found SC2 boring to watch quite quickly. It's not that you have to be super invested in trying to improve or anything, you can watch SC2 as a casual player, far more so than MOBAs IMO where you have to know the heroes to understand the compositions, SC2 you can pretty much go "More red dots, this is going well for red".
SC2 is boring to watch because the game plays out in a boring way. I haven't watched much since HotS so maybe it's better now, but it was so boring at the end of WoL. One player passive macro, other player doing 100% standard harass. If the harass failed, passive player wins in eventual A-move battle. If harasser succeeds, macro player economy falls apart and GGs.
I always found BW far more interesting to watch competitive games in, and I was never even close to good at it. SC2 I was at least high platinum at.
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On June 11 2013 08:36 LlamaNamedOsama wrote:Show nested quote +On June 11 2013 04:14 Incze wrote:
dota 1 + dota 2 easily surpasses sc2 in numbers.
Personally, I got bored of sc2 after a few months, but continued to watch for like a year. He's talking about viewership, and I don't see any dota 1 streams. Streamwise, I'm pretty sure sc2 surpasses dota 2. As for the OP, I've only watched SC2 for entertainment, never for study. I also find LoL boring to watch (and I've played a decent number of games in LoL, maybe a little over 100). People are entertained by different things, and for many, SC2 is obviously entertaining.
Dota 2 is USUALLY surpassed by SC2, but during huge Dota 2 events or during random super hype matches it shoots up and passes SC2. We got up to 80k for a Liquid vs Na'vi match that was just in a fairly small online cup. And The International 2, last year's biggest Dota 2 tournament, was 567,000 concurrent viewers including in-client, all Twitch streams, and the Chinese stream. This year's TI will beat that pretty considerably.
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On June 11 2013 04:53 Sn0_Man wrote:Show nested quote +On June 11 2013 04:47 jrkirby wrote:On June 11 2013 04:04 Sn0_Man wrote:What are the numbers on SC2 players (not viewers) these days? Just curious because Dota2 has 3.5Million "unique" players every month I put unique in quotations because I think that that probably includes people with multiple accounts. E: I believe max concurrent players is around 1/10 of that, a bit less. Over 300,000 though. You're saying the average dota 2 player has 10 accounts? What what whaaaaaaat? No, I'm saying over the course of the last month 3.5 Million players have played dota 2 (although I think this particular figure is mildly inflated by secondary accounts etc). The MOST players on Dota 2 at a specific instant in the last month was somewhere between 300,00 and 350,000.
midly inflated. lol. i have like 7 accounts or so, and im not even playing a whole lot.
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On June 11 2013 21:00 KalWarkov wrote:Show nested quote +On June 11 2013 04:53 Sn0_Man wrote:On June 11 2013 04:47 jrkirby wrote:On June 11 2013 04:04 Sn0_Man wrote:What are the numbers on SC2 players (not viewers) these days? Just curious because Dota2 has 3.5Million "unique" players every month I put unique in quotations because I think that that probably includes people with multiple accounts. E: I believe max concurrent players is around 1/10 of that, a bit less. Over 300,000 though. You're saying the average dota 2 player has 10 accounts? What what whaaaaaaat? No, I'm saying over the course of the last month 3.5 Million players have played dota 2 (although I think this particular figure is mildly inflated by secondary accounts etc). The MOST players on Dota 2 at a specific instant in the last month was somewhere between 300,00 and 350,000. midly inflated. lol. i have like 7 accounts or so, and im not even playing a whole lot.
And did you use all those 7 accounts last month even though you don't play a whole lot? Then no, it's not midly inflated. I bet the vast majority only have one account, and I bet most of the people with many account very rarely use several of them.
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On June 11 2013 17:51 ShiroKaisen wrote:Show nested quote +On June 11 2013 08:36 LlamaNamedOsama wrote:On June 11 2013 04:14 Incze wrote:
dota 1 + dota 2 easily surpasses sc2 in numbers.
Personally, I got bored of sc2 after a few months, but continued to watch for like a year. He's talking about viewership, and I don't see any dota 1 streams. Streamwise, I'm pretty sure sc2 surpasses dota 2. As for the OP, I've only watched SC2 for entertainment, never for study. I also find LoL boring to watch (and I've played a decent number of games in LoL, maybe a little over 100). People are entertained by different things, and for many, SC2 is obviously entertaining. Dota 2 is USUALLY surpassed by SC2, but during huge Dota 2 events or during random super hype matches it shoots up and passes SC2. We got up to 80k for a Liquid vs Na'vi match that was just in a fairly small online cup. And The International 2, last year's biggest Dota 2 tournament, was 567,000 concurrent viewers including in-client, all Twitch streams, and the Chinese stream. This year's TI will beat that pretty considerably.
or if Dendi is streaming... I guess that's a big event for a lot of people though lol.
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I agree, SC2 is really boring 
Still, I don't think it's necessary that you have to not play the game at all and still enjoy watching it for it to be a big thing. I think as long as you don't have to be competitive, but you still have a passing interest in playing sometimes, that's enough to make something big. To be honest, when sports get so big people who don't understand them at all and have never played them at all will watch them, that is more a cult phenomenon than anything entertaining about the sport itself. Hockey and sports like it, in my opinion, survive solely on nationalism-like tendencies. People care more about the score than the game.
I don't know about DOTA being appealing to people who have never really played it. I have never really played it and I found the two or three vods I watched to be not terribly enticing. Or it might have been League of Legends, or one and then the other. They're the same game to an uninitiated person like me. I only know that people TELL me DOTA is more complicated and LoL has been simplified.
BW was a great game because even if you only played very casually, you could basically understand what was going on. A lot of the things in that game feel like an actually semi-decent simulation of warfare. Not hyper-realism, but in terms of tactics. You can pull a lot of stuff out of Sun Tzu and apply it easily to BW, more so than a lot of other games. SC2 is kind of in its own microcosm and half the things that happen in that game happen behind the scenes. The whole game is unit composition and being anal about macro and build orders. A viewer can't really see that. Even with Tastosis explaining it, it isn't really interesting. "Oh, so that guy won because he chose better units?" On the other hand, a good flank in BW was easy to understand by anyone. One guys army got caught in the open and surrounded. Or he escaped narrowly. That's something you can see as long as you understand that one player has units this colour and race, and the other has units of that colour and race. Sounds also, play a big part in the spectator experience. But I am digressing seriously into an argument that has been had a million times since the release of SC2.
I thought this thread would be speaking more generally about esports vs other sports. On that topic I really have to say that since esports started taking a focus on popularising the newest releases of games, throwing out the old, and generally just being a paper-thin veil over a dumb marketing tactic, I don't think esports can ever surpass any sport that is allowed to have a history and go on for several decades. No matter how skill based or good players can become within the 5-6 year period (for the most prolonged esports) the game is marketed and supported. In that sense, how can esports ever really surpass something like chess or go, which though having little visual stimulation at least have endurance? Endurance is key to anything's popularity imo.
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Are you seriously saying that Dota is more fun to watch for a Casual than starcraft? There is so much random shit happening all the time in Dota, that imo it's impossible for a casual to know what's even going on, and thats not fun. Whereas sc can be easy to follow even if you have never played it.
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On June 11 2013 22:32 tuoli9 wrote:
Are you seriously saying that Dota is more fun to watch for a Casual than starcraft? There is so much random shit happening all the time in Dota, that imo it's impossible for a casual to know what's even going on, and thats not fun. Whereas sc can be easy to follow even if you have never played it.
As a total nab at DotA I agree with this it's so incredibly boring to watch lol. I think that's the case with most sports though since I doubt a lot of people actually like for example football when they don't know any of the rules.
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EPT
