EPTWatching this video from the most recent State of the Game offers honest insight into the forces surrounding eSports. The whole show is two hours but the section of interest is about 20 minutes. In this short time, you get perspective into some major interactions of community monoliths.
Back Story/Intro
It's the most recent episode of a Starcraft 2 talkshow called State of the Game, filmed June 20th 2013. This episode is interesting because it features a candid talk about the current state of Starcraft 2 in the eSports industry. Since 2010, the rise in viewership of live events was meteoric, as were the prize pools and over the course of a few short years the community saw an impressive bubble form. This is an infographic about this very trend, though it only covers through February of this year.
Anyway, SC2 is no longer top dog on the eSports scene, being eclipsed by free-to-play games such as League of Legends and World of Tanks. Even with its expansion pack release in March, Heart of the Swarm, Starcraft 2 has been reeling from a rise in viewership of other games, even though viewership has seen a recent spring-back from the doldrums at the end of Wings of Liberty.
This episode of State of the Game has four prominent personalities in eSports. The two people of interest in the section are Geoff "InControl" Robinson and Ben "MrBitter" Nichol. InControl is the captain of Evil Geniuses, the richest and sleekest team in Western eSports. MrBitter is a very popular SC2 commentator whose company NASL, until recently, was moving away from SC2. John "Total Biscuit" Bain owns Axiom eSports, his own SC2 team based in Korea and is known for his blunt, sometimes abrasive style. JP's the host. He's... Old (and awesome).
The intersecting points :
- Mr. Bitter works for NASL (the north american star-league), the best daily creator of Starcraft 2 content. They had to stop making content when Blizzard announced its own world-wide tournament, WCS (World Championship Series).
- When the best company of daily content announced they had to stop making daily content, the community was very sad.
- It was supplanted by Blizzard's daily WCS content, ran by Major League Gaming (MLG), whose content was of significantly lower quality.
- Two Days ago, Blizzard, the company who owns SC2 announced that the MLG would no longer cover WCS, and that NASL would.
- So NASL is back! That's the subject of this section of video. You also get an abbreviated history of the SC2 scene in broad strokes in a few minutes.
If you're still interested at this point, I suggest watching part of the show. Thanks for your time!
