EPTObviously this is not something that will or would happen any time soon, if at all. It might not even be something we really want but I'm just wondering whether it's even realistically possible. Needless to say, football is the most popular sport, and we would probably be fine with trumping a "smaller" sport such as badminton or ice hockey, at least for starters. But I'll go with football. If you wish, you can - in your mind - replace football with whatever sport you think we ought to be tackling. When applicable, you can also replace Starcraft with any current esport title, and its appropriate scenario, and try to think if what I'm about to explain is true to that game as well.
Why I personally prefer Starcraft to football is because I highly respect the intellectual aspect(s). I've never been particularly athletic. I've played my fair share of different sports and most of the time enjoyed them. Yet to me, they are just not as intriguing as Starcraft. On the other hand I have always been somewhat competitive so I suppose it only makes sense to steer towards digital games.
I would wager that the skill ceilings of Starcraft and football are relatively similar. It's practically impossible to become perfect at either of them. Of course, this goes for a lot of games, both digital and non-digital. A person could spend their entire life practicing Starcraft or football and still feel like they have something to learn. This virtually infinite skill ceiling, I suppose, is part of what makes them both so engaging, especially in the long term. People are generally inspired, impressed and fascinated by someone doing something extremely well, ie skillfully. It's engaging just looking at an expert at work and also one reason why people enjoy watching sports.
Imagine an alien with the IQ of an average human paying us a friendly visit. Let us name him Bob and hope he doesn't mind. We - as welcoming and hospitable human beings - naturally offer Bob a selection of refreshing beverages and invite him to watch some Starcraft and football with us. Bob, being an alien, has never seen either one before. Given the choice, after watching both for 2 hours, I think Bob would most likely prefer watching more football to watching more Starcraft, as much as he said Colossi are awesome. Why?
I'm confident Bob would get the hang of football much faster than Starcraft, with or without some kind of commentary. Starcraft is extremely complex, much more so than football. For Bob to truly respect and recognize high skill in Starcraft, or another digital game, he basically needs to understand, at least on a basic level, the way it works first.
The way Starcraft works, or its functions, have some logical similarities with the real world - a tank shot dealing AoE damage for example, but for the most part they are arbitrary. It's not easy for Bob to comprehend them. On the other hand, Bob is familiar with the laws of physics as they are in place on his home planet as well. Gravity, force, etc, are the mechanics, or functions, of football. This is why Bob would understand football much faster, thus enjoying it more. Heck, Bob might have even played around with a ball at some point!
Another reason why skill in football is more easy to appreciate is that you can see the physical activity directly. If a football player performs a bicycle kick and scores, most viewers are immediately impressed. It's pretty much an automatic, intuitive reaction. You don't even have to stop to think "wait, was that awesome or not". It just was!
I'll let you come up with an example that would be on the same level of awesomeness and difficulty in Starcraft. Now think of how much more difficult appreciating that action in Starcraft would be for a viewer, compared to the bicycle kick. The example you thought of might be hard for to appreciate even for someone who plays Starcraft. For a non-Starcraft gamer, let alone a non-gamer, it might be impossible to comprehend.
MKP's bio splitting is absolutely remarkable, but someone unfamiliar with Starcraft can't possibly appreciate the "bicycle kick" of splitting a bunch of marines fast. Bob is not impressed either. The action alone which we see on the screen is not enough to really appreciate it. Any Starcraft player (or at least terran) likely understands exactly how difficult it is to split those marines that fast and that well. Even if a camera is showing MKP's rapid hand movements and the APM counter is being displayed, Bob is still not that impressed. Bob still insists Colossi are cooler. If Bob knew how hard the splitting really is, his level of awe would be much higher. Bob should be able to - as intuitively as possible - determine the extreme level of skill required to do what he is seeing.
In Starcraft, the action itself (screen displaying marines moving into a specific formation) and the input (MKP giving commands on his keyboard) need to be perceived separately. Vast majority of the time we don't see the second part at all. In football, you see both, inseparably and immediately. The best way to make Bob understand how tough that splitting is, is to put a gun to his head (hypothetical situation, in reality we would of course do no such thing but instead offer Bob one more of his newfound favorite beverage as a reward) and make him practice marine splitting for a few hours. Following that, Bob could begin to appreciate MKP's splits. Now Bob understands the whole event better by only looking at the display, because Bob played some Starcraft and tried to split those marines, but there were just... too many banelings for Bob to handle.
To be fair, a lot of the awesome things to see in Starcraft are related to strategy which is by definition more long term. A casual fan of football probably won't understand the intricacies of the brilliant strategy a coach has come up with to defeat the enemy team. But we would also really like for Bob to understand the mental difficulty of Starcraft, and that would probably be even harder to hammer into Bob's thick skull than the effort required for marine splitting.
The ultimate esport game's bicycle kick needs to impress Bob as easily and effortlessly as the real bicycle kick does. We want Bob's freaking jaw to drop when he sees it! We want Bob to love our esport as much as he loves football. I suppose part of what I'm wondering here is if it's possible for a digital game to have a "bicycle kick" that can be appreciated by practically anyone. Keep in mind that we (or at least I) kind of want to preserve the fact that in our digital game, compared to the actual bicycle kick, it takes more mental skill, but less physical skill, to perform the awesome action.
So the question is: Is it possible to create a digital game that would 1) be intuitively enjoyable to spectate for non-gamers, 2) require some physical skill in giving the commands via whatever interface, and 3) require a lot of mental skill in making split-second decisions, coming up with a valid strategy and adjusting that strategy based on what happens in the match.
Thank you for reading. No offense whatsoever meant to any Bobs out there.
