EPTDuring the past… two weeks we have a couple of announcements that raised some eyebrows in the esports world as Valve announced the creation of the South American region and Activision-Blizzard, in a great Riot fashion, announced the most weird esports ecosystem that I’ve heard since … well whatever Riot is up to.
So I wanted to take a minute to write about this. In fact, I wanted to make a video but, believe it or not, I don’t have the time for it.
This system was a possibility back in beta times, at least according to this comment by the TeamLiquid head coach. Reality is that this announcement found almost everybody with their pants down. I do not know much about the young Overwatch competitive scene but I know about something, business.
In my mind, Activision-Blizzard, and mostly Activision, had this idea of how to make esports more profitable, since it looks like the Valve model is a thing that only Valve can do. Trust me, no company really – even Valve – is interested on having a league with salaries and stability. Companies base their decision solely in business, profitability, return over investment, etc. I’m not trying to say that these companies are cold hearted (except by Riot), I’m only saying that they don’t think this is the best for the game – this is the best for their profit. The true is that esports is growing huge and more importantly, it’s a new industry. There are no rules to follow; there are no unions, no federations, no nothing. The best thing we have is Korea for that kind of things and since esports is now so huge Korea is no longer required (in the sense that if there’s no Korea there’s no esports).
The only reliable way to increase profitability of esports without taking the Valve approach is to make esports work like traditional sports and increase viewership. Overwatch is a success in terms of sales; I don’t need to check stats for that. In fact, I bet Overwatch is a great success in terms of profitability for Activision-Blizzard. So there’s a good chance that a considerable amount of people in your town are playing Overwatch.
And that’s when the localized teams come in. Recently, it’s pretty common to see traditional Sports teams to buy “X” esports teams. Or sometimes just gets an esports branch. Just take a look at this list of football teams with esports teams.
I don’t really know if Activision-Blizzard is expecting teams like TeamLiquid or whatever to “buy slots of cities”. I don’t know how expensive these “slots” or “rights” are going to be. It sound more like they want those tasty sports dollars come to an esports team, buy it and then buy the slot for the city. Next to that your town, let’s call it “Los Angeles”, will have their “TeamLiquid Los Angeles Overwatch Team”, which will come with jerseys, hats, socks and even fucking dog food. Who knows, maybe it won’t happen or is not even going to be like it. It’s obviously too soon to give an opinion but considering the timing Activision-Blizzard maybe next time we – the public – will know that everything is ready for the next OW world cup with non-optimal squads representing their countries cities in a LAN for a decent amount of money and you know what? You are forced to like it.
I hope we can at least have that league as an alternative and not as the rule. But if that league becomes the more important in terms of money, then what will happen with everybody out of the system? I don’t know about you, but I lost a lot of the little interest I had in watching Overwatch esports. By the way who won that big show-tournament at Blizzcon?
That’s a lot of writing and we’re not even talking about Dota yet. Maybe it’s because the topic is way simpler.
So Valve announced the split of the America region into two: North and South. Without any kind of additional confirmation on how invitations or slots are going to be managed, one can only assume that NA will have 1 qualified and SA will have their own.
Is South American Dota deserving of having a guaranteed team at the Majors? Not really, but is not about deserving a slot or not, is more about – again – business.
Riot is king and ruler of the esports in South America (I don’t know why my mind relates this to the way the US approached their relations with South America during the cold war period) and most of the people, at least in my country, think that the esports were created alongside League of Legends. Rants aside, I bet the only country in which Dota is dominant in terms of popularity is Peru. Even if Valve can smell a business opportunity with Peruvian Dota it was still very doubtable to have any kind of “assist” from Valve to the South American scene since “it’s not their way to do things”.
What’s my point? You may ask. My point is that Valve, as well as Activision-Blizzard, are companies that base their decisions in profitability. Games like Dota or Overwatch needs to have people playing them in order to sustain. I don’t really know how active players translate into profit, but it does. So, going back into topic, by adding a South American qualifier Valve expects to increase not only the SA player base but also the viewership of it. Has Dota viewership numbers dropped? I can’t find a reliable stat to that, but I assume that Valve is not really happy with it – maybe it’s a good number but they expected more. The more teams from different regions playing in an important tournament, the more viewership since the ‘casuals’ will join to watch the tournament. I bet that the OW WC is having decent viewership thanks to a lot of ‘casuals’ watching it because their countries (and well, youtubers) are playing it. Maybe some of them will become new esports enthusiasts and even some may buy the game. Same goes for this South America decision. Of course, there are competitive reasons for this. We know we are adding a ‘weaker’ team to the Majors since it’s expected these SA teams to not have what it takes to compete at that level. What would have happened if Infamous didn’t throw that match against Complexity and grabbed a slot for Boston? In a competitive environment like nowadays Dota, International experience is important, but pressure can make teams like OG and Liquid to drop from a tournament against any team. It did happen, and it was painful.
So Activision-Blizzard is trying to create a new ecosystem for their Overwatch game while Valve is trying to expand or solidify their position in an region full of opportunities for making profit. Not really comparable approaches, but approaches at the end. Valve makes profit from Dota like there’s no tomorrow and Activision-Blizzard wants to create profit from a more traditional way.
Only time will tell if both these decision were the correct ones. If there’s something like a correct decision in an industry so big and fast-growing like esports.
