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Active: 743 users

I write about OW League and the new SA region

Blogs > uberxD
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uberxD
Profile Blog Joined September 2012
412 Posts
November 05 2016 23:10 GMT
#1
Warning:wall of text with little to no sense hehe

During 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.
<-- occasionally in English - @uberdota
jinfreaks
Profile Joined July 2010
United States94 Posts
November 06 2016 04:13 GMT
#2
There has been an opinion that professional competition and good business do not go hand in hand, Ever since Nintendo has continuously attempted to stifle the Super Smash Bros melee competitive scene, and before that the transition of CS 1.5 to CS 1.6. The main point of this argument is that by making a game competitive, it presents an entry barrier for new players to join the game mostly in the form of competitive toxicity etc., thus reducing company profits. Many companies like to make a newer version of the game or drastically patch it to make the game more appealing. But by doing so, this creates a PR nightmare and alienates the hardcore gamers and fan community if they exist. Imagine if Valve decided to make the map completely symmetrical, obviously to make the game less complex. This would be appealing to new casual players but not the others.

With the case of Activision-blizzard, they have had difficulties changing the game to what they see fit if the game becomes too competitive. A major case was Starcraft Broodwar in korea and how difficult it was to force the transition to SC2 (as well as subsequent expansions, that did not come favorably to the pros playing it). In hearthstone they introduced more and more rng mechanics and have completely alienated professional hearthstone players that once made up the competitive scene. Now you barely see any of these former players stream now, or have moved on to other games. I wouldn't find it surprising at all if Blizzard intends Overwatch to become a casual game as well with the current trend of all their recent game titles, especially if they wish to build a franchise around it.

Now concerning Valve's move, I can't read that much into it. By adding in the SA scene, one could say it adds more diversity in the dota strategy ecosystem. That is to say that SA scene may bring in their own set of favored drafts etc. Only time will tell whether or not this is a good move for the competitive scene. However, as you pointed out, I hardly think this was for anything but profits.
nanaoei
Profile Blog Joined May 2010
3358 Posts
November 06 2016 09:51 GMT
#3
i would upvote posts if i could.
*@boesthius' FF7 nostalgia stream bomb* "we should work on a 'Final Progamer' fangame»whitera can be a protagonist---lastlie: "we save world and then defense it"
Mafe
Profile Joined February 2011
Germany5966 Posts
Last Edited: 2016-11-07 16:35:41
November 07 2016 16:35 GMT
#4
Ok I'm late to the party, but still: As long as Valve has announced only the regions, but not the qualifying process itself (for TI7), isnt there still an off chance that some regions (read: south america) will not have a guaranteed representative nevertheless? Yes, it would be a change from the structure in the qualifiers they had the last years, and I dont expect it be that way either. But as long as Valve themself have not said that the logic "region exists -> there is a guaranteed qualifier from this region" applies, I dont see it as a given either.

Also I could imagine that TI7 will have like 10 invited teams, and then a bigger offline wildcard qualifier in seattle with say, 2 teams from each region, so that there are no guaranteed qualifiers from any region at all.
Pontual
Profile Joined October 2016
Brazil3038 Posts
November 08 2016 19:07 GMT
#5
On November 08 2016 01:35 Mafe wrote:
Also I could imagine that TI7 will have like 10 invited teams, and then a bigger offline wildcard qualifier in seattle with say, 2 teams from each region, so that there are no guaranteed qualifiers from any region at all.

I know it's not about me or you, but i can't imagine 10 invites. They don't even need to invite because every single team will try to qualify, don't matter if the team is tier 0. But then again, invites are a way to reward good performances in smaller tournaments and majors.
I would say 4 invites is guaranteed to happen and reasonable, any more than that, imho, would be a risk to invite a team that had just a good phase or lost drive, internal problems or something like that.
uberxD
Profile Blog Joined September 2012
412 Posts
November 14 2016 13:49 GMT
#6
I found time to answer, sorry im late!

On November 08 2016 01:35 Mafe wrote:
... isnt there still an off chance that some regions (read: south america) will not have a guaranteed representative nevertheless? Yes, it would be a change from the structure in the qualifiers they had the last years, and I dont expect it be that way either. But as long as Valve themself have not said that the logic "region exists -> there is a guaranteed qualifier from this region" applies, I dont see it as a given either...


It's a fair point but tbh it wouldn't make sense. For this idea to have some sense Valve would need to host a LAN final for the qualifiers which is waaaay too much work for just some spots between - probably - tier 2 teams.

By the way, I forgot to mention this but I bet someone at BTS knew about this new SA region and that's why they hired all the competent casters from the SA scene.
<-- occasionally in English - @uberdota
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