|
Smart phones are definitely having an impact with the younger generation here. Pretty much 100% of teenagers have them and they're on them every spare second. Kids still game a tonne but the platforms are shifting. Where before, kids were skipping class for PC bangs or rushing to them afterwards, they often just play/chat on their phones (cheaper and more convenient). The cost, convenience and time factors are all really big for students who spends 12+ hours a day in schooling. That said I really think it's Korea specific and gaming internationally is unlikely to take a significant hit.
|
On July 25 2012 23:01 brolaf wrote:Show nested quote +On July 25 2012 07:47 Ribbon wrote:On July 25 2012 06:53 brolaf wrote:On July 25 2012 03:58 Ribbon wrote:On July 24 2012 20:01 .vid wrote:On July 23 2012 17:18 Ribbon wrote:On July 23 2012 17:10 Koshi wrote:
So this means that SCII players can't play when they are in the army? I am hoping they are making a new team for the new talent. May 16th - oGs disbands July 13th - Zenex ceases to exist as an independent team, will merge with Startale July 23rd - Air Force Ace announces plan to disband The Korean scene is collapsing. I wouldn't be surprised to see 2-3 more teams disband in the next few months,. you forgot last year's mbc game, hwaseung oz and wemade collapses (edit: or was it in 2010? i forgot :S) I considered adding them, but that was before the hybrid league was announced. MBCGame, Oz, and WeMade were the collapse of the BW scene (Wemade was technically an SC2 team as well, but had literally 3 players). Switching to SC2 was supposed to fix everything somehow, but oGs, Zenex, and Ace are primarily SC2 teams that are collapsing. The switch did nothing to save Proleague, and will quite possibly kill the GSL as well by flooding the market, and being a really hyped SC2 league full of generally bad SC2 games. I'd say TSL (constantly on the verge of collapse, though they seem to be in better shape now), SlayerS (all kinds of shit going down in that team), and SKT1 (sponsor doesn't care about international audience) are the ones that should be on the watchlist. Woongjin and STX are also sponsors likely to pull out, but I honestly don't know why a chemical company and a shipbuilding company (!) were sponsoring BW in the first place. I doubt many BW fans are in the market for a ship. So maybe those two are just run by people who really like BW, meaning they should possibly be on the watchlist as well? On July 25 2012 02:35 brolaf wrote:On July 24 2012 16:01 Ribbon wrote:On July 24 2012 15:45 Darksoldierr wrote:On July 24 2012 09:59 Ribbon wrote:On July 24 2012 09:11 sephirotharg wrote:
I hope that professional BW survives (in Korea, that is) You wouldn't be interested in professional BW somewhere else? I know the Chinese scene is really small, and the western scene is pitable, but there's still a chance to grow them into something respectable within a few years, I think. I dont think so, Sc2's release gave BW attention to those who never heard of it before, yet nothings really changed. That's largely the BW's community's fault, though. Absolutely no effort was made to try to convert any of the "Oh hey SC2 is cool" people to BW fans, besides people on forums calling them names. Where was KeSPA's big outreach? The only major BW scene to ever even try to reach westerners was GOM back when Tasteless and I think SuperDanielMan were casting the GOMTV Classic in English. And KeSPA shut that one down pretty fast. Which, actually, was a pretty terrible decision in the long run. If GOM hadn't gotten into SC2, there'd be no SC2 now. I seriously do believe that if GOMTV was in the BW business and not the SC2 business, we'd be in a new Golden Age of Brood War right now. SC2 isn't big because of Blizzard, much as people like to blame them. It's big because GOM sold it to a foreign audience. Even right now, when the whole idea of the switch to SC2 is the international fans, there's still no official English stream for Proleague. That's insane. Even when their in SC2, KeSPA ignores the SC2 scene. They have completely and 100% fucked BW up. They're fucking up in SC2 now as well. Whatever they did for Brood War in the past, the last few years have been nothing but abject incompetence on their part. As time goes on, it will be just even harder to catch new players. Just think about, running BW on W7 already has problems and need to find fixes to make it work. This admittedly is a pretty huge problem. I'd say port forwarding is a bigger deal than killing explorer in task manager. A lot of people (myself included) literally can't do that. Now W8 is coming, another generation growing up on console games and on MMOs. Personally i would love a rise viewer numbers and just overall, player numbers, but i dont think so it will ever happen Certainly not if you keep referring to the only potential source of new BW fans in such a demeaning get off my lawnish way. Cant agree with this. Youre trying to put the cart before the horse. What comes first is a popular game by the designers, and blizzard did good here, SC2 is popular. As a result, a lot of potential viewers could supply a pro scene with earnings, so a big proscene is possible. BW is very unpopular outside korea/china, so there are few viewers and a pro scene isnt possible. http://imgur.com/OGgDLAlso, whatever you think of SC2 as a game now, absolutely no one in the west would have watched GSL Open Season 3 (dubbed by Artosis as "the worst SC2 tournament of all time" because Terrans did a 2-rax all in pulling marines literally every single TvZ) if GOM didn't have Tastosis. And that tournament could've killed SC2. even in korea BW popularity has steadily been declining since the mid 2000s with the mmos&shooters, lol and d3 now. and proleague & MBCgame didnt return a profit so the fundamentals for a golden age of bw, i cant see how those wouldve been possible when the game itself wasnt that popular any more. WHen we have a situation of businesses running at a loss, the answer is to downscale and meet the declined demand in a cost efficient manner. Adding more businesses (gomtv in your hypothesis) to this kinda runs against that concept. GOM created an entire market for SC2. It wouldn't have taken off without them (Blizzard never really cared about "e-sports" for the first year or so of SC2's release beyond lip service). They could've been creating a foreign scene for BW instead of a foreign scene for SC2. Yeah, they probably wouldn't have been able to get it as big as the one they made for SC2, but they would've brought in enough new foreign fans to keep at least themselves in business, I think. Also, someone who knows more about this than me: In retrospect, was it a good idea for KeSPA to fight the Blizzard lawsuits, or would the "we care about and respect the IP rights" vibe have been worth going along to get along? The market already existed, it was the millions of SC2 players that purchased their game and were fans of it. BW had nowhere near the amount of people playing so there is no market to supply in the frist place. The sizes of the potential revenue are nowhere near to be compared as reasonable market alternatives.
I dont think its right for people to say that broodwar was never popular outside of korea so esports never had a chance with it compared to the much more popular sc2. Wasnt broodwar a really popular game?
Broodwar did sell millions outside of koreal. It was at 11 million worldwide with only 4.5 million reported in korea in 2007 when it was still at 9 million sold. Im sure lots of people pirated it on top of that and those people are just as likely to watch an esports scene as a normal customer. Its very possible that more people have played broodwar then sc2 outside of korea at this time.
I think it was probably more the lack of anyway for video from korea tv to spread on the internet near the games release, if fast internet, twitch, youtube, and the gom classic existed back then I think it would have gotten some good numbers compared to what it eventually got when a few people were trying to build an audence to watch broodwar years after the game came out.
Here you can look at some english view numbers that broodwar did get and while they are less then sc2 I dont think they count as bad considering how far after the release of the game they had to start building a viewing audience and the quality of the amature youtube casters and they had the potential to grow more if tastosis was casting broodwar games consistantly for years to build a fanbase for gom or kespa.
http://www.gomtv.net/classics3/vod/?order=2<ype=&stype=
http://www.youtube.com/user/VioleTAK/videos?sort=p&view=0&page=2
Even well after sc2 came out it is possible for broodwar to get a 250k view video when a current sc2 casting superstar does some nastalga videos comparing well to his sc2 videos from the same months. How did that happen if nobody likes broodwar outside of korea and it never had any potential for an audence?
http://www.youtube.com/user/HDstarcraft/videos?query=broodwar
|
On July 23 2012 23:25 Darksoldierr wrote:Show nested quote +On July 23 2012 22:25 JieXian wrote:On July 23 2012 22:19 Eee wrote:On July 23 2012 10:46 Sadistx wrote:Noooooooooo  We'll forever remember you ace. Every single player. You were the amazing underdogs. The old guard. Also, However the rise of smartphones and social network services has caused progaming to decline. . What the fuck? Smartphones caused progaming to decline? Well WCG (which is ran by Samsung) also planned to switch out PC gaming for Mobile gaming at their events, I think many esports companies in Korea fear the same thing. WTF WTF WTF Mobile gaming........ More people played with Angry Birds than those who just heard of Starcraft, be it BW or Sc2, and causals are the market. For example, if WoW would be played only by the very high end hard core players, it would have died year after its release, its the 10 million causal player that make it viable. And it seems so that mobile as a gaming platform ganing more and more focus, not that it is good but its is fact :\
I know the reasons behind this perfectly man don't worry.
Here we have Angry Bird shoes, Angry Bird shirts, Angry Bird pants, Angry Bird soft toys, Angry Bird keychains, anything you can put a Hello Kitty to, not to mention the latest and most ridiculous one I've seen: An Angry fucking Bird ice cream shop.
Misspelled it but won't bother.
|
Really sad to hear this 
Ace has always had a special place for me as a team, but I guess my days of autovoting will have to come to an end 
|
So incredibly sad to hear this news. You will be remembered, ACE.
|
On July 25 2012 23:01 brolaf wrote:Show nested quote +On July 25 2012 07:47 Ribbon wrote:On July 25 2012 06:53 brolaf wrote:On July 25 2012 03:58 Ribbon wrote:On July 24 2012 20:01 .vid wrote:On July 23 2012 17:18 Ribbon wrote:On July 23 2012 17:10 Koshi wrote:
So this means that SCII players can't play when they are in the army? I am hoping they are making a new team for the new talent. May 16th - oGs disbands July 13th - Zenex ceases to exist as an independent team, will merge with Startale July 23rd - Air Force Ace announces plan to disband The Korean scene is collapsing. I wouldn't be surprised to see 2-3 more teams disband in the next few months,. you forgot last year's mbc game, hwaseung oz and wemade collapses (edit: or was it in 2010? i forgot :S) I considered adding them, but that was before the hybrid league was announced. MBCGame, Oz, and WeMade were the collapse of the BW scene (Wemade was technically an SC2 team as well, but had literally 3 players). Switching to SC2 was supposed to fix everything somehow, but oGs, Zenex, and Ace are primarily SC2 teams that are collapsing. The switch did nothing to save Proleague, and will quite possibly kill the GSL as well by flooding the market, and being a really hyped SC2 league full of generally bad SC2 games. I'd say TSL (constantly on the verge of collapse, though they seem to be in better shape now), SlayerS (all kinds of shit going down in that team), and SKT1 (sponsor doesn't care about international audience) are the ones that should be on the watchlist. Woongjin and STX are also sponsors likely to pull out, but I honestly don't know why a chemical company and a shipbuilding company (!) were sponsoring BW in the first place. I doubt many BW fans are in the market for a ship. So maybe those two are just run by people who really like BW, meaning they should possibly be on the watchlist as well? On July 25 2012 02:35 brolaf wrote:On July 24 2012 16:01 Ribbon wrote:On July 24 2012 15:45 Darksoldierr wrote:On July 24 2012 09:59 Ribbon wrote:On July 24 2012 09:11 sephirotharg wrote:
I hope that professional BW survives (in Korea, that is) You wouldn't be interested in professional BW somewhere else? I know the Chinese scene is really small, and the western scene is pitable, but there's still a chance to grow them into something respectable within a few years, I think. I dont think so, Sc2's release gave BW attention to those who never heard of it before, yet nothings really changed. That's largely the BW's community's fault, though. Absolutely no effort was made to try to convert any of the "Oh hey SC2 is cool" people to BW fans, besides people on forums calling them names. Where was KeSPA's big outreach? The only major BW scene to ever even try to reach westerners was GOM back when Tasteless and I think SuperDanielMan were casting the GOMTV Classic in English. And KeSPA shut that one down pretty fast. Which, actually, was a pretty terrible decision in the long run. If GOM hadn't gotten into SC2, there'd be no SC2 now. I seriously do believe that if GOMTV was in the BW business and not the SC2 business, we'd be in a new Golden Age of Brood War right now. SC2 isn't big because of Blizzard, much as people like to blame them. It's big because GOM sold it to a foreign audience. Even right now, when the whole idea of the switch to SC2 is the international fans, there's still no official English stream for Proleague. That's insane. Even when their in SC2, KeSPA ignores the SC2 scene. They have completely and 100% fucked BW up. They're fucking up in SC2 now as well. Whatever they did for Brood War in the past, the last few years have been nothing but abject incompetence on their part. As time goes on, it will be just even harder to catch new players. Just think about, running BW on W7 already has problems and need to find fixes to make it work. This admittedly is a pretty huge problem. I'd say port forwarding is a bigger deal than killing explorer in task manager. A lot of people (myself included) literally can't do that. Now W8 is coming, another generation growing up on console games and on MMOs. Personally i would love a rise viewer numbers and just overall, player numbers, but i dont think so it will ever happen Certainly not if you keep referring to the only potential source of new BW fans in such a demeaning get off my lawnish way. Cant agree with this. Youre trying to put the cart before the horse. What comes first is a popular game by the designers, and blizzard did good here, SC2 is popular. As a result, a lot of potential viewers could supply a pro scene with earnings, so a big proscene is possible. BW is very unpopular outside korea/china, so there are few viewers and a pro scene isnt possible. http://imgur.com/OGgDLAlso, whatever you think of SC2 as a game now, absolutely no one in the west would have watched GSL Open Season 3 (dubbed by Artosis as "the worst SC2 tournament of all time" because Terrans did a 2-rax all in pulling marines literally every single TvZ) if GOM didn't have Tastosis. And that tournament could've killed SC2. even in korea BW popularity has steadily been declining since the mid 2000s with the mmos&shooters, lol and d3 now. and proleague & MBCgame didnt return a profit so the fundamentals for a golden age of bw, i cant see how those wouldve been possible when the game itself wasnt that popular any more. WHen we have a situation of businesses running at a loss, the answer is to downscale and meet the declined demand in a cost efficient manner. Adding more businesses (gomtv in your hypothesis) to this kinda runs against that concept. GOM created an entire market for SC2. It wouldn't have taken off without them (Blizzard never really cared about "e-sports" for the first year or so of SC2's release beyond lip service). They could've been creating a foreign scene for BW instead of a foreign scene for SC2. Yeah, they probably wouldn't have been able to get it as big as the one they made for SC2, but they would've brought in enough new foreign fans to keep at least themselves in business, I think. Also, someone who knows more about this than me: In retrospect, was it a good idea for KeSPA to fight the Blizzard lawsuits, or would the "we care about and respect the IP rights" vibe have been worth going along to get along? The market already existed, it was the millions of SC2 players that purchased their game and were fans of it. BW had nowhere near the amount of people playing so there is no market to supply in the frist place. The sizes of the potential revenue are nowhere near to be compared as reasonable market alternatives.
Right when SC2 came out, the only people who were interested in the idea of watching SC2 were BW fans. Once it started taking off it became a community, with memes and shit, and started attracting new people.
Obviously, SC2 was a new highly anticipated game, and it's a lot easier to get into than BW. This helped it a lot. But SC2 as a spectator sport didn't have a lot of traction right at the start. Had a less competent orginization been but in charge of Korean SC2, it would've flopped entirely and ProLeague would be switching to League of Legends now.
On July 25 2012 16:25 Radivel-X17 wrote:
This is sad news.
You know, many years ago, I wished upon Blizz to "update" SC/BW & bnet with modern networking capabilities, modern gaming concepts and updated graphics that did not alter the way the game was played (ie, unit & building positioning & effects on environment), as in, change nothing that made the game what it was, why it was so good. Don't do away with old Bnet, don't do away with chat channels, don't do away with all that - like it or not, that style of interaction was part of what made the experience successful. Update it. Figure out some way to allow both methods or types of bnet.
SC2:BW is actually pretty good, though obviously it's not a perfect port, and some of the fanmade models of units with no SC2 version look really weird. I've actually played it over the real BW just because I'm the only person on earth who actually prefers Bnet 2 to the original, for the sole reason I can join a game and not be frozen for 30 seconds because the other guy didn't have his ports open and is sitting there wondering why no one's joining his game because Bnet 1 doesn't tell you if your ports or closed or even give you any indication anywhere that your should have them open. Though not being dumped into a chat room full of mexican spambots like the D room on ICCUP every time I log in is also nice
</rant>
(I also have much worse lag on ICCUP than Bnet 2, but that's probably because I'm on the East coast and the rest of the BW scene seems to be in Slovakia sometimes)
Just not enough reach, honestly. Since every interaction between the SC2 and BW scenes ends in a flamewar, no progress ever gets made on advancing BW to people mildly interested in it so that they get really interested in it.
(Also, there are some people in the SC2 scene who fake-like BW out of some weird committment to "e-sports" as a philosophy, or to fit in with everyone else. It's kind of weird)
|
On July 24 2012 07:48 shaggles wrote:
I would like to see KESPA's official response to that.Though it is surely sad for players (those who now or in a nearest future will join the army), I must say, I support such a decision. "E-sports" never existed. There were only some people playing best-selling games in the front of their loyal fans and get paid for that by sponsors. And as the fans evolve you have to decide whether to evolve with them or to quit. If progaming was a sport, there would be no issue of "tranisitioning to other game". I mean why? Imagine any (even the worst) NBA team willing to switch to ice-hockey or volleyball. Or imagine Lakers or Knicks forced to switch to volleyball, since a certain well-recognized sport equipment producer has a lot of balls and nets to sell. And of course if fans deny to watch basketball players playing volleyball (or they just simply don't buy these nets), perhaps NBA authorities decide to move to soccer... The officials of so-called "e-sports" have nothing in common with any sport association's functions (except for restricting an access to progaming by licensing system), and actually make marketing-wise wrong decisions. In such a volatile environment, "quit" is the reasonable decision.
I have to completely agree with you, if Starcraft was true sport then Blizzard should work on BW only and never release a sequel(or at least dont make such drastic changes), on the other side this is a game and successfull games always have sequels, because companies wants to sell more.
It would have been better if they created RTS with another name. I have been thinking of two separate scenes but unfortunatelly blizzard dont want that and they do everything to kill bw faster.
|
On July 26 2012 17:19 _Animus_ wrote:Show nested quote +On July 24 2012 07:48 shaggles wrote:
I would like to see KESPA's official response to that.Though it is surely sad for players (those who now or in a nearest future will join the army), I must say, I support such a decision. "E-sports" never existed. There were only some people playing best-selling games in the front of their loyal fans and get paid for that by sponsors. And as the fans evolve you have to decide whether to evolve with them or to quit. If progaming was a sport, there would be no issue of "tranisitioning to other game". I mean why? Imagine any (even the worst) NBA team willing to switch to ice-hockey or volleyball. Or imagine Lakers or Knicks forced to switch to volleyball, since a certain well-recognized sport equipment producer has a lot of balls and nets to sell. And of course if fans deny to watch basketball players playing volleyball (or they just simply don't buy these nets), perhaps NBA authorities decide to move to soccer... The officials of so-called "e-sports" have nothing in common with any sport association's functions (except for restricting an access to progaming by licensing system), and actually make marketing-wise wrong decisions. In such a volatile environment, "quit" is the reasonable decision.
I have to completely agree with you, if Starcraft was true sport then Blizzard should work on BW only and never release a sequel(or at least dont make such drastic changes), on the other side this is a game and successfull games always have sequels, because companies wants to sell more.
They weren't making any money off BW, though, and it's a little unreasonable to expect them not to do something that would make millions of dollars so some KeSPA guy could get paid instead.
It would have been better if they created RTS with another name. I have been thinking of two separate scenes but unfortunatelly blizzard dont want that and they do everything to kill bw faster.
It's not like KeSPA wasn't trying to kill SC2, either (shutting down showmatches, getting the game rated 18+ in Korea, etc). It was a fairly bitter and slightly pointless war over a rapidly diminishing Korean scene.
|
Really sad news This the end of an era :`(
|
On July 26 2012 18:29 Ribbon wrote:Show nested quote +On July 26 2012 17:19 _Animus_ wrote:On July 24 2012 07:48 shaggles wrote:
I would like to see KESPA's official response to that.Though it is surely sad for players (those who now or in a nearest future will join the army), I must say, I support such a decision. "E-sports" never existed. There were only some people playing best-selling games in the front of their loyal fans and get paid for that by sponsors. And as the fans evolve you have to decide whether to evolve with them or to quit. If progaming was a sport, there would be no issue of "tranisitioning to other game". I mean why? Imagine any (even the worst) NBA team willing to switch to ice-hockey or volleyball. Or imagine Lakers or Knicks forced to switch to volleyball, since a certain well-recognized sport equipment producer has a lot of balls and nets to sell. And of course if fans deny to watch basketball players playing volleyball (or they just simply don't buy these nets), perhaps NBA authorities decide to move to soccer... The officials of so-called "e-sports" have nothing in common with any sport association's functions (except for restricting an access to progaming by licensing system), and actually make marketing-wise wrong decisions. In such a volatile environment, "quit" is the reasonable decision.
I have to completely agree with you, if Starcraft was true sport then Blizzard should work on BW only and never release a sequel(or at least dont make such drastic changes), on the other side this is a game and successfull games always have sequels, because companies wants to sell more. They weren't making any money off BW, though, and it's a little unreasonable to expect them not to do something that would make millions of dollars so some KeSPA guy could get paid instead. Show nested quote +It would have been better if they created RTS with another name. I have been thinking of two separate scenes but unfortunatelly blizzard dont want that and they do everything to kill bw faster. It's not like KeSPA wasn't trying to kill SC2, either (shutting down showmatches, getting the game rated 18+ in Korea, etc). It was a fairly bitter and slightly pointless war over a rapidly diminishing Korean scene.
I never knew KeSPA was a moms' association.
|
On July 26 2012 18:29 Ribbon wrote:Show nested quote +On July 26 2012 17:19 _Animus_ wrote:On July 24 2012 07:48 shaggles wrote:
I would like to see KESPA's official response to that.Though it is surely sad for players (those who now or in a nearest future will join the army), I must say, I support such a decision. "E-sports" never existed. There were only some people playing best-selling games in the front of their loyal fans and get paid for that by sponsors. And as the fans evolve you have to decide whether to evolve with them or to quit. If progaming was a sport, there would be no issue of "tranisitioning to other game". I mean why? Imagine any (even the worst) NBA team willing to switch to ice-hockey or volleyball. Or imagine Lakers or Knicks forced to switch to volleyball, since a certain well-recognized sport equipment producer has a lot of balls and nets to sell. And of course if fans deny to watch basketball players playing volleyball (or they just simply don't buy these nets), perhaps NBA authorities decide to move to soccer... The officials of so-called "e-sports" have nothing in common with any sport association's functions (except for restricting an access to progaming by licensing system), and actually make marketing-wise wrong decisions. In such a volatile environment, "quit" is the reasonable decision.
I have to completely agree with you, if Starcraft was true sport then Blizzard should work on BW only and never release a sequel(or at least dont make such drastic changes), on the other side this is a game and successfull games always have sequels, because companies wants to sell more. They weren't making any money off BW, though, and it's a little unreasonable to expect them not to do something that would make millions of dollars so some KeSPA guy could get paid instead. Show nested quote +It would have been better if they created RTS with another name. I have been thinking of two separate scenes but unfortunatelly blizzard dont want that and they do everything to kill bw faster. It's not like KeSPA wasn't trying to kill SC2, either (shutting down showmatches, getting the game rated 18+ in Korea, etc). It was a fairly bitter and slightly pointless war over a rapidly diminishing Korean scene.
yeah shutting down showmatches cause they are so evil not because nada was still a pro BW player and ofc a Team wouldn't allow him 2 promote a different game.
promot a game for the company that is trying to fuck you over.
|
I think there's still a chance that they could change their minds if SC2 becomes popular enough. They're not doing it right away, so I think that leaves time for them to change their minds.
|
|
|
On July 23 2012 10:51 GTR wrote:
Can anyone elaborate on 'smartphones and SNS services causing the decline of progaming'?
LAN is the only way starcraft 2 will grow... i think i just solved esports.
|
|
|
|
|
|
EPT
