E-Sports Largest Games? - Page 4

On November 22 2010 20:19 Reignyo wrote:
#1 SC
#2 CS 1.6
#3 Quake
#4 CS:S
#5 WC:3

On November 20 2010 07:13 trancey wrote:


I respectfully disagree about your topic on Halo... Even though I work for MLG (I've been working on PC staff for 3 years), I started playing Halo because of my association with it. Learning to point, shoot, and have a mastery of the joystick/controller is A LOT harder than learning how to use ASDF and a mouse.

Being a CAL-M CS player back in the day, it was pretty nice being able to adjust your sensitivity for AWP and switching back for Pistols/M4/AK. I'm not being a hater here, but use of the controller needed to be honed to play this game at a high level is quite impressive. I jumped into Halo 3 after not playing any of the others and it took me like 2 months to be able to hang with the online studs in 2s (the easy bracket by the way). The MLG Pros at Halo are on a whole different level and it takes years of practice to be able to hang with these guys (most of the top pros have played every Halo title).

Also, the Halo pros use the same tactics Quake players utilize. At the top level, every team has their spawn timers for weapons and opponents down to a science. I wish you could hear the lingo that the "Coaches" and players use during matches, it's like "Spawn on 4A, cover my flank on B2..." I have no idea what they're saying but it's all code for spawn points and places on each map.

Besides Halo being on Xbox, an "American" console, there are tons of International teams that attend MLG events... MLG just has a monopoly on the community and they pay out greatly for it. Like the top 25 Halo teams are under contract and cannot attend WCG's Halo Championships (so it's always some random B-Team that wins it). But, MLG pays their teams tons of money. Final Boss, Tsquared, and a bunch of others receieved $250,000 contracts. Tsquared was on 1.75 million Dr. Pepper bottles, Gilbert Arenas gave Final Boss a $1 Million Dollar Contract (Red Bull gave them a similar offer), ESPN sponsors MLG nights, and MLG Halo Gear will start appearing at JCPenny stores on the East Coast.

How much bigger does a game need to be?

TFT will survive and be a relativly big esports game until WC4 like Brood War survived 10 years until SC2 (and WC2 survived until WC3)

On November 20 2010 07:42 son1dow wrote:

He asked for 5 and I gave him 5, I'm pretty outdated on ssf4 but as for others, I don't think you've been following enough if you think HoN (just remember for how much time it's been out m8), for example, is bigger than Halo or CoD, even if CoD was only played on MLG like you said, which is totally not the case.

sc1 is going to die and I was talking about western esports, I'll have to check but I doubt you'd have ssf4 there, only a few big events were there just some time ago really. Capcom is killing it




As much as I agree with you here on the gameplay part it's hard not to see the irony as cs compared to quake is very much like what you described as halo here.

As for the popularity, it's just there, I'm not gonna say that it's nothing just because it doesn't have too many LANs or it's not popular outside of US even though I'd like to do that very much; pretty much what tracey said, it's huge considering the money and most importantly, the viewer-base.

On November 20 2010 08:39 trancey wrote:
Thanks Risen,

As for the international exposure of Halo... Honestly, I know you don't see it over there but it's absolutely huge in the US. I get a glimpse of the numbers that Halo brings in online at MLG events and it's pretty insane. The fact the viewerbase is mostly all american and is better for sponsors that are trying to target a certain demographic and location (hence all the american products/commercials you see on MLG streams). Do these other games have LANs of 300+ 4v4 teams all paying to participate?

On the topic of American Esports only, it would be in this order:

#1 SC2 (At MLG, SC2 completely dominated Halo's numbers at the last couple events).
#2 Halo (Still solid numbers regardless, it's more of an East Coast Esport)
#3 SSF4 (West Coast Esport)
#4 CoD Black Ops (I have a feeling this game will be HUGE given the records set when the game launched)
#5 WoW: Arena (WoW's numbers still dominate CS and SSF4 on stream despite LAN crowds being smaller)

The reason MLGs don't come to the West Coast anymore is because Halo sells 2/3s of their 300+ 4v4 passes at the last two West events (San Diego and Anaheim) while they virtually sell out at all the East Coast events. CEO Mike Sepso made on blog on MLGpro calling out the West Coast and there just won't be any because of that.

SSF4 is absolutely huge in California / West Coast in general, it just makes it cheaper for the Pacific Island Countries to travel to the US too.

WoW: Arena is actually pretty big still in the US and AUS for that matter (the aussies play on US servers). I'd say it's still doing okay in EU but doesn't have quite the following or connections to people that make things happen esp at ESL (sadly). There's just a whole scene of fans that have follow the US scene, the pros tend to create a ton of drama via blogs and arenajunkies more in the US. I don't see the scene dying quite yet, but it's definitely on the decline since SC2 has taken it's place as the online traffic king.

On November 20 2010 08:42 Sm3agol wrote:
just because Halo isn't big worldwide doesn't mean it isn't big. We're talking players making a guaranteed $250k a year to play it. That is farking huge, I don't care what you can say. Its like SC:BW is in Korea, almost. Its just that it isn't played competitively anywhere else.
And people knocking its skill level.........................LOL. Any of you you people knocking it....try it. You will NEVER be anywhere close to Ogre1/2 in skill. NEVER. If the game was skilless and shallow, then you would hit a plateau, and soon everyone decent would reach that plateau. But players like the two halo 3 twins have seemingly gotten more and more skilled at the game, to the point that noone that has just picked up the game in the last couple years is ANYWHERE close. On the surface, in it's random online format, yes, it's easy to do well in. The competitive and teamwork side of it, however, is ridiculously difficult.

Quake is a hard one to measure. It's following is ridiculously small, almost to the point of it being a joke. However, it is very spectator friendly, and tons of people still watch the tournaments...so I guess it does belong. As a casual fan of the game, though, it is dead.

On November 20 2010 09:56 Trumpet wrote:
The fighting game scene doesn't have the level of sponsorship SC has, supposedly it's a bit harder without all the direct advertising the PC gaming market has for peripherals, processors, graphics cards, etc etc.

But, to give a reference point though, last years Evolution tournament in Las Vegas had somewhere around 1700 players for the SSF4. 1700 people traveled across the country for a one weekend tournament. Paying out of pocket to play in it, with nothing in the way of invites and sponsored travel to cover it.

That type of community is going to grow one way or another =)

I expect things to get even bigger for fighters with Marvel 3 about to pop.

On November 28 2010 20:31 dtz wrote:
broodwar is the most succesful but not very widespread outside Korea but it definitely is what most games aspire to be in terms of E-sports

sc2 is of course an up and coming all over the world. C is universally popular. Quake i feel is more niche.

but DotA is absolutely massive in China and Southeast asia. The penetration level is incredible in the sense that schools have DotA teams fighting in Inter-school tournaments. The Malaysian Dota team was given a sending off by the Prime Minister before going to WCG ( or was it ESWC). And they are constantly in the newspapers

Added with the fact that its creator, Icefrog has insanely loyal followers and many appreciates that valve lets him to be in total control. I predict DotA 2 will be the next big Esports provided it remains cheap enough and accesible for the Asian market.

On November 28 2010 20:30 ZlaSHeR wrote:


I follow esports, I know the lingo, and I know the callouts and strats that the halo pros use and its extremely archaic and believe it or not, overplayed and simplistic (1 is a low oint, 2 mid, 3 is the highest point on a location, A and B usually reference signs on the map, the rest of the callouts are names of features of a map, snipes, rockets, ____color___ room, etc.)

I'm not saying that its not difficult to be good at using a 360 controller, my point is that its a compltely inferior system that doesn't test the peak of human skill because, it will always take x amount of seconds to do a 180 and shoot a guy behind you. Having that time be .1 seconds instead of .002 seconds is why console FPS's are always going to play slower and be more simplistic than a PC FPS.

There are not "tons" of international teams don't kid yourself. MLG's biggest asset is their ability to market and get their voice out to the media whether it is directly or indirectly. They make the image of MLG much larger than it actually is relative to other esports.

You could not list me more than 20 teams outside of NA that play at MLG events, to be honest theres only 3-4 of them that are any competitive in the top 50 teams, and no matter how you look at it, it is NOT an international esport, it was mlg'd pet project that grew from grassroots and has stuck to an american scene through and through. There are zero major events that hold Halo outside of MLG and it seems ot be staying that way for the foreseeable future.

You look at all the numbers you throw out there, which everyones heard including myself, in the past, but MLG's system allows for it. Like I said, MLG's best feature is their advertising and publicity in the american community. Their target audience is still 14-22 year old males and it really doesn't deviate much out of there. MLG gives a select 32 players contracts, and then outside of 8 teams nobody is sponsored or makes an income playing Halo. You look at major esports that have been successful over the years like a counterstrike or a starcraft, and these are true pro-games. They're miles bigger than Halo due to the fact that they are truly popular worldwide games. There are several tens of thousands of teams all around the world, there are hundreds of individuals that are on a professional teams and organizations.

Halo has brought around, everywhere it goes, a spotlight in order to make itself stand out, that doesn't

It's 250k over three years for the players, not the teams, and this doesn't include sponsorships/other things. And why is having a coach a bad thing? It makes the game more intricate and brings it even closer to being a real sport. What do you think coaches do in real world sports? They watch the games, and tell their team the strats to run. mean that it is as popular worldwide as it is portrayed to be. Maybe MLG holds a stranglehold on the games community, but that just means that it won't allow for the game to grow more popular than MLG can let it do by itself. With all that said will major tournaments ever actually hold Halo 3 as a title, featured game? No. WCG Halo is on par with Carom 3D or cell phone racing games, not with Starcraft or Counterstrike 1.6.

On November 28 2010 20:46 ZlaSHeR wrote:


Do I see tournaments with 300+? Yes, there are about 6-7 of them a week for Starcraft 2. If you're only talking about LAN's there are leaps and bounds more 300+ signups for fighting games. Last year at Evo2k10 I believe there were brackets of 3 THOUSAND plus people.

Blackops is popular online but once again its not a game that becomes a feature title esport and, although can be popular, its not popular in the sense that every pro organization will be looking to pick up a COD team, the SK's, EG's, wemadeFOX, DuskBin, etc.

They don't have that type of international appeal or marketability that other games have.



250k a year isn't guaranteed, its 250k over 3 years for the whole team, so lets say the team doesn't have a coach, thats 4 players over 3 years, so 20k a year. Unless you're Tsquared or Walshy, which has gone to shown that Tsquared become washed up before his contract ended, and Walshy plays more Starcraft 2 than most of you guys would believe, (He's in the 1.5k+ games played category, as a Zerg might I add). Once again, those numbers that MLG doled out are all meant for marketing too. Other games don't really do that, they COULD spend that much money but there seems to be a standardization in terms of pay that esports gives to their games. The only exmaple of number inflation due for marketing I can give you is the GSL. the 87k 1st plcae prize and 26k 2nd place prize, etc. If you add it all up it comes up to 1 million korean won per GSL. They COULD give out less but the only reason they inflate it up to 1 mil won is for marketing reasons and saying "this is the biggest esport tournament in the world" Which we all know would be the case regardless of 1 million korean won, or 500k. MLG wants to hvae big numbers so they can say they're the largest when in the end, they have the largest prize pool for halo across 5 events a year, culminating to 8 teams competing for 100k, ro 20-25k per person depending on the coach. (PS: When has a major esport ever had a coach that watches the screens and tells the other guys strats). Which comes out to less than the OSL/MSL runner ups get, which is put in an economy and under a Kespa organizaiton that is known to hav ea monopoly and try to dominate its market.

PS: Sorry for all these replies so late trancey, I don't mean to be BM about taking so long I just didn't see this blog until now, but want to take the time to propose my counter arguments

On November 29 2010 02:44 Risen wrote:

I would argue that because it is so much easier for a CS/Quake player to do a 180 the Halo player has to have more skill in knowing his opponent's position.

And why is having a coach a bad thing? It makes the game more intricate and brings it even closer to being a real sport. What do you think coaches do in real world sports? They watch the games, and tell their team the strats to run.

On November 20 2010 06:21 trancey wrote:

In this match, Fatal1ty starts at 0-8 and comes back to rape... This video basically shows the competitive aspects at the top tier, which is basically memorizing spawn timers for players, weapons, and armor.

I'll never be as good as ogre2 at halo, awesome comment, he'll never be as good as 1 million SC2 players worldwide

On November 30 2010 08:40 Sm3agol wrote:


Second, you entirely missed my point. People primarily bash Halo for its "low skill ceiling" saying you get to a point soon where noone is getting much better because there is nothing to really get better at...and I was saying its bs. If one player can dominate as hard as ogre2 has, then there has to be a skillful aspect of the game that isn't close to being reached.

In other words, if the game was skilless, and had a low ceiling, then everyone "pro" would be more or less at the same level of skill and no one person could dominate. A prime example of a game like this is Counterstrike Source. Everyone at the highest level is about at the same level ,and the only thing separating teams is the actual teamwork.

Its the exact same scenario in Halo as in Quake Live. Rapha, with just positional dominance, and just mediocre, even bad(for a pro) aim and movement skill has utterly dominated the entire QL scene for a couple years now. It also shows just how much more about QL there is too learn too.