E-Sports Largest Games?

On November 20 2010 05:17 Kickboxer wrote:
Esports will never reach decent popularity if it's carried by gamers alone. Imagine if everybody into football actually had to play to find watching it fun.

On November 20 2010 05:17 Kickboxer wrote:
I think SC2 and Street Fighter 4 are the only games out there you can spectate with interest even if you don't play them.

Esports will never reach decent popularity if it's carried by gamers alone. Imagine if everybody into football actually had to play to find watching it fun.

So I would bet on those two. My hopes are also high for Diablo Arena ^_^

On November 20 2010 06:01 heyoka wrote:
Seems likely that Dota 2 will be huge when its released next year yes?

On November 20 2010 06:09 Ogna wrote:
What about games like COD or LoL?

On November 20 2010 06:21 trancey wrote:
It was also the first game to catch the attention of Western Sponsors outside of Asia and help carve gaming teams into lucrative organizations whose sole purpose is to function as a coverage and competitive hub for gamers.

On November 20 2010 06:31 trancey wrote:


It's not a lie, I was referencing that CS was a game that created Esports for Western Countries. Korean teams did attract Western Sponsors for SC, but I said *outside* of Asia.

You have to understand that CS peaked around the same time that SC:BW did in Korea.

On November 20 2010 06:39 trancey wrote:
Ah I stand corrected... But I still don't think Quake laid the foundation for Esports as much as CS and SC did. It was there first, but people didn't throw money at it like they did for CS. Imagine how many 5 man teams were being flown around for events, the game itself was an expensive Esport to maintain but sponsors/organizations still paid out for it.

On November 20 2010 04:58 son1dow wrote:
Counter strike, Halo, Quake Live, Starcraft 2, perhaps CoD are probably the main ones with sc2 probably being the most promising for the future.
Some fighting games are really big right now, but the biggest one ( Super street fighter 4 ) isn't getting the required support from it's creators, capcom and so it does not hold a big future apart from a few (huge ATM tho) community-run tournaments in the west, IMO. Some other fighting games are popular in Japan, but it's a very elitist, hardcore community so it is not very likely to spread.

Europe has been the stronger continent in western esports as a whole (sc guys might not agree but sc1 is only a small part of the games played here), but also a little bit more hardcore with their game choices so you always have to consider that.
Halo is all MLG, which is an USA based company as you may know.
Counter-strike has LAN all over the world but Europe has the, generally, stronger scene. It will have to die eventually if valve doesn't do anything and the community projects do not work out, but that has been said many times before.
Quake's community stronger in EU, but funnily NA always has a few players able to contend for the top spots.
Stacraft 2... you tell me It's big all over apparently.
CoD, I have no idea.
Japan>>USA>>>>>>EU in SF4 in my outdated, but most likely still correct knowledge.


Some other games are at least as popular (quake live actually has a pretty small community but has still managed to survive and attract sponsors throughout the years, 'the last big tournament' is a very famous quote used throughout the years), but don't have the long-lasting communities and appeal, IMHO. These include TF2 (yeah, big community, look how many tournaments it has tho), Smash etc.

Personally, I'm pretty elitist in the way I view these games, in the way that I only actually support the ones I consider hardcore like Quake, starcraft and some fighting games, even hating some of the others that I consider dumbed down - like TF2, CoD, the worst one - Halo and even, flame on, CS 1.6, (and don't get me started on MMOs, guitar or music and mobile phone games LOL) so I might not be the person to ask how big some of these games are but I do know a lot about the ones I follow and would love to clear a few things up, if you'd like me to.

On November 20 2010 06:21 trancey wrote:
Being an industry professional thats followed Esports for 10 years, these are the top 5 in terms of longevity, prize pools, international exposure, and overall LAN scene development. I sorted them into series, If I were to pinpoint the exact title, it would be a lot harder to base assumptions since some are dwindling away and others are rising into the scene. It's just easier to lump all the titles of a specific series together, since most of the time, the scene just evolves to the next title.

Top 5 Esports Games:

1) StarCraft

From the conception of Esports, StarCraft was the game that revolutionized competitive gaming. The TL community does not need to be told about the legend of "The Emperor" and evolution of the StarCraft scene in Korea. It is the first and greatest competitive gaming community to ever exist. I haven't even touched on SC2 and I feel like I don't need to.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DzdA51QkNOE

2) Counter-Strike

If one game drew attention away from the growing RTS scene of StarCraft in the early 2000s, it was definitely Counter-Strike. CS was the first to create a complex mIRC community existing to grow the competitive community at large. It was also the first game to attract Western Gaming teams sponsors and help carve teams into lucrative organizations (such as SK, Fnatic, etc.) whose sole purpose is to function as a coverage and competitive hub for gamers. Although the game is aging and the scene is virtually non-existent in NA, it's still surviving in EU and parts of Asia. Further more, even though CS's expansion was a catastrophic failure in the scene's eyes, the CoD franchise is looking to pick up with CS left off. I would say CS was a the perfect Esports of all-time for the FPS community, it was simple and very easy to pick up. The strategy and depth of skill between players existed at so many levels. Ron "Rambo" Kim works at MLG and I listened to him talk about CS mechanics, I never realized there was the depth in which different hand positions create for your game (he holds the mouse a different way depending on which gun/position he was in).

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XTWsE4z4JLM

3) Street Fighter

This is probably the franchise I know the least about but I'm absolutely certain that this is one of the biggest scenes out there (especially in Japan and the West Coast). It's fair to say that Japanese and Korean culture are the most technologically advanced in all of Asia. The huge difference between the two their social norms in parenting. The Japanese fringe upon a child that stays at home all day and plays video games, every Japanese parent pushes their children to go outside and get off the computer. Where do the nerdy gamer kids end up? At the ARCADE, of course! Bound with the stereo-type that maybe the Japanese just like fighting and fighting games in general, Street Fighter is the closest game to an Esport that the Japanese have. Names like Daigo and Justin Wong are synomous with the SF scene, players like to trash talk in this scene but all have a level of respect for one another.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XeM0rH_4ung

I know very little about Street Fighter (probably comparable to a Bronze League player), but what happens in this video is absolutely incredible. Daigo (considered the BoxeR of SF) vs. Justin Wong, the greatest rivalry in Fighting Games, was about to be defeated at 1% hp. Jwong unleashes a ultimate combo and if Daigo just blocked 1 hit, it would have killed him. The only way to have survived the 20 hit combo was to parry each one (a technique that requires you to point the joystick at each move in the combo at lightning speed), which is absolutely incredible in the fashion he did it.

4) Halo

Honestly, the Halo scene is pretty unknown outside of NA but is starting to get bigger. It's absolutely crazy what's happened at MLG with the talent and monopoly they have over the game. The prize pool and contracts offered to the pros are the only ones that can rival those made by Koreans.

Halo has ways of creating absolutely amazing plays by either sheer luck, crazy skill, or a combination of both. Seeing a pro player throw a sticky grenade onto another while being launched off into the sky seems quite normal among the top tier. The level of skill that the current pros have achieved is something that takes years of practice and building muscle memory to get to.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pnF0aH3fDZg

There is also a dynasty built into the pro scene that trumps every team that's ever emerged in competitions. The ORGE twins of Final Boss have dominated each Halo title tremendously, there's only one player that comes close to matching their achievements and he was actually their former teammate (Walshy, a SC2 fanatic by the way). There was an interesting article about ORGE2 on MLGpro today, it's quite interesting if you want to have an idea about how much this guy dominated the Halo scene. Here's some statistics on him:

Ogre 2 By the Numbers
Exited every Halo title in the franchise as National Champion.
Won four out of seven National Championships (the only player to ever do so).
Has 24 tournaments wins (three more than Walshy, the closest contender)
Final Boss is the only team to threepeat in Halo 3.
One of two players (with Walshy) to win a title in four games (Halo 1, 2, 3 and Shadowrun)
From 2003-2008, placed in the Top 2 in 38 straight tournaments.
Won 30 titles during the 38 tournament streak
From 2004-2005, won 10 straight tournaments
From 2005-2006, won nine straight tournaments

http://www.mlgpro.com/content/page/319667/Ogre-2-The-Greatest-Player-of-All-Time 5

5) Quake Series

It was honestly a toss up between WC3 and Quake for me, but given the longevity of the Quake scene and it's popularity in EU and NA, I had to give it to Quake... Besides, the Quake Live is FREE to play now (what other Esport game can you play for free online?).

Quake is considered the highest form of FPS in which it's a solo player's game, most other competitive FPS are team-based games, but Quake is the reigning Solo FPS game that trumps all others. The community and game have forged some of the greatest personalities and characters in the Esports scene. We're truly lucky to have attracted these characters into Esports, as they've evolved into helping SC2 and others scenes now.

The three people that can put it into perspective of how important Quake was into bringing them into Esports: Fatal1ty, Slasher, and 2GD. These three figures have helped grow Esports and multiple gaming scenes after beginning their careers in Quake. Fatal1ty just being an all-around badass and creating the first commercially marketed brand name based off an Esports figure, Slasher being the ultimate social networking champion of the internet, and 2GD serving as a commenting personality for Quake, WoW, and now BLC (this guy is honestly one of the best shoutcasters of all-time, esp for a Brit. I highly recommend listening to some of his old Quake or WoW commentaries, I'm not even sure how he got away with saying the things he said in-front of hundreds of thousands of people.)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kRMn1tj5-Nc

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.

Honorable Mentions: Warcraft III, WoW: Arena, DotA, HoN, LoL, SSMB, FIFA

How much bigger does a game need to be?

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?

On November 20 2010 07:23 Zechs wrote:


Your information about the number of international teams seems pretty misleading to me. Halo is fairly popular here in the UK but in the rest of Europe it's seen as a casual game like pretty much anything else on consoles. The above poster was talking about Halo being big in America and nowhere else and you haven't really said anything to refute that. About 2-5 European teams show-up to MLG (and that's an increase from 1-2 in the past) and they generally do quite poorly because they have noone to practice against over here - much like American CS teams at CPL in the past.

I'll give you an example from my own experience. When SK had a Halo team for a while the biggest event they got sent to was i36. Now, i-series is a pretty big deal in the UK - even bigger now with SC2 - but compared to 'The Majors' it's like a local LAN cafe's allnighter, just with a few more people. The squad ended up leaving because SK didn't take them seriously enough and wouldn't send them to something like MLG. I realise that's just a one-off example, but it's indicative of the major European teams' attitude towards console gaming in general.

On November 20 2010 06:55 ZlaSHeR wrote:

I'm sorry, but did you just write those names off the top of your head?

Halo and CoD are NOT big esports whatsoever, just because MLG hosts them doesn't mean they're big worldwide, because nobody plays the game at a pro-gaming level outside of MLG.

The list will include

Counterstrike 1.6
Starcraft 2/BW
Fighting games, at the moment the largest is SSF4

Those 3 by far dominant their genre's by a mile, after that you can find QL, Fifa series, and HoN right at their heels. LoL is big but its more of a semi-pro type of game, not professional quite yet, the amount of prize money for HoN tournaments is larger in general.

Halo is a slow game, the amount of control you need to play that game competitively is significantly lower than any other game you've listed so far. The game is much more simplistic, but when it comes down to it, its flashy, and its on an xbox which is the premier platform to play on in the US. All that said, once again it is NOT a major worldwide esport, there are no tournaments outside of MLG, the prize money exists only 4x a year at a level that we regularly see SSF4 tournaments hit every 2-3 weeks at a major.

On November 20 2010 07:43 lazyfeet wrote:
Funny that everyone seem to forget about dota which is big in china and southeast asia. They also have mmo esports like kart rider or those free to play fps games.

On November 20 2010 04:57 Ogna wrote:
Xaeiu thanks for a real answer and not some troll crap or search bla bla, every opinion is helpful

I see youre from austria, I will most likely move to vienna soon and start a business and I will try to incorperate it with esports

On November 20 2010 07:45 Risen wrote:


Trackmania!!! :D

And I can see where you're coming from with DotA... I just don't see it as top 5. (Don't get me wrong, I follow DotA, but that doesn't mean other people do)

On November 20 2010 06:21 trancey wrote:
WoW: Arena

On November 20 2010 08:42 Sm3agol wrote:
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.

Any of you you people knocking it....try it. You will NEVER be anywhere close to Ogre1/2 in skill.

If the game was skilless and shallow, then you would hit a plateau, and soon everyone decent would reach that plateau.

On November 20 2010 20:16 son1dow wrote:




Of course we won't, how would you imagine that if we fucking HATE the gameplay?



Do you believe that yourself? Imagine football and bowling up on the same stage, and bowling players arguing that if it only required a tenth of the skills seen it football it would've hit the plateau years ago. There obviously are some skills to work on, but that doesn't mean that what separates the players on top is the same thing as in different competitions.
Disclaimer: I'm not dissing Halo's, or bowling players\spectators\tournament organizers. It's fun, it gives you money and\or fame so why would you stop it, really. I'm just saying that as for esports, it's not going to becomes something like in South Korea if you have your, extreme example here, mobile phone games and stacraft in there.

On November 20 2010 20:36 Sm3agol wrote:
Its always the old "omg consoles, rofl, no skill involved".

And your second argument just makes no sense whatsoever. I can't even follow what you're trying to say. And if you'd followed Halo at all, and you obviously have no clue, you'd know the plateau hasn't been reached. Just taking a single skill based thing like sticky grenades. i remember back in the Halo 1/2 days, and even way back then people called it skilless and n00by . Good sticks were pretty rare and were huge moments. 4 kills hardly ever happened. Look at it now. Any game you watch usually has several ridiculous plasma grenade kills, and there's videos everywhere of ridiculous killing sprees players are starting to go on.

And I want to know, if it's not skill that separates people at the top, then what does? Ogre 2 has won something like 30 of the last 35 Halo championships. What is that? Pure blind luck?

On November 20 2010 20:59 son1dow wrote:


perhaps because you've always been on halo forums, or you haven't been listening at all?



As you said, you can't follow what I'm trying to say. That may or may not be my own fault, but that doesn't make me clueless, so I'm gonna try and make this more clear to you:



Everybody has those easier, Z, C, D and G skills in halo but your Ogre 2 is better at X and Y. The fact that you couldn't predict what I was going to say still kind of points to your own lack of knowledge, either you haven't heard something like this before or you haven't been listening.

On November 20 2010 22:47 Risen wrote:
Blech... imo it's much more like

Quake, possible skills:
X [-----------------|-]
Y[-----------------|-]
Z[-----------------|-]
C[-----------------|-]
D[-----------------|-]
G[-----------------|-]
M[--l----------------]
N[---l---------------]
O[---l---------------]
P[--l----------------]



Halo, possible skills
X[-----------------|-]
Y[-----------------|-]
Z[--|----------------]
C[---|---------------]
D[---|---------------]
G[--|----------------]
M[-----------------|-]
N[-----------------l-]
O[-----------------l-]
P[-----------------l-]

Again, until you get someone who has been pro in both you won't really know which was harder, but you're arguing the point with Trancey who was CAL material and says Halo is harder in his opinion. This all boiled down to opinion, since the difficulty of games is in large part a subjective argument.

My opinion, again for you, is that Halo is harder. Whether it's because the controller is harder to use than mouse/keyboard (a fact outlined by cross-platform interactive games) or just that there is more to learn, I don't know. You're beating a dead horse at this point man, you've already implied you didn't play Halo much b/c you didn't like the gameplay, which is fine, but don't make these blanket statements without the proper qualifications to back them up.

On November 21 2010 00:54 Potatisodlaren wrote:
Just like people who play CnC competitively can't handle BW/SC2 competitively.

On November 21 2010 00:54 Potatisodlaren wrote:
As for the Halo skill debate I think playing competitive FPS games on consoles is like a healthy person choosing to play handicap football or something like that instead of normal football because they can't handle real competition. Saying things like mastering a controller is hard is silly, just like a healthy person giving the argument that them playing handicap football in a wheelchair is hard. They aren't equal and never will be.

On November 20 2010 10:22 Jswizzy wrote:
LOL isn't the most popular but it is one of the best to watch. CLG streams all the time and they won WCG. CLG Stream

On November 21 2010 08:03 TheAngelofDeath wrote:



Listen to this man, you might learn something. Keyboard+mouse>controller in both challenge, and skill. I don't understand the argument that using a controller is more difficult, when I've played on both console and pc and there is really no comparison in terms of challenge.

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.

On December 01 2010 02:10 son1dow wrote:


Yeah, and yet it doesn't say how many skills that is. When somebody says that a game has a low skill ceiling, it is usually mean that it doesn't have many skills to excel at, nobody in their right mind would say that the skillcap has been reached by top20 teams in the world or anything like that.




If a game was absolutely skill-less, yes. But it could as well have a low skill ceiling (most skills just learnable, but enough skills to not get fully capped) and have consistent results, tbh I see this argument you made thrown everywhere and it's just a logical flaw. In your example, counter strike source HAS a low skill ceiling and yet, still may have consistent results.


utterly dominated is a very poorly chosen word, that totally did not happen, and not for this period of time
His aim is ok, as in he hits when it matters although he might not hit some amazing shots like killsen etc.
His movement is very good.
Get some knowledge, sorry :\

On November 30 2010 06:17 Gnabgib wrote:


I think this video is a better demonstration on how insane high-level quake dueling is. (taken from the Quake live thread, Rapha explaining his thought processes on a map during IEM season 4 finals)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XdkDjsBiO58

On November 30 2010 09:16 trancey wrote:
I'm a numbers man, and honestly, I can not see how CS or Quake generates revenue world-wide on the same scale that Halo does for MLG.

On December 01 2010 02:45 Piy wrote:
SSBM used to have a pretty big scene in Japan and America but Brawl just isn't as good. SF4 has a reasonable scene in Japan and America I think. Mostly Quake/CS outside of Asia though I think.

On November 21 2010 05:48 icemanzdoinwork wrote:
http://www.iccup.com/starcraft/gamingprofile/AoN.fonger.html

Top CnC Red Alert 2 player who switched to SC:BW.


Henl another Ra2 player

http://www.esl.eu/nordic/vikingcup/sc2/cup10/player/996091/


Losing to morrow on esl
http://www.esl.eu/nordic/vikingcup/sc2/cup10/rankings

On December 01 2010 02:36 Sm3agol wrote:
Going to start with QL.
You sound like a Cooller fan. Yes, Rapha has utterly dominated. He's finished in the top 3-5 in virtually every tournament he's entered, and placed 1st in well over half of them. In a field of 10-15 competitive QL duelers, that kind of record is dominance, especially considering how random the game can be. Sure his wins often look less than impressive stylisticly, but that's just his play style.
And his aim is just very average. Almost everyone aims as well as he does, and most aim better.
His movement speed is not very good. It, like his aim, is very average. He can make the normal "difficult" jumps and tricks that every decent QL dueler can make, but he never wows you with a great map run or anything.

And back to Halo, you didn't even try to argue my point. You just stated it was wrong.......? It makes perfect sense to me. If a game has a low skill ceiling then it is virtually impossible for any one person to stand out, because anyone can hit that relatively low ceiling with a lot of practice. If one person can dominate, that means either noone is trying to get better or there are still skills that you can improve on, aka, it does not have a low skill ceiling.

You seem to be confused as to what a low skill ceiling is, maybe. It means you can only get so good at it. At some point in your practicing most games(CoD, CSS, etc) no matter how much anyone practices, they are limited in how good they can get by the game itself. For instance, movement in Halo has a VERY low skill ceiling, while in Quake, its virtually limitless, as more and more practice can get you more and more movement ability. Aim in a lot of FPS games is this way, the weapons are so inaccurate at decent range that no matter how much you practice, that glock won't be headshotting the peaking awp at D2 double doors.
That is what I mean by low skill ceiling, not how many skills there are. And as long as a game has two or three high skill ceiling aspects, it is usually pretty good.

On December 01 2010 03:57 son1dow wrote:


Watch some toxjq in the times of his q4 reign. That's dominance. This? He was just the best player, and even though his consistency is astonishing he never was "that far above" everyone, so no, he wasn't dominating. The word utter would definitely have to imply that he was dominating in-game, not just in paper. His dodging ( a part of movement ) is just amazing.



You can't honestly think that two to three aspects compared to say, ten is anything. Hence, a game with two to three "uncapped aspects" has a low skill ceiling, because not only you don't have much to excel at you also don't have variety, so the "braingame" is greatly reduced. I mean, just think of how much the non-existant movement skill of halo reduces the thinking in a fight or when traveling through the map, no matter how hard the couple of aspects may be, as the skills basically make each another harder.

On December 01 2010 08:40 Sm3agol wrote:
Toxiq in Q4? Rofl? Q4, enough said. Noone really gave a crap. Sure a lot of decent players gave it a chance, but it was nowhere near as universal as Q3, and hence the competition level was drastically lower than Q3.
And also like I said, i don't care how he wins, he just keeps winning. You don't have to utter dominate ingame to utterly dominate the game. His playstyle doesn't allow him to dominate the game. His aim and movement aren't good enough to let him dominate, his dodging and positioning skills are what make him amazing. And while they win you games, they don't rack up the big scores. If someone is down 2 frags with 2 minutes left vs rapha, and he is in control you can basically kiss the match goodbye, you won't be coming back unless you hit some ridiculous shots over and over again.

And if you think I'm saying Halo is on an EQUAL skill level with QL, then I'll put that to rest immediately. Heck no. But that doesn't make Halo a terrible game/esport. Its just not as deep, while still being quite difficult at high levels.

On December 02 2010 04:00 Kickboxer wrote:
Guys... no one cares about fps games, sorry.

They tried to push fps games on TV and it was a pathetic failure.

Why would anyone want to watch that? I thought we were having a discussion about serious e-sports as in events that could attract a casual or non gamer audience :p

On December 02 2010 05:45 Jswizzy wrote:
As for streaming, strategy games are more popular because you can't stream a fps game without a third party doing it because latency is the most important factor in the game and it affects hit registration.

On March 23 2011 12:16 kn83 wrote:
SC2, SC:BR, Counter Strike 1.6, Quake, Dota, WoW:Arena, Fifa are all up there based on some research. As for fighting games, there's a surprising large amount of series played competitively worldwide (especially Asian countries), though most of it is grassroots. While Street Fighter and Smash are the most popular in the states, there not in the whole world (though still pretty big), the biggest fighters are in fact Tekken and King of Fighters. Tekken in particular is so big in Korea that it has own broadcast show, sometimes rivaling Starcraft's in viewers ( which I'm surprised most people here didn't about, since this website centers alot on the Korean scene).

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2AiIqovNGGU

Going by popularity, the biggest series worldwide are in order KOF, Tekken, SF, then Smash, with Soul Calibur, Blaz Blue, and some SNK fighters in second string.

User was warned for this post

On November 20 2010 04:57 Ogna wrote:
Xaeiu thanks for a real answer and not some troll crap or search bla bla, every opinion is helpful

I see youre from austria, I will most likely move to vienna soon and start a business and I will try to incorperate it with esports