Why Esports Will Fail - Page 5

On May 28 2011 05:55 zhurai wrote:
I don't watch "normal" sports. Nor care about it.

On May 28 2011 05:41 rawbertson wrote:


Tell me you wouldn't want to date this guy if you were a chick

On May 28 2011 05:59 Sernyl wrote:
Do people still compare e-sports to the olympics and other sports?Seriously?...

No ,it will never surpass any mainstream sports or be as popular as them.
Nevertheless ,e-sports is in a league of its own.It's still growing.Will it be more mainstream than basketball or football?Will it be even half as popular?No ,never ,but it will still be huge.Just look at the current prize pools for SC2 tournaments.Teams are literally sending their players with their own money across the world and buying + setting up team houses.SC2 teams are getting major sponsors.And when i say major i mean major.And e-sports is still in it's infant stage ,it will only get better from here.The e-sport industry is already better and bigger than it ever was and it keeps growing with every day.No ,i dont think video games will be mainstream with the general public and no ,i really doubt any video games will be added to the olympics.Nevertheless ,considering the amount of people playing video games globaly and people that are actually interested in competitions...I really see no reason why e-sports should ever die.Furthermore ,you require little knowledge of SC2 to start enjoying it ,and you can get the basic knowledge by playing any other RTS.

On May 28 2011 06:03 Try wrote:

I don't think you read my opening post. I don't have delusions that esports will be as popular as soccer, but more than that my point was that there are inherent problems in esports, such as lack of stability, the existence of too many different games that are simply abandoned after a couple years, and the low skill cap of most games.

On May 28 2011 04:59 Mormagil wrote:


Yes, and it is essentially random. While this spacifically isn't the huge problem with Brawl, the mentality behind it is. The imbalance of MK and Snake aren't really too bad of a problem (even though it certainly doesn't help). Games can survive being massively imbalanced and still be considered great.

People forget that Melee is a gigantically hugely imbalanced game. In Melee, you have 26 characters, and you have a shot at winning a big tournament with only four of them. Maybe a fifth if you count the unique cases of Mango and Hungrybox's Puff or Armada's Peach. It is even debatable that Marth is still in that category as we haven't seen a good Marth since M2K. Beyond that, nothing else has a chance. For example, you will never see a Captain Falcon win anything because they will eventually play against a Sheik in brackets somewhere. For example, Ice climbers hasn't won anything in years because people figured out how to not get grabbed. And nothing else can stand up to Fox/Falco. The best Zelda player in the world (Lake) plays at my school every now and again, and he can't even get out of pools at major events.

And yet Melee is still played as is remembered as an amazing game whereas Brawl is laughed at. Why? The difference is the skill ceiling and game difficulty. The skill ceiling in Melee doesn't exist. Even without the random chances of tripping, the tech required to even move around in Melee makes anything in Brawl look pathetic. Melee is so much harder and more intricate than Brawl that you regularly will see Melee players rape Brawl pros at Brawl.

M2K didn't dominate the Brawl scene because he played Metaknight, the most OP character in the game. He dominated because he was the only Melee player to bother with Brawl. As proof, I offer his Metaknight ditto history. If it isn't 100% wins, it's damn close. The man never lost MK vs. MK. If that doesn't say he is better than his opponents, not sure what does.

This kind of deterioration is happening all over the gaming world. I haven't seen a good counterexample of this trend in a long time.

What does this have to do with the esports scene living or dieing? Well, I would debate that games losing their high skill appeal is a bad thing in general, but I leave that up to all you. It sure as hell doesn't help, let's agree on that.

On May 28 2011 05:41 Mormagil wrote:


to the above poster:
Just throwing this out there, I don't think the ability to watch replays counts as a rule change. That counts as finally giving the refs the ability to enforce the existing rules. This results in the players finally having some problems in abusing the game, which of course changes the game. Remeber that game Alanzo Mourning took a fall from contact with Muggsy Bogues? How seriously are we supposed to take a change if it fixes something as retarded as things like that. I mean, I'm sorry, but even if you give Muggsy a tank he couldn't knock Mourning over. For me, this is about the same as a bug fix in video games.

In general:
I think the original poster was making a more economic argument about the gaming industry than an argument about the games themselves. From the game company's point of view, it makes sense to make games and patches around the common gamer. Also, it makes sense to constantly try to push the community into the merry go round of switching from Halo 15 to Halo 16. In terms of dollars, it's just too much of a good deal for them.

The growth of e-sports imo is bringing more and more interest in games that have this level of depth, and the games that are currently doing well in terms of e-sports are going to continually carry with them the basic fundamental game design concepts of the game that preceded them.

On May 28 2011 06:23 NicolBolas wrote:
The problem with this logic is very simple.

The vast, vast majority of games were never intended to be competitive games. Quake 3? It was a casual game for its day, as was Counter-Strike. Melee was never supposed to be a competitive game. Even Street Fighter 2's competitive-ness is based primarily on a bug (combos) that Capcom decided to keep around in every other installment.

Even Starcraft was never meant to be played as a competitive game. It was a casual RTS game for its time. You weren't supposed to have 300 APM. You weren't supposed to do Muta-micro and patrol-micro. You weren't supposed to be able to macro and micro like people were able to do.

Let me put it another way. Game developers have never intentionally created a competitive game (except for SC2 and modern Street Fighter games); it always happens by accident. The reason you think that games have become less competitive over time is really quite simple.

Most games that became competitive games do so because of subtle bugs in the game. Bunny-hopping, Wave-dashing, Muta-micro, etc. The vast majority of these bugs are bugs introduced by optimizing the game for the hardware of the day. The developers cut corners, made assumptions, and gamers found ways of turning those assumptions into gameplay.

With modern, relatively high-performance, hardware, game developers don't write those bugs anymore. They don't have to; they can build their engines correctly from the start. Therefore, if there are going to be competitive features, they have to deliberately add them (like combos in Street Fighter). So developers generally don't make the mistakes that cause games to be able to be appropriated for competitive play.

This means that the only way to make a competitive game is to design one specifically for that purpose. Like SC2 or Street Fighter.

What is the fundamental difference between a regular sport and eSports? Regular sports are always casual-friendly.

You can play football (any kind) if you get enough people together. You can play and have fun. You can play basketball, tennis, golf, etc. You may not be very good, but you can play it. The games are very accessible. Even boardgames like Chess and Go are very accessible.

Are eSports? Is wavedashing accessible? Is Muta-micro accessible? Casual players enjoy modern FPS games like TF2 and CoD more than they do Quake.

If you want eSports to take off, you need a game that is casual-friendly, so that everyone plays it. It still needs to have depth, but casual-friendliness is the only way eSports will ever go mainstream. Otherwise it will remain a niche.

On May 28 2011 06:23 NicolBolas wrote:What is the fundamental difference between a regular sport and eSports? Regular sports are always casual-friendly.

You can play football (any kind) if you get enough people together. You can play and have fun. You can play basketball, tennis, golf, etc. You may not be very good, but you can play it. The games are very accessible. Even boardgames like Chess and Go are very accessible.

Are eSports? Is wavedashing accessible? Is Muta-micro accessible? Casual players enjoy modern FPS games like TF2 and CoD more than they do Quake.

If you want eSports to take off, you need a game that is casual-friendly, so that everyone plays it. It still needs to have depth, but casual-friendliness is the only way eSports will ever go mainstream. Otherwise it will remain a niche.