I'm not sure where to put this, so I'll just leave it in Sports and Games. Mods can move it if they want.
Edit: I said fail more for effect than anything else; I don't think the current incarnation of esports is a failure. I do, however, believe that many people will be disappointed if they believe e-sports will become anything more than a very marginalized past time.
As our fledgling esports community grows larger and larger, we begin to dream. Can we indeed move into the mainstream? Will we have an esports television channel? Someday, will people go to a Starcraft match over a football game? Many factors point in the right direction. Day[9] daily 100 has over a million views on Youtube. Over 10,000 users are active on TL at any moment. Dozens of tournaments with huge sponsors for thousands of dollars are popping up everywhere.
Can Starcraft one day compete with mainstream sports?
While it is true that the esport community is bigger than ever before, there are inherent problems in e-sports that will forever limit its growth and prevent it from becoming accepted in society. Starcraft 1 in Korea will be the closest we will ever get to real credibility.
The main problem is lack of stability. Every time a sequel or a new popular video game is published, the community is asked to "switch over," with parent companies quickly ensuring the previous game's demise. Now imagine that you are a die-hard football (soccer in the US) fan. One day, the league suddenly makes a statement. "We have just created this awesome game called basketball. We will no longer show or support football." Two years later, the same league once again declares "We no longer support basketball, we will now be a rugby league." No tradition would be built, no lasting, growing fanbase would rise. Asking hardcore BW fans to switch over to SC2 is basically the same thing. Now imagine that there are sudden, unexpected large rule changes to traditional sports. "Football players will no longer kick balls into a net, they will kick stones into buckets. We call this football patch 1.1. Also, every other month, basketball hoop heights will be changed." Sounds ridiculous, right? Game patches are basically the same thing. While it is understandable for Blizzard to want to help balance the game, patches that come out every month that completely reset the metagame are stupid.
Secondly, the very nature of the video game business makes it difficult to harbor competition. It is always in the company's interest to cater to casual gamers. Far more of them exist over hardcore gamers, so video game companies have learned to decrease the skillcap of games as much as possible. Just look at today's games versus games in the 1990's and early 2000's. Games like Quake, Starcraft, Super Smash Brothers Melee; hell, even single player games like BattleToads or Silver Surfer were impossible to master. Now look at today's games. Super Smash Brothers Brawl. Halo Reach. The CoD series. Basically every console game made since 2004. What's worse is that its not just that companies just "happen" to make easy games. Many of these games are anti-competitive by nature, such as Brawl.
Compare
With
Tripping? Wtf?
Obviously, you can make the claim that there still exists a sizeable skillgap and it still remains impossible to play games to a perfect level. But the difference between skilled players and nonames is smaller than ever before. Some people argue that this promotes "competition." But do we really want players who practice for 14 hours a day to lose any random monkey who can pick up a controller? The beauty of sports lies in the ability of the best athletes to do what most of us cannot. If we could all run 9.8 100 meter dashes and with a little practice beat Olympic sprinters, would Usain Bolt still seem so special?
I could beat him on a good day.
I hope I am wrong. I hope that our community and our players will transcend these obstacles, and some day I will be able to turn on my TV and watch a match between Idra and Thorzain over some beers. But I'm not holding my breath.
Is that the right brawl video? It doesn't really match up with what your next paragraph says. maybe it's changed in brawl but in ssbm m2k was legendary for the sheer amount of practice he put in, and he's the one that won the match.
On May 28 2011 02:36 Antoine wrote: Is that the right brawl video? It doesn't really match up with what your next paragraph says. maybe it's changed in brawl but in ssbm m2k was legendary for the sheer amount of practice he put in, and he's the one that won the match.
Maybe it's because Metaknight is massively OP (I thought he was banned from tournaments)? Dunno.
On May 28 2011 02:36 Antoine wrote: Is that the right brawl video? It doesn't really match up with what your next paragraph says. maybe it's changed in brawl but in ssbm m2k was legendary for the sheer amount of practice he put in, and he's the one that won the match.
Maybe it's because Metaknight is massively OP (I thought he was banned from tournaments)? Dunno.
That's kind of what I was trying to get at, but I posted another video.
Yes it is quite the dream. The dream however lives with Brood War in Korea. Most sports were never mainstream right off the bat, it took a lot of time for a huge following to converge on the sports they love.
A certain game will have to stand the tests of time and always be played no matter how far into the future it is. Brood War has the best chance to achieve this feat. It has a structured league where their pro's play for the fans on a set schedule with other tournaments mixed in and broadcasted.
It might come to pass but probably not in our lifetime to become as mainstream as soccer(football), hockey, baseball and many other sports. We are just being too impatient and trying to ram it down everyone's throats that it should be mainstream tommorow. I think this is the only reason it will fail is with our impatience.
Nobody watches professional track and field outside of the Olympics, and it has been around for thousands of years and will continue to be played.
SC2 and other games don't have to be "mainstream" to succeed, even now they are doing well and if the scene doesn't grow at all, as long as it stays at a consistent level all will be fine.
I don't really like the title of this thread. As far as I am concerned, as long as e-sports stays at least as big as it currently is, it has already succeeded. Television is a dying medium. I have no interest of having a Starcraft television channel. I don't even own a TV.
On May 28 2011 02:41 Mailing wrote: Nobody watches professional track and field outside of the Olympics, and it has been around for thousands of years and will continue to be played.
SC2 and other games don't have to be "mainstream" to succeed, even now they are doing well and if the scene doesn't grow at all, as long as it stays at a consistent level all will be fine.
But that's just the point. It won't stay consistent. The scene will boom, and with the next new flashy game everyone will leave and move on to the new shiny.
On May 28 2011 02:41 Mailing wrote: Nobody watches professional track and field outside of the Olympics, and it has been around for thousands of years and will continue to be played.
SC2 and other games don't have to be "mainstream" to succeed, even now they are doing well and if the scene doesn't grow at all, as long as it stays at a consistent level all will be fine.
But that's just the point. It won't stay consistent. The scene will boom, and with the next new flashy game everyone will leave and move on to the new shiny.
I feel like if the game is good enough (BW), people will stay with it instead of moving in. In regards to your sports analogy, sure, you could say that sports wouldn't work if people were playing soccer one day then moved on to basketball once it "came out". But that's not how things worked, right? Obviously, some of those sports were invented before others, yet they all manage to keep a large following. And with games, though new ones will come out, if an older one is good enough, it'll maintain its following. The only problem I can see is the painfully shitty attention span of the current "Xbox" generation. In light of that, I agree that it'll be rather troublesome for any game to have real competitive staying power.
On May 28 2011 02:41 DrainX wrote: I don't really like the title of this thread. As far as I am concerned, as long as e-sports stays at least as big as it currently is, it has already succeeded. Television is a dying medium. I have no interest of having a Starcraft television channel. I don't even own a TV.
Esport sponsors are fickle. They support a game for a couple years as long as everyone is still playing, then move on. E-sports may stay the same size, but the games sponsors support will be completely different after 5 years. Look at WCG in 2005 vs WCG today or MLG sponsorships in 2005 vs MLG sponsorships today.
E-Sports has seen a huge growth with SC2, and it will see a huge growth should SC3 arrive as well, which I remind you is at the very least a decade away.
On May 28 2011 02:41 Mailing wrote: Nobody watches professional track and field outside of the Olympics, and it has been around for thousands of years and will continue to be played.
SC2 and other games don't have to be "mainstream" to succeed, even now they are doing well and if the scene doesn't grow at all, as long as it stays at a consistent level all will be fine.
But that's just the point. It won't stay consistent. The scene will boom, and with the next new flashy game everyone will leave and move on to the new shiny.
BW didn't boom in Korea. It plateaued. I don't see why that wouldn't happen with SC2 in the rest of the world. Many games that are played competitively today are old. Like Quake Live (Basically Quake 3), CS 1.6 and Brood war. Many new games aren't suited for pro-gaming like you say but some are (Starcraft 2) and we don't need every game to be the perfect e-sports game and if there are no new games we will just play the old ones that the fans and the players enjoy. If there is a new RTS 5 or 10 years from now that is better or more interesting than Starcraft 2 then I have no problem with it becoming the new big hit and replacing SC2. E-sports doesn't have to be like sports. I enjoy it just the way it is.
It seems to me that the problem you describe only really applies to CoD and Halo and only at MLG.
I agree with most of what you wrote in the OP, especially the parts about how it makes no sense (from a player's standpoint) to move from better games to worse games, such as BW->SC2, the great FPS of the 90s->CoD clones, etc. However, I think that e-sports will continue to grow, just because as the games get more mainstream (even if they are worse), e-sports will get more popular, even if the level of play becomes lower due to poor game design. You can see this in a bad way because the quality of games and level of play will get worse, or you can see it in a good way because the popularity of competitive gaming will grow. I see it in a bad way.
On May 28 2011 02:41 Mailing wrote: Nobody watches professional track and field outside of the Olympics, and it has been around for thousands of years and will continue to be played.
SC2 and other games don't have to be "mainstream" to succeed, even now they are doing well and if the scene doesn't grow at all, as long as it stays at a consistent level all will be fine.
But that's just the point. It won't stay consistent. The scene will boom, and with the next new flashy game everyone will leave and move on to the new shiny.
I feel like if the game is good enough (BW), people will stay with it instead of moving in. In regards to your sports analogy, sure, you could say that sports wouldn't work if people were playing soccer one day then moved on to basketball once it "came out". But that's not how things worked, right? Obviously, some of those sports were invented before others, yet they all manage to keep a large following. And with games, though new ones will come out, if an older one is good enough, it'll maintain its following. The only problem I can see is the painfully shitty attention span of the current "Xbox" generation. In light of that, I agree that it'll be rather troublesome for any game to have real competitive staying power.
Sure some people will always stay with it. Look at the hardcore Warcraft II community. However, you can hardly call it an esport if your community is like 20 people with no corporate sponsors to provide legitimate tournaments. Even taking your example BW, ICCUP is a shadow of what it once was. I think its only a matter of time before the scene in Korea stops being profitable for Kespa and dies out.
With games like CS1.6, BW, DotA, SF2, and Q3/QL that have transcended time and sequels, I don't even understand how this statement that "e-sports will die" can be true. As long as there are tournaments and people practicing for them, there will be e-sports. E-Sports even exists for titles like AoE2 and WC2 (no, I was not trying to type 3, though I'm pretty sure it exists for 3 as well). Whether it will be big is entirely another issue, but the fact is e-sports was and is here to stay. Who cares if there won't always be the scene in its exact form 20 years from now? As long as there are people to play StarCraft with me, then I'm happy.
Sure some people will always stay with it. Look at the hardcore Warcraft II community. However, you can hardly call it an esport if your community is like 20 people with no corporate sponsors to provide legitimate tournaments. Even taking your example BW, ICCUP is a shadow of what it once was. I think its only a matter of time before the scene in Korea stops being profitable for Kespa and dies out.
Why are corporate sponsors required? If someone is giving $20, and everybody is practicing their best for that $20, then is not the spirit of e-sport present? And if the spirit is present, then who cares about how big the prize-pool is? Yes ICCup is a shadow of what it once was, but have you seen the Korean BW servers? And KeSPA might die out (I'm betting against it), but that doesn't mean e-sports ends in Korea once and for all.
what about poker? one could argue that poker should die out because it is not entirely comprised of skill.
in any case. this seems to be very weak reasoning as to why esports will not grow. the better games will rise above the newer games (like BW did for 10+ years, and continues to stay active today)
On May 28 2011 02:54 vindKtiv wrote: With games like CS1.6, BW, DotA, SF2, and Q3/QL that have transcended time and sequels, I don't even understand how this statement that "e-sports will die" can be true. As long as there are tournaments and people practicing for them, there will be e-sports. E-Sports even exists for titles like AoE2 and WC2 (no, I was not trying to type 3, though I'm pretty sure it exists for 3 as well). Whether it will be big is entirely another issue, but the fact is e-sports was and is here to stay. Who cares if there won't always be the scene in its exact form 20 years from now? As long as there are people to play StarCraft with me, then I'm happy.
The whole point is that there might not people to play Starcraft with you. Once the main ADHD community dies out, the remaining players slowly leave the scene. Wouldn't you be discouraged to go on Bnet or ICCUP, only to find a ghosttown?
Interesting. Very interesting. This is something I've been thinking about for a while but because it is essentially out of my hands I haven't devoted too much time to it. What I think may happen is that a community will latch onto particular games and their communities will develop and sustain themselves. Eventually they will fade away but by that time another game will have come along. We had Brood War for a while, and now we have SC2. The game may be different but 'ESports' is growing the whole community has expanded.
On May 28 2011 02:56 ishboh wrote: what about poker? one could argue that poker should die out because it is not entirely comprised of skill.
in any case. this seems to be very weak reasoning as to why esports will not grow. the better games will rise above the newer games (like BW did for 10+ years, and continues to stay active today)
We'll see how active the BW community is 5 years from now.
I don't know if West Ham counts as "real sport," lol.
Looking forward, i think esports needs to show it's top people as well rounded, successful and socially capable. More kids are playing games day by day, so the player pool will be there, but for it to become a mainstream casual thing the casuals have to see us as more than just "those geeks with whom we have nothing in common."
Your first point - about constant updates - is legitimate. If the games, even within genres, and therefore skillsets necessary are constantly changing, by definition the scene is unstable. However, let's be honest on a couple of matters:
1) The only true esports-promoting company in RTS right now is Blizzard. All three of their most recent RTS have or had a large professional scene. BW and SC2 follow the same essential patterns; even WC3, with its very different focuses, still has all the same elements. (If you compare WC3 to another company's RTS - AE, DOW, HW - the similarities stand out.) Because of this - especially for the BW-to-SC2 switch as and if it happens - this is more like the rule changes in American football, which have gradually transformed the game but kept the continuity.
2) It's hard to see the future. SC2 has given a huge boost to the visibility of esports, but the interest in the game itself is still largely running on hype. Five years from now, we could have any of the following:
- SC2 has become "esports", worldwide, because it's that good a game. In this case, Blizz might release SCIII, or WOSC, or Ghost... but could they demand everybody just switch? Would "everybody" switch? In Korea, where BW was established institutionally, the effect on the BW scene has been very small, even with the loss of B-teamers, some practice partners, and legends to SC2. A worldwide professional community would be even harder to move.
- SC2 has lived out its hype, and died down. BW returns to unquestioned prominence in Korea and reinterests serious progamers. What happens then? No idea.
- Some other company releases an RTS miles better than SC2 and takes over esports. (MLG, new Korean leagues, etc. etc.).
- Alternatively, the new RTS divides the community, or Blizzard announces WC4 or something and the community, splinters further. This is what we need to worry about.
In short, it's too early to really predict - but yes, we need stability eventually. I think we'll reach it, I think the RTS idea has the ability to last - but I'm not willing to predict how this happens or what game will finally codify the sport.
As to your second point: RTS is by it's nature less subject to this than other games. Let's imagine that SC7 comes out, and it has perfect pathing, AI focus-fire, etc. etc.: the point-clicky element may be diminished, micro may be rewarded less... but the strategy element remains. I can't (in all my 1500 glory) ever dream of beating Kasparov at chess even though all the pieces go where I tell them to every single time. Similarly, me and my D-/silver skill will never beat Flash at this hypothetical SC7 even if it's got that perfect AI.
As long as there are viewers, there will be sponsors. I have lots of friends who watch Starcraft 2 as an E-sports that haven't even played the game. I don't think that the number of viewers necessarily have to decrease because people stop playing the game. I stopped playing Starcraft 2 before Christmas and I watch more streams now than ever.
As to your second point: RTS is by it's nature less subject to this than other games. Let's imagine that SC7 comes out, and it has perfect pathing, AI focus-fire, etc. etc.: the point-clicky element may be diminished, micro may be rewarded less... but the strategy element remains. I can't (in all my 1500 glory) ever dream of beating Kasparov at chess even though all the pieces go where I tell them to every single time. Similarly, me and my D-/silver skill will never beat Flash at this hypothetical SC7 even if it's got that perfect AI.
I'm about to go for lunch, so I only have time to reply to this part. I too play chess at about an expert/master level, and you cannot compare strategy in SC against strategy in chess. Even the most complex situations in SC cannot even begin to scratch the surface of chess complexity. Every game has strategy. However, we cannot compare strategy in a game like connect four to a game like Go. They are simply on different levels.
On May 28 2011 02:56 ishboh wrote: what about poker? one could argue that poker should die out because it is not entirely comprised of skill.
in any case. this seems to be very weak reasoning as to why esports will not grow. the better games will rise above the newer games (like BW did for 10+ years, and continues to stay active today)
Also, on the subject of poker, TV poker is kind of a farce imho. It's kind of like strongman competitions; its more for show than a legitimate competition.
I love this post and agree totally. People are jumping on board so fast with sc2 because it is possible to be "pro" and make money because the skill it requires is attainable (unlike BW). Pros in BW are legendary because of what they put into it which most people couldnt/wouldnt do. In sc2 there are "pros" who might play 5-6 hrs a day (if that) and can still make cash. This is highly attractive to people as most people play that long anyway. With easier mechanics and things you can get that would clearly give you a free win (Cruncher comes to mind when writing this sentence) you will see no-names who just game to starcraft make money.
Now imagine that there are sudden, unexpected large rule changes to traditional sports. "Football players will no longer kick balls into a net, they will kick stones into buckets. We call this football patch 1.1. Also, every other month, basketball hoop heights will be changed." Sounds ridiculous, right? Game patches are basically the same thing. While it is understandable for Blizzard to want to help balance the game, patches that come out every month that completely reset the metagame are stupid.
Actually, the NHL did this post lockout, changing some very important rules and changing the way the game is played, officiated, and watched. The result was a sudden, and large increase in popularity and prosperity for the league and sport. The league continues to look at the sport every year to find tweaks and changes to make it a faster, more exciting, but also safer, game. The patches we see with SC2 do the same thing, make the game more competitive and exciting to watch.
I think esports can succeed, but I don't think its going to happen soon. The gaming industry is currently larger than the Hollywood movie industry, and they want this to happen. I have to imagine they will find some way to make sure that esports finds some niche in everyday life, maybe not with the dramatic success of already established traditional sports, but on some level of legitimacy.
I point out the example of Korea. I know Korea is a very unique situation, but it's not alone. China and Taiwan's esport scenes are beginning to evolve into something that resembles the early esports market in Korea. And let's not forget Sweden that is beginning to look like the West's answer to Korea. It's coming, and there are enough people with power and money driving it to make its rise inevitable.
I don't think it will ever be like Soccer, or Baseball, or any other big established sport, not with the way its structured. It doesn't lend itself well to being a television show, not sure how they do it in Korea. However as our world develops more we're beginning to see the rise of online shows and phenomenons and I think esports will dominate that. If it ever does make it to a network television station it will either have to be something purely devoted to esports, or SC2, or as something off primetime, like poker. The internet can support esports easily, although television would be cool, it doesn't need it in any way, shape or form.
I don't get why people constantly bring the argument that real sports don't have rules changes that alter the way they are played.
- Basketball's shot clock completely changed the game. - F1 racing frequently changes the specs of the vehicles that can race - Olympic swimming changed the rules just a few years back to prevent swimmers' covering most of the distance without actually breaking the surface and performing the stroke nominally being swum in the race. - The NFL instant replay rule - And so on...
All sports introduce and change rules in an attempt to make them more interesting and exciting to watch. Removing an upgrade or making an upgrade take 20 seconds longer to research is certainly not as big a deal as the shot clock, and yet people didn't throw up their hands at basketball and switch to watching professional go (which really hasn't had any rules changes in a few hundred years to the best of my knowledge).
While the initial argument may be true, I think the OP is pointing fingers at the wrong issue. I think Korean BW has shown that ESPORTS is completely viable as a stable competitive medium. I think the issue at hand is perhaps why ESPORTS will fail in the west.
For that, it becomes an issue of cultural/social values than an issue of game design.
Secondly, I think the OP discounts the idea of repretoire. The typical SC(2) player has a set of skills that fairly well translates over to other RTS games. While the units themselves and even the metagame may differ drastically game to game, the repretoire necessary to play, and more importantly understand, the game is still there.
Thirdly, besides the issues present for players, what is more important for the success of ESPORTS is how the audience reacts. A game can be great to play and exciting to compete in but if it is really hard or boring to watch, then the game will fail as an ESPORTS medium. I think the best example of this is team-based CS(S) games. Counterstrike is an incredibly fun game and hundreds of thousands continue to play the game to this day. But the reason the scene never blew up to the scale of SC (or even SFIV for that matter) is because the game is really difficult to watch. A player may have made the most incredible shot ever, but if the spectator cam is somewhere else it might as well never have happend.
On May 28 2011 03:13 AmericanUmlaut wrote: I don't get why people constantly bring the argument that real sports don't have rules changes that alter the way they are played.
- Basketball's shot clock completely changed the game. - F1 racing frequently changes the specs of the vehicles that can race - Olympic swimming changed the rules just a few years back to prevent swimmers' covering most of the distance without actually breaking the surface and performing the stroke nominally being swum in the race. - The NFL instant replay rule - And so on...
All sports introduce and change rules in an attempt to make them more interesting and exciting to watch. Removing an upgrade or making an upgrade take 20 seconds longer to research is certainly not as big a deal as the shot clock, and yet people didn't throw up their hands at basketball and switch to watching professional go (which really hasn't had any rules changes in a few hundred years to the best of my knowledge).
I'm pretty sure the number of points rewarded to the player who takes the second turn in Go has changed recently in some format of Go.
Honestly, i even hope that SC2 and other games never make it to mainstream. I love the situation we are now at. Fuckton of content, players getting big bucks and yet the culture is not being bent to whatever mainstream viewer would require it to be in order to watch. So as long as the scene is healthy, i'm happy if SC2 ain't mainstream ^_^
I don't think it's fair to compare ssbm and ssbb because the creator specifically said he did not intend to make ssbb a competitive game. (same with nintendo's stance of avoiding competitiveness in their games, smash bros matches arent allowed to be broadcasted. Blizzard on the other hand intends to make sc2 a competitive eSport.
You are making the argument for why a particular e-sport will fail with time, not why the field will fail. If huge numbers of people switch over to some other e-sport, the one they were previously were into will fail(or at least diminish in popularity), but not the genre. So long as the games last at least as long as the players careers, things will be fine.
Will it ever be as popular as soccer? No probably not. But an esport doesn't need to be that big to succeed. It needs to be just big enough to bring in enough prize money to foster a reasonable level of international competition. At its current size it is doing that quite well. At its current size, esports pros make equivalent amounts of money to professional athletes in non mainstream sports. As an example, winning an event at the world swimming championships results in an award of 12,000$. This is about the same scale as SC2 right now, when you factor in that a player who wins one medal may win multiple.
The problem I see with Esports is that they are, by their nature, lacking competition. Only Blizzard can make Starcraft. If I want to make my own SCII patch, and it is better, I can't just do it and host tournaments and make money w/o Blizz's permission.
If the NBA starts putting out a bad product a better league will come and replace it, we can't do that with Starcraft because of Copryright laws and Trademark laws.
Also, I think Nintendo lucked into a competitive SSBM and Brawl could be a much better game if they just took out tripping and fixed Snake/Metaknight.
Nintendo is coming out with a new platform soon, and I expect it to have a better controller (the Wii is abysmal) and for there to be a better Smash Bros. They know that the only reason 5-10 million people bought the Wii was for Metroid, Galaxy, Zelda, and Smash Bros. I also think they will realize they can make a game that is both competitive and fun because you can turn off items etc.
On May 28 2011 03:27 cLutZ wrote: The problem I see with Esports is that they are, by their nature, lacking competition. Only Blizzard can make Starcraft. If I want to make my own SCII patch, and it is better, I can't just do it and host tournaments and make money w/o Blizz's permission.
Not entirely true. Blizzard haven't been involved in the last 7 years of BW balancing. When Blizzard released the last balance patch for brood war the game was still being played on maps like Lost Temple and was far from as balanced as it is today. Every move forward in balance since then have been made by mapmakers creating new maps and players inventing new strategies. There have already been maps released in SC2 specifically for GSL and other tournaments and I think that trend will continue if Blizzard don't do a great job themselves.
On May 28 2011 03:12 GhostFall wrote: Starcraft 1 -> Starcraft 2 is not like soccer -> basketball.
You keep the core game play intact.
The NHL had massive restructuring of rules a year ago.
That is a million times better analogy for a Starcraft X -> Starcraft X +1 transition.
NHL is still as popular as ever.
This. Football from 1970 is vastly different from football today (West Coast Offense? Spread Offense?), and if you go back further (1910) when the the forward pass is illegal, you see that some changes to sports have been far, far more major than between BW and SC1.
The rules that Michael Jordan played under in the 80s (hand-checking, Bad Boy Pistons defense, rules in the paint were different) were pretty significantly different from the rules Kobe played under in the 2000s. Some basketball purists say the game is too easy on the offensive end now; old-school lockdown defense has been outlawed
That being said, these changes aren't as frequent as in video games-- but I sincerely believe that nonetheless, the changing in games will be somewhat analogous to these transitions. Esports are exploding in popularity, and while they may not become 100% mainstream, just look at where videogames were 20 years ago (pretty niche) to today (G4 channel, virtually every other home in America has a Wii/Xbox/PlayStation, etc.) TL; DR: Anyone betting against the rise of video games in our culture since 1990 has been pretty dead wrong every step of the way; I think they will continue to be.
the skill ceiling has little to nothing to do with why esports would fail... it entirely rests on the fact that esports is a collection of tons and tons of games, with most only being relevant for 2-3 years max in most cases. Soccer, hockey, football etc will all be around in 50 years and will still be played almost the same. The games you're playing now won't exist then, and their successors will be totally different.
as far as 'fail', i think it's only a failure if you're setting the unreasonable expectation of esports becoming anything close to the Major 4 sports in the US. I don't think too many sane people are doing that.
I don't understand how you can say "ESports will fail" It's already succeeding in my eyes. Something doesn't have to be universally popular for it to be successful. Where we're at now is great there is no problem here.
I disagree. Stability: I actually think the opposite is true. I have gone through many phases of sports fandom, but have given up on all of them except my home team within a couple years for precisely the reason that it just gets boring after a while. Especially in the fighting game community, I love how the scene refreshes every couple of years. I don't think that it's necessarily better or worse, but I think there is definitely a niche in competitive entertainment for scene that is constantly evolving or changing,
Game catering to casual gamers: I think this falls especially short since the very nature of sports is that anyone can play them. I don't think soccer would be essentially the world sport if it required complex equipment or difficult rules to play.
The one thing holding back e-sports from going mainstream, I think, is that companies seem to, so far, be having a hard time monetizing the entertainment side of their games. When that problem gets solved, I feel like it could explode.
I think that esports will always be a niche thing like it is now, and I can accept that. I wouldn't want it to be mainstream anyway just because of the fans.
Have you ever went to a football (both of them), basketball, baseball, etc. event? Almost all the fans are total idiots, and a good deal of them drunk too. I think esports is better off without that.
ok im newb in ssbb.. what the fuck is tripping? i have watched like 5 different videos of ppl complaining about it but i still havent understood what it actually is.. is it that your char falls to the ground ?
On May 28 2011 02:56 ishboh wrote: what about poker? one could argue that poker should die out because it is not entirely comprised of skill.
in any case. this seems to be very weak reasoning as to why esports will not grow. the better games will rise above the newer games (like BW did for 10+ years, and continues to stay active today)
Also, on the subject of poker, TV poker is kind of a farce imho. It's kind of like strongman competitions; its more for show than a legitimate competition.
On top of that, poker on TV has fallen off significantly from its peak a couple of years ago. ESPN doesn't dedicate hours to it on the weekly broadcast schedule like it use to.
On May 28 2011 03:14 HyoSang wrote: Thirdly, besides the issues present for players, what is more important for the success of ESPORTS is how the audience reacts. A game can be great to play and exciting to compete in but if it is really hard or boring to watch, then the game will fail as an ESPORTS medium. I think the best example of this is team-based CS(S) games. Counterstrike is an incredibly fun game and hundreds of thousands continue to play the game to this day. But the reason the scene never blew up to the scale of SC (or even SFIV for that matter) is because the game is really difficult to watch. A player may have made the most incredible shot ever, but if the spectator cam is somewhere else it might as well never have happend.
I don't find this to be a big problem. Take games like golf and baseball. They aren't the most exciting things to watch. In both there is a lot of standing around. What keeps people watching though, is a connection they have with the team or person they are cheering for. For instance, you would most likely cheer on a team from the college you attended or the city you lived in. North American eSports isn't organized on that level.
Also, eSports doesn't have youth leagues in NA. eSports reminds me of competitive surfing. Competitive surfing has been growing rapidly since the 70s. The ASP world tour acts much like the GSL in Starcraft2, where there is a competition every month and the best 32 surfers in the world travel to compete. And the criteria for competitive surfing is always changing. In other countries there are youth leagues allowing the younger generation to be exposed to the competitive environment. Starcraft doesn't have that in North America. This means the younger generation isn't exposed to the game. Youth is the future of everything, and if they aren't supported, then eSports can only go so far.
Lastly eSports competitions need to take place live, in an area where people can come and actually spectate. Just like the GSL, but in North America. A live environment is so much more exciting. This would be the biggest step for NA eSports. Viewers wouldn't be in their homes anymore, viewing from their computer alone or with another person, but be with a crowd of people all viewing together.
On May 28 2011 03:53 pullarius1 wrote: I disagree. Stability: I actually think the opposite is true. I have gone through many phases of sports fandom, but have given up on all of them except my home team within a couple years for precisely the reason that it just gets boring after a while. Especially in the fighting game community, I love how the scene refreshes every couple of years. I don't think that it's necessarily better or worse, but I think there is definitely a niche in competitive entertainment for scene that is constantly evolving or changing,
Game catering to casual gamers: I think this falls especially short since the very nature of sports is that anyone can play them. I don't think soccer would be essentially the world sport if it required complex equipment or difficult rules to play.
The one thing holding back e-sports from going mainstream, I think, is that companies seem to, so far, be having a hard time monetizing the entertainment side of their games. When that problem gets solved, I feel like it could explode.
well then you're an odd ball who hates stability while everyone else likes it. And as far as moetizing the entertainment of games, that all falls back to the shelf life of titles
StarCraft is there to show that it's not "every couple years" that a game will change. Brood War has been there for what? 10 years, and people still are into it.
Your example of "hey we have soccer, now we have basketball, and will never show soccer again" is a bit of too extreme. It's not like StarCraft 2 is completely different from StarCraft 1, like soccer and basketball. A better comparison would be "hey look at Formula 1, they could have all the tires and engines they wanted, but now they have to use only 1 engine for like 3 races", or something like that. It's a change, but it's not something completely new and different.
And also, you raise the point of new sequels and new games, but it's not every game that would be used as an eSport. StarCraft 2 was CREATED TO BE an eSport, Blizzard told that themselves, they had eSports in mind when all the major options had to be choosen. That does not happen to every game.
And your second point is not completely valid, also. We don't need every game to be hard for eSports to succeeed. If we get a couple good competitive games, that's enough. Just because a game is easier to the casual gamer, that doesn't mean you won't have competitivity. Look at Counter Strike, is that game hard for a casual gamer? I don't believe it is, yet it was really competitive for many years.
I agree with many of the replies states that they are content with how esports has evolved over the last 2 years. Live on 3 a couple days ago discussed how if mediums such as Justin.tv and other streaming services didn't happen; esports would not be where it is today.
For those who think esports will fail and such, i don't think your taking into consideration the culture of korea and how BW became so popular; i think a mixture of single child homes as well as dense populations fueled brood wars to what it became.
On May 28 2011 03:53 Sajiki wrote: ok im newb in ssbb.. what the fuck is tripping? i have watched like 5 different videos of ppl complaining about it but i still havent understood what it actually is.. is it that your char falls to the ground ?
For some reason the developers thought it'd be a great idea if your character randomly tripped for no reason. The rate is increased if you're winning.
Oh and there's no way to turn it off or prevent it.
On May 28 2011 03:57 FeUerFlieGe wrote: Lastly eSports competitions need to take place live, in an area where people can come and actually spectate. Just like the GSL, but in North America. A live environment is so much more exciting. This would be the biggest step for NA eSports. Viewers wouldn't be in their homes anymore, viewing from their computer alone or with another person, but be with a crowd of people all viewing together.
I agree. But it needs to be well-run (not saying GSL isn't). Joke leagues like NASL don't make esports look good. -_-
Imo the best we have in NA is MLG, which is actually pretty high quality; it's just that they have stream issues from time to time
When I say "fail" I actually mean "will not live up to the expectations that some people have."
But the title "Why esports will not live up to the expectations some people have" doesn't have quite the same ring, now does it?
On May 28 2011 03:38 Hawk wrote: the skill ceiling has little to nothing to do with why esports would fail... it entirely rests on the fact that esports is a collection of tons and tons of games, with most only being relevant for 2-3 years max in most cases. Soccer, hockey, football etc will all be around in 50 years and will still be played almost the same. The games you're playing now won't exist then, and their successors will be totally different.
I'm not a great writer or particularly eloquent, so this basically sums up my main point better than I put it. However, I do believe skill ceilings play a role in how competitive a game/sport can be.
I feel the main thing standing against esports is the fact that you can not take your kids to the park(or send them alone) to play some 6pool vs. 4gate.
Once (if ever) it is considered healthier to stay inside rather than going outside esports will "take off".
I dont think the things mentioned in the OP are an issue (or even true).
I disagree with the part about patches... I dont know if this is something Blizzard is interested in doing, but I think they could keep SC alive 'forever', as one continuous game while just releasing updates every few years.
An update as big as SC->SC2 is going to be significantly different from SC2:WOL to SC2:HOTS, and could be made even smoother in terms of fanbase with a bit of practice. As long as the absolute fundamentals arent changed, I dont think most fans would be too put off by seeing some new stuff appearing every couple of years.
On May 28 2011 02:41 Mailing wrote: Nobody watches professional track and field outside of the Olympics, and it has been around for thousands of years and will continue to be played.
SC2 and other games don't have to be "mainstream" to succeed, even now they are doing well and if the scene doesn't grow at all, as long as it stays at a consistent level all will be fine.
Track and field is widely regarded as amateur sport; Olympics, likewise.
On May 28 2011 03:00 VGhost wrote:
1) The only true esports-promoting company in RTS right now is Blizzard. All three of their most recent RTS have or had a large professional scene. BW and SC2 follow the same essential patterns; even WC3, with its very different focuses, still has all the same elements. (If you compare WC3 to another company's RTS - AE, DOW, HW - the similarities stand out.) Because of this - especially for the BW-to-SC2 switch as and if it happens - this is more like the rule changes in American football, which have gradually transformed the game but kept the continuity.
Yet they continually stab themselves in the foot. :/
I believe one of the problems with esports is that somebody (often a company) owns the game. Blizzard can do whatever they want with SC2, and what they want is maximum profit, they can sell the rights to run a tournament. Nobody owns football, anyone can gather a bunch of people and play football with whatever rules they want, even if you can do this in SC2 today, we can't be sure that we'll be able to do it tomorrow.
On May 28 2011 03:59 Tschis wrote: I think your first point is invalid because:
StarCraft is there to show that it's not "every couple years" that a game will change. Brood War has been there for what? 10 years, and people still are into it.
So you selected one title--game which has been losing followers for a number of years now—to disprove a readily accepted claim that most games become irrelevant, unplayed or replaced after 2-3 years?
The only thing that stands in the way of e-sports is the Xbox. The "patching" argument is bullshit. Football rules get changed all the time. Everybody wants electronic referees, but the FIFA is resisting. It will probably happen though - and that's way more significant than a balance patch.
The OP's comparison of a patch creating a totally different game is a little over the top i feel. Most major sports (football, baseball, basketball) all experience rule changes that effect small situations in a game, but the main fundamental of the game is still there (as jinro stated). Just like regular sports these small rule changes (or "patches") arent always good for the game but eventually its excepted as the norm or fixed.
Another point missed with your comparison of BW to SC2 is the foreign scene. Yes SC2 isn't as big as BW is/was was but with the foreign scene booming the potential is easily there.
On May 28 2011 03:53 Sajiki wrote: ok im newb in ssbb.. what the fuck is tripping? i have watched like 5 different videos of ppl complaining about it but i still havent understood what it actually is.. is it that your char falls to the ground ?
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.
I have no problem with Patches. It's somehow a requirement for any game that is not totally symmetrical.
Take the board game Go for example. It's been played for thousand of years now. They have a rule that gives the player that moves second some extra point. This point has change in amount multiple times across the history of the game. It was a balance adjustment along the way as they discover how people become better and better at the game.
The video games industry is one that has existed only for a very small amount of time. Football (soccer) existed for thousands of years before it reached the stage it is currently at, with many different variations (rugby and football have a common ancestor, for example.) I honestly believe that while it might take a while for esports to stabalise like many other sports have, it will eventually.
I think the casual audience for video games will actually begin to decline quite soon. I think Call of Duty made it big and when MW3 comes out later this year and people realise that it sucks, there will once again be demand fr more balanced, more compitive video games which was the element of the market CoD actually had a huge share in even though all CoD games since CoD4 have been utterly terrible in terms of balance a fairness.
Also, there has never really been a game that has been designed to be played at an incredibly high competitive level. SC2 is pretty close but it still caters for the casual audience, perhaps a little too much. I remember hearing talk that MLG might commision its own game to be made specifally for competition after Reach turned out to be way too casual and random (bloom kinda ruined Halo) While this turned out to be specualtion, I see no reason why this shouldnt happen and should it happen it would provide some solution to some of the issues you raise.
Maybe I am blindly optimistic about this, but I am optimistic none the less.
I don't think you realize how much a sport changes in 5 years, the way the game is played changes the rules that affect it. For instance NBA this year just gave referees the ability to re watch a play and see if a hard to call foul is indeed a foul, or to determine if a possession lead to a 3 pointer or just a long field goal, or any other hard to make call. Its a small change but with it brought forth many more offensive foul calls, I don't have the statistics but if you've been consistently watching basketball in the last 10 years, you can tell the big men(centers, power forwards) get a lot more offensive foul calls then they used to, which change a big game because in the past more plays were made for the teams bigs as they were more reliable to get a field goal, but nowadays a lot of teams focus on getting the ball to the more agile and quicker guards. Starcraft and Starcraft 2 can be seen in the same way; I mean sure SC2 has mules, larvae inject, and chrono boost but its still a very similar econ style game that has the same basic fundamental concepts that progamers have to master in order to be able to play at a high level. I'll agree that for e-sports to move forward that a lot of games that are considered e-sports are going to have to be weeded out but games like Call of Duty(maybe not since Infinity ward is gone), Halo, and most importantly Starcraft will stay consistent in that it has the same fundamental concepts it always has and will continue to do so.
It's funny - the title of the post was intriguing, but I didn't buy the OPs arguments as to why.
I think it might be better to say - "Why Esports will never grow beyond a certain point because the fluidity of progaming is just far too great".
Esports has obviously not peaked yet since prize money, viewership and technology are all increasing, but there probably is a glass ceiling that esports will never get beyond because the players don't have long careers, the games change too frequently, the money for game devs is in making new games not supporting old ones, etc.
Interesting topic though - definitely food for thought.
The revolving-door policy of games is the biggest obstacle IMO and i've felt like that ever since CS:Source came out. It's a pretty straightforward problem, with no real solution:
Companies make games and want to make money. New games make money.
Sports are built up over a long period of time.
Take a look at the COD scene for the worst (best) example.
You realize that every major sport has been predicted to fail at some time right? But more to the point, the whole concept of E-Sports is really still in a prototype phase. You can't make an accurate prediction about it just because it doesn't necessarily share the same characteristics as different sports.
On top of the reasons mentioned, Esports will never be popular because there is no aesthetic appeal. Even if you know nothing about Football/Soccer/Basketball you can look at an athlete and see he's in-shape, if you're a woman you might want to date him, if you're a man you'd probably think "Wow I'd like to have a body like that". It's the same reason attractive people are cast in TV shows/Movies, even if you know nothing about the movie or the show you want to watch because the people are attractive. The same cannot be said for pro gamers, who more often than not are out of shape/unattractive because they get to hide behind a computer screen all day and do not need to be inshape to succeed at the game.
On May 28 2011 05:37 vivaldi290 wrote: Even if you know nothing about Football/Soccer/Basketball you can look at an athlete and see he's in-shape, if you're a woman you might want to date him, if you're a man you'd probably think "Wow I'd like to have a body like that".
Tell me you wouldn't want to date this guy if you were a chick
On May 28 2011 05:15 bioniK wrote: I don't think you realize how much a sport changes in 5 years, the way the game is played changes the rules that affect it. For instance NBA this year just gave referees the ability to re watch a play and see if a hard to call foul is indeed a foul, or to determine if a possession lead to a 3 pointer or just a long field goal, or any other hard to make call. Its a small change but with it brought forth many more offensive foul calls, I don't have the statistics but if you've been consistently watching basketball in the last 10 years, you can tell the big men(centers, power forwards) get a lot more offensive foul calls then they used to, which change a big game because in the past more plays were made for the teams bigs as they were more reliable to get a field goal, but nowadays a lot of teams focus on getting the ball to the more agile and quicker guards. Starcraft and Starcraft 2 can be seen in the same way; I mean sure SC2 has mules, larvae inject, and chrono boost but its still a very similar econ style game that has the same basic fundamental concepts that progamers have to master in order to be able to play at a high level. I'll agree that for e-sports to move forward that a lot of games that are considered e-sports are going to have to be weeded out but games like Call of Duty(maybe not since Infinity ward is gone), Halo, and most importantly Starcraft will stay consistent in that it has the same fundamental concepts it always has and will continue to do so.
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.
No aesthetic appeal? You obviously never set your eyes on the chiseled chin of Idra that would make Michelangelo weep or the woman melting baller that is White-ra.
On May 28 2011 05:37 vivaldi290 wrote: On top of the reasons mentioned, Esports will never be popular because there is no aesthetic appeal. Even if you know nothing about Football/Soccer/Basketball you can look at an athlete and see he's in-shape, if you're a woman you might want to date him, if you're a man you'd probably think "Wow I'd like to have a body like that". It's the same reason attractive people are cast in TV shows/Movies, even if you know nothing about the movie or the show you want to watch because the people are attractive. The same cannot be said for pro gamers, who more often than not are out of shape/unattractive because they get to hide behind a computer screen all day and do not need to be inshape to succeed at the game.
That's like saying that mathematics cannot have aesthetic appeal. To each his own, I can see as much beauty in someone's mind (manifested in SC through the ability to concentrate, make split second tactical decisions, maintain practice, mental strength required to perform well under pressure, etc. etc.) as I see in a beautiful woman's body.
On May 28 2011 05:37 vivaldi290 wrote: On top of the reasons mentioned, Esports will never be popular because there is no aesthetic appeal. Even if you know nothing about Football/Soccer/Basketball you can look at an athlete and see he's in-shape, if you're a woman you might want to date him, if you're a man you'd probably think "Wow I'd like to have a body like that". It's the same reason attractive people are cast in TV shows/Movies, even if you know nothing about the movie or the show you want to watch because the people are attractive. The same cannot be said for pro gamers, who more often than not are out of shape/unattractive because they get to hide behind a computer screen all day and do not need to be inshape to succeed at the game.
I disagree. Certainly many athletes are in great shape, but there are some that are not and they are/were popular during their time. Look at Roger Clemens or David Wells or any number of pitchers in baseball, and you'll find that many of them were not in peak physical condition.
As an avid hockey fan, the only thing I care about is the player's skill. It doesn't matter if he has no front teeth (not unusual for a hockey player) as long as he makes exciting plays. The same can be said for SC2.
Like someone involved in this community told me--e-sports is a niche market and it won't really grow out of that market. Of course it can become a huge ass niche market, but it won't really be mainstream.
On May 28 2011 05:37 vivaldi290 wrote: On top of the reasons mentioned, Esports will never be popular because there is no aesthetic appeal. Even if you know nothing about Football/Soccer/Basketball you can look at an athlete and see he's in-shape, if you're a woman you might want to date him, if you're a man you'd probably think "Wow I'd like to have a body like that". It's the same reason attractive people are cast in TV shows/Movies, even if you know nothing about the movie or the show you want to watch because the people are attractive. The same cannot be said for pro gamers, who more often than not are out of shape/unattractive because they get to hide behind a computer screen all day and do not need to be inshape to succeed at the game.
That's like saying that mathematics cannot have aesthetic appeal. To each his own, I can see as much beauty in someone's mind (manifested in SC through the ability to concentrate, make split second tactical decisions, maintain practice, mental strength required to perform well under pressure, etc. etc.) as I see in a beautiful woman's body.
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 05:37 vivaldi290 wrote: Even if you know nothing about Football/Soccer/Basketball you can look at an athlete and see he's in-shape, if you're a woman you might want to date him, if you're a man you'd probably think "Wow I'd like to have a body like that".
Tell me you wouldn't want to date this guy if you were a chick
Im pretty sure some straight guys would still try to date mvp...
And if u dont think gamers can be in shape check out the thread nada's body ^_^
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.
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.
I love esports and watch it every day but I agree with the OP. Even if a new version of the game comes out once every 10 years or so that will hamper the mainstream effect of the game. I am fine with that. I don't see a need to really get esports on TV though, I am more likely to cancel my television subscription than to start watching the traditional sports.
As for watching the games in a bar, I think this is a possibility Cyber cafe's especially licensed ones can be great places to watch it.
The e-sports scene (especially SC2) has already surpass my initial expectation ^^. Many of the mainstream sports have decades or even century of history so it will be a while before e-sport can match mainstream sport (if it ever will). I believe as long as gaming companies create products with esports in mind as well as being able to profit from esports, we will always have a healthy esport scene. Also, the younger and future generation are more into cyberspace/technology than ever before so I would not be surprise if esports will continue to grow in the future. Whether it will ever rival mainstream sports, who knows but I am happy with what we have :p
We will see what happens. Right now esports are big, but not huge. 50k viewers is of course a lot for the TSL finals, but is that enough for sponsors to take it to the next level?
Why does the comparision need to be made? How can you see into the future and with confidence state that webstreams wont be the new TV in a few years time?
Sure, esport might never reach to the status of real sports for the reasons you mention, but does it have to? Why can't it be its seperate entity?
More and more people grow up with PCs in their laps and once the 80 and 90s generation that have been surrounded by esport for so many years get succesful businesses running it'll expand even more.
The digital generation is slowly taking over and I have hard time seeing esport randomly dying because of that.
I think another problem with lets say the "marketing" for eSports - since we are implying they'll be huge money-wise too, is obviously the games being owned by companies. SC2 won't be on any TV screen without Blizzard getting a respectable % of the profit. Whereas I find the comparisons to chess and poker the best, even soccer or formula1 (which I remember reading was the most profitable?) wouldn't be as big if leagues and associations would have to pay a share to the inventors of the sport.
At the current rate of growth I suppose SC2 will be bigger than chess in a few years (maintaining the status is harder, true). Never seen a chess game before, but I've seen the outcome of world championships on the news before. And the sensationalism for the sensation-hungry press certainly is bigger than moving pieces on a static board every 2-3 minutes.
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.
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.
I was mainly posting towards the general posters in this thread comparing sports to e-sports.
Still ,some of it applies to your post as well ,i agree to almost all of it ,but i still think e-sports will be stable enough ,even if games change every 5 years or so.Considering the huge chunk of people that actually watch and participate in e-sports have a few games "under their belt" ,i think (IMO) they could adapt quite fast.A simple example would be BW change to SC2.Practically the same teams and the same players.It took a few months to get into the state we currently are ,but now it's going great ,isn't it? Still ,i can see your point.If ,let's say ,SC2 died and became completely unpopular ,it would be hard to transition from an RTS to ,let's say , an FPS.
You might also be trying to say that e-sports will not "have the juice" to succeed for a long periods of time ,because it has so many games in it and they keep changing on a yearly basis (expansions,patches etc)?I actually think it brings a great diversity to the scene ,but again that's IMO.I'm not gonna try to convince myself that e-sports will have a single strong game ,that people will play and watch for 10 ,maybe even 20 years strong.Nevertheless , i doubt that going from one RTS to another or going from one FPS to another ,if all the main players and teams transfer aswell to their respectful fields, will make a huge impact on distabalizing the "industry".Again ,that's just my opinion.
Virtually every argument made in the OP could have also been made at the very inception of E-Sports, and could have been used to claim that "there will never be such things as professional gamers", or "there will never be a gaming tournament with a six-digit prize pool", or "e-sports will never be televised." Of course, all of those things have happened. Why are future advances impossible given how far the industry has come so far?
On May 28 2011 03:53 Sajiki wrote: ok im newb in ssbb.. what the fuck is tripping? i have watched like 5 different videos of ppl complaining about it but i still havent understood what it actually is.. is it that your char falls to the ground ?
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.
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.
I find SC2 to be very casual-friendly with the way it uses its leagues. Everyone can play it against people of their own level, and it's totally up to them if they want to get better or not.
It's probably the most casual-friendly RTS I've ever seen.
On May 28 2011 05:15 bioniK wrote: I don't think you realize how much a sport changes in 5 years, the way the game is played changes the rules that affect it. For instance NBA this year just gave referees the ability to re watch a play and see if a hard to call foul is indeed a foul, or to determine if a possession lead to a 3 pointer or just a long field goal, or any other hard to make call. Its a small change but with it brought forth many more offensive foul calls, I don't have the statistics but if you've been consistently watching basketball in the last 10 years, you can tell the big men(centers, power forwards) get a lot more offensive foul calls then they used to, which change a big game because in the past more plays were made for the teams bigs as they were more reliable to get a field goal, but nowadays a lot of teams focus on getting the ball to the more agile and quicker guards. Starcraft and Starcraft 2 can be seen in the same way; I mean sure SC2 has mules, larvae inject, and chrono boost but its still a very similar econ style game that has the same basic fundamental concepts that progamers have to master in order to be able to play at a high level. I'll agree that for e-sports to move forward that a lot of games that are considered e-sports are going to have to be weeded out but games like Call of Duty(maybe not since Infinity ward is gone), Halo, and most importantly Starcraft will stay consistent in that it has the same fundamental concepts it always has and will continue to do so.
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.
I think you misunderstood what I was trying to say, being able to re watch plays actually increased offensive foul calls so flops like that are more possible. You might think its retarded, but its part of the game now a small subtle change in the way the game is regulated did cause a big change to the way the game is played. I think it would've been better to say it was a regulation (rule changes would've been something like implementation of the shot clock or 3 point line) look at how dominate big men were in every era of basketball before the current guard dominated era that we live in today. Its not really people abusing the rules, flopping has existed for sometime now and it has recently been growing in trend to limit teams that rely on their post players.
In terms of game developers making games for the casuals, there will always be gamers that are game developers and want to create gaming experiences that has much more depth than just games that people will buy. 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.
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.
The problem is that nobody has even the slightest clue how to do that. Blizzard is probably the closest on this score, with SC2 having some design specific to creating depth. But the simple fact is that most games that became competitive games were accidents. If you went back in time and fixed Street Fighter 2's combo system before the game released, it would have flailed to become a competitive game. And the game developers would never have noticed because it was a bug.
Game design as a whole is still in its infancy; developers are still trying to understand how to design gameplay to achieve some particular purpose. It will be quite some time before someone comes out with an all new game (ie: not a sequel) that designed to be a competitive game.
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.
I'm sorry ,but you're saying anyone can play a sport casualy ,even if they're bad ,but nobody can play SC2 casually ,because they can't micro their mutas?Wait...What?
"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."
I really don't understand your logic.Starcraft 2 basically pits you up against people of the same skill level.You don't need muta micro to play SC2 casually and you don't need any other "bug" abuse to play any game casually.How exactly is microing your units a BUG abuse (besides the patrol part ,but that only gave you an edge up to a point).The way you stated your argument ,i can come to a conclusion that you can't play football ,unless you can run for over an hour back and forth across a football stadium ,chasing a ball.You can't play basketball ,unless the court you're playing in has the same dimensions as the real deal and unless you can keep your stamina up for another few hours.You can't play chess casually unless you can make a move every 1sec and tap the timer.Bug abuse?Players simply use the game design to their advantage ,yes you can call that bug abuse ,but every sport has a niche in it's rules that you can as easaly "abuse". (chess and basketball would be great examples)
Are you stating that games are hard to learn?You can easaly pick up Counter-strike or quake or CoD and play casualy.You can easaly do the same for any RTS.
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.
Things like wavedashing and muta micro are the top end of the sports. Things like Heeling the ball over your head into the goal in soccer. Things you can learn but don't need to in order to play and have fun. People had fun building massive canon walls against other players in SC1, it doesn't mean that that will ever win a game.
I agree with you in principle though. Starting the game and playing it should be easy, it doesn't mean you can compete with a serious player. Then after you have played it for 10 years you are still improving and learning new tricks.
On May 28 2011 02:41 DrainX wrote: I don't really like the title of this thread. As far as I am concerned, as long as e-sports stays at least as big as it currently is, it has already succeeded. Television is a dying medium. I have no interest of having a Starcraft television channel. I don't even own a TV.
Esport sponsors are fickle. They support a game for a couple years as long as everyone is still playing, then move on. E-sports may stay the same size, but the games sponsors support will be completely different after 5 years. Look at WCG in 2005 vs WCG today or MLG sponsorships in 2005 vs MLG sponsorships today.
There are a few timeless classics, however. Quake live (quake 3 with very minor changes), Counterstrike 1.6, and Starcraft: Brood War. Companies can and do recognize games that are played for many years, and have a dedicated community. Samsung and Intel are good examples.
At least this OP admitted that he chose his title to bait views. Other OPs using sensational taglines such as "The competition in SC2 is a farce" and "Korea needs to pay more attention to the west" have not been so forthright.
On May 28 2011 05:42 DannyJ wrote: No aesthetic appeal? You obviously never set your eyes on the chiseled chin of Idra that would make Michelangelo weep or the woman melting baller that is White-ra.
LOL idra? let's face it, if idra weren't a good pro gamer, NO ONE would ever say he was good looking.
On May 28 2011 05:42 DannyJ wrote: No aesthetic appeal? You obviously never set your eyes on the chiseled chin of Idra that would make Michelangelo weep or the woman melting baller that is White-ra.
LOL idra? let's face it, if idra weren't a good pro gamer, NO ONE would ever say he was good looking.
That's exactly why we need to support the real E-sport - which is definitely BW. SC2 is nothing close to E-Sports. Unfortunately, we are not heading that way. BW is the answer!
You think BW is the answer to mass appeal? That's so very wrong. A more complex, worse looking game would decrease viewers, not increase it. (Korea the exception of course)
As soon as gaming becomes an accepted thing in the society, i reckon pro-gaming/e-sports will stand a chance. I do see a shift towards it becoming more acceptable nowadays, which is only a very good thing!!
I dont think e-sports will fail, the volatility of the field is of some concern though, however broodwar and counter-strike are perfect examples of how pure and skilled based games are timeless.
On May 28 2011 07:22 Coolwhip wrote: You think BW is the answer to mass appeal? That's so very wrong. A more complex, worse looking game would decrease viewers, not increase it. (Korea the exception of course)
Well graphics can be updated and content could be added with expansion packs. Personally, I'd love to see a 1080p update to Brood War with a few new units and mechanics. Well done 2D can also look way better than the 3D of Starcraft 2. Of course this will probably never happen, but it's nice to dream.
On May 28 2011 03:59 Tschis wrote: I think your first point is invalid because:
StarCraft is there to show that it's not "every couple years" that a game will change. Brood War has been there for what? 10 years, and people still are into it.
So you selected one title--game which has been losing followers for a number of years now—to disprove a readily accepted claim that most games become irrelevant, unplayed or replaced after 2-3 years?
I selected one as an example. I believe a smart person like yourself could realize there's more games like that. Counter Strike, Quake and WC3 lived a loong life
On May 28 2011 07:30 p4NDemik wrote: Who wants SC2 to be mainstream? I just want it to be sustainable 10 years from now.
Will it though? Or will it go through the slow, steady, old man like decline that all other video games go through? (including the title video games of WC3, SCBW, Counterstrike, etc.) Even Thorzain said WC3 is dead. I don't see the BW progaming scene in Korea going on indefinitely, and ICCUP is a shell of what it once was. I don't know about counterstrike, but I can't imagine it would be much different.
On May 28 2011 07:30 p4NDemik wrote: Who wants SC2 to be mainstream? I just want it to be sustainable 10 years from now.
Will it though? Or will it go through the slow, steady, old man like decline that all other video games go through? (including the title video games of WC3, SCBW, Counterstrike, etc.) Even Thorzain said WC3 is dead. I don't see the BW progaming scene in Korea going on indefinitely, and ICCUP is a shell of what it once was. I don't know about counterstrike, but I can't imagine it would be much different.
That's true, but a lot of the fanbase, backstory, community and player skill carried on from BW into SC2 - you argued that the changes between games would prevent this. I don't see the problem with having a new game every 10 years, as long as they're similar enough that the transition can be smooth. In fact, the western BW scene was declining even before SC2 beta came out (afaik, I wasn't part of it :/), so it could be argued that new games are necessary to replace the old ones, and that eSports could never succeed without new games to replace the dying ones.
eSports will not fail because eSports is not any individual game or franchise. It represents a culture that's only becoming more accessible with a fluidity (represented by changing titles) that ensures it stays relevant to the current generation of gamers.
On May 28 2011 07:30 p4NDemik wrote: Who wants SC2 to be mainstream? I just want it to be sustainable 10 years from now.
Sort of like BW? Oh snap! It probably will be with Blizzard's notary of releasing games. Then again, the Wowowowowowzers guys will probably be looking forward to WCIV and whatever is next.
Either way, I'm sick and tired of this stupid turnover shit. I want to see Jaedong and Flash competing against one another until the day they both have dentures.
personally, i truly only believe in korean e-sports. They've made it work to the extent that people half way around the world tune in for matches even 10 years after it all started with BW.
I don't think sc2 is sustainable in the western or european market because there's just too much land to cover. I don't know about anyone else but once the novelty wears off with sc2 in esports -- and i think its already happening -- i don't see it getting any bigger than it already is.
and those saying 'as soon as gaming becomes accepted in society', it really just isn't going to happen. Gaming is great, but honestly, as long as society continues to lack doctors, scientists, engineers and all that hoopla, mainstream society isn't going to vouch for it.
Way too many games with way too many tastes too which is also a problem.
I think I disagree with pretty much everything in the OP - which is a good thing, right?
All sports have evolved over time, in terms of how they are played, the equipment used, the rules, how they are packaged and presented - and they have waxed and waned in popularity around the world. I don't think patches or the emergence of new games present any novel difficulties.
Nevertheless, I think there are two obstacles to the mainstream success of e-sport.
First of all, the games simply don't look like sports, because the developers have typically gone to great lengths to conceal the abstract ruleset that's actually being played beneath a thick layer of artwork and lore. When you watch a football match, one team isn't a proud and ancient race with glowing eyes and no mouths, and the other team isn't puking out a carpet of pulsating flesh. These are big distractions; they present a 'credulity barrier' to people who might otherwise enjoy the cerebral sparring.
Secondly, and more importantly, e-sports needs a delivery conduit through which it can be pushed at potential audiences. I ended up watching poker for a while because I was flicking around one night and there it was. It's not possible for me to just end up watching e-sports; I have to know about it and go find it. And when I find it, I still have to do all the work: I have to filter this huge undifferentiated mass of content and stick with it until I find something worth watching and which speaks to me on a level I can understand. The best thread I've ever seen on TL was purely and simply a collection of results and VOD links for the NASL with summaries of which games were worth watching and why. Because if I go straight to the NASL site - and I'm a paying customer, just for context - I'm faced with this brick wall of content that I can't possibly consume or even parse. I need summaries, I need highlights, I need to be able to stay up-to-date even if I only have a half-hour today. Tomorrow I might be able to sit down with a beer and enjoy a whole bunch of matches, but I can't do that every day. For more people to be able to follow e-sports they need to be able to follow it the way they follow other sports: with varying levels of commitment. Starcraft 2 badly needs a regular cast along the lines of what 'Match Of The Day' is to football, with highlights, links to the full games - and it needs to be pan-league. It needs to show me clips from the GSL, clips from the NASL and the IPL. It needs to draw my attention to awesome stuff, and be unflinching in the absence of awesome. If a day's play was just flat out poor all round - tell me. I'll go do something else instead. That's better in the long run for my interest in the sport.
I know for myself I enjoy playing and watching both real sports and SC2; I see no reason for that to change in the near future. A few years ago this was not true in that while playing video games was fun watching them sucked. Why? Well I'm a sucker for pretty pictures and the games of the era looked hideous on a screen of any size. Try to put SCBW games on a 50"+ screen; it's not too enjoyable unless you are enough of a fan to just not care about the graphics. SC2 and other modern games have overcome this obstacle.
TSL3 was the first video game tournament I ever followed and it was awesome. Awesome enough I told people about it. Some of them watched it and some of the ones who watched it liked it and kept watching.
As has been mentioned repeatedly, "real" sports change the rules continually. The fans will deal with it as long as you don't take away the aspects of the game they enjoy (trickier than it sounds; consider that many seem to feel SC2 took things away from Brood War). This parallels patches well.
I think the stability argument is valid but it occurs mostly by choice of the game companies. Games have typically had fairly short lifespans to date but they don't have to. If SC2 takes off and stays popular an incremental update strategy becomes viable, perhaps more viable than a complete replacement. For example, add support for resolutions that are currently ludicrous, keep improving the tools for announcers and keep tweaking things that are boring or problematic through patches and add-on packs.
Blizzard certainly could have made SC2 as {BW+better gfx+tweaks}; it was their choice to make a new (albeit very similar) game instead. Making SC2 more like BW might have meant BW skill crossed over better and brought more of the BW legends faster. Anyway, I digress somewhat; my point is that If SC2 becomes seriously popular I think Blizzard would be well advised to keep improving it for a long time rather than going for the old-school full replacement approach.
SC2 seems very unlikely to overtake the big name sports (beat baseball in North America? - I doubt it!) but I can't see any reason to think it could never have its own TV channel, have a following that increases year-over-year for some time, and have more and bigger sponsors of more and awesomer tournaments. If there is revene to be had companies will move in to take it. Hell pay for NASL or GSL is pretty darn close to a TV channel today!
I do think a significant issue (at least for me) with eSports is the players are a bit too frequently uber-nerds. GSP is a stud; IdrA just isn't (remember, pretty pictures are important to me; lol). There are exceptions but I do think that it's a bit hard to produce mass-appeal from pictures of gamers in quite the same way pictures of "real sports" athletes do. This won't stop eSports growing but it might make the growth slower than if the players were a bit more visually appealing. Perhaps the TL Health and Fitness Initiative will fix this
Incidentally NASL's top 10 was an awesome move towards mass appeal; that's something where I can send a link to friends and some of them will think its pretty sweet. Highlights are a staple of "real" sports so I hope we see more of this.
This topic is bashed to death far too much a new top pops up every few weeks and get then a flame war starts in each one... Why make threads like this and spend your time better contributing your time to Esports so it won't fail...
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.
I'm sorry ,but you're saying anyone can play a sport casualy ,even if they're bad ,but nobody can play SC2 casually ,because they can't micro their mutas?Wait...What?
"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."
I really don't understand your logic.Starcraft 2 basically pits you up against people of the same skill level.You don't need muta micro to play SC2 casually and you don't need any other "bug" abuse to play any game casually.How exactly is microing your units a BUG abuse (besides the patrol part ,but that only gave you an edge up to a point).The way you stated your argument ,i can come to a conclusion that you can't play football ,unless you can run for over an hour back and forth across a football stadium ,chasing a ball.You can't play basketball ,unless the court you're playing in has the same dimensions as the real deal and unless you can keep your stamina up for another few hours.You can't play chess casually unless you can make a move every 1sec and tap the timer.Bug abuse?Players simply use the game design to their advantage ,yes you can call that bug abuse ,but every sport has a niche in it's rules that you can as easaly "abuse". (chess and basketball would be great examples)
Are you stating that games are hard to learn?You can easaly pick up Counter-strike or quake or CoD and play casualy.You can easaly do the same for any RTS.
You are right; it is incorrect to say that advanced techniques are necessary at the casual level. However, there is something with "bug abuse" that is very casual unfriendly. "Bug abuse" is very different from advanced tactics in chess or advanced movements in sports.
It is the difference between bunny hopping and rocket jumping.
Rocket jumping is the inevitable outgrowth of three rules about many FPS games:
1: Explosions (created by rockets) push players around.
2: Rockets can be fired in any direction.
3: Explosions do some quantity of damage, rather than instantly killing you. That is, a rocket is survivable at jumping range.
If a game has these three rules, rocket jumping works. Always (unless some other rules interfere). You can discover rocket jumping in a game without even playing it just by knowing the rules. You can sit down and work out that this will work, then test it in-game and find that it works.
Bunny hopping doesn't work that way. It is an outgrowth of a number of subtle game engine related concepts. It is the result of a physics system that is failing to mimic reality. You cannot discover bunny hopping without playing the game. You have to be playing the game and just trying stuff in order to figure out that you can do it.
Neither of these things make sense in reality, of course. But rocket jumping is a natural outgrowth of the game's rules; it makes sense in the context of the game world's rules. It's similar to how pieces in chess tend to be more powerful in the center of the board than at the outside. This is not stated directly in the rules, but it is implicit based on the interactions of the rules.
Bunny hopping is something that happens because of how the game's rules are implemented. You can make a version of Quake without bunny hopping that, from a basic rule perspective, worked exactly the same way. You cannot "fix" rocket jumping without changing one of the three rules or adding a fourth rule that somehow causes it to fail (like, "your rockets always instantly kill you"). And that fourth rule will generally stick out like a sore thumb (see the fix for the Archon-Toilet for a prime example).
The most unfair part of this kind of bug abuse is that it is not discoverable. A casual player can discover rocket jumping by seeing someone do it, by accident, or by thinking about the rules of the world and figuring it out. A casual player can only discover bunny hopping by being told about it or by stumbling across it. Even seeing someone doing it won't tell them how to do it, as it requires a seemingly magical combination of keypresses and mouse movement.
To put it another way, with rocket jumping, the game tells you that it exists. It doesn't tell you directly, but the information is there for all to see. With bunny hopping, the game doesn't tell you that you can do this. And it certainly doesn't tell you how.
When a casual player sees rocket jumping for the first time, they think, "hey, why didn't I think of that?" When a casual player sees bunny hopping for the first time, they think, "hey, he's hacking the game!"
This is due to a basic miscommunication. If two human beings sit down for a board game, they both know what the rules are. There's no third-party that can spring new rules on them.
In a videogame, there are what the player thinks the rules are, and what the game says they are. In a well-designed game, these two are the same. In a poorly-designed game, the game tells the player one thing, but also allows for some other things that it doesn't say are possible.
Because a videogame's rules are hidden, the player (particularly the casual player) is relying on the game to properly and accurately communicating the totality of its ruleset. Techniques like wavedashing, bunny-hopping, Muta-micro (particularly stacking and patrol-micro), and so forth are all based on the game not properly communicating with the player.
This kind of thing won't necessarily prevent casuals from watching games, but all it takes is losing one or two games to these tactics to prevent casuals from playing the game.
On May 28 2011 02:40 OutlaW- wrote: I agree. Sc2 takes not enough skill.
we shall make it 10 times harder huhuhuhuhhuu
If only =(
On topic though, you're absolutely right, the rate at which new video games are produced dwarfs the rate at which new sports are being created and this causes many problems for what we call esports. This is just something that is unavoidable, it's not like you can tell the world "stop making games" and then notice a lurking gem amidst the hundreds of thousands if not millions of games that have already been created.
Brood War is the pinnacle of what we can call esports, and while no other game can outmatch it, it will die simply because it has been "outdated" by SC2. Sports are entertaining to many people because they are easy to partake in. Billions have played the things we know as "sports" and have found them fun and because of that it ensures that when turned into a professional sport there will be viewers, parents will pass these sports onto children, while the same will probably not be done with StarCraft.
Brood War cannot revive because unfortunately SC2 players who have never touched will never comprehend it, in effect cutting off new players from entering the game. After another decade (probably less if Blizzard is in need of money), SC3 will come out, possibly, no probably much shallower than SC2, which was much shallower than Brood War. In succession each one will cut or slow players entering into the previous game, and when SC 4 or 5 sucks ass, then StarCraft will die completely. However, I could be wrong and the future can hold StarCraft as the "best esport" and esports can be held as something widely accepted and liked.
Seems to me that we're comparing apples to oranges if we're comparing esports to physical, established sports. Sharing a name doesn't mean they share any other characteristics. I don't think esports is popular for any of the same reasons physical sports are popular and as such it's hard to say "well since it doesn't work the same way it won't be as popular". Esports appeals to a different niche market, a different one from mainstream sports. This niche market is growing with the rise of technology and the dependance on computers. I don't think it's possible to say at this early stage if eports will fail.
On May 28 2011 08:13 YaySC42 wrote: Incidentally NASL's top 10 was an awesome move towards mass appeal; that's something where I can send a link to friends and some of them will think its pretty sweet. Highlights are a staple of "real" sports so I hope we see more of this.
Although it was packaged nicely. When I finally finished watching the top ten plays from the NASL I was like, "Well, is that it?"
They really didn't seem that special at all, except for BoxeR's nuke a lot of them were stupid misplays and dull as fuck.
Stability and the low skill cap aren't as big of a issue as the OP makes it look. I don't mind getting a new Starcraft every 10 years. The basics are the same and the top players will always be at the top no matter of patches, add-ons or even new games. I indeed hate the fact that Blizzard is balancing SC2 so slowly and that the luck factor is higher than it should be, but this will probably be fixed soon too.
The main issues I see with eSports at the moment is the US leagues like NASL and IPL promoting the new trend of broadcasting from replays or recorded broadcasts instead of live games. This is unacceptable in any sport and if European or Korean leagues broadcast the games live they should be able to do it too. Also let's not forget Warcarft 3 who had all the big online tournaments casted live! Instead we see NASL and IPL treating SC2 as a "product" (similar to a movie/ TV series) instead of treating it as a sports competition where viewers can get involved more into matches by following them live. How does IPL think I can get hyped about a match that was actually played 2 weeks in advance ??? There is a huge difference between watching the football Champions League Final live or recorded the second day. This should be true for Starcraft 2 too - and it saddens me to see some people blindly defending these leagues and saying it's no big deal if it's live or casted from replays. These are people who probably never experienced a live sport event and they just look at SC2 matches with the same interest as watching a movie.
On May 28 2011 02:41 Mailing wrote: Nobody watches professional track and field outside of the Olympics, and it has been around for thousands of years and will continue to be played.
SC2 and other games don't have to be "mainstream" to succeed, even now they are doing well and if the scene doesn't grow at all, as long as it stays at a consistent level all will be fine.
But that's just the point. It won't stay consistent. The scene will boom, and with the next new flashy game everyone will leave and move on to the new shiny.
Starcraft 2 is the game we all love and play and Its gaining a ton of popularity and will very likely surpass brood war in the long term as Blizzard puts so much effort into making it grow worldwide. But at the end of the day Starcraft 2 does not equal E-sports. E-Sports was around before Starcraft 2 in more forms than just Brood War and as Starcraft 2 grows and other games get to share its spotlight, more games and their communities will be recognized and have Olympic opportunities. I hope that no gamer lets their bias for sc cloud the fact that whats good for any up-and-coming Esport is good for us.
On May 28 2011 02:41 Mailing wrote: Nobody watches professional track and field outside of the Olympics, and it has been around for thousands of years and will continue to be played.
SC2 and other games don't have to be "mainstream" to succeed, even now they are doing well and if the scene doesn't grow at all, as long as it stays at a consistent level all will be fine.
But that's just the point. It won't stay consistent. The scene will boom, and with the next new flashy game everyone will leave and move on to the new shiny.
So the point is e-sports will be replaced by e-sports. I am not disappointed by this news master prophet. It's always cute to see someone with the confidence to predict the future. I'd imagine if I was a girl I would be wet right now.
I disagree completely, 100% wholeheartedly. What you're ignoring is that video gaming isn't going to get smaller. It won't. It'll get bigger and bigger and bigger and bigger. When I started gaming, NO ONE else was doing it. Now everyone is. Even people who DON'T game are saying that they do because it's so common.
As gaming advances, computers advance. It'll become so widespread that even third world countries will be decked out with computers and internet access -- not any time soon, but sure enough, it'll happen. I live in South Africa and keep close tabs on bordering and other African countries and the amount of internet usage in a place like Ghana or Congo is ridiculous considering that their running water and electricity is fucked.
So yeah, games are gonna become huge, much bigger than a sport like soccer where it's Dependant upon your personal preference in style. What can't be argued is that video games are gonna become huge thanks to computers. If anyone has an argument I'd love to hear it.
What that means is bigger markets. Much bigger markets. It'll appeal to many more people than other traditional sports, though that'll take time. You see eSports getting bigger and it's not like that hype is going to wind down and retract, it'll slowly grow and grow and grow.
I don't need to see Star 2 or BW on espn or nbc sports to validate it's success or failure. You can defeat Usain Bolt if you cheesed him and tripped him mid sprint. That's basically what cheese is in this game. The crowd would boo you and you probably will get disqualified for it. You just don't get punished as a professional or amateur outside of people talking shit about you when it comes to starcraft. If you noticed most of the cheesers aren't in gsl anymore so I guess it's safe to say the skillgap has increased in that tournament.
On May 28 2011 08:26 cyclone25 wrote: Stability and the low skill cap aren't as big of a issue as the OP makes it look. I don't mind getting a new Starcraft every 10 years. The basics are the same and the top players will always be at the top no matter of patches, add-ons or even new games. I indeed hate the fact that Blizzard is balancing SC2 so slowly and that the luck factor is higher than it should be, but this will probably be fixed soon too.
The main issues I see with eSports at the moment is the US leagues like NASL and IPL promoting the new trend of broadcasting from replays or recorded broadcasts instead of live games. This is unacceptable in any sport and if European or Korean leagues broadcast the games live they should be able to do it too. Also let's not forget Warcarft 3 who had all the big online tournaments casted live! Instead we see NASL and IPL treating SC2 as a "product" (similar to a movie/ TV series) instead of treating it as a sports competition where viewers can get involved more into matches by following them live. How does IPL think I can get hyped about a match that was actually played 2 weeks in advance ??? There is a huge difference between watching the football Champions League Final live or recorded the second day. This should be true for Starcraft 2 too - and it saddens me to see some people blindly defending these leagues and saying it's no big deal if it's live or casted from replays. These are people who probably never experienced a live sport event and they just look at SC2 matches with the same interest as watching a movie.
The difference between live and delayed is a big thing, but this is a community that's built off of vods. Everyone's sort of accustomed to watching stuff at their leisure and the live aspect is not going to make or brake it. Honestly with NASL and these other tourneys you forget that they actually aren't live after awhile.
Who knows what types of games will be out 20 even 50 years from now. There could very well be a game that has all the right elements to go mainstream and be up there with basketball and football.. With technology getting better everyday there a lot of possibilities.
I don't think E-Sports will grow beyond something like UFC or WWE in the west for at least a few decades. That's fine by me though, where the best players can at least make a decent living and there's plenty of content produced for fans to watch.
Console games are absolutely intended for the casual gamer (especially Nintendo). I see the Call of Duty Tournaments growing but it is ridiculous as an ESport. I believe the First-Person Shooter genre is dead. I'm from the old school of FPS competition where you spawned with nothing more than a pea-Shooter. Once you killed your opponent your strategy became managing your opponent's access to resources. Nowadays you spawn with a full kit. (CounterStrike/CoD)
RTS games are all we have in E-Sports but it only appeals to the strategy enthusiasts or hardcore. I Tried to get my brother into SC2 and he just couldn't get into it, and he is a big time gamer.
Adding complexity also does not increase competition. Why is it that Total Annihilation was not as successful as Starcraft when there was obviously more depth to that game? Same situation with SC2 and Supreme Commander FA.
We can't make E-Sports mainstream we can only hope to appeal to more intelligent people. There are many brainiacs out there who love strategy games (including many middle-aged adults) but will not enter the E-sports culture as long as it has this pre-pubescent geek aesthetic attached to it.
On May 28 2011 02:41 Mailing wrote: Nobody watches professional track and field outside of the Olympics, and it has been around for thousands of years and will continue to be played.
This is a very foolish, uninformed and plain out stupid statement which should not be considered for argument. As it is fully incorrect and poorly thought out.
I made a very similar thread on MLGPro.com regarding Halo. I agree, the trend for games is always towards the casuals. Unfortunately, competitive players are such a minority that we just don't make companies much money.
On May 28 2011 08:18 Benjef wrote: This topic is bashed to death far too much a new top pops up every few weeks and get then a flame war starts in each one... Why make threads like this and spend your time better contributing your time to Esports so it won't fail...
Isn't it important to identify the obstacles that esports faces? Do we just blindly turn away from the obvious problems we face, and wish them away? That's not the way things get done. Also, the discussion in this thread has been relatively civil.
On May 28 2011 09:26 Razzah wrote: Its people like you that are the reasons it will not make it.People who look down on it because they think its a joke will not help it grow.
On May 28 2011 02:41 Mailing wrote: Nobody watches professional track and field outside of the Olympics, and it has been around for thousands of years and will continue to be played.
SC2 and other games don't have to be "mainstream" to succeed, even now they are doing well and if the scene doesn't grow at all, as long as it stays at a consistent level all will be fine.
But that's just the point. It won't stay consistent. The scene will boom, and with the next new flashy game everyone will leave and move on to the new shiny.
So the point is e-sports will be replaced by e-sports. I am not disappointed by this news master prophet. It's always cute to see someone with the confidence to predict the future. I'd imagine if I was a girl I would be wet right now.
lol. Always interesting to find people who come into threads to deliberately act like douchebags. Also, you are missing the point entirely. Sure, your video game nerd mind might not notice the difference when they replace your SC2 with CoD 2348230434, but some of us care about certain games more than others. And if esports are ever to become anything more than an extremely niche market, certain games need staying power.
On May 28 2011 09:07 Coolwhip wrote: You have to realise gaming is getting bigger, but mostly with smartphone and facebook gaming. In other words not hardcore gaming.
True, but those I would hardly call esports.
On May 28 2011 09:03 Chilliman wrote: Can you actually show a good melee video?
What, not a fan of Dark's insane fox techskill? Btw, the point was more that the skillcap in melee is impossibly high.
On May 28 2011 13:01 snow2.0 wrote: Didnt we just have some freak-of-nature Schalke top4 in the Champions League?
Saying "low skill unknowns" (who will typically be playing a lot anyway) can still win stuff doesn't take its sport-nature away.
Upsets are only special when they are rare. When nobodies can frequently beat the existing champions, we simply don't care anymore.
On May 28 2011 03:53 Sajiki wrote: ok im newb in ssbb.. what the fuck is tripping? i have watched like 5 different videos of ppl complaining about it but i still havent understood what it actually is.. is it that your char falls to the ground ?
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.
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.
Fantastic point. One thing to realize about why soccer, football, etc. are so very popular is that... fans played the sports growing up! People enjoy watching the game they played themselves, except at a higher level than they could ever aspire to. Similar to casual SC2 players watching NesTea or oGsMC demolish all comers.
As the rate of casual gaming is skyrocketing around the world I think it's reasonable to expect that the pool of potential eSports audience members is doing the same.
what im really missing in this OP are real facts. for example the TLO charity stream hit over 20k viewers at times. NASL has about ~17K viewers when first aired and another ~8K watch the EU restream. i guess GSL even tops those viewcounts when you add the viewers that watch it on real TV.
you cant compare e-sports to soccer or the olympics. but what about darts? pool? pingpong? how we doing there? we have alot professional starcraft gamers in the world. i would even say, without anything to prove it, in this regard computer games beat already alot of sports.
and what is it that "real sports" dont change? sure starcraft1 & 2 are basicly different games but every worldcup uses another ball. dart changed alot. todays dartbords and darts are freaking hightech products. in the early eraly days people threw sticks at walls. the sport evolved. esports evolves too fast, maybe. but thats no reason not to become mainstream.
On May 28 2011 03:53 Sajiki wrote: ok im newb in ssbb.. what the fuck is tripping? i have watched like 5 different videos of ppl complaining about it but i still havent understood what it actually is.. is it that your char falls to the ground ?
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.
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.
Fantastic point. One thing to realize about why soccer, football, etc. are so very popular is that... fans played the sports growing up! People enjoy watching the game they played themselves, except at a higher level than they could ever aspire to. Similar to casual SC2 players watching NesTea or oGsMC demolish all comers.
As the rate of casual gaming is skyrocketing around the world I think it's reasonable to expect that the pool of potential eSports audience members is doing the same.
This statement will only be true if SC2 has real staying power; say the next 20 years. And only if Blizzard doesn't create SC3, a completely different game from SC2, and asks everyone to move on from SC2 to SC3 for fiscal reasons. In any other case, it would kind of be like asking people who grew up in the 80's to be interested in SC2 because they played asteroids when they were young.
how can you be so pessimistic about the future of esports? lack of stability? how long did the pro scene around BW exist. and its still going. and with the advent of BW millions more got in on the fun. There are tournaments world wide for tens of thousands of dollars. for a game that came out a year ago.
I dont understand your argument about skill cap and the gap between the pros and casuals narrowing. thats basically undermining all the work the pros put in. skillcap decreases because of casuals? sc2 catered to the singleplayer/weekend warrior crowd a lot. but that doesn't make the game less competitive. at the highest levels the games will always be immensely competitive. And ya the learning curve was definitely flattened out to some degree, but no one plays this game perfectly yet. by the time people approach the skill ceiling HotS will be hitting shelves. and then there will be a slew of new things to learn and understand about the game.
unfortunately i know very little about the only solid evidence you've brought forward here. the clips of SSB at high level play. however, isnt that a rather small niche of the competitive scene? correct me if im wrong but i believe marvel vs capcom and street fighter 4 are far more popular. everything you've said in your post just doesnt feel relevant to me. and with more and more money going into teams and tournaments i can only feel hope that esports will thrive, at least for a time.
as far as esports being "mainstream". i dont see that ever happening and honestly i dont care that it does. i love sc2 and the way the scenes been forming. i dont need to watch july vs mvp on g4 to enjoy it.
whos to say what the other expansions will bring, perhaps more units being added to the game will alter game play to add a skill gap that all the hardcore broodwar players are looking for, i still think the pros need time to figure out what it is that will be the deciding factor between a pro and a guy that just ladders a lot. Eventually i think that pros will become so familiar with builds that it will become what broodwar is, they will easily be able to counter it, or know what is going to happen. And SC3? i really dont see that ever being made...maybe another RTS from blizzard but im sure itll be totally different and the community will stay...I have faith....and like the post above....jesus fuck how does darts and curling have a community, and people say SC wont? so boring to watch darts n shit.....but starcraft is made to be spectated.
On May 28 2011 06:39 NicolBolas wrote: Game design as a whole is still in its infancy; developers are still trying to understand how to design gameplay to achieve some particular purpose. It will be quite some time before someone comes out with an all new game (ie: not a sequel) that designed to be a competitive game.
given the bureaucracy of creating games (studio creativity constraints, budget, etc), I don't think it'd be optimistic to see a well designed, original game built from the ground up designed for the competitive community. from the perspective of the developers, why risk a project blowing up in their faces when they can continually make worn out sequels, slap some watered down multiplayer elements on it and sell?
unless money is not an issue (and it'll always be an issue lol, let's get real), it'd be hard pressed to see any daring developers try to take a leap in a volatile market. as someone has already mentioned, there's a lot of choice in gaming, a lot of genres that don't tailor to everyone's tastes.
On May 28 2011 13:53 Werk wrote: whos to say what the other expansions will bring, perhaps more units being added to the game will alter game play to add a skill gap that all the hardcore broodwar players are looking for, i still think the pros need time to figure out what it is that will be the deciding factor between a pro and a guy that just ladders a lot. Eventually i think that pros will become so familiar with builds that it will become what broodwar is, they will easily be able to counter it, or know what is going to happen. And SC3? i really dont see that ever being made...maybe another RTS from blizzard but im sure itll be totally different and the community will stay...I have faith....and like the post above....jesus fuck how does darts and curling have a community, and people say SC wont? so boring to watch darts n shit.....but starcraft is made to be spectated.
Starcraft was not made to be a spectator sport, it was made to appeal to millions of kids so that they would buy the game. Blizzard has little to zero incentive to make any of their games into an esport; there simply is not money to be made.
On May 28 2011 13:53 Werk wrote: whos to say what the other expansions will bring, perhaps more units being added to the game will alter game play to add a skill gap that all the hardcore broodwar players are looking for, i still think the pros need time to figure out what it is that will be the deciding factor between a pro and a guy that just ladders a lot. Eventually i think that pros will become so familiar with builds that it will become what broodwar is, they will easily be able to counter it, or know what is going to happen. And SC3? i really dont see that ever being made...maybe another RTS from blizzard but im sure itll be totally different and the community will stay...I have faith....and like the post above....jesus fuck how does darts and curling have a community, and people say SC wont? so boring to watch darts n shit.....but starcraft is made to be spectated.
You really think Blizzard will pass up an opportunity to make a ton of money? I mean just look at starcraft 2, they broke it up into 3 different parts so you would have to spend more money. Blizzard really does not give a shit about esports.
On May 28 2011 13:53 Werk wrote: whos to say what the other expansions will bring, perhaps more units being added to the game will alter game play to add a skill gap that all the hardcore broodwar players are looking for, i still think the pros need time to figure out what it is that will be the deciding factor between a pro and a guy that just ladders a lot. Eventually i think that pros will become so familiar with builds that it will become what broodwar is, they will easily be able to counter it, or know what is going to happen. And SC3? i really dont see that ever being made...maybe another RTS from blizzard but im sure itll be totally different and the community will stay...I have faith....and like the post above....jesus fuck how does darts and curling have a community, and people say SC wont? so boring to watch darts n shit.....but starcraft is made to be spectated.
You really think Blizzard will pass up an opportunity to make a ton of money? I mean just look at starcraft 2, they broke it up into 3 different parts so you would have to spend more money. Blizzard really does not give a shit about esports.
Yea but they added the spectator feature so they could make MORE money, without those kinda features, the community would be a joke, if blizzard didint take the esports side of SC serious it wouldnt be nearly as a good of a game is it is now
On May 28 2011 13:53 Werk wrote: whos to say what the other expansions will bring, perhaps more units being added to the game will alter game play to add a skill gap that all the hardcore broodwar players are looking for, i still think the pros need time to figure out what it is that will be the deciding factor between a pro and a guy that just ladders a lot. Eventually i think that pros will become so familiar with builds that it will become what broodwar is, they will easily be able to counter it, or know what is going to happen. And SC3? i really dont see that ever being made...maybe another RTS from blizzard but im sure itll be totally different and the community will stay...I have faith....and like the post above....jesus fuck how does darts and curling have a community, and people say SC wont? so boring to watch darts n shit.....but starcraft is made to be spectated.
Starcraft was not made to be a spectator sport, it was made to appeal to millions of kids so that they would buy the game. Blizzard has little to zero incentive to make any of their games into an esport; there simply is not money to be made.
and sports were never invented for money.
culture is the main problem. sports are encouraged e-sports are not. factor in the other things like replaceability, catering to casuals and another big reason is that you have to have a console/cpu to play games. you get a basketball and head to the court and you're good to go.
once we overcome culture and start developing some better games then we can finally break through. but until then e-sports will be about where it is right now. it's got potential. hell i'd bet money that in my lifetime we'll see an e-sports emerge semi-successfully in western countries.
in summary, culture fucks esports up, game makers do it for the money, and how difficult it is to understand the game or difficulties in obtaining the game.
On May 28 2011 13:53 Werk wrote: whos to say what the other expansions will bring, perhaps more units being added to the game will alter game play to add a skill gap that all the hardcore broodwar players are looking for, i still think the pros need time to figure out what it is that will be the deciding factor between a pro and a guy that just ladders a lot. Eventually i think that pros will become so familiar with builds that it will become what broodwar is, they will easily be able to counter it, or know what is going to happen. And SC3? i really dont see that ever being made...maybe another RTS from blizzard but im sure itll be totally different and the community will stay...I have faith....and like the post above....jesus fuck how does darts and curling have a community, and people say SC wont? so boring to watch darts n shit.....but starcraft is made to be spectated.
Starcraft was not made to be a spectator sport, it was made to appeal to millions of kids so that they would buy the game. Blizzard has little to zero incentive to make any of their games into an esport; there simply is not money to be made.
and sports were never invented for money.
culture is the main problem. sports are encouraged e-sports are not. factor in the other things like replaceability, catering to casuals and another big reason is that you have to have a console/cpu to play games. you get a basketball and head to the court and you're good to go.
once we overcome culture and start developing some better games then we can finally break through. but until then e-sports will be about where it is right now. it's got potential. hell i'd bet money that in my lifetime we'll see an e-sports emerge semi-successfully in western countries.
in summary, culture fucks esports up, game makers do it for the money, and how difficult it is to understand the game or difficulties in obtaining the game.
Excuse me for being noob, i really only played broodwar as a kid, not competitive, didn't follow the korean scene but from the bits n peices that i have picked up, i seems like for a game that had been out for like 14 years or something, blizzard is still doing things for broodwar esports no? Isnt Kespa still getting sponsored or something by blizzard to continue to run the huge tourneys in korea? 14 years ago the game came out (or somthing like that) and they still are trying to suport Esports for an old game? surely they aren't making millions for that game still
TTWO Take-Two Interactive ERTS Electronic Arts Inc. THQI THQ Inc. ATVI Activision Blizzard, Inc.
Take a look at these stock charts and put it in a 5 year timespan. None of these companies have surpassed their 2008 highs like the rest of the market has. Let me know if you think the lack of profitability for these game companies bodes well for E-Sports.
I don't believe these companies can afford to care about E-Sports no matter how much the rank and file would love to.
On May 28 2011 13:53 Werk wrote: whos to say what the other expansions will bring, perhaps more units being added to the game will alter game play to add a skill gap that all the hardcore broodwar players are looking for, i still think the pros need time to figure out what it is that will be the deciding factor between a pro and a guy that just ladders a lot. Eventually i think that pros will become so familiar with builds that it will become what broodwar is, they will easily be able to counter it, or know what is going to happen. And SC3? i really dont see that ever being made...maybe another RTS from blizzard but im sure itll be totally different and the community will stay...I have faith....and like the post above....jesus fuck how does darts and curling have a community, and people say SC wont? so boring to watch darts n shit.....but starcraft is made to be spectated.
Starcraft was not made to be a spectator sport, it was made to appeal to millions of kids so that they would buy the game. Blizzard has little to zero incentive to make any of their games into an esport; there simply is not money to be made.
and sports were never invented for money.
culture is the main problem. sports are encouraged e-sports are not. factor in the other things like replaceability, catering to casuals and another big reason is that you have to have a console/cpu to play games. you get a basketball and head to the court and you're good to go.
once we overcome culture and start developing some better games then we can finally break through. but until then e-sports will be about where it is right now. it's got potential. hell i'd bet money that in my lifetime we'll see an e-sports emerge semi-successfully in western countries.
in summary, culture fucks esports up, game makers do it for the money, and how difficult it is to understand the game or difficulties in obtaining the game.
Excuse me for being noob, i really only played broodwar as a kid, not competitive, didn't follow the korean scene but from the bits n peices that i have picked up, i seems like for a game that had been out for like 14 years or something, blizzard is still doing things for broodwar esports no? Isnt Kespa still getting sponsored or something by blizzard to continue to run the huge tourneys in korea? 14 years ago the game came out (or somthing like that) and they still are trying to suport Esports for an old game? surely they aren't making millions for that game still
i feel the bash coming for not playing BW = (
Blizzard hasn't been involved in the BW seen at all for many, many years. Well, besides trying to sue KeSPA. BW tourneys are basically funded by the TV broadcasting networks as well as sponsorship from various Korean corporations. And yeah Blizzard probably still makes a decent amount of $ from korean broodwar sales.
On May 28 2011 02:49 Novalisk wrote: E-Sports has seen a huge growth with SC2, and it will see a huge growth should SC3 arrive as well, which I remind you is at the very least a decade away.
that's not necessarily true, since the activision merger/purchase blizzard (assuming the articles i've read in the past are correct) has been pressed to pump games out at a faster rate.. the 10 years rule may not hold much longer
On May 28 2011 14:15 scaban84 wrote: TTWO Take-Two Interactive ERTS Electronic Arts Inc. THQI THQ Inc. ATVI Activision Blizzard, Inc.
Take a look at these stock charts and put it in a 5 year timespan. None of these companies have surpassed their 2008 highs like the rest of the market has. Let me know if you think the lack of profitability for these game companies bodes well for E-Sports.
I don't believe these companies can afford to care about E-Sports no matter how much the rank and file would love to.
DJI- Dow jones industrial average. still not where it was in 2008. in case you forgot we were in a recession the past few years.
companies will continue producing games that are competitive. once again citing sc2 as an example. it was highly successful. and it will continue down the road its on, more people will pick up the game. when heart of the swarm releases blizzard will rake in more revenue, and the incentive to keep developing games like sc2 will always be there.
On May 28 2011 14:15 scaban84 wrote: TTWO Take-Two Interactive ERTS Electronic Arts Inc. THQI THQ Inc. ATVI Activision Blizzard, Inc.
Take a look at these stock charts and put it in a 5 year timespan. None of these companies have surpassed their 2008 highs like the rest of the market has. Let me know if you think the lack of profitability for these game companies bodes well for E-Sports.
I don't believe these companies can afford to care about E-Sports no matter how much the rank and file would love to.
DJI- Dow jones industrial average. still not where it was in 2008. in case you forgot we were in a recession the past few years.
companies will continue producing games that are competitive. once again citing sc2 as an example. it was highly successful. and it will continue down the road its on, more people will pick up the game. when heart of the swarm releases blizzard will rake in more revenue, and the incentive to keep developing games like sc2 will always be there.
The Dow Jones is an antiquated indicator for the economy that no one uses anymore. It only follows 30 dinosaur companies and isn't weighted for capitalization. (I work in Finance). For tech companies you must follow the NASDAQ, and the game companies have severely lagged. The NASDAQ has surpassed its pre-recession levels.
I like the OP, but I disagree in the regard of skill cap. I believe SC2 has just as high as a skill cap as BW and other sports, but this post I think is really only looking at the foreign scene.
IMO the foreign scene has "pros", but none of these people are really professionals at the game. They either don't put in the necessary time or they don't have the quality of practice or coaching that helps...most simply lack all 3. I think the biggest hurdle that needs to be overcome is the lack of professionalism among teams/players in the foreign SC2 scene. I think this would allow for the skill gap that most people think of in a "pro vs joe" way as well as promote a much better scene in general.
On May 28 2011 03:53 Sajiki wrote: ok im newb in ssbb.. what the fuck is tripping? i have watched like 5 different videos of ppl complaining about it but i still havent understood what it actually is.. is it that your char falls to the ground ?
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.
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.
Fantastic point. One thing to realize about why soccer, football, etc. are so very popular is that... fans played the sports growing up! People enjoy watching the game they played themselves, except at a higher level than they could ever aspire to. Similar to casual SC2 players watching NesTea or oGsMC demolish all comers.
As the rate of casual gaming is skyrocketing around the world I think it's reasonable to expect that the pool of potential eSports audience members is doing the same.
This statement will only be true if SC2 has real staying power; say the next 20 years. And only if Blizzard doesn't create SC3, a completely different game from SC2, and asks everyone to move on from SC2 to SC3 for fiscal reasons. In any other case, it would kind of be like asking people who grew up in the 80's to be interested in SC2 because they played asteroids when they were young.
[/spoiler]
I don't think the issue is getting people to focus on a particular game (e.g. SC2, which will of course be replaced by SC3 or another RTS within 10 years, though like CS or BW it will still have a niche following) but instead getting people to take seriously video games as a spectator sport.
Once that barrier is crossed, the specific games can be appreciated and shift. And actually, yeah, I do believe that people who grew up playing Mario Bros. loved seeing Super Smash Brothers (totally different game), for example.
I don't play Super Street Fighter IV, but I played MK2 growing up, and I therefore appreciate the spectacle of an amazing fighting game. The specifics of the game have changed, but the basic ideas and mechanics of the genre are within my understanding and thus my appreciation.
conjecture, conjecture everywhere. eSports are a new paradigm in competition, for so many different reasons. you can't apply the same old linear logic to a revolutionary topic like this.
The main problem is lack of stability. Every time a sequel or a new popular video game is published, the community is asked to "switch over," with parent companies quickly ensuring the previous game's demise. Now imagine that you are a die-hard football (soccer in the US) fan. One day, the league suddenly makes a statement. "We have just created this awesome game called basketball. We will no longer show or support football." Two years later, the same league once again declares "We no longer support basketball, we will now be a rugby league." No tradition would be built, no lasting, growing fanbase would rise. Asking hardcore BW fans to switch over to SC2 is basically the same thing. Now imagine that there are sudden, unexpected large rule changes to traditional sports. "Football players will no longer kick balls into a net, they will kick stones into buckets. We call this football patch 1.1. Also, every other month, basketball hoop heights will be changed." Sounds ridiculous, right? Game patches are basically the same thing. While it is understandable for Blizzard to want to help balance the game, patches that come out every month that completely reset the metagame are stupid.
haven't we just seen the convergence of multiple game communities with the release of SCII? this generation is a generation founded on instability. we consume technology and media and information at a rate which is unfathomable to those only a generation before us. it's not uncommon to have a tens of jobs in lifetime anymore. what, exactly, makes you think that people can't deal with instability? I can answer that for you. you're thinking in the past. you're using dated hypotheticals to reason a current problem.
Secondly, the very nature of the video game business makes it difficult to harbor competition. It is always in the company's interest to cater to casual gamers. Far more of them exist over hardcore gamers, so video game companies have learned to decrease the skillcap of games as much as possible. Just look at today's games versus games in the 1990's and early 2000's. Games like Quake, Starcraft, Super Smash Brothers Melee; hell, even single player games like BattleToads or Silver Surfer were impossible to master. Now look at today's games. Super Smash Brothers Brawl. Halo Reach. The CoD series. Basically every console game made since 2004. What's worse is that its not just that companies just "happen" to make easy games. Many of these games are anti-competitive by nature, such as Brawl.
you obviously don't understand the fundamentals of business. it's in the companies interest to maximize profits. granted, it may be most profitable to make a game that can be played by anybody with ease, but do you *actually* think that Blizzard have just turned a blind eye to the competitive growth of their games? surely you understand that when a company has potential marketability in the sustained popularity of its game, it will recognize that and act to solidify it. How is it, in any way, in Blizzards favour to make an imbalanced poorly functioning game?
@leecH : point is, in few years these PC games will fade out but darts will still be played. Of course there will be another game that has more players than darts, but does it matter? Gaming industry is built on people playing new games. And new games arive annualy.
On May 28 2011 13:53 Werk wrote: whos to say what the other expansions will bring, perhaps more units being added to the game will alter game play to add a skill gap that all the hardcore broodwar players are looking for, i still think the pros need time to figure out what it is that will be the deciding factor between a pro and a guy that just ladders a lot. Eventually i think that pros will become so familiar with builds that it will become what broodwar is, they will easily be able to counter it, or know what is going to happen. And SC3? i really dont see that ever being made...maybe another RTS from blizzard but im sure itll be totally different and the community will stay...I have faith....and like the post above....jesus fuck how does darts and curling have a community, and people say SC wont? so boring to watch darts n shit.....but starcraft is made to be spectated.
Starcraft was not made to be a spectator sport, it was made to appeal to millions of kids so that they would buy the game. Blizzard has little to zero incentive to make any of their games into an esport; there simply is not money to be made.
I'm sorry but this is just a joke of an argument. Your OP was semi-intelligible at certain points but these are just flimsy replies to make your point stand out more.
The Starcraft franchise is only as popular as it is today because it's a spectator sport. It wasn't made to be one but it sure as hell benefited Blizzard by being one.
On May 28 2011 13:53 Werk wrote: whos to say what the other expansions will bring, perhaps more units being added to the game will alter game play to add a skill gap that all the hardcore broodwar players are looking for, i still think the pros need time to figure out what it is that will be the deciding factor between a pro and a guy that just ladders a lot. Eventually i think that pros will become so familiar with builds that it will become what broodwar is, they will easily be able to counter it, or know what is going to happen. And SC3? i really dont see that ever being made...maybe another RTS from blizzard but im sure itll be totally different and the community will stay...I have faith....and like the post above....jesus fuck how does darts and curling have a community, and people say SC wont? so boring to watch darts n shit.....but starcraft is made to be spectated.
Starcraft was not made to be a spectator sport, it was made to appeal to millions of kids so that they would buy the game. Blizzard has little to zero incentive to make any of their games into an esport; there simply is not money to be made.
and sports were never invented for money.
culture is the main problem. sports are encouraged e-sports are not. factor in the other things like replaceability, catering to casuals and another big reason is that you have to have a console/cpu to play games. you get a basketball and head to the court and you're good to go.
once we overcome culture and start developing some better games then we can finally break through. but until then e-sports will be about where it is right now. it's got potential. hell i'd bet money that in my lifetime we'll see an e-sports emerge semi-successfully in western countries.
in summary, culture fucks esports up, game makers do it for the money, and how difficult it is to understand the game or difficulties in obtaining the game.
I'd like to point out that most sports were not always encouraged. For example, Don Cherry had to run away from home to pursue his pro hockey career... I mean i guess sports and games have always been encouraged to a certain extent just to keep little ones busy, but I'd argue that most kids have a more than fair access to gaming as it is.
Games themselves are encouraged, just not to a certain extent. But no one used to encourage any major sport past a certain point either... Hell I recall being scolded for only ever playing hockey as little as ten years ago.
Its a new generation of people. I am 28 years old and most of my friends prefer watching SC2 matchen instead of football. Football is VERY big here but many are watching SC2 matches now. More would watch it if they knew sites like teamliquid existed.
So the big interest we are seeing now is just 0.0001% of what it will be eventually. E-sports will grow incredible big and with SC2 in the front.
I have to agree on the fact that sequels may actually end up hurting e-sports. Some sequels are an improvement, but changing the gameplay too much will mean that people will need to relearn an entirely new game. It may end up just splitting the fans, which is what happened with BW and SC2. Both are great games, but SC2 is just so much different compareded to BW.
On May 28 2011 19:12 Avean wrote: Its a new generation of people. I am 28 years old and most of my friends prefer watching SC2 matchen instead of football. Football is VERY big here but many are watching SC2 matches now. More would watch it if they knew sites like teamliquid existed.
So the big interest we are seeing now is just 0.0001% of what it will be eventually. E-sports will grow incredible big and with SC2 in the front.
This argument is pretty weak, unless you have thousands of friends. It's pretty normal for someone thats into games to have friends that share that interest.
On May 28 2011 19:36 Grend wrote: This is not enough to predict the future of esports. Stop trying to predict the future, it`s blind luck if you are right anyway.
well it's not exactly predicting the future there is some analysis involved. thats like saying a person buys a stock and if it goes up it was blind luck. the OP has a good point about esports, it isn't going to stay if new things come out all the time.
seriously, why does everything have to be about getting bigger and bigger? size doesnt matter, if there are dedicated people in esports like day9 and djwheat and all great players, the quality of esport will remain as great as any other sport. esport might not have the biggest number of fans, but it isnt the true meaning of esport at all.
On May 28 2011 19:36 Grend wrote: This is not enough to predict the future of esports. Stop trying to predict the future, it`s blind luck if you are right anyway.
well it's not exactly predicting the future there is some analysis involved. thats like saying a person buys a stock and if it goes up it was blind luck. the OP has a good point about esports, it isn't going to stay if new things come out all the time.
That`s not analysis in my opinion. It`s a minute point blown out of proportion used to conjecture about the future of E-sports. How do you know that it will not succeed even if new games come out? What data are you basing this on?
And about the stock metaphor: Alot of times people do profit on stocks even if they are based on analysis that is wrong. The stock market is volatile and random, investment on the other hand..
I believe that one of the main flaws in esports is that there quite isint a "pratice roof" for how much you can practice every day. In nearly every other sport, you can only train a few hours every day before you risk to hurt yourself by training more. Like footballers and such, they practice in the day, but after that they go back to a normal life doing interviews and such. A esport player cannot do this, just watch the GSL. Jinro said he practiced around 14(?) hours every day when he was on fire during the last winter. This means the only thing he did every day was practice and sleeping. Nothing more.
Sure, a talent can shine in this game. But I think that in the long run. The player that have practiced the most and spent most time in his room playing will be the best. Just my two cents.
On May 28 2011 19:42 Velr wrote: Why do people bring up games like SSMB or other fighters into this?
They are not in the least interesting or anything for anyone not playing them on a pretty high level.
In RTS and some other Genres you actually can watch and "see" what is done and why it is done whiteout being decent at the game yourself.
I would say RTSs are like football, while fighting games are like boxing or MMA. In football, you can descide who's playing the best by looking at different plays and so on, while with MMA you don't have to know the details to see who get's beat up the most.
In StarCraft II, you watch who makes what build and if their micro is good, by watching details in the game. In Street Fighter IV, you watch who's life-bar is decreasing the most. I would even say it's much easier to follow a match in a fighting game since it's mostly easily tracked statistics (super meter, life bar), while in StarCraft you have to be able to analyze situations by watching more abstract statistics (supply count, # or bases, income) to figure out who's actually in the lead.
In all honesty, I'm inclined to believe that the eventual success of e-sports is inevitable. The key word there, of course, is eventual. Success, however, is a matter of perspective. I think it would be fair to say that competitive BW and SC2 is already fairly successful. But if you're talking about market-dominating multi-million dollar Fruitdealer-on-a-Wheaties-box success, it's a long way off.
As far as "making games less competitive by softening the learning curve" is concerned, I think you're way off. The learning curve on SC2 for a new player is still insanely steep. Less so, if they have experience with BW, which is why you'll notice that most of the current pro SC2 players were pro or semi-pro BW or WC3 players. Kind of shoots your "game sequels ruin the chances of successful e-sports" argument in the foot. And if you don't think SC2 is hard enough, quit playing Terran. Or stop 4-gating. Or, you know what, try playing zerg.
All joking aside, though... I would totally buy Wheaties if Fruitdealer was on the box.
On May 28 2011 02:49 Novalisk wrote: E-Sports has seen a huge growth with SC2, and it will see a huge growth should SC3 arrive as well, which I remind you is at the very least a decade away.
I agree, and just for the record, the whole SC3 what if gave me chills and a huge boner at the same time, lol....
Seriously though, I am a 34 year old gamer, have been since I was 8. The whole idea of eSports supplanting or even becoming mainstream is a bit farfetched for the simple fact that your main sports (Football (US and World versions), Baseball, Basketball, and Hockey) have been around for so long that it would take at least 2-3 generations of hardcore fans to even get close to mainstream. Cult of fanantics is the more likely road, because IMO once and egamer, always an egamer......
There are multiple examples of the competitive scene not moving from a game to its sequel. Quake Live, CS 1.6, and Broodwar in Korea come to mind first, and these are all esports games.
I feel that part of the reason esports haven't been "successful" is that there are constant improvements being made to graphics in games. If a friend sees me watching a pro Broodwar game the first thing he says is, "This game looks like crap." and he never gives it a chance. It's very hard for old games to overcome this and continue to bring new players/spectators in.
I hope that graphics have gotten to a point where this will be much less of a problem. How will SC2 look compared to games 10 years from now? Will it look good enough that potential new players will still give it a chance?
EDIT: To connect this more with what the OP was saying: In the past when a sequel was released many people switched over because, with the possible exception of gameplay, all aspects of the game are improved; pathing, graphics, user interface... In SC2 units now go where they're told to go, graphics are good enough where it is easy to understand what is going on, and features like mbs and automine make it more user-friendly. In the future I think that SC3 or other games won't be able to make such drastic improvements in these areas, which will result in people judging the game with much more emphasis on core gameplay, strategic depth, and competitiveness, rather than just switching games based on general improvements.
Some people will say that SC2 does not have the strategic depth to make it as long lasting as Broodwar; if that turns out to be true, than some other game will be able to combine gameplay with graphics and that game will lead esports to become "successful".
I think it's very difficult for you to predict the future like this. Any successful televised activity will need a large fanbase. Taekwondo, golf, chess, snooker are all games that have gained popularity and finally become economically profitable to televise. With overpopulation in the world and more people getting internet acces, more young people are going to switch to video games as their main source of entertainment rather than soccer or basketball.
Unless some miracle changes the trend and kids start doing more physical activity, more and more people with aggregate demand will be wanting televised video game competitions as time goes on.
It doesn't matter if the games change. MMA has changed their rules many times. As long as people are willing to pay for it, you'll get it on a free market. It's quite simple actually.
If anything I think that e-sports will be televised for sure, it's only a question of when. Whether or not the OSL overtakes the Champions League in popularity is simply down to how large of a timeframe you are looking at.
the fact the esports have to deal with balance is a big issue in my book. comparing fruitdealers gsl1 win to whoever won the last one isn't possible b/c the game has changed several times since then. no other main stream sport goes through changes like this. it's always 90 feet to first in baseball, a football field is always 120 yards by 62 1/3 yards (i'm almost positive the width is right), soccer is always 11v11, and so on. yes mma has changed their rules many times, but not since they got popular. as soon as they went mainstream things were set in stone, or maybe they kept changing the rules to find out what the mainstream wants. but bascially they just adopted boxing's rule. can you blame them? it started out as 1 round, no time limit, no weightclasses, and the entire tournament fought in one night. not really a recipe for success.
also the fact that there is a disconnect between the fans and the players is something mainstream will not enjoy. in the sense that while i'm watching a football game, i get to see peyton manning throw the ball and his reactions to the pass. while watching starcraft2 you could tell me anyone is playing and i'll never know until the end of the match when they show the winner, if they show him at all. you never see a player getting upset at his failed drop or poor micro, but you see athletes cheering and jeering all game long. i want to see some nerd's wry little smile when his banshee kills 8 probes, or when he detonates those burrowed banelings.
i want to actually see what the player is doing in game, not just what the observer decides to show me. how many times have you seen someone's micro drift just a little during a battle, and wonder if he switched home real quick to macro. even in chess you get to see the players interaction with the pieces, but in starcraft you never know what the player is doing at that moment. sure you see his army moving around, but is he watching it or is he in his base macroing?
You base your views of way too small amounts of facts. The only game where a sequel has felt like a succesion is starcraft since blizzard made a lot of effort to make the sequel an Esports game. This doesnt mean that BW will die out anytime soon though, since Starcraft 2 is only there to bring more people in to competetive RTS gaming. Thats its sole purpose.
Saying that Esports will fail is just pure bullshit! Esport is so young and its not like any other sport so comparing it to sports like football is stupid as hell. Those two dont even compare at all. In sports you make a game with simple frame and let the human physic do the rest. In Esports you build an extremely complex frame and let the human mind AND physic do the rest.
It is going to take a while but mark my words, Esports is the future, but its not going to happen overnight. So people who dismiss it based on stupid minor example should shut up and let Esports form. The only thing that may stand in the way of Esports is that people seem to have a tendency to outright dismiss it without giving it a chance.
I think the biggest point from this article is the fact that the games will change for 'new shiney updates'. However look at BW, because of Blizzards dedication to patching the game until it is properly balanced that has had a life of over 10 years. Which imho is enough time for competitors to build fan bases/emotional storylines to develop (e.g. player rivalries can emerge in a similar way to say a derby match in football). Which in turn lead to the fan base staying with a game even when new games emerge. Just my take on it
On May 28 2011 02:56 ishboh wrote: what about poker? one could argue that poker should die out because it is not entirely comprised of skill.
in any case. this seems to be very weak reasoning as to why esports will not grow. the better games will rise above the newer games (like BW did for 10+ years, and continues to stay active today)
We'll see how active the BW community is 5 years from now.
The only reason it will eventually die (at least in Korea) is because it looks butt-ugly. I would not be overwhelmingly surprised if SC2 custom map BW gets taken up eventually.
Most users ever online was 337 on Thu Feb 17, 2005 11:29 pm
I laughed.
What is funny ?
This is a small underground community site of a very old game. In 2005 it was almost ten years old already. Having a small community isn't really a problem, as long as you find some decent opponents to improve. I have a lot of fun playing Wesnoth or Quakeworld whereas there is often < 100 players online for example.
The games might change, but the e-sports scene will grow.
It will never get to the point of the bigger regular sports. People can identify and compare with the physical sports. They can pretty easily judge/reference what they see against themselves and their own capabilities.
Computer games not so much. To a large extent you have to be a player at some level to understand and appreciate the intricacies of whats going on. Not necessarily of the specific game, but having some experience in the genre will make it a lot apparent to you as the viewer.
But the amount of people being "gamers" to some extent is growing and so will e-sports. It won't fail.
what about poker? one could argue that poker should die out because it is not entirely comprised of skill.
They aren't going to come out with texas holdem 2.0 with better graphics that makes texas holdem 1.0 obsolete. It's a bad comparison. Also many people don't consider poker a sport. To me it's as much of a sport as furious masturbation.
With games like CS1.6, BW, DotA, SF2, and Q3/QL that have transcended time and sequels, I don't even understand how this statement that "e-sports will die" can be true.
I don't think he's saying esports will die in that what we know now will cease to be... he's saying esports will never be like traditional sports because of the medium they are bound to and he makes a pretty solid argument. Also, putting BW with those games with exception to maybe CS 1.6 is absurd. Checkers to chess.
I contribute at speed demos archive which for those who don't know is a site that has a small but hardcore community who speed runs games, many of which, are very difficult. You mentioned battletoads so here's a 19 minute speed run of the game for those interested in seeing how a good player can completely wreck a hard game and make it look easy.
e-Sports surely is doomed in the sense you describe, and in fact, I think you don't address something that is a mere extension of what you're saying but is very important indeed. With all "classic" e-Sports titles that have become over a couple years old, the talent base at the grassroots level becomes smaller and smaller. While some may argue that this is true to some degree for other professional sports including football, handegg, rugby, basketball, tennis etc. for countries that have experienced significant economic development, this process of declining interest is far, far more significant to e-Sports. With such diminishing talent, the professional scene may become rather stagnant, and after a few years, it may even be boring. Currently, I'd argue that the BW scene has dipped significantly in terms of young talent. While football fans have the luxury of wowing at the next Maradona or the new Zidane, BW fans have lacked this forward-looking optimism regarding new players since Bisu, Jaedong and Flash respectively made their marks. In recent times, only BaBy and Soulkey have inspired (and not to a great degree) with their newcomer play.
Furthermore, the transient popularity of video game titles, even e-Sports classics such as BW (professional BW is what? 10+ years old? does it have a reasonable chance to survive another 100 years like football or at least 50 years like basketball and tennis etc?), makes it incredibly risky to base a career on becoming a professional gamer. What's worse is the very limited options that a professional gamer faces once his or her career is over. It's pretty much either university (entering several years late) or administrative duties in a gaming company, and possibly commentary.
On May 28 2011 21:47 lisward wrote: I think it's simply case of apples and oranges.
When D+/C- translates to masters I think it's a little more than apples and oranges. Don't get me wrong, I love watching sc2. It's fun to watch, but I'm still waiting to see something really amaze me.
On May 28 2011 20:56 GrimReefer wrote: the fact the esports have to deal with balance is a big issue in my book. comparing fruitdealers gsl1 win to whoever won the last one isn't possible b/c the game has changed several times since then. no other main stream sport goes through changes like this. it's always 90 feet to first in baseball, a football field is always 120 yards by 62 1/3 yards (i'm almost positive the width is right), soccer is always 11v11, and so on. yes mma has changed their rules many times, but not since they got popular. as soon as they went mainstream things were set in stone, or maybe they kept changing the rules to find out what the mainstream wants. but bascially they just adopted boxing's rule. can you blame them? it started out as 1 round, no time limit, no weightclasses, and the entire tournament fought in one night. not really a recipe for success.
also the fact that there is a disconnect between the fans and the players is something mainstream will not enjoy. in the sense that while i'm watching a football game, i get to see peyton manning throw the ball and his reactions to the pass. while watching starcraft2 you could tell me anyone is playing and i'll never know until the end of the match when they show the winner, if they show him at all. you never see a player getting upset at his failed drop or poor micro, but you see athletes cheering and jeering all game long. i want to see some nerd's wry little smile when his banshee kills 8 probes, or when he detonates those burrowed banelings.
i want to actually see what the player is doing in game, not just what the observer decides to show me. how many times have you seen someone's micro drift just a little during a battle, and wonder if he switched home real quick to macro. even in chess you get to see the players interaction with the pieces, but in starcraft you never know what the player is doing at that moment. sure you see his army moving around, but is he watching it or is he in his base macroing?
I'm pretty sure most BW broadcasts have what you mention in your post (showing the players' faces, using the player's first person cam, etc.)
I feel like you're saying 'e-sports will not be as popular as mainstream sports because developers and fans don't take steps they should take if e-sports was mainstream'. Different cases require different approaches. If you look at BW (outside of Korea), absolutely nothing would have happened if SC2 did not come out. It's not like BW's popularity declined and eventually a sequel was required to refuel it, it wasn't there at all. People's acceptance for video games has increased dramatically last 13 years. There is a limit of what you can do with a 13 year old game in current environment. I believe we are at a stage that will not require another sequel in 10 years to keep the game growing.
When you compare BW in Korea 10 years ago with BW in Korea today, had it's popularity declined? From my fairly uneducated viewpoint, quite the opposite. If you also take into account the rising global acceptance for video games, SC2 seems to have a bright future. Will SC2 ever be able to compete with sports like football or basketball? Almost certainly not, but who needs it to be? There are many much lesser sports with hundreds of professional players. I would be happy if SC2 gets to that stage, and in my opinion it looks very likely that it will.
I disagree, there are plans in stockholm for a esportsbar, what more do "real" sports provide? Huge arenas with hundreds of thousands viewing? Korea already did that, having more people viewing SCBW live than were at the superbowl in the USA (which is a bigger country by far mind you).
So, we have viewers drinking and coming togheter to view it, arenas... what more do you want? In due time teams will develop etc. bringing more fans to bear in the different camps.
IdrA's comments about sc compared to sc2 on inside the game pretty much describe what I think is wrong with sc2 there's too much volatility. The game is no longer like bw where the pros are practically unbeatable also it is a lot less compelling to watch sc2 than bw as brood war units spread out making battles easier to follow what happend and the battles were longer resulting in more intense moment than those in sc2 also the micro was a lot more important and impressive. I think e-sports is something that will be big in the future but sc2 is not the ideal game for it. Quake live/ quake 3 are a lot better because there the player who wins always deserved it pretty much and you can clearly see who is the better player but in sc2 an inferior player can beat a better player any day.
I think the sc2 dev team needs to rethink a lot of the game for it to be a successful e-sports game. Because right now it's not the game that's keeping me watching and playing it's the community that has been build around it as it is probably the best one out there. I really hope blizzard aren't afraid of switching up a lot of the gameplay for HotS or LotV beacuse I think it'll need it to last in the long run.
Blizzard need to realize that new isn't always better as people have mentioned in this thread, Counter strike source was a huge fail and the CS scene is still up and going same goes for Quake 4 which was just not good at all compared to the 3rd one so they made quake live. And to a certain degree in Korea we can see that the interest for BW is a lot bigger.
On May 28 2011 22:10 Krehlmar wrote: I disagree, there are plans in stockholm for a esportsbar, what more do "real" sports provide? Huge arenas with hundreds of thousands viewing? Korea already did that, having more people viewing SCBW live than were at the superbowl in the USA (which is a bigger country by far mind you).
So, we have viewers drinking and coming togheter to view it, arenas... what more do you want? In due time teams will develop etc. bringing more fans to bear in the different camps.
Well, I don't know about Sweden, but eSports will certainly never catch on in the USA. There are far too many hurdles. The example you gave of Korea doesn't really apply. SC became popular in Korea through a very specific set of circumstances that won't be replicated anywhere else. PC bangs, the televised game Go as the infrastructure... we have nothing like that. Everything in the US is spread out, too, so something has to have crazy mass-appeal to penetrate the national market. Video games do not. There's still a stigma behind them that probably won't disappear for another 70 years or so. So, it will never catch in with the "masses."
But, so what? Why does everyone want eSports to grow in the first place? I've never understood that. It's small and awesome. What more do you want?
These threads make no sense to me. I don't want to speak for anyone else, but the goal for e-sports in my mind shouldn't be to become mainstream and have it on TV and fill stadiums and all that stuff. What's wrong with the way it is now? What's broken that we need to fix?
On May 29 2011 02:45 ander wrote: These threads make no sense to me. I don't want to speak for anyone else, but the goal for e-sports in my mind shouldn't be to become mainstream and have it on TV and fill stadiums and all that stuff. What's wrong with the way it is now? What's broken that we need to fix?
yeah my thoughts. why should i watch dumbed down for the average guy commercial infested mainstream stuff when there is already more content out there then i can watch.
so i can say "im not a nerd! starcraft is on tv ! "?
sc2 blew up beyond expectations and for me it already went to far in some aspects. i watch less cause there is too much content. you cant follow the scene without putting tons of hours in just to watch and read up the important stuff. in addition lot of the flavour is gone and people change cause the want to be more "professional".
tv/real mainstream will only change things for the worse for absolutely zero benefit for anyone here except maybe some lolfame and more money for the few top casters and players.
So the point is e-sports will be replaced by e-sports. I am not disappointed by this news master prophet. It's always cute to see someone with the confidence to predict the future. I'd imagine if I was a girl I would be wet right now.
lol. Always interesting to find people who come into threads to deliberately act like douchebags. Also, you are missing the point entirely. Sure, your video game nerd mind might not notice the difference when they replace your SC2 with CoD 2348230434, but some of us care about certain games more than others. And if esports are ever to become anything more than an extremely niche market, certain games need staying power.
You are absolutely right I deliberately act like a douche bag to people who deserve it. If you are going to predict the outcome of future events for the rest of humans, please put some effort and inject some logic into it. As for the rest of what you said, it doesn't make sense to me similar to the OP.
Video games were invented within the last 20 years, a lot of people don't even know they exist and your prophetic visions don't seem to account for this. Or the fact that video games as a whole has only increased in popularity and esports has been around for like only five years? And you can already tell how it will end? Can you please also tell me also which political party will be most powerful in 2054?
Instead of looking at what esports "needs" to make you happy, look at where esports is pointed. I cannot see into the future, but if I had to guess it looks good for esports to me.
On May 28 2011 22:10 Krehlmar wrote: I disagree, there are plans in stockholm for a esportsbar, what more do "real" sports provide? Huge arenas with hundreds of thousands viewing? Korea already did that, having more people viewing SCBW live than were at the superbowl in the USA (which is a bigger country by far mind you).
So, we have viewers drinking and coming togheter to view it, arenas... what more do you want? In due time teams will develop etc. bringing more fans to bear in the different camps.
Well, I don't know about Sweden, but eSports will certainly never catch on in the USA. There are far too many hurdles. The example you gave of Korea doesn't really apply. SC became popular in Korea through a very specific set of circumstances that won't be replicated anywhere else. PC bangs, the televised game Go as the infrastructure... we have nothing like that. Everything in the US is spread out, too, so something has to have crazy mass-appeal to penetrate the national market. Video games do not. There's still a stigma behind them that probably won't disappear for another 70 years or so. So, it will never catch in with the "masses."
But, so what? Why does everyone want eSports to grow in the first place? I've never understood that. It's small and awesome. What more do you want?
Meh, I don't get why anyone would be stupid enough to not understand the cash that is in gaming, ffs we have curling in the olympics, how many people play curling compared to games?
Anyone who is an economics student could figure out that esports will grow, why we want it to grow? Because the day it becomes as big as it can, we'll have people who actually practice asmuch as they need to become so good that the game gets to where it should be.
IdrA is just plain wrong, I love the guy and his style but he isn't an innovator. The game is still new, you might say it isn't, but aslong as there are "new" strategies the game is not figured out... just like with BW. This may take years on years, meh I'm not in any rush.
The fact that you assume that you need e-sports to have the same qualities as sports to succeed is pretty much unfounded and a very narrow/traditional way of looking at things.
The beauty of e-sports is that there are always many games for people to compete in and the most "competition-friendly" game will become the major one. For example, when starcraft 2 came out, players from wc3, sc1, c&c, aoe, and warhammer 40,000 switched over. Furthermore, people who used to watch sc1 now follow sc2 along with the new members of the community.
As a matter of fact, I am glad that new games are constantly being developed because every new release will be an attempt to improve on the previous games combined with the feedback of a more knowledgeable and mature community. This means that every new game will be even more enjoyable as a spectator sport and have a wider audience.
While I agree with some points, I wouldn't say e-sports will "fail".
They will never be as mainstream as other sports, but there will be a high enough following that we can continue to enjoy our games while everyone else watches football.
This has been said before, but I'd still like to point out that Formula 1 gets a "balance patch" almost every season. This is not that different from what blizzard is doing.
Also these threads about the future of ESPORTS etc are getting really tiring. Everyone should just consume as much as they please and what they please and all will be fine. Supply and demand will sort all this shit out eventually, lets just enjoy what is going on right now.
Those are some very interesting points, i've never looked at e-sports that way. I found the patch metaphor to be quite humourous as well.
But answer this: say, hypothetically, a company is willing to make a single, balanced game designed for competition with a high skill ceiling. The game becomes as popular as Brood War was and surpasses its popularity to the point where there is a T.V. channel for airing matches. Would the company make more money releasing a game designed for e-Sports than if they release a new game periodically? (Like Call of Duty.)
I'm no business major, I just graduated high-school Thursday, but I can see the company that releases this title to make less, at first, then a company that releases a game built for a quick buck. However, I believe, eventually, that the company that releases the competitive title will make more money in the long run due to all the fans and sponsors that a sporting event draws in. If i'm wrong then perhaps you're correct, due to greediness of businesses we will never see a single product solely for competition.
There will always be casual games and competitive games, at least for the foreseeable future. Gamers themselves know (and can identify) which games are good for competition, so they choose to play those competitively. The fact that a lot of console games are watered-down trash isn't hampering eSports - both types of games are growing because the industry as a whole is getting bigger. The industry as a whole is getting bigger mostly because of trashy low-rent console games flooding the market, while the 'big franchises' of the past (quake, starcraft, diablo, street fighter etc) try to hang on and keep an audience.
As for the argument about sequels, I'm not sure I buy it. Blizzard HAS put a lot of effort toward promoting SC2, and cutting down BW. On the other hand, though, they just finished reaching an agreement with KESPA about new broodwar tournaments. In the PC world, every Quake game is still played competitively...the original Counter-Strike is more popular than CS Source (which Valve tried to supplant CS with). In console competition, older fighting games are brought back and embraced by the community every so often.
I guess what I'm saying here is the core of competitive gaming doesn't care about market trends - people who want competition will go where competition is and find one another. It's as simple as that. E-sports won't "fail" just because it isn't accessible to everyone, and isn't pushed harder by marketing and sales people than other aspects of gaming. It's just going to keep doing its thing, slowly growing thanks to things like SC2.
Even in the world of what you call 'mainstream sports' every single one of them is played casually. By a lot more people than play competitively. Guess what, though? Everyone who has played a pickup game of basketball with their friends knows something about the NBA - they've bought into it at some level, whether by watching a game on TV or going to see one live. Or by wearing a team logo hat. Whatever. While it's true that a new version of basketball doesn't come out every 2 years, basketball is not delivered the same way video games are (they're a form of media, whereas basketball is a traditional athletic sport - you can't mass-produce "basketball" and sell it to people at Gamestop). It's up to consumers to decide which games they want to play competitively, because nobody else can truly tell them.
As for patches tweaking the metagame, that's something I've thought about a lot. It was really obvious with Guild Wars and Magic: The Gathering, but with something like SC2 (which your post should be addressing if it's on this forum...) I don't see it as much. The patches for SC2 so far have mostly left the metagame alone (with the exception of the infestor changes making them MUCH more popular), and changed the face-value 'mechanical' part of the game. If you find yourself challenged by something you see as an unnecessary shift in the metagame, chances are you were relying on flavour of the month plays a little bit too much and got cut down by developers doing their best to promote a more high-minded approach to the game.
On May 28 2011 02:54 vindKtiv wrote: With games like CS1.6, BW, DotA, SF2, and Q3/QL that have transcended time and sequels, I don't even understand how this statement that "e-sports will die" can be true. As long as there are tournaments and people practicing for them, there will be e-sports. E-Sports even exists for titles like AoE2 and WC2 (no, I was not trying to type 3, though I'm pretty sure it exists for 3 as well). Whether it will be big is entirely another issue, but the fact is e-sports was and is here to stay. Who cares if there won't always be the scene in its exact form 20 years from now? As long as there are people to play StarCraft with me, then I'm happy.
Sure some people will always stay with it. Look at the hardcore Warcraft II community. However, you can hardly call it an esport if your community is like 20 people with no corporate sponsors to provide legitimate tournaments. Even taking your example BW, ICCUP is a shadow of what it once was. I think its only a matter of time before the scene in Korea stops being profitable for Kespa and dies out.
Why are corporate sponsors required? If someone is giving $20, and everybody is practicing their best for that $20, then is not the spirit of e-sport present? And if the spirit is present, then who cares about how big the prize-pool is? Yes ICCup is a shadow of what it once was, but have you seen the Korean BW servers? And KeSPA might die out (I'm betting against it), but that doesn't mean e-sports ends in Korea once and for all.
What your describing is not what most people consider e-sports. Me and my buddies bet 20$ on a game of fifa,sc2 etc. are we now pros. People need to be making a living kido.
On May 28 2011 02:54 vindKtiv wrote: With games like CS1.6, BW, DotA, SF2, and Q3/QL that have transcended time and sequels, I don't even understand how this statement that "e-sports will die" can be true. As long as there are tournaments and people practicing for them, there will be e-sports. E-Sports even exists for titles like AoE2 and WC2 (no, I was not trying to type 3, though I'm pretty sure it exists for 3 as well). Whether it will be big is entirely another issue, but the fact is e-sports was and is here to stay. Who cares if there won't always be the scene in its exact form 20 years from now? As long as there are people to play StarCraft with me, then I'm happy.
Sure some people will always stay with it. Look at the hardcore Warcraft II community. However, you can hardly call it an esport if your community is like 20 people with no corporate sponsors to provide legitimate tournaments. Even taking your example BW, ICCUP is a shadow of what it once was. I think its only a matter of time before the scene in Korea stops being profitable for Kespa and dies out.
Why are corporate sponsors required? If someone is giving $20, and everybody is practicing their best for that $20, then is not the spirit of e-sport present? And if the spirit is present, then who cares about how big the prize-pool is? Yes ICCup is a shadow of what it once was, but have you seen the Korean BW servers? And KeSPA might die out (I'm betting against it), but that doesn't mean e-sports ends in Korea once and for all.
What your describing is not what most people consider e-sports. Me and my buddies bet 20$ on a game of fifa,sc2 etc. are we now pros. People need to be making a living kido.
I think you're just calling out hyperbole, though I would note that if you and your buddies were paid $20 to play an exhibition basketball game I'm fairly sure the NCAA would bar you from ever playing college ball, as taking that money would eliminate your "amateur" status.
Anyways this is pretty off-topic as Brood War is still wildly profitable at the highest levels in Korea (name a swimming or track-and-field star making $250,000+ on salary alone, as Flash is doing) and SC2 prizepools are growing by the month, with most 1st place finishes in the 5 figure range. That's not even counting endorsements from sponsors like Zowie and Saba Saba Chicken haha. No pros are playing BW or SC2 for $20.
i agree mostly what op is trying to say. the main villain in all this is blizzard. many other companies dont get no where near the same loyalty and trust blizzard gets from their fans. they were given the opportunity to give us a esports.... another brood war but instead they gave in do their greed and tried to shake us down just like all the other companies has been for the last 10 years. brood war was a winner from the beginning, the things that make that game special were there from the beginning. i dont buy into this crap that people say it took years for brood war to become what it is today and to give sc2 time. starcraft 2 had 10 years of experience from brood war to learn from. i really tried to give sc2 a chance but watching the pro scene is so boring, battles are uninteresting the builds a dull the game will never be fit to be a true esports.
Mainstream sports DO have "balance patches". The international bodies in charge of various sports implement new regulations somewhat frequently. e.g. adjusting the size of goalie pads in the NHL to make for more goals, free guard zone in curling, etc.
On May 29 2011 02:34 NukeTheStars wrote: Video games do not. There's still a stigma behind them that probably won't disappear for another 70 years or so. So, it will never catch in with the "masses."
How many teenage males do you know that don't play video games? When they are adults, gaming will obviously be much more accepted.
The OP's argument is flawed simply due to the definition of "mainstream" sport. The OP assumes and defines "mainstream" sport as a sport that is popular relative to his part of the world it seems, which this in itself is wrong.
How can claim Football (American) or Basketball is a mainstream sport when it isn't that popular in Europe or Asia? In the same reasoning, you can't say Soccer is a mainstream sport in the west, because in truth, no one really gives a damn about it here.
Or to flip it around, how can you say Badminton and Ping Pong isn't a mainstream sport when it is the most played in China and few other asian countries? This follows then, in the same argument, that how can you claim E-sport isn't a mainstream sport when it is the most popular in Korea?
a bit drastic, maybe u shouldn't have made such an extreme title
it's good to attract attention of course, but i think many people will hate xD
Anyways, i do agree those are some significant problems but they can be fixed. For example, unless our technology game-wise at least keeps growing super fast, and we don't play games like we do today soon, we'll be OK. Then again, maybe better technology would create even better eSports (or would a new generation of gaming be called something else?)
Blizzard can keep making money off Starcraft 1 and 2 without releasing sequels (at least for a long time, which has benefits such as "resetting" the skill level to allow room for new players, or actually create an even better game) as long as tournaments give them money (eh, sound familiar? eh? eh??? xD). Not a lot of money of course, but a little. Over time, especially if eSports continues to grow, that money will be well worth Blizzard's time especially considering they can basically just sit there and make other games while they make extra money.
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