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Where are Grand Strategy games in E-Sports?
Hello I want to start a discussion on a topic that been in my heart for a while now. I ask, why are there no Grand Strategy games in E-sports? Now before anyone flips their desks and scream SC2 and DoTA are strategy games at their screens, I’m not talking RTS Strategy, or DoTA style Strategy games. I’m talking about grand strategy! These are types of games that are more deeply focused into military and country resources management with deep strategic decision making and the possibility of diplomacy between players such as many of Paradox’s games such as Europa Universalis and the Civilization games, to use a pair of examples I have much experience playing with.
What I enjoy in gaming is decision making at its core. With lots of game mechanics going on for you to weigh in your head. If I do option A, consequence X, Y, and Z may happen types of stuff. SC2 is fun in this respect to a point, and I do enjoy watching broadcasts of it. You see 2 people making builds reacting to each other until one guy types GG. But this only lasts most of the time up to 20 minutes and then everything is reset. What I don’t quite like is that how quick a player can click his key determines how good he is at the game though assuming fairly equal knowledge of the game, that just doesn’t interest me. To me, grand strategy games are all about decision making first and diplomacy or player cooperation second. Its about long term planning for things that may not have a effect for hours down in the game. I’ve enjoyed reading some AARs(After action reports, basically this when people write about their game after having played it) for multiplayer games but they’re few in count, and fail at giving a accurate view of the overall state of a game.
What I would love to experience is an environment for these grand strategy games where I can watch and enjoy content which is casted in similar fashion as SC2 or DoTA but for games such as of Europa Universalis 3(EU3). Where a knowledgeable caster can show a campaign with the fog of war removed and perhaps with access to all chat logs through out a campaign of the game. For those who aren’t familiar with the game, basically EU3 is a nations war game with a colonization and economy system simulating 1399 - 1821. It has the potential when it is being played with 20-30 people to be a battle of wits and intrigue, back-stabbing wars, and slugfests between behemoth nations vying for dominance. Where people are killed off one by one as you play through centuries of the game. I feel there’s great potential for a entertaining narrative as it progress.
Spoilered below is my idea for a casted Grand Strategy game.
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+ Show Spoiler +I’ll give a example for EU3, a game I have experience with and can attempt to paint an imagined scenario for. I’ll try to give my view on how it would possibly be like. I’m going to give a attempt to tell the story from a caster’s stand point for a game where I played Persia loosely basing it around my experiences so I can attempt to get my point across. Now, allow me to set up a scenario! We’re about half way through a campaign, 2 main alliances have sprung up, one older and is the dominating one. It is led by Russia its two major allies are Ethiopia and Tripoli. Between them they have a couple players who they have as vassals and have conquered regions of the world for their own. The second alliance consists of China, Malaysia and Mongolia who dominate East Asia. Persia will be the cause for all the -fun- of today’s session. ![[image loading]](http://imageshack.us/a/img33/1277/persianempiremodernday.jpg) (Not an actual game screenshot, sadly all my saves and screenshots were deleted.) Now, use that imagination you have, and lets pretend we’re watching a game being casted. The caster can view of the entire map with all the players. There is a war brewing in eastern Asia with Persia and Russia as the 2 main opponents, Players nations are building militaries of 500,000 to 800,000 troops strong with navies spread out across the map. The land army is spread out across wide fronts, imagine it is like the lines in 1944 Germany with the Western Allies on one side and the Axis on the other. Now, the caster starts the session explaining the current set up on the players in the game, who has the big armies, who are the maritime powers, who is economically dominant and who is close to unlocking new key techs that may play a pivotal roll in a upcoming war or cornering a market. He notes how it is peculiar that China has sent much of is land army into Persia’s land When all of a sudden… Persia declares war on Russia! China, Mongolia and Malaysia join in as allies to Persia, Russia’s old allies Tripoli and Ethiopia answer and accept the automated call to arms to defend Russia. Persia, with a new land tech unlocked giving him access to the latest model of infantry units gives him an advantage even combat, however he has to push through the mountainous terrain of the caucuses mountains before he can flood the Russian steppes. China positions his armies in Persia’s southern border covering it while Persia can send his entire army north to attempt to force his way into breaking the Russian lines in the mountains. All the while Mongolia pressures Russia from the east in Siberia. . . Meanwhile Malaysia although he has the world’s largest navy is facing Tripoli and Ethiopia’s combined navies across the Indian ocean, The Indian subcontinent long being shared colonies for the African nations. Malaysia needs to scout for where his opponent’s main naval groups are, ambush navies in their ports, and make use of his skilled admirals and keep them in his fresh naval fleets. He trades fleets for fleets littering the oceans with the remnants of his opponent’s fleets. It’s a battle of scouting, positioning, fleet compositions and ambushing fleets in the naval front of the war. Back in the land war however things don’t go so well, Persia is in need of a crushing defeat in the harsh mountains of the caucuses. He pushes slowly but the losses suffered quickly driving up war exhaustion, and depleting manpower reserves. The needed breakthrough attack he needed isn’t happening. Mongolia is advancing through Siberia relatively unhindered however, Russia can afford to trade land for time. The war drags on nations trading fleets and armies until Persia’s manpower is spent and he can no longer properly fight battles. They concede defeat , Russia and his allies demand land and money as composition. Everyone marches home, rebuild their economies, put down rebel revolts, and await the next war… The caster with the war over, can now give a recap with what has happened in other regions of the world, and explains the consequences of the war and its peace demands, comparing the strategies the two sides took. With the down time he can go more in depth about army and navy compositions, what economy styles players are using, and relations between other nations of the world. . .
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I know there are many restrictions to grand strategy games in existence today especially with my example that may be keeping it from becoming a sort of viewable entertainment. Most if not all strategy games today don’t have observer functions or replay abilities to allow clear viewing. The games I propose would last dramatically longer. A full EU3 campaign can last for 50 hours of play time for 1 campaign. How would that be cut up into pieces to be easily digestible to be viewed? The game play can be incredibly slow with little action happening. How do you keep players from cheating when they can view the casted session and see everything about the other nations and use information in private chats or army positions to exploit a weakness in them using that knowledge? Frankly, grand strategy such as eu3 is in a niche category of gaming, not many people play it how many would want to even watch it?
The point I’m attempting to make to you readers when you read this is not that SC2, DoTA, LoL, CoD or whatever is boring and eu3 blows them out of the water in 1337N3$$. They’re different games, and they all have people who enjoy them. I understand that, and I hope those who dislike my idea can be respectful of my view as different people like different things! To me, the style of games I enjoy playing and would like to see in E-sports don’t seemingly exist outside of “Let’s plays” which is not what I’m looking for. What I would like to get discussed is if people see room for this type of entertainment to exist, if they would watch it, and to maybe spark something in someone who reads this that say hey, this has potential maybe I can do something to make this a reality? If there is something like this somewhere on the interwebs I’d also love to know about it!
I know I go on about eu3 a lot, but as i said it is what I have the most experience with and can use as an example for best to get my point across, so forgive me for that and I’ll stop ranting. >.>;
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Well, I guess one aspect why we don't see games like that is the fact that they are not easy to watch. Europa Universalis for example looks pretty... modest. I in fact came to love the look of this game. But let's be honest: Watching that would be horrible for most people.
Another aspect is that if you haven't played a game like this, you'd be totally lost. You wouldn't understand a single thing happening. StarCraft or DotA are easier to watch: Stuff explodes and things die.
And then there's another problem: Balance. Well, it's not a problem for every Grand Strategy game. But imagine Europa Univeralis as an eSport: People would know their 'build orders' how to beat country x with country y. And some countries are just much more powerful than others.
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Grand Strat. take too long, are niche games with a small fan base, the parts that could be broadcasted aren't super spectacular to watch, on top of the biggest part of the game actually taking place in the player's mind.
That said, I'd totally go for a grand strategy progaming career, if such a scene existed.
On October 04 2012 18:37 AMaidensWrath wrote:
And then there's another problem: Balance. Well, it's not a problem for every Grand Strategy game. But imagine Europa Univeralis as an eSport: People would know their 'build orders' how to beat country x with country y. And some countries are just much more powerful than others.
Balance could easily be arranged, though you'd have to resort to fantasy maps.
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I love EU3 but I just don't think it's really competitive. Like Maiden's Wrath said above, there is just no balance. Each polity has different starting conditions and even the one province minors have different neighbours.
Even a game like Civ probably has too much randomness in it for the eSport crowd, what with random start locations. You'd need specially balanced maps...
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Probably cause your average civ4 game takes hours, if not days to complete. There's also no pressure to move fast, quite the reverse actually.
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RTS and Grand strategy games actually don't have that much in common.
RTS is probably the most intense and fast-paced genre with high APM demands. Grand strategy takes hours and has nearly no APM demands.
Other problems are intentional balance problems (China is stronger than Afghanistan, how do you fix that without the game being ridiculous and unbelievable?)
Finally, the audience isn't generally that big, or that E-sporty.
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grand strategy games can never move into the e-sports scene, at least not any gameplay that goes by the definition of grand strategy, it simply takes far too long to play.
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Oh god, spectating Civ would make my eyes bleed.
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Civ isn't suited to multiplayer in any case. The only one they tried to design for multiplayer was Civ 5, and it's a horrible, botched mess of a game.
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Hah! Yesterday me and my friend streamed a 3.5 hour civ4 game on twitch. We were 2v2AI while one friend was spectating. He fell asleep after two hours.
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Nowhere, right where they belong.
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The whole thing about E-sports is that people not just from the community can get whats going on and get into watching it. Grand strategy games require some knowledge of the subject to get into it so the market-ability of these sorts of games would be terrible.
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The entertainment ability of these games would be the same as watching a 3-4 day chess match. There's a dozen people who care, and the rest of the world is very confused as to why anyone sane would bother.
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What I don’t quite like is that how quick a player can click his key determines how good he is at the game though assuming fairly equal knowledge of the game, that just doesn’t interest me.
Unfortunately for you this mentality is simply incompatible with e-sports. The only reason people would ever choose to watch somebody else play a video game rather than simply playing it themselves is to witness something they themselves are unable to do. People watched the OSL because Jangbi can cast 7 perfectly placed psi storms in 7 seconds whereas the average player can't even get high templars within range of siege tanks. People watch GSL because MMA can micro 3 drop squads of marines better than most people can manage 1. People watch EVO because Daigo can string together 15 hit combos with ease whereas most players only know how to spam hadouken. I've never played EU3 but from the way you described it I presume I could beat anyone as long as I had a complete understanding of the game's rules. This is not true for any of the e-sports. If Flash and I were to play 1v1, he could tell me exactly what he was going to do, when he was going to do it and how he was going to do it, and I still wouldn't have any chance of beating him.
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Well the new X-com might be what you are looking for. It is not really Grand Strategy game but it is not a clickfest like current esport games. It both needs knowledge of units, equipment, maps and strategy but also has flashy graphics to make it interesting to average viewer.
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Why dont you just watch the news?
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Fenrax
United States5018 Posts
The problem with a diplomacy aspect in competitive sports is very obvious and very unfixable.
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Anything non-real time type of game won't be big in e-sports because of the time constrains people have. If someone wants deep strategy type of game without APM requirement, he/she can always try chess or go. It doesn't have to involve a computer.
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Europa Universalis can be pretty interesting to cast, but not as an e-sport.
There are too much arguments against it, just pointing balance (well, let be honest, only few countries can be pick, like France, England, Austria, maybe Castille if France isn't picked, Burgundy). Only thinking about tech tree, you can forget the idea of playing any muslim (except ottoman), indian, east asian, african, or american countries.
The length is in my opinion another obstacle. A 1399-1821 game is pretty damn long especially when a lot of players are involved. The common speed during multiplayer is 3, aka moderate speed, and it means a 20 or 30 hours game, probably.
But the worst in my opinion is the fact the players can use soooo many orders without any visual impact in the game. When you choose to go for a religious decision, cultural one, or whatever - and I'm not even speaking of ideas here - it can have a deep impact in the game, and the only way to know it is to read the toolbar at the bottom of the screen. When it appears here. How can you show the use of spies ? Failed diplomacy ? How much someone is paying to convert/colonize ?
It didn't mean I don't like to watch a game from a grand strategy, from time to time, but...
The streaming way of normal games while you concentrate on one and only one country is the best. Sure, you can't see what happens in the whole world, but the game is far too deep to be seen as a global perspective. 
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that shit isn't exciting in the way a fast paced game is - it takes far too long to play and doesn't have much action, if any at all
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It can be fun to watch an exhibition game of EU3/CK2 with commentary, but it wouldn't really be a "sport" - it's a completely different kind of entertainment.
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On October 04 2012 19:31 ZERG_RUSSIAN wrote:
Later that day...
Hahaha! Truthman of truthness. Seriously though, as it has been said many times in this thread already, a game which is not Real-Time orientated could never make it into e-sports. I myself love these kind of games (EU, Medieval etc.) Sadly, the timeframe just isn't managable if you want an audience :<
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Reconsidering...
The main argument for grand strategy e-sports is cricket.
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i don't understand how has this been "in your mind for some time now" and u don't understand it's plain stupid. Go play 1 turn based strategy multiplayer game. How much time did it take ? How much time did u spend doing nothing but planing and thinking ? You think somebody would watch all that ? It's hard enough to stay focused while playing it, let alone watching
User was warned for this post
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On October 04 2012 21:23 Aqualoung wrote:
i don't understand how has this been "in your mind for some time now" and u don't understand it's plain stupid. Go play 1 turn based strategy multiplayer game. How much time did it take ? How much time did u spend doing nothing but planing and thinking ? You think somebody would watch all that ? It's hard enough to stay focused while playing it, let alone watching
Am I missing something or did he never mention turn based?
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well most of these games are turn based. if not, they take just as much time
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If you want, go ahead and make a youtube channel, you could be one of the first to break through! Imo if you really wanna do it, they absolutely have to be replays, and the normal routine play sped up quite a bit, slowing down to explain interesting/major decisions made.
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On October 04 2012 19:35 red4ce wrote:Show nested quote +What I don’t quite like is that how quick a player can click his key determines how good he is at the game though assuming fairly equal knowledge of the game, that just doesn’t interest me. Unfortunately for you this mentality is simply incompatible with e-sports. The only reason people would ever choose to watch somebody else play a video game rather than simply playing it themselves is to witness something they themselves are unable to do. People watched the OSL because Jangbi can cast 7 perfectly placed psi storms in 7 seconds whereas the average player can't even get high templars within range of siege tanks. People watch GSL because MMA can micro 3 drop squads of marines better than most people can manage 1. People watch EVO because Daigo can string together 15 hit combos with ease whereas most players only know how to spam hadouken. I've never played EU3 but from the way you described it I presume I could beat anyone as long as I had a complete understanding of the game's rules. This is not true for any of the e-sports. If Flash and I were to play 1v1, he could tell me exactly what he was going to do, when he was going to do it and how he was going to do it, and I still wouldn't have any chance of beating him.
Did Jangbi lose an arm or something? Try 3 seconds.
(Kidding aside, "complete understanding of the game's rules" guarantees nothing. Anyone can have complete understanding of Chess's rules, but still have no hope against a grandmaster. It's not purely the real-time aspect that generates skill differences and makes the game worth watching.)
The main design hurdles in making a grand strategy game viewable (not that the audience would ever be huge) are:
- Dead time needs to be reduced/eliminated in the replay
- Game state, and changes to game state, need to be clearly represented
I could imagine having fun watching a strategy game unfold if those criteria were met.
I've always been curious to watch a HoMM3 PvP play out, but I don't have anyone to play it with.
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On October 04 2012 21:27 Aqualoung wrote:
well most of these games are turn based
Civilization and the like are the only turn-based grand strategy games I know.
EDIT: And HoMM, before anyone calls me on forgetting it.
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Just from a viewer standpoint, I wouldn't want to watch a 2 hour long match in this fashion. It just wouldn't be entertaining to me.
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The game that probably came closest to Grand Strategy was Age of Empires 2, which made it into WCG. But now, the scene is small but dedicated, but it (or any similar game, :wave: AoEO) doesn't play a big part in esports.
But the problems are the same: Balance is hard with 15+ Races (which aren't as diverse in look than in SC2), which meant you have the "good" and the "bad" civs - with the pros only playing the strong races.
Also: In AoK, after 30min you have a small army, while in SC2 you can play two average games in that timespan. So it takes a long time for something to happen - just building up your stuff isn't enough to entertain people that are not fans of the game with a great unterstanding of gameplay, strategies, etc.
This is the reason why Broodwar was that successfull in Korea: even people not familar with the game could tell if a unit is Zerg or Protoss or what is happening on the screen. While with AoK and the civs sharing graphics, units and techs, this would be quiet hard.
I also guess that is why Dota-styled games are that succesfull: by removing the economic part and completly focusing on the action, it is more appealing to non-games to watch and try it (F2P also plays its part here).
Since I'm not really into the Grand Strategy Scene, this could all be a bad guess, please correct me if I'm terribly wrong.
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I dont think most people enjoy them, from what I see most bw veterans would like starcraft 2 to be less strategy more mechanics, and I heard lots of people that switched to dota due to this very reason.
I love strategy but it's long hard and boring for some, not exactly the "appeal to everyone from dog to grandma" style that esports game should have.
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Any game that encourages dipolmacy is just asking to be fixed if there is money at stake. Most turn based grand strategy games are extremely long and the highlights are hard to showcase. There just isn't a huge audience that wants to watch that. Still there are turn based strategy games where APM doesn't matter that haved pro players. Magic the Gathering, Poker and Chess being some that come to mind.
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Hearts of Iron as E-Sport. I would definetly watch this... one time.
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Cuz once eveything is figured out there is no skill involved anymore. And also drags on. If its turned base its boring.
Normal rts takes more skill. Normal rts is more simple to watch and play.
MOBAs arent stratagy games and anyone who claims so is stupid.
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I think it's hard to compete with chess in the "grand strategy" department.
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While it has its attractiveness, i think its not practical to organize tournaments for it.
Can you finish a tournament of this genre within a maximum of 3 days? I think otherwise.
When I played EU3 with my friends, we go into 3 - 5 hours per session and we can't even get close to the end of the game after a week.
What criterias would you use to determine the winner for these kind of games?
My 2 cents.
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I would love to have grand strategy games in e-sports. I love that genre, unfortunately not alot of people do so it will simply never happen.
I would watch for example Paths of Glory all day everyday if it was a videogame and an esport
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On October 04 2012 23:26 CrtBalorda wrote:
Cuz once eveything is figured out there is no skill involved anymore. And also drags on. If its turned base its boring.
Normal rts takes more skill. Normal rts is more simple to watch and play.
MOBAs arent stratagy games and anyone who claims so is stupid.
Want to talk about it?
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I feel like watching 30-45 mins games of SC2 gets brutal, try watching a 4 hour game, oh god people would sleep in between turns then wake up for the battles then nap again.
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On October 04 2012 23:26 CrtBalorda wrote:
Cuz once eveything is figured out there is no skill involved anymore. And also drags on. If its turned base its boring.
Normal rts takes more skill. Normal rts is more simple to watch and play.
MOBAs arent stratagy games and anyone who claims so is stupid.
"If its turned base its boring." That's how you want people to take your opinion as something they can trust on? Oh come on, I want substance. Wanna say big things lad? You need big explanations.
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I find the idea of strategy games as an esport intriguing, but ultimately unrealistic. You need sponsors to fund it, an audience that will watch the same thing over and over and players who take the game to a whole new level competitively compared to Joe Schmoe. I see none of these criteria ever being fullfilled in a strategy game. But like has been mentioned several times in this thread, it would have been fun to see a little peek of a casted competitive match of some strategy game.
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aren't civilization style games heavily dependent on dice rolling, seeing as they're essentially board games with way too many rules to play on a board
i don't have much experience playing the game vs humans, but i just feel like the opening positions and stuff would make the game way too volatile to have a true skill gap like starcraft does
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On October 04 2012 23:50 stenole wrote:
I find the idea of strategy games as an esport intriguing, but ultimately unrealistic. You need sponsors to fund it, an audience that will watch the same thing over and over and players who take the game to a whole new level competitively compared to Joe Schmoe. I see none of these criteria ever being fullfilled in a strategy game. But like has been mentioned several times in this thread, it would have been fun to see a little peek of a casted competitive match of some strategy game.
Depends on the game really. Base setting Civ won't work as an e-sport, but that doesn't mean some new game couldn't be made that would. There are already face to face turn based strategy games that have pro players like Chess, Poker and Magic the Gathering for example. People already watch replays, recaps, and live matches for those pro games.
My guess is that for an e-sport turn based game to have a chance is it needs to be something that can finish under two hours and preferably under 1 hour. It needs to have minimal luck. It needs to require definitive skill. Diplomacy based games just don't work professionally because money makes the temptation to negotiate based on splitting prize money too high.
On October 04 2012 23:26 CrtBalorda wrote:
Cuz once eveything is figured out there is no skill involved anymore. And also drags on. If its turned base its boring.
Normal rts takes more skill. Normal rts is more simple to watch and play.
Turn based games can definitely take skill even after "everything is figured out". Take Chess for example and even though most pro games will go thru some variation of a standard opening, there is definitely skill involved. Of course chess isn't a "grand" strategy game like Civ or some other turn based empire builder, but it is a turn based game and it's fans will watch replays and live plays, and fans can recognize the brilliance or mistakes of a player.
Obviously on a Starcraft website there are going to be lots of people who prefer RTS over turn based games. Of course chess isn't typically played professionally on the computer, but if someone designed a turn based game of the level of chess for the PC then that game could take off as an e-sport.
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The only grand strategy game hat would be remotely watchable is Hearts of Iron 3. I've played probably played like 1500 hours of grand strategy games, they just aren't e-sport material. That said, multiplayer grand strategy so much fun it's ridiculous. Blows rts away in terms of fun and complexity
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I agree that they're more fun to play than to watch. I don't think eSports is ready for matches that takes several hours to play. A 32 player tournament with bo3 matches would take weeks to play.
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As a spectator, if it's not a real time strategy game, I don't see the need to watch it in real time either... Even if that would imply that it's not a live broadcast, I think that the upsides of having a competent caster edit the game and discuss the crucial moments in detail while skimming others would outweigh the downsides by far.
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My guess would be we don't see those games in E-sport because they are boring to watch.
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Rome Total War short campaign might work!
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I think its a time issue, and a pace issue. Most people don't have an attention span of more than 3 minutes. Smart people tend to max out at around 45.
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EPT
