EPTAutomated Tournaments and the Monetization of Bnet - Page 7
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Alou
United States3748 Posts
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ImSkeptical
Australia51 Posts
I don't know if it would be viable, for maybe the maintenence of such a system would be too high for blizzard not to charge, but a sit n go system for abstract points I cannot see anyone objecting to. I personally would even go as far to subscribe for a monthly fee for the use of some kind of sit n go tourney system, just because tournaments encourage that greater level of skill and are simply much more fun then ladder play. If I could go home, run through a tournament or two in my afternoon, that would just be frekin awesome. Not meaning to hijack your awesome thread Jinro, but out of personal curiosity i'm going to insert an obnoxious poll. Poll: Would you play Play Money Sit n Go's? for a subscription fee (for maintenance) (11) only if free (7) 18 total votes Your vote: Would you play Play Money Sit n Go's? (Vote): for a subscription fee (for maintenance) | ||
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deL
Australia5540 Posts
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Kegs.aus
Australia133 Posts
theyd need to do a p2p or this wont happen....18+ issues etc. | ||
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pzea469
United States1520 Posts
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Twinweapon
United States90 Posts
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Hyp-The-Feared
United States108 Posts
third party websites like virgingaming.com is an option where gamers can bet against themselves.. but currently only for console. | ||
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tec27
United States3696 Posts
First, a lot of you are complaining that it would have legal difficulties in the US because it could be construed as gambling. While this is a possibility, Virgin recently opened up a site to do direct betting on games/tournaments you participate in: http://virgingaming.com/ . This means that they likely spent a lot of time looking into this issue and decided that they were in the clear, which bodes well for Blizzard should they decide to do something similar for SC2. Also, the reason poker is still a gray area is because it lacks a lot of mainstream support, and very few people have knowledge of whether or not it is mostly skill or mostly luck. It also occupies the same realm as a lot of other definite luck games (casinos), so it has that negative association preventing it from being easily legalized. Video games, while certainly not having an entirely positive connotation, have much more widespread support and it is generally much easier for people to accept that they are largely skill based (well, given the right games; obviously some games are mostly luck). The other big issue mentioned in here is hacking. I must agree, hacking is a large thing to consider when you start introducing money prizes and tournaments that do not require direct admin supervision. There's one thing that has been thrown around in this thread to demonstrate that hacking would not be that big of an issue, and I feel the ways in which it is incorrect must be brought to light before we can properly dispel the issue: "Theory": ICCup has very few problems with hackers, thus preventing/detecting hacking is not that big of an issue. - ICCup has very few issues with hackers largely because they have created an environment in which no hacker really desires to compete. There is no real prize for being at the top of the ladder, and hell, most hackers probably couldn't even get that high WITH hacking, so they especially have very little incentive. If there were incentives, the hacks would definitely be out there, and it would not be all that hard to create them. This can be seen by previous releases of ICCup hacks that happened largely because one of the better hack programmers got angry at someone who makes anti-hacks. In short, ICCup's lack of a big problem with hackers does not in any way indicate that SC2 automated tourneys would not. Now that we have that out of the way, I do think hacking is not as big of an issue as it might seem initially. This is because of things Blizzard could do to better combat hacking if they had more resources. Since these tournaments would likely take a rake, Blizzard would have a stream of income with which to reinvest in maintaining the tournaments. This would likely involve them hiring admins and moderators to handle both disputes and claims of hacking. We can look at the poker world to see how well this works. I think the example of AbsolutePoker is a bit far out there for SC2; the situation is quite different from anything that could arise from SC2 hacking. I think a better example is how PokerStars deals with botting and collusion. I'm sure you all understand what botting involves, but some of you might not understand what collusion is. Collusion is essentially 2 or more players sitting at the same table/same tournament and helping one another. This might mean they softplay each other, they might raise other people out of hands together, etc. In short, they are using the fact that they have planned a strategy together to beat unknowing people, which is obviously unethical and considered cheating. This is very similar to maphacking because it is not necessarily easy for players in the game to see on the outset. If PokerStars notices suspicious behavior, or a player reports someone for suspicious behavior, their hand histories (eg. replays in SC2) are looked over for foul play, and if found, they are banned. Players are then refunded for the equity they lost by those players colluding/cheating. This system works quite well, especially considering the more random nature of poker. Given this, I would think that the vast majority of the less sophisticated hackers would be caught and banned. As an added bonus, this automated tournament system would act as a sort of honeypot for them, and we would probably be dealing with much fewer hackers in regular ladder games  Sophisticated hackers are definitely more of a problem, but they are also fewer and far between. There have been demonstrations of hacks for BW that merely read client data and display it in a completely external program, allowing for pretty much undetectable complete maphacks. This is a little more difficult with SC2, because all the memory moves around between each game, so it cannot be statically referenced like in BW. It is likely/certainly still possible to do by reading packets, but this is a much more complex method. Even so, prior to a lot of the anti-hacks and things we now have for BW, there were ways of detecting maphackers by actions they took to counter things they could not see. Given enough incidents of this behavior, one could be very sure someone was hacking, and given that it involves money, I think this would be enough evidence to at least ban them from playing in automated/money tournaments. Blizzard would have to be careful to not ban people without enough evidence though, obviously, but this is very similar to how botting/collusion detection works at PokerStars, and they have a very, very good track record with making the right decisions in these cases. Edit: A thought arose shortly after posting and rereading a few posts here: This system does not necessarily need to be developed/handled by Blizzard. It would certainly be easier if it were, because they could build things into the client to automatically move people into the right games and such, but it is definitely possible for outside people to make it happen. The main thing preventing that from happening is having access to game result. If Blizzard were to make an API available to developers that would allow them to access match results, players could enter tournaments on a separate website/client and merely join games and play with the right people, then the site could automatically pick up their match results as they came in and advance the correct people in the tournament. This would be very, very similar to how VirginGaming seems to work. The main issue with a 3rd party approach is gaining trust of players, and how to prevent hacks (which is a more difficult issue when you don't directly control the game client and the game's antihack stuff). Edit2: On June 18 2010 13:44 Hyp-The-Feared wrote: sit n go's are def possible as long as blizzard doesnt take a rake. if they take a rake then it is illegal in the usa. Anyway to get around it is shady as hell and i doubt blizzard would want to risk having the gov't on their ass. I believe this depends on the state, as can be seen in VirginGaming's Terms and Conditions: Additional Information for US Citizens and Residents The laws governing contests, tournaments and skilled gaming with entry fees and/or prizes are established by each individual state, not by the federal government. As such, Virgin Gaming CAN NOT, and therefore DOES NOT, offer fee-based tournaments or games with prizes to residents of the following states: Arizona, Arkansas, Connecticut, Delaware, Florida, Illinois, Iowa, Louisiana, Maryland, Montana, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee and Vermont. VOID WHERE PROHIBITED OR RESTRICTED BY LAW. If you open an account and/or participate in any tournament or game offered on the Site while located in a prohibited jurisdiction, you will be in violation of the law of such jurisdiction and these T&Cs, and subject to having your account suspended or terminated and all winnings (if any) voided. | ||
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One.two
Canada116 Posts
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Eyesclosed
19 Posts
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jacen
Austria3644 Posts
On June 18 2010 10:32 FrozenArbiter wrote: Why? It isn't gambling. We all may know that, but computergames are viewed as luck-based by almost all governments in the world. Here in Austria you would have NO chance of getting through with this, as they even forbid running lan cafes that let you play videogames because you would pay to play a game == gambling for our government. There have been several movements in the past to further TIGHTEN these laws in the past years. I have a hard time imagining that blizzard would be able to provide buy-in tourneys on bnet here in Austria ... sadly. | ||
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rK
United States371 Posts
On June 18 2010 10:11 Noelani wrote: Man this is an awesome idea... srsly fk the government, cuz as others have said, pointless laws based on the thinking that gambling is "immoral" will prevent blizzard from bothering to tackle the legal nightmare of implementing this amazing idea. The gambling laws in the US generate $80-100 billion a year for the government (this doesn't count online gambling). Do you really believe those laws are in place because of moral reasons?  I think these kinds of tournies for SC2 would be sweet, but I can't see it realistically happening. | ||
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bobhund
Sweden364 Posts
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VTArlock
United States1763 Posts
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Bio-Leera
United States65 Posts
Now I know this isn't like the instantaneous tournaments that you were talking about While endless amounts of tournaments sounds nice, I could see myself getting carried away with it and burning a hole in my pocket. My main point and i read through the entire thread and still didn't see anyone bring it up, I guess 'cause not many people played wc3 here, but blizzard did automated tournements before for free. Like you said I don't mind paying but I don't want to pay for something that was offered for free before. In my head it works like this... the top 3, or whatever number, ranked players from each division get dropped in a huge bracket for the entire league. This will cover that problem poeple had of being in divisions but not knowing who was truly the best. if there was league wide tourneys, which I assume there will be, you would really know who was the best. Hell I might even watch for the results from those tourneys. I'm sure your idea sounded awesome coming from like sc1, but to me it sounded like what they've been doing in wc3 for years now (3 years at the least) and then putting a price tag on it. If there are any chances of extra money costs, it would be like what they did in WoW. There would be a separate server that you paid 10 more a month to play on. On that server you play against the best of the best in arena, and could also have any item you wanted. Top teams would then get to go the official blizzard tournament. So in sc2 there would be like the "Pro ID" that you pay monthly for that lets you on to a global server or something, and access to all those lan latency tourneys which i think are going to be more common than people think. alright I'm done rambling, just thought I bring up this point. | ||
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TheFinalWord
Australia790 Posts
Edit: I don't see this working at all, at least in the lower skill levels. Impossible to keep fair. | ||
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robopork
United States511 Posts
Paying to play automated tournaments is letting blizzard charge for something that should be included in the $180 we're all expect to shell out for this game. They should get good money for good games. Pay as you go gaming can be seen as good business, or a way of sucking more money out of the committed fans. In reality, it's probably both. If they do it, I'll probably pay. Doesn't make them not shit-heads for implementing it. Again, Blizzard should and will get payed a lot of money for this game. If you think about it, we'll be paying full price for the two expansions, so they're already charging us for stuff we already have so we can get the few additions. If the gaming industry needs to charge more to be functional and lucrative, fine. There isn't a law that says a game can be $60 and no more. Charge more, but do it up front so you don't end up squeezing the lunch money out of your fans. | ||
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StarMasterX
United States113 Posts
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Longshank
1648 Posts
On June 18 2010 16:09 TheFinalWord wrote: Wouldn't it be possible for people to lose ladder games on purpose to go down to copper, win tournaments up to plat then repeat? I think this could only work with a different placement system with tournaments. Ie leagues for tournaments based on your preformance in tournaments and then the regular ranking system for preformance in ladder games. Edit: I don't see this working at all, at least in the lower skill levels. Impossible to keep fair. Also, what stops the diamond player to go over to his silver level buddy's house and play the tournament? Absolutely nothing. It would be the same for Gold and Platinum aswell. Basicly, this could only work in Diamond league and it's unreasonable to think Blizzard would implement something like this for such a small portion of the playerbase - with all the legal hassle that would come with it. If you really want to see something like this(I think it would be awesome) you'd be better off setting up a third-party site for it than expect Blizzard to implement it. It just will never happen. | ||
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shinwa
Sweden225 Posts
I guess the big problem would be to manage and administrate this and keep it from being abused - but I firmly believe it is possible. Great stuff! | ||
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