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Canada11349 Posts
Promoting E-Sports through Battlenet 2.0
I've been sitting on this thread idea for awhile, but Kennigit's article on why Starcraft shouldn't be on television finally re-inspired me to write this.
Background:
I'm sure we're all very excited on how SC2 has been taking off particularly in the west. What's extremely good is how prevalent English commentated VODs and livestreams are. I joined the BW scene very late, but even then I really had to hunt to find English casted BW games on youtube. Around the same time GOMTV Classic with Tasteless commentating started up. Jackpot!
Current SC2 Online Viewing Experience:
Fortunately now, for those that know there is an esports scene it is relatively easy to find English casted games. However, I would suspect this is only the hardcore or friends of hardcore Starcraft players that introduced them to progaming.
Amongst my BW and SC2 gaming friends, I am the only one that watches the GSL at ungodly times and my friends only know about the GSL because of me. A friend and a cousin regularly watch Husky who they stumbled upon on youtube and my cousin I got watching the TSL (reasonable viewing hours) and finally the GSL vs World. Other friends own SC2, but don't bother to find if there is anything more. So in effect, word of mouth is a tried and true method of promoting e-sports, but there must be more.
Blizzard's Goal
Blizzard has consistently stated that they want to promote e-sports. To that end, they've financially backed the GSL and tried to create a game that would hold up competitively for years to come.
However, I really think they are under utilizing Battlenet 2.0 to promote e-sports.
The Vision:
I've made random posts to this effect and seen a couple similar posts, but one very big thing that Blizzard could do to promote e-sports is to embed a highlight video for each tournament. Preferably there would be a daily or weekly update, but let's consider this in manageable chunks. One highlight video per tournament.
The TSL is on and when you sign into Battlenet, you see something like this:
![[image loading]](http://imgur.com/BtkOw.png)
(Yay for noob photo-shopping using Microsoft's image editor.... Microsoft word + paint.)
There could also be a link that will bring you to where the rest of the VOD's or livestreaming is hosted. At a bare minimum, there could be an e-sport box with a link to the tournament videos.
However, I believe people are inherently lazy. Even clicking away from Battlenet, people may or may not do. However, when a video is sitting right in front of you, waiting for you click on it. The game is exciting, apparently it's a best of 3, you want more... you click the link... Gotcha! Welcome to e-sports.
Obviously not everyone is going to follow it, but it increases the coverage of the tournaments to all the single-player casuals. It's bait sitting right in front of you. In a moment of boredom on Battlenet, people are bound to click on it.
If things got really crazy, one could even include tournament hype videos... but I'll settle for one highlight video/ tournament.
Consider. Without LAN support, everyone must go through Battlenet, creating a captive audience that will always pass through that menu screen at the beginning. As great as Findley's frowny face is, I'm sure the space could be better utilized promoting e-sports every time a player logs in.
Permission:
Permission shouldn't be an issue as Blizzard holds the IP (unless KESPA can argue otherwise...) and any tournament is going to want their tournament highlighted by Battlenet itself.
This of course is limited promotion to people that already own the game. However, it seems this would be the first group you'd want to promote SC2 as they already have an interest in it.
More obligatory pictures:
GSL
![[image loading]](http://imgur.com/fnY9Z.png)
MLG
+ Show Spoiler +
GSL: Korea vs the World
+ Show Spoiler +
GSL: Whitera Victory
+ Show Spoiler +
Wow, did not know about the upload image option... I was about to manually resize them all...
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I believe there's been mention / discussion of this in some past State of the Game before.
I don't know why Blizzard hasn't attempted to incorporate SC2 related e-sports updates / coverage for the intro screen after logging into SC2 battle.net. I do know Blizzard provides some sort of event updates on their Starcraft 2 battle.net website though.
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Canada11349 Posts
Yeah, but honestly who goes on to the Battlenet forums that often? (Maybe my TL bias is showing here.) But to truly promote the game, promote it where people are guaranteed to go- where they play the game.
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There is no doubt Blizzard could be focusing a lot more on the community/spectator aspects of Starcraft II to prove they are investing in eSports besides digging their noses into >$5000 tournaments and only throwing cash at the large ones they support.
I completely agree with that proposed idea: even a crappy implementation of embedded streams inside the SCII client would be amazing! But even till then, shared replay viewing would be a huge thing on it's own. I really do hope they're just sandbagging us and have lots of good things planned for the next few years of patches and expansions.
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What is this "recent broadcast" field really good for? Perhaps they could start using that for promoting events instead?
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I'm waiting for an HLTV type deal + audio from casters. Hopefully. Someday.
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This is a great idea. I don't think Blizzard quite has the grasp of the community they think they do. That being said they do regularly have small posts in the top right corner about the tournmanets that are happening around the world, but they are out of the way, and since everyone just spams the multiplayer tab, it usually doesn't load for most people.
I think the best option for them would be to have a sort of welcome screen like that MSN today thing that pops up for Messenger. A window that pops up, DOESN'T take five minutes to load like every other battle.net window, and displays some sort of hype picture for any major tournament happening right away. It would also have a little rotary thing along the bottom like most news sites have and switch to the next one after 5 seconds or so. This way people would not be able to avoid it completely, and would at least see it before being able to close it.
I think the TL forums are something that if Blizzard was really smart would find some way to partner with or at least link to. TL has probably done more for the SC2 than anything else. It is the meeting place and launching grounds for much of the major foreign SC2 entities. Blizzard needs teamliquid.
I guess somehow I kinda got off topic, but yeah, great idea. I think it just needs some ironing out and tweaking, but definitely something Blizzard should look at. Who knows, maybe they're working on it right now and they're just trying to make it as polished as possible before shooting it out.
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While I am not fond of the idea of watching a video in something as heavy as the SC2 client, I bet there are many many more people who would be attracted to eSports for the first time because of this. Also, the ability to use BNet chat channels and PMs with the broadcast is appealing. If I could could chat with the video full-screened just as if I was in-game I would be ecstatic.
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Great idea. Mad props (y)
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I was thinking about this the other day. I don't really see why not.
Also, edited the MLG version for more accuracy.
+ Show Spoiler +
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^^ LOL
You know......blizzard might do more for esports..if..
+ Show Spoiler +
They get the game OFF battle.net and create a lan version for tourneys, thataway we wouldnt have to hear tasteless's vehicle of technology speech and have day9 do impromptu dailies in the middle of the grand finals of a tournament, which was cool but isnt a very nice thing in the fnals of the big tourneys.
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On April 12 2011 16:40 Falling wrote:
... Kennigit's article on why Starcraft shouldn't be on television...
Does anyone have a link to this article? I'm very interested to hear/see what Kennigit has to say about this.
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That would actually be awesome. If they could make some coding so that you could literaly have the obs. view with the sc2 engine, it would be even better, and less bandwidth heavy!
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Blizzard knows about this, as it is a great idea.
But i think people need to take a step back and remember that Bnet 2.0 launched with SC2 half a year ago, they are still ironing various bugs and adding features in. Things such as clans, viewing replays with friends, not to much general patches, balance patches and the 2 expansion packs they are making.
I believe this feature will see the light of day, but at this moment they hands are simply too busy
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There are much more important and viable things Blizzard could do to enhance the spectator experience.
LAN, Save Feature, Shared Replays, etc.
Blizzard could do a better job at advertising tournaments, but please understand that very few tournaments are worthy of advertisement on BNet 2.0 alongside the GSL. Once the scene stabilizes and the production hiccups become less common, maybe Blizzard will advertise E-Sports more aggressively.
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They should just make the useless raynor bigger imo.
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This is a good idea, infact the first time i ever heard about eSports was through the "News" screen on warcraft 3 where it was talking about Sweet/Grubby at the BWWI 
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They did this in WC3, I'm pretty sure, here's hoping they do it on SC2 as well.
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Canada11349 Posts
On April 12 2011 17:26 fire_brand wrote:
I think the best option for them would be to have a sort of welcome screen like that MSN today thing that pops up for Messenger. A window that pops up, DOESN'T take five minutes to load like every other battle.net window, and displays some sort of hype picture for any major tournament happening right away. It would also have a little rotary thing along the bottom like most news sites have and switch to the next one after 5 seconds or so. This way people would not be able to avoid it completely, and would at least see it before being able to close it.
Hm, that might actually be better- that community news window takes forever to load with my computer (mind you, my laptop sucks.) It's best if the video was hosted by Battlenet, but it wouldn't work if it made starting up the game longer/ make people quickly hit the multiplayer button and miss it completely.
@ some of the others
I get there's a lot other things Blizzard could be working on- since joining sGs for BW, I'm starting to see why no shared replays is such a big oversight. But this is one thing I haven't really heard Blizzard talk about implementing
On April 12 2011 17:24 Jiddra wrote:
What is this "recent broadcast" field really good for? Perhaps they could start using that for promoting events instead?
Funny thing is originally in Beta, I thought the broadcast box was going to be for recent broadcasts of tourney games or some such, but it's more like facebook status/ mass announcement to friends?
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