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I have a SC2 account and might never make it out of the Bronze league. However, I thoroughly enjoy watching matches. I easily relate it to the same kind of viewing experience as I do for (American) football-- with SC2, my friends and I talk about it online; with football, it happens in person. It seems like it's only one point away from mixing for me. I hope it is for many, many more as well.
I constantly tell my friends to pick up SC2 and try to watch a game. I tell them it's enjoyable even if you don't excel at RTS games-- because it is. Quite a few shoutcasters peak my interest in the game as I'm sure they do for many, many others.
I came from the semi-professional Quake / CS scene. The enthusiasm was there but not quite on this level. E-Sports are growing and progamers will be on some kids' walls as a poster at some point. I'm not sure it will be with SC2 but a stepping block is a stepping block-- worry less about SC2 and worry far more about E-Sports, in general.
Edit:
I thoroughly enjoyed your post. Thank you for it.
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pft, neither a bubble or a wave. it's just growing that fast
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What I worry about the most are sponsors. How many sponsors saw that esports was growing, saw that Starcraft 2 was supposed to be esports' flagship, and decided to gamble lots of money on it? At what point do they look at what they're getting for their money and say, "You know, esports is growing, but I'm not getting a good enough return on what I'm paying these players?" And then they pull their money out of esports.
I worry that a lot of the growth right now is from these sponsors gambling on SC2 and artificially growing esports in the meantime... and then they don't get enough money back from it and then back out. Bubble = burst.
I don't have any real evidence for this, it's just a worry of mine every time I hear of a new sponsor. "It's great that they're putting money into esports, but how exactly are they getting any back?"
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I just went for 15 days with internet or a PC. when i returned, i cud hardly wait to play sc2 . i was still nervous when i played. it was still the same experience. i totally cudnt watch MLG or Dreamhack till semi-finals. It dint matter. I still screamed whn HuK won. I dont know about the economics that much. I hope there are more sponsors. But one thing is for sure, as a spectator and a player, its definitely not a bubble; its not fake. its a passion and a hobby. its good.
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United Kingdom1381 Posts
We'll see how big the bubble gets when the BW players join SC2!
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I totally support Starcraft pros whoring themselves out to sponsors and team mergers. I love drama and anything that will make the sport seem a little more dramatic so more sponsors will get involved. The only thing I really care about is the games and the matches but of course I love crazy stuff happening at events and some real life involvement. I hope the live tournament setting gets bigger and bigger.
I was an active viewer of the BW scene so even if it never sustains I will still be watching what ever popularity and tournaments are remaining in the upcoming years. As to the popularity of Starcraft 2 in Korea I think it will get huge, the BW progamers are still under contract and find no monetary value in switching over anyway yet. This is why we've seen pros like July, Nada and Boxer already in Star2, because their tournament success in BW is at an end so the best option was the developing scene, I expect guys like Jaedong, Bisu, Flash to switch over in years to come, though we shall see.
The bubble or wave is pretty hard to predict, my hopes and thoughts are probably different and my opinions obviously just as biased as everyone here. I think a lot of Starcraft fans should be supporting e-sports overall, I don't care if someone watches a madden match, COD or Starcraft 2. Any of those are fine, I just want people to find enjoyment in watching progaming. Some Starcrafters will just call Star2 or BW "e-sports" when really it obviously envelops much more.
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On June 21 2011 22:53 zarepath wrote:
What I worry about the most are sponsors. How many sponsors saw that esports was growing, saw that Starcraft 2 was supposed to be esports' flagship, and decided to gamble lots of money on it? At what point do they look at what they're getting for their money and say, "You know, esports is growing, but I'm not getting a good enough return on what I'm paying these players?" And then they pull their money out of esports.
I worry that a lot of the growth right now is from these sponsors gambling on SC2 and artificially growing esports in the meantime... and then they don't get enough money back from it and then back out. Bubble = burst.
I don't have any real evidence for this, it's just a worry of mine every time I hear of a new sponsor. "It's great that they're putting money into esports, but how exactly are they getting any back?"
Mb your underestimating some things here.
1. Marketing and all it's psychological aspects
2. The fact that alot of the companies you see frequently are long-term ESPORTS sponsors (razer, steelseries etc)
3. The power/commitment of the sc community to support their players
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SC2s long-term success will rely on the e-sports scenes ability to retain spectators that no longer actively plays the game.
BWs resilience as an e-sport comes mostly in my opinion from the fact that it's great entertainment due to having prestigious leagues, recognizable names and a lot of history. Put simply you don't have to be looking for new builds to use on the ladder to watch a starleague.
In that sense BW is the only e-sport to come to close to being a real sport in that most spectators follow the tournaments but don't actually play the game themselves.
SC2s actual player base will obviously decline over time the question is if those people will stick around and follow the tournaments or not.
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Too much guesswork and too little knowledge of bubbles for my taste. Nice try though.
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Need more posts like this. Thought-provoking presentation that invites discussion.
I think SC2 is a great hobby and I hope it has the ability to be an ESPORTS mainstay for years and years. The thing that surprised me was when I found out a lot of my friends played SC2. (Graduated, stayed in town, made friends). I was always the gamer and my friends did things like watch ESPN for hours a day. All of a sudden I'm getting invited to a LAN party (LAN, lawl) with seven other guys. Wait a second, I thought I was the only one who enjoyed this. Pretty awesome  Also, kicking everyone's butt and having them awe at your Platinum level skills is amusing too when you know the real potential of players ^^
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On June 21 2011 23:52 mordek wrote:Need more posts like this. Thought-provoking presentation that invites discussion. I think SC2 is a great hobby and I hope it has the ability to be an ESPORTS mainstay for years and years. The thing that surprised me was when I found out a lot of my friends played SC2. (Graduated, stayed in town, made friends). I was always the gamer and my friends did things like watch ESPN for hours a day. All of a sudden I'm getting invited to a LAN party (LAN, lawl) with seven other guys. Wait a second, I thought I was the only one who enjoyed this. Pretty awesome Also, kicking everyone's butt and having them awe at your Platinum level skills is amusing too when you know the real potential of players ^^
sounds awesome man  I
I think starcraft can be considered a mainstream hobby in a few years. Got a few friends who play, which I don't meet more than a few times a year, they play from time to time without being real gamers, just like we played football together sometimes and still do, we now also play starcraft sometimes. It's good fun and a way to socialize. Talk some shit while playing some unserious ladder games. My only fear is that blizzard makes sc2 to expensive with all the expansions, so some of the casuals drop off. What makes other esports so popular is that they are either extremely cheap or free. CS, QL & LoL only to name a few.
anyway, good thread with many good answers 
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Really good post.
As someone said in the first page, I think one of the main challenge's for esports' (specially starcraft's) development is not sustainging a player base, but keeping ex-players or people who never bought the game as watchers. Even though in the first years of development the number of active players is really important (players not only tend to watch progames, they also bring other players in), once (and if) the game stabilizes as an actual sport, the ability to pull in non players will be exential.
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In my opinion, a large part of SC2 being a bubble or a wave will eventually lie on the way Blizzard handles the expansions and the way community responds to it. I was not in the e-sports scene (SC:BW) when it started but from my understanding (correct me if I am wrong), the expansion was already done by the time SC1 became an e-sports.
In case of SC2, it is already a dominant game based on the e-sports scene. However, the idea of having separate ladders and WoL/HoTS being completely separate games bothers me. The launch of HoTS will create a period in e-sports where a part of the community (tournaments, sponsors, players) would follow HoTS while others would stick to WoL (similar group) in essence dividing the pool both in terms of players and tournaments. The players will have to pick and choose one of the two since I don't think it is feasible practicing for 2 separate versions of the game as it mixes up strategies a whole lot (a weak analogy can be drawn to multiple versions of the same map not being good for the community as well in the current game).
Thus, I believe the launch of HoTS would be the biggest test for SC2 as a game since it will bring around a period of instability and the future of the game will depend on how that period is handles by Blizzard (as to how to they eventually decide to transition from WoL to HoTS) and how the community handles it (there is a lack of a governing body in SC2 and this might hurt since in a absence of set global/regional standards, the scene will become much more divisive in general).
This transition will test whether the SC2 scene is fragile or not and whether the community is patient enough to handle a likely rough transition. I do not know if GSL/MLG/DH (being the premier tournaments in their regions) and to a lesser extent NASL decide on this eventual transition but I hope that they keep in touch with each other so that games can transition from WoL to HoTS consistently across the entire scene since I believe they would be trend-setters in their respective regions.
Note: I do think that even though I did not directly deal with bubble or wave comparison, this event will eventually show whether SC2 is a fragile bubble or a powerful wave.
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Will there be improvements in Heart of the Swarm that make it easier for casual gamers to stay involved in the game?
Why yes. It will be called "Blizzard Defense of the Ancients." Those who tire of SC2 ladder play will eventually end up here, as did many Warcraft players. DotA can and will keep players sucked in. It's like RTS limbo. You wait in DotA for eons until the sins of the main game have been absolved, and then you return.
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On June 21 2011 10:44 FXOpen wrote:
My personal opinion is that the current Financial aspect of e-Sports is a bubble. The business models in e-Sports are flawed by instant fame. You cannot just jump in head first when there is little to no water to prevent you hitting the bottom.
Although I don't see a crash in the e-sports world mostly because there will always be demand. I do see the financial situation getting a bit tighter for teams and tournaments.
What can cause this? A poor performance by any major event or team, or something extremely controversial... Theft, law suits, or failure.
But e-Sports aren't going anywhere. Because there are soooooo many people interested in them. Well the sc2 scene is new since it's a new game but professional competition in computer games been around for quite some time now.
Another thing that comes to mind is that the amount of money going into the scene does not seem to be exactly extreme right now, you probably know a lot more than I do about this. From my point of view as "self employed" in a small local business it does not seem to be very expensive to for example partially sponsor a player. We have to pay almost $1000 for a tiny ad in the local newspaper for example and many many local stores easily spend over $10000 a week on advertising. And there are not more than like 200000 people in my town.
One problem is obviously that sponsoring sc2 players is mostly a global form of advertising. If it was local even a tiny business like ours could get a decent return of investment by sponsoring a player with say $1000 a week.
Also, in many cases you don't even need a good direct roi, many lower league sport teams get sponsored because some business owners simply like the sport and want to support it.
Anyway back to sc2. All businesses are not local obviously. If I for example owned Fractal Design I would probably at least look in to the sc2 scene, and there are literally thousands of companies like that.
Then we have the streaming thing for example. We might be in baby stages of watching live streams right now. Ignoring players streaming themselves, what if the small sc2 tournaments going on every day will have 10 times more viewers in a couple of years simply because for example jtv got a lot more viewers than today.
Many things can go wrong, jtv can go out of business instead of becoming bigger etc but new things that are "unknown" today can happen as well like for example Google or Microsoft heavily promoting live streaming.
And so on.
To me it seems like the basis for a large growth of esports is there. Tons of people are sport freaks so the potential should be there as long so called esports provide good entertainment. Personally I would guess it will be a slow process with lots of ups and downs though.
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MLG prior to IMG joining up with them were going to run into financial problems as far as I know. But then IMG sponsored them for $10 mill I think. Emphasis on think.
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On June 21 2011 23:30 Popss wrote:
SC2s long-term success will rely on the e-sports scenes ability to retain spectators that no longer actively plays the game.
BWs resilience as an e-sport comes mostly in my opinion from the fact that it's great entertainment due to having prestigious leagues, recognizable names and a lot of history. Put simply you don't have to be looking for new builds to use on the ladder to watch a starleague.
In that sense BW is the only e-sport to come to close to being a real sport in that most spectators follow the tournaments but don't actually play the game themselves.
SC2s actual player base will obviously decline over time the question is if those people will stick around and follow the tournaments or not.
Totally agree with this. If I remember an informal age survey we had here (http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/viewmessage.php?topic_id=214457) it's obvious that most here are in their early 20's and then it peters down to nothing from there. The only way SC or e-sports in general will be profitable in the long term is to get fans and hold on to them for the rest of their lives, something that will be very challenging for these companies.
Also, we have to think about the gender divide. Any business would find it tough if it couldn't attract a segment of the female population, let alone only 2%. Of course, it's possible the proportion of respondents in TL isn't representative of the number of female fans, but I don't think it's that much larger anyways.
And, of course, there's also the cultural factors in the West such as e-sports being seen largely as a waste of time/a youthful pastime/something adults wouldn't do or watch/something girls wouldn't do/etc.
E-sports may not be a bubble long term, but I think SC in general might not be profitable in the same time frame as new games/technologies are developed and come into their own.
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I would just like to point out that events like Dreamhack and MLG were already in place long before SC2 came out. If it reaches the point that, for instance, NASL and GSL go under from lack of funding and interest, DH, TSL, and MLG could theoretically all still go on because these tournaments are more or less offshoots of the bigger events whose name they go under. Granted, if SC2 ever got that unpopular, then it would probably be given the smallest venue and have the least expense, but these tournaments could still exist in some form or another.
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its a constant flow which has points at which it expands greatly.
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The future of e-sports is shaky. The amount of culture it has to overcome is enormous. I cannot speak for other countries, or even for other locations in the US, however where I live video gaming is seen as absolutely nothing but addiction or a waste of time. Thus, the amount of following it can gain is limited at best.
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EPT
