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The thing I'm the most scared of is the actual low stream numbers.
Like 6 million people in Sweden watches the Eurovision song conetest, which is completely retarded by the way, but the stream numbers of say TSL, the biggest, most anticipated, best and most awesome event ever comes up, the stream numbers are on around 80k at max.
In actuality that's super low.
Imagine the world football cup.. There's like literally billions of people watching. The sick leaves among males between 10 and 65 goes up crazily etc etc.
To me starcraft hasn't really begun picking up speed yet. It's a good start, but it's a flickering candle light, and the one thing that keeps it up, and keeps me interested in it is all the passionate people on the forums and streams.
That's what seperates the starcraft community from others.
Just Day9 and tastosis probably keep 80% (pulling stats right out of my ass, but it seems likely to me) all starcraft viewers interested in the games.
Few have enough passion to for instance watch a muted replay and enjoy it, or watch korean commentators.
If these core people leave the scene (I have a feeling artosis and day9 especially run a higher risk of getting shot by Michael Jacksson then quitting, but still), the foreigner starcraft scene is more or less dead.
That's one of the bigger risk factors.
The game is also as you said craziliy hard. I have a friend who started out by watching husky, then day9, then started playing, got stomped to the ground, and quit after 5 games, and says he doesn't wanna play cuz he's too bad at it.
He still watches streams, but is stopping that too more or less..
Maybe RTS games are too hard core for a wide spread public.
On the other hand it's a pretty good spectator sport, and only a handful of the previously mentioned football watchers actually play the game, so maybe that's not such a big factor after all.
I think e-sports will grow, and SC2 is definitely to me the most interesting to watch, but I don't think it'll ever become huge to be honest.
It'll be interesting to return to this thread in 10 years though.
Very good though =)
P.S I'm sorry if it was tldr. It's 0320 here and i gotta go to work soon so I'm a bit stressed out >.>
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Blizzard is taking a backseat approach to the movement and letting the community do crazy things with it; I don't think the responsibilities or expectations should be placed on them.
Just Day9 and tastosis probably keep 80% all starcraft viewers interested in the games. If these core people leave the scene the foreigner starcraft scene is more or less dead.
edit: Holy shit. That actually scares me even more than the tournaments.
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On June 20 2011 10:20 starcraft911 wrote:
I think it's a wave right now, but when the next big game comes out it will be somewhat of a bubble. If SC3 came out it would deffinately be a bubble.
I guess it depends on your definition of ESPORTS. If it is only Starcraft then it will inevitably be a bubble. Some would say that BW is nearing the end but is has hardly "burst". I think that the more games that get people involved, the better.
Competition between games for viewers can only increase the level of production and quality for viewers. This is a good thing.
The biggest determinant of whether ESPORTS is successful is whether it can become self-sustaining. I think this is what the OP is trying to say when he mentions the reliance on sponsors. People like Day9, who can make a living without relying on sponsors, shows the numbers are there right now. Whether this can be sustained is the real question.
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Osaka27133 Posts
In your points to consider, this:
Will there be new features in Heart of the Swarm that support bringing the plethora of E-Sports tournies and products closer to the masses of casual gamers?
and this
Will the current set of major tournaments be able to survive and thrive financially?
are really tied at the hip. In this industry new games are constantly coming out and they chip (or chunk) away users' time and interest. Despite it's success, BW was not immune from this either except in the strange circumstance in Korea. Without that core SC2 is much more vulnerable.
What it means is that the expansions as well as development support (like patches) need to keep the game relevant. This doesn't mean SC2 has to be the only game. The success in other games as an esport is an important part of diversifying the audience. But if you look at WCG, some games were pillars year after year, while others were brought on and then discarded.
Also important is the evolution of the viewing experience.The vast majority of people who experience these events do it at home in front of their computer. Tournament organizers need to constantly be aware of the experience they provide and how to best utilize this platform. The true bubble right now is in the saturation of content available. Being a second tier online experience right now is not an option for those hoping to be successful.
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I think the big development SC2 needs is a solidification of the story, the drama around the sport.
Compare to tennis for example. There are four major tournaments, the grand slams (Aussie, French, Wimbledon, US). These are the ones everyone wants to win, the tournaments where history is made and where the story of the sport is told. They also offer the highest quality tennis. Golf is similar with it's four major tournaments.
Brood war has something similar, with the big tournaments, OSL, MSL etc, also the idea of the golden mouse.
Right now, I personally see MLG, GSL, Dreamhack as the big tournaments. I think there needs to be co-operation between the tournaments so that all the top players can eaisly qualify and play in all of these tournaments. It's likely that only these tournaments can actually sustain the live event format, with all other smaller tournaments being online only.
To some degree this needs to happen organically, but it also requires co-operation between the tournaments.
Online gaming has an important feature where player fatigue is not as a big of an effect as other sports, such as football, where the physical body actually takes damage and has to recover. I'm not totally discounting mental fatigue here, especially when combined with odd hours or jet lag this can definatly effect mental performance.
The thing is this becomes a burden because tournaments can do things like NASL does, where players are expected to play from Korea in the middle of the night over laggy connections. It's just unacceptable, and we will never see the highest quality SC2 when this kind of play is allowed. It's just a fact.
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a big indicator is how many people MLGPro (or any other live event promoter) can get to pay to watch an SC2 event live.
if that number continues to climb... and MLGPro can raise ticket prices then we have ourselves a winner.
if people are unwilling to pay to see the live event then "the bubble will burst".
so far i think MLGPro's attendance is growing by leaps and bounds.;
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On June 20 2011 10:32 Manifesto7 wrote:+ Show Spoiler +In your points to consider, this: Will there be new features in Heart of the Swarm that support bringing the plethora of E-Sports tournies and products closer to the masses of casual gamers?
and this
Will the current set of major tournaments be able to survive and thrive financially? are really tied at the hip. In this industry new games are constantly coming out and they chip (or chunk) away users' time and interest. Despite it's success, BW was not immune from this either except in the strange circumstance in Korea. Without that core SC2 is much more vulnerable. What it means is that the expansions as well as development support (like patches) need to keep the game relevant. This doesn't mean SC2 has to be the only game. The success in other games as an esport is an important part of diversifying the audience. But if you look at WCG, some games were pillars year after year, while others were brought on and then discarded. Also important is the evolution of the viewing experience.The vast majority of people who experience these events do it at home in front of their computer. Tournament organizers need to constantly be aware of the experience they provide and how to best utilize this platform. The true bubble right now is in the saturation of content available. Being a second tier online experience right now is not an option for those hoping to be successful.
This ^ is a really exciting point.
The viewing market is somewhat saturated, which provides an abundance of riches for viewers. I love the fact that if you are not good enough, it will show. Nothing improves service like competition.
The space for growth is from alternative provisions. Right now there is a huge supply of competitive viewing, but relatively small amount of additional content. I guess Day9 is the best example of creating a side market. Being able to leverage the popularity of the sport to create new areas for growth, will help create a wider audience for the sport. Things like DJWheat's show, SOTG (when it comes back) and TL Attack provide an easier integration into the gaming community which is crucial for something as complicated and competitive and SC2.
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See, I doubt that it is a bubble. Everything seems to be on the rise, sponsors flowing in, players getting better and better and the production value only improving.
I think it would be interesting to apply this bubble / wave kind of idea to different aspects of e-sports though.
One very likely thing that i do see happening is that the sort of informality in the tournament scene will tone down. Once the big name sponsors work their way in, and it becomes even more money-focused, the scene will need to assume a business-like and more professional-looking appearance. I don't see investors putting huge amounts of money in to something that doesn't look completely legit.
The laughing and joking commentators that don't always talk about the game, occasionally straying through the thin lines of 'acceptable' language, will need to become completely PC, polite and on task to attract people outside of the computer gamer scene.
But this is all speculation, and if that were to happen it would certainly be a bubble, I think most of us nerds would miss watching Day[9] joke about irrelevant things...
On a further note, one can certainly consider the exponential community growth a wave, a lot of people look back on the 2005 tl.net BW bubble and wish that had never changed.
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On June 20 2011 10:22 Golgotha wrote:
you are right OP. our fate depends on Blizzard. if they screw up the expansions then we are fked.
Well, all nerd rage aside I think Blizzard has been always pretty consistent with its expansions(well, I don´t know about WoW but both SC, Diablo and W3 the expansions added much more depth)
The article is well written and all congrats OP. Personally i don´t think it will be a bubble, as many who play games and keep up with the the industry knows we all know that game sales are extremely front loaded and that the hype for a game lasts for the first 2-3 weeks and then dies out.
Fortunately for SC2 that is not the case, overall I feel that the proscene has been getting more popular lately and this has been 1 year since release. Take that and lets give credit to Blizzard, they know how to hype a game I don´t see the SC2 bubble bursting anytime soon.
One thing I must clarify, we have to take into account that stabilization of the scene does not mean a bubble bursting at one time we will go through the growing pains of the scene stabilizing, but that happens with virtually every product and service and that doesn´t mean it will fail.
Of course this kind if stuff is extremely hard to predict and I kinda found it funny that you used Sheth and Mr Bitter as an example because, don´t get me wrong I love them, apart from being good at SC2 I don´t think they are really experts in the matter of the economics of SC2. And don´t get me wrong, even experts have a hard time predicting how the market will behave you know what they say about economists, we spend 6 months trying to predict the market and the next 6 months explaining why our prediction was wrong.
Just my 2 cents, while I don´t think e-sports will become like it was like in peak korean BW days I do think that the niche it fills is growing more and more(and I am not talking just about SC2 exclusively competitive gaming as a whole haqs grown tremendously)
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Great posts.
But there is one thing which im constantly asking myself and I didnt really get an answer by reading this post:
Where is the difference between SC2 today and esport in the past 10 years?
At least here in Germany people talked about the same things already 5 years ago in the glory days of WC3/counterstrike; the optimists sounded exactly like the people who are now predicting a sustainable growth of sc2 esport.
Recently I read an article from 2006 where the author was describing how much esport would grow within the next 5 years, but now that we reached the year 2011 its hard to tell if esport in Germany did grow at all, some people might even say that less people are following esport in Germany than 5 years ago.
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I personally hope it's a bubble, and when it pops, everyone will shift back to BW. If foreigner BW got the attention and money thrown at it that SC2 has, it could have been so much better. IMO SC2's purpose in the grand scheme is to introduce Westerners to the idea of e-sports, and then they can shed their baby teeth and bite into the real e-sport, BW.
Sorry for the hate, SC2 fans. But I just don't see SC2 ever having the longevity that BW has.
IMO a big problem is the over saturation. SC2 tourneys are taking place 24-7. The GSL never fucking stops. How did that work out for guitar hero and Who Wants to be a Millionaire? Yeah...
BW 4 life. SC2 will serve it's purpose and show the rest of the world the value of e-sports. And when it dies years from now, and big American/European companies start sponsoring their Brood War pro teams, I'll think back and say "yeah, I love SC2... for what it did for Brood War!"
Hey, a guy can dream...
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I think that with all the kids today playing video games like xbox that esports will be more accepted in the future.
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This was an awesome and thought-provoking thought. My fear is that its a bubble. GSL especially worries me since they pay out so much in prizes and I'm not sure they are gaining any ground in Korea in terms of a fan base.
Hopefully I am wrong as I love watching GSL.
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On June 20 2011 10:10 Highways wrote:
Hopefully it's not a bubble.
But the lack of new NA/EU upcoming players is worrying. In Korea there are so many new faces coming in (eg. DRG, Line, MMA). Whereas in the foreign scene (particularly NA), there are no new faces at all.
Nah, I'd say that it's just getting harder and harder to get mindshare, especially with non-NA players getting mostly overshadowed by players of other nationalities (obviously Idra is an exception).
I think EU is doing fine, with Sweden really stepping up the esports scene.
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Osaka27133 Posts
On June 20 2011 10:48 groms wrote:
This was an awesome and thought-provoking thought. My fear is that its a bubble. GSL especially worries me since they pay out so much in prizes and I'm not sure they are gaining any ground in Korea in terms of a fan base.
Hopefully I am wrong as I love watching GSL.
One could argue that the potential payoff for capturing the market in Korea is greater than just about every other market.
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In my one year of studying economics, I noticed the presence of many self-fulfilling phenomenons: unemployment vs. inflation, stock market rises and crashes, pricing even (in general, "expectations"). I have a feeling this will be the most important factor. If people believe it will grow, it will grow. If pessimism prevails, a "bear" scene may bury us. At least, that's how I'll view it.
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On June 20 2011 10:47 erin[go]bragh wrote:
I personally hope it's a bubble, and when it pops, everyone will shift back to BW. If foreigner BW got the attention and money thrown at it that SC2 has, it could have been so much better. IMO SC2's purpose in the grand scheme is to introduce Westerners to the idea of e-sports, and then they can shed their baby teeth and bite into the real e-sport, BW.
Sorry for the hate, SC2 fans. But I just don't see SC2 ever having the longevity that BW has.
IMO a big problem is the over saturation. SC2 tourneys are taking place 24-7. The GSL never fucking stops. How did that work out for guitar hero and Who Wants to be a Millionaire? Yeah...
BW 4 life. SC2 will serve it's purpose and show the rest of the world the value of e-sports. And when it dies years from now, and big American/European companies start sponsoring their Brood War pro teams, I'll think back and say "yeah, I love SC2... for what it did for Brood War!"
Hey, a guy can dream...
Not gonna happen. If SC2 fails, what makes you believe that most SC2 talent will move (back) to BW?
In terms of saturation, plenty of B-class and handful of A-class BW players have moved to SC2 primarily because BW is too saturated to support them.
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Given SC2 as an e-sport is mostly popular in the 1v1 arena, there is no "team" to root for per se (even though there are SC2 clans obviously). In many other single person sports, the popularity is not only based on the play involved but also the players themselves. In fact, the players usually are more important to the game than the game itself. See what Tiger Woods did for golf for example.
I think for SC2 to survive long term we need to groom the players as being important, we should let their personalities show as much as possible. We also need both people to root for as well as against. Say what you want about people like Idra, but frankly we need more like him. He gives us a reason to cheer and boo based on who he is, which is just as important (if not more so) than his play. Day9 is another obvious example here (and he doesn't even play in tournies).
This is not to say we need to overdo it with over the top gimmicks, but I think it's human nature to root for people you feel like you "know" in some way. We can't let each other just sit quietly behind a computer screen, and expect casual fans to "get it". For this to take off in a big way, fans need to be able to connect with the game outside of the game, and that comes from the players themselves.
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If you want eSports to grow then do your best to tell your friends and keep it going. It won't go anywhere if you only talk about it to yourself or one or two people. Even telling your online gaming friends can help.
Also: That wave looks like bacon. =)
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EPT![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/b0ssC.png)
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