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On August 19 2011 03:12 Jerokar wrote:The point is: Blizzard has almost no participation in introducing people to the pro-scene. From what i have seen, they also provide a very small amount of prize money, as well as enforcing a very strict "prize pool cap" set at 5k$, taking 50% of the ad-revenue if prize exceeds that amount (refer to http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/viewmessage.php?topic_id=247210 for more details)
Well that's not entirely true. I keep seeing esports events advertised on the battle.net website as well as in-game in sc2. You know the home area where it shows news? As soon as I log into SC2 I see an advertisement about some tournament. I don't see how it's very much different from what Valve and Riot are doing right now, Blizzard is advertising esports because they care very much about it.
Just seems like you are generalizing and throwing shit out there expecting to be right. I definitely think blizzard could do a better job but I think they are more focused on creating the game than anything right now, especially with HotS. If they get HotS wrong, they'll never hear the end of it and this forum will become bash central where it's WoL vs HotS elitists and it will be BW vs SC2 all over again.
Besides, Blizzard has made it clear they want the community to take over with Blizzard merely there to watch their game played and make adjustments if they need to. Just go watch the GDC design philosophy from Dustin Browder, he tells us that leagues like GSL need to be using their own maps because the blizzard maps are made for all audiences. Statements like these lead me to suggest that Blizzard clearly wants the community to take over.
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Cayman Islands24199 Posts
microtransaction potential is still being explored
at this point, what counts as industry leadership is no longer game design (let's face it, lol etc are using recycled stuff) but the monetarizing model.
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Size of player base.
LoL has roughly 1.5 milion daily users, with peak numbers of 500k concurrent users. (Acc. to #s released by Riot not too long ago.)
Starcraft 2 doesn't come even close. I don't know the exact #s, but occasionally the client will say something like 20-30k games worldwide. That's less than TF2 or Counterstrike.
Starcraft 2 is a more viewer-friendly game, tho. That's why the pro-scene thrives while the player base stays relatively small. (Or perhaps laddering is just too stressful.)
I think in the end SC2 is somewhat commercially disappointing for Blizzard. Sure, they sold a couple million (Blizz reported 4.5 mill as 'sell-through' number. Real sales are prolly less.) But it doesn't have a subscription nor in-game purchases (which seems the way of the future). Expansions will be bought by the hardcore, but will they broaden the player base? Hard to say.
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On August 19 2011 07:00 Grumbels wrote:
My computer science class organized an online gaming night and had about a dozen titles such as some fighting games, mario kart, age of empires, hon/lol. No Starcraft II, though; most are aware of it, but haven't really given online play a try. I think there's a very good reason for this, as from what I learned, most have maybe tried playing a few times and found the experience frustrating and unclear.
Ask yourself what incentive some random gamer has to learn the very uncompromising SCII multiplayer if he isn't already acquainted with, say, the pro-scene - or at least the notion it's fun to play it competitively. I don't think there is, because SCII is not a good RTS to play online if you don't prescribe to the idea playing to win is fun. And that's something of an acquired taste to be honest.
We all tried to do so in WC3 and Brood War back when we were young and we didn't have any better online games, but nowadays you have so many worthwhile FPS and DotA games that as an RTS you will have a hard time to getting a lot of market share. They're just too old-fashioned.
I bought this game back in August 2010 and got into the ladder matches a month later. I am a complete fucking noob to multiplayer RTS in every sense of the word. I never even watched a single game of competitive Brood War. I can honestly say that it has been the most refreshing experience that I have had with games in several years. 99% of games on the market have degenerated to the lowest common denominator in their challenge as well as their overall entertainment.
Maybe you're right for all we know... maybe the vast majority of gamers would prefer call of duty or Dota over an RTS. I can only speak for myself as a long time FPS and MMO gamer that after playing this game I have never looked back, not even for a second. To me this is the most dynamic and rewarding genre by far as well as the most entertaining to watch.
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Let's be honest you think most tournaments wanted to pick LOL up or do you think it was because of a lack of a better game. No league will lever pick up a game like LOL because you have servers going down and update patches every week. I quit playing LOL because when the EU servers go down all the EU players rush to the NA server and lag everything up and make traffic jams on the client servers.
SC2 presents itself differently. It's a game that is meant to last. Last as long as SC:BW did. It will. Game has only been out for one year and it has grown huge already and has a steady base of professional players. You need professional players and teams to back the game but a game like LOL is going to lose most of their teams when DOTA2 comes out and it will become a casual game to many.
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What more do you want, they have their own tourney (Blizzcon), advertise tournaments in the SC2 news section (I remember seeing GSL, MLG and Dreamhack there) and support the most prestigious league in SC2, GSL. SC2 is a year old now and it's going strong without major influence from Blizz
For everyone saying Blizz doesn't advertise tourneys, it's just that they don't put a huge article with a link in your face, take a look at this:
http://eu.battle.net/sc2/en/search?a=eSports Team&q=eSports Team&f=article
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This seems like a pointless post, the answer is extremely simple. The number of people that play LoL compared to SC2. LoL is waaaaaaaaaaay more popular and played waaaaaaaaaaaaay more. Larger pie means more for each portion of the community. Larger casual base and a larger eSports base.
Now obviously there would be many other contributing factors. But if you think anything other then the size of the player base is the main reason then your wrong.
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On August 19 2011 10:45 dizzy101 wrote:
Size of player base.
LoL has roughly 1.5 milion daily users, with peak numbers of 500k concurrent users. (Acc. to #s released by Riot not too long ago.)
Starcraft 2 doesn't come even close. I don't know the exact #s, but occasionally the client will say something like 20-30k games worldwide. That's less than TF2 or Counterstrike.
Starcraft 2 is a more viewer-friendly game, tho. That's why the pro-scene thrives while the player base stays relatively small. (Or perhaps laddering is just too stressful.)
I think in the end SC2 is somewhat commercially disappointing for Blizzard. Sure, they sold a couple million (Blizz reported 4.5 mill as 'sell-through' number. Real sales are prolly less.) But it doesn't have a subscription nor in-game purchases (which seems the way of the future). Expansions will be bought by the hardcore, but will they broaden the player base? Hard to say.
yea but lets not forget league of legends is basically free to play.....thus more ppl are inclined to play it,thus more users, whereas with starcraft 2 you have pay 50 bucks. The fact that league of legends gives direct links to these tournaments in the game client with free to play policy, means there would be alot of viewers, Now the problem is, are these ppl genuinely interested in watching league of legends ? or are they just curious, because dota type games are really boring to watch. Even my friend who is the biggest dota addict ever said he does not enjoy watching the game, he only wants to play it. All these sources that quote "huge viewing numbers" might be true, but what are we basing this off from? 1 single dream hack???????? god ppl love to blow things out of proportion.There is zero proof league of legends is actually a good esport, Most ppl are silently going WTF?? how can this be, cause we all know something is not right in the background.
Now the thing is, are we forgetting that starcraft 2 also comes with a single player campaign? not everybody wants to play melee, Some just purchased the game for the solo campaign and to play a few custom games every now and then. Does that mean starcraft 2 has failed? nooo . Its still a phenom with a very large viewing audience and it has the sales to back it up. Alot of ppl myself included find ladder very stressfull, so i take very long breaks, but starcraft 2 is always the "come back 2 game", whereas when i play other games, as i am done with them thats it , i never come back to it.
when starcraft fixes the casual scene better, thats when even more players will be on, right now the custom map system is in shambles, and the team games are matching you up against arrange teams when playing random teams, i cant imagin how many players rage quit for life after playing such bullshit. Basically starcraft 2 is saying only solo is worth playing. If they fix the expansion, then i see only growth for this game.
There is a very sustainable amount of ppl left on battlenet that still
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LoL is so popular because of its free to play yet it's still a high quality product this is such a obvious fact that the OP didn't focus on. SC2 costs $60 and has a more difficult learning curve as well. It's not hard to figure out why it is so popular. The more popular game will attract the most viewers in the end for obvious reasons. I wouldn't want SC2 to be dumbed down even more to make it more popular, but getting Activision Blizzard to start offering a free to play model would be the biggest boost it can offer. This won't happen of course.
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On August 19 2011 04:22 emythrel wrote:Show nested quote +On August 19 2011 04:16 Jerokar wrote:On August 19 2011 04:13 emythrel wrote:
Pretty much my feeling on it are that SC2 is an esport by its own merit. Blizz doesn't need to pump money in to prize pools because sponsors do that.
LoL basically only has tourneys with prize pools because riot give the money, eventually maybe companies will sponsor it like they do sc2, but for now... without riot putting up the cash it simply wouldn't have any. But the thing is that other companies are attracting huge amounts of viewers. I dont believe that this is only because they are pumping money into the tournament scene. The LOL tournaments were attracting views BEFORE the large prize pools (look at Dreamhack season 1). Advertisement can go a HUGE way, especially a shiny link at the login screen LoL has 15million subscribers...... and they get 200k viewers. Hardly anyone that doesn't play dota/lol watches it..... i play LoL and can't watch it. Compare that to sc2 which has around 1m active players and gets 100k viewers (for finals and big matches)..... a decent proportion of which don't even play or own the game. Lots of viewers doesn't translate in to a successful esport. Bringing in viewers who don't play the game does, more over 15million players and they can only muster up around 0.01% of them to watch it compared to the 10% of sc2 players that watch pro SC2.....
it's 15 million FREE ACCOUNTS ffs, LoL doesn't even ask you for your e-mail verification.
Personally i have 2 accounts that i've barely used.
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On August 19 2011 10:57 Mojar wrote:
This seems like a pointless post, the answer is extremely simple. The number of people that play LoL compared to SC2. LoL is waaaaaaaaaaay more popular and played waaaaaaaaaaaaay more. Larger pie means more for each portion of the community. Larger casual base and a larger eSports base.
Now obviously there would be many other contributing factors. But if you think anything other then the size of the player base is the main reason then your wrong.
ofc if you make your game free (accounts) and casual you can just lure a huge crowd into sinking hours playing it, then put a shiny stream link in the front page of the client, it doesn't matter the age/ interest in ESPORTS, they'll just click it, wether they actually liked it is impossible to figure out.
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sc2 has massively declining numbers of actively laddering accounts each season. Unless blizz finds a way to fix that and add microtransactions, I wouldn't even expect them to support sc2 after the 2 expacs. Truth of the matter is, hardly anybody actually plays sc2. It's hard to accept, but it's the truth.
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On August 19 2011 11:30 Fission wrote:
sc2 has massively declining numbers of actively laddering accounts each season. Unless blizz finds a way to fix that and add microtransactions, I wouldn't even expect them to support sc2 after the 2 expacs. Truth of the matter is, hardly anybody actually plays sc2. It's hard to accept, but it's the truth.
I can't wait for HoTS ^_^.
Edit: On topic: I have friends that wanted to understand why Sc2 was so hyped everywhere and I let them play my copy. They typically gave up after like 1-2 games of testing out the game even with me pointing out what to do and what not. The only reason I play it is because I played it so much when I was younger. Also, its fun as hell.
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I think a lot of Blizzard's advertising and money support is going towards Korea. If I remember they had a TON of ads up there, as well as the GomTV support.
Great article, it would be nice to see more blizzard involvement into the foreign SC2 scene.
PS: I do remember a ton of SC2 TV advertisements during big events, but nothing since release really.
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Being F2P exponentially increases LoL's playerbase
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Blizzard has other things to promote and work on. I do agree, though. Blizzard could do a better job at promoting tournaments, the way Riot is going about it is very smart.
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On August 19 2011 11:30 Fission wrote:
sc2 has massively declining numbers of actively laddering accounts each season. Unless blizz finds a way to fix that and add microtransactions, I wouldn't even expect them to support sc2 after the 2 expacs. Truth of the matter is, hardly anybody actually plays sc2. It's hard to accept, but it's the truth.
Can I have some source and links on these statements
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^ Yeah, the number of active players in SC2 is disappointing, which is surprising considering the healthy pro-scene. I wonder whether growth or sustainability in the pro-scene is possible, given the shrinking player numbers. Can SC2 be a spectator sport only?
How many of the ppl who bought SC2 will buy the expansion? How many new ppl will be drawn into the game? I don't expect huge growth for those expansions.
Sure, LoL is free to play, which means lots of ppl sign up. But what is the average amount of $ spent by the average active player? You bet it's at least 10 bucks, allowing Riot Games to fill their koffers with shitloads of cash.
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On August 19 2011 11:39 dizzy101 wrote:
^ Yeah, the number of active players in SC2 is disappointing, which is surprising considering the healthy pro-scene. I wonder whether growth or sustainability in the pro-scene is possible, given the shrinking player numbers. Can SC2 be a spectator sport only?
How many of the ppl who bought SC2 will buy the expansion? How many new ppl will be drawn into the game? I don't expect huge growth for those expansions.
Sure, LoL is free to play, which means lots of ppl sign up. But what is the average amount of $ spent by the average active player? You bet it's at least 10 bucks, allowing Riot Games to fill their koffers with shitloads of cash.
the average person in LOL does not spend a dime. Dunno where you get those ideas . Only the true hardcore buy stuff.
anyway, starcraft 2 does not need huge playing numbers to be a successfull esport, why are mlgs getting bigger and bigger with declining player base? answer yourself that. starcraft is more viewable because of the fact its not a dumbed down piece of crap like league of legends, Whereas LOL will have more players, but less interested viewers, the guys that watch league of legends only want to see how to play thier particular hero and dont give a damn about what teams or players are playing. Whereas in sc2 we have viewers that watch the game with no sole intention of improving their game, They genuinely care who wins and follow their favorite players.
At the end of the day, whether a game is played/still keeps players or whatever does not matter . As long as the game can sell on release date to millions, then its a success. Alot of ppl will buy Heart of the Swarm, which will give rebirth to the scene. I hear also blizzard Allstars is getting released with HOTS (confirmed, "blizzards dota im refering to") so that will keep some players also., since its alot of custom models they bringing in, which will help out the custom game scene as a whole, since my map "zealot frenzy" could get alot of these nice models.
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i think theres some fundamental differences
1. SC2 has a HUGE GIANT ENORMOUS AMAZING community, like team liquid and the Bnet forums to a lesser extent if anyone wants to watch/get ito esports its very easy
2. Blizz does advertise, they may not advertise every tournament but the ones like NASL, MLG, GSL .e.t.c are all over the site and the in game news section
3. there are proffessional casters, why should blizz pick an in-company caster when there are already tons of casters willing to do cast for them? the casters with fan bases and good experience?
4. SC2 is huge, unlike LoL SC2 literally started its life as a global e-sports phenomina blizz didnt need to do anything to get SC2 to be huge because SC/BW did it all for them
5. Blizz is a huge company, theres no need to focus so much on SC2 when people worldwide are already doing it for them, there producing great casters, there producing great tournaments, there advertising, there casting there doing everything riot does for LoL but better and without costing blizz anything
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