Monetizing Starcraft / LordJerith rant. Thoughts? - Page 39

On February 13 2012 00:00 Timerly wrote:
It's funny how even people like Boss argue against the most basic principles of economics and consumer behaviour. To my knowledge no company has made profits by forcing something on its consumers without some monopoly. I also think that even GSL and such are still startups in relative terms. Do people really believe the actual hardcore fanbase for SC2 is that big? We need tons more internal numbers before saying anything of the like. Relative subscription rates for GOM, who bought which package...it's just not there for anybody but GOM, not even for Boss. You can talk all day, there's no basis. All kinds of different businesses have taken all kinds of different paths to success or failure. There are professionals in the most niche of sports and there are companies who live off the broadcasting. E-sports history tells us that making predictions is waaaay harder than it might seem even to the most experienced business people. Remember CS in 2000? Stuff got serious. The huge CPL and what came of it. WCG growth and decline. Nothing so far points to a clear direction.

My very personal opinion is that Blizzard should back all of this. The whole thing is built around people consuming their product. They wouldn't even have to make profits, any money from it would just flow back into their marketing budget which is enough to run 10 GSLs and might return quite a bit more in long term effects. Kotick likes exploiting franchises at least annually, obviously keeping people playing and wanting the next installment should be a priority in marketing, yet they choose to randomly dish out advertisement instead of turning SC2 into an even bigger phenomenon. You can make that stuff a trend, you need the opinion leaders in gaming, the hardcore crowd. I alone got like a dozen people to at least try SC2, about half of them bought it...and I'm far from the extremely hardcore crowd. I didn't pay for any events, yet I made SC2 grow. This is what should really matter here because those were at least 250$ worth of sales. Do I have to mention how multiplication and powers work? If that doesn't happen we can talk all day but SC2 won't get anywhere near the point it could go. Game lifespans are too short. Even BW had a dozen years to grow and still remained niche. You can't get the financial backing to make something explode without Blizzard's involvement.

Organisations like ESL do most stuff right. They don't go overboard on prize money, they keep the production quality up while travelling around the world and most important of all, they hedge their risks. Have multiple games in your leagues, guys, it doesn't hurt anybody. Why get all this setup only for SC2 when you could run CS, LoL, DotA and a dozen more tournaments with the same equipment? That's just wasting potential with your fixed costs being quite a huge chunk of your whole financial structure.

On February 13 2012 02:37 Schnullerbacke13 wrote: This is the reason why there is so much free content. The amount of free and cheap content is the reason why people will not pay for expensive productions. They simply don't have to.

On February 13 2012 00:00 Timerly wrote:
It's funny how even people like Boss argue against the most basic principles of economics and consumer behaviour. To my knowledge no company has made profits by forcing something on its consumers without some monopoly. I also think that even GSL and such are still startups in relative terms. Do people really believe the actual hardcore fanbase for SC2 is that big? We need tons more internal numbers before saying anything of the like. Relative subscription rates for GOM, who bought which package...it's just not there for anybody but GOM, not even for Boss. You can talk all day, there's no basis. All kinds of different businesses have taken all kinds of different paths to success or failure. There are professionals in the most niche of sports and there are companies who live off the broadcasting. E-sports history tells us that making predictions is waaaay harder than it might seem even to the most experienced business people. Remember CS in 2000? Stuff got serious. The huge CPL and what came of it. WCG growth and decline. Nothing so far points to a clear direction.

My very personal opinion is that Blizzard should back all of this. The whole thing is built around people consuming their product. They wouldn't even have to make profits, any money from it would just flow back into their marketing budget which is enough to run 10 GSLs and might return quite a bit more in long term effects. Kotick likes exploiting franchises at least annually, obviously keeping people playing and wanting the next installment should be a priority in marketing, yet they choose to randomly dish out advertisement instead of turning SC2 into an even bigger phenomenon. You can make that stuff a trend, you need the opinion leaders in gaming, the hardcore crowd. I alone got like a dozen people to at least try SC2, about half of them bought it...and I'm far from the extremely hardcore crowd. I didn't pay for any events, yet I made SC2 grow. This is what should really matter here because those were at least 250$ worth of sales. Do I have to mention how multiplication and powers work? If that doesn't happen we can talk all day but SC2 won't get anywhere near the point it could go. Game lifespans are too short. Even BW had a dozen years to grow and still remained niche. You can't get the financial backing to make something explode without Blizzard's involvement.

Organisations like ESL do most stuff right. They don't go overboard on prize money, they keep the production quality up while travelling around the world and most important of all, they hedge their risks. Have multiple games in your leagues, guys, it doesn't hurt anybody. Why get all this setup only for SC2 when you could run CS, LoL, DotA and a dozen more tournaments with the same equipment? That's just wasting potential with your fixed costs being quite a huge chunk of your whole financial structure.

On February 13 2012 00:12 FXOBoSs wrote:


SC2 numbers are indecline not increase. Viewer numbers are in decline (outside of korea). The korean scene is starting to grow a good viewerbase and you can notice this at the gom studio with more people venturing towards it. GOM has been providing a free stream for a long time, with no revenue at all entering their coffers. They provide a product more than worth the money it costs. They have given plenty to the community, answered to feed back for more than 12 months and adjusted to fit to the community.
Their HQ stream is better than anything else out there and more stable, and they rarely have major stream issues of which they are quick to fix.
They are endorsed by blizzard (they have rights to the korean sc2 monopoly) and SHOULD monetize on it to expand further for the viewing experience and to support the players who are struggling financially.

If they continue to provide it free, with no ad revenue (which subscriptions is more cost efficient) then they will inevitably implode if a sponsor pulls its funding. If they were to create a very affordable HQ m/m subscription, they will support the growth of their business, as well as the industry as a whole. I dont see why if there was funding for it, GOM wouldn't pick up other games and increase the standard of content quality across the broad. At the moment only sc2 has decent production and regular streamed events.

If GOM is going to do BUSINESS right, they need to monetize correctly, where there is money. There is currently very little money in the sponsorship market, there is no merchandise thats worth buying and ad revenue is extremely low to the point that its laughable. Cheap subscription is the best way for GOM to monetize. GOM being the only entity who has a 99.99% ready product for sale.

In no way to I compare GOM to FXO's event. It would be insulting GOM. FXO is no where near as established as gom, and its entirely why we do not do quality cuts, or content prevention, or anything else for those who subscribe. Its merely a way to dodge ads and win prizes. And until my product is close to goms, I would never force subscriptions or hurt those who don't subscribe (except subscriber only chat because sometimes chat goes nuts).

So yeh, we can talk about this again when my product is super HD and sexified like GOM's.