Michael Pachter is a consumer analyst at Wedbush Morgan, a leading financial services and investment firm. He hosts a weekly show on gametrailers.com, in which he answers user e-mailed questions. This week, among other topics, he makes his prediction on the future of E-sports, the full video can be found here.
In summary, Pachter says that last year he would have compared E-sports to women's basketball, but this year it is comparable to college baseball, a larger, and yet still limited audience. He expects the audience for E-sports to double every two years for the next ten years. He also says that the most important part of E-sports is building a competitive community where everyone can easily compare their skill levels. This is quite an optimistic outlook on his part, even predicting that E-sports will be televised in the not-too-distant future.
Basically:
1. Audience size will double every two years over the next 10 years
2. E-sports is comparable to College Baseball
3. An active, playing community is key to growth
4. E-sports will eventually be on TV
Edit: My mistake, he compares to college baseball, not basketball. I misheard him. Special thanks to Encrypto for noticing.
I would also like to add that if this is your first experience with Pachter, you should not take the embedded three minute video below as proof of his ignorance. He does tend to over-exaggerate, but it must be remembered that for someone who is so vocal in the gaming community, three minutes of negative footage isn't all that much. He tends to ramble off script, and I think that that is the source of many of these quotes. Please try to comment on what he said now rather than nit-picking prior mistakes.
On February 19 2012 10:37 hunger wrote: I always thought iNcontroL seemed like a WNBA player...
Regardless of the unnecessary iNcontroL bashing, bashing college basketball by comparing it to the WNBA? College basketball has so many more viewers than the WNBA it's not even close.
That one might be difficult, considering the *playing community has been declining by pretty large amounts every season. well, we'll see what happens after HOTS!
I've never heard of Wedbush Morgan, it is def not a leading financial services firm. Also, I would wager that WNBA still has more fans than Esports does. I would say Esports is similar to billiards/bowling in terms of viewership, and the optimistic case would be MMA/UFC.
This is a very awesome prediction to be made by someone like him, but something else has to be said -- this is for E-Sports, not necessarily Starcraft and that has to be swallowed. SC2 might be left completely in the dust as some other game, one that hasn't even started production yet perhaps, comes out of nowhere and takes it. If we want this shit to flourish, we need to support ANYTHING that has potential to make E-Sports big. Not just Starcraft.
Although, I would love it for SC2 to be on TV 10 years from now ^_^
On February 19 2012 10:46 kakaman wrote: I've never heard of Wedbush Morgan, it is def not a leading financial services firm. Also, I would wager that WNBA still has more fans than Esports does. I would say Esports is similar to billiards/bowling in terms of viewership, and the optimistic case would be MMA/UFC.
WNBA does not has more fans than e-sports does, please.
On February 19 2012 10:46 kakaman wrote: I've never heard of Wedbush Morgan, it is def not a leading financial services firm. Also, I would wager that WNBA still has more fans than Esports does. I would say Esports is similar to billiards/bowling in terms of viewership, and the optimistic case would be MMA/UFC.
WNBA does not has more fans than e-sports does, please.
"Fan" is a very loosely defined term, on both sides of the coin. WNBA does have more fans than Esports, I would bet, however. It's not a longshot at all.
On February 19 2012 10:46 kakaman wrote: I've never heard of Wedbush Morgan, it is def not a leading financial services firm. Also, I would wager that WNBA still has more fans than Esports does. I would say Esports is similar to billiards/bowling in terms of viewership, and the optimistic case would be MMA/UFC.
I think the OP confused Wedbush Morgan with JP Morgan, cas then it would make more sense.
On February 19 2012 10:46 kakaman wrote: I've never heard of Wedbush Morgan, it is def not a leading financial services firm. Also, I would wager that WNBA still has more fans than Esports does. I would say Esports is similar to billiards/bowling in terms of viewership, and the optimistic case would be MMA/UFC.
I think the OP confused Wedbush Morgan with JP Morgan, cas then it would make more sense.
To say Esports is comparable to college basketball, well, it seems laughable. Even the WNBA seems out of our league(lol pun). The only possible way these are comparable is by taking our largest events and comparing them to their regular season. I would be very surprised if the WNBA finals was getting less then a couple million viewers, and that's far beyond what any esport events gets, let alone comparing it to March Madness.
A better comparison is women's collehge basketball imo.
Esports can easily grow 100% a year the next ten years i think. Maybe reason why some companys try so hard atm to get in on it. Esport will be a competitor for other "real life" sports, its only a matter of time. The younger generation now who watch and like esports will still do so when they get 30 and 40 and 50. Thoose people wont suddenly turn to watching tennis or golf or soccer for 100% while never watching esports annymore. So its only a matter of time till the older generation, (thoose who never watch esports) has been replaced by the now still young generation who does like esports. Only thing that can threaten esports growth if is the youth will suddenly stop liking video games and start liking something else wich is extremely unlikely atm and for the next 10 years.
Computer games have gotten alot less nerdy in the past 10 years. Wow and latest generation consoles changed so much. Gaming became a thing for the whole family. Games are alot more mainstream now and socially accepted, its almost like a "normal" sports, Not quiet but its coming closer every day. just look at the barcraft examples. instead of going to pub with friends to watch a championsleague final, people go to see starcraft.
GT is the worst in credibility for anything that they do. Don't listen to a thing they say. He had more swtor then any other game in his esports stock footage. as much as I'd like to rejoice in this it really doesn't mean anything.
Michael Pachter is the Managing Director, Equity Research providing coverage across the Digital Media sector and Head of Research for the Private Shares Group. He has been recognized as StarMine’s “Top Earnings Estimator” year after year and “Best on the Street” by the Wall Street Journal. Michael brings over 20 years of experience as a financial professional to the Private Shares Group along with extensive knowledge across the social media sector in both public and private companies. Mr. Pachter holds an M.B.A. from the Anderson School at the University of California at Los Angeles, a juris doctor from Pepperdine University, an LL.M. in Taxation from the University of Florida, and a bachelor’s in Political Science from California State University, Northridge.
wow didnt knew a Pentium 3.2 was 2 Grand... Guess i should have got a another PS3 to play Starcraft on as its the best single player turn based real time strategie game.
This guy is retarded most of the time. He actually was encouraging micro-transaction games and saying that it was the best model out there for making a successful game. Unfortunately, in a sense he was right in the fact that f2p games with a micro-transaction system are extremely popular given the free aspect but for actual quality in a game, I don't think that's the correct method at all. I like how he says consoles are the best systems because PS3 and Xbox360 are better than 85/90% of PCs (assuming this was made around the time Crysis came out). What's sad is that most PCs aren't used for gaming and that comparison is pointless. I don't mean to sound negative but this guy is definitely the wrong person to listen to about future gaming predictions. He is constantly ridiculed for his audacious claims and frankly gets more wrong than right.
Hmm hes wrong about consoles then i hope. Maybe they best for the business since they can sell a new model every 1-2 year and still sell pc,s as well,but they terrible for gaming, well at least i personally hate them. How can one even game without a keyboard ?:s Though maybe hes even right about this unfortunatly, consoles seem to be popular in the biggest and most important market (the usa) and they probably apeal more to the casual gamer or people who only game verry little then pc games do.
I don't think that a three minute video of occasional things he has over-exaggerated completely invalidates his opinion. While I do think this is an over-estimate, that video of his mistakes should not suddenly make everything he says wrong. He does happen to have a more important games analyst job than anyone posting in here, and that should mean something.
well the highest number of vieuwers an esports activity had was like 50k when starcraft just came out The highest amount of vieuwers i have recently seen was 200k people watching a lol game (wats in a name) and then we dont even count all the vieuwers, only the ones on one (western) stream So thats already doubled every year during the past 2 years? 3.2m seems like a stretch, definatly in 10 years but is it realy impossible?
100kx2^10 would be 100 million btw wich seems completely rediculous but i can easily imagine 1m vieuwers for some esports event 10 years from now
On February 19 2012 11:02 hmunkey wrote: Isn't this the guy who's wrong about pretty much everything? Like so wrong that gaming blogs make reference to his name as a joke?
I really hope this guy is right on a prediction for once...
Fans of specific systems and bloggers like to give Pachter shit because he speaks his mind and doesn't sugar coat anything. If he is wrong, he will be the first to admit it. But he will go one step further, explain why he thought what he did and what data he missed that made him wrong.
Pachter gets paid a lot of money(and works very very very hard, watch the video on his average day to see) and is right a lot of the time. He is extreamly good at what he does and is very respected in the financial industry. If he says E-sports has a future and solid growth, it means that it was worth this time to look at. That is a really good sign for Esports as a whole, because it means someone wanted(and likely paid) Pachter to look at it. He is also well respected and liked in the gaming industry for making very blunt, to the point calls.
I am sure anyone running a league would love for a few hours of Mr. Pachter's time to discuss the future of Esports.
On February 19 2012 10:30 confusedcrib wrote: Edit: My mistake, he compares to college baseball, not basketball. I misheard him. Special thanks to Encrypto for noticing
HUGE difference there lol. Was about to say how this analyst guys was nuts! I know very little about college baseball except that the NCAA championships might make it on ESPN or ESPN2 whenever they occur once a year.
the very first seconds will make any SC2 fan rage.
It is Pachter btw.
"ps3 is stronger then 95% of the computers out there"
"xbox 360 is stronger then 85% of the computers out there"
.... "inserts foot into idiots jaw"
I think this guy has a negative impact on esports because he is such an idiot.
That video is a joke. A bunch of fanboys cutting together a few times Pachter misspoke into a video. They take a guy who is a lawyer training and spend the most of the time looking at market trends, effective marketing and things that have nothing to do if this PC is better than that counsel. They leave out the part where they ask a panel what the number one selling game this year will be and Pachter answers with the exact game, number of units solid, profit and projected sales until the end of the year. Per counsel and over all.
Pachter is a pretty smart guy, just don't ask him to build a computer.
esports is not only sc2 :3. And with ingame streams and advanced observing tools its quiet likely that more people will spectate. Especially if they will reach tv ... i watched tf2 ... and guildwars pvp without ever having played those games. (keeping my hands of some games because i know it will drain my time >.< ). So its a save bet to say this basically ... seeing how games throw out their 1m dollar tournament at the start, where no one wants to miss one team that found out the biggest imbalance and abuses it to win. No i am not talking about the reaper, holding beta reapers was easy as pie. (the follow up marauders were a bit tougher to deal with lol). Not a fangirl though if games would become more popular (and casual) tempts devs to become like EA. (well not the devs but their bosses) But esport can do what it wants, if games get tainted by greed, they become bad, if they are bad they are easily replaced by a small team of devs. So there is nothing to worry about for me. Even EA has something good, they keep casuals away from ruining the good games.
And well everyone knows the hardware in the pcs is way better then in the ps3, but the advantage of the ps3 is that there are no differences in hardware. Well that was before microsoft ruined console games. The general rule now multi platform games use the pc. (xbox and ps3 programming is so different, making it run on both really makes the ps3 look shabby, as programming for xbox is easier but well doesn't give the output to battle the raw power of a computer). But if you explain it to casuals, of course you say that the ps3 is better, they don't need more information. When i talk to people on why multiplatforming sucks for the ps3 and explain it detailed, they get this blank look, bit of a sadistic streak of mine.
I'll just say this. Those who can and do accurately predict future events keep their mouth shut and make money by aligning their monetary bets (trades/investments) with their predictions. Those who can't blab to the public.
On February 19 2012 10:30 confusedcrib wrote: Edit: My mistake, he compares to college baseball, not basketball. I misheard him. Special thanks to Encrypto for noticing
HUGE difference there lol. Was about to say how this analyst guys was nuts! I know very little about college baseball except that the NCAA championships might make it on ESPN or ESPN2 whenever they occur once a year.
Yeah i can almost take the guy seriously now. Second i saw he compared it to college basketball i just deemed him a moron. Let's just say i don't foresee people feverishly filling out March Madness brackets for SC2 or LOL in the future.
I hope that this growth he speculates will be true. I'm giving a good effort to do what I can to spread the cause, let's hope everyone else will as well.
Comparable to college basketball? That's laughable. College basketball has hundreds of thousands (if not 1 million+) live spectators every week at arenas throughout the country plus millions more view on TV. E-sports is nowhere close to this and never will be.
Edit: Oh, baseball? I guess that's a little more reasonable, but still pretty far off considering how many live spectated games are played on any given day during the season.
College basketball has about 50x as many viewers as Esports as a whole does.
Are you serious? He's making an example and he's not writing in a literal sense. It's blatantly obvious he's drawing a comparison.
Well it's an awful example/comparison then because the two are nothing like eachother. Even the WNBA draws far more attention than Esports as a whole. (at least in the US)
edit: Just saw that he meant College Baseball, not Basketball. lawllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllll. That's definetely a much closer comparison, but I'd still say CB has a higher overall viewership
one of the most difficult things comparing computer games to real life activities is if you suck at starcraft, it is hard to enjoy playing the game. whereas if you suck at basketball you can still run around with your friends and have a good time, even if you make 0 shots.
also the learning curve is just too steep for most non-players to grasp the concept of what's going on in the game.
anyways i love this game and hope the culture stays alive at least in korea.
On February 19 2012 11:57 Devolved wrote: Comparable to college basketball? That's laughable. College basketball has hundreds of thousands (if not 1 million+) live spectators every week at arenas throughout the country plus millions more view on TV. E-sports is nowhere close to this and never will be.
the very first seconds will make any SC2 fan rage.
It is Pachter btw.
Oh my god. Did he actually say "turn based" and "single player"? I guess he isn't the only one who is baffled. The "nature" of RTS games is that they aren't turn based... Hence the 'RT' As for why they aren't good on console... did anyone play Starcraft 1 on the N64? THAT SHIT WAS HAAAAAARD!!!! I had like 0.5 APM I think.
As for the OP, I suppose Mr. Pachter's predictions are rather optimistic.. I hope he's right! :D
I am a fan of Pachter but he knows nothing about the esports scene. He barely talks about the PC community at all. He just needs to stick to the console games.
I absolutely despise Pachter...I've watched a ton of his stuff and I feel dumber every time I do so. He either says blatantly obvious things or actually does some speculation and is almost always wrong. I frequent the gametrailers boards and he's basically the laughing stock of that place.
As for his points, 1. Audience size will double every two years over the next 10 years
2. E-sports is comparable to College Baseball
3. An active, playing community is key to growth
4. E-sports will eventually be on TV
1. That'd be nice, but I doubt it 2. I can see that 3. Duh 4. This corresponds directly with number 1. If the market is there, it'll happen.
On February 19 2012 11:57 Devolved wrote: Comparable to college basketball? That's laughable. College basketball has hundreds of thousands (if not 1 million+) live spectators every week at arenas throughout the country plus millions more view on TV. E-sports is nowhere close to this and never will be.
Edit: Oh, baseball? I guess that's a little more reasonable, but still pretty far off considering how many live spectated games are played on any given day during the season.
You say this so definitively. What makes you think it?
the very first seconds will make any SC2 fan rage.
It is Pachter btw.
BahahahahahahaHAHAHAHAHAHAHA
Ok This makes this topic hilarious, who is this guy and how the hell did he get a job?!
I mean I don't visit gametrailers and such sites because I know they are just clueless brown nosed b-journalist working with game reviews but never in my wildest imagination could I have come up with such a guy.
Reminded me of GAF lol. To those who don't know Pachter is a guy who gets everything wrong, but still after even so many years, is supported by his company to publish rubbish media statements.
The fact that he thinks e-sports will be on TV shows how much he knows about this industry. The majority of viewers are moving away from the TV and towards online streaming as far as I can see.
FYI Michael Pachter doesn't know anything. His method of analysis is "toss enough shit at the wall and some of it will stink". Some of his claims have included
"Borderlands will fail and is being sent out to die" (game is best selling original IP that year)
"Consoles are far more powerful than PCs" (this was not the case then and certainly is not the case now).
Basically don't pay any attention to what he has to say, paying him attention legitimises his position.
I'd say that's rather optimistic. Uhh, SC2's player base is declining. Halo, the 3rd(?) biggest esport in the US, has been declining rapidly over the past several years. CS is consistent in central-eastern Europe. CoD is growing steadily in the US. LoL is also growing steadily. Brood War is still a national sport in South Korea. etc. But overall, I think it will grow steadily, but doubling every 2 years is really, really stretching it.
On February 19 2012 18:41 JudicatorHammurabi wrote: I'd say that's rather optimistic. Uhh, SC2's player base is declining. Halo, the 3rd(?) biggest esport in the US, has been declining rapidly over the past several years. CS is consistent in central-eastern Europe. CoD is growing steadily in the US. LoL is also growing steadily. Brood War is still a national sport in South Korea. etc. But overall, I think it will grow steadily, but doubling every 2 years is really, really stretching it.
Meh. Huge e-sports titles coming out in the near future include Dota2 (which already draws upwards of 8-9k viewers on a daily basis for a game that is in early beta and lacks a central community site) and CS:GO (hopefully will revitalize the CS community). The thing that more or less guarantees the growth of e-sports is that developers are now actively trying to make their games e-sports. The biggest example of this is Valve with Dota2. They are literally pulling out all the stops to make it spectator/broadcast friendly.
EDIT: Don't want to confuse this with me as agreeing with Pachter. Just wanted to say that steady, sustained growth in e-sports is to be expected. SC2 aside, there are plenty of other e-sports titles coming along.
Michael Pachter is a consumer analyst at Wedbush Morgan, a leading financial services and investment firm.
Never heard of Michael Pachter, never heard of Wedbush Morgan. After watching his opinion on RTS that it's a "single player turn based" genre and that's why it doesn't work on consoles, I conclude that he is a very incompetent at his job and hence his opinion means nothing to me. Also, Esports viewership may indeed go up, but i have very little faith that SC2 will go beyond it's current point, in my opinion it will only go down and moba type games such as LoL & Dota2 will be by far and beyond the most viewed games and I really don't see any game dethroning LoL as the Esports flagship game anytime soon, influenced also because of the companies make an absolutely awesome user interface to promote esports and competitive gaming and not only that but take active measures to cultivate and grow the following and don't cripple tournament organizers with 50% fee's on ad revenue.
Hm, no idea where that vent came from, maybe cos I grew up with blizz and now I'm starting to really dislike them since they are slowly turning into EA games -.-
On February 19 2012 19:14 Nihilnovi wrote: Michael Pachter is a consumer analyst at Wedbush Morgan, a leading financial services and investment firm.
Never heard of Michael Pachter, never heard of Wedbush Morgan. After watching his opinion on RTS that it's a "single player turn based" genre and that's why it doesn't work on consoles, I conclude that he is a very incompetent at his job and hence his opinion means nothing to me. Also, Esports viewership may indeed go up, but i have very little faith that SC2 will go beyond it's current point, in my opinion it will only go down and moba type games such as LoL & Dota2 will be by far and beyond the most viewed games and I really don't see any game dethroning LoL as the Esports flagship game anytime soon, influenced also because of the companies make an absolutely awesome user interface to promote esports and competitive gaming and not only that but take active measures to cultivate and grow the following and don't cripple tournament organizers with 50% fee's on ad revenue.
Hm, no idea where that vent came from, maybe cos I grew up with blizz and now I'm starting to really dislike them since they are slowly turning into EA games -.-
I have to give credit to Riot here. They've developed a game that is fun, free and easy to get into. A very intelligent business model that I think Valve will steal.
If Valve was smart (and I think they are), they would make Dota 2 free. They will surely recoup any losses just with people buying random shit on steam. The free to play model works so much better with Dota2 than LoL and it is working amazing for Riot.
The OP says that "an active, playing community is key to growth".
This part makes me doubt his prediction (about sc2 anyway, maybe not esports in general) because there are huge numbers of people who own SC2 and watch MLG etc but don't actually play the game in any significant way, and I can't help thinking that these people are going to slowly lose interest in SC2 and drift away to more casual-friendly games.
Analysts are paid to influence the news cycle, not to give /you/ free analysis (if you want their real opinion you will be charged thousands of dollars to get Wedbush's reports on whatever company you're following).
Pachter has said Wii was a fad about a thousand times since 2006 because that's what he was being paid to get into people's heads. And look, it worked, the gaming press still believe Wii was just good marketing rather than an actual success.
Oh jesus now even TeamLiquid provides a platform to spread that moron's point of view?
It doesn't even matter if he says something that makes sense, well common sense rather, when it's just out of 2000 predictions. It's garbage analysts like him that make some game studios / publishers decide to make shitty steps.
How this guy is seriously highly regarded, I dunno. But it's most likely duo to connections in the business rather than actual knowledge about the game industry. And let's not even talk about his knowledge about eSports, every TeamLiquid user surpasses him in that aspect, by miles.
Edit:
I mean yeh, obviously eSports is going to grow. Of course the chance that a console has a price drop after 3-4 years is high. No doubt publishers are intrigued by the idea of DLC. Clearly Modern Warfare 3, 4, 5 and 6 are going to sell like hotdogs.
It's a pity that some people are impressed by the obvious things he predicts right, while they manage to ignore everything that's been wrong entirely. From that point of view, it's easy to be considered a genius.
Edit2:
Did you know, Pachter predicted that Blizzard is going to turn BNet2.0 into something requiring a monthly fee? In fact many customers were confused after this and asked Blizzard, who then responded something along the lines "we don't know who that guy is but we can assure you, BNet2.0 will not have a monthly fee."
Been following Pachter for about 2 years now on Pach Attack. Like half a year ago he knew nothing of E-sports :D He was taking CoD as an example: "Who wants to watch people play, when they can play the game themselves". That made me really laugh. I guess right now his opinion has changed greatly.
I don't even think televised matches will be that successful, since streaming just works so much better. During the stream you can do other things too, like chatting with friends about the matches etc. So I don't think it will pick on very well.
On February 19 2012 11:23 confusedcrib wrote: I don't think that a three minute video of occasional things he has over-exaggerated completely invalidates his opinion. While I do think this is an over-estimate, that video of his mistakes should not suddenly make everything he says wrong. He does happen to have a more important games analyst job than anyone posting in here, and that should mean something.
A video just cherry picking dumb things someone has said over a few years period is one thing, but these "mistakes" are pretty fucking off the mark. I have nothing against the guy (never heard of him before), but from what I saw in that video I would say he understands very little about things he claims he knows much about. If he honestly thought that "Real Time Strategy" means "Turn Based Single Player" then I really don't know what to make of his predictions.
MLG doubled their viewership in only 6 months. The growth rate, at least in the past year, is certainly enough to justify those projections. (Indeed, based purely on the last year's results, doubling every two might even seem overly conservative.)
The question then becomes: Where does the growth stop? I don't think it's going to be any time in the near future...
We're seeing a rise in developers creating games with a mind to the audience and professional scene. Blizzard obviously has an advantage here with SC2 primarily due to the experience gleaned from the happy accident that was SC:BW in Korea. And a lot of the growth in eSports over the past year is the BW edge bearing fruit in the nascent SC2 scene. But we're also seeing fighting game makers increasingly include features specific to tournament environments, MOBA developers throwing enormous sums of money at tournaments, and so on. Until such time that eSports proves that it doesn't work in a financial sense, people are going to continue to throw money at it. And it's going to keep growing.
"ps3 is stronger then 95% of the computers out there"
"xbox 360 is stronger then 85% of the computers out there"
.... "inserts foot into idiots jaw"
I think this guy has a negative impact on esports because he is such an idiot.
That movie it's like from February 2011. I don't have ps3/xbox/wii, i have only PC... but if you put all computers in one bag at this time some part of this 95% may be true. Sure we buy new PC's very often because we are nerds and we are trying constantly upgrade our hardware. But many kids/people out there don't. It's better to buy console in 3-4 years and play good games constantly. At some point consoles are more fun... I can ha
The guy talk total bullshit about PC vs Console. It isn't that console is stronger than PC. Games are just better optimized for one hardware that sits in PS3 than list of Ati/Nvidia/AMD/Intel who knows what cards and CPUS on the market... That's why...
It's not about power of the Computer, development of PC game is much much expensive. Process of making game that works on ATI 5850 and GTX 580 it's much harder... On ps3 tho they have something like NVIDIA 7900GT slightly modified... Still many games look exactly the same.
MLG doubled their viewership in only 6 months. The growth rate, at least in the past year, is certainly enough to justify those projections. (Indeed, based purely on the last year's results, doubling every two might even seem overly conservative.)
The question then becomes: Where does the growth stop? I don't think it's going to be any time in the near future...
We're seeing a rise in developers creating games with a mind to the audience and professional scene. Blizzard obviously has an advantage here with SC2 primarily due to the experience gleaned from the happy accident that was SC:BW in Korea. And a lot of the growth in eSports over the past year is the BW edge bearing fruit in the nascent SC2 scene. But we're also seeing fighting game makers increasingly include features specific to tournament environments, MOBA developers throwing enormous sums of money at tournaments, and so on. Until such time that eSports proves that it doesn't work in a financial sense, people are going to continue to throw money at it. And it's going to keep growing.
You can't compare Columbus and Providence as Providence were the finals of a year-long season. Championship matches will always have a better rating than season matches, in any sports.
if you take out Providence (finals), i feel that most audiences are plateauing since October/November... Anyway, "e-sports" may grow a lot more on the future, but MOBA like games seem to be way more dynamic than Starcraft
this m. pachter is a total idiot in my eyes. he predicts shit all the time and it never. NEVER happens (related to thos things i read to videogames). Dont know who pays him money for that.
I'm not very optimistic about the future of E-sports:| BW scene had it figured, and got the basic right - real, meaningful contracts, firm sponsorship, central governing body, long term plans and such.
Problem with SC2 is that now we have Western firms in the mix, and as always, it's all about quick money and riding the fame wave. There are no long term plans as everyone wants results right now..take for example IGN who sponsored a team for a full 6 months. Foreign teams are offering Korean players what I would guess as ridiculous sums of money, and will later realise that it mihgt not have been such a good move. NA scene is almost dead because of that.
I took some time to gather stats for 1v1 from SC2 ranks, and this is what we can see:
I'm not sure if the numbers for [S5] are legit or still not gathered fully, but either way the gaming masses have changed, it's all about the next hit game, and then you just move onto another, and so on.
Edit: the graphs are missing Chinese server, that would explain the difference between increase in Total numbers and decrease in all other servers at the same time.
On February 19 2012 10:51 Onlinejaguar wrote: Doubling every 2 years for the next 10? no way will this happen. I believe it will continue to grow but not at this rate.
This is how I feel too, it's just not realistic to expect eSports fans to double 5 times within a 10 year period...
while patcher is known for getting things wrong a lot of the time, one can't deny his insider access. He may very well have numbers we just don't have and while he is probably wrong its still a good sign for esports.
On February 19 2012 22:09 Odoakar wrote: I'm not very optimistic about the future of E-sports:| BW scene had it figured, and got the basic right - real, meaningful contracts, firm sponsorship, central governing body, long term plans and such.
Problem with SC2 is that now we have Western firms in the mix, and as always, it's all about quick money and riding the fame wave. There are no long term plans as everyone wants results right now..take for example IGN who sponsored a team for a full 6 months. Foreign teams are offering Korean players what I would guess as ridiculous sums of money, and will later realise that it mihgt not have been such a good move. NA scene is almost dead because of that.
I took some time to gather stats for 1v1 from SC2 ranks, and this is what we can see:
I'm not sure if the numbers for [S5] are legit or still not gathered fully, but either way the gaming masses have changed, it's all about the next hit game, and then you just move onto another, and so on.
Edit: the graphs are missing Chinese server, that would explain the difference between increase in Total numbers and decrease in all other servers at the same time.
Yeah, this is what will eventually be the death of SC2's popularity. It's pointless to hope that people who don't play will remain spectators forever, or that a lot of people who never played will start watching the game.
At the end of the day, it's still a video game. People need to have a personal bond with the game, not to mention a good level of understanding of the game itself. Without the players, the number of spectators will slowly but surely dwindle.
Hmm i want to point something out. I recently didn't saw streamer with over 10k people on it... maybe Idra... MC before HSC...
and League of Legends?
19k/14k and many many people with large numbers... middle of the weak at 16:00 CET, there is guy with 14 k another with 8 and 4-6 places with 4-6 k of Viewers.... twice as much compared to SC2
SC2 popularity is gone ? Maybe that's the reason why blizzard didn't implement things that they told they will be a year after WOL release??? They aren't working witch other games? They moved HoTS to 2013...
Yeah, but LoL is free to play and so way way more people play it. If sc2 had LoL's player base, our streamers would be getting way more viewers. All my friends play lol and they all tried and quit starcraft 2. Their reason? LoL is easy, starcraft was stressful.
On February 19 2012 22:34 Micket wrote: Yeah, but LoL is free to play and so way way more people play it. If sc2 had LoL's player base, our streamers would be getting way more viewers. All my friends play lol and they all tried and quit starcraft 2. Their reason? LoL is easy, starcraft was stressful.
Which doesn't mean that this will save LoL from heavy fluctuation. And guys. Stop discussing things like Sc2 vs. LoL because guess what, its all eSports. If LoL will attract big businesses over long time, it is also good for SC2. Stop trying to be the BEST out of eSports. You need to start to think as a whole. If eSports in general will be aknowledge I'm fine with having the 2nd or 3rd biggest community and prizepools and sponors and other stuff because guess what; sc2 and RTS in general aren't something to market to everyone. Compare it to some simple sport like soccer. Easy to understand. Easy to watch(if the round thing hits the rectangle thing....). Big community. I don't watch (ice)hockey because I don't know the rules. I watch Rugby only because I know the rules. Do I watch Chess? No because I don't understand most of the things they do. What is RTS in the above example? I would consider it more the chess'ish game with some more action mixed in.
Edit @ the chart above: I wouldn't consider this something special. Kinda normal for every game. Would you dig up some graphs about WoW it would look the same. And when the expansion hits they go up again just to fall
I get the impression that the doubling every two years projection was a number he kinda pulled out of his ass, but the question is whether or not he was in the right ballpark.
Let's take a look at the context in which eSports is growing.
The gaming industry as a whole is doing very well. They've been consistently posting annual growth rates above 10% in an otherwise stagnating global economy.
If we look at ESA's 2011 statistics, 72% of American households play games (up from 68% in 2009 and 67% in 2007), the average age is up to 37 (up from 35 in 2009 and 33 in 2007), and there are now more gamers above 50 than there are under 18. The generation that grew up with Atari and Nintendo simply didn't stop playing games as they aged. They're increasingly turning to games (over, say, television) to satisfy their entertainment needs. And that's the environment in which they're raising the next generation.
So... population of "gamers"? Growing. No sign of it stopping anytime soon.
The next question we need to ask is: Do people want to watch other people playing games? And the answer to that one too, I think, is an unequivocal yes. Just look at the sheer amount of traffic going to video game content on YouTube.
So... population of "gaming spectators"? That's growing, too. Exponentially, even, thanks to viral dissemination through social media.
And that brings us to eSports, which is a niche within the overall spectated gaming market where people watch gamers who are super amazingly gosu because they've devoted their lives to getting good. 2011 was the year that really put eSports on the map. But eSports in general has a lot of the ingredients that should give it staying power as competition for people's time (such as emotional investment in players, teams, and/or casters beyond simply enjoying the game).
Folks here have been pointing pointing to the decline of SC2 ladder statistics as a sign that eSports is doomed. But the numbers don't actually back that up:
Dreamhack Summer 2011 (June) - 1494026 unique viewers Battle.net SC2 Season 2 (March-July) - 2271695 active 1v1 players
MLG's numbers showed even greater increases during that timeframe.
Despite the fact that less people are actually playing SC2, more people are tuning in to watch. From that, we can conclude at least one of two things:
1) People would rather watch SC2 than play it. 2) The growth in eSports is coming from games other than SC2.
Both of those bode well for the future of eSports. Some games might have longevity as a spectator sport that outlasts their commercial relevance as a consumer product; SC:BW as an eSport lasted years and years beyond the point where regular people played it in significant numbers.
I don't know if eSports will continue to double every two years. But it is fairly safe to say that eSports viewership is a growing niche of a growing demographic in a industry that's coming to dominate people's leasure time.
On February 19 2012 22:34 Micket wrote: Yeah, but LoL is free to play and so way way more people play it. If sc2 had LoL's player base, our streamers would be getting way more viewers. All my friends play lol and they all tried and quit starcraft 2. Their reason? LoL is easy, starcraft was stressful.
Yea me too, last week i was on pizza with friends. all of them were semi pro/ casual CS 1.6 player / one was SC:BW player... They all played SC2... I even give them my beta keys, 4 of them bought game... we talk about games nowadays get back for old CS 1.6 times. They find LoL more fun than SC2, they are even comparing it to CS 1.6. Yea it's easier but who cares?
I think id isn't about price of the game, you bought game once than you play for free... It's about game itself.
But on regular servers for casual palyer one round you lost one round you won... constantly. Killing was rather easy. Plaing was fun, improving was fun... Even when someone BM'ed you there were 2-3 people thinking that he is talking bullshit and raging. Even if you got beaten badly by some pro at that game you killed some other players. You may lost the game but you won some battles. And playing with friends was much easier.
Yea SC2 is harder game. Getting better at game is harder and you when you get bm'ed you are alone... Chat don't solve that problem. Leader is hard... you have bad day you are loosing like 6-5 times in the row. Multiply that by 5 times and you are done. Yea maybe some would say, Frozenrb you sux at your protos, don't be soft. Maybe I do, maybe ladder is constantly trying to get you 50% win ratio, but at the end of the day you won't get satisfaction by making something good in lost games. Some would say, there is 2v2/4v4/3v3 but it's unbalanced. I played with friends 4v4 but it wasn't so funny like CS1.6, when you walk into sever.
I feel like i quit SC2 the same reasons i quit CS 1.6 but a lot faster! I must say i didn't have time to dedicate enough.
I'm not talking about pro players, clan CS 1.6 matches. Pro players, dedicated people will play the game no matter what. They aren't the benchmark of successful games. I feel like SC2 is unforgiving game only for narrow type of people. And people who bought it because there was such trend, people was talking about that it will be eSport success.
Being an analyst would be so sick cool. I'd definitely go for the Pachter style, make 8000 predictions, get 1 right. Get paid for the rest of my life style of analysis.
On February 19 2012 22:09 Odoakar wrote: I'm not very optimistic about the future of E-sports:| BW scene had it figured, and got the basic right - real, meaningful contracts, firm sponsorship, central governing body, long term plans and such.
Problem with SC2 is that now we have Western firms in the mix, and as always, it's all about quick money and riding the fame wave. There are no long term plans as everyone wants results right now..take for example IGN who sponsored a team for a full 6 months. Foreign teams are offering Korean players what I would guess as ridiculous sums of money, and will later realise that it mihgt not have been such a good move. NA scene is almost dead because of that.
I took some time to gather stats for 1v1 from SC2 ranks, and this is what we can see:
I'm not sure if the numbers for [S5] are legit or still not gathered fully, but either way the gaming masses have changed, it's all about the next hit game, and then you just move onto another, and so on.
Edit: the graphs are missing Chinese server, that would explain the difference between increase in Total numbers and decrease in all other servers at the same time.
That's wrong. Their (SC2 ranks) updating from season 6 is messing with season 5. Before Season 6 started Season 5 was at around 800,000. It's still declining, but not as crazy as you make it seem.
On February 19 2012 11:23 confusedcrib wrote: I don't think that a three minute video of occasional things he has over-exaggerated completely invalidates his opinion. While I do think this is an over-estimate, that video of his mistakes should not suddenly make everything he says wrong. He does happen to have a more important games analyst job than anyone posting in here, and that should mean something.
Some people just talk their way into the job, meaning they are good with words and make themself look believable. Its up to you if you trust him. For me he is just doing what he has to do, feed the bullshit to media.
EPT
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