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All I'm gonna say is, a big part of the unimaginable success BW has had in south Korea is the fact that important tournaments were being held very scarcely.
You get fed up with what you abuse of. Snickers bars end up tasting bad and bitter when you have them several times a day. Not to mention you become fat and ugly.
SC2 is, in so many ways, heading in the wrong direction. Glad to see Grubby understanding that.
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Just let me follow a handful of my favorite players through a single tourney that shows on a regular basis.
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Oversaturation is just not a problem.
If you don't want to watch. Don't watch.
Atm i tend to watcho only really big tournaments and even these don't really make me "Wow". But thats because the game is stale and pretty boring atm. Hots isn't gonna change a thing as it seems... Well, "meh" games tend to die, just that SC2 is in a situation were it could and can survie pretty long onhis name and hype alone.
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I do honestly think the number of tournaments are a problem.
Money The sponsors money gets spread out. There is a lot of smaller tournaments that if merged, could have been a big one, or the bigger ones could have been even bigger.
Fatigue and placement. It is very exhausting to sit and watch the actual big tournaments for a whole weekend. Look at the biggest tournaments in soccer (or European football) which is one of the biggest sports in my country. They don't show matches for a whole weekend. People got other stuff to do. Champions league or national team games are spread out. I think it is cool to have some of those endurance tournaments, but there are just too many. By splitting Dreamhack up over 2 weekends it would become better. We would have time to do stuff during the day, without loosing games of our favorite players. And the tournaments may even end earlier the same day. Though I do not mind them ending late on a saturday. I do mind that the finals end late on a sunday. Which is the most sensible time to place a barcraft. I have never attended to one because of that. Stupid sunday finals.
Being active getting more people to watch. Now this is a different one. This is the community that needs to become better, though I know from my own experience that it is hard because of the time and placement of tournaments that would be worth dragging people into watching. If you have a big screen hook your computer up to it and watch with your friends hanging out instead of sitting for yourself watching. Don't set up the whole day for it but do it in the evening. If people are new to watching it a whole weekend is insane and becomes boring.
Sort the Tournaments Give us some way of sorting the tournament. I only want to follow the big tournaments, and i do not want to pay to watch them. Why? because I can see equally awesome tournaments for free. But if I can sort out in all the small tournaments, and have my own calender of the big ones, I would have a lot easier time to know when they happen. I am always surprised the same week when there is a big tournament because the calender is flooded.
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On October 17 2012 16:50 QRhere wrote: All I'm gonna say is, a big part of the unimaginable success BW has had in south Korea is the fact that important tournaments were being held very scarcely.
You get fed up with what you abuse of. Snickers bars end up tasting bad and bitter when you have them several times a day. Not to mention you become fat and ugly.
SC2 is, in so many ways, heading in the wrong direction. Glad to see Grubby understanding that.
BW was succesfull in Korea, but only in Korea. SC2 take a better direction than BW in the rest of the world.
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On October 17 2012 18:29 Wertheron wrote:Show nested quote +On October 17 2012 16:50 QRhere wrote: All I'm gonna say is, a big part of the unimaginable success BW has had in south Korea is the fact that important tournaments were being held very scarcely.
You get fed up with what you abuse of. Snickers bars end up tasting bad and bitter when you have them several times a day. Not to mention you become fat and ugly.
SC2 is, in so many ways, heading in the wrong direction. Glad to see Grubby understanding that. BW was succesfull in Korea, but only in Korea. SC2 take a better direction than BW in the rest of the world.
BW was successful only in Korea because they were the only ones to work their asses off to exploit it. Had SC1 had the same mediatization as SC2, everything would be ENDLESSLY different. For one we wouldn't have to cope with how shaky the SC2 scene is from a spectator POV, because Blizzard would actually know how to make an enjoyable game.
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Way too many tournaments to follow. I don't even follow GSL completely. 4 hrs a day is too much to watch. So that leaves out all the other tournaments NASL, IPL, GSTL, Dreamhack, MLG, Blizzcon, Homestory. Some are free, some are pay, obviously I won't pay to watch someone i can watch for free somewhere. I think the SC2 scene needs to follow the korean model with BIG TIME SPONSORS. It's also hard to balance watching with playing (those who watch are assumed to play as well).
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5. I don't feel that there's oversaturation since lot of the tournaments or leagues work around PPV so those who don't pay for the content (me) get really hyped about other tournaments and don't have their thirst for SC2 quenched. While those who pay for content have made this decision to have more and they should be pleased with the amount of content there is available
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To be honest, I'm kind of hoping for the e-sports scene to decline a bit. I think that the focus of the game has gone from great strategy to great 'hype'. It's great that people can make money from the game, but when the focus shifts from strategy and execution to shouting when things are shooting, too me, that's a bad shift. I think my experienced decline in caster quality has alot to do with trying to get people who are not interested in strategy to enjoy the game anyways. That's a bad mindset. A casters job is to make the viewer understand what's happening on a deeper level. Today alot of casters conciously lie to the viewer to build 'hype'. Instead of saying "This attack will fail misserably because of X, Y and Z" they say "WILL THIS ATTACK SUCCEED!?? IF IT DOES HE WILL WIN!!!" which in my opinion feels kind of lame.
I know the basics of the game, but lack the deeper understanding of strategy. It's not really enjoyable for me to watch streams, since I really don't understand what's going on. All I can understand is which army is beating which. Instead of focusing on what the averege player DOESN'T understand, the focus is on what the average player DOES understand(units hitting each other), which makes casting kind of pointless.
And of course this is an exaggeration. Casting is still better than no casting. But the focus has to shift back to helping people who are really interested in the game to understand it, rather than to make people who are not interested in the game interested in the game by shouting when things explode.
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On October 15 2012 20:10 Grubby wrote: (5) There is no problem of oversaturation. The market of supply & demand will sort itself out eventually. Tournaments that don't provide enough quality or have enough improvements will concludingly have low viewership, therefore die off and make room for the new. The same with players who don't perform; they, too, will be replaced by the new. The circle of life will naturally work itself out, as will the circle of eSports life. No amount of theorizing is going to change anything about the direction that eSports is going to be taking, whatever that may be.
Mostly this. You can work towards increasing the market (= getting more people to watch esports). But the feel is gonna be the same. If we have 1000ppl watching a weekly cup nowadays, maybe 10k watch a mid-sized tournament and 50k a major one. Sure if we double the market we get 2k, 20k and 100k respectively. But is that gonna change the way we feel about oversaturation? Probably not. So no, oversaturation is not a problem (actually its good because it creates competition, moves the scene forward, etc). If the problem is somewhere its because the market isnt big enough.
Compare to golf or tennis btw. Who cares about a random ATP-tournament in, say, Belgium? Or the golf tour stop at some random city in California? Probably A) The really fucking hardcore fans B) People following their favourit players C) Locals, thinking its awesome that this huge tour is coming to town for a week. But is there an oversaturation of golf and tennis? Hardly. We peobably already have something like this going on in esports. Some people follow it all (A). Some only watch because its Stephano/Idra/Taeja/MC playing but turn off when the final is two random faceless Koreans (B). And NA generally prefers MLG while not as interested in ESL/DH, opposite for EU, Canadians come together when NASL comes to town, etc (C).
I dont see the problem. Work to increase the market size, rest will fix itself.
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My ideal tournament:
1 Week long (LAN) 128 players Single bracket 3 bo5 series (aka you have to win 2 bo5's to win the match) Players only play 1 game a day.
Aka exactly like tennis is at the moment...
I realize this doesn't really fit in with the topic of the thread, but just saying :D This is the future I want to see for sc2
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I do believe this is a problem, but probably one we don't hear much about because the people effected by it aren't around much anymore. I have felt this firsthand, I remember back in the beta days how exciting literally every showmatch was. I know that was partially because it was still a new game, but I also think it has something to do with the fact that there were really only two tournaments that mattered in the whole beta phase, and I watched every single match on the edge of my seat. It was riveting and it felt important, and that feeling lasted for over a year after release, but I eventually couldn't convince myself to care anymore. There are simply so many tournaments now that they've lost the relevance and impact they used to have when there were only a handful per week. I now only peripherally follow the pro scene, I play for pleasure now, but as a full time student I don't believe it's even possible to watch every tournament with what free time I have.
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I think (3). There are definitely too many tournaments.
Back in BW, there was only MSL/OSL to look forward to. Winning these two tournaments was a big deal, and these tournaments only happened 4 times a year. In addition, all of the best players participated. Because of this, excitement and hype was maintained, and players had the time to prepare and come up with innovative strategies.
Now, the exact opposite is true. There are so many tournaments now. For example, GSL/OSL/MLG/IPL/Dreamhack/NASL/IEM/WCS, just to name the majors ones. As a result the excitement and hype generated by each one of these tournaments individually has decreased for me. Winning one of these events isn't as big of a deal since they happen so frequently, and in addition, the player pool in each tournament is different, so each one emerges with a different winner. When someone wins, I don't get the excitement that we are crowning the world's best player, because I think, well MC or MVP didn't even participate in this one, etc.
An additional problem I've seen that players themselves are participating in too many tournaments. Evidence that there are too many tournament matches include, for example, Thorzain dropping out of a tournament earlier to prepare for WCS. While I have no problem with this, this clearly demonstrates that the players are being fatigued and is an additional negative to viewers. If I happened to be following the tournament Thorzain was dropping out of, and really wanted to see Thorzain play in that, I would have been extremely disappointed.
Finally, I think not only are there too many tournaments, there are too many games, or at least too many games being broadcasted. An example of this is the GSL. After players drop from the main tournament, they then have to play more televised matches in the form of Code A and Up/Down. These matches clearly aren't as exciting compared to the matches that decide the Code S champion and dilute the excitement for the GSL tournament in general. In addition, weekend-long tournaments such as IPL also presents a unique issue. While its awesome to see a winner crowned at the end of the weekend. It's impossible to follow all the action, and we don't see the same quality of games as when someone has had a week to specifically prepare for the matchup.
TLDR: Too many matches and tournaments reduces the individual value of teach tournament.
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On October 17 2012 17:16 Velr wrote: Oversaturation is just not a problem.
If you don't want to watch. Don't watch.
Uh... that's the point. If the consumer is turned off, it is the problem. It doesn't have to be rational in your own little model of why starcraft is worth watching or not.
[edit] Good summation right above me. Conceivably you could have a bunch of tournaments and games to watch if the appetite was there, but appetite is not increased by diluting the value of matches.
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On October 15 2012 20:45 mememolly wrote: Tourneys need more personalities and storylines and need to find ways to generate this and convey it to the viewer.
Fact is, more people will watch a lower quality tourney with people like Idra in than a super professional tourney with a bunch of faceless koreans or faceless foreigners.
You can have all the flashy graphics and content you want but if the players are boring and they're no storylines then people won't be interested. I don't understand your post. Isn't Idra one of the most boring guys around in SC2?
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2 and 3. Everything needs to be more streamlined and focused. We simply don't need like 10 tournaments going on at the same time.
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On October 17 2012 17:58 Kleen-X wrote:
Fatigue and placement. It is very exhausting to sit and watch the actual big tournaments for a whole weekend. Look at the biggest tournaments in soccer (or European football) which is one of the biggest sports in my country. They don't show matches for a whole weekend. People got other stuff to do. Champions league or national team games are spread out. I think it is cool to have some of those endurance tournaments, but there are just too many. By splitting Dreamhack up over 2 weekends it would become better. We would have time to do stuff during the day, without loosing games of our favorite players. And the tournaments may even end earlier the same day. Though I do not mind them ending late on a saturday. I do mind that the finals end late on a sunday. Which is the most sensible time to place a barcraft. I have never attended to one because of that. Stupid sunday finals.
Problem with this is the cost. Do you know how much it would cost to house the 32+ players for 2 weeks? Not to mention casters, non local production staff, venue?
Sport like tennis do have their tournament span over 2 weeks for Grand Slams but the budget/revenue is just totally on a different scale. The only reason GSL works is because most of the players are based in Korea. The closest thing we can get is probably The International for DoTA2 and Season 2 Championship for LoL. But those were both Flagship events that were for advertising (not revenue generation).
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There is no problem with oversaturation, this will get sorted out automatically by the market. BUT! That doesnt mean, that we cant do nothing. I believe, to grow the scene, there must be much bigger focus on local tournaments, barcrafts etc.. This is what makes new gamers that will last decades, those emotions and friends that are made through the love of the game. New blizzard games feel lonely and that is big problem! (also Lan missing is a problem ) edit: Also we need people in esports like you Grubby - that have personality and can create those emotions to the game!
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On October 18 2012 01:18 Kompicek wrote:There is no problem with oversaturation, this will get sorted out automatically by the market. BUT! That doesnt mean, that we cant do nothing. I believe, to grow the scene, there must be much bigger focus on local tournaments, barcrafts etc.. This is what makes new gamers that will last decades, those emotions and friends that are made through the love of the game. New blizzard games feel lonely and that is big problem! (also Lan missing is a problem  ) edit: Also we need people in esports like you Grubby - that have personality and can create those emotions to the game! How does the market fix the problem. If games are not entertaining because there are too many of them, viewership goes down, and the scene fades. Is the scene going to magically revive once tournaments die out and say OSL is the only one left? Of course not, it will just be a small scene at that point.
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thanks Grubby for posting this. I get the opportunity to help out with sc2quotes from time to time, and i do agree that events are getting harder to keep up with.
I agree mostly with points 2 and 3, and a dash of 4, but too much of 4 can be bad too.
Because of daily time constraints with real life stuff, and with the over abundance on events (especially events that are starting to overlap) i have to be picky about which events i watch. Last year, i'd have been like "whatever i got 2 monitors i can watch both," but that results in me not really being able to fully enjoy either stream. In the past (early 2012, and most of 2011,) when there were overlapping events, most of the time they were staggered via timezones, which made it a bit more manageable when it came to event overlaps. but as it is now, more and more events, even on their regular season broadcasts, are competing in the same broadcast time (OSL vs GSL; NASL vs EGMCSL vs IPL sometimes).
all the factors you listed in point 3 are pretty much most of my criteria for picking out events to watch over the other ones.
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