Destiny on where he thinks SC2 is heading. - Page 39

On October 18 2012 01:02 VanGarde wrote:
It is kind of interesting to see that there are so many people here who hold complete opposite visions of sc2 agree with each other without realizing that their visions are mutually exclusive. There is one group of people who feel that sc2 needs to be more mechanically demanding, allow for more early aggression and that hots is just dumbing it down too much. Most pro-gamers fall into this category. These people think that the failure of sc2 in Korea is because it is not as hard as Broodwar. Then there is the group of people who think that the problem is the opposite that sc2 is not tuned enough to the casual market and that it in fact should be MORE dumbed down. Both of these groups are writing in this thread about how they agree with Destiny, each seemingly thinking that he is talking about their method of reviving sc2.

The dilemma here is that a lot of the people who think Broodwar was a great game, would never play sc2 if it tried to be more like LoL. I belong to this group, in fact in my experience most people in this category feels that the problem with hots is in fact that it is trying to be more like LoL.

Either sc2 tries to be like LoL and Dota and take that market share, in which case we get hots, but then don't complain about how hots is dumbing the game down to attract more casual gamers.

On October 18 2012 01:25 Roarer wrote:
Destiny made some valid points in his post, but I think he did not take into account 2 very important points :

1. Sponsors care about Revenue more than viewers number. i.e. Quantity x Price, instead of mere viewer quantity. The implication is, if we have a trillion viewership, but no one is willing to pay a single buck, then sponsors will still be gone. If we have only a thousand people, but we are willing to pay a thousand dollars each month, then the sponsors may still find it attractive to sponsors tournaments. With the BW generations growing up, we now have working income to support what we love, so we are more equipped to invest into what we love than the old days. As long as our payment made up of the lost viewership, then the scene may survive/keep growing.

2. Sponsors are not the only way to support tournaments. We can take sponsors out of the whole equation if we the community as a whole can hand out enough income to support the players and the tournaments. i.e. willing to pay high PPV and support teams / players themselves.


Aiming for a wider audience is a way to keep the model running, but it is not the only way out. It would be the way to run E-sports on the top of everyone's mind, but if it is not sustainable, we have to turn to other methods. It may up to teams, tournament organizers to come up with new ways to run the economics. However, at the end of the day, it all comes down to how much we, the hard core fans, are willing to pay for what we love, how much does SC2 competition means to us. If we cannot support it, then... just like Sundance said "we are only having an expensive hobby".

I think people are looking at tournament over saturation way too pessimistic. Players should take this chance to differentiate themselves from each other, by choosing to attend some while skipping others. Teams can post hype videos on what new strats their player have in mind and how far they expect themselves can go. If competition for tournament organizers are really that fierce, the problem of tournaments dividing playing field by securing certain players should be reduced.

On October 17 2012 22:51 Kambing wrote:


Numbers now aren't necessarily indicative of a game's continued success. World of Warcraft arena attracted lots of viewers thanks to its built-in population, and that didn't last because (1) the game was fundamentally difficult to follow from a spectator's perspective and (2) Blizzard didn't push it hard as a legitimate e-sport (albeit that wasn't the terminology of the day) from neither a balance nor marketing perspective. People seem to agree that LoL (dota-style games in general) are tougher to follow from an outsider's perspective. However, Riot and Valve are doing a much better job of pushing their games forward.