EPTReality Check: State of SC2 - Page 2
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m0ck
4194 Posts
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mrRoflpwn
United States2618 Posts
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SentrySteve
United States71 Posts
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Elp
Netherlands86 Posts
The last paragraph on 'adblock is hurting eSports' annoys me though. He portrays SC2 eSports as some kind of victim, as if we need to feel sorry for eSports. 'X is killing eSports, Y is killing eSports'. Stop whining and blaming others and do something about it. So you can't run your eSports business on ad revenue alone? Fine, go pay-per-view. You want people to buy merchandise? Sell stuff people actually want to buy! You don't like people blocking ads? Use ads inside the video stream so ads can't be blocked (or whatever, work something out with Twitch). Just do what you gotta do to make it work, but don't beg for help. eSports should aspire to be a business, not charity. | ||
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GolemMadness
Canada11044 Posts
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Shinta)
United States1716 Posts
On December 15 2012 07:43 mikkmagro wrote: NB: I have nothing to do with Complexity, or the author, but I stumbled on this, and thought it was a very good read, and brought up excellent points. Reality Check: State of SC2 - Jason Bass, COO Complexity coL deserves the hits, read up here: http://www.complexitygaming.com/news/3922/ Hmm, I browsed through this and I can see where you're coming from but I don't think it's spot on. You say we have too much content, that's not true. I want to come home at night and have some SC2 to watch. If there isn't any, I'm not interested in watching streaming, and I don't want to play SC2 after work, so SC2 just isn't there for me. You mentioned football and the whole "what if the Cowboys and Texans played 3 times a week". Here you're getting more towards the problem, but still off in the basics. You want to have football content always on. I mean come on, you turn on the TV any day of the week and you can find football, whether it's a game, a TV show, or just quick game summaries etc. Content needs to be streaming constantly, and there always needs to be something to watch. The issue here is that everyone is going everywhere to play everything. If you really want a story line, you have to limit what the players can do. This may bug a lot of people, but in order to have successful eSports, you NEED to follow KeSPA's footsteps. People in KeSPA need to play people in KeSPA. They are in a league playing against each other, there is no time to go abroad and play in other events. If other countries did the same thing, there would be a lot of big name leagues running. Follow professional soccer's theme. You have a lot of teams in major countries playing their 1 league, but you also have a whole lot of Skirmishes, as well as a bunch of international cups. People can root for their favorite local team, and follow those players to the biggest events in the world. In SC2 terms, you could have teams like coL, EG, and other bigger US teams playing tournaments like MLG to earn their money instead of having Koreans coming and take it all. You can have Dreamhack run league style or circuit style tournaments instead of just a couple "majors" a year. Honestly, IEM could very easily do this by becoming less international, and focusing more on Europe. They already have tons of players playing actively locally. They could run circuit or league style tournaments over Europe where people playing these little online matches could qualify to play in minor LANs and then qualify to play in huge tournaments. So here in this small scenario, ESL is the "European League" and MLG is the "North American League". People can follow all of their local players, follow their favorite teams, and follow their favorite players as they compete to become the best in the League. Then you take this aside and you look at IPL. If we have the prior mentioned formats, IPL isn't really needed by itself. Create a merger between IPL and MLG, you create a super organization that now has a ton more funding and capabilities to make the before mentioned concepts have so much better results. Then have IPL run the IPTL under MLG's name (or a merged company's name). You have a circuit style individual league as well as a prominent Team League. Same format, Premier Division, Contender Division, Amateur Division. This would be giving more money to the better teams in the NA, rewarding our best players and encouraging them to play their best, BUT the more important thing is that it would be giving more money to aspiring NA players and teams. If all IPTL teams were from NA, you have a lot more money going into the NA scene, meaning a lot of people who would play professionally if they had the time/resources, would in fact chase that career. They would actually have the opportunity to do so! Eventually smaller teams would get more sponsors and more money rather than just dying out or staying insignificant forever. The end result is a high level of competition among a larger spectrum of ALL NA PLAYERS! DreamHack and ESL could partner together to create the same thing. I know ESL can easily bring up a well coordinated team league with several divisions. Dreamhack and ESL have tons of experience running big tournaments. All they need is more investment in smaller tournaments in more countries. Allow the Latvian community to invest more money into SC2. They could produce some damn good players if SC2 was actually a possible career in their country. Now is the part everyone's been waiting for. The MAJORS! That's right fellas, Golf/Tennis format! (also similar to soccer cups). You have MLG/IPL run their once a year huge tournament that NA players have been training all year for (and have acquired enough points over the year to participate in) and you include all the players from Dreamhack/ESL that have been training in Europe (and acquired points etc) as well as the players in China/Taiwan, as well as the players from KeSPA/ESF (who acquire points through ProLeague/GSL + their special tournaments which would be more Korean exclusive). One huge MLG/IPL tournament that all the best players from around the world play in. ONCE A YEAR! One huge DH/ESL tournament that all the best players from around the world play in. ONCE A YEAR! One huge Korean tournament that all the best players from around the world play in. ONCE A YEAR! One huge CH/TW tournament that all the best players from around the world play in. ONCE A YEAR! Having these tournaments spread out throughout the year (meaning point standings are acquired over separate timelines) mean that "all the best players from around the world" will change constantly just as the meta game does. One Korean lineup will be Leenock Life Sniper Creator HyuN MVP DRG, whereas half a year later it'll be MVP Life NesTea Hack Seed JKS and Parting. Different players creating the highest quality of games. Now, you need 1 global organization that runs MLG/IPL/DH/ESL/KeSPA/ESF/CH/TW etc. Maybe not even running them, but creating the rules in which they must abide by in order to A) Create standards for casters (setting what professional casting is). This would allow eSports to shoot up in the mainstream world. B) Create standards for players behaviors (no 6 probe rushing because you don't feel like playing, no bad manners in tournaments, etc). This let's you have KeSPAesc players with big reputations and complete professionalism. You do something stupid/against the rules, you get fined, just like in real sports fellas. C) Bring together the system in which the MAJORS would come together. D) Other things etc etc. Allow other countries to join in. SEA gets a nice orga together and gets their pro circuit to a high level, then SEA gets inducted into the world wide pro scene. India develops a huge pro scene with great setup, let them in too. In the distant future, this could even lead to moving MAJORS, with the orgas who bid the most money and having the most solid foundation being able to take 1 MAJOR that year. So many ideas could flow, and so many modifications to the above described systems. The biggest point is focus. Focus your efforts on making the scenes better. Allow the amateurs from everywhere make money, and give the best players in the world the biggest paychecks. Stop wasting such massive amounts of money on extensive amounts of international plane tickets and start focusing on local SC2. MLG/IPL could come out with several TV shows that air several times a week, provided even more content. DH/ESL doing the same thing ETC. Don't focus only on the tournaments, but get the viewers content to watch that can provide fluid entertainment as well as all of their favorite results in one place. i.e. Run News shows to provide MLG/IPL news. Run SotG like shows to talk about SC2 and provide some comedy too. And other TV show ideas. They are all possible. Even though KeSPA was a dick to OGN by wanting to run everything themselves, they get their own broadcasting station and start running TVesc content on their own. get MLG/IPL in on that and you have a TV station devoted purely to NA eSports. They could include a few TV shows talking about foreign scenes too. So much to say about these issues, but these are the issues that should be talked about. Not how "we have too much content and we need to kill small tournaments". That's all bullshit that'll just hurt the scene. Be smarter about how you spend your time, focus, and money. Help eSports grow, not the pockets of a few gamers. | ||
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ishyishy
United States826 Posts
Also about adblock: I dont use it, I dont even know how. I'm too lazy to find out, so I just watch vods. There is 1 commercial on a vod from a player stream, and then X amount of hours of commercial free content. I cant always watch them because I work all day, so I watch it when I can. Even if I could, I probably wont. I hate commercials, just cant stand them. Ads, commercials, all that shit, hate it. The most annoying shit on the planet and if I can find a way around it I will lol. | ||
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WoodLeagueAllStar
United States806 Posts
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felisconcolori
United States6168 Posts
Individual events are less packed, but that's largely because the best players all move en mass from one event to the next, and they still manage a fair number of events. The PGA tour seems to have a tournament every week or two, not unlike SC2 some months. He may have a decent point when it comes to number of leagues - the commonality in all of the above is that there are only a few, and mostly just one, major event organizer for each sport. (Sure, with football you can argue that there are more, but mostly on regional levels - FIFA being worldwide while things like Premiere and MLS are more localized.) Does this suck for smaller or start-up leagues? Yes. Just ask the Arena Football League and the United Football League. Of course, SC2 doesn't emphasize the Team as much as it does the individual, so that could be a problem (for him as a team business guy) in that the amount of content available (and available in a much more accessible way than traditional sports) makes it harder for someone to get noticed. But... that's business. EG does decently with the MCSL, Liquid does well with the TSL, but other teams aren't trying to compete (and I don't think EG or TL really do) with the dedicated event organizers like the MLG, GSL, IPL, etc. If you can't compete with the big guys, you need something to make you different, and if you can't - well, there's the amateur league he's looking for. Regional specialization (ESL or the NESL in the US come to mind, as well as TeSPA) serves a purpose too. (Because none of the big leagues is listening when I scream at them to come to me.) I don't see where this is a problem for teams, except that perhaps the leagues could be a LOT more friendly to getting team branding/sponsors out into the audience. Maybe be more selective, and less scatter shot, in deciding where to send players? You have other monetizing forces available. Again, just ask the traditional sports teams - there are people that would give an arm and a leg for a jersey. And I know I'm not the only one that thinks about what the pros use when considering hardware to buy. | ||
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coverpunch
United States2093 Posts
Event saturation is something that will inevitably happen and then the events will slow down if viewership is hurt badly. Contrary to what he's saying, other sports HAVE had similar problems. The NBA has looked into whether the NBA Playoffs are stretched too long or if people would watch playoff games every night for a month. And of course college football is the most notorious example in criticisms of the bowl schedule. I think separating pro and amateur circuits is something that has already happened to a certain degree. The big name tournament screen out scrubs with qualifying events. The funny twist is that Korean domination is exaggerated precisely because of the pressure by big foreign events to include top Korean players. Foreign pros can compete with the mid-level Korean pros. Even Korean pros as a group do poorly against players like Leenock or Parting. As for adblock, pro-gaming is a nascent profession and it will be rocky. People do not want to pay very much for content and apparently they don't want to pay with the time to watch ads either. Either advertisers have to do better to attract viewers or they can get around adblock by having streamers or casters read ads like some podcasts do. I would just say that blaming the customers is usually a sign of a bad business model. IMO the biggest problem is inflated expectations about e-sports, as though people actually thought SC2 would grow like BW did in Korea and foreign players would today be recognized as bona fide stars. | ||
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n0ise
3452 Posts
The truth is, the game is unpleasant to play in it's current state - and it takes 6 months for Blizzard to even acknowledge there is a problem. Their fixes seem to glance the actual issues of the high-level metagame, and while balance may not be broken per se, the game just feels wrong, miserable and altogether not very enjoyable to play. I translate these feelings into watching SCII, therefore I'd rather not follow any tournaments, unless my favorite players are playing. But maybe JB, the author, is right regarding the majority of people - and oversaturation is a bigger factor. | ||
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Doodsmack
United States7224 Posts
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zhurai
United States5660 Posts
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playa
United States1284 Posts
As a viewer, with there having been so many tournaments, there's kind of a feeling like it's all been done already. Foreigner versus Korean, Korean vs Korean, etc, etc. So, anymore, it kinda seems like hype = who has the biggest prize pool for any tournament in "x" time period. Even if there weren't as many tournaments, the game is freaking boring. It's predictable and no one should even enjoy what they're betting on seeing. Watching SC 2 is merely taking a bad bet when you could be doing something better or watching something more entertaining. Then, not only that, you already have HotS which is supposed to be addressing some of the shortcomings of WoL, yet we're stuck watching WoL until HotS is officially released? The game is already much better to play and watch than WoL. I get it might not being fair for the pros or the game not being properly balanced. But, how many consider WoL to be balanced? Pros being able to start playing the same game in the same time period sounds about as fair as it gets, in the long run. As a viewer, HotS would already be the preferred game. Being able to watch WoL tournaments everyday? That sounds like more of a wish for established WoL pros. No idea why anyone else would be thrilled for that. While there is something to the sports analogy, used in the article, think about professional baseball. 162 games is a long freaking season. "Your team" pretty much plays every day. Yet, most "real" fans will watch every game they can, without complaints of there being too many. So, in short, over saturation is more of a problem when the product isn't that good to begin with. Show the better product, and, yes, don't flood people with so many tournaments that you can't create an illusion of importance. To watch something, people have to be able to keep track of what the hell is going on. | ||
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ReachTheSky
United States3294 Posts
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iMAniaC
Norway703 Posts
[rant] I only run one single add-on: Flashblock. In my opinion, flash is a piece of crap. It hogs the CPU, swallows the bandwidth, makes unnecessary noise and can detect when the mouse hovers over it. In order to access the flash content, you don't even need a misclick, but a "mishover". To make matters worse, when reading news sites, they're often strewn all over the place, so to make sure that you don't "mishover", you need to pay attention to where your cursor is located when you scroll down. The picture may not be as dire as I've painted it and flash may not have as much potential to do harm as I think, but to be honest, I don't really care about what flash can't actually do, because it shouldn't be the responsibility of the end user to be on top of every little technological quirk that websites may or may not utilize. I've seen a sample of flash's potential and I expect the worse and thus I've installed flashblock to get rid of it once and for all. However, TL.net is awesome, so I added it to my whitelist. Sadly, this only seems to work for about 50% of the ads, so that's what I settled with for a while. A couple of days ago, I saw one of the interviews with Hot_Bid and he guilt tripped me into taking another look at it, in order to allow all TL.net ads to go through. So I spent 30 minutes patching Firefox and Flashblock, turning it on and off, restarting FF over and over again, adding TL.net to my whitelist in all imaginable url variations, but to no avail. I didn't get it to work and was left with a wasted half-hour, bad conscience for continuing to block half of TL.net's ads and an instaiable urge to rant about how much I hate flash. And then, a couple of days later, I saw this thread. [/rant] You can probably tell I dread the day people get the real hang of creating annoying HTML5 ads  On a more constructive note, though, what about commercial breaks in streams? I know they already do that in GSL, but I imagine everyone could do that, including progamers streaming from home. That way, you don't feel that you miss out on something while watching an ad, because it's a commercial break and there's nothing to miss anyway. It may also help with the sponsors, if their commercials are shown on streams every day instead of having to rely on shout-outs in interviews. | ||
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SaturnAttack
United States125 Posts
I somehow feel like nothing is really going to change. This is the pool of audience we are going to be stuck with unless Blizzard radically changes the game. It's going to keep shrinking and that's just what you have to live with. | ||
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Daumen
Germany1073 Posts
I very much wondered about the Adblock thing, I never rly used it for that reason, Im not someone who pays money for the Streams so I can at least watch the damn ads, but I see another big problem thats still there with the ads, for me in Germany the Blocks of Ads that are in Twitch are TOO small! Often times when a Streamer sends 3 Ads in a row... I GET TO SEE THE SAME AD PLAYED 3 TIMES instead of 3 different ads 1 time each... thats rly annoying. | ||
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coverpunch
United States2093 Posts
If you said something like "the average SC2 viewer in 2012 watched 2 hrs per weekend and spent $50 on tournaments/products/donations", then you can say that oversaturation is definitely a problem, there are too many sharks chasing too few fish. | ||
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nomyx
United States2205 Posts
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