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A few weeks ago I received an email from an individual in Texas who started his own LAN center and is in the process of creating a studio in a small town with the intentions to broadcast Starcraft 2. In Anaheim I found myself holding back tears as never-felt before emotions washed over me as each crowd erupted over their respective stages and players, each audience member unequivocally immersed in their own experience, each having their own story of how and why they were there. I’ve seen professional players leap from their stations to pump up a crowd of thousands and embrace their friends and teammates after an intense long-sought victory. I’m not talking about only Starcraft 2 here. If there is one thing every e-sports title has in common, it’s the benefit of a passionate community. That sense of coming together. That feeling of camaraderie and as you realize you are a part of a massive movement, that there are hundreds of thousands of others out there who are thinking just as you do.
As I reflected upon this I felt the urge to know why each game has such a following, and also theorized about how to reach more people. This thing that we all know exists, how is it not massive already? More importantly, is there anything each of these communities (we) can actually do to simplify the process? Here are a couple of theories I have on what might be holding us back.
Theory one: Tension between the communities. The threads I have read, the comments made by certain individuals of certain communities... r/starcraft, TL, twitch chats... It blows my mind and is the most infuriating thing. People will just bash other games as a hobby. Each person has their own reasons. It’s a terrible mentality and it should go away. People like certain games, so what? How does it help anything to hate on something that you don’t like? It doesn’t. If you have a cupcake and your friend has a cookie, are you going to argue the cookie is too crumbly and laugh at them? No! You are going to enjoy your damn cupcake! How does this look to the outside world, too? Those outside of our bubbles? Are people going want to share in our tasty treat endeavours after seeing these toxic exchanges?
Theory two: Intimidation, fear of the unknown. Look I’ll be honest this applies to me. I look at Dota 2 and the overwhelming amount of knowledge I might need to understand the game, and I never really get started. It’s daunting and intimidating. Is that an excuse? Yes. Should it be? Probably not. This also leads me away from being able to enjoy the game when I try to watch it, in a sense. Not knowing the basic ideas and not being able to appreciate awesome plays on a screen made by the best players in the world. This can apply to any game.
Does this apply to anyone else or just me? Would others be willing to help fix these potential problems? I posted on r/leagueoflegends and r/dota2 the following two threads:
http://www.reddit.com/r/leagueoflegends/comments/1i50e1/here_from_rstarcraft_you_guys_are_awesome_lets/
http://www.reddit.com/r/DotA2/comments/1iab2q/hi_from_rstarcraft_lets_hangout_more/
The basic idea of these threads was to first try to reach out and encourage more collaboration to address my “tension” theory and analyze if it even existed. Second was to address the intimidation factor and offer free help to those who seeked it in SC2, in return for their help with their game.
The response I received was staggering and unexpected. I’m really not sure what surprised me more, the amount of responses and level of friendliness, or the fact that many of the replies actually EMBRACED my game, and cited nerve issues or intimidation issues. Huge shoutout to both of those communities for being so incredibly receptive and cool about my idea about further collaboration between communities.
What also surprised me were certain community members who went back and reached out in the other direction on r/starcraft. Those threads are here:
http://www.reddit.com/r/starcraft/comments/1i6s1j/hello_sc2_you_guys_seem_cool_greetings_from/
http://www.reddit.com/r/starcraft/comments/1i5ngy/here_from_r_leagueoflegends_extending_the_olive/
Truly fantastic to see these threads pop up, showing that certain members of other communities are willing to take additional steps to bridge the gap.
The amount of responses also made me kind of sad... I only promised to help 4 people from dota2 and 4 from league of legends, and I’ve received responses from literally hundreds of awesome people that I would really like to help, but physically can’t.
So, is there a solution? I’m not promising I have one, in fact I’m open to suggestions. Rome wasn't built in a day. I feel there are little things that could be done to help us get where we want to be. Things we, as a community, have the ability to do. Things that can not only bring us together, but help push all of us forward. Where do we go from here? It might be up to you.
Based on some suggestions and reading a bunch of comments, I’ve come up with a few ideas. Ideas that any of us can do. Some I mean to tackle, and some that could be attempted by many of you. The main goals being: Encouraging additional collaboration between these amazing communities and decreasing unfamiliarity between games. I will include this list at the end of this post, and reserve the right to edit some great ones made by you fine folks to this post.
I’ll leave you with something simple as my first suggestion, something anyone can do. A simple change in attitude. Go out and actively share your cookies and cupcakes. Help each other perfect the recipe. There is plenty to go around, and none of us are running out anytime soon.
-Alex “Axeltoss” Rodriguez
P.S. This can also be applied at a much more basic level. That negative mindset whenever something new or different pops up in your OWN community. Rather than starting out bashing something you don’t like, imagine how differently things would be if everyone was constructive and positive about all of the content that is accessible and available in their respective scenes. Positive energy, rather than negative.
TL;DR: Be more open. Take action in helping your game become as accessible to others as possible.
EDIT: I'm moving forward with the coaching exchange.
Email me please if you would like to help: Axeltoss@mlg.tv.
Options:
Giving SC2 coaching to LoL players
Giving SC2 coaching to Dota players
Receiving LoL coaching from LoL players
Recieving Dota coaching from Dota players
Ideas:
- I will fulfill my promise to those I inquired in League of Legends and Dota 2. I’ve debated just taking a day to stream me coaching folks from LoL and Dota2 in the art of SC2, while also learning more of their game, but I’m not sure how interested people would be in that. The stream would be so others who want to learn can benefit, those I can’t necessarily personally interact with. I’m tentative to do this because I don’t want to feel like a self-promoter.
- A coaching exchange. It doesn’t have to be just me trading coaching for coaching. Anyone in each community can participate as well. Imagine a portal of sorts where teachers and students can link up and learn from each other.
- A weekly list of top professional matches from different games. People don’t have time to follow absolutely every match in each scene. “Best games of the week” could be a nice option for those who want to stick with their own game, but still enjoy others.
- A show of sorts where top pros and personalities from other games come together and enjoy, teach, and learn from eachother more about their respective games, and generally just have a bunch of fun.
- A source that includes a short compilation of history of each e-sport we love so dearly. Something concise and clean that gives a good sense of the current state of each scene: leagues that are happening, money at stake, top upcoming tournaments, players to look out for. This could help people from other games know WHY they should be excited about something that they haven't been able to see a ton of.
- Basic introductory videos to our games. Has anyone truly done this right? 5 minutes or less explaining the absolute basics and making people excited who have never experienced the game before. Mixing in the e-sports aspect as well as the gameplay aspect.
IdrA quote:
On July 16 2013 03:47 IdrA wrote:
one of the biggest things the sc2 scene can do to encourage this is hopping down off it's high horse. in the past i called league a casual game, having not played it at all, and in a way it is, in that you can hit buttons and kill other bad people and have fun even if you dont know what's going on. but if you actually want to be any good at it there's a ton of knowledge and abilities you need that are very different from those required for sc2. and ive seen or talked to plenty of sc2 pros who play it, with varying levels of seriousness, and are stuck in bronze or silver. some skills transfer over and if you were actually good at sc2 you should have a good understanding of how to approach learning league, but theyre entirely different games and it's entirely possible to be great and one and suck at the other. plus league is the big kid on the playground now. it just seems kinda sad and petty to be sitting there with a quarter of their viewership saying "well at least our game takes skill"
besides broodwar is the only game that is actually hard
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Great Topic.
On July 16 2013 02:01 ROOTAxeltoss wrote:
"Theory one: Tension between the communities. The threads I have read, the comments made by certain individuals of certain communities... r/starcraft, TL, twitch chats... It blows my mind and is the most infuriating thing. People will just bash other games as a hobby. Each person has their own reasons. It’s a terrible mentality and it should go away. People like certain games, so what? How does it help anything to hate on something that you don’t like? It doesn’t. If you have a cupcake and your friend has a cookie, are you going to argue the cookie is too crumbly and laugh at them? No! You are going to enjoy your damn cupcake! How does this look to the outside world, too? Those outside of our bubbles? Are people going want to share in our tasty treat endeavours after seeing these toxic exchanges?"
the difficulty in improving in this area involves the mental maturity of participants.
from a child's simple perspective if they like one thing then anything else must be "bad".
from an adult's perspective: i love SC and SC2. WoW just is not "my thing". Does this mean "WoW sucks donkey balls". No it does not, but i ahve a hard time convincing an avid 14 year old RTS player of this perspective. Take a look at how "Force" stopped supporting Diablo3. His "farewell to Diablo" was an ADULT DISCUSSION. He didn't say "Diablo sucks donkey balls".
For these communities to work in large numbers they'll include males aged 13 to 17 who have a hard time viewing their favourite games from an adult perspective. Males at this age are naturally combative and still forming their own personal identity.
When I was a around that age...
"WWF Wrestlemania 2000" was the greatest game ever made and any one who didn't agree was a total idiot.
I was 14, and of course, i knew everything.
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Great plan axeltoss!
Most of the hate is towards league from starcraft and especially dota.
Hopefully we can fix the issues on our end through this initiative.
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I think some of the points you make are very good. Yesterday at EVO a lot of people were bashing on Super Smash Brothers as being "not a real fighting game" and not an e-SPORT, even though over 100k people were watching the event. That certainly doesn't help.
I think a show such as ESPN SportsCenter with recaps from all the games might be helpful for those who don't have time to necessarily watch EVERYTHING. Top 10 plays etc. That would be fun.
Also introductory videos for games would make it easier for people to understand. People who don't understand StarCraft watch me play and have no idea what's going on. Maybe if there was a really concise 2-3 min video explaining the game in nothing but the most basic detail it would help.
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Thank you for this post.
I share with you the feeling that without new "blood" for our game, we can't make esport "progress".
However, as I see now the communauty, people seems to be divided in several categories : those who are happy with current level, those who wants more and a few that just goes by and might "damage" the communauty.
I believe Blizzard is making some move with WCS and especially the WCS portal (that fits a bit your ideas : weekly list of professional plays, basic introduction to SC2 and short compilation of eSport history). As much people loves TL, I think it is too "nerdy" for casual gamers to catch SC2 fever just by finding this site. And out of TL, few sites gets so much precised and useful information.
Concerning coaching others esports fans to SC2, maybe I'm too old, but it seems to be an running debate on these forums since a long time... Free2play, more team leagues or whatever solution we could come up, SC2, imo, fits a "niche" on our maket.
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Alex, I want you to know that I have so much respect for you for this, and everything you do. You are truly an amazing man. Now, it's time to learn how to Reddit so I can help out. ^^
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On July 16 2013 02:16 DinoMight wrote:
I think some of the points you make are very good. Yesterday at EVO a lot of people were bashing on Super Smash Brothers as being "not a real fighting game" and not an e-SPORT, even though over 100k people were watching the event. That certainly doesn't help.
I think a show such as ESPN SportsCenter with recaps from all the games might be helpful for those who don't have time to necessarily watch EVERYTHING. Top 10 plays etc. That would be fun.
Also introductory videos for games would make it easier for people to understand. People who don't understand StarCraft watch me play and have no idea what's going on. Maybe if there was a really concise 2-3 min video explaining the game in nothing but the most basic detail it would help.
Whaaaat were they really? Everybody knows that SSBM is like the best fighting game ever with the most skill required to play at a top level. I guess if they haven't really played it people wont appreciate the crazy moves of the players they're watching but shit man...
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Axel you seem like a genuinely nice guy, but I feel you are fighting a losing battle. Online + gaming = a lot of angsty behaviour and trolling.
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On July 16 2013 02:27 Swift118 wrote:
Axel you seem like a genuinely nice guy, but I feel you are fighting a losing battle. Online + gaming = a lot of angsty behaviour and trolling.
Hey if only a few people feel inspired or change their mentality then I consider that a win.
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Well, that's a good attitude to have GL 
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Nicely written article.
I just want to point out, that dota players do have a legit reason to hate on Riot/Tencent(not on the game).
The fact that Riot tried to sabotage our beloved game doesnt help the colaboration between the two communities. I follow a bit of League, there are pro players there who understand what is Riot doing, still they keep a good relationship with the dota players/community (I know about CLG_Link and d.Kiwikid).
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I really respect you for opening up the communication, and I'm really glad that for the most part, the feedback has been really positive for you. It sounds a bit dumb, but I think a lot about the gaming community, because it's been a serious love-hate relationship for me ever since I started playing online multiplayer games seriously (starting with Diablo II, about ten years ago).
I think a lot of the issue is that there is both negative internal perceptions and external perceptions of gaming. The internal perception is outrageously exclusive -- this is really, really obvious when it comes to gender. Women and girls are actively harassed, belittled, and considered unwelcome as a norm. On the other hand, the outside community views gamers as nerdy, immature boys with prepubescent humor. I'm not saying that the perceptions are remotely accurate of the entire community (we are a very diverse bunch!), but it really hurts the ability to grow in terms of viewership and being a more inclusive form of entertainment.
When it comes to collaboration between communities, just think of it like music tastes. The hipsters don't want anyone else liking their music because they want to be the ones who were into it first. The elitists think their music is way above everyone else, that others who like their music can't truly appreciate it. Then the pop music fans think everyone else is pretentious and dumb. And then there are those who simply appreciate music for the fact of listening to something that is beautiful, whether they think it is or others do. You can absolutely see this with the different game communities or the battle of the console war, and most of the times, it's just frustrating and not worth the effort to untangle.
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It's funny because I saw that Axeltoss wrote this and read everything with his voice. I like his casting! ^^
A show of sorts where top pros and personalities from other games come together and enjoy, teach, and learn from eachother more about their respective games, and generally just have a bunch of fun.
This could also be a very fun idea. I've followed the LoL scene a bit and I'm a big Curse fanboy, mostly because Voyboy joined them and because Voyboy is both incredibly good and incredibly friendly, afterwards though you start liking the entire team as a whole. Anyway, Voyboy did mention that he might have played SC2, though he said that on stream. But it could be fun to see pros coach each other at their games and stream the sessions.
I believe that someone who is striving to improve the quality of the community must follow a few guidelines. First, never be rude, regardless of the circumstances. One of the things that made me quit LoL and come back to sc2 was having my team completely flame the SHIT out of each other, arguing about who fucked up, who was wrong, holy shit what a nightmare. It's impossible to win a team game with that sort of mentality. This problem is lesser in SC2, but I still think that people should strive to be as friendly as possible; twitch chats in general are often bad.
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IMO I think a lot of it comes down to people thinking "we" instead of "me".
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On the point about why people bash other games:
Humans tend to compare themselve to eachother, in all aspects, from mentality to physical abilities. And that comparison is what we call competetiveness.
Asking people to not compare the games they play to other games, is like asking KT_Flash to not be so competetive. It's not workimng, when the nature of the games they like, are competetive in every aspect.
Also, when someone have jugded that they are superior in a specific way(stronger body, btter game, higher IQ etc), they will forever remember that, and try to make it stay that way.
And this is !!NOT!! just something kids do, thats what humans do. This is a short example of things that have been created by competetiveness:
Wars, racism, sports, schools, capitalism, social classes----
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On July 16 2013 02:46 Gentso wrote:
IMO I think a lot of it comes down to people thinking "we" instead of "me".
More like "How am i doing compared to others".
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There's nothing wrong with how the communities are grown and prosperous competitively, but intrinsically.
This is probably the smallest of issues within eSports as a whole. You won't be able to achieve what the FGC has nearly functioned for years because of the natural genre of the games.
There will always be haters, they're such a minority that I think this will get more attention than the problem it's based on.
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I think the fundamental issue with "theory one" (which I agree with) stems from the very fact e-Sports is competitive. We play a competitive game, and likely have been playing competitive games for a large part of our lives as gamers. We like to think we are better than other people we face - if we lose, it is not because they're a better player, but because we messed up, or they got lucky (generally speaking).
I saw this in the MLG Halo community so much. People have big egos online because of their online success at the game. They think that because they're better, they have the right to talk down on people, anything to boost their online ego, their e-penis. In the Halo community, this extended to eSports as a whole because of arguments against, for example, the CoD community. I can't count the amount of times I saw the "which requires more skill" debate. This happens between SC2, LoL, and Dota2 as well.
People need to stop trying to one up each other, trying to prove that what they like is the best. It all stems from our competitve nature, and that's completely understandable. But we have to put the interests of eSports as a whole first, so that we all can enjoy it.
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On July 16 2013 02:57 cloneThorN wrote:
On the point about why people bash other games:
Humans tend to compare themselve to eachother, in all aspects, from mentality to physical abilities. And that comparison is what we call competetiveness.
Asking people to not compare the games they play to other games, is like asking KT_Flash to not be so competetive. It's not workimng, when the nature of the games they like, are competetive in every aspect.
Also, when someone have jugded that they are superior in a specific way(stronger body, btter game, higher IQ etc), they will forever remember that, and try to make it stay that way.
And this is !!NOT!! just something kids do, thats what humans do. This is a short example of things that have been created by competetiveness:
Wars, racism, sports, schools, capitalism, social classes----
Honestly, that is a rather lazy viewpoint. There is something between "power of friendship > all" and "everything else sucks giant flaming nutsacks".
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Is there a reason people who like Ice Hockey have to like Football? I don't think so. Why is there an urge to unite communities for different games? I like Starcraft, I like Dota and I like LoL. I find fighting games utterly stupid on the other hand. That does not mean I should go around and bash people that like fighting games, but it does also not mean I have to like fighting games, just because I like other games.
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EPT
