The Armchair Athleticism critical series is an opinion-base article series regarding the issues and sociocultural deficiencies of the eSports scene. All articles are perceptive-base and revolving around my own experiences and understanding of the subculture.
Sociology Major & Professional Writing Minor at Concordia, Associate's Degree in Psychology & Sociology (Vanier College)
Contributed to over 11 local/national/international events - totaling up to 74,000 attendants/online spectators.
Organized/managed eight different eSports professional organizations. In addition to spearheading public relations division, news writing and marketing.
Writer of over 150 articles for various established mainstream electronic-sports websites and reporter/interviewer for established electronic-sports news sites and 200 pieces revolving around sociocultural analysis and player guides for Valve's Dota 2.
Attained over 100,000 views for Armchair Athleticism, over 2.25 million subscriptions over 105 Valve's Dota 2 player guides.
Why are you starting your own space? I was listening to the suggestions of several friends and I finally started this space after I hit a dead-end in my endeavours in E-Sports. I’m at a point where I am not really affiliated with anyone and now’s a better time than ever to do some opinion topics. Doing my own content meant I would be alone and would work around my own initiative, drive and interest. However, it also meant that I may do something that requires more work than I thought and I would be on my own. It meant that the community reception can be more direct and harsh towards me personally and my views as I would not be backed by some credible organization as when I was writer for some. In the end, this series that took me about a month of writing, editing, verification and re-writing will really be everything I’ve learned, observed and felt throughout my time. I started out with three pieces and ended up going to ten. All of them delve into inspecting the five perspectives of the scene: teams, tournaments, players, spectators and contributors. Ultimately, it aims to really take a strong look into the many issues that inhibit the StarCraft community and E-Sports culture.
Before Heart of the Swarm, there were mentions about how the scene of StarCraft II was ‘dying’; an unclear term as to what extent the eSports competition of StarCraft would dissolve to. While no one denies that the height of StarCraft II has passed after the mid-season of 2012, it’s important to note that some parts of the scene are, in fact, at a decline while others are just the natural filter of a growing subculture. The need to highlight what is worrisome and what is a natural filtered growth of StarCraft II can help create proper direction in terms of focus and urging for future endeavors in those specific fields.
For the past two or three months, I have been thinking about writing something about StarCraft’s situation overall. Actually, since Travis from League of Legends, mentioned, minorly, about how StarCraft is dying (six months ago) and in relation to how people are jumping ship to produce content for League of Legends; I have always wanted to magnify how StarCraft is coming down from its height of new content, personalities and organizations. In October and November, I noted how we were oversupplied on tournaments, new content and a lack of rotation in terms of progaming champions. Now we are starting to see new victors (usually from South Korea) but perceptively less tournaments and webshows. When people highlight the state of StarCraft, they often compare it to that of late 2011, as if the people involved and those on the outside, maintain a consistent and constant interest in a game for years on end. This coming and going, both business-wise and in general, is a filtered growth of the scene: it is the narrowing of relevant content and the decline of new events, streams and bad practices. I do think, in a lot of ways, StarCraft can be improved ranging from spread player-exposure, cycling through newer iconic people as well as Blizzard’s policy/approach in being involved with the community.
(It starts at 6:15)I suggest you take a listen to it, not all of it is relevant to StarCraft, but his personal concerns are mirrored in all eSports of today and the future. It’s insightful because they were concerns mentioned here or within communities in the past.
However, to claim StarCraft II is dying is to overlook the grand scheme of things and to ignore anything from 2010 to now. In essence, just because there is less of something, does not mean there is less popularity or interest. To put into context: despite there being more talk and more support for Dota 2 and League of Legends, does not necessarily correlate to a major decline in StarCraft II. Audiences are not exclusive to games and they are certainly not a limited resource. We’re concluding that the interest of eSports titles has grown.
"It’s dying, right? That scene is kind of dying. Maybe Heart of the Swarm will reinvigorate and I will be laughed at whenever it is a much bigger eSport than League of Legends. But I don’t think that’s the case, I don’t think it will die anytime soon, right? But basically in the StarCraft scene: things got really big but it stopped growing shortly after I sorta started following it and then it just sorta started going downhill, right? But at the same time, the content started going up and up and there was so much saturation of people doing interviews and shows. It just everything got diluted and what I think is happening right now is that there are a lot of StarCraft personalities and content-creators moving over to League of Legends side […] ”
- Travis from his Youtube series: Monday Musings
The mix understanding of StarCraft’s actual growth is due, in part, of the organizers who stretched their numbers and overhyped their achievements. It’s easy, in retrospect, to look at where we saw StarCraft going and now realizing that perhaps we exaggerated a bit in our feelings of grandeur. Now with RIOT and League of Legends setting new innovations about creating a standard of competition, eSports financial support (Valve especially here) and backing for their competitors, we can’t help but compare it to that of StarCraft II. The notion of the scene dying is due to the disproportion of players in specific regions and the dropping out of organizations, both big and small. However, these should not be the sole factors to make a basis of the scene’s death and in fact, evidence can claim that the fluctuation of tournaments featuring StarCraft and viewership are not as poor as some describe. When the StarCraft scene compares themselves to other E-Sports, the numbers are lost and the discouraged view of “what could have been” ensues. It’s a common issue where people will compare scenes without taking into circumstances of the separate games’ context and this is amongst the strongest reasons these misplaced ideas propagate into real worries.
“What we can say is that SC2 is not dying. The numbers are not going up, clearly, but they are largely stable. Interest in player streams seems to be getting lower, but WCS and other tournaments seem to easily take up the slack to keep the people watching their favorite game.” – courtesy of Conti and his tremendous work regarding Livestream and StarCraft II! I suggest you read all of the topic as there are showings of StarCraft event viewership declining.
Make no mistake, StarCraft II is still a major eSport title and will be for many months and possibly years to come. But the ideologies of it continuing to lead the pack in terms of trend-setting and ushering the general audience of traditional entertainment to eSports is definitely not in the cards. In terms of tournaments, from August 2012 to 2013, we’re actually seeing steady numbers of prize-pools (300 to 650k) across the region (less for North-American and more for Europe and South Korea – thanks to WCS) as well as inclusion of StarCraft II at multi-game events (20 to 18 more or less). We’re not in quite as dire situation as some may be lead to believe, we are just not leading the pack anymore and this is normal in a growing subculture. New foundations are always made to further up the expectations and pull for larger audiences.
Researched on the 15th of August, so the money is a little outdated (still in favour of the argument however)
eSports Earnings provides a great tool to compare years of tournaments and player earnings. The graphs may feel incomplete, but we’re mainly interested in the prize numbers for 2013 as well as how many multi-game tournaments still include StarCraft II.
What we do see here is less tournament opportunities in place for larger prize-pools by Blizzard Entertainment for each region. So while prize output is good, if not better, the amount of tournaments available for the average competitor is much less. However, without a region lock, we’re seeing a bit of starvation with North-American especially. This starvation of both quantity of major tournaments as well as unlocked regions pushes early retirements for players (fueled by their growing disinterest with the game).
How do we distinguish which is filtered growth and which is true signs of the decline of StarCraft? It’s a matter of context. IGN Pro League’s end and Major League Gaming’s redirection are signs of business: one had bad business practices, as anyone can tell you (though great public presentation), and another saw valuable markets to explore (it could be other aspects as well, there’s never one true reason; just a variety of strong justifications). KeSPA’s restructuring to a more open practice is because of the lack of popularity of StarCraft II in Korea, the WCS format that bottlenecked events and thus the need for that many teams in such a small region (eSF + KeSPA teams all for Proleague and WCS Korea [now OSL & GSL]). These are dissected examples that emphasize context to show which areas are suffering and which are simply moving on.
What I consider to be filtered growth is mostly based on opinion and perception. In 2012, we saw leaps and bounds of major production organization and presentation from the big event organizations. DreamHack always impressed me, but NASL and Turtle Entertainment [IEM/ESL] have also set the notch higher. There is an emphasis on presenters, observers (something Dota 2 hasn’t incorporated yet) and hype. Schedule and time organization have improved and attendance numbers are still very, very high. In essence, while StarCraft is readjusting in their new waistline of competitions and competitors, event organizations are setting new standards of professional work.
Let’s summarize:
Prize-pool numbers: Not any lower than we may think, just not as scattered across multiple games. I would say the lack of WCS regions within China and SEA (including Oceania) are issues, including the lack of a region lock to prevent a complete failure of a particular region. Blizzard’s position should be to keep all regions plump with healthy competition while relying on the organizers they commission for WCS production, to attract new audiences (as IEM does with Gamescom and IEM NY with Comic-Con).
Tournaments: With amount of reserved time WCS takes, to which no other tournament organizers can broadcast simultaneously with, tournament opportunities have shrunk causing many players to reconsider their options; it also causes team organizations to look into new eSports titles that offer a bit more liberty and marketable numbers for their sponsors.
Additionally, with game developers taking the reins of their scenes, they are also delegating responsibilities and excluding other organizations from producing content. Think how restricted NASL was with StarCraft II content because of Blizzard’s partnership with MLG? This is mirrored across the world and does put a hinder on new businesses. League of Legends also suffers similarly from this issue.
Viewership: I find Conti’s consistent work on the subject gives the best evidence. Within this topic, he notes that there are lower viewership numbers, but also that WCS stands on its own successfully. Overall, numbers are stable since Wings of Liberty (more or less) with events still garnering a huge interest (specifically WCS).
In summary, when we saw the strides other eSports titles are hitting, we feel this sense of unaccomplished worth. We compare ourselves to StarCraft of 2009 or StarCraft II of 2011 (Anaheim anyone?) or of Dota 2 and League of Legends. However we never really account for the major flaws of those two games. In many ways, they get things right and take a bigger investment step than Blizzard, but in other forms; the scene still needs growth; similarly with StarCraft. That is not to say that they aren’t doing better than StarCraft, they are just doing things differently and solving areas StarCraft currently suffers from (I’m sure you can think of plenty). Despite this, interest in StarCraft is steady. Declining? At times, but slowly and not looming as near as people may think. It may feel like I’m downplaying the spiraling of this scene, but I rather see it as more of refocusing the factors that matter most and then making note of where we truly stand.
To note, that I realize the exterior factors also resulting in KeSPA's restructuring and various other elements that affect the scene, including the more stable and financially welcoming system of RIOT's LCS and more.
This article isn't meant to downplay the faults of Blizzard Entertainment, but to highlight all aspects of the scene in a fair and arguably neutral light.
Many thanks to the people who proofread it:
Shawn Simon/Sheth Timothy Young/Shindigs Thomas Rigolage Dan Chou/Frodan Robbie Nakamura/GHOSTCLAW I'm also on a new timezone here, so I forget the optimal time to post in EST, ah well.
That is an interesting read and I am glad someone took the time to compare the numbers from 2013 to 2012. It gets rid of a lot of the anecdotal evidence we see out there. Its good to see that the scene is steady and that if Blizzard listens to the community and players for 2014, the numbers could climb again.
Conti's work saves everyone a lot of time thankfully. I chose a full year difference as my comparative point. But if we compared all of 2012 with the nearing of the end with 2013, I think we'd see either a consistent prize-pool number or slightly ahead.
Nonetheless, I feel that StarCraft has its huge flaws, but the interest and enjoyment of it have not faltered as much as we're mislead to believe. People will always move onto new passions after the initial hype and attention of the game has passed. It's normal, the panic that follows as well.
Thanks for commenting Plansix, you've been a consistent reader (:
No problem, there is interesting stuff in there, plus I like to have evidence to use when people claim the sky is falling.
And I think you are right that SC2 and Blizzard have huge flaws. There is part of me that thinks Blizzard is paralyzed by trying to please everyone. That they started listening to the community, but don’t know who to listen to. In the same thread you can find people demanding a more stable game, but also complaining the game is boring with the same thing every time. I really hope they continue to listen, but do what is best for the game and to keep it interesting. HotS is fun because there are new styles of play and they need to keep that going. People should be encouraged to try new things, even if things are a bit unstable because of it. Its what makes games like Dota 2 awesome, that it is always changing.
But we should encourage discussion and pointing out real suggestions to fix things, rather than just telling them Blizzard they suck.
The biggest problem with Blizzard is their misplaced role. They're concerned with viewership numbers rather than the prosperity of regional players, despite the lesser talented pool of competitors. Their goal should be a utilitarian one and let the organizations they delegate the logistics to, handle keeping the audience entertained and tuning into each region.
Secondly, no SEA/China WCS is just beyond ridiculous. I'm sure there is a reason for this, but I don't know if I'd agree with it.
These two factors would certainly elevate the feeling of a dying scene, especially when opportunity feels like a more reaching goal rather than a repeat of 2012 pre-WCS beta (where Koreans would come over to MLG, win and then leave).
SC2's design has inherent flaws. But since players were still finding opportunities to compete and win (or at least join teams to compete), there was more tolerance for these flaws. Now WCS is drying up possible smaller competitions and bottlenecking the prize-pool to a smaller amount without regional locks.
I don’t know about the issues in China, but it is a huge market and there must be a good reason why they do not have their own region. You don’t ignore that many people for no reason. If I were to bet, I would assume that the reasons have more to do with the business relationships in China and that the country is very protectionist in general. It might simply be that they don’t have anyone to work with in China.
I don think that Blizzard has hurt the growth of local players and I have always championed the idea of a minor league that is region based. The NA scene just needs more focus on itself in general, rather than the focus on bringing the Korea stars to the scene. But there is always huge push back on that front, which goes to Blizzard being paralyzed by feed back from the community. It is the problem that Blizzard has, that they don’t know what their role should be. Unlike Riot with the LCS, they cannot just take control of the entire scene without cutting out GOM and OGN. And Valve just deals with Valve and no one else for The International once a year. There is no guide book for Blizzard and they are getting mixed messages from the community.
But these are part of the growing pains of Esports, which we learn as we go. Saying “Blizzard, you need to focus on players and the viewers will take care of themselves” is a more productive discussion than “Blizzard fucked up everything”.
On September 04 2013 04:45 Plansix wrote: I don’t know about the issues in China, but it is a huge market and there must be a good reason why they do not have their own region. You don’t ignore that many people for no reason. If I were to bet, I would assume that the reasons have more to do with the business relationships in China and that the country is very protectionist in general. It might simply be that they don’t have anyone to work with in China.
I don think that Blizzard has hurt the growth of local players and I have always championed the idea of a minor league that is region based. The NA scene just needs more focus on itself in general, rather than the focus on bringing the Korea stars to the scene. But there is always huge push back on that front, which goes to Blizzard being paralyzed by feed back from the community. It is the problem that Blizzard has, that they don’t know what their role should be. Unlike Riot with the LCS, they cannot just take control of the entire scene without cutting out GOM and OGN. And Valve just deals with Valve and no one else for The International once a year. There is no guide book for Blizzard and they are getting mixed messages from the community.
But these are part of the growing pains of Esports, which we learn as we go. Saying “Blizzard, you need to focus on players and the viewers will take care of themselves” is a more productive discussion than “Blizzard fucked up everything”.
I think if they paid GameFY properly (more so than they pay the other partners), then GameFY (the guys who do WC3 and Dota 2) could easily handle this within law.
The only person to make the scene grow from within is Blizzard. Totalbiscuit can do it, MLG can do it; but it isn't a smart business move and there is no "marketing" area of their budget that could make this worthwhile for the long and consistent haul.
I think you overplay how much the community affects SC2 eSports' division decisions. I'd say they're too stubborn on so many grounds to really take what we say seriously. But I might be just exaggerating; I think they're aware, but feel they know more to make an informed decision; albeit lacking the experience to foresee the results. But now we're really getting into conjecture!
What they're doing now is pretty brutal to OGN/GSL. I noted that WCS in Korea resulted in a lot of retiring + the KeSPA sponsoring company issues, but I also feel that OGN/GSL are relying more on LoL because of how much more popular it is + how much more desirable it is for teams. With Blizzard preventing OGN/GSL from creating separate tournaments, they ultimately cut the worth of KR in half and prevent those event companies from prospering.
On September 04 2013 04:45 Plansix wrote: I don’t know about the issues in China, but it is a huge market and there must be a good reason why they do not have their own region. You don’t ignore that many people for no reason. If I were to bet, I would assume that the reasons have more to do with the business relationships in China and that the country is very protectionist in general. It might simply be that they don’t have anyone to work with in China.
My first guess would actually be that there was no WCS in China/SEA for 2013 because HotS didn't launch there in time to sync the region up with the rest of the WCS system. You might still be right--but Blizzard found collaborators in 2012, and there's several SC2 leagues in China now, so I'd guess Blizzard has options going into 2014...we'll see!
On September 04 2013 04:45 Plansix wrote: I don’t know about the issues in China, but it is a huge market and there must be a good reason why they do not have their own region. You don’t ignore that many people for no reason. If I were to bet, I would assume that the reasons have more to do with the business relationships in China and that the country is very protectionist in general. It might simply be that they don’t have anyone to work with in China.
My first guess would actually be that there was no WCS in China/SEA for 2013 because HotS didn't launch there in time to sync the region up with the rest of the WCS system. You might still be right--but Blizzard found collaborators in 2012, and there's several SC2 leagues in China now, so I'd guess Blizzard has options going into 2014...we'll see!
Crossing my fingers for this, I think you're spot-on and I can't believe I didn't realize this. Time for bed, here's hoping this discussion prospers :D
You could be right on Blizzard being stubborn. But I work for large companies and they just seem like every other large company I have ever dealt with, slow to change. There is endless second guessing, approvals and people needing to weigh in on the decision to do a specific thing. Add in the fact that they are dealing with OGN and GOM, and you are looking at one of the most protracted processes ever. Without overwhelming evidence of what they should be doing, I think any major changes could be slow to be put into place.
I don’t feel bad for OGN and GOM when it comes to what is going on in Korea. Those companies are at each other all the time and the level of sillyness that goes on is beyond me. Why don’t they have Tasteless and Artosis cast the WCS every season? Pride. Why do we get weird format changes between each season depending on who runs it? Pride. They refuse to get along and Blizzard doesn’t want a fragmented league in Korea. But at the end of the, OGN and GOM don’t own SC2, which is the thing they want to broadcast. It is the endless problem when it comes to dealing with these companies, that they have their own agenda and are as established as Blizzard and in a country that is not the US. There is part of me that wishes we could just run NA and EU leagues and not care about who was king of the world every season. It would solve a lot of problems for both Korea and the other regions. NA and EU are filled with scrappy start ups and Korea is filled with 10 year old institutions. Those two do not normally get along in business and operate very differently.
And I am not super concerned about the retirements from Kespa. It sounds like it has been a long time coming and I bet there was some excess fat from the BW era that might have needed to be trimmed. Its sounds like Kespa is working on a system where players get salaries, so it might a change in the way things are run over there. Its harsh, but players retire a lot and there are big shifts going on with all the broadcasters.
You are right that Blizzard needs to focus on working with in NA partners. NASL is a very good example of a great partner and they run a tight ship. I really want to see more from them and more out of the Esports city they are creating in California
I try not to plagiarize your greatest thoughts, but it's so hard when they're so spot-on
Thank you Cereb & y0su
On September 04 2013 05:10 Plansix wrote: You could be right on Blizzard being stubborn. But I work for large companies and they just seem like every other large company I have ever dealt with, slow to change. There is endless second guessing, approvals and people needing to weigh in on the decision to do a specific thing. Add in the fact that they are dealing with OGN and GOM, and you are looking at one of the most protracted processes ever. Without overwhelming evidence of what they should be doing, I think any major changes could be slow to be put into place.
I don’t feel bad for OGN and GOM when it comes to what is going on in Korea. Those companies are at each other all the time and the level of sillyness that goes on is beyond me. Why don’t they have Tasteless and Artosis cast the WCS every season? Pride. Why do we get weird format changes between each season depending on who runs it? Pride. They refuse to get along and Blizzard doesn’t want a fragmented league in Korea. But at the end of the, OGN and GOM don’t own SC2, which is the thing they want to broadcast. It is the endless problem when it comes to dealing with these companies, that they have their own agenda and are as established as Blizzard and in a country that is not the US. There is part of me that wishes we could just run NA and EU leagues and not care about who was king of the world every season. It would solve a lot of problems for both Korea and the other regions. NA and EU are filled with scrappy start ups and Korea is filled with 10 year old institutions. Those two do not normally get along in business and operate very differently.
And I am not super concerned about the retirements from Kespa. It sounds like it has been a long time coming and I bet there was some excess fat from the BW era that might have needed to be trimmed. Its sounds like Kespa is working on a system where players get salaries, so it might a change in the way things are run over there. Its harsh, but players retire a lot and there are big shifts going on with all the broadcasters.
You are right that Blizzard needs to focus on working with in NA partners. NASL is a very good example of a great partner and they run a tight ship. I really want to see more from them and more out of the Esports city they are creating in California
Ok now bed after this:
Oh god yes, slow to change. You are so right and change comes with needing approval from six other departments, right?
I sincerely hope 2014 actually changes things a lot more. I know 2013 was their test year, but let's hope they got the extra mile, if anything.
I admit that WCS does regulate the bumps of OGN/GOM, but honestly; the trade-off isn't worth it; where they break even and can't break away from the obligations that Blizzard sets in place. I don't know, I see your point a lot though, heavy costs however.
Yeah, long-time coming; true and yeah; excess fat from BW, so true. eSF was filled with a lot B-teamers from BW too, no? Now they're all on similar levels? That's just too much and I believe I wrote that in the article as well (something to that effect, you're spot on).
I remember that in 2011-2012 we rarely got to 100k viewers. We thought 70-80k was huge number for us but now we get more than 100k for the last WCS and we think SC2 is dying. By nature of the game we will never get as big as LoL so I don't think comparing it is really fair. SC2 even get more viewers than Dota2 in non TI tournaments. I think that' good enough but there are certainly a lot of areas to improve.
The figures showed a major decline in WCS stream viewers compared to 2012. Not sure how that can be spun as a positive.
The reality is that going forward there will be less professional SC2 players because it is too hard to make any decent money from it. Only the very select few get deep enough in tournaments to get decent prize money, and the number of players who earn decent salaries is probably shrinking too. We already have a situation where too many teams screw over their players for money owed for wages and costs and also tournaments paying out prize money very late, or not at all.
You could say the market can not support the current number of pro-gamers and it will whittle down the numbers in Darwinian fashion. Without the scene growing then the future looks bleak for many pro-games because their chances of winning money are not improving if the number of tournaments keeps declining. Maybe the scene can grow again, but it's diminishing this past year is not encouraging.
Amazing post, love the insight. I do think there's a significant amount of overstating the decline, and numbers backing up the fact that it may not be everything people are panicking about is very nice to see. This cycle of boom and bust for games is not a fun one to go through, so lets hope the negativity can be minimized in the coming bit of time so we can focus what is really important - enjoying the matches and supporting what we love, be it sc2 or LoL or whatever esport it may be.
EPT![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/kwkQa.png)
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