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Czech Republic12129 Posts
On November 18 2020 00:18 ejozl wrote:
In terms of tournament play, I don't see a decline of skill at all. But clearly the ping favours Zerg players the most and this year for good reasons we only see tournaments where ping continues to be an issue.
I do get depressed when I watch PartinG stream and the Kr ladder can't find him any players though. Imagine being a new player, you're forced to play at a certain time of day and when you actually get good, you need to have those player connections to get any decent practice.
Uh, I see a skill decline. For example check how many good Protoss players there are around. And then check how many was there 4 years ago. You can do this with any race.
Soulkey, soO, Classic, herO, Hero, MMA, GumiHo, Snute, JD, Flash, Rain, Hydra, Lilbow  , Hyun, Dear
Now to those who are still active but less good. sOs, would you believe he's a 3-time world champion? Taeja, Zest, Bomber
Tell me who replaced these guys in terms of quality. And then tell me how the quality didn't go down when we lost so many players without replacing them. Sure, the top matches are good, but until these are played...?
Polt, Fantasy, ForGG, Leenock, MC
Edit> not everyone was the bestest everest player, but they were competitive. Now they're not. Which is a bit of unfair towards Zest, but i want him much better than he's now.
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On November 18 2020 00:44 deacon.frost wrote:Show nested quote +On November 18 2020 00:18 ejozl wrote:
In terms of tournament play, I don't see a decline of skill at all. But clearly the ping favours Zerg players the most and this year for good reasons we only see tournaments where ping continues to be an issue.
I do get depressed when I watch PartinG stream and the Kr ladder can't find him any players though. Imagine being a new player, you're forced to play at a certain time of day and when you actually get good, you need to have those player connections to get any decent practice. Uh, I see a skill decline. For example check how many good Protoss players there are around. And then check how many was there 4 years ago. You can do this with any race. Soulkey, soO, Classic, herO, Hero, MMA, GumiHo, Snute, JD, Flash, Rain, Hydra, Lilbow , Hyun, Dear Now to those who are still active but less good. sOs, would you believe he's a 3-time world champion? Taeja, Zest, Bomber Tell me who replaced these guys in terms of quality. And then tell me how the quality didn't go down when we lost so many players without replacing them. Sure, the top matches are good, but until these are played...? Polt, Fantasy, ForGG, Leenock, MC Edit> not everyone was the bestest everest player, but they were competitive. Now they're not. Which is a bit of unfair towards Zest, but i want him much better than he's now.
I guess I should say the top 16~ Koreans. I definitely agree the pool has shrinked and in fact hugely so. And even the top players are not always on peak form, you can sort of see that they all try to hit their top condition around GSL season 3 -> Global finals. The winner of Season 1 and in a lesser degree Season 2, are usually the ones that take this time of the year the most serious.
Edit: I was also sort of thinking throughout LotV time in my head, not that I think this changes my statement.
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On November 17 2020 23:37 Charoisaur wrote:Show nested quote +On November 17 2020 21:52 Comedy wrote:
The rise of foreigners is legit. It's not like the remaining Koreans are worse in skill, or playing worse than 3-4 years ago.
Serral, Reynor, Clem would be able to go to toe to toe, win championships, vs koreans, in any era, 100%, in SC2.
There's just less koreans now than there were before.
that's very arguable. They don't practice in teamhouses anymore, multiple koreans have stated that they aren't as motivated anymore (Rogue) or that they got slower with advanced age (Inno). others struggle with injuries (Dark, Maru). I agree that Serral, Reynor and Clem could compete in any era but it would be naive to think their winrate vs top koreans in 2015 would be as high as it is currently.
Byun won in 2016 without having a team. KeSpa was still there, the teamhouses were still there.
Serral's win ratio against koreans rose to insanely high peaks against Dark and Maru free from injuries and Rogue motivated enough.
If we still had 2015's system you would have never seen Serral, Reynor and Clem become this good because they probably wouldn't have fully committed to Sc2 but it is simply insane to think that players as skilled as they are now would have struggled more against the top players of 2015, 2013 or 2011 even if their knowledge of the game had to be adjusted to those of the period we are considering.
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Northern Ireland24313 Posts
On November 18 2020 00:30 Lorch wrote:Show nested quote +On November 17 2020 21:52 Comedy wrote:
The rise of foreigners is legit. It's not like the remaining Koreans are worse in skill, or playing worse than 3-4 years ago.
Serral, Reynor, Clem would be able to go to toe to toe, win championships, vs koreans, in any era, 100%, in SC2.
There's just less koreans now than there were before.
If you honestly believe that no longer having team houses and weekly pro league matches was not the key factor behind Koreans no longer dominating, you are delusional. They were the best because they played in the most competitive environment (that includes regular offline matches + team houses + best ladder). If you take that away, they are no different from any other sc2 player in the world and shockingly enough that is what ended up happening.
Indeed. It’s not just the quality of practice within the houses either, it’s what it takes away in terms of practice for everyone else, as well as the connections forged in terms of good practice. Especially when Proleague was running.
The top guys are practicing internally and getting great high level practice, but they’re trying to hide their plans for that week’s Proleague match as well, so it’s unlikely they’ll be laddering all that much.
For anyone who isn’t in a team house, you’re laddering in a pool that doesn’t feature much of the best talent, while trying to bridge the gap to the very best.
Which doesn’t seem particularly doable. Within Korea very, very few have ever been at the top without having spent at least some time in the team house system.
The guys at the top have still kept up a high level, but it’s been years since a real new talent has shone at that level in Korea.
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On November 18 2020 00:07 Malinor wrote:Show nested quote +On November 17 2020 06:58 Mizenhauer wrote:This has been almost ten years in the making. The last KeSPA rookie draft was held in 2013 and there has been almost no influx of talent since. (If you really want to dig into the drafts, 2008 was the last year that produced a bunch of championship caliber players, though 2009 had some solid players as well).
So you have a scene that was never going to get a bunch of new players for a number of reasons, (less pay/less exposure/their friends are playing lol or overwatch or whatever team game is popular/the current pros were too good) that was always inevitably going to be gutted by military service, and where players are picking up all sorts of injuries that limits the amount of time they can play and you have the perfect recipe for stagnation.You can go back if you're really curious and find the interview where Zest remarks on how he tries (and I'm am paraphrasing) "half as hard as he used to". And remember, he said that YEARS ago. Or look to 2016 when players like INnoVation or soO basically mailed it in, playing Proleague (since this was what SKT paid them to do) but not putting any effort into individual leagues. There are countless other examples of players simply not putting in the time or just coasting because they were so far ahead of the second tier of competition that it wouldn't affect their bottom line all that much. It's also worth reading some stuff Jaedong said about not enjoying sc after awhile. It's quite possible a lot of the players are just burnt out after all these years. Anyway, the INnoVation's soO's, Rogue's etc regularly reached the opening stages of individual events despite not grinding ceaselessly because they were simply so far ahead of everyone else. Players like bravo, guilty, trust, etc etc were never going to have some sudden breakthrough no matter how hard they practiced. Like I said, sc2 reached a point of stagnation a very long time ago. The result is just more obvious now that so many players have gone to military and the players in eu/na are putting more time in relative to the koreans. It has nothing to do with region lock. It has nothing to do with some collusion against the Koreans. Korean sc2 was always destined to reach this point and the life matchfixing scandal simply accelerated the process by a couple of years by killing off proleague (which was already on its way out, but offered some stability to players). Even then, sc2 gave us some great games, great players, great rivalries and incredible memories. Who cares if Korean sc2 is at its lowest point? Everyone should have seen this coming years ago and the truth is it's only going to get worse. My advice is go back and watch some good games from yesteryear and celebrate the joy sc2 gave us. For some reason noone but Waxangel quoted this. There is a lot of finer points to argue about, and it is fun doing it. But this is the center of it all.
First of all, there is no need at all to go back in time to watch amazing Sc2 played at the highest level.
While the density of talents in Korea has declined without any doubt, you must be lying to everyone and to yourself if you are convinced that low quality games are being played in the bracket stages of korean and international tournaments right now; TY vs Maru has been praised as one of the best Code S finals, for example.
The whole part about koreans not caring and not practicing may be true for single players but there have also been others who stepped up during LoTV. soO, Inno, Zest and sOs got worse? Stats, Dark, TY, Rogue were better in LoTV that they had been in HoTS, by far.
The part you underlined is just as true for Brood War, as jinjin has been saying in this thread.
Sure, viewership can be amazing but there hasn't been new korean players capable of competing with the old pros for years. However, koreans were so immensely ahead in BW that nobody would be able to catch up with them and also except for maybe China, the foreign scene is basically dead in BW.
In Sc2 the gap, despite being very significant during HoTS, was never that big and the non koreans were able to mantain a living scene with influx of new talents, partly because of region lock.
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On November 18 2020 01:01 Xain0n wrote:Show nested quote +On November 17 2020 23:37 Charoisaur wrote:On November 17 2020 21:52 Comedy wrote:
The rise of foreigners is legit. It's not like the remaining Koreans are worse in skill, or playing worse than 3-4 years ago.
Serral, Reynor, Clem would be able to go to toe to toe, win championships, vs koreans, in any era, 100%, in SC2.
There's just less koreans now than there were before.
that's very arguable. They don't practice in teamhouses anymore, multiple koreans have stated that they aren't as motivated anymore (Rogue) or that they got slower with advanced age (Inno). others struggle with injuries (Dark, Maru). I agree that Serral, Reynor and Clem could compete in any era but it would be naive to think their winrate vs top koreans in 2015 would be as high as it is currently. Byun won in 2016 without having a team. KeSpa was still there, the teamhouses were still there. Serral's win ratio against koreans rose to insanely high peaks against Dark and Maru free from injuries and Rogue motivated enough.
and Byun was the first one to ever do it.
Serral played during his first reign 2 bo5s against Dark, 1 bo5 against Rogue and 1 bo5 + a bo1 against Maru.
not really representative enough to draw any conclusions from except that he had the ability to beat any player in the world which I agree with.
If we still had 2015's system you would have never seen Serral, Reynor and Clem become this good because they probably wouldn't have fully committed to Sc2 but it is simply insane to think that players as skilled as they are now would have struggled more against the top players of 2015, 2013 or 2011 even if their knowledge of the game had to be adjusted to those of the period we are considering.
I think it's insane to think the koreans are still playing exactly at the skill level they did when they were practicing in teamhouses, playing every week in Proleague and had thrice the amount of practice partners as they do now.
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The biggest reason for the decline of SC2 in Korea is competition from LoL, and to a lesser extent, Brood War. The popularity of LoL and the staying power of BW means that the SC2 player and viewership numbers in KR cannot sustain the level of competition we saw earlier in the decade, when SC2 was the only show in town.
The second biggest reason is simply the age of the game. SC2 is 10 years old now, and it's not hard to imagine that its viewership and player base can't match that of a 1-3 year old game.
I see some people claim region locking as a factor in KR's decline. I don't buy that. Region locking excludes Koreans from just the NA/EU regional tournaments - there are tons of other tournaments Koreans can participate in. For example, in 2015 there were 22 premier tournaments, of which 19 did not have region locking. Playing 3 fewer tournaments per year is not a big detriment, certainly not enough to cause the decline of an entire scene. (Also, region locking was only introduced in 2015, which is really really late in the lifecycle of SC2. KR had started to decline before then, with GSTL ending in 2013 and 2016 being the last Proleague.)
That said, although Korea's domination of SC2 is diminishing, it is far from over. Korea still claims 19 of the top 40 spots on aligulac, which is amazing for a country with 2% of the world GDP. The United States and China both have economies >10 times the size of Korea, but with only 2 and 1 aligulac spots respectively. Japan, UK, and India, all with larger economies, don't appear on the top 40 at all. Korea can drop to 5 spots and still be considered a powerhouse.
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On November 18 2020 01:27 Charoisaur wrote:Show nested quote +On November 18 2020 01:01 Xain0n wrote:On November 17 2020 23:37 Charoisaur wrote:On November 17 2020 21:52 Comedy wrote:
The rise of foreigners is legit. It's not like the remaining Koreans are worse in skill, or playing worse than 3-4 years ago.
Serral, Reynor, Clem would be able to go to toe to toe, win championships, vs koreans, in any era, 100%, in SC2.
There's just less koreans now than there were before.
that's very arguable. They don't practice in teamhouses anymore, multiple koreans have stated that they aren't as motivated anymore (Rogue) or that they got slower with advanced age (Inno). others struggle with injuries (Dark, Maru). I agree that Serral, Reynor and Clem could compete in any era but it would be naive to think their winrate vs top koreans in 2015 would be as high as it is currently. Byun won in 2016 without having a team. KeSpa was still there, the teamhouses were still there. Serral's win ratio against koreans rose to insanely high peaks against Dark and Maru free from injuries and Rogue motivated enough. and Byun was the first one to ever do it. Serral played during his first reign 2 bo5s against Dark, 1 bo5 against Rogue and 1 bo5 + a bo1 against Maru. not really representative enough to draw any conclusions from except that he had the ability to beat any player in the world which I agree with. Show nested quote +
If we still had 2015's system you would have never seen Serral, Reynor and Clem become this good because they probably wouldn't have fully committed to Sc2 but it is simply insane to think that players as skilled as they are now would have struggled more against the top players of 2015, 2013 or 2011 even if their knowledge of the game had to be adjusted to those of the period we are considering.
I think it's insane to think the koreans are still playing exactly at the skill level they did when they were practicing in teamhouses, playing every week in Proleague and had thrice the amount of practice partners as they do now.
There are mechanical metrics one can look at when evaluating performance.
Koreans may be less ahead of meta, may have less 1x builds and may study the game less but LoTV is a more mechanically demanding game than HoTS and if you don't consider currently injuried or much older players who may very well have become slower, top players have to be faster than ever to compete.
As for Serral, there can't be any discussion. Those series weren't representative? Maybe his aggregate against top koreans and the tournaments he won could be?
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On November 18 2020 01:29 warnull wrote:
The biggest reason for the decline of SC2 in Korea is competition from LoL, and to a lesser extent, Brood War. The popularity of LoL and the staying power of BW means that the SC2 player and viewership numbers in KR cannot sustain the level of competition we saw earlier in the decade, when SC2 was the only show in town.
The second biggest reason is simply the age of the game. SC2 is 10 years old now, and it's not hard to imagine that its viewership and player base can't match that of a 1-3 year old game.
I see some people claim region locking as a factor in KR's decline. I don't buy that. Region locking excludes Koreans from just the NA/EU regional tournaments - there are tons of other tournaments Koreans can participate in. For example, in 2015 there were 22 premier tournaments, of which 19 did not have region locking. Playing 3 fewer tournaments per year is not a big detriment, certainly not enough to cause the decline of an entire scene. (Also, region locking was only introduced in 2015, which is really really late in the lifecycle of SC2. KR had started to decline before then, with GSTL ending in 2013 and 2016 being the last Proleague.)
That said, although Korea's domination of SC2 is diminishing, it is far from over. Korea still claims 19 of the top 40 spots on aligulac, which is amazing for a country with 2% of the world GDP. The United States and China both have economies >10 times the size of Korea, but with only 2 and 1 aligulac spots respectively. Japan, UK, and India, all with larger economies, don't appear on the top 40 at all. Korea can drop to 5 spots and still be considered a powerhouse.
What you say is true, and what Mizenhauer said is also true.
The Korean SC2 scene has been slowly bleeding out since 2012, mostly due to a combination of matchfixing and League of Legends. Matchfixing took away StarCraft's credibility with viewers, and League of Legends took away the Korean youth & new blood. There is no undoing what has been done. Eventually players like TY, Classic, SoO, Stats, and INnoVation will all end up back playing & streaming BW either casually or full-time. Maybe Rogue as well.
Now, that being said, the level of Korean players is still very high regardless if they don't dedicate themselves to SC2 all the time. Truth is they don't need to be to continue being successful in tournaments.
We've always put the Korean StarCraft 2 scene on a pedestal compared to the rest of the world, but does it need to be on that pedestal to still be a strong region? And is it really that bad if EU and KR are on relatively equal footing?
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I think foreigners just got too good.
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atm I don't think so, but it may happen in 2021 or 2022
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wtf? have you heard of cross server LAG?
These koreans wouldnt lose a game to anyone else other than reynor or serral if it was lan
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Everyone is avoiding the elephant in the room: No one is watching SC2, and it was kept artificially alive by Blizzard for the past years through tournament money. Now that Blizzard pulled out, which was 100 percent expected, Koreans will lose their only source of income in the next months. So what's the point in trying hard, also given that most of these guys haven't been to the military yet.
Stats, TY have already started streaming BW where the money is. When even low viewer numbers in the 100-200 gives you a stable income of 11k dollars a month through donations, why would you keep playing SC2?
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Northern Ireland24313 Posts
On November 18 2020 04:02 Duke_nk wrote:
Everyone is avoiding the elephant in the room: No one is watching SC2, and it was kept artificially alive by Blizzard for the past years through tournament money. Now that Blizzard pulled out, which was 100 percent expected, Koreans will lose their only source of income in the next months. So what's the point in trying hard, also given that most of these guys haven't been to the military yet.
Stats, TY have already started streaming BW where the money is. When even low viewer numbers in the 100-200 gives you a stable income of 11k dollars a month through donations, why would you keep playing SC2?
11k dollars a month for 100-200 viewers? Is that even remotely accurate? If so wonder why anyone plays SC2!
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France12761 Posts
On November 18 2020 03:37 ShowTheLights wrote:
wtf? have you heard of cross server LAG?
These koreans wouldnt lose a game to anyone else other than reynor or serral if it was lan
Like meomeika?
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Czech Republic12129 Posts
On November 18 2020 04:02 Duke_nk wrote:
Everyone is avoiding the elephant in the room: No one is watching SC2, and it was kept artificially alive by Blizzard for the past years through tournament money. Now that Blizzard pulled out, which was 100 percent expected, Koreans will lose their only source of income in the next months. So what's the point in trying hard, also given that most of these guys haven't been to the military yet.
Stats, TY have already started streaming BW where the money is. When even low viewer numbers in the 100-200 gives you a stable income of 11k dollars a month through donations, why would you keep playing SC2?
No one is watching, have you like, ever, checked the numbers? 10k viewers for Code S during a late night/early morning in the US and working hours for Europe. (yeah, saturdays is bad) Harstem has a45k subscribers, Winter has 160k subscribers. Videos have between 10k - 25k views, older/more interesting can get over 100k.
HeroMarine right now has 1,2k viewers(1275 acording to the TL bar)
WardiTV 1,7k viewers (+- few hundred) streaming some Invitational.
Maybe you want to reword your statement, because no one watching is pretty interesting statement.
Also the community may be small, but is quite rich, which has shown during selling the ... uh... those crate things to increase the prize pools. Or when Take asked for monies to support his tourneys.
I don't blame Koreans to go to stream BW, because being a foreign streamer sucks. (bad timezone, English, SC2 )
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On November 18 2020 04:24 deacon.frost wrote:Show nested quote +On November 18 2020 04:02 Duke_nk wrote:
Everyone is avoiding the elephant in the room: No one is watching SC2, and it was kept artificially alive by Blizzard for the past years through tournament money. Now that Blizzard pulled out, which was 100 percent expected, Koreans will lose their only source of income in the next months. So what's the point in trying hard, also given that most of these guys haven't been to the military yet.
Stats, TY have already started streaming BW where the money is. When even low viewer numbers in the 100-200 gives you a stable income of 11k dollars a month through donations, why would you keep playing SC2? No one is watching, have you like, ever, checked the numbers? 10k viewers for Code S during a late night/early morning in the US and working hours for Europe. (yeah, saturdays is bad) Harstem has a45k subscribers, Winter has 160k subscribers. Videos have between 10k - 25k views, older/more interesting can get over 100k. HeroMarine right now has 1,2k viewers(1275 acording to the TL bar) WardiTV 1,7k viewers (+- few hundred) streaming some Invitational. Maybe you want to reword your statement, because no one watching is pretty interesting statement. Also the community may be small, but is quite rich, which has shown during selling the ... uh... those crate things to increase the prize pools. Or when Take asked for monies to support his tourneys. I don't blame Koreans to go to stream BW, because being a foreign streamer sucks. (bad timezone, English, SC2 )
So you are saying that Trump is winning?
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On November 18 2020 01:36 Xain0n wrote:Show nested quote +On November 18 2020 01:27 Charoisaur wrote:On November 18 2020 01:01 Xain0n wrote:On November 17 2020 23:37 Charoisaur wrote:On November 17 2020 21:52 Comedy wrote:
The rise of foreigners is legit. It's not like the remaining Koreans are worse in skill, or playing worse than 3-4 years ago.
Serral, Reynor, Clem would be able to go to toe to toe, win championships, vs koreans, in any era, 100%, in SC2.
There's just less koreans now than there were before.
that's very arguable. They don't practice in teamhouses anymore, multiple koreans have stated that they aren't as motivated anymore (Rogue) or that they got slower with advanced age (Inno). others struggle with injuries (Dark, Maru). I agree that Serral, Reynor and Clem could compete in any era but it would be naive to think their winrate vs top koreans in 2015 would be as high as it is currently. Byun won in 2016 without having a team. KeSpa was still there, the teamhouses were still there. Serral's win ratio against koreans rose to insanely high peaks against Dark and Maru free from injuries and Rogue motivated enough. and Byun was the first one to ever do it. Serral played during his first reign 2 bo5s against Dark, 1 bo5 against Rogue and 1 bo5 + a bo1 against Maru. not really representative enough to draw any conclusions from except that he had the ability to beat any player in the world which I agree with.
If we still had 2015's system you would have never seen Serral, Reynor and Clem become this good because they probably wouldn't have fully committed to Sc2 but it is simply insane to think that players as skilled as they are now would have struggled more against the top players of 2015, 2013 or 2011 even if their knowledge of the game had to be adjusted to those of the period we are considering.
I think it's insane to think the koreans are still playing exactly at the skill level they did when they were practicing in teamhouses, playing every week in Proleague and had thrice the amount of practice partners as they do now. There are mechanical metrics one can look at when evaluating performance. Koreans may be less ahead of meta, may have less 1x builds and may study the game less but LoTV is a more mechanically demanding game than HoTS and if you don't consider currently injuried or much older players who may very well have become slower, top players have to be faster than ever to compete.
the game rewards multitasking more but that doesn't mean players are better at it.
If you rewatch series like Maru vs Dear, Life vs Dream or INnoVation vs Soulkey their multitasking was at least as good as their multitasking today with less mistakes.
also which korean is even left playing at his best right now? Maru and Dark struggle with injuries, Rogue only gets motivated for the big prizepools, Zest and Inno weren't really championship contenders for quite some time now, Stats is in his last year... I guess Trap is still playing at his best but he never was a championship level player. oh and TY.
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I hold the highest upvoted post on the mentioned Reddit thread. I believe this gives me some power here.
The title of this thread is very not good, (because rock bottom is certainly not where the Korean scene is,) and I demand it be changed to something less flashy.
The discussion here has proved to be fruitful though, so I won’t demand a lock. That is all I have to say.
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On November 18 2020 04:24 deacon.frost wrote:Show nested quote +On November 18 2020 04:02 Duke_nk wrote:
Everyone is avoiding the elephant in the room: No one is watching SC2, and it was kept artificially alive by Blizzard for the past years through tournament money. Now that Blizzard pulled out, which was 100 percent expected, Koreans will lose their only source of income in the next months. So what's the point in trying hard, also given that most of these guys haven't been to the military yet.
Stats, TY have already started streaming BW where the money is. When even low viewer numbers in the 100-200 gives you a stable income of 11k dollars a month through donations, why would you keep playing SC2? No one is watching, have you like, ever, checked the numbers? 10k viewers for Code S during a late night/early morning in the US and working hours for Europe. (yeah, saturdays is bad) Harstem has a45k subscribers, Winter has 160k subscribers. Videos have between 10k - 25k views, older/more interesting can get over 100k. HeroMarine right now has 1,2k viewers(1275 acording to the TL bar) WardiTV 1,7k viewers (+- few hundred) streaming some Invitational. Maybe you want to reword your statement, because no one watching is pretty interesting statement. Also the community may be small, but is quite rich, which has shown during selling the ... uh... those crate things to increase the prize pools. Or when Take asked for monies to support his tourneys. I don't blame Koreans to go to stream BW, because being a foreign streamer sucks. (bad timezone, English, SC2 )
I think what Duke_nk was trying to say is that the prize pools of major tournaments cannot be sustained by the viewership alone. The GSL and DH NA/EU prize pools are too large to be funded from just ad revenue and brand sponsorship. The gap is being filled by Blizzard, to the tune of $1-3m per year.
The rule of thumb I like to use is: SC2 is 1/10 the size of Dota, and Dota is 1/3 the size of LoL. This is accurate for most metrics (monthly active users, daily active users, twitch viewer-hours, peak viewer count). The only exception is tournament prize pool - Valve is much better at monetizing its player base for TI than Blizzard or Riot. And there is greater regional variation in popularity between Dota/LoL than SC2.
If Blizzard begins decides to stop funding SC2 after the current 3-yr commitment, tournaments will have to adapt. We will likely see more of the following:
- Smaller prize pools
- Lower production
- Structuring tournaments for more content hours, like what DH NA/EU has done with their group stages this year
- More Twitch ads
- More Chinese tournaments
- Piggybacking off csgo/dota/lol tournaments for cross-marketing and cost sharing
- Sponsorships from betting sites
- Corporate sponsorship from tech/finance companies as recruiting pipeline, and not as marketing. (Shopify might be the first of this kind)
- Pay per view, or sub requirement for 1080p
So it's not that nobody's watching - SC2 is still among the top 30 games on twitch, which extremely impressive for a 10 year old non-moba/br game. Rather it's that tournament prize pools cannot be sustained without more viewers or improved ways of monetizing existing viewers. KR pros are especially reliant on tournament winnings because they don't stream as much. Team salaries are their only other source of income.
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EPT
