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On November 18 2020 06:25 Husyelt wrote:
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.
Not sure if you're serious but... haha (?).
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Northern Ireland24316 Posts
On November 18 2020 06:25 Husyelt wrote:
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.
While a fine and reasonable post, get back to Toast and Taste dagnabbit!
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On November 18 2020 06:30 WombaT wrote:Show nested quote +On November 18 2020 06:25 Husyelt wrote:
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. While a fine and reasonable post, get back to Toast and Taste dagnabbit!
I will release the next episode this weekend.
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On November 18 2020 06:29 warnull wrote:Show nested quote +On November 18 2020 04:24 deacon.frost wrote: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.
Top 30 game with a prize pool as heavily subsidized as SC2 is not impressive at all. Don't kid yourselves. GSL gets twice the prize money compared to ASL, despite 1/10th to 1/20th the viewership, which is scattered around the globe and despite the 90k dollars fee Afreeca has to pay Blizzard each season. From an advertisers view, you want to have all the viewers in a single region for maximum effectiveness, which is the case especially for BW. BW is the second most watched esport in Korea, only next to LoL, despite being older than some people in this forum. THIS is impressive. Not a game that has been kept artificially alive since 2012-13, and where at its peak in Korea, they had to pay cheer girls/free hamburgers so the audience doesn't seem empty
When Blizzard stops funding, what will happen that there will be considerably lower prize pools, in the dimension of foreign BW during its hey day, so about a few thousands a tournament. NO SC2 player will be able to sustain their life with that. The popularity of SC2 is even lower than AOE2 right now. At most we will see some popular streamers living a life close to poverty streaming, most players will have to find an actual job. SC2 will at most be a hobby, not a career. The level of play will hit rock bottom.
TY, Stats and Roro have already started streaming BW and are playing in tournaments. They'll know that since the support of Blizzard will end soon, there will be no money left to grab. 99% of their income was from tournaments. Soon there will be none. At least with BW, they will earn some good money from donations through streaming.
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Online results need to be taken with a grain of salt.
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On November 18 2020 09:34 Duke_nk wrote:Show nested quote +On November 18 2020 06:29 warnull wrote:On November 18 2020 04:24 deacon.frost wrote: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. Top 30 game with a prize pool as heavily subsidized as SC2 is not impressive at all. Don't kid yourselves. GSL gets twice the prize money compared to ASL, despite 1/10th to 1/20th the viewership, which is scattered around the globe and despite the 90k dollars fee Afreeca has to pay Blizzard each season. From an advertisers view, you want to have all the viewers in a single region for maximum effectiveness, which is the case especially for BW. BW is the second most watched esport in Korea, only next to LoL, despite being older than some people in this forum. THIS is impressive. Not a game that has been kept artificially alive since 2012-13, and where at its peak in Korea, they had to pay cheer girls/free hamburgers so the audience doesn't seem empty When Blizzard stops funding, what will happen that there will be considerably lower prize pools, in the dimension of foreign BW during its hey day, so about a few thousands a tournament. NO SC2 player will be able to sustain their life with that. The popularity of SC2 is even lower than AOE2 right now. At most we will see some popular streamers living a life close to poverty streaming, most players will have to find an actual job. SC2 will at most be a hobby, not a career. The level of play will hit rock bottom. TY, Stats and Roro have already started streaming BW and are playing in tournaments. They'll know that since the support of Blizzard will end soon, there will be no money left to grab. 99% of their income was from tournaments. Soon there will be none. At least with BW, they will earn some good money from donations through streaming.
I think bringing up AOE2 is actually really important in this discussion. The timeline of AoE2 is in many ways similar to BW, and both games are seeing a sort of overdue renaissance in terms of attention and viewership, both got remastered editions (Microsoft, for the most part, doing a much better job of being involved with and involving their content creators and audience), both have a strong history of grassroots support during the trough of their history, both relied on volunteers + 3rd party software for the bulk of their competitive play at one point, and neither had any support from their host company for years at a time.
To me, the question is whether or not SC2 will go through a similar renaissance period after the lights and water get shut off and suddenly the SC2 scene has to fend for itself. You bring up the point that SC2 is much more global than BW, but I honestly feel that this is about as true for SC2 as is it for AoE2 - with representation spanning from China to Scandinavia, North America to South America, and viewership also being representative of that diversity. However, AoE2 is growing year in and year out, in large part due to non-player viewers, strong content creators, great tournaments and storylines, and of course the fact that it is a great game. I may be overly cynical, but I think SC2 and its current community would not be able to muster that kind of effort. However, I think that after a few years of even more dire stagnation, deflation, and relative lack of support, grassroots efforts can bring about a revival. Perhaps that is what the SC2 community should be planning/hoping for, and not more artificial Blizzardbux, Korean dominance/activity, or any jingoistic dreams of foreign heroes being "omg the best evar" in a deteriorating competitive environment.
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Northern Ireland24316 Posts
On November 18 2020 10:13 Jealous wrote:Show nested quote +On November 18 2020 09:34 Duke_nk wrote:On November 18 2020 06:29 warnull wrote:On November 18 2020 04:24 deacon.frost wrote: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. Top 30 game with a prize pool as heavily subsidized as SC2 is not impressive at all. Don't kid yourselves. GSL gets twice the prize money compared to ASL, despite 1/10th to 1/20th the viewership, which is scattered around the globe and despite the 90k dollars fee Afreeca has to pay Blizzard each season. From an advertisers view, you want to have all the viewers in a single region for maximum effectiveness, which is the case especially for BW. BW is the second most watched esport in Korea, only next to LoL, despite being older than some people in this forum. THIS is impressive. Not a game that has been kept artificially alive since 2012-13, and where at its peak in Korea, they had to pay cheer girls/free hamburgers so the audience doesn't seem empty When Blizzard stops funding, what will happen that there will be considerably lower prize pools, in the dimension of foreign BW during its hey day, so about a few thousands a tournament. NO SC2 player will be able to sustain their life with that. The popularity of SC2 is even lower than AOE2 right now. At most we will see some popular streamers living a life close to poverty streaming, most players will have to find an actual job. SC2 will at most be a hobby, not a career. The level of play will hit rock bottom. TY, Stats and Roro have already started streaming BW and are playing in tournaments. They'll know that since the support of Blizzard will end soon, there will be no money left to grab. 99% of their income was from tournaments. Soon there will be none. At least with BW, they will earn some good money from donations through streaming. I think bringing up AOE2 is actually really important in this discussion. The timeline of AoE2 is in many ways similar to BW, and both games are seeing a sort of overdue renaissance in terms of attention and viewership, both got remastered editions (Microsoft, for the most part, doing a much better job of being involved with and involving their content creators and audience), both have a strong history of grassroots support during the trough of their history, both relied on volunteers + 3rd party software for the bulk of their competitive play at one point, and neither had any support from their host company for years at a time. To me, the question is whether or not SC2 will go through a similar renaissance period after the lights and water get shut off and suddenly the SC2 scene has to fend for itself. You bring up the point that SC2 is much more global than BW, but I honestly feel that this is about as true for SC2 as is it for AoE2 - with representation spanning from China to Scandinavia, North America to South America, and viewership also being representative of that diversity. However, AoE2 is growing year in and year out, in large part due to non-player viewers, strong content creators, great tournaments and storylines, and of course the fact that it is a great game. I may be overly cynical, but I think SC2 and its current community would not be able to muster that kind of effort. However, I think that after a few years of even more dire stagnation, deflation, and relative lack of support, grassroots efforts can bring about a revival. Perhaps that is what the SC2 community should be planning/hoping for, and not more artificial Blizzardbux, Korean dominance/activity, or any jingoistic dreams of foreign heroes being "omg the best evar" in a deteriorating competitive environment.
By what metrics is AoE2 currently more popular than SC2? Not disputing this, more that it’s news to me.
I’m not sure where your cynicism as to SC2 and it’s community’s ability to do anything similar in terms of grass roots stuff comes from. As to whether Blizz actually enable it to be possible is another thing entirely.
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On November 18 2020 10:21 WombaT wrote:Show nested quote +On November 18 2020 10:13 Jealous wrote:On November 18 2020 09:34 Duke_nk wrote:On November 18 2020 06:29 warnull wrote:On November 18 2020 04:24 deacon.frost wrote: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. Top 30 game with a prize pool as heavily subsidized as SC2 is not impressive at all. Don't kid yourselves. GSL gets twice the prize money compared to ASL, despite 1/10th to 1/20th the viewership, which is scattered around the globe and despite the 90k dollars fee Afreeca has to pay Blizzard each season. From an advertisers view, you want to have all the viewers in a single region for maximum effectiveness, which is the case especially for BW. BW is the second most watched esport in Korea, only next to LoL, despite being older than some people in this forum. THIS is impressive. Not a game that has been kept artificially alive since 2012-13, and where at its peak in Korea, they had to pay cheer girls/free hamburgers so the audience doesn't seem empty When Blizzard stops funding, what will happen that there will be considerably lower prize pools, in the dimension of foreign BW during its hey day, so about a few thousands a tournament. NO SC2 player will be able to sustain their life with that. The popularity of SC2 is even lower than AOE2 right now. At most we will see some popular streamers living a life close to poverty streaming, most players will have to find an actual job. SC2 will at most be a hobby, not a career. The level of play will hit rock bottom. TY, Stats and Roro have already started streaming BW and are playing in tournaments. They'll know that since the support of Blizzard will end soon, there will be no money left to grab. 99% of their income was from tournaments. Soon there will be none. At least with BW, they will earn some good money from donations through streaming. I think bringing up AOE2 is actually really important in this discussion. The timeline of AoE2 is in many ways similar to BW, and both games are seeing a sort of overdue renaissance in terms of attention and viewership, both got remastered editions (Microsoft, for the most part, doing a much better job of being involved with and involving their content creators and audience), both have a strong history of grassroots support during the trough of their history, both relied on volunteers + 3rd party software for the bulk of their competitive play at one point, and neither had any support from their host company for years at a time. To me, the question is whether or not SC2 will go through a similar renaissance period after the lights and water get shut off and suddenly the SC2 scene has to fend for itself. You bring up the point that SC2 is much more global than BW, but I honestly feel that this is about as true for SC2 as is it for AoE2 - with representation spanning from China to Scandinavia, North America to South America, and viewership also being representative of that diversity. However, AoE2 is growing year in and year out, in large part due to non-player viewers, strong content creators, great tournaments and storylines, and of course the fact that it is a great game. I may be overly cynical, but I think SC2 and its current community would not be able to muster that kind of effort. However, I think that after a few years of even more dire stagnation, deflation, and relative lack of support, grassroots efforts can bring about a revival. Perhaps that is what the SC2 community should be planning/hoping for, and not more artificial Blizzardbux, Korean dominance/activity, or any jingoistic dreams of foreign heroes being "omg the best evar" in a deteriorating competitive environment. By what metrics is AoE2 currently more popular than SC2? Not disputing this, more that it’s news to me. I’m not sure where your cynicism as to SC2 and it’s community’s ability to do anything similar in terms of grass roots stuff comes from. As to whether Blizz actually enable it to be possible is another thing entirely.
Looking at some data from ESCharts and similar sites, it seems the two scenes at peak are actually quite more comparable than I expected, with 2020 SC2 hitting slightly higher peak viewership for premier tours like GSL (35k vs 30k for AOE2 Hidden Cup and similar, notably 48k and 80k in 2019 for some SC2 tours I saw). The player base numbers are a bit more difficult to compare because they are reliably calculated differently but it seems that SC2 is actually potentially more active (13k average users per month for AoE2, 200k total unique per season for SC2 from what I could find). So, I will admit that it was probably wrong for Duke_nk to say AoE2 is more popular than SC2 in the moment, but in many ways they are more comparable than some would expect given the respective ages of the games (DE of course being only 1 year old but not much different in its release than BW RM save for the aforementioned superior support and involvement of Microsoft vs. Blizzard).
The reason why I am cynical about the SC2 community as it is now has been explained in my previous posts in this thread to an extent, but I also feel that it is just a pattern, too. SC2 has to be deader before there is enough impetus to reinvigorate it. Progamers have to go to the military or find full time jobs and start families - same as content creators and personalities. Then after a few years, during which some diehards will continue to carry the torch, when the stable income is attained and the first child nears 3 years old and is less of a daily strain on family life, people may say - "hey, I feel like playing a game of SC2" or "I wonder what's going on in SC2 right now?" Etc. Basically, the scene has to take a break so that the fatigue wears off and the more dedicated participants start to miss the game. Maybe. Seems to me that is how it went for BW and AOE2.
EDIT: If Duke_nk has a better stats source I'd love to see it myself!
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Northern Ireland24316 Posts
On November 18 2020 10:39 Jealous wrote:Show nested quote +On November 18 2020 10:21 WombaT wrote:On November 18 2020 10:13 Jealous wrote:On November 18 2020 09:34 Duke_nk wrote:On November 18 2020 06:29 warnull wrote:On November 18 2020 04:24 deacon.frost wrote: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. Top 30 game with a prize pool as heavily subsidized as SC2 is not impressive at all. Don't kid yourselves. GSL gets twice the prize money compared to ASL, despite 1/10th to 1/20th the viewership, which is scattered around the globe and despite the 90k dollars fee Afreeca has to pay Blizzard each season. From an advertisers view, you want to have all the viewers in a single region for maximum effectiveness, which is the case especially for BW. BW is the second most watched esport in Korea, only next to LoL, despite being older than some people in this forum. THIS is impressive. Not a game that has been kept artificially alive since 2012-13, and where at its peak in Korea, they had to pay cheer girls/free hamburgers so the audience doesn't seem empty When Blizzard stops funding, what will happen that there will be considerably lower prize pools, in the dimension of foreign BW during its hey day, so about a few thousands a tournament. NO SC2 player will be able to sustain their life with that. The popularity of SC2 is even lower than AOE2 right now. At most we will see some popular streamers living a life close to poverty streaming, most players will have to find an actual job. SC2 will at most be a hobby, not a career. The level of play will hit rock bottom. TY, Stats and Roro have already started streaming BW and are playing in tournaments. They'll know that since the support of Blizzard will end soon, there will be no money left to grab. 99% of their income was from tournaments. Soon there will be none. At least with BW, they will earn some good money from donations through streaming. I think bringing up AOE2 is actually really important in this discussion. The timeline of AoE2 is in many ways similar to BW, and both games are seeing a sort of overdue renaissance in terms of attention and viewership, both got remastered editions (Microsoft, for the most part, doing a much better job of being involved with and involving their content creators and audience), both have a strong history of grassroots support during the trough of their history, both relied on volunteers + 3rd party software for the bulk of their competitive play at one point, and neither had any support from their host company for years at a time. To me, the question is whether or not SC2 will go through a similar renaissance period after the lights and water get shut off and suddenly the SC2 scene has to fend for itself. You bring up the point that SC2 is much more global than BW, but I honestly feel that this is about as true for SC2 as is it for AoE2 - with representation spanning from China to Scandinavia, North America to South America, and viewership also being representative of that diversity. However, AoE2 is growing year in and year out, in large part due to non-player viewers, strong content creators, great tournaments and storylines, and of course the fact that it is a great game. I may be overly cynical, but I think SC2 and its current community would not be able to muster that kind of effort. However, I think that after a few years of even more dire stagnation, deflation, and relative lack of support, grassroots efforts can bring about a revival. Perhaps that is what the SC2 community should be planning/hoping for, and not more artificial Blizzardbux, Korean dominance/activity, or any jingoistic dreams of foreign heroes being "omg the best evar" in a deteriorating competitive environment. By what metrics is AoE2 currently more popular than SC2? Not disputing this, more that it’s news to me. I’m not sure where your cynicism as to SC2 and it’s community’s ability to do anything similar in terms of grass roots stuff comes from. As to whether Blizz actually enable it to be possible is another thing entirely. Looking at some data from ESCharts and similar sites, it seems the two scenes at peak are actually quite more comparable than I expected, with 2020 SC2 hitting slightly higher peak viewership for premier tours like GSL (35k vs 30k for AOE2 Hidden Cup and similar, notably 48k and 80k in 2019 for some SC2 tours I saw). The player base numbers are a bit more difficult to compare because they are reliably calculated differently but it seems that SC2 is actually potentially more active (13k average users per month for AoE2, 200k total unique per season for SC2 from what I could find). So, I will admit that it was probably wrong for Duke_nk to say AoE2 is more popular than SC2 in the moment, but in many ways they are more comparable than some would expect given the respective ages of the games (DE of course being only 1 year old but not much different in its release than BW RM save for the aforementioned superior support and involvement of Microsoft vs. Blizzard). The reason why I am cynical about the SC2 community as it is now has been explained in my previous posts in this thread to an extent, but I also feel that it is just a pattern, too. SC2 has to be deader before there is enough impetus to reinvigorate it. Progamers have to go to the military or find full time jobs and start families - same as content creators and personalities. Then after a few years, during which some diehards will continue to carry the torch, when the stable income is attained and the first child nears 3 years old and is less of a daily strain on family life, people may say - "hey, I feel like playing a game of SC2" or "I wonder what's going on in SC2 right now?" Etc. Basically, the scene has to take a break so that the fatigue wears off and the more dedicated participants start to miss the game. Maybe. Seems to me that is how it went for BW and AOE2. EDIT: If Duke_nk has a better stats source I'd love to see it myself!
Aye AoE2 is doing the kind of numbers WC3 should have done/exceeded if they didn’t horribly botch that Remaster.
If you keep the die-hards who are playing anyway, you get guys of my advanced age fancying picking up an old favourite, some new players and that’s a lot of potential momentum, especially in RTS where there’s not a huge amount of choice. Both returning casuals who have other life commitments plus any new players kind of need each other, otherwise the multiplayer experience equals getting stomped by the diehards who never stopped playing (part of the problem with Quake Champions from what I’ve read). Diehards get new blood, new exposure and more potential for tournaments and the likes, so everyone’s a winner really.
AoE2 both through being a great game and a great remaster definitely did a great job in opening things up. Quite like to try it myself.
I do sort of agree with you that perhaps the community in SC2 needs weaned off the Blizzard teat, but the scene is not yet declined enough for people to take the step.
The pessimism I would have is that unlike BW, AoE or WC3 in the olden days, how can the community step up with a game client that doesn’t let you do things the third party way?
It’s a big hurdle, one I think the community could overcome but if Blizz just stop updating say, the map pool one day and you can’t run easily accessible third party ladders where’s the next stage of growth, or at least ways to stem further decline?
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On November 17 2020 04:39 Morbidius wrote:
Maru finishing 4th in a group with 2 foreigners. TY, the GSL champion, 3-0ed by NA runner up.
It's called "not wanting to participate in the tournament".
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On November 18 2020 17:35 GameLocalizer wrote:Show nested quote +On November 17 2020 04:39 Morbidius wrote:
Maru finishing 4th in a group with 2 foreigners. TY, the GSL champion, 3-0ed by NA runner up. It's called "not wanting to participate in the tournament".
Participating in the tournament is a weird way to fulfill that want. 
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Well, but there were no qualifiers for this one. I could perfectly well see that the professional ethics wouldn't allow any of the players to decline playing in a tournament for which their other wins had gotten them invited by default.
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I think at the end of the day, we should just be thankful that SC2 was such a impressive scene at one stage. People will always remember the sheer amount of skill and hard work that was required to be a pro gamer especially when looking back at the height of its glory days, when 8 Korean Kespa teams each fielded dozens of top players flooding Code S and Code A with talent. Having said that, I really wish people would stop saying that the current level of SC2 is higher than it ever was, it both removes all credibility of that person and disrespects all the hard work pro-gamers of the old era had put in to perfect themselves to the skill they had achieved at that point in time.
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Northern Ireland24316 Posts
On November 19 2020 22:41 MinixTheNerd wrote:
I think at the end of the day, we should just be thankful that SC2 was such a impressive scene at one stage. People will always remember the sheer amount of skill and hard work that was required to be a pro gamer especially when looking back at the height of its glory days, when 8 Korean Kespa teams each fielded dozens of top players flooding Code S and Code A with talent. Having said that, I really wish people would stop saying that the current level of SC2 is higher than it ever was, it both removes all credibility of that person and disrespects all the hard work pro-gamers of the old era had put in to perfect themselves to the skill they had achieved at that point in time.
It arguably is though, perhaps with less consistency though that’s probably true. Extra years of practice, even if less intense and structured probably gives some gains, plus people discover little optimisations here and there.
Maru and Serral at their absolute peaks in recent years for example stack up pretty well with what we’ve seen in the Kespa period. Where there is a decline that’s definitely visible in terms of military, other retirements and guys like Zest or $o$ are clearly not as good as they used to be.
In an alternate timeline where you have Kespa and Proleague, another Starleague etc it would be an even higher level again. Not just for the practice regime but the very format as well as prestige of Proleague made for really high level gameplay.
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On November 19 2020 22:57 WombaT wrote:Show nested quote +On November 19 2020 22:41 MinixTheNerd wrote:
I think at the end of the day, we should just be thankful that SC2 was such a impressive scene at one stage. People will always remember the sheer amount of skill and hard work that was required to be a pro gamer especially when looking back at the height of its glory days, when 8 Korean Kespa teams each fielded dozens of top players flooding Code S and Code A with talent. Having said that, I really wish people would stop saying that the current level of SC2 is higher than it ever was, it both removes all credibility of that person and disrespects all the hard work pro-gamers of the old era had put in to perfect themselves to the skill they had achieved at that point in time. It arguably is though, perhaps with less consistency though that’s probably true. Extra years of practice, even if less intense and structured probably gives some gains, plus people discover little optimisations here and there. Maru and Serral at their absolute peaks in recent years for example stack up pretty well with what we’ve seen in the Kespa period. Where there is a decline that’s definitely visible in terms of military, other retirements and guys like Zest or $o$ are clearly not as good as they used to be. In an alternate timeline where you have Kespa and Proleague, another Starleague etc it would be an even higher level again. Not just for the practice regime but the very format as well as prestige of Proleague made for really high level gameplay.
So my counter argument to what you said about Maru and Serral, would be that their dominance was mostly due to lack of competition, (Mass retirements post kespa for Maru, and region lock for Serral). I know the game has changed in LotV strategically (with the extra starting workers that expanded mid game and shortened early game, which happens to be great for zerg fyi); but you have to keep in mind that back in that 2014 era, the pros were still doing what was the optimal strategies for that build of SC2, what made them better back then comparing to now is just the execution of the strategies, these days in Code S (even in the later parts of the tournament) you see some really clumsy and uncharacteristic mistakes way too often, mistakes that in the KESPA were all ironed out by their training regiment. While I know that was hard on the players, it also made me respect their skills so much more than now, where pros basically only practice right before a tournament, and rarely do anything more than just their ladder builds. At the end of the day Koreans don't have magical powers, they were best in sc2 because of practice environment they had that was built up over decades of team house culture, with it gone their decline in skill was just a given.
As for Serral, he really is a great player even back in HotS days, but I really wish he was tested more post 2016, I would have loved to see him or Reynor play against the very best of the koreans with the kespa teams to support them, instead of the shadows of the korean's progamers now. I do think Reynor for example was definitely comparable to Life in terms of skill and play style, but remember even Life wasn't the favourite of big tournaments back then, we had a lot of really strong contenders to keep him in check especially in HotS.
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On November 17 2020 07:09 jinjin5000 wrote:the big worry for Korean SC2 is that there is no real viewership combined with no new blood. The lack of new blood has been talked of recently in Snow's interview series with TY & Stats and they address this very issue saying that it is big worry they are not seeing anyone new around that can challenge the current pro level/lead the next generation. Combine this with the looming defunding from Blizzard on Korean SC2 tournaments, there is going to be big gap between tournaments Koreans can participate in and the next one, only really filled in by online tournaments. With GSL being gone, I can see many of the current roster moving to coaching another esports like League/ moving on to BW streaming/ retiring. As TY & Stats also mentioned, Life's matchfixing accelerated this process and dismantling of the Kespa teams preventing recruitment of new talent just stopped Korean SC2 in tracks. Combine that with low viewership and interest means this was really inevitable. Hell, even BW, which still has big following in Korea has this very same problem with lack of new blood (other than Soma). If game with much bigger viewerbase is struggling and looking likely to be on the tail end due to lack of new blood due to there being no supportive infrastructure (teams), SC2 would go the same path as well. [link to the translated interview with TY & Stats on this issue (ENG sub on CC)]+ Show Spoiler +
There is more viewership from korea stuff htan for foreigenr stuff no?
Specially in the youtube vods no?
If i am wrong please correct me.
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On November 19 2020 23:36 Argonauta wrote:Show nested quote +On November 17 2020 07:09 jinjin5000 wrote:the big worry for Korean SC2 is that there is no real viewership combined with no new blood. The lack of new blood has been talked of recently in Snow's interview series with TY & Stats and they address this very issue saying that it is big worry they are not seeing anyone new around that can challenge the current pro level/lead the next generation. Combine this with the looming defunding from Blizzard on Korean SC2 tournaments, there is going to be big gap between tournaments Koreans can participate in and the next one, only really filled in by online tournaments. With GSL being gone, I can see many of the current roster moving to coaching another esports like League/ moving on to BW streaming/ retiring. As TY & Stats also mentioned, Life's matchfixing accelerated this process and dismantling of the Kespa teams preventing recruitment of new talent just stopped Korean SC2 in tracks. Combine that with low viewership and interest means this was really inevitable. Hell, even BW, which still has big following in Korea has this very same problem with lack of new blood (other than Soma). If game with much bigger viewerbase is struggling and looking likely to be on the tail end due to lack of new blood due to there being no supportive infrastructure (teams), SC2 would go the same path as well. [link to the translated interview with TY & Stats on this issue (ENG sub on CC)]+ Show Spoiler +https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qPig5JWrPos&list=PLdqi0o4auh2HWTaLfI33PCPwiD6yk02N6&index=2 There is more viewership from korea stuff htan for foreigenr stuff no? Specially in the youtube vods no? If i am wrong please correct me.
The problem is that even with big viewership, there isnt any new blood coming in to challenge the current top pros in bw
Unless you mean sc2, then it has much, much more foreign views than koreans
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When people talk about past skill, are they talking about it relatively speaking? I don't think any player in 2013-2014 could beat the top players of today. I guess HotS and LotV being much different makes a difference.
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It's debatable whether post-KeSPA* period can be considered peak SC2. The assumption is that the players really level up as years go by. While that may be true to any mature sport or game in general, the counter factors are the disbandment of teamhouses, lower viewership, dilution of player pool, and so on.
BW is the perfect analogy. Is ASL post-KeSPA peak BW? Likely not. I recall a recent Flash interview 1-2 years back. The question was whether Flash-present was better than Flash-past during the KeSPA days. His answer was rather enlightening. In the short term or short series - yes, he would beat Flash-past because of the new knowledge gained in recent years through mind-games. But if you gave Flash-past some time to learn the new meta and knowlege - no, Flash-past would absolutely demolish him. Of course, he's probably factoring that his mechanical skills are getting rustier with age. But I think the same general principle can apply to most BW pros.
Back to SC2 - Are foreigners playing better than any period before? That's a tough question. But the fact that they have an impressive record of beating Korean 'old hats' proves little (in the GOAT discussion context). Just like how no one can safely say that Soma beating Flash proves that Soma would've beaten peak Flash, neither can anyone safely say that Serral and Reynor would have beaten peak Rain, Inno, the-Zerg-that-shalt-not-be-named, and so on.
Ultimately, it's quite evident that the Korean SC2 is in decline. The only question is how far they have fallen from their pedestal (and brought down the overall quality and competitiveness of the game as a consequence).
* not sure when exactly the dividing line is - the death of Prologue?
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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 )
Its hilarious that you are using these numbers unironically. Those numbers are god awful. If these are the standards to consider sc2 alive, well it speaks for itself.
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EPT
