MLG doubled their viewership in only 6 months. The growth rate, at least in the past year, is certainly enough to justify those projections. (Indeed, based purely on the last year's results, doubling every two might even seem overly conservative.)
The question then becomes: Where does the growth stop? I don't think it's going to be any time in the near future...
We're seeing a rise in developers creating games with a mind to the audience and professional scene. Blizzard obviously has an advantage here with SC2 primarily due to the experience gleaned from the happy accident that was SC:BW in Korea. And a lot of the growth in eSports over the past year is the BW edge bearing fruit in the nascent SC2 scene. But we're also seeing fighting game makers increasingly include features specific to tournament environments, MOBA developers throwing enormous sums of money at tournaments, and so on. Until such time that eSports proves that it doesn't work in a financial sense, people are going to continue to throw money at it. And it's going to keep growing.
"ps3 is stronger then 95% of the computers out there"
"xbox 360 is stronger then 85% of the computers out there"
.... "inserts foot into idiots jaw"
I think this guy has a negative impact on esports because he is such an idiot.
That movie it's like from February 2011. I don't have ps3/xbox/wii, i have only PC... but if you put all computers in one bag at this time some part of this 95% may be true. Sure we buy new PC's very often because we are nerds and we are trying constantly upgrade our hardware. But many kids/people out there don't. It's better to buy console in 3-4 years and play good games constantly. At some point consoles are more fun... I can ha
The guy talk total bullshit about PC vs Console. It isn't that console is stronger than PC. Games are just better optimized for one hardware that sits in PS3 than list of Ati/Nvidia/AMD/Intel who knows what cards and CPUS on the market... That's why...
It's not about power of the Computer, development of PC game is much much expensive. Process of making game that works on ATI 5850 and GTX 580 it's much harder... On ps3 tho they have something like NVIDIA 7900GT slightly modified... Still many games look exactly the same.
MLG doubled their viewership in only 6 months. The growth rate, at least in the past year, is certainly enough to justify those projections. (Indeed, based purely on the last year's results, doubling every two might even seem overly conservative.)
The question then becomes: Where does the growth stop? I don't think it's going to be any time in the near future...
We're seeing a rise in developers creating games with a mind to the audience and professional scene. Blizzard obviously has an advantage here with SC2 primarily due to the experience gleaned from the happy accident that was SC:BW in Korea. And a lot of the growth in eSports over the past year is the BW edge bearing fruit in the nascent SC2 scene. But we're also seeing fighting game makers increasingly include features specific to tournament environments, MOBA developers throwing enormous sums of money at tournaments, and so on. Until such time that eSports proves that it doesn't work in a financial sense, people are going to continue to throw money at it. And it's going to keep growing.
You can't compare Columbus and Providence as Providence were the finals of a year-long season. Championship matches will always have a better rating than season matches, in any sports.
if you take out Providence (finals), i feel that most audiences are plateauing since October/November... Anyway, "e-sports" may grow a lot more on the future, but MOBA like games seem to be way more dynamic than Starcraft
this m. pachter is a total idiot in my eyes. he predicts shit all the time and it never. NEVER happens (related to thos things i read to videogames). Dont know who pays him money for that.
I'm not very optimistic about the future of E-sports:| BW scene had it figured, and got the basic right - real, meaningful contracts, firm sponsorship, central governing body, long term plans and such.
Problem with SC2 is that now we have Western firms in the mix, and as always, it's all about quick money and riding the fame wave. There are no long term plans as everyone wants results right now..take for example IGN who sponsored a team for a full 6 months. Foreign teams are offering Korean players what I would guess as ridiculous sums of money, and will later realise that it mihgt not have been such a good move. NA scene is almost dead because of that.
I took some time to gather stats for 1v1 from SC2 ranks, and this is what we can see:
I'm not sure if the numbers for [S5] are legit or still not gathered fully, but either way the gaming masses have changed, it's all about the next hit game, and then you just move onto another, and so on.
Edit: the graphs are missing Chinese server, that would explain the difference between increase in Total numbers and decrease in all other servers at the same time.
On February 19 2012 10:51 Onlinejaguar wrote: Doubling every 2 years for the next 10? no way will this happen. I believe it will continue to grow but not at this rate.
This is how I feel too, it's just not realistic to expect eSports fans to double 5 times within a 10 year period...
while patcher is known for getting things wrong a lot of the time, one can't deny his insider access. He may very well have numbers we just don't have and while he is probably wrong its still a good sign for esports.
On February 19 2012 22:09 Odoakar wrote: I'm not very optimistic about the future of E-sports:| BW scene had it figured, and got the basic right - real, meaningful contracts, firm sponsorship, central governing body, long term plans and such.
Problem with SC2 is that now we have Western firms in the mix, and as always, it's all about quick money and riding the fame wave. There are no long term plans as everyone wants results right now..take for example IGN who sponsored a team for a full 6 months. Foreign teams are offering Korean players what I would guess as ridiculous sums of money, and will later realise that it mihgt not have been such a good move. NA scene is almost dead because of that.
I took some time to gather stats for 1v1 from SC2 ranks, and this is what we can see:
I'm not sure if the numbers for [S5] are legit or still not gathered fully, but either way the gaming masses have changed, it's all about the next hit game, and then you just move onto another, and so on.
Edit: the graphs are missing Chinese server, that would explain the difference between increase in Total numbers and decrease in all other servers at the same time.
Yeah, this is what will eventually be the death of SC2's popularity. It's pointless to hope that people who don't play will remain spectators forever, or that a lot of people who never played will start watching the game.
At the end of the day, it's still a video game. People need to have a personal bond with the game, not to mention a good level of understanding of the game itself. Without the players, the number of spectators will slowly but surely dwindle.
Hmm i want to point something out. I recently didn't saw streamer with over 10k people on it... maybe Idra... MC before HSC...
and League of Legends?
19k/14k and many many people with large numbers... middle of the weak at 16:00 CET, there is guy with 14 k another with 8 and 4-6 places with 4-6 k of Viewers.... twice as much compared to SC2
SC2 popularity is gone ? Maybe that's the reason why blizzard didn't implement things that they told they will be a year after WOL release??? They aren't working witch other games? They moved HoTS to 2013...
Yeah, but LoL is free to play and so way way more people play it. If sc2 had LoL's player base, our streamers would be getting way more viewers. All my friends play lol and they all tried and quit starcraft 2. Their reason? LoL is easy, starcraft was stressful.
On February 19 2012 22:34 Micket wrote: Yeah, but LoL is free to play and so way way more people play it. If sc2 had LoL's player base, our streamers would be getting way more viewers. All my friends play lol and they all tried and quit starcraft 2. Their reason? LoL is easy, starcraft was stressful.
Which doesn't mean that this will save LoL from heavy fluctuation. And guys. Stop discussing things like Sc2 vs. LoL because guess what, its all eSports. If LoL will attract big businesses over long time, it is also good for SC2. Stop trying to be the BEST out of eSports. You need to start to think as a whole. If eSports in general will be aknowledge I'm fine with having the 2nd or 3rd biggest community and prizepools and sponors and other stuff because guess what; sc2 and RTS in general aren't something to market to everyone. Compare it to some simple sport like soccer. Easy to understand. Easy to watch(if the round thing hits the rectangle thing....). Big community. I don't watch (ice)hockey because I don't know the rules. I watch Rugby only because I know the rules. Do I watch Chess? No because I don't understand most of the things they do. What is RTS in the above example? I would consider it more the chess'ish game with some more action mixed in.
Edit @ the chart above: I wouldn't consider this something special. Kinda normal for every game. Would you dig up some graphs about WoW it would look the same. And when the expansion hits they go up again just to fall
I get the impression that the doubling every two years projection was a number he kinda pulled out of his ass, but the question is whether or not he was in the right ballpark.
Let's take a look at the context in which eSports is growing.
The gaming industry as a whole is doing very well. They've been consistently posting annual growth rates above 10% in an otherwise stagnating global economy.
If we look at ESA's 2011 statistics, 72% of American households play games (up from 68% in 2009 and 67% in 2007), the average age is up to 37 (up from 35 in 2009 and 33 in 2007), and there are now more gamers above 50 than there are under 18. The generation that grew up with Atari and Nintendo simply didn't stop playing games as they aged. They're increasingly turning to games (over, say, television) to satisfy their entertainment needs. And that's the environment in which they're raising the next generation.
So... population of "gamers"? Growing. No sign of it stopping anytime soon.
The next question we need to ask is: Do people want to watch other people playing games? And the answer to that one too, I think, is an unequivocal yes. Just look at the sheer amount of traffic going to video game content on YouTube.
So... population of "gaming spectators"? That's growing, too. Exponentially, even, thanks to viral dissemination through social media.
And that brings us to eSports, which is a niche within the overall spectated gaming market where people watch gamers who are super amazingly gosu because they've devoted their lives to getting good. 2011 was the year that really put eSports on the map. But eSports in general has a lot of the ingredients that should give it staying power as competition for people's time (such as emotional investment in players, teams, and/or casters beyond simply enjoying the game).
Folks here have been pointing pointing to the decline of SC2 ladder statistics as a sign that eSports is doomed. But the numbers don't actually back that up:
Dreamhack Summer 2011 (June) - 1494026 unique viewers Battle.net SC2 Season 2 (March-July) - 2271695 active 1v1 players
MLG's numbers showed even greater increases during that timeframe.
Despite the fact that less people are actually playing SC2, more people are tuning in to watch. From that, we can conclude at least one of two things:
1) People would rather watch SC2 than play it. 2) The growth in eSports is coming from games other than SC2.
Both of those bode well for the future of eSports. Some games might have longevity as a spectator sport that outlasts their commercial relevance as a consumer product; SC:BW as an eSport lasted years and years beyond the point where regular people played it in significant numbers.
I don't know if eSports will continue to double every two years. But it is fairly safe to say that eSports viewership is a growing niche of a growing demographic in a industry that's coming to dominate people's leasure time.
On February 19 2012 22:34 Micket wrote: Yeah, but LoL is free to play and so way way more people play it. If sc2 had LoL's player base, our streamers would be getting way more viewers. All my friends play lol and they all tried and quit starcraft 2. Their reason? LoL is easy, starcraft was stressful.
Yea me too, last week i was on pizza with friends. all of them were semi pro/ casual CS 1.6 player / one was SC:BW player... They all played SC2... I even give them my beta keys, 4 of them bought game... we talk about games nowadays get back for old CS 1.6 times. They find LoL more fun than SC2, they are even comparing it to CS 1.6. Yea it's easier but who cares?
I think id isn't about price of the game, you bought game once than you play for free... It's about game itself.
But on regular servers for casual palyer one round you lost one round you won... constantly. Killing was rather easy. Plaing was fun, improving was fun... Even when someone BM'ed you there were 2-3 people thinking that he is talking bullshit and raging. Even if you got beaten badly by some pro at that game you killed some other players. You may lost the game but you won some battles. And playing with friends was much easier.
Yea SC2 is harder game. Getting better at game is harder and you when you get bm'ed you are alone... Chat don't solve that problem. Leader is hard... you have bad day you are loosing like 6-5 times in the row. Multiply that by 5 times and you are done. Yea maybe some would say, Frozenrb you sux at your protos, don't be soft. Maybe I do, maybe ladder is constantly trying to get you 50% win ratio, but at the end of the day you won't get satisfaction by making something good in lost games. Some would say, there is 2v2/4v4/3v3 but it's unbalanced. I played with friends 4v4 but it wasn't so funny like CS1.6, when you walk into sever.
I feel like i quit SC2 the same reasons i quit CS 1.6 but a lot faster! I must say i didn't have time to dedicate enough.
I'm not talking about pro players, clan CS 1.6 matches. Pro players, dedicated people will play the game no matter what. They aren't the benchmark of successful games. I feel like SC2 is unforgiving game only for narrow type of people. And people who bought it because there was such trend, people was talking about that it will be eSport success.
Being an analyst would be so sick cool. I'd definitely go for the Pachter style, make 8000 predictions, get 1 right. Get paid for the rest of my life style of analysis.
On February 19 2012 22:09 Odoakar wrote: I'm not very optimistic about the future of E-sports:| BW scene had it figured, and got the basic right - real, meaningful contracts, firm sponsorship, central governing body, long term plans and such.
Problem with SC2 is that now we have Western firms in the mix, and as always, it's all about quick money and riding the fame wave. There are no long term plans as everyone wants results right now..take for example IGN who sponsored a team for a full 6 months. Foreign teams are offering Korean players what I would guess as ridiculous sums of money, and will later realise that it mihgt not have been such a good move. NA scene is almost dead because of that.
I took some time to gather stats for 1v1 from SC2 ranks, and this is what we can see:
I'm not sure if the numbers for [S5] are legit or still not gathered fully, but either way the gaming masses have changed, it's all about the next hit game, and then you just move onto another, and so on.
Edit: the graphs are missing Chinese server, that would explain the difference between increase in Total numbers and decrease in all other servers at the same time.
That's wrong. Their (SC2 ranks) updating from season 6 is messing with season 5. Before Season 6 started Season 5 was at around 800,000. It's still declining, but not as crazy as you make it seem.
EPT![[image loading]](http://i40.tinypic.com/rr1ksp.png)
