On October 19 2011 07:02 Cyrak wrote: This has got to be the dumbest thread I have ever read and I have read some really fucking shitty threads. Applying the logic of football beer advertising to a computer game only makes sense in the a context where the two are similar 'sports'. Newsflash: they aren't.
'Sports', in the now-classical sense, are characterized primarily by the fact that all the competitors are peak human physical specimens. Starcraft players fit into a group that's half way between chess and professional ping-pong. You need smarts and you need a very narrow and specific set of physical skills. It's a nerdy niche type of entertainment and when it's embraced and marketed as such it's going to reach the people who are open to watching that sort of thing.
If you want Starcraft to become a phenomenon with a culture like professional Football (american or international) then the key to that is the cultural component. Those games have traditions and social rituals as well as an almost tribal level of attachment to local teams. This helps to build storylines that transcend the mere individual game.
Brood War has attained this in Korea not because of the way it was marketed but because it became a cultural phenomenon. This didn't happen over night and it didn't happen on purpose either. They didn't grow the game by forcing it into some formulaic, distorted caricature of another popular sport. They did their best to make it exciting for the people who love watching video games on TV.
As someone with a background in marketing this OP comes across as simplistic, naive, and juvenile.
Well said, I think trying to turn us into something we're not is not going to help. Attracting people who don't truly like it for what it is and only wants to watch dumbed down versions of it are not going to sustain the community or the culture, they'll come, check it out, and leave, that's NOT how you build a business model.
Never forget your audience is 18-24 year olds that have free time in between drinking, class and regular sports.
The audience you're trying to sell SC2 as an e-sport quite simply won't buy it. No matter what you do. No matter how many mainstream personality wannabes you bring into it. If for no other reason, they won't buy it because they won't watch a Real Time Strategy video game for fun. You can sugarcoat it for them all you want, they won't buy it.
This isn't the target audience that Starcraft should be interested in unless somebody wants to waste a lot of time and money and accomplish nothing. If you're smart, you'll be running away from that kind of "mainstream", and run very far. The closer you go to mainstream, the more eclipsed you will be by actual mainstream (/sports) television. They already do the same thing you want to do here, only they do it better, and they already have the audience you want to compete for.
The more I hear about this, the more I believe that this particular image of "mainstream SC2" is just a pipe dream a portion of current fans have, those who need some level of mainstream acceptance to feel better about their interest/hobby and less nerdy or whatever. It's not a viable way to gain any significant number of new followers AT ALL, it's just so you can tell your roommate "hey we have this hot chick doing a TV show on SC2".
...and then he'll say "yeah, that's cool, whatever".
TV isn't the way to go, and although I get why people would want it, I don't get why people keep bringing different iterations of "Starcraft on TV" up, as they've all had good reasons against them presented.
My opinion: In order to "spread" the whole Starcraft/Starcraft 2 thing (if you really want to interfere with the natural spread of an idea, which usually isn't a good idea) is to focus on local events. I know people talk about Barcraft and whatnot, but I've personally ever heard of one event for SC2 that was local to me. It might be different for some of you, but I'm sure other people are in my shoes. Build from the ground up. I know the money is in the community, can't hurt to try local before thinking about national.
is there anything major and hardcore regarding televised Esports that wont include artosis? Are you for real OP? he s the one. hes the legend. but overall i like u r idea.
The main problem with televised SC2, is that SC2 isn´t a game everyone could play and there isn´t the insentive to make them want to play, watch Poker, is so simple for the casual viewer, they just see how playing good odds can make you win a shit load of money and it seems easy, too easy, they can just go and play it, even believe they have a shot at becoming Pro, but it is the kind of game Poker is, not the aproach it has been given (although it matters as without WPT it would have never happen), SC2 has a very specific market which seems very difficult to grow by going on TV at this moment.
After reading more and more of people's views here, the more it feels like the scene needs to be nurtured and homegrown similar to what happened in Korea with BW. But unfortunately(for Blizzard), something major needs to give. And that's LAN support.
The reasons for LAN are not merely technical at this point. Sure people are going to pirate the game and it can't be stopped. The stuttering games seen in too many game tourneys really hurt the game no matter how much the expectation is that stable internet functionality should be a given(apparently it's too much to ask for in many areas).
Casters need to be professional at all times, you have Tasteless who talks about "gay", "penis" and says "fuck" too much on his twitter and also tries to be humorous all the time. Trying to be funny is not a bad thing but this is a professional sport here and I rather see "professionalism" not talking about dragon ballz, digimon, yugioh or pokemon or what ever. Maybe see a jock watching it and Tasteless starts to talking about Squirle or what ever he will think "WTF IS THIS?" Solution:
Jason LEE's his voice is perfect. Listening to him makes it feel like its a sport and not just a game. He gets really excited like the Korean commentators when something is about to happen and if i recall he makes the people spectating behind him turn around because he is so loud and excited... something that i never see from artosis and tasteless. His main weakness is his knowledge of the game, but with training and guidance he can easily be the man for the job.
Also the quality of the tournament has to be improved. Compare camera angle shots between professional Korean and Western starcraft tournaments. Whats the difference? The cameras for the western version NEVER MOVES. It might change to another camera but its the same thing it never moves at all, and simple camera movement camera technique can create drawing effects for the viewers. GSL always zooms in and out of something in the intro with some music and MLG. Just a still CAM that just changes to the player announcers and all..
I wouldn't watch it if it was on TV to be honest since it seems "better suited" on internet
That said I don't see whats the problem with it being on TV if people prefer it that way, but I imagine the majority would still watch matches over streams
I wonder if you could market SC2 to the mass gamers (People who play a large degree of games), not the hardcore ones?(Dedicated SC2/esports fans) I think that it might be possible and its a angle that hasn't been tried/discussed yet (Or maybe, IDK)
EDIT: Can't do it without Artosis man, that guy is a baller. Look at what he did to become a caster in Korea.
Excellently written post. I agree with you on every single point. Only grope I have is that you did not type it as ' StarCraft ' with the capitalized 'C' =/
For the greater good of the business, I think TV isnt such a bad idea. ESPN means more viewers means more access to sponsors. From a selfish fanboy point of view, there may not be much benefit but from a business point of view, I dont see how SC2 being on ESPN could possibility hurt the market.
It seems you're suggesting that eSports has to completely change its image entirely to fit on TV and appeal to the right crowd. We need to completely sell out. I'm sorry, maybe that could work honestly and it would give SC2 the needed appeal to work on TV, but if what it takes is sacrificing all that makes SC2 so cool and nerdy and essentially appealing to the same crowd that MLG is with "Get real!" and the like, I don't think it's worth it.
Of course, that's only a selfish fanboy perspective, but Husky has mentioned (in the episode he did with RWJ, yeah RWJ is silly but it was more of a discussion as opposed to his usual lackluster attempts at comedy) that going on TV isn't an entirely safe option.
"You have to sign all these contracts, and it's like here's your soul and everything else you have to sign away"
They kind of speculated that the internet was the new medium and that TV would eventually become less and less relevant.
I'm a marketing major and I can tell you that a lot of what's stated here is somewhat correct. There will have to be adjustments made to fit your general demographic of TV viewing audiences. The demographic of ESPN is mostly adult males which unfortunately is not exactly the same demographic as Starcraft. Starcraft's demograhic is mostly young teen males.
I don't agree with everything in the OP, but for the most part things like most noob friendly casters will have to be a must. The criticism of Artosis is accurate. People who are just tuning in for the first time wouldn't want to be called nerds initially. Though I would like to point out that most ESPN cast crews are groups of three instead of two so Artosis has a spot in the lineup.
I don't know about the need to have hot women walking around. Having a female sideline reporter is fine, but there isn't the need to have a super hot "slutty" girl walking around. Most female ESPN reporters are people who've played the game professionally or have been deeply involved in the sport they're casting. I'm sure people wouldn't be turned off if there wasn't a super hot girl on the program.
Besides those two notes there's nothing I disagree with. Remember analysis is generally done afterwards. You'll usually have a segment that breaks things down so a casting crew that does mostly play by play is more important. Some analysis is fine of course, but it needs to be quick like 5-10 seconds. I feel that Husky is probably the best for this position.
Most of op is pretty good, though I dont totally agree with caster seleection, but whatever..
There is one important wrong sentence in the op though: "Starcraft is extremely similar to Poker and Poker has obviously been a huge success. "
No its not similar at all. Poker already was seen as a legitimate "hobby" before its breakthrough in 2002-2004. Sc2 isn't, as it seen as someone nerds plays/watches.
Poker is totally different, as it has a lot of history around it, and the average joe understands the basic rules of the game. Hence he can already relate to the decisions that the pro poker do, and he is interessted in finding out how the best players play.
I really doubt sc2 on television would have any impact on the succes of sc2. For a game to be a succes in television the potential viewer needs to know the game before he watches it on tv, and be interessted in how the best players play.
Imagine this: A typical viewer wants to watch tv, but doesn't know what he wants to watch, so he zaps through a few channels. Sc2 pops on one of the channels. Will he begin watching it, and get interessted in it, if he doesn't have any interest in the game? No he wont. And I dont think that television will succes as sc2 isn't there yet. It needs to be considered a legitim game before it can get succes on TV.
Barcraft was a step in the right direction. What is the next step?
Why would we want more people if we have to change what we are? Artosis being TOO nerdy? I thought thats why we loved him. This is like changing yourself to get some girl: its not going to go as you hoped. If we go on tv we shouldn't have to water our-selves down at all.
Football is a very simple game, kick the ball into the net. You can sit down with mates and watch a game and you can follow it very easily. You may not realise some extreme bit of footwork or how truely amazing a goal was, but you can follow it and enjoy it.
SC2 on the other hand is the opposite. The game is very complex, someone new to the game may spend an hour watching it and not know what was really going on.When a player GG's, would a new viewer be able to understand why? How much would a new viewer enjoy something they dont understand and for how long would they stick with it before changing channels. Yes it is down to the casters to explain things, but how dumbed down do you go?
At the moment SC2 is still fresh, things are being discovered and casters are still figuring out what to do. The reason we'd want more exposure would be to get more money to the pro teams, this i understand. If more money was put into Pro teams, how would this be good if streams of their tournament games were dumbed down for mainstream audiences.
And what if the casting moved to something like sky? Tournaments like MLG may then only be available to people who have a sky subscription.
One last thing to consider.. SC2 is made by a company out to make money. If SC2 became mainstream, how could this affect the game or even SC3?
Personally, i like things how they are. I dont hide that i watch and play it. I like the casting and the quality of tournaments as well as players live streams. Is there any way for my experience to improve? This is the ultimate question. I just wish there was barcraft in North Wales, Bangor area that i could go to.