Monetizing Starcraft / LordJerith rant. Thoughts? - Page 4
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JJH777
United States4285 Posts
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m4inbrain
1505 Posts
On February 09 2012 16:49 flowSthead wrote: First of all, your 50% is a totally made up statistic. If you have a source I would love to read it, but otherwise where do you get that number? It could be 90% or it could be 10%. 50% is completely random. As for your hardware example, that is a bad example. There are so many places to go buy hardware from and you will be buying the same hardware. If I want to watch DRG vs MMA in an epic best of 7 then I have to pay for the Blizzard Cup. I can't watch DRG vs MMA at some MLG for free because there is no guarantee that I will get that same epic best of 7. It's not comparable. What might happen is I go to watch LoL or Dota instead of SC2 (if you're into that; if all you watch is SC then it won't matter). Its actually no statistic at all (but feel free to start a poll). But a reasonable guess. Watch streamchats, forums etc - you will get the reason. And of course its comparable. How do you know that your MMA vs DRG will be epic? Could be DRG dronerushing MMA. And apart from that: just look around you. Every single game/sport that has "business" involved is dominated by ONE big league/tournament. Why is that? Someone in this thread actually had the right idea, just think about world of warcraft. How many p2p-MMOs do you see on the market, and better: how do they compare to WoW in terms of subscriptions? Yeah. You guessed right, the only one noteworthy is SWTOR. And well, i just cancelled by sub after the first month, and so did many others. You cant(!) have 4 big leagues next to each other. That doesnt work. Because business is also about expanding. If you want to expand, you need to kill the other leagues, because no one would actually pay 25$ a month to 4 different leagues. That just wont happen. | ||
willy001
United States89 Posts
for free event after event. What makes the audience deserve it? The ad revenue they generate? HD is a commodity not aomething that everyone is entitled to. Esports should have some pay per view streams for big events or invitationals. | ||
ceaRshaf
Romania4926 Posts
On February 09 2012 17:02 willy001 wrote: Not sure why everyone is so unwilling to pay more for better content. I mean I would personally not like to pay per mlg. I would rather pay for a whole year like the gsl. I mean the production quality is great, the player base is diverse, and the post game antics are well worth the price. Although some people would prefer to have HD quality for free, I think that they should cope with 480 or 360p quality for free. It doesn't make sense to just give every event to people HD for free event after event. What makes the audience deserve it? The ad revenue they generate? HD is a commodity not aomething that everyone is entitled to. Esports should have some pay per view streams for big events or invitationals. Because the production quality is not up there. Look at Netflix that asks for 10$/month and gives you access to hundreds of hours of streamed video entertainment. Why would I pay some random enthusiasts that want to make money off of StarCraft. Give me something to buy and I will buy. Don't force me to buy rotten bread. | ||
m4inbrain
1505 Posts
On February 09 2012 17:02 willy001 wrote: Not sure why everyone is so unwilling to pay more for better content. Because you dont get better content. You get the same content. The content is generated by the dudes playing, not by MLG itself. They just provide the stream, organisation etc. You would pay for a better production. And well, before i pay, i want to see that better production - because to be brutally honest (apart from GSL, again), the production sucks in most of the big events. Dreamhack was decent, MLG just sucks, so does IGN. The production is merely above amateurish (note: i dont say i could do it better, but then again, i dont want to charge someone for something), there are technical problems of every sort in almost every event, etc. Edit: take IEM Sao Paolo as example, Rotterdam and Bitter in some T-Shirts, sweating their asses off (no offense to them of course). Thats for amateurs. Its not just the stream, but every single bit around that. You want to play big as a league? Well better start getting some professionalism in that. No sweaty nerds, no wooden desks painted to look like metal, no "studio" which looks worse than the inside of the shed behind my house, airconditioning for the casters (and a "cosmetic-dude"), stuff like that. May sound exaggerated, but thats what you pay for in PPV. Organisation, professionalism. Not saying that i dont like the actual stuff, but if you really want to charge me with a lot of money, i want something back in return. And that does not stop after setting up a HQ stream, sorry. | ||
NightOfTheDead
Lithuania1711 Posts
@mainbrain MLG sucks? How is that so? | ||
DoX.)
Singapore6164 Posts
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aka_star
United Kingdom1546 Posts
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chadissilent
Canada1187 Posts
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AcrosstheSky
United States237 Posts
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flowSthead
1065 Posts
On February 09 2012 16:56 m4inbrain wrote: Its actually no statistic at all (but feel free to start a poll). But a reasonable guess. Watch streamchats, forums etc - you will get the reason. And of course its comparable. How do you know that your MMA vs DRG will be epic? Could be DRG dronerushing MMA. And apart from that: just look around you. Every single game/sport that has "business" involved is dominated by ONE big league/tournament. Why is that? Someone in this thread actually had the right idea, just think about world of warcraft. How many p2p-MMOs do you see on the market, and better: how do they compare to WoW in terms of subscriptions? Yeah. You guessed right, the only one noteworthy is SWTOR. And well, i just cancelled by sub after the first month, and so did many others. You cant(!) have 4 big leagues next to each other. That doesnt work. Because business is also about expanding. If you want to expand, you need to kill the other leagues, because no one would actually pay 25$ a month to 4 different leagues. That just wont happen. Well I know because the games have already happened. My point is exactly that it could be DRG dronerushing MMA over and over again. The games already happened, and there have been plenty of people talking about how great the games were. So now, if I had not already, I could go and buy a Blizzard Cup ticket and watch them. Killing the other leagues also isn't necessarily a bad thing. If the GSL became the only league in the world, I would also expect there to be more GSL games. FIFA may be the dominant football association, but they run many many tournaments. What's wrong with that exactly? I mean there is an inherent assumption in the argument that having just one company dominate the landscape will necessarily mean that it will just be the GSL chilling out in the same format with no changes. It could mean the death of SC2 or it could mean the GSL becomes the next FIFA, or anything in between. There is also no reason to assume that there will be a dominant organization. Most of these sports organizations came about at a time before the Internet, and before streaming was the way it is today. Maybe there wouldn't be one dominant organization in most sports if they had been invented post Internet. Business is also not just about expanding. Expanding is certainly part of it, but a bigger part is sustainability. You can do a lot with a small but loyal customer base that is willing to pay money to see you in any way they can. You don't have to have every single person pay $25 a month for 4 different leagues. Some people will pay for one league only, some for two, some for three. Some people will not pay every month. You will get a mix and different results in different months. You can have 4 leagues survive next to each other, and they probably won't be all the same size, but there doesn't necessarily have to be a clear winner. You could, for example, have pluralities. So GSL has 35% of viewers, MLG has 30%, and IPL/DreamHack/IEM get the other 30% (as an example, I am not saying this will happen). There is little reason to assume that because football, and basketball, and hockey all went this way, that eSports will too. It's a different market and a different technology. It's not as directly comparable as people want it to be. It still needs to be monetized better, but it doesn't have to be monetized the way other sports need to. | ||
FeiLing
Germany428 Posts
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m4inbrain
1505 Posts
On February 09 2012 17:12 NightOfTheDead wrote: @mainbrain MLG sucks? I think you have mixed up something, because you clearly dont belong to the scene. GSL and MLG are top starcraft 2 esports we currently have. In terms of production? I excluded GSL in all my postings, so i dont know why you bring them up (because i think they are by far the "worthiest" to charge). MLG? Really? Thats what you think is professional production, with arbitrary pause between games, technical difficulties, no "studio", no real concept, membership-problems (silveraccount)? Well, im sorry, if that is good enough for you - feel free do whatever you want. Btw, dont you think its kinda retarded to say "you dont belong to the scene because you dont share my opinion"? Just saying. | ||
Nayl
Canada413 Posts
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Velr
Switzerland10417 Posts
MLG (and all others except GSL) have a long way to go . | ||
flowSthead
1065 Posts
On February 09 2012 17:25 Nayl wrote: OGN as well as MBC does their stuff without charging anyone a cent because not many would show up/watch esports events that gets charged. And OGN at least is doing fine. They are both cable channels. I assume that means they have commercials and people would pay to have the channel. Just because we in the foreign community would watch games on YouTube or restreamed, does not mean their main source of revenue wasn't a mainstream source. MLG doesn't have a cable channel so it's not really comparable. | ||
NightOfTheDead
Lithuania1711 Posts
On February 09 2012 17:21 m4inbrain wrote: In terms of production? I excluded GSL in all my postings, so i dont know why you bring them up (because i think they are by far the "worthiest" to charge). MLG? Really? Thats what you think is professional production, with arbitrary pause between games, technical difficulties, no "studio", no real concept, membership-problems (silveraccount)? Well, im sorry, if that is good enough for you - feel free do whatever you want. Btw, dont you think its kinda retarded to say "you dont belong to the scene because you dont share my opinion"? Just saying. Yea, i actually wanted to know why u think MLG sucks. Although, have in mind, before sc2, worldwide esports scene and infrastructure have been almost non-existant (speaking about RTS), apart from Korea. We cannot expect to have everything in few years. In other words, the expectations shouldnt be as high as production that are on TV shows, or high-profile sports, and whatnot. | ||
Akta
447 Posts
On February 09 2012 15:09 Chill wrote: Well it doesn't make much sense to compare the money in the sc2-sport to things that are literally huge compared it. I'm sure there is a way to generate decent money with sc2 as it is but shouldn't the main goal for everyone right now be to try make it more popular?I think people have gotten used to this charity model where the majority is given away for free. I think there's this perception that companies are making money, but I doubt they are. It's a tough spot. Monetize and people revolt and you die. Don't monetize and you slowly drown. I don't know how it's going to work. Maybe you have to completely level up the broadcast to a completely different place where people expect to pay for that quality? No idea. Edit: No one seems to treat this as a business. There's a feeling things should be free because they want it to grow. Until we get past that and make it a business, it'll never be more than a niche market, which is fine, but it is what it is. How do we even know if for example GOM's way is actually good for the scene. How many premium subscribers can they have, a few thousands, if that? If you had to pay $20 to watch any sc2 event right now would those "big" perhaps 2000 viewer events be good for the future of the scene or detrimental? Personally I doubt that the fact that people are used to getting most sc2 content for free is a "problem" right now and I'm not sure it will ever be one. I mean how many paying viewers could you realistically expect an event to get that gets for example 50k viewers when it's free. 10% probably isn't even on the map even if it was like $3 never used to be free. | ||
m4inbrain
1505 Posts
On February 09 2012 17:19 flowSthead wrote: There is little reason to assume that because football, and basketball, and hockey all went this way, that eSports will too. It's a different market and a different technology. It's not as directly comparable as people want it to be. It still needs to be monetized better, but it doesn't have to be monetized the way other sports need to. Wait. It happened to every (and i mean: every) sport so far, and thats just "little reason"? You are damn right its a different market, especially because its a sooooo much smaller market. Even on free streams, what was the highest amount of viewers you saw? 100k? Iirc (maybe wrong, but im pretty sure) the highest number i saw was round about 150k. Thats 150000 persons watching a FREE stream. 150000. Any idea how small of a number that is? Its literally nothing. There are stadiums out there, in which you could fit more than that. So now you want cancel free streams, and charge. You lose lets say 50k viewers. 100k left. How do you aquire new ones? As you said, Starcraft is NOT football. Or baseball. Or basketball, or anything else that we played as kids (and our parents, and their parents, and THEIR parents etc). You need to have a special interest in starcraft, to watch these streams. If you just want to watch exciting sport, there are tons of them out there, in the TV, for free. So how do you advertise your stream to grow? Its completely pointless to even discuss it, because it cant work. Its not like millions and billions of people watch starcraft 2. Its actually a really small part, even smaller than WoW, LoL or DoTA(2). Also, if its true what someone just pointed out, well.. Its even "pointlessier" (oO) to discuss, because it cant actually happen. Yea, i actually wanted to know why u think MLG sucks. Although, have in mind, before sc2, worldwide esports scene and infrastructure have been almost non-existant (speaking about RTS), apart from Korea. We cannot expect to have everything in few years. In other words, the expectations shouldnt be as high as production that are on TV shows, or high-profile sports, and whatnot. You know what? I agree completely. But the same goes for fees/charges. | ||
nakedsurfer
Canada500 Posts
On February 09 2012 17:32 NightOfTheDead wrote: Yea, i actually wanted to know why u think MLG sucks. Although, have in mind, before sc2, worldwide esports scene and infrastructure have been almost non-existant (speaking about RTS), apart from Korea. We cannot expect to have everything in few years. In other words, the expectations shouldnt be as high as production that are on TV shows, or high-profile sports, and whatnot. Lol are you troll or for serious? Have in mind that Jared is trying to compare SC2 to UFC & WWe and says we should charge in a way that they do and then you tell mainbrain that he can't compare it as well? If you're going to charge people 25$ or whatever for 3 days and the production value isn't top notch and their main reasoning so far is; well it needs to be like WWE because thats the only way it'll be successful but don't compare our production to that which I just compared to because we havn't grown enough. If we havn't grown enough then don't try and adopt a system which is clearly more advanced. | ||
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