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Growth here, growth there. The common agenda seems to be to discuss how to achieve growth in StarCraft (2) but no one ever talks if growth is actually good? It seems self evident that it is right? Well...
Growth will lead to larger salaries for players.
Yap, hard to argue with this. That's definitely something that growth will do. If more people watch, that means players can command a higher salary to sponsors whose message reaches more people. However, I'm going to argue that this is all growth essentially accomplishes and that the downsides might not actually be worth it.
Growth does not lead to more content.
I've seen very little evidence that a larger sport with more viewers typically has more tournaments going on. In fact, I'm seeing an inverse correlation. There's far less content for giant sports like Football (not handegg). Probably the most popular sport in the world yet I can watch more StarCraft content than Football. There just aren't that many matches. Due to its size and appeal for sponsorship, a single organization. FIFA, has taken control of it and firmly regulates like all of such organizations do. How much content there can be. There is no laissez-faire market for tournaments any more when someone tells them when and where they can hold one and under what conditions.
WCS has done something similar. Blizzard has taken control. WCS 2012 did not interfere with the scene much. But in WCS 2013 it basically forced NASL out of operation of their normal league. NASL essentially got replaced by WCS AM with the NASL now hosting that. Except that it had far less content, far less games and just in general was, in my opinion, a poorer tournament. NASL was a fantastic long league where players from around the world competed in offline for the top to go to the online finals and it delivered a lot of content.
MLG also dropped StarCraft because they claimed it conflicted with WCS. Obviously IPL doesn't count because they went out way before that.
In Europe, we're also seeing less weekend tournaments since WCS since there are rules they can't conflict scheduling with WCS.
And finally of course, the number of GSL's was reduced from 5-6 per year to three. In fact, it was reduced even more so because initially the GSL and the OSL were forced to share while the year before that we had six GSL's and one OSL. I'm not seeing this WCS system that is supposed to inspire growth inspire more content. Hey, maybe it makes the sport more popular, but it certainly doesn't generate more stuff for us to watch.
There is such a thing as negative publicity.
Once a sport becomes large enough, the maxim of "There is no such thing as negative publicity." starts to fade. The giant companies interested in sponsoring are large enough to have to consider "the angry mum", suddenly players have to sign contracts which stipulate what they can and cannot say any more and we basically get a bunch of dare I say "Korean answers" in interviews that mean nothing. Every single player says "Thank you for your support, I will do my best to train hard and win!" because you can't ever offend an angry mother with that. People can't smack talk each other any more or give their honest opinion on the state of the game and all that stuff because that might offend people.
Casters and tournaments will also have to be censoring themselves. Ever noticed how on Dreamhack Apollo says "fuck" often enough yet when he was casting an MLG tournament he never dropped one of those? MLG is known to focus on growth. I guess they don't want to scary away angry mums with parts of the English lexicon.
Do we want the casual viewer?
The big thing to achieve growth and the big thing growth will lead to is attracting the "casual viewer". People who watch StarCraft but don't really understand it but just watch a game here and there. If you look at Football, the majority of its viewership seems to come from people who watch the World Championship but otherwise don't really understand the game.
Ever watched football commentary? It's absolutely awful. 90% of the commentating a football commentator does is just saying the name of whoever has ball possession. I used to think Football was a strategically empty game until I looked it up. Now I recognize some tactical moves I learnt about but the commentator, while probably aware of them. Elects not to highlight them because that will scare away the mighty casual viewer right?
The commentating, even the observer layout of the game is going to suffer if more and more casual viewers are going to come in. Tournaments will be forced to adapt to this market. Gone will be analytical commentary in favour of just shouting what's visible on screen. Many tournaments are already having health bars off. That's just unacceptable to me that health bars are off or you have an observer that highlights it well when it's needed. But hey, you gotta bring that casual clutter-free viewing experience. Next off, supplies will no longer be visible, upgrades will no longer be visible, minimap will be gone until you have the ultimate casual viewing experience, just explosions on the screen, no caster making any attempt to tell what's actually going on and all you hearis "OHH, HE'S STIMMING IN, NIIICE SPLIT CATCHING HIM UNSIEEEGED!", I can see that, thank you very much.
This is what football does, you can implement a minimap in football. You can either use a camera or you can tell players they have to wear a small transmitter somewhere in their clothing so that their position can be triangulated and you can electronically display this. This would greantly enhance my viewing experience of watching football to know where all the players are I don't see on screen. You can have a small minimap like that showing the numbers of players. Of course, they don't do that, because such clutter of information would scare away the casual viewer. And if enough casual viewers come into StarCtaft, you can bet such clutter as a minimap will be removed from the observer interface as well.
Why I don't deny that progamers will probably get a better salary by growth. Honestly, what's in it for us, the fans? Absolutely nothing. We will achieve no benefit from making the sport larger than it currently is except this silly penis size contest with LoL and DotA.
  
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But what incentive do tournament organizers have not to cater to casuals? It's pretty much a given that when you have high level matches the "hardcore" Starcraft viewers will tune in. Excluding casuals and new viewers in your production would be hard to defend from a business point of view.
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On October 03 2014 19:36 Saechiis wrote:
But what incentive do tournament organizers have not to cater to casuals? It's pretty much a given that when you have high level matches the "hardcore" Starcraft viewers will tune in. Excluding casuals and new viewers in your production would be hard to defend from a business point of view. If the scene is small enough there are basically almost no casual viewers so they don't need to be considered. You see this everywhere, the smaller the scene, the less the commentating focuses on the casuals.
In things like Smash the commentators basically assume that you know the insides of the game, because everyone who would be watching does that in practice.
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Growth means higher likelihood of opportunity.
Your comparisons are a bit faulty, larger sports do not have "more" content so to speak (arguable) but the content is consistent and nearly all-year round with much, much larger international events. If anything, your argument contradicts your overall point and blurs the finer details and differences between organized traditional sports and eSports.
WCS reduced the number of colliding tournaments and emphasized continuing organizations by establishing relevance through the WCS Points system. This is on top of growing prize-money and consistent competition. NASL dying out is more due to internal deconstruction than outside lack of opportunity. In its place, ESL NA has managed to prosper and further their outreach throughout NA (West and East Coast).
I think you'd have a better argument using Riot's LCS system, in which consistent viewership and matches keep the game at a consistent founding level, but it is a 'make-or-break' system that cause a lot of turnovers in the scene, especially for aspiring players.
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On October 03 2014 20:20 Torte de Lini wrote:
Growth means higher likelihood of opportunity.
Your comparisons are a bit faulty, larger sports do not have "more" content so to speak (arguable) but the content is consistent and nearly all-year round with much, much larger international events. If anything, your argument contradicts your overall point and blurs the finer details and differences between organized traditional sports and eSports.Content used to be consistent and more plentiful. Now it's less plentiful. We used to have 5-6 consistent GSL's, now we have 3 consistent GSL's per year. The NASL used to have a consistent schedule, now it's gone.
WCS reduced the number of colliding tournaments and emphasized continuing organizations by establishing relevance through the WCS Points system. This is on top of growing prize-money and consistent competition. NASL dying out is more due to internal deconstruction than outside lack of opportunity. In its place, ESL NA has managed to prosper and further their outreach throughout NA (West and East Coast).
WCS simply flat out reduced the number of broadcast games is my point.
I don'tsee the benefit of "continuing organizations" if this simply means less broadcasted games.
With NASL dying I'm talking about NASL the league, not the company. That just flat out died because of scheduling rules with WCS. Also note how Dreamhack is now over 2 days instad of 3, probably because they can't broadcast on a friday like they used to because of these scheduling conflict rules again.
I think you'd have a better argument using Riot's LCS system, in which consistent viewership and matches keep the game at a consistent founding level, but it is a 'make-or-break' system that cause a lot of turnovers in the scene, especially for aspiring players.
LoL also shows that popularity of a sport does not mean higher number of games broadcast. They have far less games than we have despite being far more popular.
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On October 03 2014 21:17 SiskosGoatee wrote:Show nested quote +On October 03 2014 20:20 Torte de Lini wrote:
Growth means higher likelihood of opportunity.
Your comparisons are a bit faulty, larger sports do not have "more" content so to speak (arguable) but the content is consistent and nearly all-year round with much, much larger international events. If anything, your argument contradicts your overall point and blurs the finer details and differences between organized traditional sports and eSports. Content used to be consistent and more plentiful. Now it's less plentiful. We used to have 5-6 consistent GSL's, now we have 3 consistent GSL's per year. The NASL used to have a consistent schedule, now it's gone. Show nested quote +WCS reduced the number of colliding tournaments and emphasized continuing organizations by establishing relevance through the WCS Points system. This is on top of growing prize-money and consistent competition. NASL dying out is more due to internal deconstruction than outside lack of opportunity. In its place, ESL NA has managed to prosper and further their outreach throughout NA (West and East Coast). WCS simply flat out reduced the number of broadcast games is my point. I don'tsee the benefit of "continuing organizations" if this simply means less broadcasted games. With NASL dying I'm talking about NASL the league, not the company. That just flat out died because of scheduling rules with WCS. Also note how Dreamhack is now over 2 days instad of 3, probably because they can't broadcast on a friday like they used to because of these scheduling conflict rules again. Show nested quote +I think you'd have a better argument using Riot's LCS system, in which consistent viewership and matches keep the game at a consistent founding level, but it is a 'make-or-break' system that cause a lot of turnovers in the scene, especially for aspiring players. LoL also shows that popularity of a sport does not mean higher number of games broadcast. They have far less games than we have despite being far more popular.
Growth creates exposure, exposure creates more talents, more talents creates more content, more content creates more growth. I would prefer growth, since more growth would only mean better content (I am really sick of seeing the same old few pro players nowadays). Number of games broadcasted does not indicate quality of games.
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Comparison with football is wrong. There are near constant streams of football going on on (illegal) stream sites. The main limiter in content is the fact that television is the main medium, and that the process of getting a match of football on tv costs much more than streaming a random sc2 game. It has nothing to do with growth. I'd say age of origin of content says more. Besides, I don't know how it is in Albania, but I can watch football almost every day, and have the choice between a number of clubs in the neighbourhood, completely free. I just have to go there. I can watch training sessions or matches of people of different age. And I'm not even talking about (talk)shows featuring football. Also, go to a bar and try to talk about sc2. Chances are very small you'll get a decent talk. Football is streamed in a lot of pubs, and almost always there are people there talking about it.
You may say some of this doen not count as content, but the point is that these are all consequences of growth. Football's grown too much to even be compared to sc2. You're just cherrypicking in my view.
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On October 03 2014 18:40 SiskosGoatee wrote:
Growth does not lead to more content.
I've seen very little evidence that a larger sport with more viewers typically has more tournaments going on. In fact, I'm seeing an inverse correlation. There's far less content for giant sports like Football (not handegg). Probably the most popular sport in the world yet I can watch more StarCraft content than Football. There just aren't that many matches. Due to its size and appeal for sponsorship, a single organization. FIFA, has taken control of it and firmly regulates like all of such organizations do. How much content there can be. There is no laissez-faire market for tournaments any more when someone tells them when and where they can hold one and under what conditions.
huh?
Live Sports are merely a subset of Live Event Entertainment.
The same principles apply. A live sporting event is live event entertainment.
The goal of every live event promoter is to do only one thing. Make a giant pile of money. You do this with high viewer counts.
The NFL, UFC, WWE, NHL, WCW, TNA, NWA, NBA, and MLB all increase their content as popularity rises.
The NFL has become more popular over the past 30 years. Instead of piling on every single game on Sunday afternoons as happened in 1980... now ... we have Thursday Night Football, Sunday Night Football, Monday Night Football..
damn... in 1980 there was 1 day to watch Football wiht 13 games going on at 1PM on Sunday... and back then you could only watch your own home town team. Now that never happens.
Now you can watch NFL Football 3 nights per week and all damn day on Sunday.
You can't swing a dead-cat without hitting an NFL insider show.
UFC's quantity and quality of content has skyrocketed to match the demand of consumers.
WCW and WWF become more popular and what happens? They introduce Smackdown and Thunder.
WCW wanes in popularity ... and guess what? say goodbye to both Nitro and Thunder.
I could say the same thing for the NWA, TNA, ECW, Stampede Wrestling, Mid Atlantic, and on and on and on. More viewers means more events and more content.
NFL, NBA, MLB, and NHL are constantly trying ot increase the # of playoff games in their leagues becuase of high demand and high viewer counts. They let more and more teams into the playoffs and they let the playoff series go longer and longer. More viewers.. more content.
The NHL and NBA let their players play in the Olympics? why? high viewer counts, more content, more money.
Increasing viewer numbers leads to more content. It also leads to content with higher production values.
This is because live event promoters ( ufc, nfl , wwe) want to maximize profit.
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On October 03 2014 21:50 HaruRH wrote:Show nested quote +On October 03 2014 21:17 SiskosGoatee wrote:On October 03 2014 20:20 Torte de Lini wrote:
Growth means higher likelihood of opportunity.
Your comparisons are a bit faulty, larger sports do not have "more" content so to speak (arguable) but the content is consistent and nearly all-year round with much, much larger international events. If anything, your argument contradicts your overall point and blurs the finer details and differences between organized traditional sports and eSports.Content used to be consistent and more plentiful. Now it's less plentiful. We used to have 5-6 consistent GSL's, now we have 3 consistent GSL's per year. The NASL used to have a consistent schedule, now it's gone. WCS reduced the number of colliding tournaments and emphasized continuing organizations by establishing relevance through the WCS Points system. This is on top of growing prize-money and consistent competition. NASL dying out is more due to internal deconstruction than outside lack of opportunity. In its place, ESL NA has managed to prosper and further their outreach throughout NA (West and East Coast). WCS simply flat out reduced the number of broadcast games is my point. I don'tsee the benefit of "continuing organizations" if this simply means less broadcasted games. With NASL dying I'm talking about NASL the league, not the company. That just flat out died because of scheduling rules with WCS. Also note how Dreamhack is now over 2 days instad of 3, probably because they can't broadcast on a friday like they used to because of these scheduling conflict rules again. I think you'd have a better argument using Riot's LCS system, in which consistent viewership and matches keep the game at a consistent founding level, but it is a 'make-or-break' system that cause a lot of turnovers in the scene, especially for aspiring players. LoL also shows that popularity of a sport does not mean higher number of games broadcast. They have far less games than we have despite being far more popular. Growth creates exposure, exposure creates more talents, more talents creates more content, more content creates more growth. I would prefer growth, since more growth would only mean better content (I am really sick of seeing the same old few pro players nowadays). Number of games broadcasted does not indicate quality of games. Then again, explain why there is zero empirical evidence of this? There is absolutely no correlation between the size of a sport and the amount of content. Like I said, LoL is bigger yet they have less games. Footbal is waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay bigger than both and they have even less broadcasted televised games. So explain that to me. then if you believe growth creates more content.
On October 03 2014 23:35 Yorbon wrote:
Comparison with football is wrong. There are near constant streams of football going on on (illegal) stream sites. The main limiter in content is the fact that television is the main medium, and that the process of getting a match of football on tv costs much more than streaming a random sc2 game. It has nothing to do with growth. I'd say age of origin of content says more. Besides, I don't know how it is in Albania, but I can watch football almost every day, and have the choice between a number of clubs in the neighbourhood, completely free. I just have to go there. I can watch training sessions or matches of people of different age. And I'm not even talking about (talk)shows featuring football. Also, go to a bar and try to talk about sc2. Chances are very small you'll get a decent talk. Football is streamed in a lot of pubs, and almost always there are people there talking about it. Obviously I mean professional football, I can obs a game between friends every day too if I want.
I'm also not from Albania, that's just the first country on the list. Regardless, the Eredevisie plays a total of 612 averaging 100-minute games in the entire year. That's not a lot of content and the Eredevisie is pretty much the only thing a Dutch club can compete in if they don't make the UEFA Cup or the Champion's league. Of course there's still the European Championship or the World-Cup bi-anually.
You may say some of this doen not count as content, but the point is that these are all consequences of growth. Football's grown too much to even be compared to sc2. You're just cherrypicking in my view. I've compared more than football though. I'm just saying that football fans get far less minutes of professional football to watch then we get minutes of professional StarCraft.
The other comparison I made was StarCraft II before WCS and StarCraft after. The amount of content has simply gone down. You cannot deny that. 6 GSL's versus 3. NASL had more games than WCS AM has now etc. A lot of stuff had to be cut to make WCS happen whose purpose is apparently to grow stuff. The growth may happen, but it's in popularity, not minutes of broadcast professional StarCraft.
On October 03 2014 23:55 JimmyJRaynor wrote:
Increasing viewer numbers leads to more content. It also leads to content with higher production values.
This is because live event promoters ( ufc, nfl , wwe) want to maximize profit. Indeed, and what generates profit is to make sure that others aren't broadcasting during their tournament. THe NFL may increase its own content. But the NFL basically prohibits any other league to simultaneously exist. And this is exactly what WCS has done and what the LCS has done and what KeSPA has done.
Growth means that some organ is going to take control for the sake of profit and basically eliminate the competition and that leads to a reduction in content. KeSPA during BW basically killed the Gom Classic as a political move because they didn't like the competition and the threat to their hegemony because Gom had an official deal with Blizzard. WCS says "You can't have a tournament going while we have something going.", that again leads to less content and is directly why the NASL as a league (not as a company) ceased to operate and why MLG dropped StarCraft. They said "We can't broadcast it while avoiding WCS."
Growth leads to monopolies and monopolies lead to less content. Laissez-faire markets lead to more content.
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On October 04 2014 00:51 SiskosGoatee wrote:
Indeed, and what generates profit is to make sure that others aren't broadcasting during their tournament. THe NFL may increase its own content. But the NFL basically prohibits any other league to simultaneously exist. And this is exactly what WCS has done and what the LCS has done and what KeSPA has done.
Growth means that some organ is going to take control for the sake of profit and basically eliminate the competition and that leads to a reduction in content. KeSPA during BW basically killed the Gom Classic as a political move because they didn't like the competition and the threat to their hegemony because Gom had an official deal with Blizzard. WCS says "You can't have a tournament going while we have something going.", that again leads to less content and is directly why the NASL as a league (not as a company) ceased to operate and why MLG dropped StarCraft. They said "We can't broadcast it while avoiding WCS."
Growth leads to monopolies and monopolies lead to less content. Laissez-faire markets lead to more content.
o ya? how did the AFL exist if the NFL won't let other leagues exist? XFL ? USFL?
"basically prohibit" ?
where did Tommy Maddox come from?
the NFL does not have legislative power within the USA.
plenty of other sporting events, football and others go on during NFL games... and during the NFL season.
the NFL can not prohibit the creation of other leagues. the NFL can not pass any laws forbidding a rival football league from playing.
there is no prohibition on creating a football league in the USA.
The NFL has the audience and ratings it does because they provide top notch entertainment. They do not exist via coercion.
There is more "American Football Content" than ever before.
Most of it comes from the NCAA and has nothing to do with the NFL.
so i'm not sure what point you are trying to make here.
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On October 03 2014 18:40 SiskosGoatee wrote:
Growth does not lead to more content.
I've seen very little evidence that a larger sport with more viewers typically has more tournaments going on. In fact, I'm seeing an inverse correlation. There's far less content for giant sports like Football (not handegg). Probably the most popular sport in the world yet I can watch more StarCraft content than Football. There just aren't that many matches. Due to its size and appeal for sponsorship, a single organization. FIFA, has taken control of it and firmly regulates like all of such organizations do. How much content there can be. There is no laissez-faire market for tournaments any more when someone tells them when and where they can hold one and under what conditions.
Doesn't most of the firm regulation come from the simple fact that there is a risk of injury for players to play in other leagues, thus the organization is protecting their investments? That was the impression I've had and that doesn't apply to eSports really. I guess you could argue the RSI risk might be greater, but that seems like a stretch.
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United States4883 Posts
I know that SiskosGoatee never posts things for feedback or discussion but merely to argue down others and prove why he is right. Therefore, I leave with the simple thought:
Opinions are opinions, and SiskosGoatee is full of them without any real knowledge of any such subject of real economics, game design (maybe even SC2 as a whole), or business principles, as evidenced by his incredible lack of such information. It would be a lot easier to take him seriously if it weren't always just his blind opinions supported by bullshit resources and speculation. As is, these blogs have become a bit of a joke to me, as one imagines an impatient child stamping their feet and insisting, "No, the crust on the bread is bad! It tastes bad! Take it off, take it off!"
Fight me, I wanna see the true power of your opinionation.
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Well I was hoping for something else entirely when I saw this title.
1.5/5 ~.~
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you should give the guy an additional 0.5 for saying "laissez-faire" in one of his replies.
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Handegg has some fairly good commentary, but I think it would be better if they dropped more f-bombs.
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oh well with todays WCS overlay I gues this deserves a bump lol
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I have nothing to add. Bump for discussions
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EPT
