|
On December 15 2009 03:58 Lovin wrote: Sigh... Whatever has a beginning has an end, I suppose.. But I will be here to see it happen.
if it goes down, im going all the way to the bottom with it
|
On December 15 2009 04:01 ondik wrote: The replay bashing is right but you have to see also the other side of the coin - thanks to replays the skill level development is SO MUCH higher than it would be without them.
Also - I like the china/korea analogy. As for me boxer is the most educated and inteligent (at least in sphere of starcraft business) progamer.
Good competition is one thing, but the current situation is slash and burn agriculture and promotes an inbred culture.
|
Real talk Boxer. I can't help but feel a little down after reading this. IMO a good start would be to hire Artosis and Tasteless and others qualified as full time commentators for proleauge and individual leagues.
|
Canada5565 Posts
On December 15 2009 04:24 John49ers wrote: Real talk Boxer. I can't help but feel a little down after reading this. IMO a good start would be to hire Artosis and Tasteless and others qualified as full time commentators for proleauge and individual leagues.
Yeah for sure, that would attract so many more foreign fans.
|
This is why BoxeR is the best progamer ever. I really hope the steps he mentioned are taken to sustain eSports.
|
pro gaming came 15 years early
there is no 'e-sports' oriented game design yet
|
Maybe tweak the way the audience watches games.
Sometimes I think the cameras scare the fans away or at least fans seeing themselves on the bigscreen drive them off? Maybe they should have it so that only viewers at home can see the audience and their signs and the fans over there are left with gameplay only. At least that's how I see it.
Just watching a match and some insecure fan shying away from the camera speaks volumes to me and probably others in SK. It's as if they're embarrassed to be there. Others look downright irritated by a camera being zoomed on them for the five seconds.
I'm probably waay off base though. Maybe its a cultural thing.
|
On December 15 2009 04:46 John49ers wrote: Maybe tweak the way the audience watches games.
Sometimes I think the cameras scare the fans away or at least fans seeing themselves on the bigscreen drive them off? Maybe they should have it so that only viewers at home can see the audience and their signs and the fans over there are left with gameplay only. At least that's how I see it.
Just watching a match and some insecure fan shying away from the camera speaks volumes to me and probably others in SK. It's as if they're embarrassed to be there. Others look downright irritated by a camera being zoomed on them for the five seconds.
I'm probably waay off base though. Maybe its a cultural thing.
Lil Susie said on gom one time that it was because a vast majority of them were suppose to be studying at cram schools instead of watching the game.
|
Wow, looks like he has a really negative outlook on where e-sports is going.
|
On December 15 2009 04:50 Trowabarton756 wrote:Show nested quote +On December 15 2009 04:46 John49ers wrote: Maybe tweak the way the audience watches games.
Sometimes I think the cameras scare the fans away or at least fans seeing themselves on the bigscreen drive them off? Maybe they should have it so that only viewers at home can see the audience and their signs and the fans over there are left with gameplay only. At least that's how I see it.
Just watching a match and some insecure fan shying away from the camera speaks volumes to me and probably others in SK. It's as if they're embarrassed to be there. Others look downright irritated by a camera being zoomed on them for the five seconds.
I'm probably waay off base though. Maybe its a cultural thing. Lil Susie said on gom one time that it was because a vast majority of them were suppose to be studying at cram schools instead of watching the game.
Ah I see now. Thanks.
|
|
No what he's getting at is that the problem is there's no fun in going to the games. Except for the possibility of seeing the gamers themselves, but that's a novelty that wears off quickly, and the audience-base isn't large enough to keep that up for very long. When you go to a sports game, you pay money (this is crucial), which in turn feeds the finances of the entertainment industry. At the same time you're treated, ideally, to both an entertaining product as well as a unique experience of being in a stadium seat with tens of thousands of other people cheering/booing. It's something you can't experience at home. Cherry on top is comfortable/better seating, and many other perks - that's just how stadiums operate.
Starcraft however is basically a free-of-charge plastic seats mashing of "as many people as we can get into this room." In a way you get what you pay for, but this moves "e-sports" Starcraft away from "sports" as most people know it and more towards free "entertainment" ala a Christmas carol at the church right down the block. It's not sustainable, or at least not very good for product growth, because you have no good revenue stream, and so the quality more-or-less stays the same, give or take some growth based on charitable feelings (sponsorship). This probably also factors in greatly to the lack of strength by players - aside from their "I'm too young to care" sort of attitude, they don't actually seem to generate much of a revenue stream, aside from possibly the broadcasts, except the broadcasts are freely obtainable on the internet so you're really just looking at advertisements... and none of us know really how much they're making off of those advertisements. In any case it's doubtful they're making TOO much of a profit based on how many teams/games/players they're sponsoring, and this only applies to two companies, anyways (MBC and OGN, OGN even backed out of sponsoring the team; the team clearly wasn't generating enough revenue to cover for the broadcasting costs).
His two main points thus are that in order to sustain the business, you need to have a business model for growth; status quo is never going to cut it in businesses, because costs will keep rising but that means your revenue stream won't keep up; it also causes stagnation of the product for the consumer, which directly leads to less viewers. That's for the executives - that's why he mentioned his request to the government, etc. The other half of the equation is the quality of the product itself, and this is where he bashed the replays - clear-cut build orders and the "solving" of the game has resulted in many cookie-cutter builds, where we have one exciting game out of five, and many of these "exciting games" are more exciting because of the players playing, not the game itself. I mean today, + Show Spoiler + but the excitement was born out of the potential displayed by the loser! What kind of lowered standard for a good game is that? How is that possibly going to keep the attention of a casual fan, whom you desperately need to keep a product going?
|
2biggest problems: - there´s no money coming from outside Korea( tv, streams, merchandise) so the possibility of spreading the popularity is slim - vods, why did everyone love NalRa,Boxer, Intotherain and others? because they won by doing the stupidest shit
It´s not that simple though, but those are the biggest reasons IMO.
|
I love Boxer and all, but this isn't very convincing.
It's popular in Korea and there are tournaments, but oversea there isn't much attention. I felt the limit as I won WCG twice. 7 and 8 years ago? Surely nothing's changed in 7 years!
Replay is a big problem too. The retirement of old progamers was influenced by replay. Even when Nal_rA and others pulled off an interesting strategy, copying it a day or two after is possible because of replay. As the old progamers went down, fans left. More effort was needed to hold them, but such effort is insufficient nowadays. Replays came out 8 years ago. I have replays older than Nal_rA's first TLPD game. And apart from WCG and the recent leak, pro reps are nearly impossible to get nowadays.
We hear this "SC is dying" crap every few months. The only thing that can kill SC is a better RTS.
|
I don't think he's saying it's dying but rather that it's not growing, which is debatable. He implies that it's going to take SC2 to properly grow, and I'd probably guess most people would have said the same anyways, before this little interview.
The most interesting things for me were that 1) he once tried to bring the government in to help and 2) he noticed that fans aren't filling up seats at games anymore. The latter is somewhat surprising and possibly alarming.
|
Agreed with Bob above: the last WCG in China was actually as exciting as I've ever seen it, and incomparably so from Boxer's time. In terms of everything: level of play, audience both local and global (we had excellent live English casters for fuck's sake).
And reps only have a slight effect: a pro team with access to a simple casted game could replicate that strategy/build in a few hours anyway. The more important thing is that now skills are more even and higher level. All-in cheese is not as common (remember Boxer's drops and microing 6 marines for 2 minutes, macro-be-damned?), and amateurs simply cannot compare to pros.
|
On December 15 2009 05:20 citi.zen wrote: Agreed with Bob above: the last WCG in China was actually as exciting as I've ever seen it, and incomparably so from Boxer's time. In terms of everything: level of play, audience both local and global (we had excellent live English casters for fuck's sake).
The question I have is whether that experience is replicable. China is one thing; all the pro-gamers that went there came away surprised by the audience that showed up. But the rest of the world? Even now, "7-8 years" after Boxer, I don't think Germany/USA/etc. would rouse up much of a crowd. And I mean we're talking about China here, the same China that churned out megabucks for the Olympics (I don't know if they gave much strength to WCG but my guess is that they did, considering how image-obsessed the government is) and also happens to be the only other country with a proper e-sports professional setting.
... which is why boxer brought up the Korea-China analogy at the end, IMO.
|
On December 15 2009 05:12 SonuvBob wrote:I love Boxer and all, but this isn't very convincing. Show nested quote +It's popular in Korea and there are tournaments, but oversea there isn't much attention. I felt the limit as I won WCG twice. 7 and 8 years ago? Surely nothing's changed in 7 years! We hear this "SC is dying" crap every few months. The only thing that can kill SC is a better RTS.
Hate to be the first one to tell you, but Starcraft outside of Korea hasn't exactly grown in the last 7-8 years. Sure, things have changed; for the worse.
Even Starcraft's popularity in Korea has peaked, and did so several years ago. E-Sports need a new game that can bring it to the next level, and hopefully Starcraft 2 will be that game but it remains to be seen.
|
On December 15 2009 05:16 Southlight wrote: I don't think he's saying it's dying but rather that it's not growing, which is debatable. He implies that it's going to take SC2 to properly grow, and I'd probably guess most people would have said the same anyways, before this little interview.
The most interesting things for me were that 1) he once tried to bring the government in to help and 2) he noticed that fans aren't filling up seats at games anymore. The latter is somewhat surprising and possibly alarming. It's definitely growing outside of Korea, dunno about inside. 1) was at least a couple years ago and 2) is probably because there's so many damn games. You're right that there's no big incentive for going to games, so I'm curious what the TV/online viewership is like.
|
On December 15 2009 05:27 Eury wrote:Show nested quote +On December 15 2009 05:12 SonuvBob wrote:I love Boxer and all, but this isn't very convincing. It's popular in Korea and there are tournaments, but oversea there isn't much attention. I felt the limit as I won WCG twice. 7 and 8 years ago? Surely nothing's changed in 7 years! We hear this "SC is dying" crap every few months. The only thing that can kill SC is a better RTS. Hate to be the first one to tell you, but Starcraft outside of Korea hasn't exactly grown in the last 7-8 years. Sure, things have changed; for the worse. Less players, wayyyyyyyy more fans.
|
|
|
|