The Challenge of Popularizing eSports
- Thread starter Dennis Scimeca
- Start date
I'm sorry, I just don't think that making video games like professional sports is in anyway a worthwhile goal at all, regardless of the inefficacy of the comparison. Professional athletes these days are often childish dickbags that "we" (the public) only put up with because they're good at a couple tricks.
And the only reason sports make that much money is due to the advertising surrounding it. The commercialization of the sport is what makes it "successful." I don't want that to become the world of video games.
And the only reason sports make that much money is due to the advertising surrounding it. The commercialization of the sport is what makes it "successful." I don't want that to become the world of video games.
It seems odd to be against the commercialization of gaming when it is by nature a commercial enterprise; unlike many sports (which in their simplest variation require only a big flat space and a $5 ball) games are inherently costly, and there is plenty of advertising already within games and in the surrounding culture (see the banner ads on the side).Dastardly said:
I don't particularly like the idea of "eSports", but it seems like the obvious next step. These days you can turn anything into a competition that can be broadcast around the world. As the author said, it's just a matter of getting the correct people (i.e. gamers) interested in watching it.
On a related note, who wants to bet that the first game expressly designed for watching is made by EA? Someone over there must be doing the math on how much of the eSports market they can control if they make the first big game that's challenging for players, but straightforward and entertaining to watch.
It is generallly seen as a step towards that respectability gaming so intensely seems to crave. Whether and why gaming being "respectable" - as e.g. football is - would even be a good thing is beyond me.Dastardly said:
Furthermore I would like to point out that the hero-worship professional athletes garner is not entirely in spite of them (occasionally) being spoiled douchenozzles: it is quite likely it even adds to their appeal. After all there is no surer sign of power than behaving like a fuckwad with total impunity.
Or in short: the public doesn't tolerate it - they love it, in much the same way as they love their celebrity gossip.
Would I want these personality cults erected around pro gamers? Fuck no.
Blizzard (among others) already beat them to it. Starcraft II was made knowing that Koreans would watch it like crazy, and it certainly is catering to that. Just not as amateurish as EA would go about it.Thunderous Cacophony said:
I wrote for an eSports website for a while, the competitive gaming scene in Australia is packed with douchebags. Note to players: It's not a contest of physical ability, stop pretending you're goddamn Rambo.
In Australia? Sure.Vault101 said:
Now do me a favour. Combine a footballer with a youtube commenter. See how that ends up.
I covered TF2, but they play pretty much anything that's MPVault101 said:
CS
SC2
TF2
Whole lot of sporting games
DOTA (and similar)
etc
You can't be serious in praising LoL as a competitive game where there are countless characters each one with its own set of abilities, and in the next sentence saying SC2 is too hard to follow. It's nearly impossible to watch LoL if you don't play it, SC2 is much easier to grasp that it's an army versus another.Smilomaniac said:
Not only that, but the "many strategies and counter-strategies" which Smilomaniac thinks the casual viewer has no chance of knowing are exactly where commentary comes in. Good commentators are going to be there to help fill in the knowledge gap for less experienced viewers so that they can follow what's going on and SC2 is pretty much perfect for this because those strategies play out over longer periods of time, and you can see the beginnings of a major attack being laid out 3-4 minutes earlier in terms of what a player is building.GrungyMunchy said:
That would not happen to nearly the same degree in something like LoL, and I agree, it's a poor spectator game for the uninitiated.
It's dismissive to call being able to throw a baseball 100 miles an hour a "trick." While I agree that athlete's bad behavior is often ignored, let's not diminish their accomplishments. We resent when people blow off our skills as writers, gamers, or intellectuals; let's not return the favor.Dastardly said:
Fair to say. The remark wasn't mean to reflect the definitive value of the accomplishments themselves, but rather the value of any talent or ability relative to a person's demonstrated character. I should have used a more diplomatic phrasing.Susan Arendt said:
I mean to indicate that being really, really good at something (anything really) never grants someone a free pass to be a complete buffoon, do something illegal, or just be rude and abrasive. I see this happen too often with professional athletes (as well as actors and musicians, though this thread was more specifically about athletes).
I would just hate to see that kind of culture take root in the gaming world (any more than it already has in some corners).
Yeah, commentary is definitely important. It can depend on the commentator as well though. Some are just plain better than others at explaining things.Smilomaniac said:
Sean actually is one of the better SC2 commentators in my opinion. I'm not sure I'd recommend the dailies he does though simply because they're aimed more at helping SC2 players improve than they are at pushing SC2 as a spectator sport. But you can easily look up some recent MLG's that he's commentated since the videos are available for free on their site in the archive. Maybe just skip to some of the later matches in the tournaments to see some of the top players squaring off.
I'm not going to argue that watching a couple of matches with commentary will make someone who's never seen the game suddenly understand the deeper aspects of it of course, but I do think that with the right commentary and a basic understanding of what the point of the game is that they wouldn't be totally lost, and I think SC2 lends itself to that a lot since things happen over long period of time and it's at least easy to see army A going to fight army B or destroy base C. Non-players can quickly grasp the important parts of the game; mining resources, building a base/units, and attacking quite quickly. Even the units, largely having a single defining function which is easily visible (spell casters aside anyway) lends itself to the game being quickly understood.
I may check out the spectator mode in LoL sometime though so thanks for the tip. I'm in favour of pretty much anything that not only makes it easier to watch competitive games, but learn from them and increase the skill level at the top by helping all levels of players improve.
E-sports have GOT to change the context from the game to the people playing the game in order to take off in a big way. No one who doesn't play Starcraft understands or cares about competitive Starcraft. But ANYBODY can root for their home-town team, and remain interested in a game once given proper commentary. You don't have to like football to get caught up in the superbowl buzz -- it's OUR GUYS versus THOSE OTHER GUYS WE HATE. Let's get 'em!
Imagine if you will a fictional e-sports league.
In this league, you have typical geographically-based teams. The Oakland Aggros. These teams square off against eachother regionally, and then nationally, like every other pro-sport: and they don't do it at just ONE game.
Each season, the e-sports league adopts new "official" games in each genre for the next season. This is the game they feel best suits the competitive play environment. So this year, the ~OFFICIAL FIGHTING GAME OF PROFESSIONAL E-SPORTS~ might be Marvel vs Capcom 3. Racing: Gran Turismo. FPS: Battlefield. RTS: Starcraft.
When these teams face eachother, they're facing one another in ALL of these games. So now instead of watching two people who are really good at Starcraft play eachother (which is always going to feel analogous to watching a chess-match, or a game of Go) you're watching two gamers who have trained to be good in a wide variety of games, in a panoptic battle of skills, which can feel much closer to the traditional contest of athletes.
After all, baseball players don't just go up against eachother at catching games or hitting games -- they're tasked with a wide variety of interactions, and that's what makes it interesting. Maybe this guy is a great fielder, but he's terrible at bat. And guess what? Suddenly it's interesting to watch, when he steps up to bat. Suddenly there's context.
Suddenly there's A NARRATIVE.
So maybe this guy is great at first person shooters, but he's god awful at driving games. Or maybe the Oakland Aggros have the RTS scene in the bag, but they're getting cleaned up in the Fighting game. And I wonder what will happen to Joe Schmoe, who had the best Fighting record in the whole league, but now he has that hand injury? Did you see that highlight of him in the last minutes against the Dallas Grinders? Where were you when Bob Robson pulled that last-minute grenade stick from across the map, and won the World Championship?
And in addition to building a more compelling competitive framework, the whole ~OFFICIAL GAME~ thing inherently commercializes the whole thing in an exciting way. You'd have companies like EA striving to create an FPS game with the most balanced competitive scene, so they could snag that nomination, get all that free screen-time (read: advertising), push all those additional units, etc. "Official FPS of E-sports 2012" is a pretty good thing to be able to put on the cover of your game.
And the only way to get it is to make a great game.
As others have said, commentary is important as well. I've never played Tribes in my life, but to my surprise, I got very caught up watching 4chan play Reddit in a series of Tribes matches (4chan won with a total upset come-from-behind victory). But even there -- it's context. Narrative. Community. Drama. THIS TEAM vs THAT TEAM.
Imagine if you will a fictional e-sports league.
In this league, you have typical geographically-based teams. The Oakland Aggros. These teams square off against eachother regionally, and then nationally, like every other pro-sport: and they don't do it at just ONE game.
Each season, the e-sports league adopts new "official" games in each genre for the next season. This is the game they feel best suits the competitive play environment. So this year, the ~OFFICIAL FIGHTING GAME OF PROFESSIONAL E-SPORTS~ might be Marvel vs Capcom 3. Racing: Gran Turismo. FPS: Battlefield. RTS: Starcraft.
When these teams face eachother, they're facing one another in ALL of these games. So now instead of watching two people who are really good at Starcraft play eachother (which is always going to feel analogous to watching a chess-match, or a game of Go) you're watching two gamers who have trained to be good in a wide variety of games, in a panoptic battle of skills, which can feel much closer to the traditional contest of athletes.
After all, baseball players don't just go up against eachother at catching games or hitting games -- they're tasked with a wide variety of interactions, and that's what makes it interesting. Maybe this guy is a great fielder, but he's terrible at bat. And guess what? Suddenly it's interesting to watch, when he steps up to bat. Suddenly there's context.
Suddenly there's A NARRATIVE.
So maybe this guy is great at first person shooters, but he's god awful at driving games. Or maybe the Oakland Aggros have the RTS scene in the bag, but they're getting cleaned up in the Fighting game. And I wonder what will happen to Joe Schmoe, who had the best Fighting record in the whole league, but now he has that hand injury? Did you see that highlight of him in the last minutes against the Dallas Grinders? Where were you when Bob Robson pulled that last-minute grenade stick from across the map, and won the World Championship?
And in addition to building a more compelling competitive framework, the whole ~OFFICIAL GAME~ thing inherently commercializes the whole thing in an exciting way. You'd have companies like EA striving to create an FPS game with the most balanced competitive scene, so they could snag that nomination, get all that free screen-time (read: advertising), push all those additional units, etc. "Official FPS of E-sports 2012" is a pretty good thing to be able to put on the cover of your game.
And the only way to get it is to make a great game.
As others have said, commentary is important as well. I've never played Tribes in my life, but to my surprise, I got very caught up watching 4chan play Reddit in a series of Tribes matches (4chan won with a total upset come-from-behind victory). But even there -- it's context. Narrative. Community. Drama. THIS TEAM vs THAT TEAM.