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Post by Hereticus on Oct 8, 2013 21:56:51 GMT -8
This was a pretty cool piece on the rising fame of Esports
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Post by Pencil Stick on Oct 8, 2013 22:36:33 GMT -8
Fuck no, they aren't mutually exclusive and don't share much of an audience.
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Post by Hereticus on Oct 9, 2013 0:50:53 GMT -8
How do you figure that?
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Post by Hans1942 on Oct 9, 2013 6:23:21 GMT -8
Because someone casual like me doesn't enjoy watching esports as much as a hockey game. There is a difference of watching someone click his mouse and keyboard vs him/her doing the actual action. There are enough people in the world like myself for esports not to surpass sports.
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Post by Swatz on Oct 9, 2013 7:28:11 GMT -8
Unlikely but it may become popular not surpass.
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Post by Pencil Stick on Oct 9, 2013 21:15:55 GMT -8
It is not as immediately obvious to an e-sports audience what skill players have if they are not familiar with the game. If I watch a LoL match, I have no idea whatsoever what I'm seeing because I don't have much familiarity with the game. I know who's winning, but I don't know why, I don't know who is playing well, or even what constitutes "playing well". I can sorta tell what's going on in a Starcraft match because I'm more familiar with the game. I know exactly what I'm seeing and who is good spectating Planetside, I'm intimately familiar not only with being a player of the game, but a strategy-maker and leader.
Now, if I'm watching American football, even if I don't know the rules of the game, I can say, "Wow! That huge dude is fast! He just decked the shit out of that other guy! I could never do that!" or "That's a hell of a throw! No one I know has that kind of skill!"
So, even if, hypothetically, an organization like MLG grew to the size of a major sports organization, their audience is necessarily going to be more limited compared to an event where you need to be a player of the game to really appreciate it. I don't have to play baseball to appreciate the skills required.
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Post by Deleted on Oct 9, 2013 21:34:41 GMT -8
Sports require Narrative. Until the commentators for "e"sports acquire the ability to spin a narrative...not so much for esports. I posted about this a while back. Still holds.
Think about the decades and generation span that it takes to grow a fan base like the Cubs or Spankess. Sure you can have short spans for SC or BS4...but where is the contiguous draw from season to season, change of players... It is the narrative that will be the tie that binds it.
Without it, sure you have something nice to watch, a community gestalt with a psuedo mainstream front end. Longevity wise though...demand better.
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Post by Hereticus on Oct 9, 2013 22:05:01 GMT -8
I think the difference between traditional sports and Esports largely relates with the difference between a Athlete and a Competitor, Is a Gamer a Athlete? I don't think so, not in the traditional meaning of the word anyways (a person trained or gifted in exercises or contests involving physical agility, stamina, or strength; a participant in a sport, exercise, or game requiring physical skill).
But a Athlete is also a person trained to compete in a exorcise or game, Which I think Online Multiplayer Games fit that description, the routines and twitches gamers have to train and practice to learn and develop is no different then the teamwork and coordination professional Athlete develop. Definitions often change based on the times we live in...
Maybe not within the next 10 years, But I'm sold that within our life time Esports will become a major thing.
Video Games as far as the mainstream is concerned started in the early 70's. In roughly 40 years the industry has developed from kids competing for highscore in Pong or Pac-Man to the giant arenas as seen in above video for League of Legends or even a National Sport like Starcraft in Korea. If something like NASCAR where your just driving left 500 times can become a professional Sport, I think Video Games have a pretty good chance if they can overcome some of the hurdles that Tom's pointed out in above post.
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Post by Swatz on Oct 10, 2013 7:27:31 GMT -8
Major possibly south korea is a great example. But surpass you're average sports unlikely. You have to take into account some people can't watch video games because of motion sickness and other disorders.
I will say though in our lifetime maybe we can see the start of e sports growing to the point of having a solid fanbase and getting better commentators.
Surpassing sports no maybe after were long gone and dead maybe as equals but not surpassing.
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Post by Pencil Stick on Oct 10, 2013 8:29:09 GMT -8
Let's face it, this depends entirely on whether there's money to be made off this. Doesn't matter if it's good for the game or the gamers or the audience.
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Post by Hans1942 on Oct 10, 2013 10:55:43 GMT -8
Sports require Narrative. Only baseball really requires a narrative. I am fairly sure esports can surpass it. Which I think Online Multiplayer Games fit that description, the routines and twitches gamers have to train I am not looking at a players mouse when he plays. I mean most of the time in LoL the least interesting and annoying part is when they click everywhere. There is a big difference in seeing someone spaz his mouse everywhere vs watching someone be extremely accurate in how he/she moves their body. These are the hurdles I see that esports needs to overcome: 1. The choice of game. esports isn't equivalent to soccer. Its equivalent to the olympics really. So many different games are part of esports or attempt to be. So all the attention will be divided among the different games. THIS IS THE BIGGEST HURDLE. 2. Ease of learning the game. As someone said above, it is harder to understand what is going on. 3. Seeing a body move is entirely different than watching someone play a video game. 4. Currently the experience and training needed for esports is much much less than the experience and training needed to be a top soccer player. It can and will be big but lets not kid ourselves, esports has a very very long way to go. |
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Post by Hans1942 on Oct 10, 2013 10:56:53 GMT -8
Let's face it, this depends entirely on whether there's money to be made off this. Doesn't matter if it's good for the game or the gamers or the audience. There is money to be made if the audience watches it or listens to it. |
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Post by Hereticus on Oct 10, 2013 13:57:55 GMT -8
In that League of Legends tournament there was a 1 million grand prize to the winning team and that's a established competing game, in the Vegas Tournament that Changes, Talron and the others participated in the grand prize was what... 3 or 5 thousand? and PS2 is just starting to open the door on being a Esport, but PS2 - that's a entirely different discussion in and of itself, my point being is that there's big money involved in Esports, make no doubt about that.
Esports is little different then ESPN imo, ESPN covers all the different sports leagues NFL, NBA, MLB, NHL, so on etc... Esports covers all the video game tournies from LoL, Starcraft, Halo, CoD, so on across any game that's ever declared itself multiplayer and has a fanbase that's grown large enough to be recognized. IMO the difference between ESPN and Esports is standardization.
I can follow Soccer and Baseball alright because there sports I'm familiar with but football, basketball, and any other sport I have absolutely no idea what's going on and I don't care to, those sports are not interesting for me, but ESPN shows the different scoreboards, player stats, teams and rankings for every sport in every league in the same standardized format. I follow RTS tournies pretty closely and I'm just this year starting to follow PS2 tournaments, all other video games I don't have a interest in there competitions but Esports has standardized stats for some games and not others... That's where I see the stunting in Esports growth.
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Post by Swatz on Oct 10, 2013 14:14:08 GMT -8
don't forget video game bias which is fairly high, along with that E-sports is still in it's infancy rushing to quickly and there may not be an audience even if there is money.
At some point when were dead maybe they will be on par or just under regular sports but that's far off.
Standardization is only part of it you can have the most polished thing ever that some people will sacrifice themselves for but if most people don't bother with it then well it's not going to shoot off.
Base ball and Soccer are easy there is a set of rules that usually never changes no new units or rules or tweaks to make things balanced. Only the crowd that knows it will really get into and others who have no clue of the rules, units, statistics and dozens of others stats could they really get into it. Can you read something in another language on the spot with no help whatsoever.
Plus since things are constantly changing will there be a hold for an audience because I'm sure not everyone wants to re learn the same thing 20 or so times over the course of a year.
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Post by Hereticus on Oct 10, 2013 14:24:53 GMT -8
Standardization helps big time in attracting masses and keeping them. Fair point to the fickleness of some video games but to that I point out that just about every Multiplayer game ever has had to deal with balance shifts on a regular basis, It's something that any "serious" gamer is well adjusted to because it's the nature of the game to adapt quickly so you can stay ontop, part of the appeal to some gamers if you will is the constant change.
I'm not sure if Video Games will ever surpass traditional sports but there certainly shaping up to be a serious contendor to atleast be on-par.
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