Do like me and get into eSports because that's how American gridiron football dies

The ones I've watched have either been boring as hell or so fast and blingy that it's hard to watch.

Sports for me comes down to the thing about confusing movement for action, there need to be stakes. Basketball is a wonderful sport but because each play-event is so low-stakes it's only truly exciting in the playoffs/last two minutes of a close game. Soccer might seem slow to the uninitiated but because of the low-scoring nature, there's a lot of action (every shot could be the last goal/winning goal - not true of basketball) and everything takes a heightened pitch (also true of baseball in low scoring games).

E-sports draws huge crowds but there hasn't been THE game that crosses over yet that you don't have to play (for most people) to be exciting and I don't know what that sport looks like. It needs to be slower than the elite play FPSes, it needs to be always comprehensible in space (so many of the fast and blingy games are like a bad action movie where people are punching but you don't know who or where or why), the game itself needs high stakes (no respawning, more value to any given action/event).

In LoL, the team fights around the objectives during mid and end game have brutally high stakes and can really go either way, even when one team appears to have a solid lead. The two big objectives in the middle of the field actually have separate countdown timers that pop up so the audience and the players can see that they'll be "up" in :35, which can lead to great escalations in tension and heightened drama around each player's positioning right before everything blows up in a largely incomprehensible melee, and if any clear winner emerges from that it usually turns into a significant advantage for their team. But you also get to see one team lose 4 out of 5 players in one of those fights and then the 5th will jump in and steal the objective! I dunno.

Watching CLG go 3-0 over TSM in finals was fun, and so was watching C9 win the regional qualifier as the bottom seed over the course of 14 games, which was nuts. Wow, I watched a lot of hours of people playing video games last month.

Other high points:

1. Pause and resume at will. Lack of mainstream coverage means that avoiding spoilers is relatively easy, even a day or two after the fact! However, knowing that a series is "best of 5" and seeing that there are only 3 matches on Youtube, hours after the last game, kind of gives something away.

2. It's pretty much all on youtube in 720p / 60fps! for free!

3. It's 30-60m of uninterrupted play. No ads breaking it up. The players are covered in sponsor logos and Coca-Cola has a "Coca-Cola eSports" Twitter account and GEICO is getting in on stuff, but as yet, the screen remains unblemished by brands, and the announcers don't drop in a "brought to you by" every 8 minutes, or frankly ever.

Huuuuuge in China; some local language buddies at my uni are pretty invested in beating the South Korean teams at the upcoming Worlds event. From what they've said a lot of the teams here are owned by the sons of billionaires as a lark (junior version of Russian oligarchs/oil barons owning football teams?), and they've imported a lot of the top Korean players over the past year. Kinda hard for me to follow the commentators when I watched the Chinese semis w/them (though I now think 加油! is the phrase I've heard the most over here) ... unlike English streams where online comments are in a box to the side where they can be disabled, they're superimposed over the stream ... lots of 666666666666666666s and, uh, a surprising amount of random anti-Japanese sentiment.
P.bleak about gender stuff (cf ILG thread about casual sexism) but tbh so's any NZ major team sport that's not netball or field hockey, by and large.

GRONK

i think "eSports" can and will produce something with the depth and complexity of e.g. football but we are definitely not there yet. beyond baseball sure. the primary ingredients are design for purpose, ambition and money, and then history; the first three of those are likely on the near horizon, there is awareness of the potential and someone will step up. hearthstone is an example of a player with money and vision taking a popular archetype and streamlining/dumbing down to broaden appeal. that is the probably the route.

Bring on pro-Rocket League, and make all the players wear South Korean pro-gamer flightsuits

http://espn.go.com/espn/photos/gallery/_/id/13492606/image/1/costumed-spectators-league-legends

Fans dressing up on game day makes it a valid American cultural thing, at least

has to incorporate drinking & gambling too obv, or maybe it has idk

Oh betting is thing. Ashton Kutcher is apparently one of the big investors in "Unikrn:"

http://motherboard.vice.com/read/real-money-esports-betting-site-unikrn-comes-to-the-us-with-virtual-currency

pretty much all the audience / fan photos I've seen do imply that the crowds are almost teetotal at these things, though. Including the gallery kingfish just linked above

its like 99% dudes too..

I love to play dota2 and I definitely think esports is the next big thing for people in their teens.. I would love to be able to get into the business somehow and take these little fuckers' money.

People in their teens grow up to be people in their twenties, thirties and so on, and that's what's going to start eating away at the dominance of other current pro sports. The ones that are the least appealing, least affordable and least "watchable" from those kids' perspective are going to be the primary victims of that change in preferences.

I don't really follow this stuff a whole lot, but are there any games that have been developed specifically as eSports? Something designed to be watchable by an audience? Because if anyone wants eSports to seriously compete with American football, it seems like this is something that should be focused on

Considering that Riot "Games" only makes one game, which is technically free to play, and that the analysts and broadcasters and play officials are all Riot employees - I think League definitely qualifies as the answer to your question.

Rocket League definitely works as a casted spectator game. This MLG match below is entertaining. It seems like they're still figuring out the camera. It doesn't look as good from a bird's eye view, whereas flipping between player views is a little jarring.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZwGFZk9NLaU

national cyber league

...is an actual thing, look it up

no athleticism in this stuff, though

anyway, not to beat a dead horse, but I really think LoL has most of the ingredients to be a successful spectator sport already. Here are things that are missing:

1. Players and teams that have enough of a personality, sustained over a few marquee seasons of outstanding performance, perhaps, that real showmanship becomes part of the experience. Nobody has a good touchdown dance in eSports. There's no NFL Films for this stuff yet. It'll come.

2. The compliment to 1 is myth-making writers and broadcasters who can really emphasize and amplify those dramatic elements and showbiz aspects.

-- I would kill for a Mike Tanier or Brian Phillips level of journalist to cover League of Legends. There is at least one guy doing Football Outsiders style analysis and writeups for LoL - http://oracleselixir.com/ - but he's barely Bill Barnwell. And still too dry. Every sports writer needs to be a sad, irredeemable homer on some level. I guess that probably takes more than 4-5 years to develop.

-- eSports casters and analysts are occasionally exciting to listen to, but a lot of time I get the feeling that since basically everybody in the booth is an active player, and a nerd, they're all kind of up their own hole about strategy and play style and basically too cerebral about the whole thing. It's much more enjoyable when they try to bring their inner Berman and make bad puns or whatever. Be a little dumber, sell the plays a little harder. Watching the EU LCS casts, I kept thinking I wish this former-pro brainy Krepo / play-by-play doofus Quickshot annoying-each-other chemistry actually worked. It's so close.

Gaming fan here :)

It seems like you are pretty new to the scene. I'm not sure how you would say that LoL or Starcraft or CS:GO or Dota or Hearthstone etc. are not successful "spectator sports" already (I prefer competitive gaming to esports but w/e)?
Big tournaments are broadcasted to millions of people and tickets are sold out in less than a minute for venues like the Korean olympic stadium which was used for last years Worlds (the biggest international tournament in LoL).
Also, you will find a lot of showmanship in Dota (teams like NaVi, Secret), Starcraft (ceremonies for GSL, Proleague and so on have been going on for years) etc, but nothing in Western LoL which is handled (poorly) by Riot.

In case you didn't realize, most of the "journalism" will be found on either team sites like Teamliquid, sites with a dedicated gaming section like The Daily Dot or The Score Esports, or on Goldper10 where even guys like Thooorin, one of the most popular gaming journalists over the last couple of years, will post some of his stuff (if you're only looking for articles and not videos that is). If there is anything lacking, it's definitely not myths about players, teams, rivalries and so on. You can hardly watch any tournament without hearing about people like Flash, Faker, Neo, Dendi etc depending on the game you're watching (not sure if that's what you're talking about though). Anyway, if you think teams or players lack personality I guess this was your first time or that you haven't really watch anything outside of LCS?

While I agree that a duo like Krepo and Quickshit is about as bad as it gets, I think the duo of Deficio/Quickshot works pretty well, even though the more popular duos out there would obv be Monte/Doa, Phreak/Kobe, Deman/Miller etc

In general, as a big fan of different competitive gaming scenes I don't get the point behind trivial statements like "oh wow, this could almost be like a real sport" / "what if there were real journalists covering this", especially when faced with the sloppy, bullshit journalism that ESPN, NYT and the likes bring out every month or two. There are so many great things going on in a lot of these games and some of the storylines in competitive gaming are fucking unreal!

Not sure where you start though, but I would suggest watching OGN or Worlds (starts in October) for LoL, The International or Dreamhack for Dota, Gfinity or any Dreamhack for CS:GO, and Proleague or SSL for Starcraft 1/2. If you want "journalism", just stalk some twitter or check the subreddits (LoL subreddit is the biggest subreddit of all iirc).

1. Players and teams that have enough of a personality, sustained over a few marquee seasons of outstanding performance, perhaps, that real showmanship becomes part of the experience. Nobody has a good touchdown dance in eSports. There's no NFL Films for this stuff yet. It'll come.

part of the difficulty in selling some of these personalities is theyre just teenagers and some behave pretty terribly on their streams.. its not malice or character deficiency its just that theyre awkward teens given a big platform and they dont know how to act. but on the flipside the dota 2 international coverage had some nice player profile pieces that shed some positive light on why these dudes play, the tension it creates in their family when they decide to go pro, etc.

"biggest subreddit of all" kind of sums up the challenge to achieving mainstream, widespread cultural currency, doesn't it?

Also brings up the question, though, of whether the kind of pervasive cultural influence that belongs to ye olde major league sports is going to ever be a thing in the future, or if enthusiasts and the markets/fora that serve them are going to increasingly resemble silos.

(or if enthusiasts were ever anything but specialized, but the fact that ESPN, Sports Illustrated etc. cover their topics year-round just makes it seem like there is a generic "sports" that lots of people care about?)

I dont get this "challenge to achieving mainstream, widespread cultural currency". Is this a goal?

Also, with regards to personalities I think it depends on which game we are talking about. In general, Riot does a poor job with everything including presentation of the players but outside of LCS you can find shows like Reflections or Summoning Insight, both of which are often times pretty great (if you're a fan).. With that being said, some of the people who spend 14 hours gaming every day are weird.

I have a hard time imagining competitive gaming consistently covered by any big media outside of Korea where it's been on national television for many years; imo it seems more likely that it will stay on Twitch, Azubu, Afreeca, / Team Liquid, Reddit, HLTV.org for many years to come?
ESPN recently had a job application for an "esports editor" which was pretty much a joke across gaming communities. Maybe they seriously want to be a part of this "market" or whatever but so far they have only produced clickbait or garbage over and over.

i've been watching pro league of legends for a couple years now. it still feels like a sport in its infancy to me though. the game is incredibly difficult at both an individual and team level, and much of the team-level strategy has only been developed in the past couple years, so the gap between the good and bad teams is much wider than in any of the major traditional sports leagues since there's a significant knowledge gap in addition to a player skill gap. and so you get a lot of one-sided games during the 'regular season'.

on the other hand, getting to watch the good teams collectively build the playbook for the game over time has been kind of fascinating.

yeah its hard to get the general public into a game that I've personally invested like 1000+ hours (oh my dear god) and I still find new and interesting things I had no idea about in terms of mechanics or strategy

but the format its in now is pretty forward looking.. its all on the web, it can be viewed whenever you want and theres a ton of games on all the time to just watch in the background while you sit in the living room watchin' tv. Im sure twitch, et al are happy they have a lock on it for now.

yeah Blizzard and Valve have both taken shots at getting their games on ESPN etc. but Riot seems happy to sit back on twitch/youtube and let the viewers come to them. it's working just fine so far, they're outdrawing the other esports by a massive amount.

Well, in terms of money, the LoL players earn less than cs:go or dota players for example. Also, Riot spends a lot of money on LCS whereas other game companies allow international competition and tournaments which means that League of Legends has basically no tournaments at all besides the regional LCS league in spring/summer/ and then Worlds.

I dont pay attention to LoL's monetization methods but if they played their fanbase like valve plays theirs during the international they could make way more money. Everyone wants to spend money on shiny in game hats.

a few years ago i got really into watching professional Starcraft 2. I think more than anything it's an extended exercise in dramatic irony--in that the spectators are the only ones with a full grasp of what is happening (at least most of the time). I think that's a unique way to watch a competition. im not as into the pure "skill" of the players (ie, how fast they are, etc.) but instead how that skill allows the development of styles of play that are impossible for regular people.

as i stopped playing myself i eventually lost interest in watching it though. im not really sure why--i dont think the ideal game has been developed yet, really. i think with traditional sports there's a kind of baseline common experience of having and using a body--i mean playing the way an NFL or NBA player plays might as well be impossible for me but somehow it feels easier to imagine--but when watching something like LoL (which I have never played) there's just nothing to hold on to. so i wonder if the limitation of eSports will always be the need for the spectators themselves to have a more than passing familiarity with the actual experience of playing the game (like, the actual "physics" of it, if you will).

xp LoL is pretty aggressively monetized for a free-to-play game, there's a ton of cosmetic stuff to buy, plus the heroes aren't all free from the start, you have to slowly unlock them over time if you don't want to buy them with $. pretty sure they are making a killing if they have the resources to fund professional leagues on multiple continents

also agree with ryan that none of these games yet feel positioned to break through to a wider audience than just the people who play the game themselves. i think the MOBA genre lends itself well to a spectator experience (team dynamics, rising tension over the course of a game, frequent but not constant action), but the burden of knowledge to become a LoL or DOTA fan is really high compared to like basketball or whatever - LoL has ~130 heroes that all do different things, i think DOTA is over 100 now as well, etc.

I've never gotten into watching commentated games other than Starcraft, where should I go from there?

Really I am cool with just being into that one eSport

Starcraft is really fun to watch because at the pro-level the baseline skill level is so high it starts to become a high level strategy game. whereas at the level i play at whoever is the fastest and most adroit as moving all the pieces around efficiently is gonna win easily. perhaps this is the fantasy of watching IRL sports as well--a kind of fantasy in which skill is taken for granted and replaced by pure strategy. on the other hand, there's few things more exciting in sports than when someone is just better (faster, stronger, etc) that everyone else. but those moments are kind of rare, really.

I played enough a number of years ago that I could watch the replays and see that the other player was doing many more actions per minute, but I would still win in a fair number of matches because their strategy was garbage, so there's still that sort of mid-tier play.

I just can't click and hit the keys so damn much, my wrists would die.

haha yeah. also playing Starcraft is a special kind of terror.

some amazing sc2 play here

I've never gotten into watching commentated games other than Starcraft, where should I go from there?

Really I am cool with just being into that one eSport

― μpright mammal (mh), Wednesday, September 16, 2015 9:05 PM (1 hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I started getting into dota when I came across youtube videos and twitch. I remember watching the draft that happens at the start of a match and I was thinking 'what in the ever loving fuck are these people talking about' but it got me to actually play the game and try to figure it all out.. been playing ever since.

However I will say I feel like an ancient old bastard because Im 36 and one of the dudes who won TI is 16.

as a man of similar age I feel u

i miss sc2 sometimes. winning a game was like snorting coke, but going on a losing streak could totally ruin my mood for the day. definitely the most stressful game i've ever played. switching to league was a good decision in that it's more social and more recreational, but the high from winning isn't quite the same, also the players are younger and dumber overall.

i couldn't get into watching league for a good while after i started playing, whereas watching sc2 just as it came out is what got me into playing. i feel a little guilty because i have a lot of respect for the starcraft players and around the time i switched to league there seemed to be a bit of an exodus from the scene, it makes me sad to think of the sc2 guys all still plugging away in front of a much smaller audience. that said, at this point i've been watching and playing league longer than i ever did sc2, and i went to one of the days of the LCS finals at madison square garden. that was pretty fun, also surreal to see in person the sorts of people who have wished death upon me in the game chat.

i can't really imagine watching LoL if i didn't play it, but it's cool that some people do.

apparently the company my friend works for just got bought by the company that makes league of legends

fan-made hype video for the LoL world finals, starts Oct 1st

http://www.youtube.com/watch?t=170&v=H-H3aqD7fbw

as i stopped playing myself i eventually lost interest in watching it though. im not really sure why--i dont think the ideal game has been developed yet, really. i think with traditional sports there's a kind of baseline common experience of having and using a body--i mean playing the way an NFL or NBA player plays might as well be impossible for me but somehow it feels easier to imagine--but when watching something like LoL (which I have never played) there's just nothing to hold on to. so i wonder if the limitation of eSports will always be the need for the spectators themselves to have a more than passing familiarity with the actual experience of playing the game (like, the actual "physics" of it, if you will).

― ryan, Wednesday, September 16, 2015 8:36 PM (5 days ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

this seems v on point! i watched a not-great and p old documentary about starcraft players in korea ('state of play') and was struck by how unable to give a feeling of the actual flow of the game it was (lots of dramatic zoom-ins on monitors showing units ... doing things)

i enjoy that starcraft ii is the only pc game toys'r'us stock here

Draftkings is doing fantasy League of Legends now.

MOBA games have their own weird gambling sites where you can wager in game items for ones of higher quality.. I hope whoever is involved doesnt think they can actually make money doing this shit, but who knows..

I have seriously considered procuring a CLG LoL team jersey so that I can wear it during the finals group round. And beyond, if they make it out. Haflway just to make some kind of point against all the people wearing their insipid football team uniforms every Friday at the office.

my teamliquid dota2 jersey became obsolete a few months after i bought mine because they dropped their squad ): these days i just end up rooting for the home team any time the international comes around

this topic is interesting to me a) because i've never been a fan of traditional sports but here i am obsessing over these teams and tournaments and b) the fact that i don't even play the game anymore and yet i'm more of a fan than ever

Riot just released their series "Legends Rising" with some of the players who are competing at Worlds (starting in two days!)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WDMNiH-vOrY&index=1&list=PLPZ7h6L6LC7WyTh4u17cXEll-JdL-tpbC

World championship starts in 15
http://www.twitch.tv/riotgames

Holy shit what a day.

watching the rebroadcast because stupid european time zones put everything good in the part of the day I actually had to work

ADCs are the most sensitive to balance changes since they're pretty much just about which ones currently put out the most damage, they don't have enough utility for there to be an array of situational picks.

well. that was a shitload of NA LCS matches.

I'm not sure I'll ever understand all the tiebreakers and/or how to read the standings at this point

jesus christ that 100 Thieves / Clutch semifinal

In the last round I swear Ssumday pulled a trick play for 100T - everyone's dead even, they're chipping away at the base, he's an extremely competent player who clearly loves to tank, and he just sorta wanders off into the range of CG so half of the opposing team instinctively initiates on him. For about 1200ms this looks like it could turn into an amazing fight, and then it turns into 100T finishing off the base because CG wasted everything.

I really want to know if this is a thing. If so, brilliant. Rooting for 100T heading into finals, obv.

It is a thing. Really great series. Also this is something that happened... http://www.twitlonger.com/show/n_1sqg4s1

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l1_hYP6WjC8

the world's top fighting game player is a furry

the US's top, not world unfortunately

I almost missed the semifinal between TSM and C9 today. Thankfully I didn't. TSM is like the Patriots of NA LCS, I'm always glad when they get sent home

I guess I'm rooting for doublelift in worlds now

Winners might use drugs - Does eSports have a doping problem?

that just makes me want to get a script for Adderall

I tried that once and they called my mom to get my history and they told me it didn’t sound like I have a developmental disorder. But bumping my SSRI helped.

OTC adderal when tbh

fuckin' NA LCS lining up for yet another WHY BOTHER showing at LoL worlds

how does the region that produces the most world record speedrunners and regularly competes at the highest levels in DOTA2 and all that dumb FPS shit keep getting its ass served at this game

the teams just aren't good at high level strategy, whether that's on the players or coaches i dunno

NA server has a significantly smaller player base than the other major regions

its a less competitive playerbase too i think re: % of people who play ranked vs casual games

https://i.imgur.com/O3qlDHt.jpg

NARRACIÓN FINAL DE PARTIDA DE G2

Los esports nos hacen sentir momentos increibles. pic.twitter.com/kVuZivQAuu

— Ibai (@LVPibai) October 20, 2018

https://kotaku.com/as-esports-grows-experts-fear-its-a-bubble-ready-to-po-1834982843

that was a good article even though it took me a week to remember to finish reading it. The closing anonymous quote does not bode well for the field, I'm afraid - it sounds way too close to "let's just do it and be legends" - also, Overwatch is completely unwatchable, and that's coming from someone who loves the Wachowskis' Speed Racer movie.

Ex-esports caster here, still on the fringes of esports but not as heavily involved:

This isn't likely a bubble in the same way the two previous implosions were. I don't think Blizzard's approach to OWL will be good for esports longterm, but I don't think it can sink gaming to the same extent as previous implosions.

There are other monetization structures (i.e., Valve's structures) that are lucrative--and being able to bring those numbers to the table will allow investors to feel more surefooted, even after a failure like OWL might put on display.

(by the way, casting Overwatch is also extremely difficult compared to other esports. unenjoyable experience imo)

I saw Overwatch on tv at the gym and it was completely illegible to someone who's never played it (although the same is true about football!).

Part of the difference is how obvious and tangible the objective is. In football, I can point to an end of the field and say, “That team wants to get the ball to that side of the field, and that team wants to stop them,” and someone who has never seen football can make sense of that. Put bodies in the way to stop them from getting anywhere. The nuance is in decision making and execution, but the objective is simple. You don’t have that luxury on a big windy fantasy world map.

Further, most people know what it’s like to throw a ball, or to try and run from someone. It’s obvious where the skill is in these things.

This is a problem across a lot of esports. Some games (like Starcraft) have the benefit of the gameplay looking like a spectacle; there’s multitasking and clashing armies and four different things going on at once. Trying to get the buy in from people who don’t know what it’s like to try and land a projectile is tough.

Fighting games will alway be the easiest thing to watch bc you can always tune out the jargon from the cast and just watch the thing happen all at once on the single field of play

I'm not annoyed that G2 lost in the finals, I'm annoyed they got swept so easily.

So: is ESPN going to have to resort to covering esports on live TV now?

FGC events pretty high risk as far as gatherings go unfortch, even if it were only competitors there that's still a lot of ppl cheek to jowl in a hotel ballroom

yeah espots events aren't any less risky than any other spots event

the fighting game majors are likely to be cancelled too. not sure about evo which is in late july but the spring and early summer ones for sure

Yeah, this is extra bad for regional fighting game tournaments

https://kotaku.com/amidst-coronavirus-the-fighting-game-community-faces-a-1842317400

It strikes me that conducting other esports matches without an in-person audience would at least allow for social distancing. Fighting tournaments aside it doesn’t seem like a large gathering is required

Fox Sports is showing a virtual NASCAR race

Virtual car racing is more entertaining than real racing

Seems like it’d be cheaper, safer, easier to broadcast, quieter, lots of advantages

Shorter, too - can't drag 500k people to a superspeedway for a one hour race but with iRacing why not? Cut out the middle 300 miles of the Daytona 500 that pop-pop uses for his Sunday nap.

No guilt from the thrill of a good wreck.

Is this on Twitch? Where do I check this out

Twitch and Youtube for NASCAR and Indycar
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kW1hvZQM4-0&t=1264s

I thought Formula 1 was doing these but I don't see them on Youtube

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kW1hvZQM4-0&

If I had a bunch of money I'd probably invest it in a racing setup but I also get really mad at Forza so realistic racing would probably not actually be fun in any way

This very nice-seeming English guy is making it harder to say no to getting into racing (aside from not owning a PC)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9-uCx06dlZU

https://i.imgur.com/fYOR4ci.png

Shady Numbers And Bad Business: Inside The Esports Bubble

Kotaku asked sources with knowledge of esports teams’ revenue about what sort of deficits they run, but most seemed reluctant to answer. One, speaking anonymously, believes a lot of teams are operating on million-dollar yearly deficits. The CFO of Complexity Gaming, one of the only team representatives to respond to Kotaku’s inquiries, declined to say if the team is profitable. Although it’s early on in the industry’s new life as a sexy investment, there’s only so long organizations can remain unprofitable before they’re deemed duds.

NewZoo analyst Jurre Pannekeet, who sees the revenues for 14 esports teams, says the majority of teams are operating at a loss, but declined to say how much on average, citing nondisclosure agreements. When pressed whether that majority was closer to 51 percent or 90 percent of teams operating at a loss, he said: “If you looked into it, it’s probably closer to 89 percent than 50 percent.”