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

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

and just as a reminder for those who don't understand why the second clause of the thread title

http://grantland.com/the-triangle/the-death-of-evan-murray/

I can't seem to get into LoL because I'm too much of a dota elitist =\

jesus christ deficio needs to learn how to let his PBP guy just talk for a minute. yeeeeeesh

Do broadcasters in other sports ever make admissions via twitter that they didn't have a great day in the booth and they promise to do better soon?

Does this count?
https://twitter.com/pgammo/status/578228323257561089

I don't believe so.
Another item re: announcer jargon, whether PBP or analyst, maybe having a global, frequently ESL, text-based community determine the names for things seems like it's more awkward. "Wombo Combo" and "Split Push" don't quite roll off this anglophone's tongue the same as "dime package" or "blitz" or "wildcat" but also, I'm pushing forty, and I'm probably picking nits because I'm a relatively old American dude.

I'm never going to say "wombo combo" out loud except to illustrate how ridiculous it sounds coming out of my mouth, is basically what I'm saying.

Sounds like a Guy Fieri menu item.

PEeSports

Maybe I'll take a second and try and unpack why in the fuck I came back to ILX and started this thread. Ok maybe just explain the last dependent clause and not the one before it, because that's another thread in itself probably.

I. Everything about American football, which used to be my sports thing, fundamentally disgusts me now. Charlie Pierce has said all of it better than I will ever be able to. It's fucking gladiator games and no amount of money that the NFLPA can negotiate is worth what young men put themselves through to have a chance at a contract at some potentially nonexistent future point in their quite probably abbreviated lives. And Dan Snyder still owns a team. The NFL is not even capable of the moral high ground that the NBA has achieved by giving Steve Ballmer a franchise. Their free farm leagues in the NCAA are possibly the worst thing about my country after our atrociously insipid interpretation of the 2nd amendment and the electoral college.

I was in this nice tap room the other day and they gave me a pick 'em card to fill out for a free $50 gift card. This is a place I will go back to again. I made the bartender argue with me before figuring fuck it, free beer, circling a shitload of home teams and deciding that I would use "44" as my under on the MNF tie breaker.

II. LoL continues to surprise and fascinate me. As above, it has so many hallmarks of a "real sport" in terms of complex strategies, the way games can ebb and flow, the way underdogs can pull out surprise wins, the way teams can come back from major deficits, etc. It's genuinely dramatic and a blast to watch, more often than not.

III. I need to think about this more, and am using this thread to do so - I wonder what happens if this becomes genuinely big, if the GEICO and Coca-Cola and other megacorp sponsorships will eventually turn the league and the teams into things that are "too big to fail" and cartel behavior takes over. Right now, it seems like there's no place or opportunity for any sort of organized malfeasance here, and if the game got dirty, the whole subreddit of people who give a shit might just turn and go play something else, and Riot could go out of business.

The players can play other games - their skills are transferrable, and the money is good but not unbelievable the way it is in major league sports. When that tipping point is reached - when, for example, the best all play DOTA 2 because that's where the real money is, and maybe LoL is like the CFL equivalent or whatever, and either way the players feel trapped in a golden cage because the paychecks are better than whatever schnook job they have to take because they have either a worthless degree or no degree at all, etc. - it will be interesting / depressing to see what happens. This is kind of a unique opportunity to watch a sport go from being a pastime to being a profession, something I don't think any of us have gotten to observe in our lifetime.

When I grew up, all the sports were already Sports, or Not Sports. You either played something that was for fun only or you played something that - however indirectly or impossibly - fed into the farm system for a Real Sport. So this moment right now is, on the one hand, just another predictable outcome any futurist or cyberpunk author told us about 30 years ago, and on the other hand, actually happening, and now I've gotten the bug I have serious FOMO. HAM for worlds. 30 minutes into Day 2 and chill and I post to ILX like.

plus watching the players wrap the cords around their keyboards and mice and fold up their mousepads and throw away their disposable coffee cups after every match just makes me feel something

Lastly, and this is how I KNOW in my HEART OF BRAINS that is is truly a competitive professional sport worthy of my attention, and that of all the other humans, and so on:

1. I get the feeling that at the pro level, most matches really boil down to what characters the teams decide to play (and prevent the other team from playing) in each match. So basically all games are mostly resolved in the first 8 minutes before they even "spawn minions" or whatever and the rest is watching humans drag shit out such as we do. Since there is no home stadium advantage, or starter / closer management strategy, this is the best equivalent. But that a sufficiently sophisticated viewer could probably turn off the youtube after the first 15 minutes and be 75% unsurprised by the outcomes, that's a sport, because hey, that's what they all do.

2. it's SO BORING most of the time. Literally nothing worth spectating happens most of the game. This is the hallmark of all great games. Whenever anything exciting happens, you run over to the laptop where the screams are coming from, hit the back button a few times, and then try to understand how whatever the fuck is going on came to be, and figure out how to feel about it. This is EXACTLY the same as hockey, "association football," baseball (if you are a criminal) and so on. I love it. I finally get to feel like a person who cares enough about sports to watch them long after they happened.

i stopped watching/following football several years ago. it's been pretty decent! apologies to charlie batch for not knowing he's been long retired

sorry you've been driven to this ridiculousness

It's way better than trying to give a shit about the fucking Nationals

Was doing my head in watching the Chinese stream in the parts where they'd be showing the Dutch interviewer talking to a Korean player via a translator, and the Chinese casters translating over the top of that.

re: transferable skills, have there been any high-level code-switches? With how short people's careers seem to be (though early days yet) ... IDK, strange watching people in their early-mid 20s "retiring" into becoming coaches/managers/commentators/etc.

IDK, I'm not too familiar with American sports but AFAIK there's just one major game in each category, compared with, IDK, Australia where you've got league, union & AFL as three "running with a ball" sports where players can switch codes pretty easily compared to basketball/baseball/grid iron (DotA/LoL/HotS vs, IDK, DotA/CounterStrike/Street Fighter or w/e).

Interesting watching the changed landscape of global competition after the great Korean talent exodus in search of NA/EU/CN $$$.

the whole reason I came back to ILX to holler about this has been completely explained to me and the world by your link to the Barassi Line article

Like I said, I have a lot more thinking to do about this and why I decided "fuck NFL, I'm going to become a LoL geek" this year

An agent friend of mine who I've known since my William Morris Agency days was in South Korea a couple years back and could not get his head around 1) eGame leagues and 2) that spectators were watching tournaments in movie theaters. I recommended that he start following this closer but it was just too alien (and admittedly ridiculous) for him to even comprehend what was going on.

Haven't been following LoL too much because I'm up to my neck in EVE Online. That's my own shameful fault. OTOH, the NFL can die in a fire but I'll always laugh hard at the next billionaire development group that tries to bring the NFL back to Los Angeles and fails utterly. Welcome back Tomboto!

A huge factor in professional sports is "I can't do that!" whether it's being 265 pounds of muscle running a 4.4 40 or hitting Clayton Kershaw's curve or trying to stop Lebron from driving to the rim. There's a sense of superhuman-ness to sports that drives their popularity. There's enough familiarity to parse the amazing qualities of what's happening along with the familiarity to recognize that everyone involved is in the 1% of the 1% athletically (or at least skillwise, in baseball).

Old people don't get that with video games. Show my dad a LoL match and it's going to look like people spamming buttons to do vaguely incomprehensible stuff. He's not going to grasp the way e-sports pros are the difference in high school QBs and Aaron Rodgers. Will e-sports, as teenagers today age, fit into that role - recognizing that reaction times and certain sorts of intelligence involved are as amazing as that incredibly athletic linebacker? Part of me doubts it - human beings having always privileged physical prowess and all that. Likewise, can e-sports build that sense of awe and interest for non-lower level gamers (as if the NFL only appealed to people who'd played high school ball) - I never played organized baseball but I can be bowled over by masterful pitching or an insane Andrelton Simmons play.

yeah it's certainly not obvious to people who haven't played MOBAs just how freaking difficult they are. i've played LoL on and off for 2 years and have improved a lot in that time and i'm still in the 2nd lowest skill bracket. it just takes an absurd amount of mental and hand-eye acuity to be good at these games.

i agree that this is a pretty huge barrier to esports becoming 'mainstream' but i don't think that's really anyone's goal who's smart about this stuff. A niche global audience can be equal to / bigger than a mainstream national audience.

and now i'm awake at 8am on a saturday to watch SKT vs EDG, this is extremely good shit

I love that nobody can believe that two north american teams are at the top of their groups. And I really love that AHQ beat Fnatic with an overweight catfish wearing a toque. Also was really impressed by the crowd's reaction to AHQ's win - they were obviously deflated, Fnatic seems like it's the closest thing to a French national team in LoL, but they stood and clapped (those that didn't immediately evacuate the arena, anyway). The announcers were also talking about how awesome French live crowds are for live LoL matches. Fascinating.

Not terribly sad that China's no.1 and no.3 seeds are both 0-2, either.

Seems like LGD and IG having their marquee players get listed as four of the top 5 individual players in the tournament (http://worlds.lolesports.com/en_US/featured/top20/) was a bit of a Madden / SI curse. Should have seen that coming.

Here's where I'm following stuff

http://worlds.lolesports.com/en_US/worlds durr

http://www.youtube.com/user/LoLChampSeries/ hurr

http://www.sbnation.com/league-of-legends-lol-esports simple enough

Not really:
http://www.thescoreesports.com/news
http://www.gamespot.com/league-of-legends/

Also disappointed that ilxor balls is not C9 balls

on the strength of a tombot recommendation I spent about eight minutes exploring if this was a thing I should consider or not and in fairly short order decided that this is one of many things (see also: tumblr, denim geekery, Game of Thrones) I've gotta sit out.

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.”