The rise and rise of e-sports
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Add in the balance patch changes that were still happening, broodwar players making the cross over, new players showing up, foreigners sort of having a few GSL showings... It really was excellent entertainment.
One bad fight in RTS might lose you the game. 2 minutes of bad defending might lose you a game you were 100% winning in soccer. Same in fighting sports (because of knock-out) and in chess (because of check-mate).
Meanwhile in basketball, volleyball, baseball, MOBA, FPS - if you're winning by 20% your chances of comeback are very low. If you're winning by 50% it's over.
TL; DR: games that are good to watch aren't linear.
And in some games (like volleyball) it's even more strict.
I watched a lot of SC2 when the game was first released, and I still watch VODs every now and then. The game is roughly as repetitive as any other sport. Sure, there are brilliant tactical plays, but each game has one of a few broad themes.
Average score in soccer is probably around 2-1. Crazy comeback is 0-3 to 4-3. 0-1 to 2-1 is just a normal game. 2-0 is called "the most dangerous lead" :)
Average score in basketball is around 110-90? I just googled "basketball greatest comeback", and it said "Only eight times in NBA history has a team rallied from a 30-plus point deficit to win a game." I rest my case regarding comebacks.
In general I think of games as a spectrum creative/fluid games vs structured/efficiency games.
At 0% there's volleyball. Scoring chances are given for free every X seconds. All the foreplay is 2 passes, each time you have only 5 possible players to pass to, you don't move much. All creativity in volleyball does is - it might make the other team set up a block in the wrong place/at the wrong height, which means you increase your chance of scoring.
At 30% there's basketball - you have up to 30 seconds for foreplay, you have 4 players to pass to, they can move, but basically anything works - offense has a huge advantage over defense so if you're on the same level as the opponent - you will get a chance to score every almost time it's "your round". It's all about efficiency near the bin - creativity only gives you a slightly better scoring position and slightly more scoring chances.
In soccer there's no concept of "rounds" because you will lose possession 100 times anyway, no matter who starts the game. You can score 5 goals in 9 minutes or you can never get a scoring chance. You have to be creative and do something special to even get into a scoring position. Foreplay lasts for about 5 minutes on average between each shot, and you have to make many decisions at each step - you have 10 possible targets for your passes, and a field that's far too big for 22 players. So players without the ball have to make meaningful decisions constantly, too.
Starcraft is very close to 100% on that spectrum, because there's very little structure, and creativity is required, even if you follow a build-order. You can do a 6-pool. You can drop and harras someone to death only to lose because somebody had a ninja-base the whole time. You can turtle and build a death-ball. You can recover after a failed all-in and do a surprising (or not) tech-switch. You can lose at minut 1 and at minute 30. The win conditions change.
A good team going down 30 points in a basketball game would be extremely uncommon. And in playoffs, series are best-of-7 so there is another level of comebacks. You can lose the game, or even multiple games, and come from behind to take the series. This kind of speaks to my point that your perception is really based on a lack of understanding about the games.
If you think about goal scoring as a stochastic process where the likelihood of scoring is relative to the team's skill, then a better team could very easily go down by a few goals in soccer whereas it would be extremely unlikely for a better team to go down by dozens of goals.
Also, there have been over a hundred multi-point comebacks this season in the NHL.
Why do you need to specify it's "a good team"? Comebacks can happen in a game between good and bad team. I checked NBA results few weeks back and every week some team loses by 30-40 points.
> If you think about goal scoring as a stochastic process where the likelihood of scoring is relative to the team's skill
Then from the Central Limit Theorem you will know that the more samples you take from a random variable - the less random the result will be. I.e. if you have a game where you take 1000 shots and whoever shots more wins - you don't have to play, the exact result is pretty much known beforehand.
But less randomness is only one of the problems.
I have nieces and nephews who loves videogames, but are often not invested enough in one to really master it. These kids spend more time watching youtube videos of other people playing games than actually playing them themselves. I hear it all the time, how mystified parents and grandparents are.
Fast forward 10-15 years. Those kids are adults with a love of the games, with a habit of spectating.
It's no different than football or tennis or hockey.
(Well - it's different than golf, which sucks...)
I played 5 seasons in my life, 4 in high school and it was without a doubt the most fun athletic experience of my entire life. I’ve never really been able to get interested much watching football otherwise because it just isn’t the same. There were a few women on my teams throughout the years (some of the most feminine and badass women I’ve ever met) but it’s unfortunate American football is such a male dominant sport.
It almost seems when people say they like watching football now they mean they like drinking alcohol or playing fantasy.
Idk, always thought it was kind of strange how basically every sport can also be a “pastime” activity but football just turns into a spectator activity after a while.
Edit: not a football quote but makes me think of “people don’t think it be like it is but it do”
Edit2: not a fan of footy/soccer much but really the greatest thing about the sport imo is the simplicity and ability for anyone to play basically whenever wherever and at whatever age. It’s so much more the game of the People as such
Edit3: just rambling here but remember towards the end of last season senior year the coaches said something like “hope you have a lot more better things to look forward to in your life after this, but keep in mind these will be some of the best times of your life”. think about that a lot, and it was never lost on me at the time, but now I’m actually feeling my body age and chit it’s just so true and real. This feels somewhat pathetic to write out haha but really do miss playing football unlike anything else.
Last edit: this is literally the last thing I’d ever of thought to be writing about as a comment on HN
By contrast actual football has an estimated global fanbase of some 3.5 billion.
Even in the poorest part of the globe with no equipment of proper fields you'll find young people practicing with 'balls' made from wadded up material bound by tape, playing keepy up with hacky sacks and other odd objects, etc.
(And now I see your edit .. ah, well)
FWiW I grew up with a limited equipment dirt field version of foot egg, aka:
But for the record, American Football is fine. It's the lionization of players which is the most problematic.
In the US, that is an issue that exists across many sports in any case, but the most pronounced is Football (wtf is with Americans and sports anyhow?).
This year saw a time where Chess became the top trending app on the App Store. The strength of traditional sports and games is their timelessness - can e-sports ever match that?
I don't think the age of a game has much to do with it, especially for games which are receiving ongoing support from the developer.
DotA 2 is 10 years old -- or closer to 20 years if you count the Warcraft 3 map it evolved from -- and still actively played.
CS:GO is 11 years old, and is also an evolution of a Half-Life mod from 2000.
League of Legends is 14 years old.
Games like counter strike and StarCraft are still entertaining to watch even if you don’t understand the nuances.
Compare this to traditional sports like basketball, baseball, or hockey. When someone does something truly impressive, even someone who's not an expert in the sport can still appreciate it. There's no special knowledge needed to recognize an amazing shot, a great catch, or a stunning goal. It's just obvious.
So, until esports can make that same kind of connection with a broader audience, I don't think it's going to be a huge draw for a lot of people. Fans need to be able to clearly see and appreciate the skill and talent on display, without feeling like they're missing something or being left out. Once that happens, I think esports could really take off and become a major force in the world of sports and entertainment.
Isn't it pretty obvious when someone gets multiple frags? Saves their team? This isn't any different then the running back going through the other team. It's pretty obvious
Early league of legends's character designs somewhat aims to achieve this as well, it only lasted for a couple of years though. Basically the issue is that when you keep adding content (characters, maps), the complexity just grew too much. Not quite exponentially, but definitely some kind of super-linear.
I think this is one advantage of traditional board games (chess, go) and sports in comparison to Esports. If I spend a couple years of my life learning the basics of Go, 10 years from now on, I will still be able to appreciate the game all the same. Can't say the same for any kind of esports -- and I did spend thousand of hours in a couple of them.
I attribute this to RTS being stressful to play casually, which leads to a smaller player base.
Between SC1 and 2 I probably played a couple dozen straight up competitive matches. I much, much, much prefer custom games/'use map settings' in SC1 parlance, or good old co-op comp-stomps.
It certainly depends on the game, but you don't need to be an expert to appreciate some of the plays. A few days or weeks of gaming are usually enough to understand what's going on in professional matches and start enjoying them. That's the same as for traditional sports.
ex. "I know how the Knight piece moves, but wow, I never thought of using it like that"
Agree with you that it's a bit easier to know what's going on with RTS games like Age of Empires, since you have a top-down isometric view instead of only first-person view like csgo.
As an European who played a lot of soccer and basketball and watches a lot of soccer - I find baseball totally unwatchable :) Not because I don't know the rules well, but because it's too static and predictable.
I have the same problem with volleyball and to some extent basketball - the game is a linear combination of repeating the same basic task dozens of times. Whoever succeeds more times wins. So by the half-time you usually know who will win. And there's very little space for creativity.
Meanwhile in RTS and in soccer it's pretty common to win the game for 80% of the time only to lose it because of 1 big mistake or 1 brilliant play. This possibility makes them more entertaining even when it doesn't materialize - because you can hope or be afraid of a come-back.
This is IMHO why I enjoyed watching StarCraft 2 more than Dota 2 or FPS games even before I started playing SC2.
Incorrect. This is what people who are into sports think.
It doesn't matter how simplistic sports are, unless someone is into it, they simply don't care.
We both play WoW, and if we see some skilled players doing PvP, we are impressed.
It's not. This is like saying anyone appreciates classical music.
ChessBrah might draw the casual user in with their blindfold bullet set to cool techno; the Botez sisters with their energy and wit.
E-sports has completely revitalised my love of chess and drawn many new non-players in by the demonstrations of streamers like the above of it's brilliance, variety and sheer, unadulterated fun.
That's just sad. The level of grind it takes to become pro is nuts. For every one professional player or streamer there's a countless number of people that have wasted their lives on this stuff.
The scale is such that to be good it's very often a case of mastering a zero-sum game. Rote repetition until it becomes [hand] muscle memory. The same shit, over and over, until your eyes bleed.
Aged nine and up? Just let the kids have fun. High-level e-Sports should be considered child abuse at that age.
There is money to be made. That clearly is more important, don't you think? /s
Also, this is not new - in music, real sports, chess and other fields, young children have been abused in that way for ages, all over the world.
For collegiate sports—which is a meat grinder of hopes and dreams unto itself—most athletes figure out pretty quick whether they're making it in the big leagues or not. There's an expiry there just by virtue of the way the human body works. I suppose it's still possible to ruin your life trying, but least you come out of it with excellent physical fitness (brain injuries aside), and having not stared at a screen the entire time.
I was completely unprepared for the spectacle I beheld when we walked into the arena. It was an atmosphere to rival any professional sports events, complete with over-the-top lights, announcers, and a boisterous crowd. It was completely awesome, with crowd oohing, aahing, and cheering to amazing plays.
Most of esports is not profitable. Events are usually run for the love of the game as opposed to trying to make money. Or there is VC money which they are unlikely to find a return on.
There's a lot of sponsor money involved, big organizations with multiple teams for different games traveling to large events. Doesn't sound like they are all doing it for the love of the game.
There's single teams that are valued > $500m: https://www.insiderintelligence.com/insights/esports-ecosyst...
Just because there is a lot of money moving around it doesn't mean it's profitable in general.
>Doesn't sound like they are all doing it for the love of the game.
Doing it in hopes of making a return on investment doesn't guarantee you will be profitable.
>There's single teams that are valued > $500m
A lot of those numbers are inflated. As the sister comments mention look at what happened to faze.
Ex. Valorant, Overwatch, WoW, LoL (maybe actually profitable?), DotA.
Scenes actually run for the love of the game are Melee + anything tiny
The only independent esport that is kinda self-sustaining is Korean Brood War, been divorced from blizzard for a long time and still going strong w sponsorships and ad revenue.
But yeah, fighting games scenes are actually quite durable and rising up from grassroots in general
That can be said about any sport. Broadcasting football is big business but most teams are not profitable and the players play for the love of the sport as opposed to trying to make money
Huh. That's neat trivia. More westerners are interested in horse racing that e-sports. Thank you article.
I didn't say anything about whether more people who watched sports were active versus passive. This doesn't invalidate my point that professional sports serve as a source of inspiration for people to be active.
Esports inspire exactly zero people to be physically active.