Twitch acquires eSports pro-gaming team Evil Geniuses
goodgame.gg
goodgame.gg
The question to me is whether additional acquisitions may be in order. For example, would they perhaps move to acquire Sean Plott's Day[9] TV?
Even in "regular sports", ratings rise when narratives like rivalries or dynasties are in play. We saw the decline of viewership in Starcraft:Broodwar in Korea when such narratives fizzled and when the old stars faded from relevance, despite the considerable increase in overall skill level. Starcraft 2 has arguably suffered from the relative lack of such a narrative, due in part to the fragmentation of its competitive scene. Blizzard has taken matters into its own hands with WCS, following Riot's lead. The question to me is how, if at all, Twitch will involve itself, given that its success depends on content and content very much hinges on narrative.
[1] I am not sure if Amazon is involved with the decision at all, but since Amazon Prime Instant Video is in a platform and content war with Netflix and others, it wouldn't surprise me if they influenced the move.
>Even in "regular sports", ratings rise when narratives like rivalries or dynasties are in play. We saw the decline of viewership in Starcraft:Broodwar in Korea when such narratives fizzled and when the old stars faded from relevance, despite the considerable increase in overall skill level.
There were new stars and new rivalries. This totally leaves out the Savior scandal, competing games, and how unique and what fluke BW actually was. A game never meant to be played competitively, pushed to it's limits for years and years and years by the players and map makers, broken mechanics that turned out to balance the game near flawlessly. The list goes on and on. BW was an anomoly in the esports world, a game being played competitively 10 years after it's made is not normal. Melee is the only game that comes to mind that is similar. Counter Strike is still being played of course, but not the original game, no patches, like BW or Melee.
>Starcraft 2 has arguably suffered from the relative lack of such a narrative, due in part to the fragmentation of its competitive scene.
I disagree 1000%! SC2 suffered from horrible balance decisions, a battle.net system that was objectively worse than BW and WC3, no LAN, and an over-zealous Blizzards-Activision that wanted to extract as much money as possible as quickly as possible. Things like putting limits on how much a prize pool can be before Blizzard takes a cut actually encouraged tournaments to stay smaller the first year or two of SC2. No LAN meant games would crap out and couldn't be restarted with tens of thousands of dollars on the line. No automated tournaments, no clans, no nothing. Battle.net 2.0 was so bad, such a monumental fuck up, it shows that Blizzard literally had no idea what they were doing and did not care what the community thought. We begged for years for things that were not that hard to implement for a gigantic company like Blizzard. Finally, the balance. When you balance a game for the lowest level player, it may bring a short spike in players but the reward of a high skilled play is gone. There is no reason to work hard and figure things out. The competitive scene suffered due to these decisions. Finally, the worst choice of them all, to let Wings of Liberty (vanilla SC2) fester and die while they developed Heart of the Swarm (the first expansion). Broodlord/Infester became so boring and dull to watch for months and months while Blizzard didn't do anything. They waited for HotS. And guess what? Want HotS? You have to buy the original as well! Good call! Not greedy at all. So many truly terrible decisions killed SC2 and it's a damn shame. As you can tell, I'm bitter. SC2 had great narratives. Huk vs Korea, Boxer coming back, Nada coming back, Idra (love him or hate him), the EG/TL stuff then Huk going to EG!, so many great runs through GSL or MLG, White-Ra beating MC at that worlds game!, MMA the prodigy of Boxer, MMA vs MVP at Blizzcon, so many great stories. The scene died because Blizzard fucking killed it. My beautiful Starcraft destroyed out of greed and shortsightedness.
As far as your complaints about westerners not winning anymore, that's proof that the game is good, not bad. Westerners lost in BW as well. All it shows is that the winner of the game accurately reflects which player is more skilled. Korea has a decade and a half of infrastructure and training behind their SC2 players. This makes their players more skilled and makes them win. The period where westerners were winning consistently was just a blip on the history of SC before 1) KESPA players switched to SC2 and raised the bar for KESPA players, ESF players, and westerners alike and westerners couldn't keep up 2) before the game was figured out. It would attract more viewers if other nations could compete with Korea, but for that to occur either the game would have to be unfair or westerners would have to actually be as good as Koreans.
Finally, gaming as a whole changed. SC2 came out four years ago, before the rise of MOBAs. Honestly, MOBAs are just better suited to mass audiences as far as esports is concerned. SC2 is an brutal, unforgiving, extremely difficult 1v1 game. MOBAs are free-to-play team games. In SC2 you are a commander of units. In MOBAs you play a single actual character with a personality and style you can identify with. Life's lings have personality, yes. As do MarineKing's marines. But Insec's Lee Sin? Madlife's Thresh? Those are actual characters people can latch onto. League/dota also generate many more highlightable moments, whereas SC2 is more of a tug-of-war.
SC2 is falling into its rightful place among esports... as tennis. A difficult 1v1 game. MOBAs are football. I'll keep watching SC2 because I love it and it's a beautiful game. It's a better game than it ever has been, and the amazingness of recent tournaments is a testament to that. I just don't expect it to explode any time soon.
Also, while not achieving the cultural status it did during wings of liberty, SC2 is at least maintaining its audience if not slowly growing. That's more than most games 4+ years in. I don't blame the slowing of this growth on the game, or on blizzard. It's just that the times have changed.
Idra leaving the game because he hated it. Sea lasting about a week on Liquid before going back to play BW. Naniwa being forced by Alliance to play at IEM despite not having practiced for months due to Swarm Host infestation of EU ladder. Artosis pitching Starbow to prominent eSports organizations. Not to mention never ending community complaints about Protoss design. These are not signs of a beautiful game.
With Legacy of the Void alpha reveal Blizzard themselves have addressed many of existing design concerns. Breakable force fields, Swarm Host redesign, warp-in nerf, powerful defensive Zerg unit and even major economy adjustments.
You are correct, SC2 will never surpass MOBAs, but it can do much better than it is doing now.
I've tried to watch lol and dota2 tourneys, but it's soo boring. I don't know what any of the skills does, nobody is explaining them, everybody assume I must play the game to watch this, I don't even know who's wining except if the frag difference is big.
Even CS streams are better than MOBAs.
I sincerly hope sc2 wil have some revival, it's great game, I started to play multiplayer because of watching it. The design decisions that people cry over - I don't think they matter that much for average Joe, games in silver or gold league aren't decided by balance.
Here's the thing. How long did any of these stories and themes last? Most of them tended to die within a few months of starting. How easy were they to follow? With a whole slew of international events to follow, it was unclear which tournaments even mattered. There was very little continuity from one event to the next. SC2 as a scene has lacked the linear progression that OSL/MSL/Proleague offered viewers (Though I was only around for 2004 - 2010 or so). I feel like even War3 was easier to follow than SC2 as a spectator.
In fact Disney simultaneously owned both ESPN and the Anaheim Angels for a number of years before selling the team.
[1]: http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goodgame_%28%C3%A9quipe%29
Pro gaming is a commercially interesting scene. I'm not involved but I've had some interesting conversations with people involved in the scene (Garfield included). Talk about a capital-limited environment.
EDIT: This also includes D2L - a relatively large DOTA league, as well as parts of CLG (CounterLogic Gaming) - http://clgaming.net/news/611-kelby-may-steps-down-as-general...
http://www.reddit.com/r/leagueoflegends/comments/2osl1p/evil...
I'm just interested in the correctness of the metaphor.
NBA has owned teams in the past; most recently being the New Orleans Pelicans from 2010-2012.
A number of those guys (Ricky, Arturo, Justin) were friends of mine back before I left the scene, long before all of the team business started.
(1) Today's Top Product Hunt - http://www.producthunt.com/posts/hidden-founders (2) One of New Yorker's big Nov. 2014 Stories - http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2014/11/24/programmers-pri...