I find watching RTS e-sports tournaments of games that I love much more entertaining than Netflix/Sports. The commentators just love what they are casting and you can sense it in their voice. You get to see real players doing so many things at the same time, constantly adapting. All the while the viewer sees everything and knows everything while the players only see a small subset. It makes it all so unpredictable and entertaining.
I think what makes RTS great to watch is the same thing that made soccer the most watched sport in the world. The game is free-flowing, it's not repetative, decision-making on the spot matters and comebacks aren't very rare.
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.
Have you watched a professional sport heavily? Comebacks are quite common in hockey, American football, and basketball. What you call repetition is likely your inability to appreciate the sportsmanship due to unfamiliarity.
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.
I watch mostly soccer cause I think other teams sports are boring to watch in comparison. I admit I only have limited understanding of hockey and American football, but I know basketball pretty well, I played a lot of basketball in high-school, I even played a a city-level competition between about 30 high-schools.
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.
> 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.
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.
> A good team going down 30 points in a basketball game would be extremely uncommon.
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.
Never thought about it that way, but that makes sense. Soccer and Basketball are both very free flowing with needing to make calls in the moment. There isn't really much of a huddle. Where as football and baseball feel a lot more turn based.
Basketball is still turn-based in the sense that you get your 30 seconds and you're expected to score unless you mess up. And then the opponent gets their 30 seconds. There's very little time and space for the game to diverge before it's restarted to a starting position.
And in some games (like volleyball) it's even more strict.
I concur. I wonder if the fact that the game was also "less solved" back then made it more enjoyable to spectate too.
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.
Perhaps in the west we can connect the rise of e-Sports with a near future of them as the Next Big Thing.
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.
Assume we’re talking American football here - it’s a unique sport because you can really only play it legitimately on a team with a lot of equipment and time/resources. So basically if you’re 18 and under (or very talented at playing football).
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
For what I was getting at - doesn't matter if it is soccer or "el futbol Americano". It's all the same point.
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?).
Hell of an assumption, central north american hand egg is largely constrained to its parish north of Mexico | south of Canada in an area that barely cracks 330 million.
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:
I'll be interested to see how the longevity of e-sports pans out. Most games will be woefully outdated after a decade: will the audience move to the next big game, or stay playing the old games? Or will video games eventually plateau to a point where significant technological advancements are no longer made?
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?
abstract strategy games like chess, go, and hex are fun ti play but difficult to watch for the layman. You tend to just be watching people think rather than the game itself unless you’re really well versed in it.
Games like counter strike and StarCraft are still entertaining to watch even if you don’t understand the nuances.
I've watched a few esports games, like Overwatch and Fortnite, and I have to say, they didn't quite grab my attention. The problem is, unless you really understand the ins and outs of the game, it's hard to tell if a player is doing something truly remarkable. I mean, how can we even be sure that the people we're watching are actually playing the game? They might just be pretending to hit keys and move their mouse, and we wouldn't know the difference!
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.
I disagree not with your overall point but with the extent to which game knowledge is necessary. I have never played baseball, I barely even know the rules, and watching a baseball match is incredibly boring to me. I can't appreciate it at all. It's literally just people randomly moving around to me. There is no difference to videogames here.
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.
Case in point, chess, which is rapidly becoming an e-sport. I play casually, but am a really weak player. My poor understanding of the game isn't at all a barrier to me enjoying Hikaru on Twitch.
I think the main point (which you and parent agree with, but OP skimmed) is that SOME knowledge of the game is needed to be able to appreciate what is happening.
ex. "I know how the Knight piece moves, but wow, I never thought of using it like that"
That was one of starcraft 2's game and graphic design criteria: it should be obvious to the viewer even if they don't have the game knowledge. Unfortunately the game flopped fairly hard in term of esport (relatively to expectation) along with the decline of RTS.
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 don't think it flopped, but the casual userbase hasn't grown much. I chalk that up to Blizzard's failure to give Custom games more of a spotlight and the overall game being overtaken by MOBA and FPS-battle-royale games.
I think I fall into that camp of people of love RTS games, but find it too stressful to play competitively. I like to turtle up and build my cool base and then run over the enemy with a wave of tanks. Command & Conquer was my jam.
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.
That's something I enjoy about Age of Empires 2 lobbies - you can hop into a big 8 player FFA, two people are clearly going to dominate, two people are building cute little NPC bases, and everyone else is in between. The focus is off you, but you still have your own little drama trying to do your best in a chaotic world.
> 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.
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.
I watch basketball clips on YouTube. Sometimes my wife passes by and catches a player doing a windmill dunk, or a no look touch pass. Having no understanding of the game, she doesn't know to be impressed.
We both play WoW, and if we see some skilled players doing PvP, we are impressed.
> 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.
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.
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
Strategy games are generally much more entertaining to watch than FPS games. Age of Empires 2 (yes, that one) is relatively easy to follow with a good announcer/caster such as "T90" on Youtube. Other big esports like Dota can be a lot of fun to watch, but require nontrivial knowledge of the game to really understand what's going on.
FPS games are entertaining as well. The downside is you need to know: (1) the game (e.g. csgo), (2) roughly know the map (e.g. de_dust2), and (3) have a commentator that breaks down the mindgames both teams are using. If you have all 3 elements, then watching FPS is simply amazing. I've watched a former CS pro (friberg [1]) commentate some csgo matches on his stream. It's simply amazing how much he knows about the game, and some of the mindgames / strategies both teams use.
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.
Try watching the remarkable machinations of genius-level chess players like GM Hikaru for a more familiar grounding.
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.
Interestingly, as someone who watches/watched a few esports (typically games I've played as well – StarCraft, CS:GO) I felt the other way around with traditional sports. I don't really know the rules, nor can I make sense of what makes a good move in the game.
>At Seoul Game Academy, a chain of schools in South Korea’s capital, 3,000 students aged nine and up (roughly 99% of them boys) hone their skills at nine games in hopes of becoming full time “e-sports” athletes.
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.
Yes and no. Sports with young kids typically don't get too intense outside of the occasional psycho coach or parent. American football in particular of course does have a nasty CTE/TBI hazard by nature—which IMHO should render it off-limits to minors.
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.
FaZe went public via a SPAC, so this outcome isn't totally unexpected. It isn't a commentary on the success of e-sports any more than the various tech SPACs are for the tech industry as a whole.
A few years ago, I took my son to the CS:GO Major Championship in my city. It was held in a university's arena, and my son was excited to go. Even though I'm a gamer myself, I was very "meh" about being up to my armpits in e-sports fanatics, and was expecting something like LAN party writ large.
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.
Most esports is marketing by the game developer, produced at a loss to retain player interest and sell the dream. Having pros to watch makes the game more fun and feel legitimate. There's a reason casters hype player skill non-stop.
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.
DotA has a healthy number of tournaments that aren't hosted by Valve, but a concerning number of those are heavily sponsored by esports betting companies. When (not "if") regulation closes in on that industry, the scene may look very different.
Yep, one game I follow Hearthstone Battlegrounds has had a majority of funding for events slashed by Activision Blizzard. Very unfortunate for the professional players who are incentivised more to be successful streamers rather than competitive gamers and us fans.
If you are disputing the whole point of the article directly like that, you'll have to provide a source.
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.
10x Revenue multiple is insane on those valuations. Most of those teams are barely 10 years old, and mostly unprofitable through their tenure. I think we're starting to see a rational market take over with FaZe going from 750m+ market cap to ~30m.
Rocket league for one receives sponsorship from car companies, nike, movie studios, and even football clubs regularly. Their nike paint finishes were selling like hot cakes.
Notice how the game company is the one making the money. Tournament organizers, server admins, production, casters, players, managers, etc do not have a sustainable source of money. Often people volunteer their services and communities fundraise money to fly teams in to compete because that's the only way they can afford it.
>Most of esports is not profitable. Events are usually run for the love of the game as opposed to trying to make money
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
> E-sports have yet to engage Western audiences quite as much. About 20% of Americans take an interest, according to a poll by Morning Consult—slightly less than follow horse-racing.
Huh. That's neat trivia. More westerners are interested in horse racing that e-sports. Thank you article.
At least you can say that the regular sports inspire people to be active or get involved in sports. I'm not really on the esports being a negative thing though.
They mostly inspire people to sit on the couch and eat unhealthy food and drinks with friends while watching on the TV. The amount of people watching is so so much higher than the people who get involved in any particular sport.
>The amount of people watching is so so much higher than the people who get involved in any particular sport.
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.
It's impossible to play esports competitively if you aren't in a good physical and mental state. You can try but you will be playing way below your peak, to the point that it stops being enjoyable.
for me the dream would be a competitive game where you could get exercise. like if you could race other people with your peloton online.
someone made a jank prototype of this for mario kart.
>https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UN6iYyGgqmA
Because it's fun and enjoyable. Because it's satisfying to be good at something. Because it's entertaining to watch people who are experts at a thing you like.
Instead of thinking of it like football without the exercise, think of it like chess or any other pursuit of excellence.
Most people consider doing things you find rewarding or entertaining to be a worthwhile enterprise. That doesn't need to conflict with living a healthy lifestyle.
