This announcement gives me a very nostalgic comfort - As a former competitive Counter-Strike player turned eSports tournament organizer and co-founder of an (in the end) unsuccessful eSports organization, this really reaffirms much of my time spent and makes me really regret leaving eSports when I did. I'm very happy to see Alex Garfield, who I looked up to when almost nobody knew who he was, help turn eSports into a true professional sport that it deserves to be, and even happier to see the huge amount of support that Twitch is providing to the entire community.
Can we fix the title please? Twitch acquired much more than just Evil Geniuses, they acquired Good Game Agency which owns and manages quite a few teams and other e-sports related things. (As he points out in his statement)
They seem to recognize and accept that the market paradigm is rapidly moving from one of dominance of the platform to dominance of content [1]. EG has one of the strongest content and persona (i.e. character driven narrative) in the scene in the world and certainly in the West (not entirely sure how the older European powerhouses like SK Gaming have fared in recent years).
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.
Finally, a topic I'm somewhat of an expert in on HN!
>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.
I disagree with almost all of your comments about SC2. All of the things you mentioned (no lan, no clans, allowing blord/infestor to go on too long, etc.) are just red herrings for the greater factors at play that kept SC2 from exploding. It was instead that the landscape of both SC2 and gaming as a whole changed.
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.
I think that both you and chez17 are listing factors that contributed to the decline of SC2. Design errors made by Blizzard cannot be dismissed.
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.
SC2 has one huge advantage over MOBAs I've seen - it's interesting to watch when you don't play it. I've played original sc campaign for a few weeks when it was published, then had no contact with the game for several years, recently I've discovered sc2 tourneys streamed by ZeddSC (great Polish sc2 commentator) - I was hooked immediately, despite knowing next to nothing about the game, meta, players etc. It's just fun to see players microing 100+ units at the same time.
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.
Speaking as someone who used to watch SC2 and now mostly watch DOTA2 only, the reason I stopped was because it got so boring. Blizzard design choices made the games awfully predictable, to the point where I just lost interest. This is in contrast to DOTA2, which continues to be exciting and fresh, with exciting matches and constantly evolving new strategies (not all of them but enough to keep me interested)
>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.
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.
I watched a lot of SC2 during WOL and I recently went to IEM San Jose. I was reminded of why I stopped watching. Koreans are completely impersonal. You can't even force yourself to become partial to them on any level other than their in game skills. As a foreigner, all the Koreans might as well be clones of each other. The language barrier is simply too much and it makes for a really boring spectator environment.
Ironically, this exact thing happened with women's professional golf with the dominance of Korean players whose sole focus was on winning. Fans became less interested in the game, sponsors were not happy about tournament winners being impersonal during press conferences, etc. It was a major factor (though not the only one) in the reduction of the tour schedule and overall decrease in prize money as well.
I don't get what you mean by your comment. CS:GO is the best thing to happen to counter strike and the game and the players are doing better than ever.
When I saw the website and the name and the references to counter strike I immediately thought of GG[1] the french team that was #1st for a pretty long time. Also they were renting servers for a lot of money and they were synonyme with quality (it was always a pleasure to play a match on a goodgame server).
GoodGame has a number of other teams (Team Tinker and Alliance on the DOTA scene?) under management. Thus the name change from EG some time back.
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.
Tinker and Alliance are looking pretty shaky in the long term - Tinker just dropped out of a tournament and Alliance was unable to play games of theirs earlier today. It looks right now like they'll soon see major changes, disband, or become one team. Alliance also sponsors a League of Legends team and a few other teams in other scenes though.
I think Alliance will be fine. There was a really good interview with Loda at the Summit where he said that he has a plan/vision but Chessie's medical problems were a big blow to them (remember they were beating VG and Mushi's Team Malaysia 2-0 in China just 2 months ago). That's why Bulldog is also on a break, they don't want to play with standins.
Loda also had a good performance at the Summit recently, standing in for Tinker. Even if Alliance may not be so hot on the scene right now, the talent at the core of their team is still present.
Big congrats to Emmett and Alex. I'm thrilled to see EG and Twitch join forces. Alex is one of the best in the eSports business and this will provide a great home to them.
Oops, forgot to fill this in: "I’ll be doing an AMA tomorrow at [time] on [subreddit] for those of you who have questions or who’re interested in learning more."
Smart move. It's amazing how far the e-sports industry has come in the last few years. When I was invited to compete at CGS Combine (which Alex references in this post), I knew it was way ahead of its time. There's a lot of big opportunities and unsolved problems in this space to tackle.
Unlikely, Twitch would have to do something pretty significant to harm other teams in an anti-competitive manner. Even then, I'm not sure anyone can do anything.
Fox used to own the Dodgers. Disney used to own the Angels and the Ducks. Liberty Media still owns the Braves (I think). MSG owns the Knicks and Rangers. And a bunch of other teams own their networks - the Red Sox own NESN, the Yankees own a large part of YES. Fox owns half of the Big Ten Network. ESPN owns a large part of the Longhorn Network and the SEC Network. I could go on and on, but suffice it to say that there's a ton of precedent.
Because then they have control over the generation of some of their flagship content, which in turn drives revenue. It's no different to Apple buying fab labs, sapphire plants, etc. to ensure that they can continue to churn out cutting edge devices.
I am with you in I am happy too with eSports becoming more mainstream. But I disagree with your perception of "sport thugs" and "purely physical abilities".
Traditional sport stars are looked upon because of their skills, not 'pure physical abilities'. See the recent "one hand catch" on american football. Messi on soccer, NBA best plays of the week. Physical abilities are more of a necessity on pro traditional sports rather than the reason the stars are admired.
At the same time, eSports are not totally "intellectually based". FPS, in my point of view, has the same proportion of skills and strategy as any traditional sports. Games like League of Legends have indeed more strategy involved, but still demand skills. No eSports is like chess or traditional card games, and I guess that is why their are such an interesting show.
This tournament is created by blizzard which has an obvious incentive but there are plenty of other large hearthstone tournaments with healthy audiences.
The skills in Hearthstone are in place in form of powerfull and rare cards. It is not like adversaries using the same cards as in poker.
Site, different presentation than skills, but the same role
A lot of competitive games have uneven playfields. For example, in League of Legends, you have to play a gimpy fake version of your hero forever to unlock the real version.
In practice the high level players who you see on tournaments on Twitch are all playing with all cards (or max level heroes) available. In Magic: The Gathering this costs $xx,xxx (for modern) or $x,xxx (for standard). In League of Legends, this costs an unskippable grind, but you can pay to make the grind shorter. In Hearthstone, this costs about $800.
Notably, some competitive games do not have this property. In DotA, you can play every hero at full power without paying money or doing a forced grind. In Ultra Street Fighter 4, you can play every character at full power after buying the game for $40 or something.
Edit: anyway, the original comment was about "purely intellectual" esports. I think this means "0 execution" esports? Like, turn-based games where whenever you try to do something, you succeed in doing it, or at least succeed with a known probability instead of a probability based on a test of dexterity. So Hearthstone is definitely that, and "but Hearthstone has cards with rarities" is a red herring.
Your statement about League is not a hundred percent correct. There are no "gimpy fake versions" of heroes and IMHO the initial grind is actually necessary due to the steep learning curve. Yes, you can pay to make the grind shorter, but there's no reason to do so.
Playing a hero with the wrong runes, masteries, and summoner spells (because the game won't let you pick the right ones) is playing a gimpy fake version of the hero. Similarly, if you had to play Street Fighter 3: Third Strike Chun-Li with Super Art 1 while levelling up your summoner to unlock Super Art 2, you would be playing a gimpy fake version of the character.
Why do we expect that playing a fake version of the hero against other fake heroes is better training for playing the real game than just playing the real game? What if the player picks up habits that are only good when the opponent cannot use the correct runes, spells, and masteries? In our Street Fighter example, people could learn to do things that Chun could punish with SA2 but not with SA1, and they would get away with them until their summoners reached the max level.
What if the player is an experienced LoL player who moved to a different continent, or a genre savvy player, or a LoL player whose previous account was banned? These players can't really benefit from the forced grind, even if it has any benefits.
Fighting games are pretty intellectually based; a huge amount of the strategy in them involves being able to 'read' your opponent and predict in a meaningful way what they're going to do, while they're trying to predict exactly the same thing about you. Whoever reads their opponent better is likely to win the match.
This is hilarious. Like the e-sport thugs won't fill that thug-shaped hole. Even more hilarious, strategy games are somehow more "intellectually based" than regular sports.
"Oh, you play single player games, what a weirdo!"
