6 ms·

How eSports are saving the PC industry

71 points by sophcw 11y ago

cryoshon 11y ago
Dota/CS:GO are a couple of my favorite games, and excel in eSports because they have impeccable balance, a huge fanbase, and extreme depth of play/recurring novelty. I think eSports wise both franchises are in for the long haul; the real challenge is to deal with the game-release-mediated ebb and flow of relative popularity. There's also a ton more investment in the quality of the games themselves relative to console/cross released titles. The Battlefield and CoD series are great examples of titles completely incompatible with competitive play: there's hardly any balance, no spectator mode, games and DLC churned out every year, distant/apathetic devs/producers, made to be 100% approachable rather than engaging for people who invest more time, and buggy as shit without exception. Valve has found ways around these problems, and that is why they excel at eSports titles.
TheCapn 11y ago
Did anyone ever believe PC gaming was dieing besides those who wrote hype headlines? CounterStrike/Starcraft have been dominant eSports for over a decade and that was when PC gaming was "strong". They gave headway to the MOBA genre with LoL and DotA but they never really dwindled. Year after year gaming grew but so did the other platforms. People assumed PC gaming was dieing because console/mobile markets flourished? Its not a 0-sum market
- kllrnohj 11y ago
  I think a lot of people really did believe it, but they vastly underestimated how much Steam was displacing vs. consoles displacing in the major stores like Best Buy and whatnot. Like, you'd go to the store, see rows and rows of PS3 & XBox 360 games and practically nothing for PC games. It's not a big leap to say pc gaming is dying based off of that, as obviously stores are going to sell what people are buying. Digital distribution is obvious NOW but back in the day there were a loooot of people scoffing at paying the same price for the digital version and making fun at people for not getting the obviously superior physical version.
  - debaserab2 11y ago
    My friends and I were very excited when we could start a download to get a game instead of have to go to a physical store. None of us thought of this as a change for the worse. Digital distribution was obvious back then; it took about half a decade for them to get it right though. Steam was plagued with all kinds of issues, and in the early 2000's broadband wasn't quite ubiquitous in the speed we expect from it today. I remember it took a full day to get Half-Life 2 downloaded.
- edias 11y ago
  StarCraft was only ever big in Korea, StarCraft 2 is more so the opposite but that didn't come out until 2010. Counter Strike died in the mid 2000s and only in the last 2-3 years has made a big comeback. eSports historically has gone through bubbles and we are currently in the 3rd one. No eSports has ever been dominant for a long period of time.
Loque 11y ago
Sorry if this incorrect of me to do, but shouldn't the title be: "How eSports is* saving the PC industry"? Unless of course it is "All your industry are belong to us" :`) Thanks for the post!
- pmlamotte 11y ago
  Depends on if you look at eSports as an all encompassing entity, or as a collection. If you swap out "eSports" in the title with "sports" it works.
yongelee 11y ago
should be titled: how STEAM is saving the PC industry.
- Zikes 11y ago
  Given their work with the Steam Link and Steam Controller, I think you have a valid point. Steam Link supports DualShock and XBox controllers, and can stream via network from a PC located elsewhere in the house, making PC a viable competitor in the "couch gaming" space that consoles have thus far dominated.
  - daheza 11y ago
    I agree with you about the steam link. It now allows me to play couch co-op games in the living room without having to drag my computer into the living room. The steam controller however does not seem to have as much use. I tried using it on several games in my library and was not satisfied with the amount of control I got. A wireless keyboard and mouse could give me a better experience.
    - Zikes 11y ago
      I've had a bit of a mixed reaction with my Steam Controller experience. I find the trackpad approach innovative, and the configuration options have incredible depth, but that depth also creates complexity and a steep learning curve. I think it can be a viable replacement for controllers in certain genres, and it can make other genres "couch" viable which previously weren't (turned-based mouse-driven games, for instance). I think it will find its own niche, overlapping some of the games which were previously keyboard/mouse exclusive as well as some of the games previously XBox/DualShock controller exclusive.
      - JetSetWilly 11y ago
        Although I agree that the steam controller will make previously mouse/kb only games viable on the desktop and was probably designed for that, I've been surprised by how much more pleasant it has made gaming with games designed for a traditional controller. For example, Dishonored plays fantastically well with the steam controller. You have all the advantages of a traditional controller, except the camera control is much more precise and mouse-like. And although the steam controller may never compete with a mouse and keyboard for games like CS:GO, r/SteamController is reporting encouraging findings, with people claiming to be surprisingly competitive using a steam controller by utilising dual aiming (trackpad for large, coarse movements and gyro for tiny correctional movements). The bottom line is that for me a steam controller is a massive improvement over a traditional controller, it is like it takes the best aspects of mouse+kb and game controllers and combines them in one package. Console makers should take note, but unfortunately at this point outside nintendo the traditional console makers are very unwilling to innovate with the base controller.
TTPrograms 11y ago
Just wait until gamers start interacting with VR en-masse. The massive framerates required to make a transparent viewing experience (60-100 FPS) combined with the ultra-high limits on resolution perception at that FOV means that electronic entertainment enthusiasts will have big boxes in their homes for another decade or so at least.
wnevets 11y ago
The PC gaming industry didn't need saving. Console publishers tried hard to spread the FUD that it was dying but the numbers told a different story.
huac 11y ago
"H&F: Do you see the PC gaming market being eclipsed by mobile or console any time soon? JG: I think mobile has it since the install base is massive and people have a lot of spare time sitting around where they have their phone right with them. Mobile has a fantastic growth opportunity."
- rasz_pl 11y ago
  You missed the part about keyboard and mouse being essential for any kind of precise control
  - huac 11y ago
    That hasn't stopped console games in the past, why should it matter for mobile? (all console games rely heavily on 'aim-assist')
duiker101 11y ago
I think that the base concepts of this article are wrong. eSports is not saving PC gaming because the games require the best hardware. In fact competitve games have some of the lowest requirements possible. Riot(League of Legends) goes out of their way all the time to make sure that their game will work even on the most outdated computers and really none of the competitive games have the most astonishing graphic. For the pros too it's not about the hardware or graphics, many use the lowest possible settings to make sure they get a decent performance. I don't know if it's still a thing but in Counter Strike people use very low resolutions to enhance performance, have better vision and reduce mouse movement. We are talking about games where a few ms can make a difference. What is selling hardware is not eSports. It's all those games that look amazing and perform the best on great hardware. Skyrim(or even GTA V) for example, on a console will never look as good as on a PC. A recent controversy was that on PC Watchdogs was "downgraded" before release to look more like the console version because they weren't powerful enough. Here's another thing that is saving the PC industry, the mod community. If there is one thing for sure is that phone gaming wont destroy PC gaming.
- rlu 11y ago
  Re: Counter-Strike https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JyCuEmmZc4A https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JyCuEmmZc4A
- atom-morgan 11y ago
  > I don't know if it's still a thing but in Counter Strike people use very low resolutions to enhance performance, have better vision and reduce mouse movement. I can't say for sure with CS but I know it's definitely the case with StarCraft. I saw it firsthand when I was in Vegas for a competition and had the chance to spectate behind some of the competitors irl. All that I saw were on the lowest graphics settings.
  - freehunter 11y ago
    When I played CS:S in CAL Open, I saw a lot of people putting the graphics all the way down so their vision wasn't obscured by dust in the air, or fluffy bushes, or sun glare, or particle effects. I never played seriously enough to go as far as finding out if it made a difference. I just liked to play a pretty game.
api 11y ago
Design and education kept Apple alive through the dark years. I can see gaming doing the same for the PC industry through the dark years of Cloud ("Mainframe 2.0") until "PC 2.0" arrives.
- saiya-jin 11y ago
  don't worry about PC itself, all offices around the world will make sure this won't die soon even if all gaming went bust. Heck, even myself at home, I haven't yet met a good enough replacement of my do-it-all-super-fast desktop back home.
  - api 11y ago
    True but that won't keep the high end alive. You don't need a very powerful machine to do office stuff. Gaming will keep the "performance PC" alive until a few more years of Moore's Law and people start realizing that these high-end gaming PCs with neonz can run the same sorts of "big data" work loads you can presently only really run in the cloud. In 5-10 years a sub-$2000 performance PC will have 8TB of PCI-X flash, 16 CPU cores, umpteen gazillion GPU cores, and 128GB of RAM, and "wait why do I need Amazon Cloud when I can have it on my desk at 0ms latency?"
  - Majestic121 11y ago
    I would not be so sure about that. Sure, there is a real comfort to work when you have big screens and a mouse/keyboard, but you don't actually need a PC for that, a tablet is enough. Right now, PC are still way cheaper and the difference in power is still sensible, but I think this will change very quickly. Of course, this is true for basic office work : if you need power, as a dev/graphist/whatever, a PC will still be the way to go. However, most office job don't actually need that much power, and the flexibility offered by a tablet is huge : being able to work from anywhere, bringing your whole computer to take notes/read mails during a reunion, etc...
    - moistgorilla 11y ago
      > Sure, there is a real comfort to work when you have big screens and a mouse/keyboard, but you don't actually need a PC for that, a tablet is enough. I can hardly get work done on my laptop let alone a tablet.
redml 11y ago
My biggest surprise is how this all runs on Microsoft's operating system and Microsoft does very little to nothing to facilitate this as a potential revenue stream. In fact they're just sitting by and watching as the biggest player, steam, is slowly taking their library off of windows and onto mac or linux.
- dageshi 11y ago
  I think Valve are getting games onto mac and linux in anticipation of an xBox store, or a locked down version of Win 10 with an xBox store coming in the future.
  - henryboston 11y ago
    It's because Steam is developing their own hardware based off Linux. They want games to be able to run on their own hardware.
    - kibwen 11y ago
      The original impetus for developing their own hardware and Linux-based OS was because of the imaginable threat of Microsoft locking down Windows in a post-app-store world. It's a last-ditch contingency plan as well as a way to assert their intent to Microsoft. Of course, I'm still very happy that it has the side effect of drastically improving the gaming landscape on Linux even if none of the worst-case Windows scenarios ever come to pass.
- bad_user 11y ago
  Until now at least this has been one of the reasons for why Windows stayed the dominant operating system. I own a MacBook Pro with OS X on it. I also have an Ubuntu Linux workstation. But in my home there's also a Windows laptop for playing games, as I've got some favorite games that do not work on OS X or Linux. And it's not just because of popularity. Game developers prefer Windows as a target also because of things like Visual Studio or because of DirectX being technically superior and cleaner than OpenGL. And if they play their cards right, I don't see the situation improving as this has been going on ever since 1995. Thing is Windows survived for so long only because it's been (sort of) neutral. I mean yeah, it has always been complementary to other Microsoft products or services, like Office, but Windows has been much more neutral or open than a console's environment, or more "modern" operating systems like, say, iOS. But now you can see Microsoft introduce things like the Windows store, with the traditional revenue cut of course. You have to consider, for example, that Steam is pushing for Linux as a defensive move. And I tell you, if Microsoft goes even further then this, it will mean the end of Windows ;-)
kibwen 11y ago
> Defense of the Ancients 2 (1,262,612 daily players) Curiously, "Dota 2" is not actually an abbreviation for "Defense of the Ancients 2", the full name of the game is just "Dota 2". Valve did this because they weren't capable of trademarking the term "Defense of the Ancients", whereas they were eventually able to procure the commercial trademark for "Dota" (which caused a stir in the greater community at the time, which had been using the initialism in a general capacity for ages).
- taurath 11y ago
  I still don't see exactly how they were able to "own" the trademark. They didn't create the mod or the game, they just hired the 3rd developer who was mostly doing balance improvements during his tenure. There was a whole community around DotA that suddenly had to migrate to "official" channels.
dvt 11y ago
As a former pro gamer (CS 1.6 and CS:Source), I'm happy to see eSports become more mainstream. However, I think there's still a lot of work to be done as far as general viewership and standardization. Twitch and Youtube Gaming I think validate eSports as an emerging industry.
Tiquor 11y ago
PC doesn't need saving. ESports has the penetration it does because of a saturation of hardware in the market and slower upgrade cycles. ESports is benefiting more from the PC market than vice versa.

71 points by sophcw 11y ago

Dota/CS:GO are a couple of my favorite games, and excel in eSports because they have impeccable balance, a huge fanbase, and extreme depth of play/recurring novelty. I think eSports wise both franchises are in for the long haul; the real challenge is to deal with the game-release-mediated ebb and flow of relative popularity. There's also a ton more investment in the quality of the games themselves relative to console/cross released titles. The Battlefield and CoD series are great examples of titles completely incompatible with competitive play: there's hardly any balance, no spectator mode, games and DLC churned out every year, distant/apathetic devs/producers, made to be 100% approachable rather than engaging for people who invest more time, and buggy as shit without exception. Valve has found ways around these problems, and that is why they excel at eSports titles.

TheCapn 11y ago

Did anyone ever believe PC gaming was dieing besides those who wrote hype headlines? CounterStrike/Starcraft have been dominant eSports for over a decade and that was when PC gaming was "strong". They gave headway to the MOBA genre with LoL and DotA but they never really dwindled. Year after year gaming grew but so did the other platforms. People assumed PC gaming was dieing because console/mobile markets flourished? Its not a 0-sum market

kllrnohj 11y ago
I think a lot of people really did believe it, but they vastly underestimated how much Steam was displacing vs. consoles displacing in the major stores like Best Buy and whatnot. Like, you'd go to the store, see rows and rows of PS3 & XBox 360 games and practically nothing for PC games. It's not a big leap to say pc gaming is dying based off of that, as obviously stores are going to sell what people are buying. Digital distribution is obvious NOW but back in the day there were a loooot of people scoffing at paying the same price for the digital version and making fun at people for not getting the obviously superior physical version.
- debaserab2 11y ago
  My friends and I were very excited when we could start a download to get a game instead of have to go to a physical store. None of us thought of this as a change for the worse. Digital distribution was obvious back then; it took about half a decade for them to get it right though. Steam was plagued with all kinds of issues, and in the early 2000's broadband wasn't quite ubiquitous in the speed we expect from it today. I remember it took a full day to get Half-Life 2 downloaded.
edias 11y ago
StarCraft was only ever big in Korea, StarCraft 2 is more so the opposite but that didn't come out until 2010. Counter Strike died in the mid 2000s and only in the last 2-3 years has made a big comeback. eSports historically has gone through bubbles and we are currently in the 3rd one. No eSports has ever been dominant for a long period of time.

Loque 11y ago

Sorry if this incorrect of me to do, but shouldn't the title be: "How eSports is* saving the PC industry"? Unless of course it is "All your industry are belong to us" :`) Thanks for the post!

pmlamotte 11y ago
Depends on if you look at eSports as an all encompassing entity, or as a collection. If you swap out "eSports" in the title with "sports" it works.

yongelee 11y ago

should be titled: how STEAM is saving the PC industry.

Zikes 11y ago
Given their work with the Steam Link and Steam Controller, I think you have a valid point. Steam Link supports DualShock and XBox controllers, and can stream via network from a PC located elsewhere in the house, making PC a viable competitor in the "couch gaming" space that consoles have thus far dominated.
- daheza 11y ago
  I agree with you about the steam link. It now allows me to play couch co-op games in the living room without having to drag my computer into the living room. The steam controller however does not seem to have as much use. I tried using it on several games in my library and was not satisfied with the amount of control I got. A wireless keyboard and mouse could give me a better experience.
  - Zikes 11y ago
    I've had a bit of a mixed reaction with my Steam Controller experience. I find the trackpad approach innovative, and the configuration options have incredible depth, but that depth also creates complexity and a steep learning curve. I think it can be a viable replacement for controllers in certain genres, and it can make other genres "couch" viable which previously weren't (turned-based mouse-driven games, for instance). I think it will find its own niche, overlapping some of the games which were previously keyboard/mouse exclusive as well as some of the games previously XBox/DualShock controller exclusive.
    - JetSetWilly 11y ago
      Although I agree that the steam controller will make previously mouse/kb only games viable on the desktop and was probably designed for that, I've been surprised by how much more pleasant it has made gaming with games designed for a traditional controller. For example, Dishonored plays fantastically well with the steam controller. You have all the advantages of a traditional controller, except the camera control is much more precise and mouse-like. And although the steam controller may never compete with a mouse and keyboard for games like CS:GO, r/SteamController is reporting encouraging findings, with people claiming to be surprisingly competitive using a steam controller by utilising dual aiming (trackpad for large, coarse movements and gyro for tiny correctional movements). The bottom line is that for me a steam controller is a massive improvement over a traditional controller, it is like it takes the best aspects of mouse+kb and game controllers and combines them in one package. Console makers should take note, but unfortunately at this point outside nintendo the traditional console makers are very unwilling to innovate with the base controller.

TTPrograms 11y ago

Just wait until gamers start interacting with VR en-masse. The massive framerates required to make a transparent viewing experience (60-100 FPS) combined with the ultra-high limits on resolution perception at that FOV means that electronic entertainment enthusiasts will have big boxes in their homes for another decade or so at least.

wnevets 11y ago

The PC gaming industry didn't need saving. Console publishers tried hard to spread the FUD that it was dying but the numbers told a different story.

huac 11y ago

"H&F: Do you see the PC gaming market being eclipsed by mobile or console any time soon? JG: I think mobile has it since the install base is massive and people have a lot of spare time sitting around where they have their phone right with them. Mobile has a fantastic growth opportunity."

rasz_pl 11y ago
You missed the part about keyboard and mouse being essential for any kind of precise control
- huac 11y ago
  That hasn't stopped console games in the past, why should it matter for mobile? (all console games rely heavily on 'aim-assist')

duiker101 11y ago

I think that the base concepts of this article are wrong. eSports is not saving PC gaming because the games require the best hardware. In fact competitve games have some of the lowest requirements possible. Riot(League of Legends) goes out of their way all the time to make sure that their game will work even on the most outdated computers and really none of the competitive games have the most astonishing graphic. For the pros too it's not about the hardware or graphics, many use the lowest possible settings to make sure they get a decent performance. I don't know if it's still a thing but in Counter Strike people use very low resolutions to enhance performance, have better vision and reduce mouse movement. We are talking about games where a few ms can make a difference. What is selling hardware is not eSports. It's all those games that look amazing and perform the best on great hardware. Skyrim(or even GTA V) for example, on a console will never look as good as on a PC. A recent controversy was that on PC Watchdogs was "downgraded" before release to look more like the console version because they weren't powerful enough. Here's another thing that is saving the PC industry, the mod community. If there is one thing for sure is that phone gaming wont destroy PC gaming.

rlu 11y ago
Re: Counter-Strike https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JyCuEmmZc4A https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JyCuEmmZc4A
atom-morgan 11y ago
> I don't know if it's still a thing but in Counter Strike people use very low resolutions to enhance performance, have better vision and reduce mouse movement. I can't say for sure with CS but I know it's definitely the case with StarCraft. I saw it firsthand when I was in Vegas for a competition and had the chance to spectate behind some of the competitors irl. All that I saw were on the lowest graphics settings.
- freehunter 11y ago
  When I played CS:S in CAL Open, I saw a lot of people putting the graphics all the way down so their vision wasn't obscured by dust in the air, or fluffy bushes, or sun glare, or particle effects. I never played seriously enough to go as far as finding out if it made a difference. I just liked to play a pretty game.

api 11y ago

Design and education kept Apple alive through the dark years. I can see gaming doing the same for the PC industry through the dark years of Cloud ("Mainframe 2.0") until "PC 2.0" arrives.

saiya-jin 11y ago
don't worry about PC itself, all offices around the world will make sure this won't die soon even if all gaming went bust. Heck, even myself at home, I haven't yet met a good enough replacement of my do-it-all-super-fast desktop back home.
- api 11y ago
  True but that won't keep the high end alive. You don't need a very powerful machine to do office stuff. Gaming will keep the "performance PC" alive until a few more years of Moore's Law and people start realizing that these high-end gaming PCs with neonz can run the same sorts of "big data" work loads you can presently only really run in the cloud. In 5-10 years a sub-$2000 performance PC will have 8TB of PCI-X flash, 16 CPU cores, umpteen gazillion GPU cores, and 128GB of RAM, and "wait why do I need Amazon Cloud when I can have it on my desk at 0ms latency?"
- Majestic121 11y ago
  I would not be so sure about that. Sure, there is a real comfort to work when you have big screens and a mouse/keyboard, but you don't actually need a PC for that, a tablet is enough. Right now, PC are still way cheaper and the difference in power is still sensible, but I think this will change very quickly. Of course, this is true for basic office work : if you need power, as a dev/graphist/whatever, a PC will still be the way to go. However, most office job don't actually need that much power, and the flexibility offered by a tablet is huge : being able to work from anywhere, bringing your whole computer to take notes/read mails during a reunion, etc...
  - moistgorilla 11y ago
    > Sure, there is a real comfort to work when you have big screens and a mouse/keyboard, but you don't actually need a PC for that, a tablet is enough. I can hardly get work done on my laptop let alone a tablet.

redml 11y ago

My biggest surprise is how this all runs on Microsoft's operating system and Microsoft does very little to nothing to facilitate this as a potential revenue stream. In fact they're just sitting by and watching as the biggest player, steam, is slowly taking their library off of windows and onto mac or linux.

dageshi 11y ago
I think Valve are getting games onto mac and linux in anticipation of an xBox store, or a locked down version of Win 10 with an xBox store coming in the future.
- henryboston 11y ago
  It's because Steam is developing their own hardware based off Linux. They want games to be able to run on their own hardware.
  - kibwen 11y ago
    The original impetus for developing their own hardware and Linux-based OS was because of the imaginable threat of Microsoft locking down Windows in a post-app-store world. It's a last-ditch contingency plan as well as a way to assert their intent to Microsoft. Of course, I'm still very happy that it has the side effect of drastically improving the gaming landscape on Linux even if none of the worst-case Windows scenarios ever come to pass.
bad_user 11y ago
Until now at least this has been one of the reasons for why Windows stayed the dominant operating system. I own a MacBook Pro with OS X on it. I also have an Ubuntu Linux workstation. But in my home there's also a Windows laptop for playing games, as I've got some favorite games that do not work on OS X or Linux. And it's not just because of popularity. Game developers prefer Windows as a target also because of things like Visual Studio or because of DirectX being technically superior and cleaner than OpenGL. And if they play their cards right, I don't see the situation improving as this has been going on ever since 1995. Thing is Windows survived for so long only because it's been (sort of) neutral. I mean yeah, it has always been complementary to other Microsoft products or services, like Office, but Windows has been much more neutral or open than a console's environment, or more "modern" operating systems like, say, iOS. But now you can see Microsoft introduce things like the Windows store, with the traditional revenue cut of course. You have to consider, for example, that Steam is pushing for Linux as a defensive move. And I tell you, if Microsoft goes even further then this, it will mean the end of Windows ;-)

kibwen 11y ago

> Defense of the Ancients 2 (1,262,612 daily players) Curiously, "Dota 2" is not actually an abbreviation for "Defense of the Ancients 2", the full name of the game is just "Dota 2". Valve did this because they weren't capable of trademarking the term "Defense of the Ancients", whereas they were eventually able to procure the commercial trademark for "Dota" (which caused a stir in the greater community at the time, which had been using the initialism in a general capacity for ages).

taurath 11y ago
I still don't see exactly how they were able to "own" the trademark. They didn't create the mod or the game, they just hired the 3rd developer who was mostly doing balance improvements during his tenure. There was a whole community around DotA that suddenly had to migrate to "official" channels.

dvt 11y ago

As a former pro gamer (CS 1.6 and CS:Source), I'm happy to see eSports become more mainstream. However, I think there's still a lot of work to be done as far as general viewership and standardization. Twitch and Youtube Gaming I think validate eSports as an emerging industry.

Tiquor 11y ago

PC doesn't need saving. ESports has the penetration it does because of a saturation of hardware in the market and slower upgrade cycles. ESports is benefiting more from the PC market than vice versa.