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Shady Numbers and Bad Business: Inside the Esports Bubble

111 points by somebehemoth 7y ago

someexgamedev 7y ago
Often viewers are incentivized to watch the tournament, by being offered exclusive cosmetic items in game or some premium currency for the game. This makes the view counts artificially inflated by people just looking for the handout. But the esports coordinator gets to flex the big viewer number as if it were organic. Also esports competitors skew young because league participation means you are taking 3-6 months off work to earn below minimum wage. These young players are often delaying college educations to compete. You may mistake their hunger for competitive spirit, but they're actually just hungry. Watch their streams in the off-season and listen to them dread the return to the "gaming house" and its frequency of ramen meals.
- forrestthewoods 7y ago
  Professional sports do tons of promotions all the time. Bobble head night! Deeply discounted multi-game packs. Twice a year the Mariners do “bark at the park” and you can take your dog into the stadium. It’s great fun.
  - Semaphor 7y ago
    That's different though because you actually have to go and pay the entrance fee. With esports you can just keep the stream running in the background, you can usually even mute it. The Elder Scrolls Legends (TESL) had "drops", watching streamers play the game would give you in-game benefits. To the surprise of nobody, even small streamers (as long as they promised to host another TESL streamer afterward) had hundreds of viewers. Very, very quiet viewers who would not write in chat even once. Rebroadcasts became a thing with the biggest TESL streamer simply showing the same once recorded game-play over and over again. Because no one had to make any effort or pay to watch the stream.
    - de_watcher 7y ago
      There is also a very similar thing that we have in sports: betting. Independent sites exist for esports betting. In Dota 2 there is also betting on pro games with the in-game shards that are earned only by playing (if the player is subscribed to this program with a fixed fee).
- libertine 7y ago
  > Often viewers are incentivized to watch the tournament, by being offered exclusive cosmetic items in game or some premium currency for the game. This makes the view counts artificially inflated by people just looking for the handout. But the esports coordinator gets to flex the big viewer number as if it were organic. Precisely. Just to give you a quick example - since time shifting came into play for TV consumption, the perceived value of TV advertising campaigns decreased (though I don't think it became cheaper, but I think that's for other reasons) - except for live sports events. That's a premium in a world where people can see content on their own terms, and where our attention is constantly shifting attention between screens. Live sports events is the only time we're comfortable assuming that a huge audience has their attention retained in the TV screen. It's a emotional thing, a social thing, and truth be told, it's the most spoiled type of content even few seconds after major in-game events. Everyone wants to see it in real time. There's no need to give any incentive for this behavior. Hell there's a whole sales event surrounding it (beers, snacks, etc, thrive on such events). Now, there are people who act the same way for esports... but like you said, if they need to inflate those numbers, something is not triggering it the right way, or maybe it simply doesn't have what it takes yet. Constant meta changes, forced metas by developers, grinding, balance issues, boring (but effective) strategies, predictable outcomes, a lot of small things that off put their highest potential audience - the players. If they can't retain their attention, it will be difficult to do it for anyone else.
  - mrguyorama 7y ago
    >Constant meta changes, forced metas by developers, grinding, balance issues, boring (but effective) strategies, predictable outcomes, a lot of small things that off put their highest potential audience - the players. If they can't retain their attention, it will be difficult to do it for anyone else. I'm not convinced. The NFL has all of these, and it's still huge. The one important thing e-sports lacks is tradition and culture. "Everyone" watches the superbowl. "My family grew up watching football/playing in high school" This is all stuff that took 100 years to organically come together, though maybe it really only got big the past 40ish, I'm not sure.
    - libertine 7y ago
- gameswithgo 7y ago
  Paragraph 2 sounds exactly like any normal athletic sport until (if!) you make it to the big time, if your sport has one, and most don't.
socrates1998 7y ago
>Esports diehards spent $5.00 each last year on esports, according to NewZoo, with mid-level fans generally spending half of that. Ouch. That's nothing.
- wallace_f 7y ago
  The way that is written, it really sounds misleading to me. Dota2's $25+ million prize pools are virtually entitely crowdfunded from the fans. Yesterday, a commonplace tournament wrapped up giving the winners $300K and a new Mercedes. The article mentions Esports viewership is about to surpass pro sports, yet pro sports have massive government funding and support from elementary school up through stadium construction. They are further entrenched in monopolistic competition through cable TV and regulatory laws. So then is esports really the artificial bubble industry, and not pro sports? Further, Esports has been linked with positive externalities such as cognitive benefits--high IQ development--while some of the pro sports are literally the opposite, being linked with CTE and other neurological destruction. Shouldn't public funding change, then?
  - munchbunny 7y ago
    It's probably not a bubble, but also I don't accept the argument that esports are better. Excluding football and boxing (brain trauma), I haven't seen anyone destroy their careers over really enjoying playing physical sports. I do, however, know plenty of classmates and younger kids who are addicted to games like Dota or League of Legends, both of which are staple esports games. If I had to choose a sport for my kid to have delusions of being able to go professional, I wouldn't pick esports, despite myself playing many of those games. The intelligence argument is weak at best. Among other things linked with an increase in intelligence: a good night's rest and regular physical exercise. I will give you the hand eye coordination point though. Ultimately, esports should be treated as exactly what pro (physical) sports are: entertainment, best in moderation.
    - humanrebar 7y ago
      > I haven't seen anyone destroy their careers over really enjoying playing physical sports. If you blow out your knees before the age of 22 due to playing competitive team sports, you're probably not working on your feet for a living.
oceanghost 7y ago
What a long-winded article.
xkfm 7y ago
I wonder if the bubble is mostly an issue with franchising coming out of Acti-Blizzard and Riot Games? The CGS (championship gaming series, mentioned in article) crushed CS in North America and it didn't pick back up until CS:GO came out. It was also franchised. Population density/internet quality may have something to do with it as well. Europe and South Korea seem to have stronger esports scenes for just about every game. The players from those regions tend to be better, and they have more tournaments located there.
- xemdetia 7y ago
  In that aspect I wouldn't consider it to be a bubble, but just a subsidized product. What I think is silly is that LAN tournaments that used to be a natural extension of other events to reduce overall costs have turned into the same scheme as boxing/wrestling promotions. The game publisher's investments really go all the way back to the fact that the traditional tournament scenes from back in the day (kespa, wcg, etc) didn't kick anything back up to the developers and could keep ticket sales/sponsorship costs. Now they subsidize that market so they have some aspect of control and to also get their piece through various monetization schemes. The reason why I suggest it's similar to boxing/wrestling is that really all you need to get into the market and trying to create an event is charisma, connections, and time to pull off a single event. It's not like there is an overarching master event planner for all events and leagues, it's a much more loose market and you may be able to throw a few big promotions a year. It's not too different than putting on an industry event like a home show, IT expo, or any other kind of weird infrequent event. Since the actual profits for those kind of events are slim at best people cut corners and be exploitative in all sorts of fun ways. The question is always just going to be when are the subsidies/sponsorships are going to stop. A cynical part of me feels like there are a lot of people on the inside of corporations writing sponsorship checks are driven by people who are fans of esports as well- just the same as people who write checks for golfers or NASCAR.
BearsAreCool 7y ago
I've had a long time interest in gaming, getting into computers due to it like I imagine many of you guys did. I also do have a fair amount of interest in esports, having been involved in a competitive scene half a decade ago and having watched a good number of esport tournament. However, it seems that the recent surge in esports is insanity. My main concern is how it is viewed by many, especially children, to be an easy and profitable career path. With survivorship bias we "gamers" regularly see individuals who just spent more time gaming winding up making millions every year, and that is a highly appealing dream. At least with the traditional far fetched dream of being a pro soccer player significant work had to be put into training, but that really isn't needed for gaming as gaming was designed to be fun and addictive from start to finish.
- jwagenet 7y ago
  I disagree. Kids dreaming of becoming a professional gamer is no different than the aspirations to become a pro athlete over the last few decades. I went to schools with far too many pro baseball or pro football hopefuls. Kids train their asses off to barely play college ball.
kibwen 7y ago
The article ends up burying several important ledes: that whole companies are built around inflating livestream viewership numbers, and that popular streamers are threatening to slowly gut the competitive esports scene. For the latter, note the perverse incentives: Twitch streamers famously lose so many subscribers to even a day away from their stream (or, heaven forbid, a whole weekend) that the amount of money needed to entice them to spend days at a time traveling to attend tournaments leads to either ludicrous and unsustainable prize pots or a competitive scene where, ironically, all the best players decide not to compete because they would lose money by doing so (especially ironic considering that they likely became popular by competing in the first place).
- darkerside 7y ago
  I wonder if a system like boxing/UFC would fit better. High profile players organizing individual fights/games within a lightly regulated framework.
  - Godel_unicode 7y ago
    This is exactly what Johnnyboi_i does with rocket league. It probably helps that he's also easily the best broadcast personality in the rocket league streaming scene, but his stream is super popular.
- meruru 7y ago
  >Twitch streamers famously lose so many subscribers to even a day away from their stream Are you saying people will unsubscribe from Twitch channels because it didn't post a video for a day? That sounds crazy. Why does it happen?
  - fwip 7y ago
    One thing to consider is that Twitch streaming is primarily a live event. The interaction with the streamer and community is part of the appeal. Also, missing a day of streaming might mean that people whose monthly subscription ran out (and would have been reminded that day) end up not renewing. It's much easier, psychologically, to extend a subscription than to renew one you let lapse.
jimbob45 7y ago
Video games and sports leagues should focus on getting leagues where everyone can participate, not the select few who burn away 10s of hours a day no-lifing the stuff. Such people are one-dimensional, uninteresting, and crowd out the space for interesting people. Instead, cap the prize money and allow all teams in your league under the same rules, a sort of massive Pro/Am league. This might sound too radical but League of Legends already does this with their ladder system: everyone who plays the game is ranked somewhere on the gigantic ladder and, if you're good enough, you can play against the pros if you get ranked up there. The NBA could do it too instead of attracting only 8 foot freaks of nature and guys who have been playing professionally since age 8. Fans would have a tangible reason to want to watch other than that the pros are pretty good. I dunno. The NBA also makes oodles of money and they'd hate my system too so w/e.
- nexuist 7y ago
  There are leagues for people who don't "no-life" the game. Think of little league games or small LAN tournaments at conventions. People do enjoy those types of settings, you just wouldn't tell from media coverage because they only take events with multi-thousand dollar prizes seriously. Also, I think your second paragraph contradicts the first one. "Everyone who plays the game is ranked somewhere on the gigantic ladder and, if you're good enough, you can play against the pros if you get ranked up there." How does one get good enough? By being one of "the select few who burn away 10s of hours a day no-lifing the stuff." The reason why people want to watch "8 foot freaks of nature and guys who have been playing professionally since age 8" is exactly because they offer the best possible gameplay a human being can achieve. That's why they're professionals. If you want to make a living competing against average players, you could just stream on Twitch.
- chillacy 7y ago
  > everyone who plays the game is ranked somewhere on the gigantic ladder and, if you're good enough, you can play against the pros if you get ranked up there I'm not sure I follow how this fixes the problem identified in the first paragraph, namely that competitive systems draw people who spend all of their time practicing their skill.
- 7y ago
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
wesleytodd 7y ago
I actually see someone calling it a bubble as a good sign. Media outlets are typically looking for stories like this, and even if most of this is close enough to true, it is a new industry and has tons of room to grow.
scassidy 7y ago
It seems to me like there's a mismatch between the traditional sports business model and esports. E-sports may not end up looking like the NFL. It could just be individuals with huge followings. Instead of teams that pay for housing and training and salaries like the NFL, esports teams will just have administrative staff and not much else.
- tcmb 7y ago
  The remote workers of sports, so to speak.
- majani 7y ago
  There are a lot of prolific people in esports that argue the same, that esports should be a grassroots, fan-driven thing, rather than the sponsor-driven model
toofy 7y ago
I think esports will take off once a modern popular game allows local communities and neighborhoods to host what we used to do with lanparties. Part of what helped propel traditional sports into ubiquity was the ability to have a ball and play anywhere with anyone you choose which allowed schools to build teams with practice fields and community leagues etc... Modern games, at least as far as I can tell require you to connect to the IP holders company’s servers and often don’t allow you to pick and choose specifically who you play against which in turn makes it nearly impossible to build leagues and do team scrimmages, team practices, local community leagues, etc... And the other major issue I see is the lack of quality spectator features in games. My friends had a LAN party a few months ago and we played some older game, quake3osp(?) Its definitely old, but it seemed to have the kind of setup I imagine it would take for a modern game to really become as prolific as traditional sports. It had amazing spectator functions where you could jump from player to player at will, it had the ability to host the server yourself, you could trade players from the sideline onto your team at anytime, you could pause the match, you could practice on any map you wanted, you could pick a map and run around for an unlimited amount of time practicing, etc.. etc... Modern games require too much interaction directly with the companies who control the IP for them to ever really take off. Could you imagine if neighborhood kids playing football didn’t have the freedom to just run around the same field for hours and play against the same other team for hours? And were required to only play when everything is controlled by the Professional league who controls the nfl or mls branding? It never would have flourished.
- ben-schaaf 7y ago
  > It had amazing spectator functions where you could jump from player to player at will, it had the ability to host the server yourself, you could trade players from the sideline onto your team at anytime, you could pause the match, you could practice on any map you wanted, you could pick a map and run around for an unlimited amount of time practicing, etc.. etc... Other than subbing in players, most source games have all of these features. Not sure about Dota 2, but certainly CS:GO and TF2 have all those features with a community that uses them.
  - toofy 7y ago
AFascistWorld 7y ago
Esports is particularly time-wasting.
stunt 7y ago
For many companies, Esports are a marketing tool to sell more.
madrox 7y ago
I've been following this pretty closely over the last year. Gaming is a hits driven business, and the last couple AAA titles to come out were DOA. Viewership is either being questioned or outright down everywhere. Esports numbers will be a little stickier overall because those are your most passionate players, but the audience isn't growing. To grow the audience interested in esports, you need more esports-ready games that aren't just cannibalizing the audience of other esports games. I suspect this may be one of the reasons why Nate Nanzer is headed to Epic. If esports is in a bubble, then the best way to head it off is to boost Fortnite's ailing competitive scene to draw new audiences. All games should see a halo effect if Fortnite can start drawing the kinds of interest OWL has in the last year.
- majani 7y ago
  Problem is Fortnite really isn't that watchable on a competitive level. Following a 100 player deathmatch on a third-person shooter is cumbersome to say the least.
throwaway38383E 7y ago
I'm an investor in an Esports organisation that some of you may have heard of, however I no longer have anything to do with it and am in the process of selling my shares to the other investors. The reason has nothing to do with profit but morality, in my opinion this industry is nothing but the exploitation of some of the more vulnerable people in our society.
- vvdcect 7y ago
  Talk to a journalist or send over any evidence you have of the said exploitation. https://www.theguardian.com/securedrop https://www.theguardian.com/securedrop https://www.nytimes.com/tips https://www.nytimes.com/tips
challenger22 7y ago
>As it turns out, it was a little too huge. According to Dot Esports, one commentator for the first-person shooter Quake received a $300,000 salary in exchange for live commentary that was poorly received. Counter-Strike players received a reported $2,500 a month plus housing in Marina Del Rey. That added up to about $1.8 million in salaries per year. “I know from firsthand experience running a team that a lot of these teams have never even made that much in revenue,” Fields said. E-sports is a loss-leader for the video game industry. Duh.
- majani 7y ago
  That would make sense if the game companies were the ones sponsoring the teams, but they only support esports in small ways.
majani 7y ago
The article misses one crucial issue with esports. The appeal of mainstream sports tends to be that the audience gets to watch genetic outliers perform physical feats of wonder. It's a very primal appeal. Watching Sonicfox dominate just doesn't generate the same level of emotion for most people as watching Michael Jordan dominate.
dfxm12 7y ago
New "sports leagues" have growing pains (as do most new businesses). The AAF shuttered pretty quickly. Vince McMahon is planning on losing money for at least 5 years with the new XFL. Is "bubble" really the right word for this situation?

111 points by somebehemoth 7y ago

Often viewers are incentivized to watch the tournament, by being offered exclusive cosmetic items in game or some premium currency for the game. This makes the view counts artificially inflated by people just looking for the handout. But the esports coordinator gets to flex the big viewer number as if it were organic. Also esports competitors skew young because league participation means you are taking 3-6 months off work to earn below minimum wage. These young players are often delaying college educations to compete. You may mistake their hunger for competitive spirit, but they're actually just hungry. Watch their streams in the off-season and listen to them dread the return to the "gaming house" and its frequency of ramen meals.

forrestthewoods 7y ago
Professional sports do tons of promotions all the time. Bobble head night! Deeply discounted multi-game packs. Twice a year the Mariners do “bark at the park” and you can take your dog into the stadium. It’s great fun.
- Semaphor 7y ago
  That's different though because you actually have to go and pay the entrance fee. With esports you can just keep the stream running in the background, you can usually even mute it. The Elder Scrolls Legends (TESL) had "drops", watching streamers play the game would give you in-game benefits. To the surprise of nobody, even small streamers (as long as they promised to host another TESL streamer afterward) had hundreds of viewers. Very, very quiet viewers who would not write in chat even once. Rebroadcasts became a thing with the biggest TESL streamer simply showing the same once recorded game-play over and over again. Because no one had to make any effort or pay to watch the stream.
  - de_watcher 7y ago
    There is also a very similar thing that we have in sports: betting. Independent sites exist for esports betting. In Dota 2 there is also betting on pro games with the in-game shards that are earned only by playing (if the player is subscribed to this program with a fixed fee).
libertine 7y ago
> Often viewers are incentivized to watch the tournament, by being offered exclusive cosmetic items in game or some premium currency for the game. This makes the view counts artificially inflated by people just looking for the handout. But the esports coordinator gets to flex the big viewer number as if it were organic. Precisely. Just to give you a quick example - since time shifting came into play for TV consumption, the perceived value of TV advertising campaigns decreased (though I don't think it became cheaper, but I think that's for other reasons) - except for live sports events. That's a premium in a world where people can see content on their own terms, and where our attention is constantly shifting attention between screens. Live sports events is the only time we're comfortable assuming that a huge audience has their attention retained in the TV screen. It's a emotional thing, a social thing, and truth be told, it's the most spoiled type of content even few seconds after major in-game events. Everyone wants to see it in real time. There's no need to give any incentive for this behavior. Hell there's a whole sales event surrounding it (beers, snacks, etc, thrive on such events). Now, there are people who act the same way for esports... but like you said, if they need to inflate those numbers, something is not triggering it the right way, or maybe it simply doesn't have what it takes yet. Constant meta changes, forced metas by developers, grinding, balance issues, boring (but effective) strategies, predictable outcomes, a lot of small things that off put their highest potential audience - the players. If they can't retain their attention, it will be difficult to do it for anyone else.
- mrguyorama 7y ago
  >Constant meta changes, forced metas by developers, grinding, balance issues, boring (but effective) strategies, predictable outcomes, a lot of small things that off put their highest potential audience - the players. If they can't retain their attention, it will be difficult to do it for anyone else. I'm not convinced. The NFL has all of these, and it's still huge. The one important thing e-sports lacks is tradition and culture. "Everyone" watches the superbowl. "My family grew up watching football/playing in high school" This is all stuff that took 100 years to organically come together, though maybe it really only got big the past 40ish, I'm not sure.
  - libertine 7y ago
gameswithgo 7y ago
Paragraph 2 sounds exactly like any normal athletic sport until (if!) you make it to the big time, if your sport has one, and most don't.

socrates1998 7y ago

>Esports diehards spent $5.00 each last year on esports, according to NewZoo, with mid-level fans generally spending half of that. Ouch. That's nothing.

wallace_f 7y ago
The way that is written, it really sounds misleading to me. Dota2's $25+ million prize pools are virtually entitely crowdfunded from the fans. Yesterday, a commonplace tournament wrapped up giving the winners $300K and a new Mercedes. The article mentions Esports viewership is about to surpass pro sports, yet pro sports have massive government funding and support from elementary school up through stadium construction. They are further entrenched in monopolistic competition through cable TV and regulatory laws. So then is esports really the artificial bubble industry, and not pro sports? Further, Esports has been linked with positive externalities such as cognitive benefits--high IQ development--while some of the pro sports are literally the opposite, being linked with CTE and other neurological destruction. Shouldn't public funding change, then?
- munchbunny 7y ago
  It's probably not a bubble, but also I don't accept the argument that esports are better. Excluding football and boxing (brain trauma), I haven't seen anyone destroy their careers over really enjoying playing physical sports. I do, however, know plenty of classmates and younger kids who are addicted to games like Dota or League of Legends, both of which are staple esports games. If I had to choose a sport for my kid to have delusions of being able to go professional, I wouldn't pick esports, despite myself playing many of those games. The intelligence argument is weak at best. Among other things linked with an increase in intelligence: a good night's rest and regular physical exercise. I will give you the hand eye coordination point though. Ultimately, esports should be treated as exactly what pro (physical) sports are: entertainment, best in moderation.
  - humanrebar 7y ago
    > I haven't seen anyone destroy their careers over really enjoying playing physical sports. If you blow out your knees before the age of 22 due to playing competitive team sports, you're probably not working on your feet for a living.

oceanghost 7y ago

What a long-winded article.

xkfm 7y ago

I wonder if the bubble is mostly an issue with franchising coming out of Acti-Blizzard and Riot Games? The CGS (championship gaming series, mentioned in article) crushed CS in North America and it didn't pick back up until CS:GO came out. It was also franchised. Population density/internet quality may have something to do with it as well. Europe and South Korea seem to have stronger esports scenes for just about every game. The players from those regions tend to be better, and they have more tournaments located there.

xemdetia 7y ago
In that aspect I wouldn't consider it to be a bubble, but just a subsidized product. What I think is silly is that LAN tournaments that used to be a natural extension of other events to reduce overall costs have turned into the same scheme as boxing/wrestling promotions. The game publisher's investments really go all the way back to the fact that the traditional tournament scenes from back in the day (kespa, wcg, etc) didn't kick anything back up to the developers and could keep ticket sales/sponsorship costs. Now they subsidize that market so they have some aspect of control and to also get their piece through various monetization schemes. The reason why I suggest it's similar to boxing/wrestling is that really all you need to get into the market and trying to create an event is charisma, connections, and time to pull off a single event. It's not like there is an overarching master event planner for all events and leagues, it's a much more loose market and you may be able to throw a few big promotions a year. It's not too different than putting on an industry event like a home show, IT expo, or any other kind of weird infrequent event. Since the actual profits for those kind of events are slim at best people cut corners and be exploitative in all sorts of fun ways. The question is always just going to be when are the subsidies/sponsorships are going to stop. A cynical part of me feels like there are a lot of people on the inside of corporations writing sponsorship checks are driven by people who are fans of esports as well- just the same as people who write checks for golfers or NASCAR.

BearsAreCool 7y ago

I've had a long time interest in gaming, getting into computers due to it like I imagine many of you guys did. I also do have a fair amount of interest in esports, having been involved in a competitive scene half a decade ago and having watched a good number of esport tournament. However, it seems that the recent surge in esports is insanity. My main concern is how it is viewed by many, especially children, to be an easy and profitable career path. With survivorship bias we "gamers" regularly see individuals who just spent more time gaming winding up making millions every year, and that is a highly appealing dream. At least with the traditional far fetched dream of being a pro soccer player significant work had to be put into training, but that really isn't needed for gaming as gaming was designed to be fun and addictive from start to finish.

jwagenet 7y ago
I disagree. Kids dreaming of becoming a professional gamer is no different than the aspirations to become a pro athlete over the last few decades. I went to schools with far too many pro baseball or pro football hopefuls. Kids train their asses off to barely play college ball.

kibwen 7y ago

The article ends up burying several important ledes: that whole companies are built around inflating livestream viewership numbers, and that popular streamers are threatening to slowly gut the competitive esports scene. For the latter, note the perverse incentives: Twitch streamers famously lose so many subscribers to even a day away from their stream (or, heaven forbid, a whole weekend) that the amount of money needed to entice them to spend days at a time traveling to attend tournaments leads to either ludicrous and unsustainable prize pots or a competitive scene where, ironically, all the best players decide not to compete because they would lose money by doing so (especially ironic considering that they likely became popular by competing in the first place).

darkerside 7y ago
I wonder if a system like boxing/UFC would fit better. High profile players organizing individual fights/games within a lightly regulated framework.
- Godel_unicode 7y ago
  This is exactly what Johnnyboi_i does with rocket league. It probably helps that he's also easily the best broadcast personality in the rocket league streaming scene, but his stream is super popular.
meruru 7y ago
>Twitch streamers famously lose so many subscribers to even a day away from their stream Are you saying people will unsubscribe from Twitch channels because it didn't post a video for a day? That sounds crazy. Why does it happen?
- fwip 7y ago
  One thing to consider is that Twitch streaming is primarily a live event. The interaction with the streamer and community is part of the appeal. Also, missing a day of streaming might mean that people whose monthly subscription ran out (and would have been reminded that day) end up not renewing. It's much easier, psychologically, to extend a subscription than to renew one you let lapse.

jimbob45 7y ago

Video games and sports leagues should focus on getting leagues where everyone can participate, not the select few who burn away 10s of hours a day no-lifing the stuff. Such people are one-dimensional, uninteresting, and crowd out the space for interesting people. Instead, cap the prize money and allow all teams in your league under the same rules, a sort of massive Pro/Am league. This might sound too radical but League of Legends already does this with their ladder system: everyone who plays the game is ranked somewhere on the gigantic ladder and, if you're good enough, you can play against the pros if you get ranked up there. The NBA could do it too instead of attracting only 8 foot freaks of nature and guys who have been playing professionally since age 8. Fans would have a tangible reason to want to watch other than that the pros are pretty good. I dunno. The NBA also makes oodles of money and they'd hate my system too so w/e.

nexuist 7y ago
There are leagues for people who don't "no-life" the game. Think of little league games or small LAN tournaments at conventions. People do enjoy those types of settings, you just wouldn't tell from media coverage because they only take events with multi-thousand dollar prizes seriously. Also, I think your second paragraph contradicts the first one. "Everyone who plays the game is ranked somewhere on the gigantic ladder and, if you're good enough, you can play against the pros if you get ranked up there." How does one get good enough? By being one of "the select few who burn away 10s of hours a day no-lifing the stuff." The reason why people want to watch "8 foot freaks of nature and guys who have been playing professionally since age 8" is exactly because they offer the best possible gameplay a human being can achieve. That's why they're professionals. If you want to make a living competing against average players, you could just stream on Twitch.
chillacy 7y ago
> everyone who plays the game is ranked somewhere on the gigantic ladder and, if you're good enough, you can play against the pros if you get ranked up there I'm not sure I follow how this fixes the problem identified in the first paragraph, namely that competitive systems draw people who spend all of their time practicing their skill.
7y ago

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]

wesleytodd 7y ago

I actually see someone calling it a bubble as a good sign. Media outlets are typically looking for stories like this, and even if most of this is close enough to true, it is a new industry and has tons of room to grow.

scassidy 7y ago

It seems to me like there's a mismatch between the traditional sports business model and esports. E-sports may not end up looking like the NFL. It could just be individuals with huge followings. Instead of teams that pay for housing and training and salaries like the NFL, esports teams will just have administrative staff and not much else.

tcmb 7y ago
The remote workers of sports, so to speak.
majani 7y ago
There are a lot of prolific people in esports that argue the same, that esports should be a grassroots, fan-driven thing, rather than the sponsor-driven model

toofy 7y ago

I think esports will take off once a modern popular game allows local communities and neighborhoods to host what we used to do with lanparties. Part of what helped propel traditional sports into ubiquity was the ability to have a ball and play anywhere with anyone you choose which allowed schools to build teams with practice fields and community leagues etc... Modern games, at least as far as I can tell require you to connect to the IP holders company’s servers and often don’t allow you to pick and choose specifically who you play against which in turn makes it nearly impossible to build leagues and do team scrimmages, team practices, local community leagues, etc... And the other major issue I see is the lack of quality spectator features in games. My friends had a LAN party a few months ago and we played some older game, quake3osp(?) Its definitely old, but it seemed to have the kind of setup I imagine it would take for a modern game to really become as prolific as traditional sports. It had amazing spectator functions where you could jump from player to player at will, it had the ability to host the server yourself, you could trade players from the sideline onto your team at anytime, you could pause the match, you could practice on any map you wanted, you could pick a map and run around for an unlimited amount of time practicing, etc.. etc... Modern games require too much interaction directly with the companies who control the IP for them to ever really take off. Could you imagine if neighborhood kids playing football didn’t have the freedom to just run around the same field for hours and play against the same other team for hours? And were required to only play when everything is controlled by the Professional league who controls the nfl or mls branding? It never would have flourished.

ben-schaaf 7y ago
> It had amazing spectator functions where you could jump from player to player at will, it had the ability to host the server yourself, you could trade players from the sideline onto your team at anytime, you could pause the match, you could practice on any map you wanted, you could pick a map and run around for an unlimited amount of time practicing, etc.. etc... Other than subbing in players, most source games have all of these features. Not sure about Dota 2, but certainly CS:GO and TF2 have all those features with a community that uses them.
- toofy 7y ago

AFascistWorld 7y ago

Esports is particularly time-wasting.

stunt 7y ago

For many companies, Esports are a marketing tool to sell more.

madrox 7y ago

I've been following this pretty closely over the last year. Gaming is a hits driven business, and the last couple AAA titles to come out were DOA. Viewership is either being questioned or outright down everywhere. Esports numbers will be a little stickier overall because those are your most passionate players, but the audience isn't growing. To grow the audience interested in esports, you need more esports-ready games that aren't just cannibalizing the audience of other esports games. I suspect this may be one of the reasons why Nate Nanzer is headed to Epic. If esports is in a bubble, then the best way to head it off is to boost Fortnite's ailing competitive scene to draw new audiences. All games should see a halo effect if Fortnite can start drawing the kinds of interest OWL has in the last year.

majani 7y ago
Problem is Fortnite really isn't that watchable on a competitive level. Following a 100 player deathmatch on a third-person shooter is cumbersome to say the least.

throwaway38383E 7y ago

I'm an investor in an Esports organisation that some of you may have heard of, however I no longer have anything to do with it and am in the process of selling my shares to the other investors. The reason has nothing to do with profit but morality, in my opinion this industry is nothing but the exploitation of some of the more vulnerable people in our society.

vvdcect 7y ago
Talk to a journalist or send over any evidence you have of the said exploitation. https://www.theguardian.com/securedrop https://www.theguardian.com/securedrop https://www.nytimes.com/tips https://www.nytimes.com/tips

challenger22 7y ago

>As it turns out, it was a little too huge. According to Dot Esports, one commentator for the first-person shooter Quake received a $300,000 salary in exchange for live commentary that was poorly received. Counter-Strike players received a reported $2,500 a month plus housing in Marina Del Rey. That added up to about $1.8 million in salaries per year. “I know from firsthand experience running a team that a lot of these teams have never even made that much in revenue,” Fields said. E-sports is a loss-leader for the video game industry. Duh.

majani 7y ago
That would make sense if the game companies were the ones sponsoring the teams, but they only support esports in small ways.

majani 7y ago

The article misses one crucial issue with esports. The appeal of mainstream sports tends to be that the audience gets to watch genetic outliers perform physical feats of wonder. It's a very primal appeal. Watching Sonicfox dominate just doesn't generate the same level of emotion for most people as watching Michael Jordan dominate.

dfxm12 7y ago

New "sports leagues" have growing pains (as do most new businesses). The AAF shuttered pretty quickly. Vince McMahon is planning on losing money for at least 5 years with the new XFL. Is "bubble" really the right word for this situation?