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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

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.
Godel_unicode 7y ago
Your system has one simple but fatal flaw; watching people who suck isn't interesting. {,e}sports only draw viewers if the sport is played well, and there are very few people who can do that for almost any sport. Consider that rocket league has built in support for tournaments, and it's a ghost town because they're always won by Grand Champs, who are also usually twitch streamers, just destroying normal people. Edit: it's also blatantly untrue that elite players are uninteresting, go watch any press conference with Von Miller or James Harden. This kind of uninformed pejorative just comes off sounding like sour grapes.
de_watcher 7y ago
Are you familiar with anything except League of Legends? Because everything has a ladder: SC2, CS:GO, Dota2...
empath75 7y ago
Hearthstone is like this. They have a ladder and I have played against pro players before on it and I’m mediocre at the game. They also have an open masters tournament that allows anyone to compete and feeds directly into a grandmasters league that’s on twitch.

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.

Godel_unicode 7y ago

Your system has one simple but fatal flaw; watching people who suck isn't interesting. {,e}sports only draw viewers if the sport is played well, and there are very few people who can do that for almost any sport. Consider that rocket league has built in support for tournaments, and it's a ghost town because they're always won by Grand Champs, who are also usually twitch streamers, just destroying normal people. Edit: it's also blatantly untrue that elite players are uninteresting, go watch any press conference with Von Miller or James Harden. This kind of uninformed pejorative just comes off sounding like sour grapes.

de_watcher 7y ago

Are you familiar with anything except League of Legends? Because everything has a ladder: SC2, CS:GO, Dota2...

empath75 7y ago

Hearthstone is like this. They have a ladder and I have played against pro players before on it and I’m mediocre at the game. They also have an open masters tournament that allows anyone to compete and feeds directly into a grandmasters league that’s on twitch.