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What I learned from watching six hours of Starcraft
- deleted 16y ago[deleted]
- hartror 16y agoThe usual "Don't dig for gold, sell shovels" type thing and in this case the analogy holds up very well. The SC2 players are digging for gold and only a few of them make a big strike and the casters and distributors are the ones making all the cash selling shovels.
- kjr 16y agoyeah but how much? has a market actually taken form or are those casters who are making money nothing more then novelty?
- Charuru 16y agoRumors puts popular casters at around 250K a year, just from youtube revenue.
- kjr 16y agoPretty impressive. Much of this money likely goes to further tournaments and such anyways so a lot of the money is probably finding its way back to players.
- Charuru 16y agoThey also spend their money making videos like this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fzMhh8zhTiY http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fzMhh8zhTiY He really looks like he's having fun.
- 3pt14159 16y agoThe top caster (H to the husky, husky) has a lambo and wasn't rich prior to casting esports.
- hartror 16y agoHe doesn't. At the end of Bainlings he says he doesn't even have the money to hire one.
- angrycoder 16y agoWhat method are you using to determine he is the 'top' caster? Of all popular casters out there, he is the least professional and least insightful.
- Charuru 16y ago# of views?
- loganlinn 16y agoI thought he mentioned that justin.tv provided him with it
- baddox 16y agoOne could argue that, while being a successful professional gamer is hard and rare, it's probably much harder and rarer to be a successful caster of professional games. Casters also have to tackle a broader range of skills: they have to remain very current with the game they cast (and they're generally expected to be above-mediocre players themselves), they have to understand the production and distribution process (audio, screen capturing, uploading to Youtube/other video site, etc.), and most of all, they have to get and maintain fans.
- ohashi 16y agoMany of the casters are skilled players themselves. Artosis (one of the commentators for GSL) was quite highly ranked. I believe Tasteless and his brother Day9 are as well. What's interesting to me is Husky, who I don't think is anywhere near their skill has the largest audience. I've got friends who don't play starcraft who watch husky and love it like it's any other sport. So I definitely agree there is a lot of skills involved and even different target markets. The hardcore players like the best player/casters. There appears to be an even larger casual/not playing at all audience that enjoys the sheer entertainment value of esports.
- Charuru 16y agoWell yeah, if the goal is to make money, trying to become a top player is probably not the smartest path. But like for anything else, the real top players are doing it primarily because they really love the game.
- kjr 16y agoI predict e-sports to develop almost identical to american sports. Thus, before any real money can be made (for players and distributors/producers) elements of american sports need to be echoed: big money backers (owners), betting, and a more structured and and centralized league system. The problem is e-sports is still so immature for the above three things, both technically (cheating is a major issue) and in popularity (e-sports has yet to prove exiting to the uninformed spectator).
- mcantor 16y agoI wasn't aware that cheating is such a huge deal in pro gaming. Source? Also, it occurs to me that cheating has been a big deal in regular sports, too...! ;-) In fact, I would say the same about interest levels. I found football excruciating until I learned the rules.
- Charuru 16y agoCheating is not a major issue. I follow StarCraft and have never heard of an instance of actual cheating. Match throwing to earn money on betting against yourself was a major scandal 2 seasons ago though.
- kjr 16y agoIn pro gaming not so much. What I mean here is "casual" pro gaming. This is a big issue in FPS games. Smaller player driven leagues have a hard time weeding out cheaters in games like counterstrike and other fps's. This leads into the other point as well. Football is just jammed down peoples throats so much that even watching TV/movies you probably got a decent understanding of it. Without casual pro gaming it is hard to gain interest in e-sports at a high level.
- amalcon 16y agoIt's a pretty big deal in high-level sports, too. Ask Jose Canseco (the baseball player who most famously used steroids), Bill Belichick (the infamous American football locker-room videotaper), and He Kexin (the almost-certainly-underage Chinese gymnast from 2008).
- 16y ago
- richcollins 16y agoBlizzard makes the most money as the copyright holder. They can shut down any of the casters streams whenever they so desire.
- mcantor 16y agoMaybe I'm having a brain fart, but... under what legal auspice could Blizzard force them to shut down the streams?
- richcollins 16y agoCopyright law. They already sued Kespa into submission. I'm guessing at some point that they will anoint a company with exclusive rights to broadcast SC2 and start suing everyone else. http://www.publicknowledge.org/node/3171 http://www.publicknowledge.org/node/3171
- kjr 16y agoWouldn't it be better if Blizzard employed them? Set up internal league systems and actually embraced e-sports as a revenue generating area? I think the next evolution of e-sports will be a big name company actually doing the above. Problem is it is pretty risky to do. Games with huge fanbases and legacies of e-sports like starcraft/counterstrike are probably the only ones were it would work right out of the gate.
- hartror 16y agoReally? I would have thought it is fair use, but I guess no Machinima producers have true tested the law in this regard? Certainly Blizzard attempts to control the use through the TOU and restrict derivative content to non-commercial use only.
- baddox 16y agoIn the USA, fair use legal precedent has mostly been superseded by laws such as the DMCA. I don't agree with it, but that's the legal situation we're in these days.
- robryan 16y agoI'd imagine the top players in Korea would get marketing and endorsement deals?
- SebMortelmans 16y agoGod Startupcraft looks soo awesome, almost considering flying to USA to attend :P
- iwwr 16y agoThe original Starcraft (Broodwar) is much more enjoyable to watch, though SC2 may be more interesting to play.
- mcantor 16y agoWith both games, I am a novice at best; but I'd be interested to hear why you find SC:BW more interesting to spectate.
- johnswamps 16y agoI'm not the parent, but lots of people complain that the SC2 maps are too small. You can quickly get to your opponents base on small maps which making early agression powerful, resulting in a lot of short games. If you've watched the last two GSLs, you probably noticed a lot of < 10 minute games (e.g lots of 2 rax all-in/pressure builds). By contrast, SC:BW games tend to be a lot longer and more exciting where you get to see many if not all expansions on the map taken, more strategy when it comes to unit composition besides just "well you weren't ready for my early game push so I just won easily", map control becomes essential, harassment, etc.
- mcantor 16y agoI enjoyed playing on the SC2 newbie maps for that reason, actually; the boulders placed in front of the bases changed macro-strategy drastically. I'm awful enough as a player that it didn't help me win at all, but it was an interesting variation nonetheless!
- kmfrk 16y agoBlizzard have rolled out a map pool with much bigger (tournament/ladder) maps, so there's definitely something for everyone.
- johnswamps 16y agoWhat maps are you referring to? They've tweaked the map pool a little bit (Shakura's Plateau is not bad) but I still see the same complaints people have been making. The GSL is thinking of adding new custom maps for this reason (http://wiki.teamliquid.net/starcraft2/Maps#Possible_New_Maps http://wiki.teamliquid.net/starcraft2/Maps#Possible_New_Maps).
- ddkrone 16y agoIt's not like being the players and participating in tournaments is such a hard gig. They are often sponsored by various technology or clothing companies and get to do what they really enjoy. The casters also get to do what they enjoy but they serve a much larger audience of people that fall between casual and professional player so that's one of the reasons they make more money.
- leelin 16y agoThe analogy to music distributors is a little off. The SC2 replay casters are adding significant value to the content, in addition to sifting through what content is worthy of casting. They need to know where in the map to pan the camera, explain what is going on, decide which parts to fast-forward and pause, and probably many other nuances experienced SC2 players enjoy. Casters are doing 2-3 jobs in one: pick one or two interesting replays each day out of many submitted, do all the work of a sports commentator, and then do all the work of a video editor (for non-live casts). In other words, even if I knew a replay was a good one to watch, I'd prefer to watch it casted. On the other hand, a great song or a great sports game is probably fine on its own, but rarely a raw movie reel.
- Zeelar 16y agoI'm more inclined to have casters in their own category instead of players vs. distributors. As leelin mentioned, casters add their own value by adding spit and polish to the games, which increases the reach on the games itself. Distribution platforms tend to not have any hands in the content but benefit more from getting a good "flow" of content through their network. As for monetization though, in every industry, there are outliers in each category that make a lot more money but in general, (successful) distribution platforms generate the most nominal revenues and frequently the people adding polish don't. The more skill/polish added though, the higher the premium it seems.
- jamii 16y agoIndeed, watching good casters is a good way to master a new game. Delivering insight into the reasons behind the players actions and tactics is a valuable service.
- lukeschlather 16y agoActually, I think it's a bit strange that this isn't the case with conventional sports. When it comes right down to it, what makes sports interesting is less the absolute skill of the competitors and rather the relative skill. So a high school match is no less interesting than a professional match. There's obviously a part of everyone that believes skill should be rewarded, but really what sports spectators are looking for is entertainment value - and completely unskilled players are just as capable of creating something entertaining to watch as skilled players. Distributors on the other hand are judged precisely by how entertaining the product they deliver is, so their skill and effort should have a much more obvious correlation to their earnings. It therefore makes sense that it's more profitable than playing, since only specific people are any good at turning games into an entertaining mass-market product.
- whathappenedto 16y agoThere's actually been academic research papers written about spectating Starcraft: http://jeffhuang.com/Final_StarcraftSpectator_CHI11.pdf http://jeffhuang.com/Final_StarcraftSpectator_CHI11.pdf There's a number of types of people who watch Starcraft, and a number of things Starcraft does really well to get a large audience of viewers (hiding/showing certain game information).
- gnubardt 16y agoHD's starcraft videos are really enjoyable. His commentary seems pretty professional (don't watch sports so have no basis for comparison) and reveals elements of play I was totally unaware of before. http://www.youtube.com/user/HDstarcraft http://www.youtube.com/user/HDstarcraft