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It isn't only money. With OWL, it is clear that players have left $100k+ salaries because of the mismanagement of some franchises. In LCS, you hear about teams

It isn't only money. With OWL, it is clear that players have left $100k+ salaries because of the mismanagement of some franchises. In LCS, you hear about teams playing other games in scrim time, it isn't serious. In OWL, the schedule was punishing and you could see that players on some teams weren't happy (and btw, what Seagull doesn't say...if you are a streamer, being in OWL is negative cost publicity...you are getting paid and you build a fanbase...the reason why people like him left was: Fuel is/was chaotically managed, and the league placed massive limitations on your time...now OWL competitive matches get less views than players they cut from their teams get when they stream, genius product management). Games aren't cyclical. The money from some games has dried up, but the top competitive games are the same every year. And the money in those games is fairly good (LCS isn't the largest LoL league, average pay is close to half a mil). Consumers want to watch pros play the big games: LoL, CS:GO, DOTA2, etc. But I think the gap between the 1st and 10th best player isn't as large as it is in some conventional sports (and the games are far less luck-based), so teams are quite happy to rinse players when they have a bad game and they don't tend to come back (it isn't related to age or even skill atrophy, it is related to the pressure to always win...you see the same thing in soccer where teams take short-term decisions for decades and get nowhere, regardless of how many resources they throw at it i.e. Manchester United). Ironically, I think this has damaged the product. With OWL, they had an okay product but it was totally mismanaged at multiple levels. They tried to create franchises, but teams trade players furiously (so you had a London that was all Korean players, and which played in the Asia time zone during Covid). Most people watch to see their favourite player, the vast majority of the big names have retired or quit...so the teams will keep furiously trading, and no-one will watch because their favourite player isn't playing anymore (we will see what happens with OW2, but I doubt things improve...the product is just sterile). Esports leagues have a very skewed understanding of why people watch.

dmix 5y ago
For non-gamers like me: OWL = Overwatch league LCS = League of legends championship series
tmpz22 5y ago
OWL raised over $100M and tried to blitz scale a sport into popular culture. In their hubris they made a long list of mistakes certainly including the ones you mention. To me the dumbest thing they did was legally kill community tournaments that made Competitive overwatch a thing in the first place. If they had kept a strong T2 league it could’ve done much more then cultivate talent for the pro league, they could’ve iterated and experimented on formats with the clear winning ideas being used by OWL FOR FREE. Bunch of dummies who probably cashed out fantastically on their individual comp. - former impassioned fan
- skippyboxedhero 5y ago
  The reason why the community tournaments were so popular was the authenticity. I think people remember some of those moments more than anything that happened in OWL because they were real. And I could have forgiven it, if anyone made money...I don't think anyone has made money out of OWL. The fact they raised $100m was the first sign they were about to incinerate it all. Maybe it can't ever recover but I think the game could have been more popular than LoL in the West. It had such a broad base of users (the only FPS-style game that had women) but they couldn't manage the game, couldn't manage the league, just total failure at every level (and they took years to develop OW2, which is basically a reskin of the original...embarrassing).
- jdgoesmarching 5y ago
  I loved Overwatch for a time and always thought it made for a poor esport in terms of watchability. Fast-paced MOBAs might work if your game is top down, but trying to follow 12 different heroes in a FPS popping a cluster of giant ult animations is impossible.
  - JohnBooty 5y ago
    but trying to follow 12 different heroes in a FPS popping a cluster of giant ult animations is impossible. I (very casually) played a lot of FPS back in the day: Quake 1/2/3, Tribes 1/2, TF2, etc. I watched some Overwatch matches on TV and found it... extremely hard to follow. 1. Watching other people play from a first-person perspective is rough. They need to figure out better camera angles or something. I don't know the exact answer there. Also needed, perhaps, replays of key moments? Even more so than traditional sports, esports is so "blink and you missed it" 2. I've never played Overwatch specifically, so I didn't know the maps at all. The broadcasts really need to address this somehow unless they only want to appeal to people that already know the maps. Give me some kind of.... map overlay so I know where the heck the action is happening, relative to the goals on the map. 3. The announcers were unlistenable. They just sounded like fans. "OH!!!!!! GAMERDUDE123 WITH THE KILL!!!!! OOOOOOHHHHH!!!!!" Broadcasting traditional sports is extremely hard, and esports doubly so, so I realize how difficult a task it is. But my god. Unlistenable. This was a few years ao, maybe it's better now. But it was basically a nightmare to me.
presentation 5y ago
> Games aren't cyclical. The money from some games has dried up, but the top competitive games are the same every year. Zooming out, LoL was released in 2009; soccer was "released" maybe around 1848, not counting similar games throughout history [1]. I find it hard to believe that any of the listed games will remain dominant for very long relatively speaking, just by the fact that they are software products of the moment. People don't think of "soccer" as a product whatsoever; this changes the economics of going pro. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Association_football#History https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Association_football#History
- sgarman 5y ago
  Sure but it's not like Soccer was the ONLY game invented 1800's, it's just the one we talk about because it was the best / survived the longest. There is probably a graveyard of ball related games that just didn't catch on. Additionally it's not like the first version of Soccer is how we play today - tons of iterations happening over time. I don't think it's totally fair to say none of the current esports games won't live a longer life - we just haven't had enough time yet to see which ones or if. I do think the biggest issue of longevity is that these (e)sports are owned by private companies. You sorta hit at this about them being products. Companies can essentially can kill them when they want or if they stop making enough money. Maybe some sort of open source game yet to be developed owned by the community will be the first game to meet your Soccer like comparison.

dmix 5y ago

For non-gamers like me: OWL = Overwatch league LCS = League of legends championship series

tmpz22 5y ago

OWL raised over $100M and tried to blitz scale a sport into popular culture. In their hubris they made a long list of mistakes certainly including the ones you mention. To me the dumbest thing they did was legally kill community tournaments that made Competitive overwatch a thing in the first place. If they had kept a strong T2 league it could’ve done much more then cultivate talent for the pro league, they could’ve iterated and experimented on formats with the clear winning ideas being used by OWL FOR FREE. Bunch of dummies who probably cashed out fantastically on their individual comp. - former impassioned fan

skippyboxedhero 5y ago
The reason why the community tournaments were so popular was the authenticity. I think people remember some of those moments more than anything that happened in OWL because they were real. And I could have forgiven it, if anyone made money...I don't think anyone has made money out of OWL. The fact they raised $100m was the first sign they were about to incinerate it all. Maybe it can't ever recover but I think the game could have been more popular than LoL in the West. It had such a broad base of users (the only FPS-style game that had women) but they couldn't manage the game, couldn't manage the league, just total failure at every level (and they took years to develop OW2, which is basically a reskin of the original...embarrassing).
jdgoesmarching 5y ago
I loved Overwatch for a time and always thought it made for a poor esport in terms of watchability. Fast-paced MOBAs might work if your game is top down, but trying to follow 12 different heroes in a FPS popping a cluster of giant ult animations is impossible.
- JohnBooty 5y ago
  but trying to follow 12 different heroes in a FPS popping a cluster of giant ult animations is impossible. I (very casually) played a lot of FPS back in the day: Quake 1/2/3, Tribes 1/2, TF2, etc. I watched some Overwatch matches on TV and found it... extremely hard to follow. 1. Watching other people play from a first-person perspective is rough. They need to figure out better camera angles or something. I don't know the exact answer there. Also needed, perhaps, replays of key moments? Even more so than traditional sports, esports is so "blink and you missed it" 2. I've never played Overwatch specifically, so I didn't know the maps at all. The broadcasts really need to address this somehow unless they only want to appeal to people that already know the maps. Give me some kind of.... map overlay so I know where the heck the action is happening, relative to the goals on the map. 3. The announcers were unlistenable. They just sounded like fans. "OH!!!!!! GAMERDUDE123 WITH THE KILL!!!!! OOOOOOHHHHH!!!!!" Broadcasting traditional sports is extremely hard, and esports doubly so, so I realize how difficult a task it is. But my god. Unlistenable. This was a few years ao, maybe it's better now. But it was basically a nightmare to me.

presentation 5y ago

> Games aren't cyclical. The money from some games has dried up, but the top competitive games are the same every year. Zooming out, LoL was released in 2009; soccer was "released" maybe around 1848, not counting similar games throughout history [1]. I find it hard to believe that any of the listed games will remain dominant for very long relatively speaking, just by the fact that they are software products of the moment. People don't think of "soccer" as a product whatsoever; this changes the economics of going pro. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Association_football#History https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Association_football#History

sgarman 5y ago
Sure but it's not like Soccer was the ONLY game invented 1800's, it's just the one we talk about because it was the best / survived the longest. There is probably a graveyard of ball related games that just didn't catch on. Additionally it's not like the first version of Soccer is how we play today - tons of iterations happening over time. I don't think it's totally fair to say none of the current esports games won't live a longer life - we just haven't had enough time yet to see which ones or if. I do think the biggest issue of longevity is that these (e)sports are owned by private companies. You sorta hit at this about them being products. Companies can essentially can kill them when they want or if they stop making enough money. Maybe some sort of open source game yet to be developed owned by the community will be the first game to meet your Soccer like comparison.