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It might be interesting to note that during Starcraft Brood War's heyday as a major esport in Korea, it wasn't really touched by Blizzard. They weren't pushing
by helen___keller 4y ago
It might be interesting to note that during Starcraft Brood War's heyday as a major esport in Korea, it wasn't really touched by Blizzard. They weren't pushing out updates or expansions, or leveraging control of the IP e.g. involving themselves in managing the competitive scene.
Blizzard basically treated the game as "done" and the competitive scene turned into a major esport organically.
- thih9 4y agoThanks. I don’t follow esports or multiplayer/online games; before reading your comment I assumed that this is the usual scenario.
- CyanBird 4y agoStarcraft 1 in Korea was defacto managed by Kespa not blizzard, you can look them up, they are a Korean association, they both Kespa and blizz actually had strong spats and disagreements on it, Kespa would run sc1 not exactly like an sport, but somewhat similar to a "teenager's reality TV show" with the backdrop that the teens were playing video games competitively rather than doing wherever competitive reality TV shows do these days Running esports like actual sports is not really how esports came to be, which is why I very much believe this to be the wrong way to go about it. These days tournament organizers care more of storylines of players battling each other than the actual sport, because that's what's relatable to viewers, humans are hardwired to like stories so now they try to leverage that more than it was done back on 2016 or so
- rvba 4y agoThat is not exactly true. When StarCraft 2 came out there was a big push by Blizzard to kill StarCraft 1 (Brood War). Blizzard tried to force the leagues and players to play both games at the same time. I remember very well how SC2 fans on websites like teamliquid wanted to "kill" Brood War too, so SC2 would somehow get more viewers. Blizzard didnt really know what to do with Brood War's popularity.
- Too 4y agoTo give them credit, they don’t pump out a new half finished StarCraft every Christmas, like others do. SC2 was in almost every aspect a better game, both for players and audiences.
- JamesSwift 4y agoBetter overall, but the nuance and balance of it (which IMO is the secret sauce of BW) was much worse.
- helen___keller 4y agoCorrect, the release of Wings of Liberty marked the end (IMO) of the glory days of brood war. Largely because, as you mentioned, blizzard started to leverage their IP in an attempt to control the esports scene and transition people from BW to WoL.