7 ms·

This is only a problem because businesses are trying to prop up competitive scenes for arbitrary games from nothing, which is a silly way to go about this. The

This is only a problem because businesses are trying to prop up competitive scenes for arbitrary games from nothing, which is a silly way to go about this. They're games, people play them for fun. Let the competitive scene develop organically and then go in with investor money for better broadcast equipment and sponsors and shit and draft a team to compete in the existing competitive scene. Trying to just create a competitive scene for random games out of thin air when players haven't even shown they're going to stick around for it is insane. The default approach for any unproven competitive game should at most be "hey we're hosting an official tournament with a modest prize pool in the hope to drive adoption of our game, if it works we might do it again next year" not "we're investing millions into regional teams and stadiums out of thin air like we're bootstrapping the fucking NFL, and don't you dare host your own tournaments.".

lbhdc 4y ago
I agree. It seems like if companies are pulling out its probably best for the scene. I think people still want to have fun and compete against each other, and it will be more interesting to see organic competitions instead of the large corporate sponsored ones.
smeagull 4y ago
The few scenes I've followed (so two) have died because funding disappeared and the games stopped getting updates, with one ladder being taken off the internet entirely. I am hesitant to bother getting into any new esport.
wolverine876 4y ago
Maybe the sports model doesn't apply at all, and it's arguably pretty unimaginative to try to force the proven sports model onto computer games. Is there another way to play as a collective experience, and to monetize it (not that I care to monetize it, but obviously some do)? Or another way of approaching the issue, do we need more than what's already in multiplayer online games? Should we just add something to those that is more of a mass collective interaction?
- p1necone 4y ago
  The regional model definitely doesn't make sense for video games given their non physical nature. At a continent/country level it does (because people too far away wouldn't be playing together because of latency). Fighting games are a bit of an exception because historically they've been in person only, again because of latency. Modern rollback netcode has made this less of an issue though. My first thought is that online communities should have their own teams, what game would HN play competitively?
  - wolverine876 4y ago
    Ha. Game of Life? Nethack? Crypto puzzles? Obsfucated code competition?
    - jamiek88 4y ago
      Dwarf fortress. ascii of course.
      - p1necone 4y ago
        Dwarf Fortress hot potato is fun. Each player takes care of the fort for N hours, and then passes it on to the next player. Every time someone manages to lose the fort to FUN! they're eliminated and the remaining players start up a new one.
        fbdab103 4y ago
        Sounds like strategic seat-ordering and sabotage is the name of the game. Five minutes before the end of your slot, destroy everything, unleash the kracken, etc.
        ilyt 4y ago
        Ye it would quickly devolve to some no-counter strats
        4y ago
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
JamesSwift 4y ago
Its a chicken-egg situation. You need talent to attract attention, and you need attention to attract talent. You have to bootstrap prize pools etc IMO to hit critical mass until it becomes a "self fulfilling prophecy" and keeps the players invested. Otherwise, the next thing that offers a more legit prize pools and sponsorships is the "correct" choice if they are trying to make this their living.
- p1necone 4y ago
  I don't think it really is a chicken and egg problem though - hardly any of the competitive scenes for the biggest games historically got bootrapped like this: Counterstrike: Organic community, Valve only started putting effort/money into it after it had already proved itself. Starcraft: ditto DoTA: ditto AoE2: ditto Smash: Nintendo is practically actively hostile to the competitive community, it persists regardless. DoTA 2 and LoL arguably weren't bootstrapped either - they relied on players jumping ship from the already existing and proven OG DoTA scene.
  - JamesSwift 4y ago
    It seems you are arguing that the _competitive scene_ exists, which I dont dispute. I was under the impression we were discussing the _ability for a player to play the game as their career_. i.e. The equivalent of a pro sports athlete but for a video game. The players are for the most part going to move to where the money is (and esports are unique in that way, where skillsets are more transferable between games). That said, DOTA 2 is a large part of the current "esports" wave of payout-driven hype trains. The International was an unabashed marketing play to drive interest ("It drew attention due to its staggering $1.6 million USD prize pool, the highest prize pool of any single esports tournament at that time." [1]). [1] - https://liquipedia.net/dota2/The_International https://liquipedia.net/dota2/The_International
dragonwriter 4y ago
If you let it develop organically before investing, there’ll be more money chasing from more people who recognize the potential by the time you invest, so you’ll get smaller upside, having to pay more for a similar share.
TulliusCicero 4y ago
While I'm inclined to agree, when it comes to developers with a strong reputation for making fun competitive games, I can understand how it could make sense to just jump in immediately with lots of money. The goal is obviously that if you make a big investment into a competitive scene, that may attract top tier talent from other games, and that talent will itself bring in more regular players and viewers.
- p1necone 4y ago
  Yeah this is a fair take too. Riot seems to have been largely successful in this approach with Valorant. Blizzard tried with Overwatch but imo they tried to push an overly structured approach with too much top down control way too far.
  - TulliusCicero 4y ago
    Maybe, but from what I heard, Overwatch was also left in the lurch when it comes to content for a long while.
- fbdab103 4y ago
  Gaming is the reddest of the red oceans. People only have so many hours in a day so if they are playing X they are not playing Y. Huge first mover and network effects to be the popular game.
ilyt 4y ago
Pretty much. Just looking at biggest titles, they are all designed to appeal to any skill level of play and "just" be fun PvP game Games "designed for esports" are trying to push horse before the cart. Game needs to get the playerbase first, be interesting and competitive in the long run second and then you can scoop people on top, put them in funny named teams and make them duke out to the public you get from having a big playerbase
- jedmeyers 4y ago
  > Game needs to get the playerbase first, be interesting and competitive in the long run second and then... Ain't nobody got time for dat. Push the new game out, organize two tournaments, recycle the game into the next iteration... Rinse and repeat.
bakugo 4y ago
This comment would've made sense 10 years ago, but it doesn't today. The modern gaming landscape is generally incompatible with organic competitive scene development, and really anything else that might be considered "organic". The developers want to have full control over the game, how it's played, when it's played, and who plays it. They don't want anything to develop "organically" without them having a hand in it so they can extract as much profit from it. > They're games, people play them for fun. There's another big problem right there: this isn't really true anymore for most multiplayer games. Most that released in the past few years (and some games that were older but were updated) come with dozens of "features" designed to force people to play them even when they don't want to: battle passes, limited time events, endless grinds, etc, this is done to maximize engagement and profit and effectively turns the games into chores rather than something you do for fun. Doesn't help that most of these games weren't really fun in the first place.
- noobermin 4y ago
  Stuff like this is why people overestimate "market effects" and under estimate just group think in industries. Sure it is "more profitable" in some sense to do it this way, but you'd imagine someone somewhere will make a small fps that doesn't have this overly controlled crap and then win big, taking a share of the big guys' profits, and then the cycle churns into a new area of phase space. The reason that hasn't happened yet is because a) gamers are just too dumb or lead by hype to try small non-triple A titles (which isn't quite true) or b) the groupthink in the industry is too thick for anyone to even try it. I feel like it's a combination of these two, probably more of b) but enough of a) justifies developer's collective illusions about what is proftable (that is, b))
  - Red_Leaves_Flyy 4y ago
    New gamers with disposable income and generally little education or world experience are produced cyclically. Middle and high school students have the time to no life games long enough to become truly great at them in ways that no adult with only a few free hours every week can compete with. So the adults with jobs and families and kids drop out of the AAA games using FOMO as a crutch to prop up sales and engagement metrics. The kids, lacking fully developed PFCs get enamored by these exploitative tactics and every now and then one of these games get this perfect and print billions. With a declining population, incoming generations who grew up with modern video games and their tactics, and increasing scrutiny of psychological manipulation of children by video game companies I expect these companies to maliciously double down on their tactics instead of increasing investment into original content and novel games that present too much risk for the boring and greedy money men running the companies and investment funds.

lbhdc 4y ago

I agree. It seems like if companies are pulling out its probably best for the scene. I think people still want to have fun and compete against each other, and it will be more interesting to see organic competitions instead of the large corporate sponsored ones.

smeagull 4y ago

The few scenes I've followed (so two) have died because funding disappeared and the games stopped getting updates, with one ladder being taken off the internet entirely. I am hesitant to bother getting into any new esport.

wolverine876 4y ago

Maybe the sports model doesn't apply at all, and it's arguably pretty unimaginative to try to force the proven sports model onto computer games. Is there another way to play as a collective experience, and to monetize it (not that I care to monetize it, but obviously some do)? Or another way of approaching the issue, do we need more than what's already in multiplayer online games? Should we just add something to those that is more of a mass collective interaction?

p1necone 4y ago
The regional model definitely doesn't make sense for video games given their non physical nature. At a continent/country level it does (because people too far away wouldn't be playing together because of latency). Fighting games are a bit of an exception because historically they've been in person only, again because of latency. Modern rollback netcode has made this less of an issue though. My first thought is that online communities should have their own teams, what game would HN play competitively?
- wolverine876 4y ago
  Ha. Game of Life? Nethack? Crypto puzzles? Obsfucated code competition?
  - jamiek88 4y ago
    Dwarf fortress. ascii of course.
    - p1necone 4y ago
      Dwarf Fortress hot potato is fun. Each player takes care of the fort for N hours, and then passes it on to the next player. Every time someone manages to lose the fort to FUN! they're eliminated and the remaining players start up a new one.
      - fbdab103 4y ago
        Sounds like strategic seat-ordering and sabotage is the name of the game. Five minutes before the end of your slot, destroy everything, unleash the kracken, etc.
        ilyt 4y ago
        Ye it would quickly devolve to some no-counter strats
        4y ago

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

JamesSwift 4y ago

Its a chicken-egg situation. You need talent to attract attention, and you need attention to attract talent. You have to bootstrap prize pools etc IMO to hit critical mass until it becomes a "self fulfilling prophecy" and keeps the players invested. Otherwise, the next thing that offers a more legit prize pools and sponsorships is the "correct" choice if they are trying to make this their living.

p1necone 4y ago
I don't think it really is a chicken and egg problem though - hardly any of the competitive scenes for the biggest games historically got bootrapped like this: Counterstrike: Organic community, Valve only started putting effort/money into it after it had already proved itself. Starcraft: ditto DoTA: ditto AoE2: ditto Smash: Nintendo is practically actively hostile to the competitive community, it persists regardless. DoTA 2 and LoL arguably weren't bootstrapped either - they relied on players jumping ship from the already existing and proven OG DoTA scene.
- JamesSwift 4y ago
  It seems you are arguing that the _competitive scene_ exists, which I dont dispute. I was under the impression we were discussing the _ability for a player to play the game as their career_. i.e. The equivalent of a pro sports athlete but for a video game. The players are for the most part going to move to where the money is (and esports are unique in that way, where skillsets are more transferable between games). That said, DOTA 2 is a large part of the current "esports" wave of payout-driven hype trains. The International was an unabashed marketing play to drive interest ("It drew attention due to its staggering $1.6 million USD prize pool, the highest prize pool of any single esports tournament at that time." [1]). [1] - https://liquipedia.net/dota2/The_International https://liquipedia.net/dota2/The_International

dragonwriter 4y ago

If you let it develop organically before investing, there’ll be more money chasing from more people who recognize the potential by the time you invest, so you’ll get smaller upside, having to pay more for a similar share.

TulliusCicero 4y ago

While I'm inclined to agree, when it comes to developers with a strong reputation for making fun competitive games, I can understand how it could make sense to just jump in immediately with lots of money. The goal is obviously that if you make a big investment into a competitive scene, that may attract top tier talent from other games, and that talent will itself bring in more regular players and viewers.

p1necone 4y ago
Yeah this is a fair take too. Riot seems to have been largely successful in this approach with Valorant. Blizzard tried with Overwatch but imo they tried to push an overly structured approach with too much top down control way too far.
- TulliusCicero 4y ago
  Maybe, but from what I heard, Overwatch was also left in the lurch when it comes to content for a long while.
fbdab103 4y ago
Gaming is the reddest of the red oceans. People only have so many hours in a day so if they are playing X they are not playing Y. Huge first mover and network effects to be the popular game.

ilyt 4y ago

Pretty much. Just looking at biggest titles, they are all designed to appeal to any skill level of play and "just" be fun PvP game Games "designed for esports" are trying to push horse before the cart. Game needs to get the playerbase first, be interesting and competitive in the long run second and then you can scoop people on top, put them in funny named teams and make them duke out to the public you get from having a big playerbase

jedmeyers 4y ago
> Game needs to get the playerbase first, be interesting and competitive in the long run second and then... Ain't nobody got time for dat. Push the new game out, organize two tournaments, recycle the game into the next iteration... Rinse and repeat.

bakugo 4y ago

This comment would've made sense 10 years ago, but it doesn't today. The modern gaming landscape is generally incompatible with organic competitive scene development, and really anything else that might be considered "organic". The developers want to have full control over the game, how it's played, when it's played, and who plays it. They don't want anything to develop "organically" without them having a hand in it so they can extract as much profit from it. > They're games, people play them for fun. There's another big problem right there: this isn't really true anymore for most multiplayer games. Most that released in the past few years (and some games that were older but were updated) come with dozens of "features" designed to force people to play them even when they don't want to: battle passes, limited time events, endless grinds, etc, this is done to maximize engagement and profit and effectively turns the games into chores rather than something you do for fun. Doesn't help that most of these games weren't really fun in the first place.

noobermin 4y ago
Stuff like this is why people overestimate "market effects" and under estimate just group think in industries. Sure it is "more profitable" in some sense to do it this way, but you'd imagine someone somewhere will make a small fps that doesn't have this overly controlled crap and then win big, taking a share of the big guys' profits, and then the cycle churns into a new area of phase space. The reason that hasn't happened yet is because a) gamers are just too dumb or lead by hype to try small non-triple A titles (which isn't quite true) or b) the groupthink in the industry is too thick for anyone to even try it. I feel like it's a combination of these two, probably more of b) but enough of a) justifies developer's collective illusions about what is proftable (that is, b))
- Red_Leaves_Flyy 4y ago
  New gamers with disposable income and generally little education or world experience are produced cyclically. Middle and high school students have the time to no life games long enough to become truly great at them in ways that no adult with only a few free hours every week can compete with. So the adults with jobs and families and kids drop out of the AAA games using FOMO as a crutch to prop up sales and engagement metrics. The kids, lacking fully developed PFCs get enamored by these exploitative tactics and every now and then one of these games get this perfect and print billions. With a declining population, incoming generations who grew up with modern video games and their tactics, and increasing scrutiny of psychological manipulation of children by video game companies I expect these companies to maliciously double down on their tactics instead of increasing investment into original content and novel games that present too much risk for the boring and greedy money men running the companies and investment funds.