7 ms·

It was definitely an interesting article but the first sentence of the article proper really grabbed me. The weird thing to me about the world is you can have

by wincy 3y ago

It was definitely an interesting article but the first sentence of the article proper really grabbed me. The weird thing to me about the world is you can have an event that literally millions of people watch around the world, and if you had asked me “what’s the International” five minutes ago I wouldn’t have had any idea, and I’m a very online person! I play video games, even, and at one point played DOTA2! The internet has totally fractionated our culture to subcultures within subcultures, to the point where when people meet in person they have nothing to talk about. Down with the monoculture and all that. It’s astounding how much money and thought and effort went into building the booths too! This is the least surprising part: there is a lot of money sloshing around in the world. The amount of talent to build soundproof booths so people can comfortably play a video game in front of a bunch of people is wild.

__s 3y ago
TI is a bit notorious because it's prize pool is massive compared to other esports. Winning TI puts someone's prize earnings past lifetime earnings of most other top player's career prize earnings in other games https://liquipedia.net/dota2/The_International#Tournaments https://liquipedia.net/dota2/The_International#Tournaments https://liquipedia.net/dota2/Portal:Statistics/Player_earnings https://liquipedia.net/dota2/Portal:Statistics/Player_earnin... https://liquipedia.net/starcraft2/Winnings https://liquipedia.net/starcraft2/Winnings https://liquipedia.net/starcraft/Portal:Statistics/Player_earnings https://liquipedia.net/starcraft/Portal:Statistics/Player_ea...
- bspammer 3y ago
  To hammer it home even more: https://www.esportsearnings.com/players https://www.esportsearnings.com/players 21 dota players at the top before you get a different game (Fortnite)
  - alargemoose 3y ago
    Wow, Not only are the top 21 dota 2 players, all but *4* of the top 50 earners are dota 2 players
    - tym0 3y ago
      And the top 5 earners for CS:GO are all Astralis players.
- fragmede 3y ago
  1st place in 2022 got $8,518,822! Nice!
- q7xvh97o2pDhNrh 3y ago
  Fascinating. This isn't a space I follow, but the data is eye-opening. To contextualize it for myself a bit more, I checked out annual earnings [1] instead of lifetime and compared it to the overall global list [2] of athletes across all sports. One interesting takeaway is that it looks like eSports are still a couple orders of magnitude away from breaking into that rarefied air — the top eSports athletes earned ~$1.8M over the last year, while the cutoff to make it in the list of top 50 global highest-earning athletes is ~$45M. It wouldn't surprise me to see eSports start making it up there over the next couple decades, though. The second interesting takeaway is that, for many athletes in the global top 50, their off-the-field earnings are a big part of their total. By contrast, endorsement deals for eSports athletes don't seem like much of a thing nowadays, other than the occasional team-up for a gaming mouse/keyboard. This seems like it'd be a growth area for eSports over the next couple decades, too. TL;DR: I wish there were some way to buy some ETFs or stake some athletes in the eSports space. It seems like it has a lot of growth ahead of it still. [1]: https://www.esportsearnings.com/players/highest-earnings-last-365-days https://www.esportsearnings.com/players/highest-earnings-las... [2]: https://www.forbes.com/lists/athletes/ https://www.forbes.com/lists/athletes/
  - Huppie 3y ago
    You've probably missed that the former website only lists winnings and does not include the player salaries and other income like from streaming. The numbers are significantly higher for the top players, but sure enough still a lot lower than 'regular' athletes.
  - namtab00 3y ago
    There you go: VanEck Video Gaming and eSports UCITS (ESP0) http://www.investing.com/etfs/vaneck-vectors-videogameesports-gbp http://www.investing.com/etfs/vaneck-vectors-videogameesport...
- kleinsch 3y ago
  This is only prize earnings, important to keep in mind that Dota heavily weights prizes from tournaments. Highest total prize earnings on that chart is $7M, Faker pulls in $5M/year in salary alone.
NikolaNovak 3y ago
Thing is, millions aren't what they used to be! with world population at just over 8 billion, the viewership of 2 million makes it pretty obscure. World cup final had 1.5 Bil viewers apparently (TIL).
- jack_pp 3y ago
  Well, can't really compare a fairly complex computer game where you need to actively play in order to even understand the stream with a.. checks Wikipedia.. 2000 year old game with simple enough rules that you can watch without any knowledge. Football also has the advantage of a fixed rule set. I've played over 4000 hours of dota in my life but none in the last 12 months. I've tried watching it on twitch and the map layout changed, probably new heroes were added or old heroes changed..
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
  - thaumasiotes 3y ago
    > Football also has the advantage of a fixed rule set. I'd tend to agree that video games are ensuring they can never stick around by constantly throwing the rules in the garbage. But if you're going to claim that soccer is 2000 years old, you can't also claim that it has a fixed rule set. It changes at a slower pace. The slower pace of change is an improvement over video games. But it still changes. There is not even continuity between an attested 2000-year-old game and soccer.
  - Cyph0n 3y ago
    That’s why I’m of the opinion that CS is the best spectator esport out there. The rounds are short and the overall barrier to entry for a viewer to enjoy the game is low, yet the skill ceiling is extremely high. Edit: If you’re not familiar with CS, try tuning in to the ESL stream and see how much you understand: https://www.twitch.tv/eslcs https://www.twitch.tv/eslcs
    - matrss 3y ago
jon-wood 3y ago
Everyone being in different sub-cultures doesn’t mean people have nothing to talk about, it makes conversation way more interesting if you’re just willing to step out of your bubble for a bit. Some of the best pub conversations I’ve had have been chatting to someone about things I’d never even heard of until that moment, and finding out about fun niches that I’d probably still not know about otherwise.
Keyframe 3y ago
Also, world got a lot bigger (more people) and smaller (a lot of news instant and online) at the same time.
dubcanada 3y ago
That's strange, The International is a very well known esport event, the biggest in it's hayday, it's certainly dropped off, but at one point there wasn't a way to open Steam without seeing details about the International. While I agree with your premise, The International was heavily advertised on Steam products. Which is the biggest gaming store. Outside of that, there was minimal but anyone who watched esports saw TI stuff, it was always #1 on twitch during its week playoffs/tournament day.
- IggleSniggle 3y ago
  That's an interesting take. I've been playing on Steam since HL2, very regularly, and although I remember DOTA2 being heavily advertised, I don't think I ever saw an ad or promotion for The International. Unlike the other poster, however, I never actually installed DOTA2.
- fragmede 3y ago
  I played World of Warcraft I and II on an IPX network, but I stopped gaming around when Quake 2 died out in favor of CS. I have steam installed on my MacBook. I used Twitch a lot in 2020 and 2021; less so these days. I spend way too much time on HN; I'm not ill informed about other things. Probably saw an ad for it sometime in the past but I can't say I remembered its name or anything. The attention economy is real. There are huge swaths of culture that I'll hear about from friends of friends and it's astounding how much is out there and the conventions they have for it.
  - taneq 3y ago
    I'm guessing that was muscle memory sneaking a 'World of' in there. ;)
- amelius 3y ago
  Another datapoint here: I didn't know about the event either.
  - dubcanada 3y ago
walthamstow 3y ago
> where when people meet in person they have nothing to talk about. Not true IMO. My friends are all nerds with widely varied interests, there is no one single interest that we all share. Only one of us is into model trains, for example, but he still talks about it and we still listen and ask questions. (For reference, we're late 80s/early 90s millennials.)

by wincy 3y ago

__s 3y ago

TI is a bit notorious because it's prize pool is massive compared to other esports. Winning TI puts someone's prize earnings past lifetime earnings of most other top player's career prize earnings in other games https://liquipedia.net/dota2/The_International#Tournaments https://liquipedia.net/dota2/The_International#Tournaments https://liquipedia.net/dota2/Portal:Statistics/Player_earnings https://liquipedia.net/dota2/Portal:Statistics/Player_earnin... https://liquipedia.net/starcraft2/Winnings https://liquipedia.net/starcraft2/Winnings https://liquipedia.net/starcraft/Portal:Statistics/Player_earnings https://liquipedia.net/starcraft/Portal:Statistics/Player_ea...

bspammer 3y ago
To hammer it home even more: https://www.esportsearnings.com/players https://www.esportsearnings.com/players 21 dota players at the top before you get a different game (Fortnite)
- alargemoose 3y ago
  Wow, Not only are the top 21 dota 2 players, all but *4* of the top 50 earners are dota 2 players
  - tym0 3y ago
    And the top 5 earners for CS:GO are all Astralis players.
fragmede 3y ago
1st place in 2022 got $8,518,822! Nice!
q7xvh97o2pDhNrh 3y ago
Fascinating. This isn't a space I follow, but the data is eye-opening. To contextualize it for myself a bit more, I checked out annual earnings [1] instead of lifetime and compared it to the overall global list [2] of athletes across all sports. One interesting takeaway is that it looks like eSports are still a couple orders of magnitude away from breaking into that rarefied air — the top eSports athletes earned ~$1.8M over the last year, while the cutoff to make it in the list of top 50 global highest-earning athletes is ~$45M. It wouldn't surprise me to see eSports start making it up there over the next couple decades, though. The second interesting takeaway is that, for many athletes in the global top 50, their off-the-field earnings are a big part of their total. By contrast, endorsement deals for eSports athletes don't seem like much of a thing nowadays, other than the occasional team-up for a gaming mouse/keyboard. This seems like it'd be a growth area for eSports over the next couple decades, too. TL;DR: I wish there were some way to buy some ETFs or stake some athletes in the eSports space. It seems like it has a lot of growth ahead of it still. [1]: https://www.esportsearnings.com/players/highest-earnings-last-365-days https://www.esportsearnings.com/players/highest-earnings-las... [2]: https://www.forbes.com/lists/athletes/ https://www.forbes.com/lists/athletes/
- Huppie 3y ago
  You've probably missed that the former website only lists winnings and does not include the player salaries and other income like from streaming. The numbers are significantly higher for the top players, but sure enough still a lot lower than 'regular' athletes.
- namtab00 3y ago
  There you go: VanEck Video Gaming and eSports UCITS (ESP0) http://www.investing.com/etfs/vaneck-vectors-videogameesports-gbp http://www.investing.com/etfs/vaneck-vectors-videogameesport...
kleinsch 3y ago
This is only prize earnings, important to keep in mind that Dota heavily weights prizes from tournaments. Highest total prize earnings on that chart is $7M, Faker pulls in $5M/year in salary alone.

NikolaNovak 3y ago

Thing is, millions aren't what they used to be! with world population at just over 8 billion, the viewership of 2 million makes it pretty obscure. World cup final had 1.5 Bil viewers apparently (TIL).

jack_pp 3y ago
Well, can't really compare a fairly complex computer game where you need to actively play in order to even understand the stream with a.. checks Wikipedia.. 2000 year old game with simple enough rules that you can watch without any knowledge. Football also has the advantage of a fixed rule set. I've played over 4000 hours of dota in my life but none in the last 12 months. I've tried watching it on twitch and the map layout changed, probably new heroes were added or old heroes changed..
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- thaumasiotes 3y ago
  > Football also has the advantage of a fixed rule set. I'd tend to agree that video games are ensuring they can never stick around by constantly throwing the rules in the garbage. But if you're going to claim that soccer is 2000 years old, you can't also claim that it has a fixed rule set. It changes at a slower pace. The slower pace of change is an improvement over video games. But it still changes. There is not even continuity between an attested 2000-year-old game and soccer.
- Cyph0n 3y ago
  That’s why I’m of the opinion that CS is the best spectator esport out there. The rounds are short and the overall barrier to entry for a viewer to enjoy the game is low, yet the skill ceiling is extremely high. Edit: If you’re not familiar with CS, try tuning in to the ESL stream and see how much you understand: https://www.twitch.tv/eslcs https://www.twitch.tv/eslcs
  - matrss 3y ago

jon-wood 3y ago

Everyone being in different sub-cultures doesn’t mean people have nothing to talk about, it makes conversation way more interesting if you’re just willing to step out of your bubble for a bit. Some of the best pub conversations I’ve had have been chatting to someone about things I’d never even heard of until that moment, and finding out about fun niches that I’d probably still not know about otherwise.

Keyframe 3y ago

Also, world got a lot bigger (more people) and smaller (a lot of news instant and online) at the same time.

dubcanada 3y ago

That's strange, The International is a very well known esport event, the biggest in it's hayday, it's certainly dropped off, but at one point there wasn't a way to open Steam without seeing details about the International. While I agree with your premise, The International was heavily advertised on Steam products. Which is the biggest gaming store. Outside of that, there was minimal but anyone who watched esports saw TI stuff, it was always #1 on twitch during its week playoffs/tournament day.

IggleSniggle 3y ago
That's an interesting take. I've been playing on Steam since HL2, very regularly, and although I remember DOTA2 being heavily advertised, I don't think I ever saw an ad or promotion for The International. Unlike the other poster, however, I never actually installed DOTA2.
fragmede 3y ago
I played World of Warcraft I and II on an IPX network, but I stopped gaming around when Quake 2 died out in favor of CS. I have steam installed on my MacBook. I used Twitch a lot in 2020 and 2021; less so these days. I spend way too much time on HN; I'm not ill informed about other things. Probably saw an ad for it sometime in the past but I can't say I remembered its name or anything. The attention economy is real. There are huge swaths of culture that I'll hear about from friends of friends and it's astounding how much is out there and the conventions they have for it.
- taneq 3y ago
  I'm guessing that was muscle memory sneaking a 'World of' in there. ;)
amelius 3y ago
Another datapoint here: I didn't know about the event either.
- dubcanada 3y ago

walthamstow 3y ago

> where when people meet in person they have nothing to talk about. Not true IMO. My friends are all nerds with widely varied interests, there is no one single interest that we all share. Only one of us is into model trains, for example, but he still talks about it and we still listen and ask questions. (For reference, we're late 80s/early 90s millennials.)