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Why People Watch StarCraft, Instead of Playing
generalepsilon writes "Researchers from the University of Washington have found a key reason why StarCraft is a popular spectator sport (PDF), especially in Korea. In a paper published last week, they theorize that StarCraft incorporates 'information asymmetry,' where the players and spectators each have different pieces of information, which transforms into entertainment. Sometimes spectators know something the players don't; they watch in suspense as players walk their armies into traps or a dropship sneaks behind the mineral line. Other times, players know something the spectators yearn to find out, such as 'cheese' (spectacular build orders that attempt to outplay an opponent early in the game). Rather than giving as much information as possible to spectators, it may be more crucial for game designers to decide which information to give to spectators, and when to reveal this information."
And by "post" I mean ZERG RUSH!
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
Or maybe it's like any other competitive sport, there are people who enjoy watching it being played at a higher level than they themselves are able to participate at?
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Like most academics, I think they have put way too much thought into this.
Outside of Korea I imagine people for the most part watch this stuff because it’s awe-inspiring to see someone playing who has literally dedicated a huge chunk of his life to the game and as a result is mind blowing skilled at it. Inside of Korea they watch it for the same reason everyone else watches hockey, soccer, football, etc
These guys really do treat it as a professional sport in Korea... with training camps, massive salaries, licensing and a _draft_. Spectators are just a part of that. Whether or not you take the “esport” seriously, it’s still something to see at least once, even as just a novelty.
As for playing vs watching, I assume it’s the same as any other “sport”. I can play hockey with the guys at work, and still enjoy watching professional hockey players who dedicate way more time to the game and are better at it then I’ll ever be. One can play starcraft with their friends while still having an appreciation for people who take it seriously.
It's actually because starcraft has a horrible user interface and AI engine so it's more entertaining for some people to watch play at the expert level than try to actually play and accomplish nothing because they aren't fast enough
this is a phenomenon unique to starcraft, and absent from more strategic and better designed RTS games where playing the game is much more popular than watching experts
"Such as 'cheese' (spectacular build orders that attempt to outplay an opponent early in the game)."
I'm going to start canon-rushing just so I can quote that line when I get raged. "Sorry you were no match for my spectacular build order, NOOB".
I wish they would include a "spectator" mode in more online games. I'm not very twitch quick, but I do enjoy *watching* a lot of FPS multiplayer (where you can see the really quick and clever guys pull off some amazing stuff). I wish there were more games with a mode that let me walk around as a "ghost" in the game, just watching without having to worry about getting killed and tea-bagged over and over again by 14-year-olds.
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
it's because some of us like the game and enjoy watching people who have mastered it.
Why people watch football instead of playing.
So there are also these things where you can watch other people play. There is no "information asymmetry". And thousands of people watch those, too.
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I watch because its interesting seeing a much higher level of play than I will ever be, learning about the game and strategies,
and sometimes for the great commentators such as LAGTV.
Any game can be interesting watch. Depending on the player,
it could be a great movie or a retarded painful mess to watch.
This is especially true with assassins creed.
This seems similar to watching poker on TV where the viewer knows what cards all the players are holding. There is still suspense with regards to the flop (and turn/river) and whether the betting/bluffing strategies will work.
a quick visit to any porn site will tell you this.
I love StarCraft 2, however it is extremely stressful to play. Sometimes I just want to chill, so I bring up the teamliquid.net stream list and watch my favorite players instead. Note that this is different than spectating a match as an observer/referee because you are essentially looking over the players shoulder and aren't privy to what his opponent is doing.
That being said, watching live cast games from the observer point of view (such as the recent TSL3) is a lot of fun as well. It really amazes me how much production value these tournaments have.
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Remember that article put out recently about how Koreans have higher rates of autism than other counties?
Why do people watch football? Because playing the game isn't nearly as fun as it first appears. It's hot, exhausting, boring, routine work. The only upside is in pitting your "wits" against equally determined players. In other words it's only rewarding at the extreme levels.
As a Starcraft player, I suck.
At my level (bronze), Starcraft is primarily not a strategy game, it's a "push buttons faster" game. The best thing I could do to improve my play is to make more stuff and spend more money. At low levels it's a game of who can make the most stuff (almost ignoring what that stuff is). If I had perfect macro, made only marines and did absolutely 0 micro I'd probably at least move out of bronze and maybe further.
Watching Starcraft is the only way I get to enjoy the game as a strategy game. When I see a player, for example, cancel a hatchery after having it scouted and then build a baneling nest on the remaining creep I can enjoy what a brilliant strategic that is. If I were to try that at my skill level I'd probably screw it up or my opponent wouldn't know how to react even if they fell for my trap.
The game I watch is almost a totally different game from the game, at my skill level, that I play.
I watch rather than play for a couple of reasons. 1) I haven't shelled out the 60 bucks for it because of 2) I have very little guaranteed uninterrupted time (I have 2 small children) so I can't play games reliably. However I can watch day9's Funday Monday and laugh my head off, or listen to Husky spaz out in glee at something amazing that a pro has done or watch Total Biscuit berate himself for making stupid mistakes in real time. It's like watching any other sport.
It is interesting what people like to watch and why.
It always intrigued me that a whole bunch of people who don't play football or baseball watch those things on TV.
Yet not many people watch live chess matches, etc.
I think another key issue is that StarCraft is one of the more frustrating games to lose for some people. When I play a game of Ultimate and my team loses, I can usually understand what mistakes we made, what plays we let go that we should have stopped and where we were outplayed. It's still disappointing to lose, but it's readily understood when it happens.
SC2, in particular, has a lot of information asymmetry between the individual players, not just the spectators and players. When I lose a match in SC2 I feel dumb. I still know there's something I should have scouted, a change I should have made in my build order, somewhere I could have had some better micro, or even when I fell behind on my macro, etc, but I don't really know what, at the moment of my defeat, I should have done differently. So I go back, and I watch, and I see all my mistakes, and I see my opponent's mistakes, and I think, "Why didn't I push then? Why did I leave this point undefended for so long? Why did I make unit x instead of unit y?"
One figures out why one lost, but one has to go through the process of watching it all over again, and watching all one's chances to win just stroll on by.
You can probably describe the same thing in TV poker. Everyone watching can see all the players hands, and can see a train wreak coming. Players also like to think how they would react to the same plays given the amount of information.
I own the game, but play rarely, mostly because I suck.
I believe this is because Chess, while interesting to an educated viewer, is probably excessively dull for anyone who doesn't know quite a lot about chess. I'm a pretty smart guy, but I would not watch a chess match, because I would not understand anything of what they are doing and why.
Starcraft differs from this, in that there is a lot of fancy graphics and action. There is a lot of goodies going on for the people into the game, but an uneducated viewer could also enjoy it because there is a lot of action, and it's easier to "get" at minimum knowledge of the game.
Chess is relatively "boring". It's gameplay is very abstract and doesn't involve a whole lot of action since it's Turn Based, it's also very focused and can be completely cast with a single camera. StarCraft is a Real-Time Strategy Game with a huge area of play, lots of possibilities and a lot more things going on at once and every caster can bring their own viewpoint, change camera's and it will be a completely different cast every time. Chess also has very few 'units' and not a whole lot of animation.
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Ordinarily I would say this is because when we sit down for entertainment, we expect a minimum rate of feedback per unit time. Things don't necessarily have to constantly be happening, but things have to happen fast enough. And even when things aren't happening for long stretches, that's why we have color commentary.
For chess, unless you have timers set short enough to speed matches up, there's not going to be that rate of feedback most folks want. Yes, some would still find it entertaining, but you have to achieve a critical mass before it becomes popular enough to warrant significant attention.
Also, there's a lot more to be gained from watching these esports than what you would get from a summation of the win results. The "box score" might say you had a 1.7:1 kill ratio, with a much higher resource capture rate, but it doesn't show how you managed it. That brilliant move in the middle game of your chess match, the one that blew open your opponent's defense? I'm going to see that in the move summary. They even have a notation for particularly unexpected moves. In essence, I can capture the bulk of the match, not only the what but the how, by looking at the equivalent of the "box score".
Interesting timing for this article. I just released a Starcraft 2 spectator mod that builds on the features of the most popular observer maps on Battle.net (currently 1v1 Obs by Slime and iCJug by Rodrigo). I am hoping to form a partnership with iCCup to apply this to pro-level ladder maps. I love watching SC2 matches, which inspired me to spend my weekends for the last few months working on this, and I am committed to adding features on an ongoing basis.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YmZ64QqD5d0
I can theorize as well. Their methodology doesn't seem much more accurate than an educated guess.
As for the topic itself, from personal experience, watching has not much to do with the additional info that the audience has, because most live streams aren't good enough at highlighting such things. The players themselves are much more attuned to the timing and rhythm of their game and even if one player can't see what the other is doing directly, he is usually more expectant of it happening than the audience can be. In many cases, he knows exactly what the other player is doing with high probability be being correct without having direct knowledge of it.
To me, watching is fun because I know how to play the game. And I know that everything the pros are doing on screen takes tons of research and practice to get right. Some are physically impossible for me to do (the speed of their clicks and key presses, for example). From playing the game, I've learned to appreciate what goes into every little action I see on screen.
People watch people play Starcraft? Oh this is just a Korean thing...they have weird fascinations with games that other cultures don't.
Ave Molech Setting
And I'm not that good at it; not the sharpest tool in the shed, indeed not even in the shed! But if you know in general what the pro players are doing it is fun to watch even if you do not understand why they are doing what they do. Besides which all that APM hurts my fingers!
Not really the same thing. With the fog of war in Starcraft, information is a resource just as valuable as anything else. Come to think of it, though, adding fog of war to football and chess would prove interesting indeed...
I've been to a chess tournament with some of the world's top players (Kasparov, Anand, Kramnik included). The hall was packed pretty full of people watching the game boards on the big screen. So yeah, people watch even chess.
Of course chess doesn't really make a good spectator sport. One problem is the speed - a single move will take several minutes, can take half an hour even, that isn't exactly fun to watch even if you're into chess. The other problem is the level of skill involved. You have to be a very skilled player to see the reasoning behind Kasparov's moves. If you're an enthusiast, 90% of moves at that level will leave you clueless as to why they were made. This is rather different from Starcraft, where a bronze-level player may understand what the pro player is doing, or from football, where a fan can appreciate quality passing without being able to do anything remotely similar.
We don't watch starcraft because it's a a good sport. We do do it because Day 9 is hilarious.
I remember someone asking me once why I care about football. I thought about it for a second and replied, "Why does anyone care about anything?"
I think they just rediscovered dramatic irony. Good work!
Or, you could, you know, play League of Legends, where watching what your teammates do is actually part of the game, and thus, it appeals to both, and being a good spectator can actually help you in playing the game?
I was thoroughly unimpressed with Starcraft 2, because the developers seem almost hell-bent on refusing to innovate. If you really want to see something amazing and you're pointing your eyes at the RTS industry, be sure to take a look at the mod developers, because they've done far more impressive work.
If you can read this, I forgot to post anonymously.
That definition has to be the most positive take on cheese ever.
In chess, there are no psychic commandos shooting nuclear bombs.
Andrew
I've never played SC2, but I enjoy watching it sometimes because a talented commentator can bring so much life to the game. Having played other RTSes in the past, I can understand what's going on to a degree by myself, but a great commentary to go with a game adds so much.
By the way, it's amusing that this should be posted on FUNDAY MONDAY: look up "day9 funday monday" if you need a compelling reason why SC2 can be fun to watch.
Your statement stands for observing, but here are some other thoughts on the two games:
Speaking as someone who played in a reasonably high level in both: Made the first Blizzard world championships in Brood War, and made 1000x my initial bankroll in Poker:
In Starcraft, you will only win tournaments if you're really good. In Poker, you don't need to be the best to win tournaments.
Because you need to be really good in Starcraft to win, there isn't much money for players who aren't top 1000 players.
Because anyone can win in Poker, sometimes you play perfectly and still lose.
If you're a top 10000, but not top 1000 player in Poker, you'll still make money just beating up on people worse than you. There is no such money to be had in Starcraft.
In Starcraft the ladder ranking system makes you a 50% player unless you're top 10 on the server, or you're at the bottom of the ladder. In Poker, it is pretty easy to find people worse than you and get over 50% rating when you're not top 10 in the world.
God spoke to me.
I think its funny when people watch me play. i know its whom ever i am playings friends who are on the phone with them telling them what i am building. its called cheating...duh. but i usually still win...no cheese here.
And this is why developers need two monitors. How better to keep your skills sharp than to both play and watch at the same time?
Keep your pants on. He'll get back to coding in just a minute.
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The key word here is Starcraft
Everyone knows no one is watching or playing Starcraft 2. Especially the Koreans.
Totalbiscuit!
Best damn color commentator ever. Shoutcraft is one damn interesting show to watch.
It's not just Starcraft tough. I'm not the only one who enjoys watching other people play games, that why the entire genre of "Let's Play" exist.
But... the future refused to change.
in turkey sc community, in between 1998-2005, we have watched a lot of games of our fellow players, and rarely these were better than us.
There is a magic to watching it than playing it - first it saves the hassle, second, its good to see people use their brain and wits to match against other. and indeed, there can be a lot of humor in between spectators while watching.
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The problem with e-sports is the niggers.
As streaming takes hold, it is hard to reconcile good taste with the fact that the blacks are increasingly on the stream. Even worse, they are heard to speak and to use their ghetto-infested lingo whilst at it. Many a potential lover and follower of the sports has been turned off by the sight of the once pure and beloved path to mastery in these electronic lands now requiring one to "keep it real" or "know what someone is saying."
People like to watch others do cool things better themselves.
It's cheaper and less time intensive than to do it yourself well.
Commentaries are fun (as others have said).
Researchers are idiots who come up with idiot ideas so they can get paid.
But my question is- how much money did they spend on this. What's next, why do we like watching pro football rather than playing? Hopefully, it wasn't federal taxpayer's money, so it was contained to the student's and/or the states money (I don't live there).
Vote monkeys into Congress. They are cheaper and more trustworthy.
I think in Korea SC2 is very comparable to Chess, it's got a fan following but it's nothing like baseball or football in the states. People show up to gaming conventions all the time for all sorts of games just to watch. The original had almost unlimited depth to it's play style and from that arose a fan following, time will tell with the 2nd one, but right now it's at least partially playing off the glory of the original.