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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."
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.
"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.
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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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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.
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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Because they don't have a guaranteed salary and 100% medical?
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Well, isn't everything more popular than watching experts play other RTSes? Honestly, I know you are trolling here but how you got modded +3 interesting is beyond me. Starcraft is the best RTS of all time. Do you think Korea just missed these other "great" RTSes while they devoted their lives to Starcraft? Face it, Starcraft is the best balanced RTS out there, and other RTSes might be more fun for you to play, but thats because you're bad and haven't found the One True Way that is unbeatable and makes the game boring for good players.
If I can just reach out with my words and touch a butthole, just one, it will all be worth it.
Starcraft 1, maybe that's true. It was great, at the time (and I've played a lot of RTSes) ... but that is far from true for Starcraft 2. Then again, even RTSes that are focused on macro really do anything like what would be needed to really have a "strategic" game. SupCom came close, but still fell way short.
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.
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
It is not. I've seen many times in many games. I've done it myself for a variety of reasons. Seeing someone pretty skilled at RTCW:ET was very entertaining to watch in a Saturday afternoon (sometimes with a big cup of coffee on cold days where your fingers could barely move).
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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.
It would be good for Starcraft to receive an update. Monitors that work at 1600x1200 or 2400x1800 are rare, and controls could be better.
Oh, you might say "but there is one". Sorry, I mean one that is capable of network play. As long as Starcraft 2 has no reliable and low-ping way of playing, it is unfit either for serious competitive play nor for a number of home setups.
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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".
For example, Supreme Commander:
Whereas in Starcraft:
This does not, however, make Starcraft a bad game. User interface efficiency is not the most essential component of a game. If it were, World of Warcraft would be a spreadsheet in which players would replace "Level 1" with "Level 70" instead of all doing that inefficient crap where you kill small animals in the forest for months.
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.
I love to watch (grid-iron) football and I love to play. Getting 22 people for an 11 on 11 game of football is hard to do so any version of football I play is incomplete and a pale representation of the game itself. Being able to watch the game the way it was meant to be played by the best players in the world is great entertainment. Playing 3 on 3 or 5 on 5 is a great activity. There is no line that divides playing and watching into 2 sections where you must only choose one.
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...
So Starcraft is the "best" because you really like and are good at it
No, thats not what I said. Can you read? Specifically this part:
Starcraft is the best balanced RTS out there, and other RTSes might be more fun for you to play, but thats because you're bad and haven't found the One True Way that is unbeatable and makes the game boring
What that means is RTSes that are often times called more fun than Starcraft are only fun at the low end of the skill tree. I am also at the low end of skill, but I can at least recognize that starcraft is competitive at very, very high levels, and the professionals play very differently. In most other RTSes, good players will unearth a single good strategy that dwarfs others. Think Tic-Tac-Toe. When you are young and don't understand the game, it may be more fun than chess. However, there is a way to force a tie every single game once you figure it out. Chess does not have this limitation, or at least it is very difficult to reach that point of understanding in the game. Starcraft is more like chess, most other RTSes are like Tic-Tac-Toe. Once you figure out the trick to it, its very boring. Maybe you haven't reached that point with them and its fun for you. Great. There is a reason why the best RTS players in the world play Starcraft though, and that is why Starcraft is the best. It has the most depth and remains coherent and balanced all the way through.
The reason I think the modding of interesting is inappropriate is because it seems a lot like trolling to me. This isn't like WoW where it appeals to casual gamers. People in Korea play to the death (literally). Its hardcore, and an AC comes in here alluding to "more strategic" RTSes without naming names? That smacks of trolling and just being factually incorrect. Not to mention its a very shallow thought process.
If I can just reach out with my words and touch a butthole, just one, it will all be worth it.
Starcraft is the best RTS of all time.
Starcraft wasn't even the best RTS of its own time. But hey, I clearly value different things to you.
Do you think Korea just missed these other "great" RTSes while they devoted their lives to Starcraft?
Sorry, we're talking about a country that went insane over Lineage II? Forgive me if I don't share their cultural background and enthusiasm for twitch micromanagement attention to detail boring clickfest nonsense. It fails my 'fun' test.
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.
Are you trying to start a macro/micro fight with me?
If I can just reach out with my words and touch a butthole, just one, it will all be worth it.
And? Did you find an answer?
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I clearly value different things to you.
Monitors that work at 1600x1200 ... are rare
Used to be a fairly common resolution from the late 90s thru mid 00s until HDTV came along and ruined it.
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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.
I would argue that the user interface was a conscious choice by the developers. When your tools are limited, there's a much higher "skill ceiling" (the best you can get) than when simple things are handled for you. In Starcraft, you have to make conscious decisions on what to focus on. Do you want to make sure that your economy is strong and that you're constantly producing fighting units (macro)? Do you want to manage your units and get the most efficiency possible out of them (micro)? Do you want to focus on harassment, positioning, laying traps, etc? Can you do all of these things at once?
There are even Starcraft players who think that Starcraft 2 makes things TOO easy. While this is an April Fools joke, there are plenty who actually would WANT the game to be this hard. Sure, it would be nice to be able to tell a Barracks to "constantly make marines, but don't take money until you need to start a new one," but then Macro becomes obsolete, and there is no skill to being able to make units. Some people are great at Macro, some are great at Micro, and some are good at plenty of other things, but it's this diversity in HOW individuals can be skilled that makes Starcraft interesting. Some people actually ENJOY it.
I think that Starcraft, while being a strategy game, has a lot in common with twitch-based games as well... enough so that it's "more" real-time than other RTS games. Some people prefer slower-paced more strategic games, and that's fine, but they're not "better" any more than Chess is "better" than Starcraft.
As to why people like to watch it... well, I think it can be a combination of things. I watch the GSL, and I've even gotten my girlfriend into it. While I enjoy it because I know the sort of skill that the game requires, my girlfriend really enjoys the casters (Tasteless and Artosis), who are quite funny, and the players (along with the rivalry and ceremonies after the game). She doesn't really understand the strategy, and probably can barely identify a "6-pool" (an extremely early opening that aims to do tons of early damage), but she still enjoys watching it because the game is just straight up entertaining to watch. I also expect that a lot of the appeal is in HOW popular it is now, and how it can be fun to watch something with a group of people and cheer when other people to cheer (my response to football).
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.
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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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Mods, really? How the hell is this offtopic?
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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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Everything you listed for Supreme Commander is why it is not a highly skilled professional gaming sport. Anyone stupid enough to mass queue marines in all their barracks won't be teching, or moving onto the next stage of their plan etc Speed is rewarded, but not just speed, accuracy, formations? How boring is that to watch, I prefer to watch someone like Nani for example in the TSL finals control stalkers so carefully to beat an opponent I cannot see how Supreme Command comes anywhere close to SC2 as a game that requires such control and speed and tactical thinking
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.
The real problem is that someone hasn't killed you yet.
Once, I saw a guy racistly badmouth a black lady for being clumsy when she almost tripped on him. While his back was turned to the crowd someone threw a huge rock at the guy. It missed his head and caught him in the neck, breaking (we later read) two vertebrae and leaving him paralyzed for life. The hilarious thing is that even though at least five hundred people must have seen it, and someone must have seen who threw it, nobody "saw" anything. The only thing I'm sure of is that she and her two friends were the only blacks there so whoever threw the rock was white.
Turns out the lady's shoe was broken. Someone helped her fix it and everyone had a GREAT day.
I wish you had been there. :)