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eSports Starting To Go Mainstream
An anonymous reader writes: eSports have never been more popular, and many large companies are starting to view them in the same light as traditional sports. The amount of money being thrown around is beginning to rival the money exchanged over sports teams. A recent Dota 2 tournament handed out over $10 million in prizes, and Google's $1 billion purchase of game-streaming site Twitch.tv has now been confirmed. But it doesn't end there — companies like Coca-cola, Intel, Nissan, and major movie studios are looking at the audiences being drawn by eSports and realizing the advertising potential. "Last fall, Riot Games sold out the Staples Center for its League of Legends Championship Series Finals. While 12,000 people watched live in the home of the Lakers and Kings, over 32 million tuned in to the livestream." George Woo, head of a global eSports tournament, said, "Attendance to Intel Extreme Masters events has grown 10X with us filling up sport stadiums, where we have visitors lining up to get a seat to watch the competition. Online it has grown 100X, where we now get more viewers watching livestreams for a single event than we'd have tune in for an entire season in the past."
If people classify chess as a sport, so should these things, no? But then again, When will we see simultaneous exhibitions with esports where one guy fights against 30-50 people and win?
eSports have been my long-time favorite way to spectate gaming (or demonstrate skill to an audience). I've never been much of a fan of watching real-life sports -- some have been pretty interesting, especially if they don't have downtime (like soccer, rugby, etc) -- but at the end of the day, the fact that I don't participate in these sports has left me with less interest.
Competitive Gaming on the other hand, has been a staple in my life since Doom II. I will never forget how Quake 1 had great multiplayer mods with capture the flag, etc, and that you could go into a spectator mode. At that point, I was very excited to see how other players would react and strategize in situations I myself would encounter.
Fast forward over a decade and we've got competitive counter strike, battlefield 2, etc, rolling along and the shoutcasts started. These were always very niche, but they were far more frequent than the extremely rare CPL video streams and the poor attempts by big media companies to create an eSport event on television. Back then (about 10 years ago), those big media events usually had too many shots of the crowds and of the gamers themselves, and not enough attention to the gameplay. For me, the best shoutcasts were direct video streams from observer mode and first person mode, with announcers discussing the game as it unfolds.
Anyway... In the last several years, there have been Twitch streams and much larger scaled video game streams or recordings on youtube that are really starting to please my tastes. It's good to see that gaming, a very popular medium for competition and pleasure, is gaining mainstream attention. This is also a great sign that our generation is finally starting to matter.
The real issue with Video Game sports is the fact for the time for the people to get the 10,000 hours of practice to be a real master at it will take at least a couple of years. At the point where people are ready for it to be a sport, the game is already kinda old, and the new kids who are coming in are training on new games.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
That's part of the challenge and appeal.
Some of the old games like Starcraft are still honored at sporting platforms, because those are the games where you can see the "old masters" play their refined strategies against each other, as is expected in a game of chess. In newer games, the strategy isn't a refined battle plan, but a more volatile response to counter the opponent's particular style, more akin to a boxing match.
You do not have a moral or legal right to do absolutely anything you want.
Video games are better to spectate than sports. Broadcasters have known this for decades, doing what they could to compensate. Gimmicks won't stall change forever though, sooner than later they'll have to face this fact. The real interesting stuff will be the cultural shift when video games start to challenge the popularity of athletic sports.
Wake me up when it gets more air time than the pro bass fishing tournaments or water ski competitions.
Well.. maybe. Or Maybe not. But Definitely not sort of.
Regular sports are already a pretty obnoxious part of our society. Fandom brings out an ugly semi-repressed tribal side of people. Most sports themselves are lame and boring to watch on TV,especially when the wanker of an announcer just can't shut up and has to drone on with endless repeats of some anecdote.
Sports, like electronic games, can be a lot of fun to play, mostly awful to watch.
Stay off my lawn too.
Was it shown on the ocho?
" But a sport involves the combo of physical exertion,"
Back in my day, lugging that goddamned 21" Trinitron CRT around with my almost as heavy loaded Antec P4 Server WAS the physical exertion aspect. Not easy for someone that's 6' and 145.
Off my lawn.
Still waiting on Serviscope_minor to wake up to fucking reality and realize that Jessica Price isn't going to fuck him.
Cool story grandpa. You played some shitty game with shitty physics so all games must have bad physics. You used IM instead of voice and video chat so the only form of online communication must be through text. You played some shitty game at a low level so hand eye coordination and reflexes don't matter in any game. You didn't make any friends playing online that you keep in contact with and meet in real life so no one must be able to.
Your failure isn't stopping it from becoming the norm.
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