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.<p>They're games, people play them for fun. Let the competitive scene develop organically and <i>then</i> go in with investor money for better broadcast equipment and sponsors and shit and draft a team to compete in the <i>existing</i> competitive scene.<p>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.<p>The default approach for any unproven competitive game should <i>at most</i> 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.".
As far as I can tell, two groups are making plenty of money off of esports:<p>1 - The companies that make the game. Whether it's Riot and Blizzard selling slots in their leagues for eight figures, Valve using their annual tournament to sell in-game cosmetics, or all the companies ultimately owning broadcast rights to their game, this is the biggest difference between esports and traditional sports.<p>The New York Yankees and Los Angeles Dodgers make money because they sell their own tickets and broadcast rights to their games; even though MLB does control the streaming revenue, they share it out to teams and ultimately have to bow to the wishes of a majority of team owners. What you don't see is a single company MLB inc that owns the copyright to the game of baseball, sells broadcast rights to all teams themselves, charges teams to play in the league, and can kick teams out of the league at a whim. That's the situation in esports.<p>2 - Individual players, with streaming. Players can first make a name for themselves in competitions, then stream on their own Twitch channel for revenue. This is not that different from athletes acting as social media influencers and signing endorsement deals, but the biggest difference is that by streaming on Twitch, they appear side-by-side with tournament broadcasts. It's as if LeBron's instagram account where he streamed his workouts and pickup games were just one change-of-the-channel away from ESPN, and people would consider it normal to flip between the game and individual player streams.<p>Lots of esports orgs, as part of signing players, get a big cut of the player's streaming revenue. But the revenue for an individual player's twitch stream, while great for an individual, usually isn't going to be significant enough to maintain a whole organization, and when a player brand does get big enough that their stream could sustain an org - that's when the player will be heavily incentivized to go independent, and make more money from streams than they do from competing.<p>Ultimately, I think esports has a bright future - overall total viewership continues to rise, even though some games like League of Legends - which is more than a decade old now - are starting to fade. It's just the business models of the offline sports world don't carry over, and that's especially apparent with these organized teams.
The core problem of competitive games is that they're "owned" by someone. Imagine if "soccer" or "tennis" was owned by a corporation.<p>This is what's happening when you watch a competitive game of Counter Strike (Valve) or Starcraft (Blizzard).<p>Sure there are institutions like FIFA and Wimbledon but nobody owns football/soccer.<p>My proposal would be for a game to be competitive it must be open source by default -- a generous license like MIT.
Long term, I think esports are going to be fine. However, I think it's too early for them to really take root and embed themselves into any sort of mainstream or stable culture.<p>Physical sports have been around since forever and even if we're talking about some of the biggest games around at the moment we're talking about things like football which was invented in 1863. Plenty of time to shake out all the details such that everyone understands the game and some stability evolves.<p>Not only are videogames much newer, but the medium is up to the whims of large corporations with a history of making crazy decisions just to squeeze another dime out of the consumer.<p>Give it a couple of generations and I'm sure it'll earn it's place and become a staple of lazy sunday afternoons.
Note to all financiers drunk off zero-interest capital: not every new thing has to be jammed into 'unicorn' clothing. Some things can just exist as cottage industries.<p>I first saw a televised StarCraft competition in South Korea in 2001. That still exists AFAIK. Maybe it can't expand too far beyond that, but at the same time, maybe it shouldn't?<p>Trying to manufacture celebrity gloss and betting markets around eSports like it's professional field sports is just sad. How many actual fans want to see the industry go that way?
As someone who played a lot of Starcraft back during SC1/SC2 Wings of Liberty days, Starcraft was a game I loved watching other people play - mostly due to fog of war knowledge asymmetry in the audience.<p>If I was someone who didn't play video games, I think Rocket League would be the title I would be interested in watching others play.<p>I just can't fathom any non-gamer ever finding Call of Duty, League of Legends, DOTA, Overwatch, Valorant, etc. interesting enough to watch. I played many of those same games at some point and even I don't find them interesting to watch. First person shooters in particular seem so confining in terms of spectating.
As someone has followed the industry for quite some time, I would say that the hype isn't really dying down, but rather that teams are finally having to address the elephant in the room: Pro player compensation is completely out of whack with regards to where franchising revenue/merch sales are. Salaries need to come down maybe 50% in the West for the numbers to make sense.
There is way less team loyalty.
Teams are not geographical, so no physical attachment.
Teams change players too much for me to become a fan and buy their merch.
I really feel like Esports should have been built up slowly around more first principles. Keep the overhead as low as possible in the beginning. You're just going to be losing money in the beginning so why not minimize that cost. Pay the players a liveable wage, and cover their expenses to travel to the venues. As they become more popular do paid meet and greets with fans. Raffles for merch as well as other video game paraphenalia (peripherals, consoles, games, computers etc), and start acquiring sponsors. Have a promotional Amazon link. Make YouTube videos documenting the process, and get the adsense.<p>The two main goals would be consistent placing at tournaments and breaking even, then becoming cash flow positive. Slowly increase player salaries in line with the profits and larger sponsor ships.<p>But that isn't what happened. People started creating the teams and spending millions on player salaries. This put immense pressure from the beginning to getting cash flow positive, placing first in every tournament etc. And now we are seeing the ramifications of this.<p>Don't get me wrong there were other external factors as well. I wouldn't try to create an esports team around any Nintendo Ip for example given their track record. And the collapse of OWL due Blizzard management doesn't help.
This is a minor take from someone who used to play CoD at a very high level (cash tournaments, wager matches, GB/CMG/UMG front page teams). At least from the perspective of games like Call of Duty and Overwatch, I think at least some chunk of it is that the quality of games is rapidly decreasing and it's killing off the fanbase. I remember back when it seemed like everyone I knew was following the CoD pro scene, watching the streams, tournaments, championships, etc. Nowadays I don't know a single person who still engages with that content and the responses I get from them are that they don't enjoy watching the games anymore. The current CoD (MW2 remastered), there are pro players making commentary and tweeting about how much they hate the games design. The person who is probably the single best known pro CoD player Scump is retiring now and he's said in side comments that it definitely has to do with how bad the game is designed. People seem to be losing confidence in these companies that make the games with the biggest esports scenes. Overwatch 2 now has also received quite a bit of negative press. There's probably a good chunk of anecdotal experiences inside my view but this is my take on things.
It seems like fewer games are being successful at becoming competitive esports. Many of the ones people play had their origins in mods: Counterstrike, Dota, various battle royal mods, and so forth.<p>Companies now often don't want mods, as they interfere with selling cosmetics, loot boxes, and so on.
I don't follow esports much except for Age of Empires 2 (Definitive Edition). It is a comparatively small community, but nonetheless very impressive for a 20+ year old game. I have been surprised by the increasing number of top-level tournaments (with good prize money) that are being organized. Very excited for the future of this game.
There is one huge problem behind esports: their viewers are always going to be limited by the actual game's userbase.<p>As no game grows forever at some point the popularity of the esport is also going to fall.<p>Esports are here to stay but the dreams of any videogame being able to catch and retain viewers for decades is just never going to be there.
The only game I really see viable as a true nationally broadcast e-sport is counter-strike. Dead simple concept, intuitive mechanics even to laypeople, and the meta game can be explained in 10 minutes.<p>Maybe besides COD, everything else is too complex and requires to much prerequisite knowledge to really get into. I could probably get my dad to watch counter-strike. He would probably wouldn't go for valorent. Almost certainly not something like overwatch. And definitely would never watch something like league or dota.<p>Sure, there is money in e-sports catering to the communities that form around the games, but I think for most games they'll never reach outside their player community.
One of the problems in the eSports scene is that there's not a lot of room left for grassroots events to grow. Too much of eSports is propped up by deep pockets hoping to become the next money printing giant. Then when the return isn't happening, they just kill everything off. Why would anyone invest in something so volatile? Looking at you ActiBlizz, with the suddenly cancelled HGC.<p>I'll continue to watch Brood War and StarCraft 2. The prize pools might not be as large as they once were, but the games are still amazing.
I would ask another question: if the "hype" about traditional sports, like football (soccer), basketball, NFL, car racing is worth the money sunk on advertising there?<p>I have a gut feeling that most of the money spent on investing in sports seems to be wasted - with relatively low returns. "Brand building" is just an empty promise and much better results could be achieved spending this money in a better way.<p>It feels that companies invest in advertising in a particular sport only because the CEO likes that particular sport; obviously the consulting companies will come with some bullshit slides to defend it.<p>E-sports never really managed to get this hype - and in e-sports the companies more often try to track return on investment, which is probably low.<p>In regular sports we have companies like Gasprom spending hundreds of millions on advertisements - why? (I mean less money for tanks at least)<p>On a side note: for e-sports some companies spent money so much smarter, say some graphic card companies sponsor weekly tournaments (costs them peanuts - say 1 graphic card per week) - which is probably lower cost than spending one time on some big ticket event, or sponsoring a team, about which nobody cares about - because viewers track particular players.<p>In general most money spend on marketing is poorly tracked and effectively wasted; anyone who actually looked more into it can see how the agencies barely even bother to track real stats. Investment in sport feels especially unprofitable - mostly vanity projects of decision makers. For example Chevrolet sponsored Manchester United - for millions, while not selling their cards in Europe.. Ewanick was fired for that deal.
I’m a pretty regular esports watcher (Apex Legends is my game of choice) and I thoroughly enjoy it. But it’s also clear that it’s a terrible investment at the moment. Seems the only ones making money are game companies themselves (obviously), the rare org like TSM, and pros that have large Twitch and YouTube followings.
With the benefit of hindsight, I think esports are more similar to the model set by the World Series of Poker than pro sports.<p>Well attended in-person attended always felt like a non-starter to me. I go to NFL and NHL games a few times a season, even with bad seats the field is big enough that you only look to the monitors for the replay. For a computer game you're not watching play on the field, just the monitors, so you have the same problems as a movie theater.<p>I get the social aspect for your tiny tournaments, or once-a-year events. But that's just not as big of an audience. I still go to the movie theater too. But unless you're there for the hype of being in a loud crowd... why go often?
Online chess tournaments have been sponsored by FTX and obscure poker companies with Malta ties.<p>It is pretty embarrassing how chess pros and streamers hyped bitcoin and online poker. The image will take a while to recover.
This synergizes with several other comments, but I think you're looking at another victim of the interest rates rising above 0%. It isn't just the easy availability of the money for esports themselves, it's the easy availability of money for sponsorships, ad spend, hardware, no immediate need to show profitability on the chance that maybe someday it will, a whole bunch of things. With the rising interest rates, that all disappears at once.
Starcraft II was really the only esport I ever cared about or watched. I think it is also widely considered the first esport. Make of that what you will.
For me personally it's because there are too many random events for all the different games. There is no one big tournament that many people could focus on and talk about.<p>E.g. even if I was interested in some particular event, it would not feel appropriate to mention it to my friends because they most likely will not care about it... so there is no community feeling.
It makes little sense to directly compare esports to traditional sports, aside from the name and the fact that competition is involved.<p>Esports' biggest issue is that the only real reason someone is going to start watching is because they play the game and want to see pros play it. Esports are usually not much fun to watch if you don't already love the game (neither are traditional sports).<p>The main reason to watch a sport is because you love the game on one hand, or you love the teams/players on the other. Traditional sports get a lot of the latter because there's history and inertia.<p>You don't have to love football to cheer for the Pats when you live in Boston. But you aren't going to cheer for the Boston Uprising (or even be aware that they exist) if you don't love Overwatch.
I hope things keep going with esports and that the hype doesn't fade too fast. It's interesting to compare with the rise of American football like the NFL here in the US, since everybody is saying we are repeating the early 1900s in general.<p>Some 10+ years ago I helped a friend's son get a full ride esports scholarship, and it really stood out as a huge new benefit for kids like him (with a certain set of skills!) at the time. Totally launched his career in software too.<p>My own boys randomly announced recently that they are part of their school's esports club, and I feel the same way...they enjoy gaming and no matter how this goes, they have a new option, a group activity to belong to. Whether they really get into it as a career or not, it has been a clear pro for them.
I was involved with the London esports scene from 2010 to 2014, running events that would gather up to 500 people for blizzard and valve games.<p>I left the scene because I could not morally justify the exploitation of the majority of the talent. I hoped that the younger guys would be finding a way to make it work for the majority but it still irks me how many years have been wasted by young adults on a wild goose chase. Some very few were able to make a living out of it and deserve 100% what they pulled, but man, what a churn in that industry.<p>Devastated that TB / Odee didn't get to manifest a vision for player's union. That would have made a difference.
Esports doesn’t <i>have</i> to mimic traditional sports. My family watches a monthly Minecraft competition together, featuring not the best in the world but participants who are already popular streamers outside that context.<p>The competition is streamed from the perspectives of the participants, the teams change every month, and there is no prize money. Regardless of all these factors it’s still a fun, competitive event that delivers a good sports watching experience.<p>It doesn’t have the money or professionalism of major league sports, but for us it entirely doesn’t matter either.
Given the timing coincides with rising interest rates, I wonder how much of these investor and sponsor decisions revolve around cutting costs as opposed to any change in esports and their audience.
i think the top e-sports games are terrible: cs (the recoil system is a literally a hack), fortnite (F2p crap[1] and its not really a real game, you can feel the OOP system while you're playing as it takes several round trips for any action other than moving/shooting to happen), pubg (bloated amateur project). then theres valorant which aside from being F2P is largely boring as hell in the same way as overwatch. ive been told that my assumption that LoL is wonky RPG-esque metacrap is correct. only the starcraft games look alright, those are the only big games i havent played yet.<p>there's very little happening in the world of multiplayer games. the only ones with consistently decent netcode are COD and BF. after their first few flops (like BF2) they finally mastered it. everything else is downhill from there. theres not much you can do to make your game good when it has no substance (at the very least you need a solid implementation, let alone interesting graphics, which Lol, Overwatch, and Valorant lack) other than hype it up.<p>1. fortnite was acceptable for an alpha quality project in the first few months, then they got skins and the FPS dropped by 3/4 for any causal hardware, and it was all downhill from there
I wonder what else this will start happening to. The massive VC boom had a knock-on effect of pumping huge amounts of advertising spend into everything advertising dollars could be spent on.<p>In a lot of places, the slack is being picked up by sports gambling (one of the few VC sectors with an actual revenue model), but how long will that last? Particularly when their services are only legal for about 1/3 of the US population, and of questionable value in the first place?
The problem is that there's not enough audience. It's a niche thing compared to big sporting events like F1, La Liga, Premier League, NFL, NBA, etc.
I've been a fan of esports since I was downloading RealMedia replays of Boxer's Brood War games in the early 2000s, and still watch pro League and Dota2. Have gone to the EVO FGC tournament most years, as well. Plus some live League/Starcraft events in Korea.<p>The hype is fading because it was vastly overhyped and oversaturated to begin with. Games that should have never been made esports were turning into esports. One end of the spectrum was just bad games getting esports leagues prematurely. Remember Infinite Crisis, the DC Comic-based MOBA that had a full "season 1 championship" in beta, then the game itself ended up lasting only 5 months before getting shut down?[0] On the other hand you have games that are popular, but are really bad spectator sports. Fortnite and Rocket League are great examples of hugely popular games which have attempted an esports scene but failed to gain much traction, especially relative to their popularity. And then there's the ugly, which is Blizzard's massive investment into Overwatch League. Despite all the shady metric-gaming in the books (they used to automatically embed OWL Twitch streams into the Blizzard launcher, meaning anyone who launched a Blizzard game while OWL was happening counted as a viewer) OWL has looked pretty bad. They've even had to change the game rules multiple times to "fix" staleness in pro play, and Overwatch 2 is heavily targeted at adjusting pro play as well.<p>You can't just throw money at a game and have it become an esports phenomenon like Blizzard has tried; a <i>lot</i> of things have to go right with the game itself. The map and game state has to be easily readable to a viewer, which is why MOBA, RTS and fighting games to a lesser extent have done a lot better than FPS historically. The balance needs to be there; the GOATS[1] (3 tank 3 healer) setup in Overwatch made the game miserable to watch. The pacing needs to be right; it can't be too slow-paced <i>or</i> too fast-paced. This includes both any fighting that happens, as well as the overall pace of <i>when</i> fighting happens. If any of these factors aren't quite right, pro play is going to be a mess.<p>And sometimes, even with all those boxes ticked, it just doesn't take off. Heroes of the Storm is a great example here, where it was <i>mostly</i> pretty good as an esport on paper, though perhaps a bit slow-paced with too much healing. But the game never really took off in popularity and thus Blizzard killed its esports league.<p>Investors get tricked into thinking they're investing into the NBA or NHL with esport pitches, when in reality they're investing into the XFL, USFL or a lacrosse league.<p>[0] <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Infinite_Crisis_(video_game)" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Infinite_Crisis_(video_game)</a><p>[1] <a href="https://www.polygon.com/2019/2/25/18239845/overwatch-goats-meta-triple-tank-explainer" rel="nofollow">https://www.polygon.com/2019/2/25/18239845/overwatch-goats-m...</a>
Hasn't this happened before? Reading the History of eSports will show 'pretty much' the same thing happening in the 80's with High Score Arcade tournaments, then in the 90's with Console Game Championships, etc...<p>We may see another round of interest when the new wave of gaming systems matures, but I think this will always be the case. Maybe next time people will learn from the past?
I think one of the problems is that eSports games can change rapidly. For me it's easy to not watch soccer for 5 years and then watch a match and still know what's going on. But i don't have the mental capacity or even time to do the same for a valorant match. It's great for the niche, not simple enough for the masses (viewers).
I feel like simracing as an esport will be very successful sometime after we stop using gasoline even for racecars. Why even race around a track once the sims are as accurate as real life? Just put drivers in fancy g-force feedback cockpits and have them race in the virtual world!
Esports is as strong as the popularity of the games they are based on. I used to follow a few and it was always because I played the games heavily, sometimes at a decently high level. But if I stop playing the games, I stop watching the streams.<p>Is that true for you as well?
All major sports generate massive amounts of revenue due to in person sales and broadcasting rights. Sports also drive other avenues of revenue especially in big cities. Esports will not be on major television networks for a long time. Esports also do not have leagues with good in person attendance. Games and audiencies change too much and the best they can do is tournaments. Venture capitalists invested massive amounts of money based on hype and now are struggling to get ROI, let alone profit. The influx of cash will slow down as the venture capitalists face the consequences of their actions. Esports will not die but actually increase. Viewership numbers about League of Legends are showing decline because the game is in its late stages for competitive play. Valorant is the new rising star and others will follow in its path. Counter Strike has stayed pretty consistent which is impressive. Simply put investors will need to come up with a new strategy that is more traditional if they want to invest in this industry. To not invest though is simply an opportunity for better investors
Some smaller companies are doing cool things with esports <a href="https://youtu.be/RkrWz7G-blY?t=841" rel="nofollow">https://youtu.be/RkrWz7G-blY?t=841</a>