Hey Malstrom, I think the community of e-sports is helping prevent its popularity, even if the games themselves are popular. Think of it this way:
I never played football on a team, but I like watching it and so do many other people. I’m nowhere near as good as Tom Brady. If Tom Brady makes a mistake, like misreading the defensive coverage and throws an interception because of it, I can turn to the person next to me and say “Tom Brady screwed up. He didn’t see that the linebacker pretended to blitz and really dropped back into coverage, so the linebacker jumped the route and intercepted him.” The person could agree with me, or could say “Yeah but Brady was really pressured, the offensive line should’ve protected him better.”
I never played tennis outside of gym class. I don’t know much about it. If was a tennis enthusiast, I might understand angles and such and know when a backhand is more appropriate than a forehand. The enthusiast who never played could turn to his friend and say “Roger Federer screwed up. He should have backhanded that volley and tried to aim for the far corner so the other guy couldn’t return it. Instead, Federer forehanded it and set the other guy up for an easy shot that Federer couldn’t return, costing Federer that game.” His friend might say he’s right or wrong.
I’ve hardly played chess at all. A chess enthusiast may not have won tournaments, but could still know a good amount about it. He could watch some championship and see that one of the players made a mistake. He’d turn to his friend and say “He shouldn’t have moved his bishop there, that allowed White to take his rook and then his queen. Instead if he moved his knight here, his rook and queen would’ve been safe.”
I’ve never played Starcraft 2. I played a lot of SC1 and WC3 but mostly custom games. I still have a decent grasp of basic RTS stuff like positioning, e.g. allowing your low-hp Marines to be flanked and destroyed by enemy Zealots, or in WC3 safely blinking in with my Warden and using Fan of Knives to destroy enemy Shamans and Witch Doctors. But if I were to say “TLO/Idra screwed up here. He could have had his units in a better spot. He could have used Fungal Growth on the stimmed Marines and kill them, rather than the Marauders who spent the whole battle sitting in place anyways,” many others will immediately say “What’s your rank noob? You’re not Idra/TLO. You haven’t been to Korea or competed in tournaments. They’re better players than you, don’t say they screwed up when you would get manhandled in Grandmasters league.”
In other sports (if we even call e-sports a sport), people can talk about the game and its whether their ideas are right or wrong that are argued about. There are sites for sports that go extremely in depth into the game, and the majority of writers and visitors probably never played nor coached the actual game (e.g. footballoutsiders.com). But arguments are always about the ideas themselves, not how the person’s ability to play compared to the professional players. (to be fair, sometimes in coaching situations we might say “He’s a coach, you’re not, he knows what he’s doing” but even then many of us can see glaring coaching mistakes like leaving in a tired pitcher.)
The majority of fans at a stadium could never play the game itself and could even be demolished by high school athletes. I don’t know what it was like during those Nintendo gaming event days. The only image I have of competitive gaming for NES is something like that scene from The Wizard where the kids are playing SMB3. I’ve watched random Korean SC videos, and I am confident the majority of the people in the crowds suck at the game. They’re there to watch. I’m sure there are message forums in Korea. I wonder if they suffer from the same problems as forums here.
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You bring up a great point. The audience to real sports reacts differently than the E-sports. Why is that?I’m not a sports fan (for my entertainment, I play video games). But here is my observation on the real sports.
Real sports is an escape to people. That is it’s job. They get in the big Lazy-Boy, get a drink and some nachos, invite friends over, and watch “The Big Game”. Unlike a movie where people remain quiet, there is much hooting and hollering while watching a game. I suspect the fans enjoy hooting and hollering as that is part of the experience. This has to be the case or else why would people go topless and paint themselves in the team’s colors? And there is an enjoyment for rooting for a team. There are those people who root for a team that always loses. Yet, they keep coming back. Why? What is fun about rooting for a team that always loses? Perhaps because it isn’t about the losing/winning to those people, it is about the rooting.
With Starcraft and video games in general, you don’t see that from the audience. It is, as if, they do not view the games as an ‘escape’. They see them as a source of superiority. Think of WoW for a moment. If someone said, “I have all epics.” So what? The real question is did that person have fun? The purpose of games is to have fun. The purpose of games is not to make yourselves feel superior to others. We have real life for that.
I know what you’re saying. It is as if the community is made up of thin-skinned egomaniacs (who are eager to impress everyone else with their ‘knowledge’). So if you say, “Maybe fungal growth wasn’t the right move there…” you will get screamed at saying, “FUNGAL GROWTH WAS THE RIGHT MOVE! I AM RANKED 6443 ON MASTER LEAGUE (or whatever).” The reason why these people are watching Starcraft 2 matches is not for the same reason why people why Real Sports as clearly indicated in their completely different responses.
You know what I suspect? What if Blizzard got the E-Sports scenario upside down?
South Korea was once a much poorer country. Clayton Christensen did his missionary work in South Korea and remarks, how in Seoul, people would transport water through buckets then in an almost pre-Industrial society. (Christensen also jokes how he was the tallest man in the country.) South Korea has developed extremely rapidly since then. But here is the rub:
A very critical difference between real sports and E-sports is that real sports is expensive. Teams are expensive. Stadiums are expensive. While I’m not up to date on sports within the Asian nations, I do recall the Japanese suddenly becoming interested in baseball, and it became a sort of ‘pasttime’ over there. And this occurred either during or right after Japan’s economic ascent. In the West, ‘real sports’ became pasttimes during the Industrial Revolution.
So instead of this view of E-Sports gaining popularity in South Korea and then spreading its popularity everywhere else in the world, perhaps it is the opposite. Perhaps as South Korea grows economically, E-Sports (which is a poor man’s sport) will be replaced more and more by Real Sports. Sure, E-sports would still be around since the fans will remain fans. But its popularity will remain flat or slowly shrink. I haven’t been up to date on the Korean Starcraft scene in a while, but from what I heard, Starcraft 2’s “E-Sports” popularity is flat or slightly declining from Starcraft 1’s. And I know, for sure, that E-Sports is completely dead in America and will remain dead forever. In other words, the NFL is not losing any sleep over Starcraft 2.