A woman (!) at Kotaku writes a story about the decline of E-Sports. Our hardcore friends go batshit insane over it.
The comments and reactions to the story are pretty delicious… even by hardcore standards. What makes the reaction so amazing to me is the intensity in these E-Sports people. They complain about the article writer being condescending… as if that is what E-Sports people don’t do all day. Games like Starcraft were way more fun (and became popular) before all this E-Sports garbage came out. Even the Cases’s Ladder people knew they didn’t get to define the game back with Warcraft 2 and other games.
Here is a Real World perspective. The NFL makes so much money, there is no way any business in the NFL can fail. No way. The reason why sports originally became popular was because, as Theodore Roosevelt noted, sports were a replacement for war. Men and women could prove their ‘vigor’ in sports instead of some stupid battlefield. Sports broadcasters are all highly trained broadcasters. They are not people pulled from the streets.
E-Sports has broadcasters pulled from the streets who are the definition of amateurs. I don’t think any E-Sports caster has gone to a broadcasting school. And no one is making any money with E-Sports. As the Kotaku article noted, people might get around 30k which is considered a very low wage. Contrast that to an actual pro-athlete and there is no comparison.
There is no mass audience for E-Sports. “But some tourneys are bringing in 100,000 viewers! Some places can even get up to a million views!” To put this in perspective, some of my blog posts have brought in this number of views. And I’m not even trying with this silly site. Or to put in another perspective, that audience is worldwide. Even a national audience of that low (say America) of 100,000 viewers would mean you would be canceled. For worldwide audience, this number is extremely low.
Now some might say the purpose isn’t to get a mass audience but to monetize what audience there is. And I suppose E-Sports is doing that as well as it can. I know Blizzard’s strategy with Starcraft 2 was to money milk the E-Sports scene for new revenue streams.
The stubborn fact is that E-Sports is not growing and will never become mainstream. Getting angry at people who point this out isn’t helpful.
To illustrate how thin skinned these people are, they consider the following to be ‘condenscending’…
Treacy also describes the difficulties that one must endure in order to really make it as a pro gamer, a thankless profession that only pays about $30,000 annually before sponsorships. His advice to aspiring pros boils down to the following: It’s really hard. “It’s not easy to go pro. It takes time and if you don’t pick the right games you could spend over two years mastering a certain game only to have it blown out of the water as no one is sponsoring it anymore. So pick wisely. Oh, and don’t rage so much from losses. You only learn from your mistakes.”
Here’s to staying one of the Regular People.
What’s condescending here? Was it the last line? It could apply to a pro-football athlete describing what he must do to be pro.
I did immerse and study up on the E-Sports scene especially with Starcraft 2. None of it is growing. The reason why Starcraft E-Sports became “popular” in South Korea was because of the lack of entertainment options (South Korea used to be a third world country not too long ago). Now as South Korea grows in wealth, it has more entertainment options than watching people play a PC video-game. Also, when I speak to people in South Korea, there is a heavy stigma on these game players. People there consider these games to be a waste of time, a distraction where time should be placed more on a person’s studies or job.
I have noticed the E-Sports crowd has a mob-mentality. It is as if they are so enveloped in this psychosis, it seems as if they are animated by vanity:
-I am in front of a trend. (E-Sports is growing and will soon become a mainstream medium).
-I am cultured and exotic because I am an American who watches South Koreans play a PC video game.
-I am part of high tech sports. (As opposed to the ‘low’ sports of football, baseball, hockey, etc.).
-I’m not really a nerd! I’m just “more Korean”!
When anyone breaks this bubble of E-Sports, these people do not have a ‘polite disagreement’. The response is more like “Crucify the person!” Such a response can only occur if these E-Sports fans are motivated by vanity than by entertainment.
Who cares what other people think? If you are entertained by it, so what if someone isn’t? The fanatical response is as if E-Sports is people’s religion. “All the virtues come from E-Sports…” you will hear. “Hard work, respect for other people, E-Sports is making me into a better Human being.” Let me end this post now because I am laughing too hard to continue.