[PATV] Wednesday, September 21, 2011 - Extra Credits Season 3, Ep. 9: Pro Gaming

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[PATV] Wednesday, September 21, 2011 - Extra Credits Season 3, Ep. 9: Pro Gaming

This week, we consider the reasons why professional gaming hasn't really caught on in the west (yet).

Read the full story here

Lowkr

Great commentary in a pro-game is what keeps me interested. I don't watch sports much, but when I do, there has to be a commentator telling me what's going on. Tidbits about players and strategies that could or should have been implemented in a certain situation.
A little humor goes a long way too. I want to be entertained. That's why I'm watching.

Side note: League of Legends - never played - but man I love to watch a good match-up. And for my money (although technically I've never dropped a cent yet) Total Biscuit gives me the best entertainment value for my time watching. Superb commentary.

BearCommando

I don't know if you guys have been keeping up with Dota 2, but Valve is SUPER catering to the spectator with the game. With a yearly million dollar competition and the best spectator mode I've seen in a game, along with tons of support in game and out for casters and sponsors, this game is revolutionary for esports in my opinion. It's community on reddit and joinDota is great, and there are tens of thousands of people who know multiple pro players by name and follow them on streams. Hope other games catch on.

betrayerkol

"We're gonna have to find our own stars [...] being a human being worth caring about - or worth hating - is what will make someone a star."

Worth hating? Cross Assault gogogogo.

MetalzFish

League of Legends has all four of those things. Now it's just a matter of time ^_^

GuiltyLight

League of Legends and DotA2 have a huge problem, though. See, to the non-pro player... even to people who only play them at an average level of skill and prowess, high level matches are absolutely incomprehensible unless you're EXTREMELY well-versed on hundreds of minute details, why someone takes a specific item vs other matchups, etc. In MOBA / ARTS games, there's too much going on AND too much on too technical of a level for the average spectator to understand. It's not like a 1v1 RTS where commentators can break stuff down for newbs. You're dealing with almost a dozen seperate players with thousands upon thousands of potential composite matchups and strategies. MOBA games will never become "pro-gaming" the way this EC episode is talking about. I guarantee you 99% of DotA2 players don't actually understand what's going on (or why people are doing what they're doing) in a DotA2 tournament match.

Page-

dota (and lol) consistently pull the highest number of spectators out of any game, up there with sc2 and often above it.

your opinion seems totally legit.

Skatneti

Not surprisingly, sport games are not that bad for a spectators point of view. Since the game is designed around a spectator sport anyway it has quite a lead on spectating, say, someone taking an hour to decide what beard they are going to choose on Oblivion. Take FIFA, me and my friends often play tournaments while having a few bears and its interesting to watch. Not as good as the real thing but, well, is anything as good as the real thing? First time Ive commented, big fan. Um, yeah..

ZombieAladdin

Would Justin Wong be an example of a pro gaming athlete with a lot of personal drama outside the screen?

VezRoth

Husky, and Total Biscuit make for a human touch, and IDRA is definitely a Pro Gamer that you love to watch, or love to hate. He's so emotional of a player.

Piggie

It's a shame that this episode came out before League of Legends really exploded as a pro game. The game's spectator mode, the drama surrounding certain pro gamers and their teams, and the fame surrounding certain commentators (Phreak!) would definitely be good points to talk about. I'd love to see what EC thought that Riot was doing right as well as what they thought Riot wasn't doing so well. I hope it's in a later episode

mechamanexe

One thing that I think should be brought up is that I don't think it would really be possible for a console game to really be competetive unless the developers focused on repeatedly updating that game instead of trying to make a new one. Like, for example, say there was competetive halo. Instead of making halo 57, we would have to take the most recent halo and instead of working on another, try to balance out everything etc. Like the current MOBA comkpetetive craze, that's a perfect example. LoL balances and patches like, what, every 2 weeks? And maybe adds another champ every 3 or 4?

zluvsanime

look to the super smash bro. series for an example of sport video games. me and my friends josh and steve play it as often as we can and so we feel a bit guilty when ever joshes girlfriend comes over because she just sits there like a lump while we eat up 40 mins of her time enjoying ourselves... that is until we asked her about it. turns out that not only does she enjoy watching but without any prior knowledge of the game she was able to decipher the basic mechanics and more impressive how WE play. she can bring up stats of how often she sees a certain match up and what the average outcome of that match is, she knows which characters we are best with and which stages hold a benefit to our play styles. we enjoyed her insight so much that we include her in the games while still keeping her a spectator, mind you this part is more for fun than competition but it improves our player spectator relationship; it gives us a greater variety and makes this an interactive sport for her to watch. because of her great insight every so often we ask her to pick the entire match; she will pick characters that might challenge us or simply be a really even and epic match up, she picks characters that we hardly ever play but is confident that we will excel with them. it really is quite impressive the information and fun she was able to devour from simply watching us play. we may have vast knowledge on how to play the game itself but she has greater and much more impressive knowledge on how we as individuals play the game which i think is part of the very crucial human element

zluvsanime

the smash brothers series is well on its way to being a true sport. each new game and mod is vastly different than the last but the basic mechanics remain the same allowing everyone to understand whats going on once the understand the basics. i play project M and melee with my friends josh and steve it's one of our favorite things to do so we tend to play it a lot when we get together. because of this we always felt bad when joshes girlfriend came over because she disliked playing the game due to the vast difference in skill and so was reserved to watching... that is until we actually asked her how she felt about it. much to our surprise and delight not only did she enjoy watching but starting with no knowledge of the games mechanics she was able to remember and call upon a massive amount of observation data that made her viewing of our matches more enjoyable; things like which characters we use more often, what play styles we were weak against and even what stages held a benefit to our certain play style. just through watching she learned and understood way more about the game than we did, sure we knew how TO play but she understood and enjoyed how WE play. now we have a beneficial viewer player relationship every so often we will ask her for input like what match up she hasnt seen in a while, what match would challenge one of us, and we even ask her to pick us characters that will give us a close and satisfying match. if this is not an example of how gaming could become a sport i have no idea what is

zluvsanime

the smash brothers series is well on its way to being a true sport. each new game and mod is vastly different than the last but the basic mechanics remain the same allowing everyone to understand whats going on once the understand the basics. i play project M and melee with my friends josh and steve it's one of our favorite things to do so we tend to play it a lot when we get together. because of this we always felt bad when joshes girlfriend came over because she disliked playing the game due to the vast difference in skill and so was reserved to watching... that is until we actually asked her how she felt about it. much to our surprise and delight not only did she enjoy watching but starting with no knowledge of the games mechanics she was able to remember and call upon a massive amount of observation data that made her viewing of our matches more enjoyable; things like which characters we use more often, what play styles we were weak against and even what stages held a benefit to our certain play style. just through watching she learned and understood way more about the game than we did, sure we knew how TO play but she understood and enjoyed how WE play. now we have a beneficial viewer player relationship every so often we will ask her for input like what match up she hasnt seen in a while, what match would challenge one of us, and we even ask her to pick us characters that will give us a close and satisfying match. if this is not an example of how gaming could become a sport i have no idea what is

bahhab

I remember talking with friends about pro-gaming way back in the quake days. The big problem i had (which complicates the whole spectator thing immensely) is that there is WAY too many interesting points of view.

Most forms of football or basketball have one point of interest. The ball. If you focus on the ball you usually can't go too wrong. At worst you miss someone getting taken out in back-play which you can hopefully pick up on replay while they're busy giving out a penalty for it.

Poker is harder until you splice together all the hands so you can see them all at once. That combined with being able to see the player who we're currently waiting on shows you basically everything you need to know.

Cricket is slightly harder because sometimes there are two points of interest, the pitch and the outfield however this still comes down to "look wherever the ball is" but with the pitch being added as a smaller screen in a screen type thing because if the ball isn't there you don't need detail, just to see what's going on. Baseball, I imagine, is basically the same but different. (Sorry, i'm Australian so i have a better understanding of Cricket than baseball)

Contrast with one of the earlier spectator potentials... Capture The Flag. Sure the mechanics are simple, but there's SO MANY points of focus. The two flags at a minimum. Frequently the flag bases (even sans flags) are important. Map specific choke points. Camping players etc...

Starcraft has some advantages but even assuming we only care about what each player is looking at (which isn't guaranteed), that's still 2 points of interest and both points of interest need complete detail.

Deathmatch is right out... 8 player deathmatch means 8 points of focus. MOBA generally fits into this group too.

Perhaps the only real standout i can think of in this space is where the points of focus are so crammed together that they all fit on the same screen. It's perhaps somewhat ironic then that the titles that best fit this model almost all sit on a platform generally panned as being "not hardcore enough".

seijin

Well done