The E-Sport Entertainment Market
What's an e-sport? Almost everybody today should know the answer. But how did it begin? People wanting to watch baseball stars or the Olympics makes perfect sense, but why would anyone want to watch a bunch of nerds playing, well, video games? Well, the answer lies in South Korea just over two decades ago.
It's the late 90s. Blizzard Entertainment had recently released the RTS game Starcraft, and it's a huge hit. It's a game with unrivaled depth of strategy, with a continuously evolving metagame and strategic discussion. Soon enough, people get competitive, and with competition comes public interest. The South Koreans create tournaments that quickly grow in scale; in fact, Starcraft was the first video game to be broadcast on TV.
The appeal of Starcraft as an e-sport was simple: it was a popular game, meaning that many people knew at least the basics; the graphics were impressive for the time, making it pleasant to watch; the professionals were incredibly good, so it had the wow factor; prize pools quickly reached the millions, creating high stakes. This e-sport phenomenon quickly spread across the world.
The Super Smash Bros. series and the Street Fighter series quickly followed. Like Starcraft, there was a very competitive community, and the professionals had enough skill to give it the extra wow factor. However, unlike Starcraft, the depth of strategy wasn't so daunting. Whereas Starcraft's steep learning curve deterred new players from getting into the game, eventually causing it fall out of the mainstream (over a decade later), a simple fighting game gave new players an easier time when it came to following along.
Fast forward another few years, when the internet and PC gaming started revolutionising the market. MOBAs and MMOs started taking centre stage, and games like CS:GO, League of Legends, and DoTA 2 grabbed the e-sport audience's attention. Like fighting games, these had a level of simplicity that made it easy to watch and follow along, even if one didn't even play the game. Furthermore, these were team games. Similar to how people identified, followed, and cheered for teams in sports leagues or countries in the Olympics, people would follow teams in the e-sport scene. Add a couple of really talented shoutcasters or commentators, and the e-sports were almost indistinguishable from regular sports and a form of entertainment.
But there's a fundamental flaw with the e-sport market: there's less incentive to physically go to one. Streaming websites like Twitch let people watch major tournaments from home, similar to watching a game on TV. That's perfectly fine in terms of revenue: in-game events and advertisements supported the prize pool for some of the bigger games. However, games like Starcraft 2 and Heroes of the Storm quickly fell into a downwards spiral. A negative feedback loop consisting of low production value and low community interest made it harder and harder for these lesser-known games to keep up with the e-sport giants. Even hardcore fans are hard-pressed for their interest, as old content tends to outshine the more modern yet less flaired live content.
So, here we are today. The e-sport giants have saturated markets, as almost every gamer in the world either knows about them or is an active fan/participant of the games' e-sport scene. There's no room for growth, and these companies know that. Unlike Atari, whose stagnating revenue caused them to mistakenly overflood the market, many older e-sport giants (i.e. Street Fighter and Starcraft) knew to pull out and let their e-sport scenes die out with their playerbase.
Source:
https://www.ign.com/articles/2016/03/22/the-rise-and-fall-of-starcraft-ii-as-an-esport
http://adanai.com/esports/
It's the late 90s. Blizzard Entertainment had recently released the RTS game Starcraft, and it's a huge hit. It's a game with unrivaled depth of strategy, with a continuously evolving metagame and strategic discussion. Soon enough, people get competitive, and with competition comes public interest. The South Koreans create tournaments that quickly grow in scale; in fact, Starcraft was the first video game to be broadcast on TV.
The appeal of Starcraft as an e-sport was simple: it was a popular game, meaning that many people knew at least the basics; the graphics were impressive for the time, making it pleasant to watch; the professionals were incredibly good, so it had the wow factor; prize pools quickly reached the millions, creating high stakes. This e-sport phenomenon quickly spread across the world.
The Super Smash Bros. series and the Street Fighter series quickly followed. Like Starcraft, there was a very competitive community, and the professionals had enough skill to give it the extra wow factor. However, unlike Starcraft, the depth of strategy wasn't so daunting. Whereas Starcraft's steep learning curve deterred new players from getting into the game, eventually causing it fall out of the mainstream (over a decade later), a simple fighting game gave new players an easier time when it came to following along.
Fast forward another few years, when the internet and PC gaming started revolutionising the market. MOBAs and MMOs started taking centre stage, and games like CS:GO, League of Legends, and DoTA 2 grabbed the e-sport audience's attention. Like fighting games, these had a level of simplicity that made it easy to watch and follow along, even if one didn't even play the game. Furthermore, these were team games. Similar to how people identified, followed, and cheered for teams in sports leagues or countries in the Olympics, people would follow teams in the e-sport scene. Add a couple of really talented shoutcasters or commentators, and the e-sports were almost indistinguishable from regular sports and a form of entertainment.
But there's a fundamental flaw with the e-sport market: there's less incentive to physically go to one. Streaming websites like Twitch let people watch major tournaments from home, similar to watching a game on TV. That's perfectly fine in terms of revenue: in-game events and advertisements supported the prize pool for some of the bigger games. However, games like Starcraft 2 and Heroes of the Storm quickly fell into a downwards spiral. A negative feedback loop consisting of low production value and low community interest made it harder and harder for these lesser-known games to keep up with the e-sport giants. Even hardcore fans are hard-pressed for their interest, as old content tends to outshine the more modern yet less flaired live content.
So, here we are today. The e-sport giants have saturated markets, as almost every gamer in the world either knows about them or is an active fan/participant of the games' e-sport scene. There's no room for growth, and these companies know that. Unlike Atari, whose stagnating revenue caused them to mistakenly overflood the market, many older e-sport giants (i.e. Street Fighter and Starcraft) knew to pull out and let their e-sport scenes die out with their playerbase.
Source:
https://www.ign.com/articles/2016/03/22/the-rise-and-fall-of-starcraft-ii-as-an-esport
http://adanai.com/esports/
I think the rise of e-sports can definitely be attributed to its appeal as spectator sports. I can personally relate, as not only do I watch pro gaming but I also like to watch the NBA. For example, many people watch professional sports league because we figure that the athletes we watch are freaks of nature and almost impossible to replicate. On the other hand, what makes video games appealing is that your skill is determined more by your dedication rather than in-born talent. As a result, e-sports can become spectator sports that rivals that of professional sports leagues.
ReplyDeletehttps://venturebeat.com/2018/11/30/the-rise-of-esports-as-a-spectator-phenomenon/
One thing that differentiate E-sports from regular sports is the relevancy of a video game. Unlike regular sports, the popularity of a singular video could die out quickly. While this rapid change is good for game developers and the company, sometimes this rapid change means thees games will lose popularity in the E-sport realm. This makes it hard for some newer companies to push their game to a bigger stage.
ReplyDeleteThis was an extremely fascinating article. It has been really interesting to see the growth of Esports in numerous video games. Being a FIFA fan, it has been great to see the emergence of the competitive FIFA scene. Recently I was over the moon to be able to see people playing FIFA on the TV on NBC sports. I think you bring up a very interesting point regarding the revenue model of ESports. In professional sports the two revenue streams are through gameday tickets and TV rights. In Esports they dont really generate revenue from ticket sales. Aditionally, you oftentimes see the indiviual players getting more views on their videos than people watching them play at a tournament. For that reason ESports could be in trouble.
ReplyDelete