Do like me and get into eSports because that's how American gridiron football dies

Basically everything about the NFL and NCAA football is absolutely, horribly fucked up and just about irredeemable to me at this point. To fix all the shit that I can't stand about it, the sport would likely become unrecognizable from the carrion-sucking cultural remora that it is today. So don't bother!

I happened to go down some random Internet hole this past June and got my interest piqued by League of Legends pro games - mostly because I had no idea what anybody was even SAYING, and opaque jargon fascinates me - I had to go look up about every fourth word in whatever article I was reading, which led to this whole cascade of browser tabs and no matter how much I educated myself via poorly-curated wikia sites and corporate lore pages, on some level, still none of it made any actual sense. This is kind of how I figured out that this was actually a sport. At some point there's a floor where explanation stops. It's a game! People play it! Other people, who are really good, get paid to play it! And there are losers, winners, coaches, owners, sponsors, and even dickheads and cheaters and penalties and people who fucking FAKE INJURIES so they can kill their contract and get traded to a better team. That, people, is a pursuit you can waste some ungodly amount of time paying undue attention to.

I'm done with football, even if Chip Kelly somehow pulls some kind of Kuhn-class paradigm shift out of his ass this season. It's all horrible.

12k people paid for tickets to MSG and watched the North American League of Legends finals LIVE, never you mind however many million watched online, the numbers keep thrashing other pro "actual" sports apparently - that number will not go down. The Dota 2 International was so big my bosses' boss, a retired brigadier general, was talking about the week afterward to anybody that would listen. He doesn't even play. He was just stoked that he got to root for the winners (children are the future, long story, etc). These leagues are only 4-5 years old.

This shit is just as fun to watch as any other professional team game I've paid a moment's attention to in my life. Similarly, it's largely unnecessary to understand everything that's going on in order to enjoy the game. The players get paid. Their injuries, and they do get them (shoulder, arm, neck, wrist, mostly RSI, as far as I can tell) are recoverable with physiotherapy and rest. The collegiate players (yes) get to take home their tournament shares. The work, effort, and observably sublime "these people are not like you and me" skills are real. The teams and their leagues aren't completely given over to cronyism yet. The "casting" - especially for League - is just as good as you'd get watching any other pro sport, probably better in many cases. Lastly, I found a couple of nascent sabermetrics geek communities where people are already trying to figure out what the VORP / DYAR etc is for these games. It's all there!!! minus dan snyder and permanent brain damage and "student-athletes." OK, there's no player's union yet, although that hasn't exactly improved the sports where such a thing exists, and certainly hasn't crippled the ones where it doesn't.

This is a thread for asking me how you too can get excited about how complicated computer games played by people who call themselves things like "ZionSpartan" and "LemonNation" are going to eclipse complicated shoving contests played by people who call themselves "r3dsk1ns."

watching pro starcraft players after growing up playing starcraft w my friends gave me some idea of how it must feel for people who can hold a basketball to watch jordan or lebron or whoever: like they've found different physics

have aspired my whole life to be really good at hardcore pc twitch shooters (currently: quake live and the in-alpha fifth unreal tournament game, which is called "unreal tournament"), but these have way less potential as spectator sports than *craft/DotA style games, where choices and outcomes are a lot more legible to an audience. also they prob breed psychos more readily.

There's no good "spectator" option for FPS games. The very concept of a truly 3D map with cover and interiors means you'd never be able to show people what's going on in any comprehensive way. And picking which player to follow seems like a crapshoot. I'm sure there will be those who always go for that sort of thing, same as people become rabid fans of Formula 1, perhaps.

One-on-one games seem to me to be a little more insular and mostly for those who play (as you imply) - tennis and golf come to mind?

The MOBA genre really seems like the one that's going to take off. Well, it already has, but to my point above, it's just starting. I think LoL is genuinely positioned to blow the fuck up. Anyway, I posted this to ILE not ILG - I'd really like to see what casual folks think. I certainly haven't touched a serious RTS, much less a MOBA, in years, I'm slow as hell and I overthink everything.

The ones I've watched have either been boring as hell or so fast and blingy that it's hard to watch.

Sports for me comes down to the thing about confusing movement for action, there need to be stakes. Basketball is a wonderful sport but because each play-event is so low-stakes it's only truly exciting in the playoffs/last two minutes of a close game. Soccer might seem slow to the uninitiated but because of the low-scoring nature, there's a lot of action (every shot could be the last goal/winning goal - not true of basketball) and everything takes a heightened pitch (also true of baseball in low scoring games).

E-sports draws huge crowds but there hasn't been THE game that crosses over yet that you don't have to play (for most people) to be exciting and I don't know what that sport looks like. It needs to be slower than the elite play FPSes, it needs to be always comprehensible in space (so many of the fast and blingy games are like a bad action movie where people are punching but you don't know who or where or why), the game itself needs high stakes (no respawning, more value to any given action/event).

In LoL, the team fights around the objectives during mid and end game have brutally high stakes and can really go either way, even when one team appears to have a solid lead. The two big objectives in the middle of the field actually have separate countdown timers that pop up so the audience and the players can see that they'll be "up" in :35, which can lead to great escalations in tension and heightened drama around each player's positioning right before everything blows up in a largely incomprehensible melee, and if any clear winner emerges from that it usually turns into a significant advantage for their team. But you also get to see one team lose 4 out of 5 players in one of those fights and then the 5th will jump in and steal the objective! I dunno.

Watching CLG go 3-0 over TSM in finals was fun, and so was watching C9 win the regional qualifier as the bottom seed over the course of 14 games, which was nuts. Wow, I watched a lot of hours of people playing video games last month.

Other high points:

1. Pause and resume at will. Lack of mainstream coverage means that avoiding spoilers is relatively easy, even a day or two after the fact! However, knowing that a series is "best of 5" and seeing that there are only 3 matches on Youtube, hours after the last game, kind of gives something away.

2. It's pretty much all on youtube in 720p / 60fps! for free!

3. It's 30-60m of uninterrupted play. No ads breaking it up. The players are covered in sponsor logos and Coca-Cola has a "Coca-Cola eSports" Twitter account and GEICO is getting in on stuff, but as yet, the screen remains unblemished by brands, and the announcers don't drop in a "brought to you by" every 8 minutes, or frankly ever.

Huuuuuge in China; some local language buddies at my uni are pretty invested in beating the South Korean teams at the upcoming Worlds event. From what they've said a lot of the teams here are owned by the sons of billionaires as a lark (junior version of Russian oligarchs/oil barons owning football teams?), and they've imported a lot of the top Korean players over the past year. Kinda hard for me to follow the commentators when I watched the Chinese semis w/them (though I now think 加油! is the phrase I've heard the most over here) ... unlike English streams where online comments are in a box to the side where they can be disabled, they're superimposed over the stream ... lots of 666666666666666666s and, uh, a surprising amount of random anti-Japanese sentiment.
P.bleak about gender stuff (cf ILG thread about casual sexism) but tbh so's any NZ major team sport that's not netball or field hockey, by and large.

GRONK

i think "eSports" can and will produce something with the depth and complexity of e.g. football but we are definitely not there yet. beyond baseball sure. the primary ingredients are design for purpose, ambition and money, and then history; the first three of those are likely on the near horizon, there is awareness of the potential and someone will step up. hearthstone is an example of a player with money and vision taking a popular archetype and streamlining/dumbing down to broaden appeal. that is the probably the route.

Bring on pro-Rocket League, and make all the players wear South Korean pro-gamer flightsuits

http://espn.go.com/espn/photos/gallery/_/id/13492606/image/1/costumed-spectators-league-legends

Fans dressing up on game day makes it a valid American cultural thing, at least

has to incorporate drinking & gambling too obv, or maybe it has idk

Oh betting is thing. Ashton Kutcher is apparently one of the big investors in "Unikrn:"

http://motherboard.vice.com/read/real-money-esports-betting-site-unikrn-comes-to-the-us-with-virtual-currency

pretty much all the audience / fan photos I've seen do imply that the crowds are almost teetotal at these things, though. Including the gallery kingfish just linked above

its like 99% dudes too..

I love to play dota2 and I definitely think esports is the next big thing for people in their teens.. I would love to be able to get into the business somehow and take these little fuckers' money.

People in their teens grow up to be people in their twenties, thirties and so on, and that's what's going to start eating away at the dominance of other current pro sports. The ones that are the least appealing, least affordable and least "watchable" from those kids' perspective are going to be the primary victims of that change in preferences.

I don't really follow this stuff a whole lot, but are there any games that have been developed specifically as eSports? Something designed to be watchable by an audience? Because if anyone wants eSports to seriously compete with American football, it seems like this is something that should be focused on

Considering that Riot "Games" only makes one game, which is technically free to play, and that the analysts and broadcasters and play officials are all Riot employees - I think League definitely qualifies as the answer to your question.

Rocket League definitely works as a casted spectator game. This MLG match below is entertaining. It seems like they're still figuring out the camera. It doesn't look as good from a bird's eye view, whereas flipping between player views is a little jarring.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZwGFZk9NLaU

national cyber league

...is an actual thing, look it up

no athleticism in this stuff, though

anyway, not to beat a dead horse, but I really think LoL has most of the ingredients to be a successful spectator sport already. Here are things that are missing:

1. Players and teams that have enough of a personality, sustained over a few marquee seasons of outstanding performance, perhaps, that real showmanship becomes part of the experience. Nobody has a good touchdown dance in eSports. There's no NFL Films for this stuff yet. It'll come.

2. The compliment to 1 is myth-making writers and broadcasters who can really emphasize and amplify those dramatic elements and showbiz aspects.

-- I would kill for a Mike Tanier or Brian Phillips level of journalist to cover League of Legends. There is at least one guy doing Football Outsiders style analysis and writeups for LoL - http://oracleselixir.com/ - but he's barely Bill Barnwell. And still too dry. Every sports writer needs to be a sad, irredeemable homer on some level. I guess that probably takes more than 4-5 years to develop.

-- eSports casters and analysts are occasionally exciting to listen to, but a lot of time I get the feeling that since basically everybody in the booth is an active player, and a nerd, they're all kind of up their own hole about strategy and play style and basically too cerebral about the whole thing. It's much more enjoyable when they try to bring their inner Berman and make bad puns or whatever. Be a little dumber, sell the plays a little harder. Watching the EU LCS casts, I kept thinking I wish this former-pro brainy Krepo / play-by-play doofus Quickshot annoying-each-other chemistry actually worked. It's so close.

Gaming fan here :)

It seems like you are pretty new to the scene. I'm not sure how you would say that LoL or Starcraft or CS:GO or Dota or Hearthstone etc. are not successful "spectator sports" already (I prefer competitive gaming to esports but w/e)?
Big tournaments are broadcasted to millions of people and tickets are sold out in less than a minute for venues like the Korean olympic stadium which was used for last years Worlds (the biggest international tournament in LoL).
Also, you will find a lot of showmanship in Dota (teams like NaVi, Secret), Starcraft (ceremonies for GSL, Proleague and so on have been going on for years) etc, but nothing in Western LoL which is handled (poorly) by Riot.

In case you didn't realize, most of the "journalism" will be found on either team sites like Teamliquid, sites with a dedicated gaming section like The Daily Dot or The Score Esports, or on Goldper10 where even guys like Thooorin, one of the most popular gaming journalists over the last couple of years, will post some of his stuff (if you're only looking for articles and not videos that is). If there is anything lacking, it's definitely not myths about players, teams, rivalries and so on. You can hardly watch any tournament without hearing about people like Flash, Faker, Neo, Dendi etc depending on the game you're watching (not sure if that's what you're talking about though). Anyway, if you think teams or players lack personality I guess this was your first time or that you haven't really watch anything outside of LCS?

While I agree that a duo like Krepo and Quickshit is about as bad as it gets, I think the duo of Deficio/Quickshot works pretty well, even though the more popular duos out there would obv be Monte/Doa, Phreak/Kobe, Deman/Miller etc

In general, as a big fan of different competitive gaming scenes I don't get the point behind trivial statements like "oh wow, this could almost be like a real sport" / "what if there were real journalists covering this", especially when faced with the sloppy, bullshit journalism that ESPN, NYT and the likes bring out every month or two. There are so many great things going on in a lot of these games and some of the storylines in competitive gaming are fucking unreal!

Not sure where you start though, but I would suggest watching OGN or Worlds (starts in October) for LoL, The International or Dreamhack for Dota, Gfinity or any Dreamhack for CS:GO, and Proleague or SSL for Starcraft 1/2. If you want "journalism", just stalk some twitter or check the subreddits (LoL subreddit is the biggest subreddit of all iirc).

1. Players and teams that have enough of a personality, sustained over a few marquee seasons of outstanding performance, perhaps, that real showmanship becomes part of the experience. Nobody has a good touchdown dance in eSports. There's no NFL Films for this stuff yet. It'll come.

part of the difficulty in selling some of these personalities is theyre just teenagers and some behave pretty terribly on their streams.. its not malice or character deficiency its just that theyre awkward teens given a big platform and they dont know how to act. but on the flipside the dota 2 international coverage had some nice player profile pieces that shed some positive light on why these dudes play, the tension it creates in their family when they decide to go pro, etc.

"biggest subreddit of all" kind of sums up the challenge to achieving mainstream, widespread cultural currency, doesn't it?

Also brings up the question, though, of whether the kind of pervasive cultural influence that belongs to ye olde major league sports is going to ever be a thing in the future, or if enthusiasts and the markets/fora that serve them are going to increasingly resemble silos.

(or if enthusiasts were ever anything but specialized, but the fact that ESPN, Sports Illustrated etc. cover their topics year-round just makes it seem like there is a generic "sports" that lots of people care about?)

I dont get this "challenge to achieving mainstream, widespread cultural currency". Is this a goal?

Also, with regards to personalities I think it depends on which game we are talking about. In general, Riot does a poor job with everything including presentation of the players but outside of LCS you can find shows like Reflections or Summoning Insight, both of which are often times pretty great (if you're a fan).. With that being said, some of the people who spend 14 hours gaming every day are weird.

I have a hard time imagining competitive gaming consistently covered by any big media outside of Korea where it's been on national television for many years; imo it seems more likely that it will stay on Twitch, Azubu, Afreeca, / Team Liquid, Reddit, HLTV.org for many years to come?
ESPN recently had a job application for an "esports editor" which was pretty much a joke across gaming communities. Maybe they seriously want to be a part of this "market" or whatever but so far they have only produced clickbait or garbage over and over.

i've been watching pro league of legends for a couple years now. it still feels like a sport in its infancy to me though. the game is incredibly difficult at both an individual and team level, and much of the team-level strategy has only been developed in the past couple years, so the gap between the good and bad teams is much wider than in any of the major traditional sports leagues since there's a significant knowledge gap in addition to a player skill gap. and so you get a lot of one-sided games during the 'regular season'.

on the other hand, getting to watch the good teams collectively build the playbook for the game over time has been kind of fascinating.

yeah its hard to get the general public into a game that I've personally invested like 1000+ hours (oh my dear god) and I still find new and interesting things I had no idea about in terms of mechanics or strategy

but the format its in now is pretty forward looking.. its all on the web, it can be viewed whenever you want and theres a ton of games on all the time to just watch in the background while you sit in the living room watchin' tv. Im sure twitch, et al are happy they have a lock on it for now.

yeah Blizzard and Valve have both taken shots at getting their games on ESPN etc. but Riot seems happy to sit back on twitch/youtube and let the viewers come to them. it's working just fine so far, they're outdrawing the other esports by a massive amount.

Well, in terms of money, the LoL players earn less than cs:go or dota players for example. Also, Riot spends a lot of money on LCS whereas other game companies allow international competition and tournaments which means that League of Legends has basically no tournaments at all besides the regional LCS league in spring/summer/ and then Worlds.

I dont pay attention to LoL's monetization methods but if they played their fanbase like valve plays theirs during the international they could make way more money. Everyone wants to spend money on shiny in game hats.

a few years ago i got really into watching professional Starcraft 2. I think more than anything it's an extended exercise in dramatic irony--in that the spectators are the only ones with a full grasp of what is happening (at least most of the time). I think that's a unique way to watch a competition. im not as into the pure "skill" of the players (ie, how fast they are, etc.) but instead how that skill allows the development of styles of play that are impossible for regular people.

as i stopped playing myself i eventually lost interest in watching it though. im not really sure why--i dont think the ideal game has been developed yet, really. i think with traditional sports there's a kind of baseline common experience of having and using a body--i mean playing the way an NFL or NBA player plays might as well be impossible for me but somehow it feels easier to imagine--but when watching something like LoL (which I have never played) there's just nothing to hold on to. so i wonder if the limitation of eSports will always be the need for the spectators themselves to have a more than passing familiarity with the actual experience of playing the game (like, the actual "physics" of it, if you will).

xp LoL is pretty aggressively monetized for a free-to-play game, there's a ton of cosmetic stuff to buy, plus the heroes aren't all free from the start, you have to slowly unlock them over time if you don't want to buy them with $. pretty sure they are making a killing if they have the resources to fund professional leagues on multiple continents

also agree with ryan that none of these games yet feel positioned to break through to a wider audience than just the people who play the game themselves. i think the MOBA genre lends itself well to a spectator experience (team dynamics, rising tension over the course of a game, frequent but not constant action), but the burden of knowledge to become a LoL or DOTA fan is really high compared to like basketball or whatever - LoL has ~130 heroes that all do different things, i think DOTA is over 100 now as well, etc.

I've never gotten into watching commentated games other than Starcraft, where should I go from there?

Really I am cool with just being into that one eSport

Starcraft is really fun to watch because at the pro-level the baseline skill level is so high it starts to become a high level strategy game. whereas at the level i play at whoever is the fastest and most adroit as moving all the pieces around efficiently is gonna win easily. perhaps this is the fantasy of watching IRL sports as well--a kind of fantasy in which skill is taken for granted and replaced by pure strategy. on the other hand, there's few things more exciting in sports than when someone is just better (faster, stronger, etc) that everyone else. but those moments are kind of rare, really.

I played enough a number of years ago that I could watch the replays and see that the other player was doing many more actions per minute, but I would still win in a fair number of matches because their strategy was garbage, so there's still that sort of mid-tier play.

I just can't click and hit the keys so damn much, my wrists would die.

haha yeah. also playing Starcraft is a special kind of terror.

some amazing sc2 play here

I've never gotten into watching commentated games other than Starcraft, where should I go from there?

Really I am cool with just being into that one eSport

― μpright mammal (mh), Wednesday, September 16, 2015 9:05 PM (1 hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I started getting into dota when I came across youtube videos and twitch. I remember watching the draft that happens at the start of a match and I was thinking 'what in the ever loving fuck are these people talking about' but it got me to actually play the game and try to figure it all out.. been playing ever since.

However I will say I feel like an ancient old bastard because Im 36 and one of the dudes who won TI is 16.

as a man of similar age I feel u

i miss sc2 sometimes. winning a game was like snorting coke, but going on a losing streak could totally ruin my mood for the day. definitely the most stressful game i've ever played. switching to league was a good decision in that it's more social and more recreational, but the high from winning isn't quite the same, also the players are younger and dumber overall.

i couldn't get into watching league for a good while after i started playing, whereas watching sc2 just as it came out is what got me into playing. i feel a little guilty because i have a lot of respect for the starcraft players and around the time i switched to league there seemed to be a bit of an exodus from the scene, it makes me sad to think of the sc2 guys all still plugging away in front of a much smaller audience. that said, at this point i've been watching and playing league longer than i ever did sc2, and i went to one of the days of the LCS finals at madison square garden. that was pretty fun, also surreal to see in person the sorts of people who have wished death upon me in the game chat.

i can't really imagine watching LoL if i didn't play it, but it's cool that some people do.

apparently the company my friend works for just got bought by the company that makes league of legends

fan-made hype video for the LoL world finals, starts Oct 1st

http://www.youtube.com/watch?t=170&v=H-H3aqD7fbw

as i stopped playing myself i eventually lost interest in watching it though. im not really sure why--i dont think the ideal game has been developed yet, really. i think with traditional sports there's a kind of baseline common experience of having and using a body--i mean playing the way an NFL or NBA player plays might as well be impossible for me but somehow it feels easier to imagine--but when watching something like LoL (which I have never played) there's just nothing to hold on to. so i wonder if the limitation of eSports will always be the need for the spectators themselves to have a more than passing familiarity with the actual experience of playing the game (like, the actual "physics" of it, if you will).

― ryan, Wednesday, September 16, 2015 8:36 PM (5 days ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

this seems v on point! i watched a not-great and p old documentary about starcraft players in korea ('state of play') and was struck by how unable to give a feeling of the actual flow of the game it was (lots of dramatic zoom-ins on monitors showing units ... doing things)

i enjoy that starcraft ii is the only pc game toys'r'us stock here

Draftkings is doing fantasy League of Legends now.

MOBA games have their own weird gambling sites where you can wager in game items for ones of higher quality.. I hope whoever is involved doesnt think they can actually make money doing this shit, but who knows..

I have seriously considered procuring a CLG LoL team jersey so that I can wear it during the finals group round. And beyond, if they make it out. Haflway just to make some kind of point against all the people wearing their insipid football team uniforms every Friday at the office.

my teamliquid dota2 jersey became obsolete a few months after i bought mine because they dropped their squad ): these days i just end up rooting for the home team any time the international comes around

this topic is interesting to me a) because i've never been a fan of traditional sports but here i am obsessing over these teams and tournaments and b) the fact that i don't even play the game anymore and yet i'm more of a fan than ever

Riot just released their series "Legends Rising" with some of the players who are competing at Worlds (starting in two days!)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WDMNiH-vOrY&index=1&list=PLPZ7h6L6LC7WyTh4u17cXEll-JdL-tpbC

World championship starts in 15
http://www.twitch.tv/riotgames

Holy shit what a day.

watching the rebroadcast because stupid european time zones put everything good in the part of the day I actually had to work

and just as a reminder for those who don't understand why the second clause of the thread title

http://grantland.com/the-triangle/the-death-of-evan-murray/

I can't seem to get into LoL because I'm too much of a dota elitist =\

jesus christ deficio needs to learn how to let his PBP guy just talk for a minute. yeeeeeesh

Do broadcasters in other sports ever make admissions via twitter that they didn't have a great day in the booth and they promise to do better soon?

Does this count?
https://twitter.com/pgammo/status/578228323257561089

I don't believe so.
Another item re: announcer jargon, whether PBP or analyst, maybe having a global, frequently ESL, text-based community determine the names for things seems like it's more awkward. "Wombo Combo" and "Split Push" don't quite roll off this anglophone's tongue the same as "dime package" or "blitz" or "wildcat" but also, I'm pushing forty, and I'm probably picking nits because I'm a relatively old American dude.

I'm never going to say "wombo combo" out loud except to illustrate how ridiculous it sounds coming out of my mouth, is basically what I'm saying.

Sounds like a Guy Fieri menu item.

PEeSports

Maybe I'll take a second and try and unpack why in the fuck I came back to ILX and started this thread. Ok maybe just explain the last dependent clause and not the one before it, because that's another thread in itself probably.

I. Everything about American football, which used to be my sports thing, fundamentally disgusts me now. Charlie Pierce has said all of it better than I will ever be able to. It's fucking gladiator games and no amount of money that the NFLPA can negotiate is worth what young men put themselves through to have a chance at a contract at some potentially nonexistent future point in their quite probably abbreviated lives. And Dan Snyder still owns a team. The NFL is not even capable of the moral high ground that the NBA has achieved by giving Steve Ballmer a franchise. Their free farm leagues in the NCAA are possibly the worst thing about my country after our atrociously insipid interpretation of the 2nd amendment and the electoral college.

I was in this nice tap room the other day and they gave me a pick 'em card to fill out for a free $50 gift card. This is a place I will go back to again. I made the bartender argue with me before figuring fuck it, free beer, circling a shitload of home teams and deciding that I would use "44" as my under on the MNF tie breaker.

II. LoL continues to surprise and fascinate me. As above, it has so many hallmarks of a "real sport" in terms of complex strategies, the way games can ebb and flow, the way underdogs can pull out surprise wins, the way teams can come back from major deficits, etc. It's genuinely dramatic and a blast to watch, more often than not.

III. I need to think about this more, and am using this thread to do so - I wonder what happens if this becomes genuinely big, if the GEICO and Coca-Cola and other megacorp sponsorships will eventually turn the league and the teams into things that are "too big to fail" and cartel behavior takes over. Right now, it seems like there's no place or opportunity for any sort of organized malfeasance here, and if the game got dirty, the whole subreddit of people who give a shit might just turn and go play something else, and Riot could go out of business.

The players can play other games - their skills are transferrable, and the money is good but not unbelievable the way it is in major league sports. When that tipping point is reached - when, for example, the best all play DOTA 2 because that's where the real money is, and maybe LoL is like the CFL equivalent or whatever, and either way the players feel trapped in a golden cage because the paychecks are better than whatever schnook job they have to take because they have either a worthless degree or no degree at all, etc. - it will be interesting / depressing to see what happens. This is kind of a unique opportunity to watch a sport go from being a pastime to being a profession, something I don't think any of us have gotten to observe in our lifetime.

When I grew up, all the sports were already Sports, or Not Sports. You either played something that was for fun only or you played something that - however indirectly or impossibly - fed into the farm system for a Real Sport. So this moment right now is, on the one hand, just another predictable outcome any futurist or cyberpunk author told us about 30 years ago, and on the other hand, actually happening, and now I've gotten the bug I have serious FOMO. HAM for worlds. 30 minutes into Day 2 and chill and I post to ILX like.

plus watching the players wrap the cords around their keyboards and mice and fold up their mousepads and throw away their disposable coffee cups after every match just makes me feel something

Lastly, and this is how I KNOW in my HEART OF BRAINS that is is truly a competitive professional sport worthy of my attention, and that of all the other humans, and so on:

1. I get the feeling that at the pro level, most matches really boil down to what characters the teams decide to play (and prevent the other team from playing) in each match. So basically all games are mostly resolved in the first 8 minutes before they even "spawn minions" or whatever and the rest is watching humans drag shit out such as we do. Since there is no home stadium advantage, or starter / closer management strategy, this is the best equivalent. But that a sufficiently sophisticated viewer could probably turn off the youtube after the first 15 minutes and be 75% unsurprised by the outcomes, that's a sport, because hey, that's what they all do.

2. it's SO BORING most of the time. Literally nothing worth spectating happens most of the game. This is the hallmark of all great games. Whenever anything exciting happens, you run over to the laptop where the screams are coming from, hit the back button a few times, and then try to understand how whatever the fuck is going on came to be, and figure out how to feel about it. This is EXACTLY the same as hockey, "association football," baseball (if you are a criminal) and so on. I love it. I finally get to feel like a person who cares enough about sports to watch them long after they happened.

i stopped watching/following football several years ago. it's been pretty decent! apologies to charlie batch for not knowing he's been long retired

sorry you've been driven to this ridiculousness

It's way better than trying to give a shit about the fucking Nationals

Was doing my head in watching the Chinese stream in the parts where they'd be showing the Dutch interviewer talking to a Korean player via a translator, and the Chinese casters translating over the top of that.

re: transferable skills, have there been any high-level code-switches? With how short people's careers seem to be (though early days yet) ... IDK, strange watching people in their early-mid 20s "retiring" into becoming coaches/managers/commentators/etc.

IDK, I'm not too familiar with American sports but AFAIK there's just one major game in each category, compared with, IDK, Australia where you've got league, union & AFL as three "running with a ball" sports where players can switch codes pretty easily compared to basketball/baseball/grid iron (DotA/LoL/HotS vs, IDK, DotA/CounterStrike/Street Fighter or w/e).

Interesting watching the changed landscape of global competition after the great Korean talent exodus in search of NA/EU/CN $$$.

the whole reason I came back to ILX to holler about this has been completely explained to me and the world by your link to the Barassi Line article

Like I said, I have a lot more thinking to do about this and why I decided "fuck NFL, I'm going to become a LoL geek" this year

An agent friend of mine who I've known since my William Morris Agency days was in South Korea a couple years back and could not get his head around 1) eGame leagues and 2) that spectators were watching tournaments in movie theaters. I recommended that he start following this closer but it was just too alien (and admittedly ridiculous) for him to even comprehend what was going on.

Haven't been following LoL too much because I'm up to my neck in EVE Online. That's my own shameful fault. OTOH, the NFL can die in a fire but I'll always laugh hard at the next billionaire development group that tries to bring the NFL back to Los Angeles and fails utterly. Welcome back Tomboto!

A huge factor in professional sports is "I can't do that!" whether it's being 265 pounds of muscle running a 4.4 40 or hitting Clayton Kershaw's curve or trying to stop Lebron from driving to the rim. There's a sense of superhuman-ness to sports that drives their popularity. There's enough familiarity to parse the amazing qualities of what's happening along with the familiarity to recognize that everyone involved is in the 1% of the 1% athletically (or at least skillwise, in baseball).

Old people don't get that with video games. Show my dad a LoL match and it's going to look like people spamming buttons to do vaguely incomprehensible stuff. He's not going to grasp the way e-sports pros are the difference in high school QBs and Aaron Rodgers. Will e-sports, as teenagers today age, fit into that role - recognizing that reaction times and certain sorts of intelligence involved are as amazing as that incredibly athletic linebacker? Part of me doubts it - human beings having always privileged physical prowess and all that. Likewise, can e-sports build that sense of awe and interest for non-lower level gamers (as if the NFL only appealed to people who'd played high school ball) - I never played organized baseball but I can be bowled over by masterful pitching or an insane Andrelton Simmons play.

yeah it's certainly not obvious to people who haven't played MOBAs just how freaking difficult they are. i've played LoL on and off for 2 years and have improved a lot in that time and i'm still in the 2nd lowest skill bracket. it just takes an absurd amount of mental and hand-eye acuity to be good at these games.

i agree that this is a pretty huge barrier to esports becoming 'mainstream' but i don't think that's really anyone's goal who's smart about this stuff. A niche global audience can be equal to / bigger than a mainstream national audience.

and now i'm awake at 8am on a saturday to watch SKT vs EDG, this is extremely good shit

I love that nobody can believe that two north american teams are at the top of their groups. And I really love that AHQ beat Fnatic with an overweight catfish wearing a toque. Also was really impressed by the crowd's reaction to AHQ's win - they were obviously deflated, Fnatic seems like it's the closest thing to a French national team in LoL, but they stood and clapped (those that didn't immediately evacuate the arena, anyway). The announcers were also talking about how awesome French live crowds are for live LoL matches. Fascinating.

Not terribly sad that China's no.1 and no.3 seeds are both 0-2, either.

Seems like LGD and IG having their marquee players get listed as four of the top 5 individual players in the tournament (http://worlds.lolesports.com/en_US/featured/top20/) was a bit of a Madden / SI curse. Should have seen that coming.

Here's where I'm following stuff

http://worlds.lolesports.com/en_US/worlds durr

http://www.youtube.com/user/LoLChampSeries/ hurr

http://www.sbnation.com/league-of-legends-lol-esports simple enough

Not really:
http://www.thescoreesports.com/news
http://www.gamespot.com/league-of-legends/

Also disappointed that ilxor balls is not C9 balls

on the strength of a tombot recommendation I spent about eight minutes exploring if this was a thing I should consider or not and in fairly short order decided that this is one of many things (see also: tumblr, denim geekery, Game of Thrones) I've gotta sit out.

which is sad because I have such fond memories of tombot NFL sundays :(

c9's storyline through the summer and now at worlds is just nuts

C9's Heroes of the Storm team also won the North America championship, feel like the teamfight-heavy HotS games may have some advantages for casual spectatorship because it's more often legible what teams are trying to do, maybe.

i've never watched or played HotS, but from what i've heard it sounds like a much more streamlined MOBA (i.e. for noobz and casuals only,) so that may be true

it's certainly more streamlined, the way I felt about it as a player is that when playing Dota 2 even after dozens of games I wasn't totally clear on what the right thing to do was and the game wasn't trying to teach me, whereas in HotS the right thing to do was often obvious and the feedback loop of shorter games made it easier to learn from the game what to do.

Which is to say people who have spent hundreds of hours getting baseline competent in Dota 2 and LoL could reasonably find HotS shallow but, like fighting games, the execution barrier that's meaningless to experienced players is massive to people who have never played before. None of which is necessarily relevant for spectatorship, but it might feed into which of these games (if any) has the most robust viewership in 10 years or whatever.

It's in no way clever of me to point out that the Twitch Era has pretty much opened the door for this stuff in the US, and I think it's more than just the big mobas that are going to seep into the wider consciousness. The street fighter finals at EVO apparently peaked at 250,000 viewers on the Twitch stream this year, fighting games are pretty spectation-friendly (single screen, familiar metaphor (punching), quick matches).

i like the idea of a MOBA where the complexity of the game is folded more elegantly into the physics of it, in the manner of like smash bros, but i also love all the layers of nerdy details you have to think about to figure out the best way to play LoL in any given situation

HotS basically condenses league/dota down to the neutral objective fights (dragon/baron/roshan) which tend to be the most exciting parts of the game anyway. the downside is that theres very little expression of individual skill since all team resources are shared - feels like it's impossible for there to be an equivalent of Faker, i.e. a 'best player in the world' in HotS.

quincie don't forget we had to coach you up to get into NFL games too.
I seriously am considering getting a chromecast just for watching LoL on TV though

c9's storyline through the summer and now at worlds is just nuts

― karl...arlk...rlka...lkar..., Sunday, October 4, 2015

Imagining the prop bet odds on the first pentakill of the tournament coming from C9 Balls

the big dota tournament this weekend had two hilarious sponsors - tostinos pizza rolls and soylent

hilarious AND apt

*makes "one the nose" gesture*

That reminds me did I tell everybody that this exists?

https://twitter.com/CokeEsports

"hey teen do you like eating but find it too difficult?"

too time consuming, my APM suffers

i'll be honest all the totinos pizza rolls ads on twitch right now have made me want to eat pizza rolls for the first time since college. but i have resisted so far

the ads are not good ads though, they just serve as constant reminders that pizza rolls are a food that exists

i was disappointed that i didn't see any players drinking those soylent 2.0 drinks on stage

I have to admit my interest in the group stage has waned considerably for this second round, the "one group per day" agenda is frankly lame as all hell. If you don't catch the first two or three matches in the AM then who gives a shit? I went from watching almost every match on the rebroadcasts last week to watching basically nothing this week.

If C9 go home tomorrow I'll be SO PISSED.

Also some of the novelty of patch 5.18 pick/bans wore off - darius, boring, morde bans everywhere, a couple teams picked up veigar this week, that's like the big news.

yeah, i didn't watch much of it either, one group a day is a terrible idea. i was interested to see dyrus' last game, though, i learned to play from watching him

rip north america

I like Origen but I wish they hadn't been put up against Flash Wolves to advance. No more Steak! There is always a reason to be sad.

KT not banning smeb's Fiora at all during this round seems profoundly stupid. On one hand, I don't mean to turn this into a subreddit. Still though this seems like a "pound the ball! top lane carry is for pussies!" type of approach to the game; as above, it's fun to watch the strategies evolve, but that also entails watching coaches show how ignorant they are. And I don't even play.

http://www.sbnation.com/2015/10/18/9563119/league-of-legends-2015-world-championships-results-scores-kt-rolster-koo

Lots of roster shakeups in the offseason. Also this:

...Instead of single-game matchups between opponents, weekly matches will take place over a best-of-3 series. The European LCS will be switching to a best-of-2 format...

The NA LCS and EU LCS will have different formats due to cultural reasons, Riot explained in the release. Best-of-2 series in European soccer tournaments are not uncommon, while American sports are quite averse to ties.

That's not going into effect until the summer season though, spring will still be single games

also my team got bought out so I have to pick a new one to support now

were you team 8 for life?

gravity

this is kind of reductive but LCS tends to just turn into a bunch of teams running rock into rock week after week and i'd rather root for the team that's trying to find paper even if they're not always successful

it does look like the raw talent is going to be better distributed in NA this year though so hopefully teams will have to step up their strategy

i think c9 has the most notable history of deviating from the strategic norm and finding success, in their original incarnation, anyway

It's interesting to watch the stables try to settle.

The Doublelift to TSM drama didn't get near enough coverage, or I guess I just don't spend enough time on Reddit? Star QB switches to a rival team, shortly after pantsing said team in the playoffs, and not because they offered more money - but because his original team cut him! This is scripted TV level craziness.

I was sad to hear LemonNation retired from C9. He always seemed to me like the most relatable guy in LCS to me. Is he coaching now? For C9 or who?

yeah he's C9 coach now

i'm interested to see how C9's season goes with Rush as their jungler, he's probably the most exciting player to watch in NA at the moment

Did TSM just decide to go the full Steinbrenner for this season?

TSM has always been pretty analogous to the yankees

i know something exciting happened in LOL this week regarding some guy teleporting back to his base and getting killed? like twice in a row? but i couldn't understand exactly the import of what is was. can someone plz explain?

the "Mark" summoner spell lets you teleport to the location of a target after first hitting them with a snowball. Froggen was in a 1v1 with Doublelift at the All-Star invitational whatever and two matches in a row he hits DL with the snowball and then teleports to DL's location while DL is running back to his home tower. I think early in the game the base turrets can just about one-shot you, so that happened.

yeah tldr it was just a funny and improbable game mechanics interaction that happened causing someone to get insta-killed, then they decided to just restart the game since it was a showmatch, and it happened again

http://www.sbnation.com/2015/12/14/10105038/doublelift-froggen-all-stars-snowball-1-v-1

Wait why is ZionSpartan singing Bieber songs on youtube now

This is a very confusing sport to follow

http://www.sbnation.com/2015/12/18/10612480/nca-lcs-spring-split-2016-schedule-start-date

http://lol.esportspedia.com/wiki/Echo_Fox

i played a little heroes of the storm this weekend and it was fun. i've played lol in the past (and even a little starcraft 2). are other ilxors playing any of these? i'd love to get into some prebuild teams for heroes or lol bc random groups are hit and miss.

ok i'm bored so here's my current takes on this dumb video game sport

NRG and Immortals are the new teams that have actual good rosters, though it's always a toss-up as to whether that manifests into team-level success. i'd expect them to both be middle of the pack in their first split.

CLG is likely to be better than people expect without doublelift, ADC is the most replaceable role in the game since it's mostly micro, and aphromoo was always quietly the most important player on the team. still a downgraded roster though, probably won't be taking 1st place again.

TSM should be able to take their boring conservative playstyle and top tier individual players to a top 3 finish as always, whereas Team Liquid, the other boring conservative playstyle team, is probably headed to the bottom of the standings unless they find a new style

Renegades are kind of a wild card, they've got some big names in their coaching/management staff but not as much on the roster where they're relying on some new-to-LCS players. assuming they field Remilia at support she'll be the first woman in LCS, so that's cool

Dignitas's new roster got kinda laughed out of the room when they revealed it but i think they're actually the most compelling dark horse team, good mix of experience and upside

Cloud 9 has continued to show little to no success with one of the strongest-on-paper rosters, its pretty clear at this point that their dominant 2013-2014 run was lightning in a bottle. still, they added Rush who's arguably the best individual player in the league, and they're always a potential 1st place team if they can get their shit together

Echo Fox is a new team without a revealed roster yet, and Impulse attempted to sell their team with no news on that front yet, I think it's likely that these are going to be last-minute cobbled together rosters with maybe 1 or 2 good players each since that's all that's available at this point. Likely bottom of the barrel teams here, though Keane could make one of them interesting at least if he's on one of them, he was my favorite player to watch last year.

which game(s) are those teams for

LoL - as is the schedule I posted above

I look forward to posting my guided-by-nothing pick-em's to this thread during the spring split

man i wish dota had a regular schedule like LoL, instead all our tournaments end up being in he middle of the work-day or the night

btw i made an esports thing: http://vods.xyz which helps me keep up with all the matches i missed. i'm toying with adding LoL vods but i don't really know the community at all

What are good sites to follow esports news? http://www.sbnation.com/esports kinda sucks and never updates, and I'm too old to keep up with Reddit.

http://www.gosugamers.net maybe? also if team liquid has a LoL site then that's probably pretty decent

idk if there's any decent one-stop site equivalent to espn for esports yet. seems like a real opportunity tbh.

closest thing i can think of is http://www.dailydot.com/topics/esports/ but it's poorly organized, they don't separate headlines by game which gets confusing especially when the same organizations have teams for multiple games. also their LoL guy kinda sucks, idk about the people covering other games since i don't follow them

ive seen a lot of promotion for http://www.thescoreesports.com/ looks pretty decent

oh yeah that site is decent i forgot about it

Thescoreesports is pretty great - the preview for the upcoming EU LCS is good http://www.thescoreesports.com/lol/news/5607 (writeup for NA is coming up soon if not already?)
Liquidlegends.net is not as well maintained as their Starcraft site but the forum is alright.
I think the weekly Youtube show Summoning Insight is great. Episodes are long but you can listen while doing other stuff. It's made by longtime esports journalist Thorin and the American caster Montecristo (he casts the Korean League). They cover EU, NA, Korea, and China and usually have a player or coach as their weekly guest (comes with timestamps so you can skip past regions you don't follow). It's been the most popular (and best imo) League show for a couple of years now.
I also think it's pretty likely that we see more American sites pop up this year since there has been a huge influx of cash in the North American seen in the offseason..

*North American scene obv

despite being one of the few in-depth "long form" esports journalists, i'd steer clear of thoorin since he's an insufferable shitlord

NA LCS starts this weekend, i'm more excited for it than i thought i'd be after not watching most of summer split last year. winter's a better time of year for this stuff.

i think i am defaulting back to being a CLG fan this year unless one of the new teams plays an unorthodox style successfully since that's the shit i like to see most

Yeah, Thorin really likes pissing people off.. I still think SI is the best League show by far though.
NA LCS is very exciting this year imo. A lot of money and a lot of strong rosters with the Korean imports. Will be exciting to see how well CLG does after losing their star player without any clear form of compensation.
The biggest thing for me with both EU and NA this year is that we now get best of three for NA and BO2 for EU which will hopefully make for some great series + better international performance (especially for NA).

the best-of matches don't start until the summer split fyi, this split is still single games

the only thing thoorin does well is one-on-one interviews

he needs an editor tho

speak of the devil http://espn.go.com/esports/

hah u beat me

ps hello fellow doto player

I look forward to posting my guided-by-nothing pick-em's to this thread during the spring split

NA LCS Week 1 Day 1
TSM vs. CLG
-maybe this is wishful thinking but i'm expecting TSM to start slow since they have a dramatically changed roster (no 2 people have played on the same team before) and a new coach. whereas CLG won a lot of their games last year through clever teamplay rather than pure skill and they still have the same guys calling the shots this year so they're very capable of running through slightly better teams
C9 vs. IMT
-this is a good first test for Immortals's coaching staff, i think if they ban out Rush's best champions then they're the better team here, and if they don't do that then they deserve the loss if/when he goes off
DIG vs. NRG
-i do like Dignitas as a sleeper pick but they're way outclassed in both solo lanes in this matchup which is a recipe for disaster
REN vs. TL
-i never watched Renegades play in the minors last year but people are reasonably high on them, and Liquid is a chronically underperforming team that lost their best player. this is still pretty much 50/50 to me though so the edge goes to the more experienced team
FOX vs. TIP
-Impulse is headed straight to relegation if they don't pull some serious magic out of nowhere, everyone on their roster is likely 9th or 10th best out of the 10 teams at their position

TSM
C9
NRG
REN
FOX

Watching the new ADC + Support lanes is going to be entertaining, I think. I see your point re: TSM but I think they're going to just steamroll folks until people figure out their number, and at some point they'll implode, but that might not even happen until after this split

Sunday:

REN
CLG
TSM
C9
IMT

NA LCS Week 1 Day 2
REN vs. NRG
DIG vs. CLG
TSM vs. TL
FOX vs. C9
IMT vs. TIP
mostly good team vs bad team on Sunday, REN/NRG is the only one that's close on paper

TSM usually doesn't implode until worlds, NA finals last year being an exception. i think there's a good chance they'll dominate NA LCS into the foreseeable future with yellowstar shot calling, but that depends on their roster having good chemistry. svenskeren is a big question mark for me.

first day of NA LCS coverage starting now if any of the uninitiated want to see what this crap is all about http://www.twitch.tv/riotgames

Did not see that CLG win coming.
Or that REN-TL would take a full hour! holy smokes

ok what I said about TSM I meant Immortals

immortals vs tsm is next saturday, that'll be the big test

that 2v4 w/ pobelter + huni was brilliant. perfect game in 18 minutes O_O

sorry i just realized we might be doing no-spoilers here?

imo spoilers are fine, treat this like any other sports thread, it's interesting how that's even a concept for esports though as very few people watch stuff like football etc after-the-fact

pretty much every other pro sport intentionally makes it a pain in the ass to watch anything but highlights after the game

And yes, treat as any other sports thread, if you haven't seen the matches you're interested in, avoid

Saturday 1/23:

TIP C9
TSM IMT
TL CLG
DIG REN
NRG FOX

Sunday 1/24:

TSM DIG
NRG IMT
CLG C9
FOX TL
REN TIP

looks about right to me, idk what to make of TL's new roster yet though

like were they actually playing well last week or is TSM just shit rn

so is IMT the favorites at this pt? they just look so good but i haven't watched many of the other matches so far so i don't know how they compare to the rest of the field

They're definitely the favorites now, their roster is almost as good as TSM's and they look way crisper as a team already. Also have shown an ability to close out winning games quickly which has been an issue for NA teams other than CLG for a long time

Week 2
Day 1: C9, IMT, CLG, DIG, NRG
Day 2: DIG, IMT, CLG, TL, REN

the most interesting NA storylines rn are how will TSM evolve as a roster and how high is the ceiling for IMT. on paper TSM has a higher ceiling, but IMT came together very quickly and there might be some magic there, it could be the team pobelter has been waiting for. i don't have the faith in CLG that ciderpress does, i see zion and aphro as being the co-captains of that team and both of them are inconsistent, especially under pressure.

ahem, Zion is Darshan now

apologies, he is serious eSports athelete. i wish the casters would go by their real names. or at least the guy who calls himself 'pyrotechnics'

Echo Fox has failed to submit an eligible roster for Saturday’s game and will forfeit that game. Despite multiple deadline extensions, they were unable to field a roster.

wut
did one of their players quit on them or something

visa problems maybe

ah yeah sounds like they were fielding people with unresolved visa status

TIP threatening an upset

man i don't understand how Cloud 9 turns back into a pumpkin every time they try to play without Hai. dude is some sort of insane mastermind of LoL

and against the team IMT steamrolled

seraph is a big upgrade in the top lane though for TIP, he's a good player. not sure if they've just got him on loan as a sub or if he's a permanent addition

"poppy everywhere"

Actually amazed how good the Twitch stream looks on my television

watching my first LoL game, here goes

twitch stream went down, youtube still up

can heroes buyback from death in league? TSMs base got thrashed after that bad baron fight where in dota they'd buy back on some heroes to defend

nah, if you're dead you're dead

yeah there's no buyback in LoL

is remi the only woman in the tournament?

ctrl+f this thread shows me that u said above she's the first in the tournament cool

Actually op... its gay

wow

So the meta-meta for this split is "how long can Immortals keep this up"

NRG misplayed their poke comp horribly, one mistake that massive and it's the end of the game. NA teams constantly throwing games back and forth throughout the season holds the whole region back when it comes to international tournaments.

are there any esports type games where you can play FFA but then create alliances after the game has already started?

many hours were spent in college playing starcraft with my roommates in the same room, and we'd join a ffa game only to ally once one of us started getting attacked, or at the last minute before stomping everyone else, to much swearing and aggravation on the part of internet randos

pretty much all esports are team vs team or 1 vs 1, i don't think anyone's found a way to make free-for-all game modes hold up under the scrutiny of competitive play. it's an interesting thought experiment though.

the only comparable thing i can think of that has a esports-esque devoted following is grand strategy games, but those aren't played as esports to my knowledge

they are played multiplayer; it doesn't work as realtime broadcasting (obv) but the write-ups/discussions are great. i wish i could remember enough about this one game i read for either civ 4 or civ 5 to google it up. there was a guy who [for one of 4/5] wrote a bunch of guides and iirc had great let's plays and he had a personal civ page. i think it was one of his multiplayer games.

i don't think there is professional play tho

ok how about games that let you do what I said, whether or not they're used competitively. changing alliances, etc

I guess EVE and games of that nature have alliances that can be broken and large economies but that's a bit more of an investment than I'm willing to make right now

televised/streamed grand strategy games would take longer than old school cricket

I guess I'm asking "what is the least esport-ish game that doesn't have a steep time investment"

I kind of keep wishing some iPhone game was like Fallout Shelter only with the ability to trade and have some espionage to wreck other players' vaults

that's a good pitch imho

http://www.pixelstarships.com/?

NA LCS week 3
Sat: DIG, C9, NRG, CLG, IMT
Sun: TL, TSM, C9, IMT, CLG

so someone told me rick fox owns a LoL team?

yeah he bought a team but then half-assed the roster for this season, it's one of the bottom of the barrel teams that's liable to get relegated in the summer

Today
DIG
TSM
NRG
FOX
IMT

Tomorrow
TL
TSM
C9
IMT
CLG

I assume TIP dominated that match because DIG fucked up their picks, but I need to watch that again.

nah, DIG just got massively rope-a-doped in cross-map trades. really interesting game actually in how it accelerated out of control.

i didn't realize that TIP has Seraph permanently now as well as finally getting their originally intended jungler/midlaner in from korea, they could actually be a real team now (by real i mean mid-standings rather than last place, they're still not gonna win playoff matches)

hai's lookin like a porcupine

oh wait they also picked Rengar into Lulu, that is in fact a fucked up pick. Rengar is one of those champions isn't very strong unless the jungler is a Rengar specialist, which no one in LCS is currently

C9 with the fisher price my first siege composition, yawn

ha, I missed this from yesterday

"poppy across every region"

week 4
sat: TL over DIG*, C9 over REN, IMT over CLG*, TSM over FOX, NRG over TIP
sun: IMT over TL*, NRG over C9*, TSM over REN, CLG over TIP, DIG over FOX

asterisks denote the games i'm most interested in watching

IMT are going to have to lose at some pt but it doesn't feel like this is the week

if there's any secret to IMT's success it's that they have really good players at both top and jungle which are otherwise weak positions in the league. they're crushing the top side of the map consistently and no one can really do anything about it

when does NA switch to Bo3? next split? this would be a good meta for it, short games. i would've liked to have seen a series between IMT and TSM.

yeah summer split will be best of 3 matches

TL
C9
CLG wut
TSM
NRG

IMT
C9 wut
TSM
CLG
DIG

I'd like to see Renegades get their shit together but I think this split is already a wash.

Is anything interesting going on in EU LCS? I kind of miss how Quickshot pronounces "scumbag krepo"

no idea, the EU games being during work hours for me makes it not worth it to follow

liquid looking like an actual contender with the new lineup

Surprised that TIP lasted that long

fantastic ace from IMT there

c9 lookin smart again

Week 5

2/13
FOX vs REN
NRG vs CLG
C9 vs TL
TIP vs TSM
IMT vs DIG

2/14
FOX vs NRG
CLG vs TSM
IMT vs C9
TL vs REN
DIG vs TIP

week 5
sat: FOX over RNG, NRG over CLG*, C9 over TL*, TSM over TIP, IMT over DIG
sun: NRG over FOX, CLG over TSM*, IMT over C9*, TL over RNG, DIG over TIP

I didn't realize the Echo Fox roster was getting Froggen back this week. Or what a difference he would make.
Renegades is looking like one of those "real" sports teams where the roster is basically unrecognizable a quarter of the way through the season. Who are these players? Where did they come from?

week 6
sat: NRG over DIG, IMT over REN, C9 over TSM*, CLG over TIP, TL over FOX
sun: CLG over REN, TSM over DIG, C9 over NRG*, TIP over FOX, IMT over TL*

i think Team Liquid is the most likely team to upset Immortals but still not betting on it

sat: NRG over DIG, IMT over REN, TSM over C9, CLG over TIP, TL over FOX
sun: CLG over REN, TSM over DIG, C9 over NRG, FOX over TIP, IMT over TL

renegades winning the early game fights against immortals but still losing ground on the map

holy shit this TL - FOX game

Froggen is a HUGE difference to this team - I'm kind of surprised how well TL is hanging on (54 minutes, 6 dragons and 2 barons in)

And then an Ace because Keith lost his mind. Holy shit

dang i missed that one, but TSM-C9 was a tense one too

Yeah, I just watched that one on youtube. Good lord the numbers.

that C9 - NRG match was also way more entertaining than I expected.
it is probably not a great sign for my choice of emerging sport that inter-match dead air is occupied by soundcloud nerdstrumentals and a countdown timer instead of intense, concentrated advertising for the newest flavors of four-wheeled conveyances

LCS is funded by the game and in turn acts as advertising for the game, they don't need sponsors or 3rd party ads in the way that other sports leagues do

I get that, but if a few ads chucked in my general direction between casts helped pay for better audio sync, for example, I'd be happy to subject myself (on mute, of course)

here are some other ideas that are less crass

1. The contrast on the stream is pretty terrible. I can tell that the spectator client is capable of better blacks than they use for the main screen, because the border around the map is pitch. Tune that shit up.

2. The casters need some lightboard markers or something. The replay is limited by the pace of play, true, but it could give us a lot more insight if the casters had better tools than just chattering and hoping the producers' slow-mo instincts are the same as theirs

3. I'm really coming around to the idea of using double elimination. I also kind of wish they had 3 more teams.

they just expanded from 8 to 10 teams last year and the bottom teams are still having trouble finding a stable roster, i think another expansion is a ways off, there just isn't much talent in NA that isn't already on one of the top 5-6 teams

agree on both points on the visuals though, and best-of-3 matches are coming in the summer split

god dammit such a busy week I literally just remembered the GAME'S ON

good time to tune in!

holy shit this match is amazing

DARSHAN

Team Impulse vs NRG Esports
Cloud9 vs Counter Logic Gaming
Liquid vs TSM
Renegades vs Team Dignitas
Immortals vs Echo Fox

C9 vs CLG is a real toss-up. I would hate to be Echo Fox today, though. That feels like it might be a 24 minute game or even less

ok well I should have gone with my instincts on TIP vs NRG I guess

PeeSports.

So I was out and missed most of the matches this weekend but the C9 comeback against REN was absurd in terms of sheer experience, calm and patience just smothering the team with what appeared to be a much stronger comp

Has there been any CLG game this split where Darshan didn't do well and they managed to win anyway?

is IMT still undefeated?

probably not since he plays carry/duelist champions that don't have the utility to contribute when behind

IMT is 15-1, CLG took a game off of them a few weeks ago

Darshan on Fiora basically took IMT's base by himself

yeah that's basically his thing as a player

he had a memorable game in the playoffs back in 2014 when he was on dignitas, where he surprised everyone by picking Nasus who's otherwise pretty much untouched in pro play and then ended up winning the game singlehandedly by teleporting away from a baron fight and into TSM's base

so you guys watch anything on twitch? was watching some random people playing games i have been playing and streamers are a whole different culture that seems foreign to me

the Russian dude who was really into chatting with people and sharing Russian memes was interesting, but I sure understood none of it

i watch some LoL streams occasionally but most of the popular ones are just the current or former pro players who are mostly just boring college age kids. i try to look for folks who are outsiders to the twitch/streaming meme culture since that stuff just grates on me. kind of the first time in my life that i feel 'too old for this shit'

I have spent a little time watching people get killed repeatedly working through Destiny raids. I can't watch lol streamers at all, they're all incomprehensible

it is kinda fun to just flip through channels for different games and compare the fanbases. the variety of people is pretty extreme

lol Huhi just said "the reason for the slump is kind of gone" - CLG's like we traded our locker room dickhead to TSM, what slump?

I was just coming here to post a slightly longer rumination on how crazy good CLG seems to be despite dumping Doublelift, and then Huhi drops the postgame "not to name names" truth bomb

unrelated, the fact that we are in the late 2010s and all these young eSports shoutcasters have these identically conservative suits and 50s haircuts just weirds me out, every weekend

Like phreak is the oddest looking one and that's just because he's a late 90s throwback.
Where are the people of the future with the turquoise man-bouffants and the translucent plastic blazers over shirts that look like a QR code and houndstooth had a baby?

Twitch chat is by far the most incomprehensible shit.

"Darshan is a great singer."

holy shit that TSM - NRG last match of the split was fucking amazing. Watching Trundle chase Poppy all the way from base to base, the Curtain Call on Doublelift, the crazy first NRG attempt on the nexus, wtf all of that was nuts.

not even mad that it prevented the TL - TSM tiebreaker

http://matchhistory.na.leagueoflegends.com/en/#match-details/TRLH1/1001650086?gameHash=9318948ba65de769&tab=overview

utter madness

pretty happy that the TSM 'superteam' resulted in their worst split to date

meanwhile, huni and reignover are now 35-1 in their 2 LCS splits

I'm going with C9 and TL in the quarterfinals.
controversial I know.

I should catch up on how EU LCS went this split. I've got a little staycation coming up since wife & kid are heading to OH for the back half of spring break.

TSM vs. C9 playoff series about to start, and it's not the finals matchup for once

i like that TSM's plan of jamming a bunch of good but non-complementary players together has failed, would have been disappointing if roster construction was that simple in this Sport

lol

ah yeah they won anyway

C9 has similar problems too though, Rush is a player who only excels at an extremely aggressive playstyle and they don't seem to know how to use him

it's just so weirdly in character for them. almost entirely different team, still shows up in playoffs for the first loss then sweep.

streaming on netflix now...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fjoCwM1xMuM

incredible final game in CLG vs TL

so wait, any lol players here?

i play a bit but this thread's more about watching the pro games idk if we have a lol thread in ILG

i have played but not in a while

I play a lot, almost more as a social thing at this point, a way of keeping in touch with friends

yeah it's the same for me. its a fun game when you're on voice chat with your team, not so much just playing solo with random kids

immortals playing like shit in the playoffs

lol, you def do not like tsm

its definitely in my nature to hate the yankees/lakers equivalent in every sport

tsm deserved to win that though, immortals' insistence on running an ad carry top laner rather than have a proper frontline was baffling

finals heading to game 5 rn

that was sick

concur. was in the wrong time zone for most of the tournament matches, being able to catch TSM v CLG round WTF was great
esp the part where CLG won

Where are the people of the future with the turquoise man-bouffants

oh yeah @RiotDash got rid of his regular hair and went back to the dyed fauxhawk, thank goodness

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CgWDVFiUUAE8M58.jpg

I want a commentator that looks like a mid-90s gadzooks store threw up on them

blue hair, anime goggles, giant pants

so SBnation finally put full time people on eSports (personally I blame my starting this thread - clearly this was the tipping point)

http://www.riftherald.com/

I still kind of miss Yannick when he was at Kotaku but this is way better, and all LoL, no messing around with Blizzard's pretenders.

Very stoked about how well CLG has been doing at MSI. NA showing up! And against SKT no less!

I'm going to Seoul for a work trip next month. It may finally be time to sink the cash on that Aphromoo jersey

Renegades and TIP banned from LCS, and dignitas got relegated, so we'll have 3 new teams for the summer split

Yeah dang

http://www.riftherald.com/2016/5/9/11637402/renegades-tip-tdk-league-of-legends-ban

I hated Montecristo from the first time I saw him cast so well played, rito

wonder if riot regrets expanding LCS from 8 teams to 10 so soon, the bottom couple teams ever since have basically just been a rotating door of players, the talent pool isn't quite deep enough yet and the newer orgs dont seem to ever have their shit together enough to bring in foreign players without running into visa issues

I don't think there's any proven right way to expand a pro sports league so as to assure parity and keep everyone mostly competitive. Gazillion-dollar "real" sports have been doing it for decades and can't seem to avoid having multiple organizations that are run like shit and have patchwork rosters of sub-replacement-level players.

those teams still have fans though since real sports are regional. it's much harder to forge an esports identity strong enough that fans will stay invested through bad seasons

i guess thats probably just the wrong way to think about it though, pro LoL is self-similar to amateur LoL and other 'ladder' play where what you see as a spectator is the tip of an iceberg of people trying to become the best.

probably most comparable to english football of any real sports leagues, US sports don't have that type of continuity from the major leagues on down

NA LCS starts tomorrow night (!)
matches are now best of 3 instead of single games, which means there will be friday night matches to fit them all in.
there's 3 new teams: Apex, Phoenix1, Envy
-Apex got in thru winning the minor leagues (replacing Dignitas) and has a deep roster of good players who have had past success but no stars. with Keane as their midlaner they're probably the best bet this split to pull out some unorthodox strategies and catch better teams off guard, much like Gravity did last year. probably a middle of the pack team.
-Phoenix1 and Envy bought TIP and Renegades' spots. Phoenix1 has a very questionable roster and are likely the favorites to finish last. Envy has more talent and some dark horse potential.

Hooray!

gamewise the major change is that instead of just The Dragon there are 4 types of 'elemental' dragons now that each give a different type of team buff, and the spawn order is randomized each game, which makes games play out differently depending on which ones show up and how much each team values each type. Then, after 35 minutes, all further dragons are the Elder Dragon which is comparable in impact to the Baron.

ideally these changes force more action at all stages of the game since dragon is more important now, but pro LoL is a chaotic system so who knows what will happen

looks like the new schedule is
Friday night: 1 match at 8pm EST, 1 match at 11pm EST
Saturday & Sunday: 2 simultaneous matches at 3pm EST, 2 simultaneous matches at 6pm EST

so i guess there will be 2 channels on sat and sun that you can flip back and forth between

they need to balance each of the dragons better imo. i don't see good teams making a risky play for a little extra movement speed. EU looked pretty much like business as usual yesterday.

How do teams know which kind of dragon has spawned? As long as you have wards near the lair you can see, I guess?

the type of the next dragon is broadcast to both teams as soon as the previous one is killed (or at the start of the game for the first one). its public info, you have 6 minutes to decide whether you care about contesting it

oh ok

anyhoo I guess there's still just one Twitch channel: "All games will still be streamed on YouTube, and the Riot Games Twitch stream will rotate dependent on matchups" whatever that means, I'll find out tonight or tomorrow

i suspect it means they have a B-team casting whichever game they deem to be less interesting, apparently they built a 2nd studio though so there's an actual stage and everything for both games

looking at twitch right now they just straight up have 2 separate channels running for the 2 EU games with the main riotgames channel redirecting to one of them

games have been good so far, a bit more chaos & action than recent splits

yeah, seems like NA is adapting to the changes more

an all-time epic dota2 match last night at the manila major: liquid vs mvp game 2

the constantly heaving animation loops during character select in DOTA and HOTS really turn me off

it's like every champion is about to hock up a hairball

sometimes when the game is paused the portraits will get stuck in a funny loop where like their mouth will just open and close over and over

https://youtu.be/NnJuqsV6d6M

these teamfight breakdowns by jatt offer the best micro analysis around

trying to get tickets to LCK while I'm in Seoul

looks like i may have finally correctly identified the dark horse team

dota 2's the international is going on right now, grand finals on sunday. here's an insane game between the current favorites EG and EHOME: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uryTZc4XjNQ&feature=youtu.be

link since embed is broken

SATURDAY not sunday. the grand finals are tomorrow

I've somehow stumbled into the Vainglory Europe Summer Championships. So weird looking at two tables of guys with iPads.

So it sounds like US style fixed leagues and profit sharing are on the way:

http://www.riftherald.com/competitive/2016/9/22/13017670/riot-letter-lol-esports-future

and Blizzard taking a page from Riot:

http://www.polygon.com/2016/9/22/13017690/heroes-of-the-storm-global-championship-hgc-esports-league-promotion-relegation

getting rid of relegation would be great imo, the bottom teams need incentive to try out new talent rather than running out the same old replacement-level guys and playing for 8th place. there's been so many ownership changes that there's new teams in the league every season anyway even without relegation.

yep, this is a very good thing afaict

God rooting for NA in Worlds is like being a Bills fan

apt

That C9 - FW matchup was only just barely worth it. Although I would really have preferred losing to Taiwan instead of Russia yesterday.

I loved all of that last match so much. But seriously, you have to be a bit on a Trump level to just not ban any of CLG's signature champs, especially the day the Aurelion Sol gets enabled for the tournament again. That was some next level arrogance and it's nice to see the number 1 seed get beat that badly for it.

"we were pretty tilted after losing to the fucking Russians"

Hugely disappointing conservative fashion from the analyst desk. Everybody just came straight from their IT consulting gig

Dash just started a sentence with "is there any learnings..."
So there, this is definitely a real sport now

really love how aurelion sol, of all champions, is the kryptonite to the hotshot korean teams

it's sort of like if you discovered that the best smash bros players in the world couldn't deal with Bowser

Ringer piece on why the Sixers bought Team Dignitas:

https://theringer.com/e-sports-just-leveled-up-b270de97c2d#.cpdds81rf

OK, feeling CLG again. Not that I ever stopped but they just melted G2. That was a lot of fun.

Also it's always fun when the game moves fast enough that the casters can't finish any sentences for a minute or two

I think I'm rooting for the Koreans here.

strangely compelling pick & ban phase for this C9 vs SKT match, or maybe I'm just desperate for anything today that isn't a kid's birthday party or pre-debate political chatter (or, you know, American gridiron football)

God the group stages at Worlds are just NA kryptonite even when they hold them just up the coast in the same time zone and everything. Ugh.

Not sure if it's worse being an EU fan though, their false hopes are probably a lot more crushing.

If I'm Meteos I'd have to feel a little bad about the fact that my team has to spend 2/3 of every ban phase on making sure the other jungler can't have fun

quarterfinals bracket

Thursday 10/13: SSG over C9
Friday 10/14: SKT over RNG
Saturday 10/15: EDG over ROX
Sunday 10/16: H2K over ANX

Friday 10/21: SKT over EDG
Saturday 10/22: SSG over H2K

Final: Oh who cares, LCK bores me to tears

I still think of H2K as the team that can't ever deal with the surprises teams pull out in the playoffs, I'll always bet against them at this stage

Maybe but I am mad at ANX for keeping CLG out of the knockout round and also there's that probably illusory "more best-of-5 experience" factor

i just remember some past tournament last year, i forget if it was EULCS playoffs or worlds, where H2K kept going for the same power picks every game and teams just started pre-emptively countering them with their picks and H2K still just picked their go-to picks into the counters repeatedly as if they were working from some tier list that they were incapable of changing during the tournament

Welp, time for NA to get blown out of the tournament. Whoo hoo!

This has been a shellacking. At least we got to see a Zac pick.

OK, so much for my bracket. 3/4 semifinalists are LCK. I wonder if Riot is going to try and change the script?

dunno what they could even do. the korean teams have pretty much always been better, they have better established infrastructure and coaching and a deeper talent pool to draw from

getting rid of the relegation system in LCS will help if that's really what's in the works, the lack of stability is probably hurting NA a lot

Just posted this to the Civ VI thread, but for some reason Team Liquid hiring a Civ player to go pro gives me hope that there is life beyond LoL and whatever sad nonsense Blizzard keeps trying to cook up

For the company that made StarCraft, their inability to grasp how to make a decent modern competitive game kind of blows my mind - other than a hunch that the talent pool that made SC great has already been sniped & divvied up by other shops

Of course that's insulting to all the new folks that have come up since then and are making good decisions re: Hearthstone and Overwatch - but still, these aren't games I want to watch other people play, at all

https://newzoo.com/insights/articles/esports-franchises-70-watch-only-one-game-and-42-dont-play/

Esports gives lapsed game enthusiasts an outlet to still enjoy the entertainment provided by games without having to develop or keep up with the skills required to play.

I have basically abandoned watching all professional sports, e- or otherwise. I am just a lapsed enthusiast, period.

Welp, time for NA to get blown out of the tournament. Whoo hoo!

― Anacostia Aerodrome (El Tomboto), Thursday, October 13, 2016 6:08 PM (six months ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

still relevant

i kinda burnt out on NALCS, have barely watched any since last spring. the league has basically just been spinning its wheels for 2 years now, no one can manage to pair stable resources with smart people so you just end up with TSM vs C9 and a revolving door of not-good-enough teams every split.

i'm actually feeling NALCS more lately as actual NA talent is coming up and getting good results, rather than using imports as a crutch--franchising should help with that, too. players like hauntzer and dardoch make it interesting. next split could be good with dardoch going to clg.

I find hearthstone impenetrable but this was kind of fun to read, especially with some of the reaction shots of the players:

https://kotaku.com/cringe-your-way-through-one-of-the-worst-pro-hearthston-1804285781

A couple of other things:

1. I would not have guessed that of all the content banners in the kinja farm, Kotaku and Deadspin would have made a baby together ("Compete"), much less sold a shitload of gillette ads in the process

2. as much as I take a shit on the NCAA in the opening post, I feel like esports really does need some Title XI-style shaping; I don't know how that would even begin to work in our current environment, however.
2a. unless the leagues, tournament promoters, and teams all decided to self-regulate and make more CLG RED outfits but that seems like it would take a leap of faith none of them are currently willing to make. Can hardly blame them but I really do find it hard to sustain interest in players who literally all look like they came out of maybe a half-dozen cloning vats

lol the guy who won that match is a pretty strong MTG player so I'm willing to give him the benefit of the doubt - sounds like most of the unforced errors were on the other side anyway. I didn't know there was a card that reduces the turn timer, that seems like a joke to have such a thing in a strategy game that aspires to be a serious competitive game.

Stuff like hearthstone would be much more interesting to me if they did more "wacky" things designed to tilt otherwise excellent strategists. One of the reasons I lost interest in pro LoL was the skill ceiling is so high that no matter how much they would blow up the meta with a patch, the teams & regions just kept settling back into the same positions, more or less. Like trying to care about the AFC North.

I'm getting back into this btw. having to learn all the new team names and who's on what now. aphromoo is playing for the cleveland cavaliers now I guess?

But actually I came here to post this:

https://compete.kotaku.com/scarletts-starcraft-ii-victory-shows-how-esports-could-1822809807

A woman from Canada beat everybody else at StarCraft II at a tournament HELD IN KOREA.

oh shit

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/dc-sports-bog/wp/2018/03/01/d-c-s-new-entertainment-and-sports-arena-to-host-esports-competition-in-november/

Hai Lam is first ballot NA HoF I'm just saying

Bjergsen despite his danishness tbh

it's maybe a little weird that after just a few weekends of watching LCS games off and on during this split I was able to spot that there must have been a patch change because all of a sudden that creepy harlequin sniper dude was back as a regular ADC pick

ADCs are the most sensitive to balance changes since they're pretty much just about which ones currently put out the most damage, they don't have enough utility for there to be an array of situational picks.

well. that was a shitload of NA LCS matches.

I'm not sure I'll ever understand all the tiebreakers and/or how to read the standings at this point

jesus christ that 100 Thieves / Clutch semifinal

In the last round I swear Ssumday pulled a trick play for 100T - everyone's dead even, they're chipping away at the base, he's an extremely competent player who clearly loves to tank, and he just sorta wanders off into the range of CG so half of the opposing team instinctively initiates on him. For about 1200ms this looks like it could turn into an amazing fight, and then it turns into 100T finishing off the base because CG wasted everything.

I really want to know if this is a thing. If so, brilliant. Rooting for 100T heading into finals, obv.

It is a thing. Really great series. Also this is something that happened... http://www.twitlonger.com/show/n_1sqg4s1

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l1_hYP6WjC8

the world's top fighting game player is a furry

the US's top, not world unfortunately

I almost missed the semifinal between TSM and C9 today. Thankfully I didn't. TSM is like the Patriots of NA LCS, I'm always glad when they get sent home

I guess I'm rooting for doublelift in worlds now

Winners might use drugs - Does eSports have a doping problem?

that just makes me want to get a script for Adderall

I tried that once and they called my mom to get my history and they told me it didn’t sound like I have a developmental disorder. But bumping my SSRI helped.

OTC adderal when tbh

fuckin' NA LCS lining up for yet another WHY BOTHER showing at LoL worlds

how does the region that produces the most world record speedrunners and regularly competes at the highest levels in DOTA2 and all that dumb FPS shit keep getting its ass served at this game

the teams just aren't good at high level strategy, whether that's on the players or coaches i dunno

NA server has a significantly smaller player base than the other major regions

its a less competitive playerbase too i think re: % of people who play ranked vs casual games

https://i.imgur.com/O3qlDHt.jpg

NARRACIÓN FINAL DE PARTIDA DE G2

Los esports nos hacen sentir momentos increibles. pic.twitter.com/kVuZivQAuu

— Ibai (@LVPibai) October 20, 2018

https://kotaku.com/as-esports-grows-experts-fear-its-a-bubble-ready-to-po-1834982843

that was a good article even though it took me a week to remember to finish reading it. The closing anonymous quote does not bode well for the field, I'm afraid - it sounds way too close to "let's just do it and be legends" - also, Overwatch is completely unwatchable, and that's coming from someone who loves the Wachowskis' Speed Racer movie.

Ex-esports caster here, still on the fringes of esports but not as heavily involved:

This isn't likely a bubble in the same way the two previous implosions were. I don't think Blizzard's approach to OWL will be good for esports longterm, but I don't think it can sink gaming to the same extent as previous implosions.

There are other monetization structures (i.e., Valve's structures) that are lucrative--and being able to bring those numbers to the table will allow investors to feel more surefooted, even after a failure like OWL might put on display.

(by the way, casting Overwatch is also extremely difficult compared to other esports. unenjoyable experience imo)

I saw Overwatch on tv at the gym and it was completely illegible to someone who's never played it (although the same is true about football!).

Part of the difference is how obvious and tangible the objective is. In football, I can point to an end of the field and say, “That team wants to get the ball to that side of the field, and that team wants to stop them,” and someone who has never seen football can make sense of that. Put bodies in the way to stop them from getting anywhere. The nuance is in decision making and execution, but the objective is simple. You don’t have that luxury on a big windy fantasy world map.

Further, most people know what it’s like to throw a ball, or to try and run from someone. It’s obvious where the skill is in these things.

This is a problem across a lot of esports. Some games (like Starcraft) have the benefit of the gameplay looking like a spectacle; there’s multitasking and clashing armies and four different things going on at once. Trying to get the buy in from people who don’t know what it’s like to try and land a projectile is tough.

Fighting games will alway be the easiest thing to watch bc you can always tune out the jargon from the cast and just watch the thing happen all at once on the single field of play

I'm not annoyed that G2 lost in the finals, I'm annoyed they got swept so easily.

So: is ESPN going to have to resort to covering esports on live TV now?

FGC events pretty high risk as far as gatherings go unfortch, even if it were only competitors there that's still a lot of ppl cheek to jowl in a hotel ballroom

yeah espots events aren't any less risky than any other spots event

the fighting game majors are likely to be cancelled too. not sure about evo which is in late july but the spring and early summer ones for sure

Yeah, this is extra bad for regional fighting game tournaments

https://kotaku.com/amidst-coronavirus-the-fighting-game-community-faces-a-1842317400

It strikes me that conducting other esports matches without an in-person audience would at least allow for social distancing. Fighting tournaments aside it doesn’t seem like a large gathering is required

Fox Sports is showing a virtual NASCAR race

Virtual car racing is more entertaining than real racing

Seems like it’d be cheaper, safer, easier to broadcast, quieter, lots of advantages

Shorter, too - can't drag 500k people to a superspeedway for a one hour race but with iRacing why not? Cut out the middle 300 miles of the Daytona 500 that pop-pop uses for his Sunday nap.

No guilt from the thrill of a good wreck.

Is this on Twitch? Where do I check this out

Twitch and Youtube for NASCAR and Indycar
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kW1hvZQM4-0&t=1264s

I thought Formula 1 was doing these but I don't see them on Youtube

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kW1hvZQM4-0&

If I had a bunch of money I'd probably invest it in a racing setup but I also get really mad at Forza so realistic racing would probably not actually be fun in any way

This very nice-seeming English guy is making it harder to say no to getting into racing (aside from not owning a PC)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9-uCx06dlZU

https://i.imgur.com/fYOR4ci.png

Shady Numbers And Bad Business: Inside The Esports Bubble

Kotaku asked sources with knowledge of esports teams’ revenue about what sort of deficits they run, but most seemed reluctant to answer. One, speaking anonymously, believes a lot of teams are operating on million-dollar yearly deficits. The CFO of Complexity Gaming, one of the only team representatives to respond to Kotaku’s inquiries, declined to say if the team is profitable. Although it’s early on in the industry’s new life as a sexy investment, there’s only so long organizations can remain unprofitable before they’re deemed duds.

NewZoo analyst Jurre Pannekeet, who sees the revenues for 14 esports teams, says the majority of teams are operating at a loss, but declined to say how much on average, citing nondisclosure agreements. When pressed whether that majority was closer to 51 percent or 90 percent of teams operating at a loss, he said: “If you looked into it, it’s probably closer to 89 percent than 50 percent.”

i've inadvertently fallen into the rabbit hole of watching brood war replays on youtube. it's become a low-stress default thing to have on an ipad while making dinner or whatever. i played the game just enough as a teenager to know the basics of how everything works, but the buildup of strategy and skill over the past quarter century by pros is pretty insane.

Didn't exactly kill off football

Aren't some high level esports leagues good ways for autocratic regimes like the Saudis to burnish their international reputations?

In any event I've gotten into competitive Balatro in a big way (which I'm pretty sure is not funded by the Saudis).