Tag Archives: esports

Some ESL numbers prompted some thoughts about balance.

Patrick Howell O’Neill wrote up a great overview of the success that was ESL’s recently-concluded IEM Katowice event. ESL claims that the four-day stop in Poland was the most watched European-based esports event to date. While the numbers in the infographic released by ESL really do tell the story of a great success, something else caught my eye and my mind sort of started doing the thing that could be called thinking.

thedailydot

IEM Katowice was highest-rated European esports event ever — Last week’s IEM World Championship and EMS One tournaments in Katowice, Poland combined to be the highest rated esports event in European history, according to numbers just released by Twitch and Turtle Entertainment, IEM’s parent company.

Do the companies that publish and support other games that are on the Intel Extreme Masters’ series see the event as a success for their game’s community? I’m sure that the viewership numbers alone are probably affirmation enough to allow the companies to pat themselves on the back for allowing their games to be included in these tournaments. The question I’m curious about: excluding the distorted prize purse of the StarCraft 2 winner-take-all event, does the level of investment that the companies put forward relatively resemble what actually goes into the community? If not, is that a big problem for the future of these games as esports or is it simply the circle of life in a twisted economically unstable sense?

I’m not exactly sure that I’m going to find nice results if I start looking. Even estimating the cost benefit of a single tournament at a community levels shows that the community puts in considerably more money than what is paid out (a tip of the hat to keekerdc for sharing an estimate). Besides, the whole bit relies on tournament organizers not completely being financially sound enough to raise money that isn’t dependent on things like contest and entry fees, which hasn’t really been the case at all, as far as I know.

In any case, more questions than opinions above, but I just felt like I needed to write that out. Link post format working? Link post format working.

Public speaking for the greater good of mankind.

Or something like that.

From what I have heard about the recent TEDx event that happened in Richmond, VA this past year, I didn’t miss a thing that was relatively mind blowing or important. And that’s fine, because apparently the organizer for the TEDx event had the gall to charge tickets for the event–something that is generally not done for TEDx events.

Richmond has this perpetual self-esteem/identity problem where it sees itself as something as cool as an Austin-like city that deserves to have a properly attended celebration of its diversity and melting pot of the arts but can’t seem to break the mold. I hate that about this city.

Sure, Richmond should aspire to not suck, but it shouldn’t do that by trying to get x amount of influential people (read: owns a business with downtown frontage and/or has significant connections) into a room to hear presentations about what sucks about Richmond and what they can do to fix it. It should just get people into a room and talk about why things are pointlessly embarrassing on a case by case basis. The goal of the discussion shouldn’t be to fix something to be more attractive, it should be to share knowledge and discover what everyone should be addressing at their own levels.

I went off on a pretty wild tangent there, but this is along the lines of what I hope to accomplish in explaining my relationship with esports and writing about all things technology on this blog at bill conference 3.

https://alpha.app.net/bcarr/post/13541913

I think I’ll have slides, because holy shit I am a fucking train wreck when it comes to talking off of the top of my head, but I’m splitting my presentation into two parts. I’m looking to give a short presentation about why I am a horrible writer and then lead into a sort of “this is what I have to deal with” comparison with the current esports scene. I also intend to interrogate whoever is there (who I assume could give less than three fucks about video games and turning it into a spectator sport) about where I should be focusing or even if I have a place in esports at all.

MLG’s backup plan for StarCraft 2.

https://alpha.app.net/bcarr/post/11531410

How weird is it that MLG is looking to get back into the SC2 scene? I guess it was going to happen at some point or another, but I would have thought the search wouldn’t have taken such a public angle.

Then again, with his heart-on-his-sleeve history of interacting with the game’s community, I suppose I shouldn’t have been surprised at all.

MLG has a fond place in my esports heart because it was the first real event that I made an effort to attend. SC2 was important to it over the last couple of years and being the only real American event series that makes an effort to survive has a lot to do with it. It wasn’t as important as the Korean league or the Dreamhack series, but being all things to nearly all of the English speaking community raised it up to the level of the other international successes.

This afternoon, Sundance briefly clarified his original tweet:

Now the original call makes more sense. MLG certainly has the reach and the reputation that could make it an appealing venue for an up-and-coming SC2 league based in the North American region, or even one-off events that fail to realize being able to hold multiple events.

Here’s hoping that one of the two people that actually asked Sundance for contact information over Twitter (or anyone that has his info, really) can give MLG something to put on stage that it can be proud of.