Essentials:

>> Competitive games are not fun.
>> DotA has HATS MAN, HATS!

It feels like over the last few years there has been a huge amount of hype built up by these pillars of esports (artosis, day9, djwheat) towards sc2 even though a lot of the pros would admit that the game is still quite flawed, like destiny said in his thread about how easy it is to cheese your way to tournament winnings and how that luck factor removes the skill (ESPORT ELEMENT) from the game itself. He calls it "the game is punishing" where as rather its just poor game design, but you can't have perfect game design in a RTS like sc2 or maybe you can with blizzard being such a huge company and seeing how talkative the sc community is and how much attention they pay to the game.

Every other point in the thread aside, I really feel for why quake has been around for so god damn long is because the skill in it is genuine due to good game design, and when u see a player come around and thrash another top professional, u know its not cheese or some sort of luck that contributes to the win, you have to be on par with the other player and match him in every way and which is why people enjoy seeing it happen because it doesn't happen often. baksteen being the most recent case.

That's just my opinion, didn't read the rest of that thread. Also, sc reddit has tendencies to make something out of nothing (calling the sponsors bullshit comes to mind). so i would wait a week before really thinking to myself "oh yeah sure sc2 now has no future because destiny says so." This is a huge argument with a lot of sides to it, but im glad that ppl are talking about it.

As for the moba games, yeah they're popular because they're easy/addictive. from what im hearing about reborn and how 2gd said on his show that its gonna be hardcore and made with lowest possible budget, i dont see it being a tripleA title or anything remotely close. but who knows. only time will tell. "if theres one person who can make a successful esports fps, its probably him and if he can't do it, then nobody can" - redeye

... i only spec sc2. .. cant be bothered to play more games then quake.

... occasionaly i break out and play something else, but i rarly finish it. ... ow well back to quakcis.

Exactly!

Shit son, I'm glad they don't play quake.

i remember starting to watch quake matches around 2005. i was just glad i can watch the best players playing each other as well as the best can earn enough to get by.

in 2010 i was glad something finally broke through, hoping to people will take notice what it is about and start appreciate the competition. than everything went wrong... all this "nerdgasm uhoh nerdchills..." and so on, everything is more important than the actual performance of players. ironically destiny is also just the product of this, find me a real sport where a D-lineup noone is more famous than actual professionals.

conformising the whole thing (americanizing?) - or with other words putting an ideology behind it- to cover up the fact its about anything but first world teenagers wanking off to a video game to sell them useless shit just turn my stomach out. i swear if i have to watch another minute of these mainstream esport casts ill just jump out from the 10th floor head on. its disguisting.

Making things casual and as easy as possible and then throwing money at it does not bring bigger view numbers or bigger fanbase, it just doesn't. It might for a while, but overall people WANT TO SEE SKILL not a random circlejerk.

I don't see Shootmania streams with n+1k viewers up 24/7.

Making things casual and easy, or "accessible", will certainly bring in a bigger fanbase, look at LoL. The game is incredibly accessible and has a massive community that only continues to grow. Games can be accessible but still retain a sufficiently high skill ceiling to facilitate a good level of competition. Football is casual, easy and accessible, most popular sports are, it's the same for video games.

Of course the most important factor, is something good? Shootmania is an example of something that is just plain shit. Unsurprisingly it has very few players, any game with very few players will have low amounts of viewers because obviously the main demographic for any game is first and foremost the people who play that game and have an interest in competitive gaming. The upcoming tournaments for Shootmania are everything that is wrong with "esports", they are not about the competition, they are a marketing exercise dressed up as a competition. These competitions are not the result of a thriving scene that has provided great games and generated real interest in itself, they're a disgusting transparent attempt to generate hype in a terrible game that is failing to appeal to anyone.