|
|||
In today's world, there's no better way to learn than by example. By examining the past and present, staff writer baka stands to evaluate our direction and explain how it's out of our hands at this point.  Disclaimer: The article below is to tickle your souls and question your motive. Never take it too literally. Understand this is simply a perspective that could be taken, and not one that I stand with. I continue to have hopes for E-Sports and will work for it if given the opportunities. All in all, this is just a GotFrag article for our faithful readers. The direction of competitive video gaming since it first began with its online leagues has only been moving forward at an accelerated pace. It seems only logical to extrapolate this positive correlation and interpret that eventually competitive video gaming will become a sport that is socially and commercially recognized. Modern gaming teams are transforming into organizations and minor corporations to accommodate the growing demand and interest of potential companies and sponsors who are becoming more aware of the video gaming scene. Again, the future of ‘E-Sports’ seems promising, big companies are beginning to sponsor some of the best teams in the world to compete in international competitions. Similarly, event organizers like the CPL are pouring consistent effort into improving the competitive scene to raise awareness and money. Even third world countries are becoming more involved in these events and competitions which can only mean an increasing growth rate for E-Sports. Looking closely, the direction of E-Sports is slowly commercializing, teams are becoming Incorporates. Gaming leagues are run by limited liabilities. The right path is being taken; it requires a business to get business. A corporate lawyer that deals with risk assessments of marketing schemes told me a few reasons as to why his company is holding back to be involved with sponsoring a ‘professional’ gaming team. Before we dive in this matter it is a good time to ask ourselves as to why monopolies such as Microsoft, Sun Microsystems, Level3 and Google are not actively involved in the market. Could it be because smaller companies like NVIDIA and ATI have already infiltrated the market? Even more reasonably, could it be because their products do not target the audience within the E-Sports community. If so, then we should ask ourselves why companies like Kappa, who are not technology-based, would tap into such a spontaneous market, or Subway would throw money out to promote its food? In the end the logic is simple: everyone wears clothes and everyone eats. It’s a matter of what brand to buy when deciding to buy clothes and what fast food to eat when hungry. However, bringing back the anonymous senior, some companies choose not to tap into the competitive gaming market based on a very simple accounting ratio: the cost to revenue is low and non-profitable. The cost of marketing and financing a good marketing scheme either through sponsorships and other means would not provide a good turnover in revenue in the long run. Again, this is based on the competitive gaming scheme and not video gaming in general. Video gaming in general is a big market; companies throw millions of dollars into that market. However the competitive side; that is, the ‘E-Sports’ side is only a small percentile of the totality – in the eye of a business developer, throwing money in the market can be more of a risk than a reward. New games that use more advanced technologies are made; Businesses make a killing by providing products that cater to these advancements. They target the leisure gamers and the parents that spoil them. E-Sports can never be stable in this case, new leagues will always form for new games, teams and gamers will move to other games in the future when there’s better prize money. This then can become a problem, gaming organizations that wish to catch the eyes of potential investors will have huge problems providing financial statements that would make investors believe there will be a rise in the equity. Likewise, teams without equity will have a hard time paying off liabilities such as the wages of their players and staff. In the end, without money a team can only be a team for so long. Player contracts would eventually end, managers will have problems paying their players and teams would eventually diminish. The only change investors like is growth, organizations changing focus on another game simply means a demand for more funding and reimplementation for marketing and management. That’s a no-no to investors and sponsors. E-Sports will eventually come to a halt, it will not die because it's always changing from one game to another, instead it will stop growing. The cycle will continue, teams will form and teams will diminish. Organizations will have problems with funding yet keen motivated talents will take over and try again. In the end, there will be one hit wonders but there won’t be the Lakers or the Patriots. What should ‘Professional’ gamers and what those who want to become one do now? Don’t take it too seriously. It is best to move on once you’ve reached the spotlight and soaked the admiration. The future of professional gamers only reaches a certain point of limited income and low salaries with small bonuses. When companies decide to move on to make another killing, so would teams and organizations that are funded by these companies. Inevitably, the once star whom went undefeated for years will be forgotten and desperate for a new living. The only asset we can get now is education, hourly-paid jobs will only remain hourly paid. Education however can lead to a more realistic future. An hour of gaming is an hour less of education. No matter how good one is with time management, fitting 'professional gaming' hours into a busy schedule is time well managed but not time well spent. What then is the next step for E-Sports? The fact is, E-Sports is not an entity at all compared to other sports, and it has no say in its future. The future of E-Sports is determined by powerful organizations beyond our reach as of now. Moreover, until the day one of us becomes a member of the Walton’s family or a billionaire who decides to stabilize E-Sports, there really is no future of further growth. Gaming will remain leisure, leisure gamers will remain the target of money-hungry companies. Professional gamers will have no place to stand. |
Thursday November 26 2009 | |||||
| |||||
User Comments
GotFrag is a coverage site. We cover E-Sports and ofcourse we promote it. My article does not reflect the thoughts and feelings of GotFrag, it's simply an article expressing my thoughts.
I think we need to make the Disclaimer size 72pt. so people like you would actually read it!
Read #12 : "heh goood read"
Read #10
It's meant to be read, it's meant to be pondered upon. And it really isnt a waste of time. I love writing and it only takes 15min to write something like this article.
No one likes to hear about disasters like the Tsunami or New Orleans flood, but why does the News still report those and why do people still write about it?
Point one, the population of e-sports is a small percentage of the total video gaming population. Fair enough, there's less gamers into e-sports then total gamers, but how can you say "The cost of marketing and financing a good marketing scheme either through sponsorships and other means would not provide a good turnover in revenue in the long run."? What evidence do you have to back this up? If you look at the current context of e-sports you find that there are in fact a lot of companies that find e-sports provides a good turnover in revenue. These technology companies that pump money into e-sports are increasing in size and number, the whole industry is growing. What exactly makes you think that suddenly these companies will stop supporting e-sports despite the fact that more people are getting into gaming and esports, more people are playing video games and using computers. You need to have evidence to back up your statements.
Your second point is even more fragmented then your first, you say that "E-Sports can never be stable in this case, new leagues will always form for new games, teams and gamers will move to other games in the future when there’s better prize money." How do you define stable first of all? And if new teams and leagues are forming, and there's better prize money that these teams are hunting for as you say, does that not constitute stability? You go on to speculate about team liablities and financial statements with no evidence to back it up.
It's a potentially interesting point to bring up, about the ever-changing playing field in e-sports. As opposed to traditional sports with static playing fields, esports has all kinds of different games to contend with. This definately presents an obstacle to the growth of e-sports, but you don't even talk about what has happened in the past in regards to this obstacle, or what kind of solutions could be taken to comabt it. If you look back in the history of e-sports you find out that despite the fact that there's new games all the time, if a game is a popular competitive game it will continue to be so indefinately and sponsors will continue to pump money into it, see Starcraft and CS 1.6. Also, what if a savvy game developer were to embrace e-sports, commit itself to making the best possible playing field that at the same time could be updated (in a non gameplay changing way) the graphics over time to appease the 'big business' of selling graphics cards etc, to make the sponsors happy so to speak.
It could have been an interesting article, but there's no cohesion to the arguments, no evidence to back anything up. Overall a very poor article.
*Edit*
And just to conclude, I recently watched 3 documentaries on similar competitive games. Murderball, about parapalegic athletes playing rugby, another one about international Chess players, and one more about the US Scramble tournament. Each is a few years old now, and all claim that the games will be 'the next big thing'. Well they're not, and particularly for the same reasons that spectators outside e-sports' audience don't watch the games. They're only fun for the players, to everybody else its a hobby, and this article states that they are the people without tunnel-vision. We should play the game as a hobby, not a career.
I remember season 5 going 8-0 with my team, winning 3 matches 23-1 and 1 match 24-0 then losing in playoffs cuz we all were burned out on practicing so much. I never really played or practiced to hard after that because I knew what it would take to even have a chance at being amazing, team or solo, and I didn't think it was worth it.
Just need to do what's fun, and also think to the future, not necessarily gaming, but your life.
My oh my... I think you didnt read the whole article. I said that marketing and sponsoring VIDEO GAMES makes a KILLING. But the COMPETITIVE SIDE is a MINORITY that produces a poor TURNOVER.
"Video gaming in general is a big market; companies throw millions of dollars into that market. However the competitive side; that is, the ‘E-Sports’ side is only a small percentile of the totality – in the eye of a business developer, throwing money in the market can be more of a risk than a reward."
I think writing in capital letters make it sound louder! :D
I didn't get to this point in my other post, so thank you for reminding me. I'll first say that, you're right that it's not at this point in time a great money making scheme for developers, (although the painkiller devs were trying to do just what i was proposing). But a company like Valve has a huge opportunity that in my mind they're totally missing the boat. And I'll tell you why.
First of all if you look at any online game there are the hardcore players and the casual users. Us e-sports people are the hardcore players, if you look at Everquest or World of Warcraft, us gotfraggers are the equivalent to the Fires of Heavens or other guilds that make it their life mission to conquer the game as quick as possible. Us hardcore gamers always make up a small percentage of the total gaming population. But isn't it funny that if you look at all the most popular online games you tend to find that the game that has the most hardcore players, also has the most casual players. There is a direct relationship between the amount of hardcore players and the amount of casual players that are attracted to a certain game, so to bring that over to e-sports, the more people who are into a certain game competitively, the more the general gaming population tends to be into it as well. Hardcore players have a huge effect on what games are truly popular.
To this end, as far as creating an e-sports game, it would obviously need to be targetted at the gaming population as a whole, but the idea is once you have a great game like a CS 1.6, or a Starcraft that you don't want to tinker with the gameplay much, you want to increase the graphics without sacraficing the gameplay (basically source done right), in order to appease both the hardcore gamers (which source failed to do) and the performance demanding sponsors.
Of course I'm simplifying a lot of things, and you need to have a bit of luck like Valve did, to create a truly successful e-sports platform, but it's not something you can dismiss out of hand. The main point is that, of course if you were to create a new game like hockey that was only targetted at NHL players of course you wouldn't do very well financially, but of course people want to play what the pros play, and just because the average joe is not competing in leagues it doesn't mean that he can't be influenced by the pros. The reason Valve is missing the boat is that they have the golden opportunity to get things right and provide a platform that everyone enjoys that can be updated graphically indefinately.
"marketing and sponsoring VIDEO GAMES makes a KILLING. But the COMPETITIVE SIDE is a MINORITY that produces a poor TURNOVER."
Ok so marketing and sponsoring of video games makes a killing? How exactly does that work, both marketing and sponsoring requires spending lots of money. Do you mean that marketing and sponsoring gives a good return on investment, and are you talking about esports or the video game industry in general?
The competitive side is a minority of what? If you mean to say that the competitive video game industry, the e-sports industry, is a minority in the video game industry as a whole, then you'd be correct. Are you trying to say that as a whole in the e-sports industry, the cost of sponsorship does not provide a good turnover? Obviously, like your anonymous executive, for some companies who are not related to the gaming industry that would be true, but obviously for a lot of companies supporting e-sports so far DOES provide a good 'turnover'. I understood this point fully and I addressed it in my previous post.
And no, capital letters does nothing to improve your writing skills.
they target the young people that aspire to become those professional players and actually go out and play or they target the older people that USED TO aspire to become those professional players but have moved on from playing sports when they were teens to watching it on tv
there will be 1 hit wonders but no lakers/patriots?
excuse me?
how many fans did nip have IMMEDIATELY when they came back?
how many of these fans ever even saw nip play or could even name anyone that was on nip other than heaton/potti?
how many people even know how significant heaton's famous eco ace vs. 4k was in that match?
only the VERY SMALL minority of us that were around back then can even remember x3 wasnt the only team to give nip a run for their money at that event or that nip dominated x3 on train
how many of us can remember midway's melee from dog (or how even watched midway and the rdw guys running this site play matches live)
how many people that own a dkt pad even know he played ut or was on one of those teams to give nip a run for their money
how many new fans does cooller have now that werent even playing games competitively when he was dominating q3
how many fans does fatality have that werent even around when he was playing against cooller in q3
we arent disappearing, we are becoming the minority and what we watched happen is now the history that the new people are learning when they come into the scene
real sports progress because of history, the history that began as a leisure sport, esports is still writing the contents page of its book, and if you havnt noticed, "real" sports have passed their climax and viewers are declining but entertainment is growing
so if people are shying away from tv's its not like they are starting to read books more, they are turning towards the internet and the domain of leisure video games, the cycle begins anew
i think this needs a summary so what i am saying is that there ARE lakers/patriots already, all you need to do is look at the forum topics on the side of this page and you will see that they are there.
i can remember when frod was a nobody (since he posted before me) but because of word of mouth he has a dynasty around his name for being an amazing awper, he is the johnny r of this generation
i remember when midway was just a decent player but he is world famous now for being on the media side (kind of how madden football games dont have him as a coach, but as a commentator)
just take a look at people that played at that x3/nip cpl that are now the first wave of "john madden's": midway, vesslan, half the rdw team
we havnt even seen the first year of true esports
#35 how many people compete in this chess tournament? Chess is not a game for everyone. lots of people would call it "boring."
#33
As quoted: "this is based on the competitive gaming scheme and not video gaming in general. Video gaming in general is a big market; companies throw millions of dollars into that market. However the competitive side; that is, the ‘E-Sports’ side is only a small percentile of the totality – in the eye of a business developer, throwing money in the market can be more of a risk than a reward."
Does it get any clearer than that?
Oh and to quote you: "but obviously for a lot of companies supporting e-sports so far DOES provide a good 'turnover'. I understood this point fully and I addressed it in my previous post."
Obviously? Not really. Expense is suppose to generate Revenue, thus the Macthing Rule in Finance. However, with a lot of these companies sponsoring teams, their marketing and sponsorship is only money put in to improve the "image". This can not be calculated into Revenue. It's a long process, it's an experiment, it takes years before they can recognize any Revenue earned from actually providing this sponsorship. That is something neither us or the companies have answers for yet.
NWT Inc, a Telecommunication company that is networthed in the billions went on the same kind of marketing venture. 3 years later, in 2005, they ended the marketing scheme due to it's failure in actively improving an increased in profit. That's evidence for you sir.
You miss the biggest point. It doesnt matter how many fans there are. It's a matter of whether companies can make money from these fans. And bringing back my article. They cant.
but to watch? its boring.
So idiot, what do you really think? eSports will just not grow?
Only if you understand the game real well though...
More Pages
Submit Comments
Registered Users Only
In order to post comments, you must be a registered member. If you have not registered, it's free and easy!