The comments on this video are super cool. Many people are sharing their personal experience with gaming and esports as they age and it's providing a ton of color to this data. I was nervous about this video because it is super nerdy but now I'm glad I made it. Thanks everyone for watching it and commenting here.
Are we as individuals not able to signup or pay for this? It is mainly company and Enterprise based? All I see is "login" and "request a demo", but want company info.
I think the ageing out is driven by the lack of tradition. The games are constantly changing and if you try to come back you not only have to learn all new faces but also new mechanics. The lack of local/state university leagues means that there's no school pride or networking benefits to following eSports after college.
Don't forget that if you take time away from a competitive game and comeback, the skill gap has increased ontop of you being 'rusty'. Even with a game like Rocket League, they don't add anything mechanically however people are constantly finding new mets and ways to play and even after all these years the pros of today are leagues ahead of pros from yesteryear.
1915, nerd from Brazil who have no connection to e-sports besides being a viewer, but still think your videos are so interesting and nobody else dive so deep into such topics as you do. It's always refreshing seeing a person working with something they love, because it becomes clear you enjoy yourself while talking. This is my first time commenting a call out, but that's because I usually watch you on my TV.
I been a fan of esports since Final boss, str8 rippin, iInstinct, and many other teams of the halo era. I’m now married, own a business with employees I can’t watch esports like how I use too. Mainly because as I got older I found myself getting away from competition in gaming and find myself loving single player games or coop games.
Speaking from my experience - 30 to 34 is the hot time to have kids for my coworkers. I'm going to be 30 this summer, but I also work in the video game industry and so keeping up with video games is part of my job. But even my coworkers who are literally producers, designers, and marketers - they all say that they have no time for games after having kids.
Not to mention how games like league really dont respect your time. Sure you can play as little as you want but the passes are grindy and seasonal reward systems like ranked and honor require constant engagement for menial rewards
many do say that, "no time for games" and they never have fun again. Never touch a game and float away from the market their kids love. The people who say "no time for games or fun" grow old mentally. Yes, there is no time to play games super serious when you have kids but you can casual play when you have some free time (but most choose to never touch game again since they think that you can only play serious and "as a job"). Same with people who think that you can only speedrun games, its impossible to play casual. They will destroy games whenever they touch one since its the "only way" to play a game.
I work with Mobile Esports and I’ve noticed that most of the mobile gamers are on the older side. Maybe once people get married with kids and higher responsibility jobs just transition to mobile games that don’t trap them in front of a computer?
Turning 40. I used to play a bunch of games (LoL, DotA Allstars, CS:S Dota2, WoW, Apex) 2 things changed for me over the past 5 years My son started getting older. And so the types of games I had time for changed, leaning more towards gaming in quick sessions, if at all My tolerance for bullshit dropped. I stopped playing Mobas altogether, cause who needs the stress. I still watch esports but mainly just big events (ALGS w Apex and The International w Dota2) Otherwise my tastes and interests have changed towards real world news. I still game on mobile, but gamer drama and games industry stuff is off my radar
I think low tolerance for bullshit is a big one. The older I get, the less tolerance I have for bullshit that doesn’t improve my quality of life, which unfortunately is most competitive multiplayer games.
@@rezellehime Chris Williamson does podcasts on men's mental health and society. He just dropped an interview with a researcher whose expertise is on violent video games Men and boys play who violent video games (FPS titles) are ones who are seeking status. Nothing new, sure. But its a crazy corollary where guys that fuck, if they game, its shooters. So that toxicity that comes with the age old Xbox Live trope, or perhaps the Moba, it very much is that -- if you're ruining the game for me, you are fking up my biological subconscious measure of my own worth. And I guess its not ground breaking when its worded like that but to me its mind blowing that it relates to the millions of years of primate evolution. And our instinct of social status being vital to survival-- even though today the outlet for many is in a virtual make believe world
i think one of the biggest sticking points on the income side (and you even look at the modern warfare numbers you mentioned) is the place where the community tends to play the game: folks who have a solid pc set up tend to have a lot of disposable because it takes a lot more time and money to have a good pc set up, compared to a console, which is comparatively more affordable and streamlined. if the place to play the game is a financial barrier to entry, then you will see a higher income for that group, no matter the age (parents need to afford the fancy pc's for their kids afterall).
I think a look at Optic would be beneficial. With such an old franchise they still create content driven by their ESports and fun videos and podcasts by personalities people grow old with. Their mech drops, content route, and sponsorships were the blueprint for 100 Thieves. I would say the majority of the fanbase are late 20s-30s and may have a problem with onboarding younger fans. But they may be the only org in Call of Duty E-Sports whose fans are giving breath to the league. H3cz has been very vocal of the more recent fall of ESports and how it came to be.
honestly ive been a lifelong gamer and the ENTIRE reason ive never really watched any esports at all was because whenever i see all those young kids living out there dreams who got to commit there everything to something they fucking loved i get full of anger and envy because my entire adolescence i was completely psychologically tortured by my mother in various ways that made me even being able to pursue my dreams impossible let alone making it. and now im almost 28. people my age DO NOT EXSIST in esports unless they've been in the game for 10+years already and at this age there probably only it because of a combination of legacy factors or their content creation avenues that have kept them relavant. maybe im wrong but when have you EVER seen someone even above like 22 suddenly come out of nowhere and crack into the scene as a player with no previous content creation following or already established connections? for me it puts me in a horrible headspace knowing that breaking in in any capacity is 100% permanently impossible for someone like me...especally now since ive never gotten away from my mother this entire time and i question weather or not im already experiencing severe cognitive decline already. i just get mad because i think that should be fucking me in one of those seats and i didnt get to try because of my weakness as a person because of a SINGLE shitty person in my life and at least in my mind assuming that every single person there didnt have people like that in their lives. people who would make sure they know that everything they think is wrong, every opinion is wrong, and that everything they have ever wanted to look at or pursue is wrong or to be disregarded and must be dropped at any given moment based on the whims of said person with 0 regard for weather you actually cared about whatever you were doing and god forbid you take a stand and get full on screamed at for multiple hours.
19:15 squad. I've been really enjoying the video thus far! I've always felt unique as a fan of eSports because I actively follow nine or ten different scenes, but I don't really play video games that much myself, especially not the ones that I watch. I started to age out in my teenage years after all of the old servers of the games I used to play started to get shut down. The realization of the finitude of material things served as a kind of awakening that caused me to re-direct my time elsewhere, but I still enjoy the competition between professionals!
Im 31. Have entered some valorsnt tourneys and have been keeping up w the esport since the first ever event. Im now pretty invested in csgo and am awaiting cs2. Maybe im in the minority but as of rn im enjoying playing and viewing.
I can tell you exactly why people age out of gaming. Too much money, too much time, too much effort. You answered it yourself Devin. You situated your whole life around gaming, but for people who did not it's unsustainable.
So this point is interesting to me. I am 30 going on 31. I still play games like I am 18, but at the same time I'm successful. I think 99% of it honestly comes down to two things: I have a wife who games, I don't have kids. Since my wife games (we met on wow) she understands how fun and inviting they are. If you have kids, they're going to be the ones playing.
@@heero854 Well I think Devin is talking about the eSports side of gaming. You can still enjoying games as they get older, but the competitive side of gaming starts to become unreasonable as you get older. It's like suggesting you can age out of watching movies, tv shows, or reading books.
19:15. As a gamer into the higher age bracket what I have noticed is that the pressures from outside forces that are close to you (family, friends, girlfriends etc) to stop you from gaming become increasingly difficult to overcome. I can totally relate to you Devin in that I can only justify gaming by either making money in it in some way or by expressing that I am a gamer and that is that.
31:40 As someone in my late 30's, the drop-off is not surprising. I don't think I know anyone who is into esports. I think a big part of it is because video games were considered to be very uncool during the 90's. Anything that was remotely geeky or even intellectual was aggressively mocked by pop culture at the time. I wouldn't be surprised if we have many fewer per capita gamers than younger generations because of that. Another part is esports wasn't readily available when we were growing up. Streaming video wasn't common until I was out of college, so if it wasn't on network or cable TV, it didn't exist for us. It's hard to sell people on watching people play video games on the internet when you didn't grow up with that idea. It's easy to say, "They are getting married and having kids, so they don't have time". Those things are true, but I don't think that's not stopping my demo from watching baseball or football, so I don't think that's relevant. We just don't have the culture of esports ingrained in us. I'm not convinced this will be an issue for later generations who are already invested in esports. We aren't aged out. We were never there.
Hard not to agree with you, your point of view is a lot more complex, then just simply write that when people are getting into their 30 are getting families. I will just write that there are people who are in normal sport and who are 35 and are in their prime. Soo basically anybody who talk shit about age is just lazy and don’t want to take responsibility to try himself in something that he pursue, because he is afraid too much. Then to make him be free of this responsibility he will say to himself that he is too old, by lying to himself he can now live calmly.
Think you nailed the issue right on the head. And as far as the younger esports fanbase not being as large as you'd expect given number of gamers, connects back to it being hard for a game to last forever and remain cool. Think halo, COD, gears... All were super popular and cool, but that just isn't really sustainable. I'd imagine eSports would be better served to not be tied to individual games. And naturally creates some variety and the ability pivot as new games and trends rise up. Not much innovation in triple a gaming makes it hard to have the hot new title as well.
To add, being tied to individual games also fractures the already smaller fanbase into several even smaller fanbases. Especially true within similar genres. Just seems better to promote eSports as competitive gamers, and avoid being tied to specific developers. Who mostly seem uninterested in supports eSports. Fortnite probably did it best, even though I'm not a fan. But they have done a good job keeping gamers my kid's age interested with their cash cups and other stuff like that.
This kind of data deep dive and analysis is what keeps me working in the data field because it can tell such interesting stories of how groups are engaged with different parts of entertainment
In my 7-ish years of playing League I never watched esports. The only reason I would have watched it is to learn something more about the game, but "esport League" is completely different from the usual game, therefore it doesn't matter.
I think iRacing has the best chance as an eSport. Driving has mass appeal and it can lead into actually driving for nascar. The simulation equipment could also be used for driving classes at local high schools. I could even see adults participating in a local iRacing rec league. It's ready made for a multigenerational tradition.
19:15 Talking about old and young people watching the same esport, I watch aoe2 eSports which is a 20 year old game and a community run Esport so it is closer to the fans and has a reasonable viewership for such a small game. It also doesn't have exorbitant player wages so it's entirely community funded and doesn't go beyond their means.
48 retired, lifetime gamer. Play a lot of CoD ...over the last 4 titles I have put in 5,232 hours in 😬 Haven't looked into what I've put into all the games I play. I use to work 14 to 18 hours a day, 6 to 7 days per week and rarely took a vacation. Lets just say I have directed that towards gaming in my retirement 😂 I do also enjoy watching pro CoD and Halo. OpTic baby
OpTic does a fantastic content on their teams that make it to lan. Their cod, halo, and valorant when they fielded a roster was top tier content. Can’t wait to see what they do with their apex team going to London for a lan. I would like to see stats around OpTic bc I feel like they obviously have a huge cod fan base. I feel like OpTic is an interesting team specially with the merge of NV. I feel like when OpTic makes good content around a team it booms. I feel they capitalize most when it comes to content around super star teams.
I have been dying for OpTic to do some content around their Apex team. Hoping their dominant split 2 is the catalyst for H3CZ to acknowledge their existence 😂
I would also give Superstitum credit for setting players up for player personalty. Stewe2K = somke criminal, Frekazoid = We hawt impersonated, n0thing = the guy that stay up all night to find a new smoke, m0E = the Rager, Scream = Can he miss, JW = the guy that trolls but wins, Phasa = the gym guy the is secret nerd, Summit = the guy that ran through a molly.
I actually found your content and I've been binging it over the few days. It's not flashy, but makes you think by looking at the data and hearing your explanation behind it. Keep it up!
19:15 -- I love this kinda stuff keep it up! I would love to see you talk about Valorant and the male/female demographic and maybe even do a whole video on the types of things different games do to attract female demographics
I love watching FGC events but I’m also a FGC/smash player! I’ve had family and friends say that the simple premise of the FGC makes it much easier/interesting to follow than MOBAs or shooters.
Can confirm that it’s much easier to watch 10 minute cideos of people playing the characters than a entire overly drawn out event masquerading as a real sport
coming to this after watching 2 csgo major live streams in parallel their esports is just great, i never really liked the game for a long time but got into it 3 years ago and watched ever T1 event since then, it's so fun and exiting
The more you grow up, the more outlook, perspective, objectives and passion you have in life it's just simple math. When i was 20, i only had gaming as a passion and was working a part time job so i was involve in getting better myself and following esport. Now i'm 33, i have a lot of hobbies and passion which i'm somewhat competitive at (Climbing, running, Piano for exemple) and a full time job which doen't allow me to keep track of what is happening on " Pro " level plays. I still games a lot and still love it, i just shifted to more solo casual experience instead of competitive multiplayer and stop watching twitch in general
It seems to me that the primary failure of e-sports commercially is down to the fact that most people who are not hardcore gamers just don't understand what is going on. The people trying to monetize this stuff never seem to get this.
Maybe one of the reasons the Battlefield 3 and 4 scene's esports never took off is because the average age of the playerbase was generally higher (35-44 and 45-over). As a longtime member of a Battlefield community since 2142 it's always been shocking to me how many older men, specifically and especially military veterans, play Battlefield compared to really any other game.
19:15 - I'm a data guy and want to get into marketing. These kinda tools get me excited to see that something I've viewed as a really cool hobby (eSports) growing up is actually viable for long term investment, if done correctly, just like traditional sports in a marketing perspective. Keep up this kinda content, I love it.
I used to be a degenerate gamer, but I've definitely "aged out" and am barely a casual gamer these days. The reason for this is two fold; the first is just generally unsolvable: I don't make any money when I play a game and our society is so deep in the "gig economy" culture right now that I can no longer de-stress, because every time I'm de-stressing, I'm not accomplishing my goals or earning my bag. That's a broader societal/culture issue that I think is much bigger than gaming. But the second reason is where the gaming industry has dropped the ball and could improve: part of what kept me playing was my friends also played. As they had children and responsibilities, it became harder for us all to find time together where we could play. And the current gaming industry is not well-designed to help players find new friends to replace the old ones. That is, every game has you heavily invested in working together as a team *for this one game*. And then as soon as that game is over, you never see any of those people ever again. Whereas games like WoW heavily invested in guilds and community building, which allowed people to get to know one another and become more heavily invested in each other than they were in a single pick-up-group raid. I think the current gaming industry needs to strongly consider doing something similar, because while it won't help with user acquisition, it should pretty strongly increase lifetime customer value.
Made it to 19:15 Tbh the reason why I'm watching this video I think is less so to do with the topic rather than Devin himself because I don't really consume this kind of content from anyone else; he makes consuming/learning about this kind of stuff really enjoyable.
19:15, love the esports vids, I started playing counter-strike and watching esports since i was 11, been hooked every since. I'm now 18 and working in the fgc/esports myself, your content has been super insightful and entertaining!
I don't usually comment, but I had to say something because this video was just super cool. I don't really watch a lot of esports other that league worlds (and even that is dependent on my mood for the year) but I think its interesting to break down what demographics do watch. I still play league but I've been slowly playing less and less as I've been getting into final fantasy XIV, and watching this makes me wonder what a game like that has for demographics as far as engagement goes, since its such a different type of game. Good video, always enjoy your content. :D
Secret shout out squad! Anecdote andy here, I'm not even out of the 24-30 bracket yet and I don't care about these teams... I've got stuff to do (job, friends and family, hobbies) and I'm primarily playing singleplayer games now. Not to mention the teams are picking up highschoolers and college kids I don't relate to anymore... Shit comes at you fast I guess!
19:15 Still here! Might be interesting to you from an analytical standpoint, but this is the first video from you that I’ve clicked on in months - super interesting topic!
19:15 - Love these videos. As someone who primarily watches Dota and FGC esports, it's interesting to hear about the other esports, their brands, and how they compare to the sort of bubble that Dota and FGC esports live in. It'd be interesting to see how Dota, specifically, compares to some of the other big esports considering how so few big orgs invest in it. From what I've seen people say, there's just not that big enough of an audience? Or is it because Dota doesn't have a huge market share in the US/EU?
Anecdote time: 35+ year-olds I know who still game are programmers, work on server/website/etc fields. If they can, they have Twitch or LCS playing on screen #3 while they work on #1-2.
100T just stands out in terms of content first and that goes a long way. I don’t watch much of their content anymore but being more creator focused is helping them much more than other orgs one more thing about 100T that I notice a lot of people mistake is it’s pronunciation (sorry to call you out Devin) and Nadeshot did bring this up in a podcast about how he actually isn’t happy with the logo design because it leads to that confusion it’s not “one hundred thieves” “uh hundred thieves” it’s “hundred thieves”
19:15 I find the data on who follows different organizations interesting because I don't normally have a lot of brand loyalty. I specifically follow individual players most of the time with most of my eSports viewing being FGC content. Overall I watch a variety of eSports. I'm 30 and grew up in SoCal arcades and watching people go at it in MvC2, SF III, Guilty Gear, etc was one of my favorite things to do. I try not to take for granted that I can look up footage of almost any player in almost any game and find more video than I have time to watch.
Its hard to hypothesize if people are ageing out or if the industry is just too young to be fully established in everyday life. If you think about it esports streaming has only been around 15 years or so as opposed to traditional sports which have been around 100s of years. The internet only became ubiquitous recently when the smartphone connected everyone at all times, and even more recently social media completely took over everyones lives.
On and off for me, I watch the occasional CS major or CDL final but that’s really it. There was a time when I was excited for the LoL season and would watch every week
Competitive fighting games are a different beast entirely. It isn't as dependent on extreme time investment like LoL or RL, or hyper fast reaction speed like competitive FPS's that gatekeeps people over their mid 20's. It's demographic is comfortably in their 30's and extremely diverse in every aspect.
I mean the Counter-Strike age Gap is super easy to explain if you know anything about the history of Counter-Strike. The game had an unpopular competitive expansion in "Source" which tanked the popularity of competitive scene. So when csgo came out there was reinvigoration of the scene since the original run of Counter-Strike esports with pre Justin TV a lot of new fans were able to throw in on the new wave of competition. Old fans = 1.6 New fans = CS:Go No fans = source Gap explained
I find this topic extremely interesting. Really good video. I personally think we still need to wait a few generations to really see if people age out of games and esports. I feel like it's such a young industry that not a lot of generations experienced it. Over time I think the age distribution will become wider.
This is super interesting stuff to think about. I definitely think people ageing out of playing a game is something that esports and traditional sports have in common. The key difference is that a lot of people continue to watch sports long after they have stopped playing it but most people stop watching esports when they stop playing the game. The only game that comes close to holding an audience that has already stopped playing themselves is cs and I think this is because it's the game that's closest to being a traditional sport, the game is timeless and rarely changes so anyone can follow it without having to keep up with updates. I hope more games will realise that combining the constantly updating game model and esports is not a good idea in the long run.
Dota 2 and csgo are probably going to be the longest lasting esports I think. Both of those started organically and haven't done the whole franchising thing and is fun to watch because they have international tourneys regularly than region locked tourneys until the world cup.
32:00 I really want to see metrics from the FGC. I genuinely believe those gamers are growing up with those historic franchises (SF, Tekken, MK, Smash). But I can def say there’s no money there ( 1M Cpt is an aberration from the history but a good step in the right direction if sustainable)
I personally fit into that 30+ age dropoff. I was an avid watcher of esports 10 years ago (mostly SC2 and CSGO) but it's too much of a time commitment to be watching 8 hour streams. I'd rather spend the 1-2hours I get playing the game than watching someone else.
8:32 On CoD having an older trending audience, a lot of this is due to the old games being much better imo. Lots of old heads who have been playing/watching for a very long time who put up with the drop in quality. Younger people with less attachment to the franchise are more likely to just go somewhere shiny and new
1915. Would love for you to talk about the failures of owl and cdl and how they could have been mitigated. Also would love for you to talk about clg I know it would be hard for u but it could help out others owners in the future.
I'm 36 and watch all the big CSGO tournaments and been playing CS since 1999 and CoD since 2007. Lots of my friends around my age are the same and some even have kids but understanding wife's :) I hope I'll be playing CS and watch esports until I die and that many other males will do the same but your stats suggests otherwise which is a bit disappointing. Anyway love your content! It would be awesome if esports teams released documentary style content from their tournaments and life as a pro gamer. Please help them understand that we fans don't just want to see highlights from the matches as I've probably already saw it live.
Optic Gaming is making some good long form content - The Process. Shawstin and the content team over there is killing it. Wish they had more of that though
I'm approaching 30 and I've started watching way less esports than I did before. I used to watch every COD major and the LCS championships. Now I have two kids and I'm trying to get my oldest involved in sports so I have way less time and the time that I do game is becoming a lot more chill than before. Been playing a lot more MLB The Show than COD and other competitive games. It's just too draining to play ranked modes in games, even though I still love playing it. There's also no local esports scene at all here compared to what there used to be. The competitiveness feels way less now that the leagues don't have any form of relegation and they are guaranteed top bracket in all the major tournaments. I feel like the organized leagues are trying so hard to make the leagues more "competitive" that they cycle through the players too much for me to care about some of the players. You can't build those storylines like Optic Scump and others that have a storied career. This guy didn't perform in his first few games? Let's release him and get another guy from the Challengers pool of players. Optic was the first major team that got me engaged and they're one of the few teams that I still keep up with from time to time because they still have decent content.
The biggest issue with any E-Sport is how many people who watch don't play the game. Because of that when a person quits playing the game it also means the the person quits the E-Sports orgs engagement as well. It is kind of like breaking up with your significant other and their best friend as well. Until E-sports and E-Sport orgs figures out how to maintain and monetize players past their playing days or viewers who would never play the game there will always be limit to the low overall cap that the industry will ever have.
I'm really curious about how different this is for fighting games. I myself rarely ever watch streams, but I will tune in for FGC events and I know many others in my area who do the same. To us, it's on par with football and wrasslin'.
When I was younger I watched every big tournament for multiple games I was following. I used to play them all a lot and would watch esports consistently on the side when doing other things. Once I didn't have the time to play those same games, watching them wasn't engaging. If I wasn't going to apply anything that I saw, I simply didn't really care. Whenever I have free time now I rather play other games that I can better fit into my schedule and are not competitive. When I had the time before I used to be really competitive and got matched with some pro players. Since I am unable to spend all that time playing I can't keep up to a performance standard I'm happy with and would rather just do other enjoyable activities, gaming or not.
My husband and I play league, we're both over 50, and we've definitely spent many thousand dollars over the past ten years on that game between skins and esports team shirts and two tickets to one of the semi-finals!! So while the over 40 crowd is minimal, don't discount our empty nest buying power! :)
The phenomenon you speak of around the 37:38 minute mark is something that i have heard of referred to as in the moment gamers or customers. It is something i have heard come up in the conversation of game design / physical games vs digital and something to think about in general when you are creating a product or service in this day and age there are so many ways for a consumer to engage with content and what will make me not just pay attention to you but buy a t shirt or your album? Many forms of entertainment are not just competing with the entities in their bubble like xbox, nintendo, playstation but they are also competing with netflix, max, amazon, twitch, disney, etc. The bulk of the live tv industry are still relying on sports to bring in viewers which they can leverage in contract negotiations for bigger deals which i agree still has it's place but they still need to think about streaming capability like what wwe does with peacock. Media will continue to get more and more fragmented as time goes on the only thing cable or a streaming platform has is ease of access but when you don't own the license to the product you are playing or streaming (games) it becomes more of a headache as a consumer imo because these games are all on servers and once they get delisted emulation is the only way to enjoy them. I prefer games that typically don't have a yearly release schedule because you know that they are in it for the long haul.
I waited a day to respond, but the only esports I tend to watch are team game tournaments in Age of Empires 2. I'll casually watch some iRacing on the side, but the main esports series (League, Valorant, CSGO, Dota, FGC) just have no appeal to me. Everything I used to enjoy just went so heavy on personalities and composing stories to the viewers that I just doze off before the draft even starts. It's almost to how I enjoy watching the Olympics, but I can barely watch anything on the primetime NBC Olympic coverage here in the US... they spend 12-15m talking about or with athletes that might get 60s from start to the finish of their event... Even trickling down streaming sites to speedrunning or casual gaming... it just got so bad I barely watch anything anymore. When I find something, its usually just a sleeping aid now and I'm not really paying attention because I couldn't find anything on Spotify.
1915- I play games religiously and watch them. I am 30 and am on the higher income spectrum. I don't really care about ESports teams whatsoever. It's never really made sense to me, because I feel like the brands are really really different between games. Like I like Astralis CSGO, but I could never care about their LoL team. The games I currently play are mostly the ones I've played since I was a kid, or blizzard games. I will play switch games, and then everything by Blizzard, not activision. Hearthstone, OW, Diablo, Starcraft, WoW. I also hold stock in the company. Aside from that I play OSRS. Those are my main drivers. I am also proficient in the games I DO play, Masters in Overwatch, 7k BG rating in hearthstone, max in OSRS. Never made it to masters in Starcraft, but at least I hit Diamond. I play Blizzard games so much, I own the stock so I can "pay myself back". I think for most older people it just comes down to wife and kids. Kids take money and time. Most wives just think gaming is bad. My wife, who I met on WoW, plays games right next to me all the time. If my wife didn't understand the hobby I don't think I'd spend as much time as I do, which is whenever I am not at work. The Esports problem is that anyone who cares about esports, like we found out from this video, is like 25 and is in debt up to their eyeballs. Take a look at what happened to Faze. What about Moist ESports? ESports just completely blows money. OWL made the salary like 50k, for even C-String players, and while I know that doesn't translate to other games 1:1, less than that you can't live on if you don't win competitions. Then you have the rest of the team which is probably another 20-30 people for a decent sized org? It's a literal money pit. Ain't no way you gonna sell enough shirts to recoup any type of that money and I can count on 1 hand the amount of people I've seen walking around in 100 Thieves merch in Baltimore and Chicago. For the conclusion, I agree with everything. I am 30 and I simply refuse to watch and play DOTA because there is too much going on for me and I understand the stuff. LOL is at least nice and happy colors. I disagree that people will completely grow out of the games though because the games are just 10 years old and the people are 29, so that means they would have started playing at 19 instead of at 20, so if 45% are going to be less than 24, that means they would have been 14 when they started playing. You should look at older franchises and see what it looks like. Look at World of Warcraft, Runescape, and even how Pokemon has been as those players would have been 10-18 when they started and they might have older audiences. Pokemon has also been out for 30 years and that info would be amazing. Anecdotally, I feel like I run into a lot of women on Overwatch as well. I think it has to do with the customization tbh. How and why did I type this much.
I wonder how many people start quitting gaming because they lose some of their gaming crew. Most of these games are team-based and it can be daunting to start again with a different group if you had been gaming with the same people for a while. The games are also very punishing in their matchmaking and ranking. It's hard on the ego to realize you'll never be plat or diamond again because you don't have the time and energy to invest and that you'll only be silver now.
I can relate to this. When my game buddies are on I win a lot and confidence is high, when they aren't ill try less hard and give up easier (Apex legends ranked games). It's not fun to win or lose when friends aren't there
1915 Ever since I remember I was into watching someone else play, in primary school I would go to my friend's flat and watch him play Gothic, Stronghold etc. I would sometimes play too but was very rarely unhappy with not having the hand on the mouse... In my mid teens I also got into volunteering at conventions and then into helping organize events so I think it's only natural that watching, working on and nerding out about esports tournaments became my thing :D I've noticed that with age the pools of games I watch and games I play tends to drift apart more, I play a lot of PoE but don't really watch it, I've never played CS:GO but I watch every major event and so on. EDIT: I'd like to see the stats for Age of Empires 2... it's a small but very healthy scene that tends to have people on the older side and from various different countries...
As I played League of Legends, I would watch League streams/tournaments. A few years ago my wrist couldn't keep up anymore, so I dropped off League and League streams. I'm 33 now.
This was an incredibly interesting listen. I’ll have to rewatch later tonight to see the data. As for the personal experience, I can give mine with CoD. For me it’s not that I don’t have the time to play, it’s that the state of the game leaves me uninterested in doing so, and thus I’ve moved to other games (and Plutonium). With that lack of interest in the game itself, watching isn’t a priority like it used to be. Something exacerbated by the CDL era making the decision to get rid of the old teams (and thus storylines) and with the extremely limited player pool a lot of the interesting player dynamics from the middle-tiers who could occasionally compete or more streaky players. In short: they lost what they had and couldn’t build something before the game killed my interest.
My nephew started playing valorant when he was 14-15 years old and now switched to cs:go at the age of 16 because all his friends play cs:go now. From my understanding some popular streamers starting playing cs:go because of skin openings so that probably influnced them. 1915 btw. :D
Hey I noticed that when you looked at Blast, you were grabbing statistics on their Blast Shorts channel. Could that be affecting the age range? I don't know much about the demographics of short-form vertical video but I'd guess that it skews younger.
Dope rundown on the data and your insights @devinnash I can say you definitely come thru when I need info on influencer marketing and e-sports related stuff for my own ventures. Thx bro'
The comments on this video are super cool. Many people are sharing their personal experience with gaming and esports as they age and it's providing a ton of color to this data. I was nervous about this video because it is super nerdy but now I'm glad I made it. Thanks everyone for watching it and commenting here.
Are we as individuals not able to signup or pay for this? It is mainly company and Enterprise based? All I see is "login" and "request a demo", but want company info.
loved this!
Let's be real, I follow this channel BECAUSE it's nerdy
I think the ageing out is driven by the lack of tradition. The games are constantly changing and if you try to come back you not only have to learn all new faces but also new mechanics. The lack of local/state university leagues means that there's no school pride or networking benefits to following eSports after college.
Don't forget that if you take time away from a competitive game and comeback, the skill gap has increased ontop of you being 'rusty'. Even with a game like Rocket League, they don't add anything mechanically however people are constantly finding new mets and ways to play and even after all these years the pros of today are leagues ahead of pros from yesteryear.
I’ve been following COD a long time before schools showed up
1915, nerd from Brazil who have no connection to e-sports besides being a viewer, but still think your videos are so interesting and nobody else dive so deep into such topics as you do. It's always refreshing seeing a person working with something they love, because it becomes clear you enjoy yourself while talking.
This is my first time commenting a call out, but that's because I usually watch you on my TV.
I been a fan of esports since Final boss, str8 rippin, iInstinct, and many other teams of the halo era. I’m now married, own a business with employees I can’t watch esports like how I use too. Mainly because as I got older I found myself getting away from competition in gaming and find myself loving single player games or coop games.
Speaking from my experience - 30 to 34 is the hot time to have kids for my coworkers. I'm going to be 30 this summer, but I also work in the video game industry and so keeping up with video games is part of my job. But even my coworkers who are literally producers, designers, and marketers - they all say that they have no time for games after having kids.
Not to mention how games like league really dont respect your time. Sure you can play as little as you want but the passes are grindy and seasonal reward systems like ranked and honor require constant engagement for menial rewards
many do say that, "no time for games" and they never have fun again. Never touch a game and float away from the market their kids love. The people who say "no time for games or fun" grow old mentally.
Yes, there is no time to play games super serious when you have kids but you can casual play when you have some free time (but most choose to never touch game again since they think that you can only play serious and "as a job").
Same with people who think that you can only speedrun games, its impossible to play casual. They will destroy games whenever they touch one since its the "only way" to play a game.
I work with Mobile Esports and I’ve noticed that most of the mobile gamers are on the older side. Maybe once people get married with kids and higher responsibility jobs just transition to mobile games that don’t trap them in front of a computer?
Turning 40. I used to play a bunch of games (LoL, DotA Allstars, CS:S Dota2, WoW, Apex)
2 things changed for me over the past 5 years
My son started getting older. And so the types of games I had time for changed, leaning more towards gaming in quick sessions, if at all
My tolerance for bullshit dropped. I stopped playing Mobas altogether, cause who needs the stress.
I still watch esports but mainly just big events (ALGS w Apex and The International w Dota2)
Otherwise my tastes and interests have changed towards real world news. I still game on mobile, but gamer drama and games industry stuff is off my radar
I think low tolerance for bullshit is a big one. The older I get, the less tolerance I have for bullshit that doesn’t improve my quality of life, which unfortunately is most competitive multiplayer games.
@@rezellehime Chris Williamson does podcasts on men's mental health and society. He just dropped an interview with a researcher whose expertise is on violent video games
Men and boys play who violent video games (FPS titles) are ones who are seeking status. Nothing new, sure. But its a crazy corollary where guys that fuck, if they game, its shooters.
So that toxicity that comes with the age old Xbox Live trope, or perhaps the Moba, it very much is that -- if you're ruining the game for me, you are fking up my biological subconscious measure of my own worth.
And I guess its not ground breaking when its worded like that but to me its mind blowing that it relates to the millions of years of primate evolution. And our instinct of social status being vital to survival-- even though today the outlet for many is in a virtual make believe world
i think one of the biggest sticking points on the income side (and you even look at the modern warfare numbers you mentioned) is the place where the community tends to play the game: folks who have a solid pc set up tend to have a lot of disposable because it takes a lot more time and money to have a good pc set up, compared to a console, which is comparatively more affordable and streamlined. if the place to play the game is a financial barrier to entry, then you will see a higher income for that group, no matter the age (parents need to afford the fancy pc's for their kids afterall).
I think a look at Optic would be beneficial. With such an old franchise they still create content driven by their ESports and fun videos and podcasts by personalities people grow old with. Their mech drops, content route, and sponsorships were the blueprint for 100 Thieves. I would say the majority of the fanbase are late 20s-30s and may have a problem with onboarding younger fans. But they may be the only org in Call of Duty E-Sports whose fans are giving breath to the league. H3cz has been very vocal of the more recent fall of ESports and how it came to be.
honestly ive been a lifelong gamer and the ENTIRE reason ive never really watched any esports at all was because whenever i see all those young kids living out there dreams who got to commit there everything to something they fucking loved i get full of anger and envy because my entire adolescence i was completely psychologically tortured by my mother in various ways that made me even being able to pursue my dreams impossible let alone making it. and now im almost 28. people my age DO NOT EXSIST in esports unless they've been in the game for 10+years already and at this age there probably only it because of a combination of legacy factors or their content creation avenues that have kept them relavant. maybe im wrong but when have you EVER seen someone even above like 22 suddenly come out of nowhere and crack into the scene as a player with no previous content creation following or already established connections? for me it puts me in a horrible headspace knowing that breaking in in any capacity is 100% permanently impossible for someone like me...especally now since ive never gotten away from my mother this entire time and i question weather or not im already experiencing severe cognitive decline already.
i just get mad because i think that should be fucking me in one of those seats and i didnt get to try because of my weakness as a person because of a SINGLE shitty person in my life and at least in my mind assuming that every single person there didnt have people like that in their lives. people who would make sure they know that everything they think is wrong, every opinion is wrong, and that everything they have ever wanted to look at or pursue is wrong or to be disregarded and must be dropped at any given moment based on the whims of said person with 0 regard for weather you actually cared about whatever you were doing and god forbid you take a stand and get full on screamed at for multiple hours.
19:15 squad. I've been really enjoying the video thus far! I've always felt unique as a fan of eSports because I actively follow nine or ten different scenes, but I don't really play video games that much myself, especially not the ones that I watch. I started to age out in my teenage years after all of the old servers of the games I used to play started to get shut down. The realization of the finitude of material things served as a kind of awakening that caused me to re-direct my time elsewhere, but I still enjoy the competition between professionals!
Im 31. Have entered some valorsnt tourneys and have been keeping up w the esport since the first ever event. Im now pretty invested in csgo and am awaiting cs2. Maybe im in the minority but as of rn im enjoying playing and viewing.
I can tell you exactly why people age out of gaming. Too much money, too much time, too much effort. You answered it yourself Devin. You situated your whole life around gaming, but for people who did not it's unsustainable.
So this point is interesting to me. I am 30 going on 31. I still play games like I am 18, but at the same time I'm successful. I think 99% of it honestly comes down to two things: I have a wife who games, I don't have kids.
Since my wife games (we met on wow) she understands how fun and inviting they are.
If you have kids, they're going to be the ones playing.
@@heero854 success is subjective. I'd be depressed with your life.
@@killmesoicanrespawn3775 Why?
@@heero854 Well I think Devin is talking about the eSports side of gaming. You can still enjoying games as they get older, but the competitive side of gaming starts to become unreasonable as you get older. It's like suggesting you can age out of watching movies, tv shows, or reading books.
19:15. As a gamer into the higher age bracket what I have noticed is that the pressures from outside forces that are close to you (family, friends, girlfriends etc) to stop you from gaming become increasingly difficult to overcome. I can totally relate to you Devin in that I can only justify gaming by either making money in it in some way or by expressing that I am a gamer and that is that.
aka you are a beta
31:40 As someone in my late 30's, the drop-off is not surprising. I don't think I know anyone who is into esports.
I think a big part of it is because video games were considered to be very uncool during the 90's. Anything that was remotely geeky or even intellectual was aggressively mocked by pop culture at the time. I wouldn't be surprised if we have many fewer per capita gamers than younger generations because of that.
Another part is esports wasn't readily available when we were growing up. Streaming video wasn't common until I was out of college, so if it wasn't on network or cable TV, it didn't exist for us. It's hard to sell people on watching people play video games on the internet when you didn't grow up with that idea.
It's easy to say, "They are getting married and having kids, so they don't have time". Those things are true, but I don't think that's not stopping my demo from watching baseball or football, so I don't think that's relevant. We just don't have the culture of esports ingrained in us.
I'm not convinced this will be an issue for later generations who are already invested in esports. We aren't aged out. We were never there.
Hard not to agree with you, your point of view is a lot more complex, then just simply write that when people are getting into their 30 are getting families. I will just write that there are people who are in normal sport and who are 35 and are in their prime. Soo basically anybody who talk shit about age is just lazy and don’t want to take responsibility to try himself in something that he pursue, because he is afraid too much. Then to make him be free of this responsibility he will say to himself that he is too old, by lying to himself he can now live calmly.
Think you nailed the issue right on the head.
And as far as the younger esports fanbase not being as large as you'd expect given number of gamers, connects back to it being hard for a game to last forever and remain cool. Think halo, COD, gears... All were super popular and cool, but that just isn't really sustainable.
I'd imagine eSports would be better served to not be tied to individual games. And naturally creates some variety and the ability pivot as new games and trends rise up.
Not much innovation in triple a gaming makes it hard to have the hot new title as well.
To add, being tied to individual games also fractures the already smaller fanbase into several even smaller fanbases. Especially true within similar genres.
Just seems better to promote eSports as competitive gamers, and avoid being tied to specific developers. Who mostly seem uninterested in supports eSports.
Fortnite probably did it best, even though I'm not a fan. But they have done a good job keeping gamers my kid's age interested with their cash cups and other stuff like that.
This kind of data deep dive and analysis is what keeps me working in the data field because it can tell such interesting stories of how groups are engaged with different parts of entertainment
In my 7-ish years of playing League I never watched esports. The only reason I would have watched it is to learn something more about the game, but "esport League" is completely different from the usual game, therefore it doesn't matter.
I think iRacing has the best chance as an eSport. Driving has mass appeal and it can lead into actually driving for nascar. The simulation equipment could also be used for driving classes at local high schools. I could even see adults participating in a local iRacing rec league. It's ready made for a multigenerational tradition.
The problem with iRacing is that you need a bit more expensive rig and extra equipment for it.
19:15 Talking about old and young people watching the same esport, I watch aoe2 eSports which is a 20 year old game and a community run Esport so it is closer to the fans and has a reasonable viewership for such a small game. It also doesn't have exorbitant player wages so it's entirely community funded and doesn't go beyond their means.
1915, I'm an esports organization owner so pretty much all your videos I find interesting and I learn a lot from them. Thank you for the content :)
48 retired, lifetime gamer. Play a lot of CoD ...over the last 4 titles I have put in 5,232 hours in 😬 Haven't looked into what I've put into all the games I play. I use to work 14 to 18 hours a day, 6 to 7 days per week and rarely took a vacation. Lets just say I have directed that towards gaming in my retirement 😂
I do also enjoy watching pro CoD and Halo. OpTic baby
OpTic does a fantastic content on their teams that make it to lan. Their cod, halo, and valorant when they fielded a roster was top tier content. Can’t wait to see what they do with their apex team going to London for a lan. I would like to see stats around OpTic bc I feel like they obviously have a huge cod fan base. I feel like OpTic is an interesting team specially with the merge of NV. I feel like when OpTic makes good content around a team it booms. I feel they capitalize most when it comes to content around super star teams.
I have been dying for OpTic to do some content around their Apex team. Hoping their dominant split 2 is the catalyst for H3CZ to acknowledge their existence 😂
19:15 Really great video, it would be interesting to see how Esports has changed over the years.
19:15 Woot Woot! I love having your vids in the bg while I'm working!
I would also give Superstitum credit for setting players up for player personalty. Stewe2K = somke criminal, Frekazoid = We hawt impersonated, n0thing = the guy that stay up all night to find a new smoke, m0E = the Rager, Scream = Can he miss, JW = the guy that trolls but wins, Phasa = the gym guy the is secret nerd, Summit = the guy that ran through a molly.
I actually found your content and I've been binging it over the few days. It's not flashy, but makes you think by looking at the data and hearing your explanation behind it. Keep it up!
19:15 -- I love this kinda stuff keep it up! I would love to see you talk about Valorant and the male/female demographic and maybe even do a whole video on the types of things different games do to attract female demographics
I love watching FGC events but I’m also a FGC/smash player! I’ve had family and friends say that the simple premise of the FGC makes it much easier/interesting to follow than MOBAs or shooters.
Can confirm that it’s much easier to watch 10 minute cideos of people playing the characters than a entire overly drawn out event masquerading as a real sport
coming to this after watching 2 csgo major live streams in parallel
their esports is just great, i never really liked the game for a long time but got into it 3 years ago and watched ever T1 event since then, it's so fun and exiting
19:15 special shoutout moment. I love the vids they're amazing keep up the great work.
19:15, right after you said One Hundred Thieves and made the hairs on the back of Nadeshot’s neck stand up.
I got excited when you talked about TL stats 19:15 because I've been a fan since the old SC BW days
Love this long videos personally, very good content
The more you grow up, the more outlook, perspective, objectives and passion you have in life it's just simple math.
When i was 20, i only had gaming as a passion and was working a part time job so i was involve in getting better myself and following esport.
Now i'm 33, i have a lot of hobbies and passion which i'm somewhat competitive at (Climbing, running, Piano for exemple) and a full time job which doen't allow me to keep track of what is happening on " Pro " level plays. I still games a lot and still love it, i just shifted to more solo casual experience instead of competitive multiplayer and stop watching twitch in general
It seems to me that the primary failure of e-sports commercially is down to the fact that most people who are not hardcore gamers just don't understand what is going on. The people trying to monetize this stuff never seem to get this.
Maybe one of the reasons the Battlefield 3 and 4 scene's esports never took off is because the average age of the playerbase was generally higher (35-44 and 45-over). As a longtime member of a Battlefield community since 2142 it's always been shocking to me how many older men, specifically and especially military veterans, play Battlefield compared to really any other game.
duh its 2023 how can you be part of the community since 2142 thats in the future dudeeeee
@@zobazoba6418 bro im like a time traveler maaan
Games change esports change. Real sports like football baseball don't just the players and this is the issue.
"It's really nerdy"
Yes it's a Devin Nash video I know what I'm here for.
This video was super cool and informative, always guessed about this date with friends so cool to see the actual numbers
19:15 - I'm a data guy and want to get into marketing. These kinda tools get me excited to see that something I've viewed as a really cool hobby (eSports) growing up is actually viable for long term investment, if done correctly, just like traditional sports in a marketing perspective. Keep up this kinda content, I love it.
Great nerdy stuff! Thank you 🖖
I used to be a degenerate gamer, but I've definitely "aged out" and am barely a casual gamer these days. The reason for this is two fold; the first is just generally unsolvable: I don't make any money when I play a game and our society is so deep in the "gig economy" culture right now that I can no longer de-stress, because every time I'm de-stressing, I'm not accomplishing my goals or earning my bag. That's a broader societal/culture issue that I think is much bigger than gaming. But the second reason is where the gaming industry has dropped the ball and could improve: part of what kept me playing was my friends also played. As they had children and responsibilities, it became harder for us all to find time together where we could play. And the current gaming industry is not well-designed to help players find new friends to replace the old ones. That is, every game has you heavily invested in working together as a team *for this one game*. And then as soon as that game is over, you never see any of those people ever again. Whereas games like WoW heavily invested in guilds and community building, which allowed people to get to know one another and become more heavily invested in each other than they were in a single pick-up-group raid. I think the current gaming industry needs to strongly consider doing something similar, because while it won't help with user acquisition, it should pretty strongly increase lifetime customer value.
I have no real interest in eSports, but it’s always interesting to hear engagement & demo breakdowns like this. Good shit, Devin!
Love this video can you do more of these? Also could do a video that focuses more on the fighting game community side of things, like the tournaments?
im always here at the secret call outs. i love your content also, this last 1956 min went by so fast
made it to the secret callout and the end. Good stuff as always
Made it to 19:15
Tbh the reason why I'm watching this video I think is less so to do with the topic rather than Devin himself because I don't really consume this kind of content from anyone else; he makes consuming/learning about this kind of stuff really enjoyable.
God I love these... It makes me feel less alone as an analytics nerd.
19:15, love the esports vids, I started playing counter-strike and watching esports since i was 11, been hooked every since. I'm now 18 and working in the fgc/esports myself, your content has been super insightful and entertaining!
Really cool stats Devin, alot of it not surprising, but still cool. Great video 👍
I don't usually comment, but I had to say something because this video was just super cool. I don't really watch a lot of esports other that league worlds (and even that is dependent on my mood for the year) but I think its interesting to break down what demographics do watch. I still play league but I've been slowly playing less and less as I've been getting into final fantasy XIV, and watching this makes me wonder what a game like that has for demographics as far as engagement goes, since its such a different type of game.
Good video, always enjoy your content. :D
Secret shout out squad!
Anecdote andy here, I'm not even out of the 24-30 bracket yet and I don't care about these teams... I've got stuff to do (job, friends and family, hobbies) and I'm primarily playing singleplayer games now. Not to mention the teams are picking up highschoolers and college kids I don't relate to anymore... Shit comes at you fast I guess!
19:15 Still here! Might be interesting to you from an analytical standpoint, but this is the first video from you that I’ve clicked on in months - super interesting topic!
19:15 - Love these videos. As someone who primarily watches Dota and FGC esports, it's interesting to hear about the other esports, their brands, and how they compare to the sort of bubble that Dota and FGC esports live in.
It'd be interesting to see how Dota, specifically, compares to some of the other big esports considering how so few big orgs invest in it. From what I've seen people say, there's just not that big enough of an audience? Or is it because Dota doesn't have a huge market share in the US/EU?
19:15 lol. In my mid 20s my laptop died. By the time I saved up for a new one, there were too many new LoL characters to come back
33:25 Re: PC titles- When you necessarily have a computer, the income demographic shift rules out everyone who doesn't.
Anecdote time: 35+ year-olds I know who still game are programmers, work on server/website/etc fields. If they can, they have Twitch or LCS playing on screen #3 while they work on #1-2.
100T just stands out in terms of content first and that goes a long way. I don’t watch much of their content anymore but being more creator focused is helping them much more than other orgs
one more thing about 100T that I notice a lot of people mistake is it’s pronunciation (sorry to call you out Devin) and Nadeshot did bring this up in a podcast about how he actually isn’t happy with the logo design because it leads to that confusion
it’s not
“one hundred thieves”
“uh hundred thieves”
it’s “hundred thieves”
Love the content and the data talk
19:15 I find the data on who follows different organizations interesting because I don't normally have a lot of brand loyalty. I specifically follow individual players most of the time with most of my eSports viewing being FGC content.
Overall I watch a variety of eSports. I'm 30 and grew up in SoCal arcades and watching people go at it in MvC2, SF III, Guilty Gear, etc was one of my favorite things to do. I try not to take for granted that I can look up footage of almost any player in almost any game and find more video than I have time to watch.
Its hard to hypothesize if people are ageing out or if the industry is just too young to be fully established in everyday life. If you think about it esports streaming has only been around 15 years or so as opposed to traditional sports which have been around 100s of years. The internet only became ubiquitous recently when the smartphone connected everyone at all times, and even more recently social media completely took over everyones lives.
On and off for me, I watch the occasional CS major or CDL final but that’s really it. There was a time when I was excited for the LoL season and would watch every week
Competitive fighting games are a different beast entirely. It isn't as dependent on extreme time investment like LoL or RL, or hyper fast reaction speed like competitive FPS's that gatekeeps people over their mid 20's. It's demographic is comfortably in their 30's and extremely diverse in every aspect.
I mean the Counter-Strike age Gap is super easy to explain if you know anything about the history of Counter-Strike. The game had an unpopular competitive expansion in "Source" which tanked the popularity of competitive scene.
So when csgo came out there was reinvigoration of the scene since the original run of Counter-Strike esports with pre Justin TV a lot of new fans were able to throw in on the new wave of competition.
Old fans = 1.6
New fans = CS:Go
No fans = source
Gap explained
I find this topic extremely interesting. Really good video.
I personally think we still need to wait a few generations to really see if people age out of games and esports. I feel like it's such a young industry that not a lot of generations experienced it. Over time I think the age distribution will become wider.
This is super interesting stuff to think about. I definitely think people ageing out of playing a game is something that esports and traditional sports have in common. The key difference is that a lot of people continue to watch sports long after they have stopped playing it but most people stop watching esports when they stop playing the game. The only game that comes close to holding an audience that has already stopped playing themselves is cs and I think this is because it's the game that's closest to being a traditional sport, the game is timeless and rarely changes so anyone can follow it without having to keep up with updates. I hope more games will realise that combining the constantly updating game model and esports is not a good idea in the long run.
19:15 pog
Nice video this is super geeky but really cool thanks for sharing.
I've said it before, but thank you for making these videos. They are always fascinating.
Edit: Secret call out hooya
19:15 thanks so much for this!
Amother binge watch session from Devin...and yes I'll still be there at the secret callout 😂
GREAT VIDEO DEVIN!
Dota 2 and csgo are probably going to be the longest lasting esports I think. Both of those started organically and haven't done the whole franchising thing and is fun to watch because they have international tourneys regularly than region locked tourneys until the world cup.
32:00 I really want to see metrics from the FGC. I genuinely believe those gamers are growing up with those historic franchises (SF, Tekken, MK, Smash). But I can def say there’s no money there ( 1M Cpt is an aberration from the history but a good step in the right direction if sustainable)
I personally fit into that 30+ age dropoff. I was an avid watcher of esports 10 years ago (mostly SC2 and CSGO) but it's too much of a time commitment to be watching 8 hour streams. I'd rather spend the 1-2hours I get playing the game than watching someone else.
8:32 On CoD having an older trending audience, a lot of this is due to the old games being much better imo. Lots of old heads who have been playing/watching for a very long time who put up with the drop in quality. Younger people with less attachment to the franchise are more likely to just go somewhere shiny and new
100T & OpTic are just cool man they do dope things with sponsors and content.. Nadeshot got me into Call of Duty so I love what hes doing over at 100T
19:15 Still here! lol I love the deep nerd Dives!
1915. Would love for you to talk about the failures of owl and cdl and how they could have been mitigated. Also would love for you to talk about clg I know it would be hard for u but it could help out others owners in the future.
I'm 36 and watch all the big CSGO tournaments and been playing CS since 1999 and CoD since 2007. Lots of my friends around my age are the same and some even have kids but understanding wife's :)
I hope I'll be playing CS and watch esports until I die and that many other males will do the same but your stats suggests otherwise which is a bit disappointing. Anyway love your content!
It would be awesome if esports teams released documentary style content from their tournaments and life as a pro gamer. Please help them understand that we fans don't just want to see highlights from the matches as I've probably already saw it live.
Optic Gaming is making some good long form content - The Process. Shawstin and the content team over there is killing it. Wish they had more of that though
I'm approaching 30 and I've started watching way less esports than I did before. I used to watch every COD major and the LCS championships. Now I have two kids and I'm trying to get my oldest involved in sports so I have way less time and the time that I do game is becoming a lot more chill than before. Been playing a lot more MLB The Show than COD and other competitive games. It's just too draining to play ranked modes in games, even though I still love playing it. There's also no local esports scene at all here compared to what there used to be. The competitiveness feels way less now that the leagues don't have any form of relegation and they are guaranteed top bracket in all the major tournaments. I feel like the organized leagues are trying so hard to make the leagues more "competitive" that they cycle through the players too much for me to care about some of the players. You can't build those storylines like Optic Scump and others that have a storied career. This guy didn't perform in his first few games? Let's release him and get another guy from the Challengers pool of players. Optic was the first major team that got me engaged and they're one of the few teams that I still keep up with from time to time because they still have decent content.
The biggest issue with any E-Sport is how many people who watch don't play the game. Because of that when a person quits playing the game it also means the the person quits the E-Sports orgs engagement as well. It is kind of like breaking up with your significant other and their best friend as well. Until E-sports and E-Sport orgs figures out how to maintain and monetize players past their playing days or viewers who would never play the game there will always be limit to the low overall cap that the industry will ever have.
I'm really curious about how different this is for fighting games. I myself rarely ever watch streams, but I will tune in for FGC events and I know many others in my area who do the same. To us, it's on par with football and wrasslin'.
Damn notepad has tabs now! LETS FREAKING GO!!!
When I was younger I watched every big tournament for multiple games I was following. I used to play them all a lot and would watch esports consistently on the side when doing other things. Once I didn't have the time to play those same games, watching them wasn't engaging. If I wasn't going to apply anything that I saw, I simply didn't really care. Whenever I have free time now I rather play other games that I can better fit into my schedule and are not competitive. When I had the time before I used to be really competitive and got matched with some pro players. Since I am unable to spend all that time playing I can't keep up to a performance standard I'm happy with and would rather just do other enjoyable activities, gaming or not.
My husband and I play league, we're both over 50, and we've definitely spent many thousand dollars over the past ten years on that game between skins and esports team shirts and two tickets to one of the semi-finals!! So while the over 40 crowd is minimal, don't discount our empty nest buying power! :)
The phenomenon you speak of around the 37:38 minute mark is something that i have heard of referred to as in the moment gamers or customers. It is something i have heard come up in the conversation of game design / physical games vs digital and something to think about in general when you are creating a product or service in this day and age there are so many ways for a consumer to engage with content and what will make me not just pay attention to you but buy a t shirt or your album? Many forms of entertainment are not just competing with the entities in their bubble like xbox, nintendo, playstation but they are also competing with netflix, max, amazon, twitch, disney, etc. The bulk of the live tv industry are still relying on sports to bring in viewers which they can leverage in contract negotiations for bigger deals which i agree still has it's place but they still need to think about streaming capability like what wwe does with peacock. Media will continue to get more and more fragmented as time goes on the only thing cable or a streaming platform has is ease of access but when you don't own the license to the product you are playing or streaming (games) it becomes more of a headache as a consumer imo because these games are all on servers and once they get delisted emulation is the only way to enjoy them. I prefer games that typically don't have a yearly release schedule because you know that they are in it for the long haul.
I waited a day to respond, but the only esports I tend to watch are team game tournaments in Age of Empires 2. I'll casually watch some iRacing on the side, but the main esports series (League, Valorant, CSGO, Dota, FGC) just have no appeal to me. Everything I used to enjoy just went so heavy on personalities and composing stories to the viewers that I just doze off before the draft even starts. It's almost to how I enjoy watching the Olympics, but I can barely watch anything on the primetime NBC Olympic coverage here in the US... they spend 12-15m talking about or with athletes that might get 60s from start to the finish of their event... Even trickling down streaming sites to speedrunning or casual gaming... it just got so bad I barely watch anything anymore. When I find something, its usually just a sleeping aid now and I'm not really paying attention because I couldn't find anything on Spotify.
19:15 always watch these videos while working out so I can gain mentally and physically 🤙
I love that this pops up right after I just watched the CSGO Major all day today lol
Same. Dropped my kids off at school and saw tht g2 Come back.
1915- I play games religiously and watch them. I am 30 and am on the higher income spectrum. I don't really care about ESports teams whatsoever. It's never really made sense to me, because I feel like the brands are really really different between games. Like I like Astralis CSGO, but I could never care about their LoL team.
The games I currently play are mostly the ones I've played since I was a kid, or blizzard games. I will play switch games, and then everything by Blizzard, not activision. Hearthstone, OW, Diablo, Starcraft, WoW. I also hold stock in the company. Aside from that I play OSRS. Those are my main drivers. I am also proficient in the games I DO play, Masters in Overwatch, 7k BG rating in hearthstone, max in OSRS. Never made it to masters in Starcraft, but at least I hit Diamond. I play Blizzard games so much, I own the stock so I can "pay myself back".
I think for most older people it just comes down to wife and kids. Kids take money and time. Most wives just think gaming is bad. My wife, who I met on WoW, plays games right next to me all the time. If my wife didn't understand the hobby I don't think I'd spend as much time as I do, which is whenever I am not at work.
The Esports problem is that anyone who cares about esports, like we found out from this video, is like 25 and is in debt up to their eyeballs. Take a look at what happened to Faze. What about Moist ESports? ESports just completely blows money. OWL made the salary like 50k, for even C-String players, and while I know that doesn't translate to other games 1:1, less than that you can't live on if you don't win competitions. Then you have the rest of the team which is probably another 20-30 people for a decent sized org? It's a literal money pit. Ain't no way you gonna sell enough shirts to recoup any type of that money and I can count on 1 hand the amount of people I've seen walking around in 100 Thieves merch in Baltimore and Chicago.
For the conclusion, I agree with everything. I am 30 and I simply refuse to watch and play DOTA because there is too much going on for me and I understand the stuff. LOL is at least nice and happy colors. I disagree that people will completely grow out of the games though because the games are just 10 years old and the people are 29, so that means they would have started playing at 19 instead of at 20, so if 45% are going to be less than 24, that means they would have been 14 when they started playing. You should look at older franchises and see what it looks like. Look at World of Warcraft, Runescape, and even how Pokemon has been as those players would have been 10-18 when they started and they might have older audiences. Pokemon has also been out for 30 years and that info would be amazing. Anecdotally, I feel like I run into a lot of women on Overwatch as well. I think it has to do with the customization tbh.
How and why did I type this much.
19:15 I need geeiq for my data science class ong
19:15 I'm a nerd. Can't get enough esports content like this
I wonder how many people start quitting gaming because they lose some of their gaming crew. Most of these games are team-based and it can be daunting to start again with a different group if you had been gaming with the same people for a while. The games are also very punishing in their matchmaking and ranking. It's hard on the ego to realize you'll never be plat or diamond again because you don't have the time and energy to invest and that you'll only be silver now.
I can relate to this. When my game buddies are on I win a lot and confidence is high, when they aren't ill try less hard and give up easier (Apex legends ranked games). It's not fun to win or lose when friends aren't there
1915 Ever since I remember I was into watching someone else play, in primary school I would go to my friend's flat and watch him play Gothic, Stronghold etc. I would sometimes play too but was very rarely unhappy with not having the hand on the mouse... In my mid teens I also got into volunteering at conventions and then into helping organize events so I think it's only natural that watching, working on and nerding out about esports tournaments became my thing :D
I've noticed that with age the pools of games I watch and games I play tends to drift apart more, I play a lot of PoE but don't really watch it, I've never played CS:GO but I watch every major event and so on.
EDIT: I'd like to see the stats for Age of Empires 2... it's a small but very healthy scene that tends to have people on the older side and from various different countries...
As I played League of Legends, I would watch League streams/tournaments. A few years ago my wrist couldn't keep up anymore, so I dropped off League and League streams. I'm 33 now.
This was an incredibly interesting listen. I’ll have to rewatch later tonight to see the data.
As for the personal experience, I can give mine with CoD. For me it’s not that I don’t have the time to play, it’s that the state of the game leaves me uninterested in doing so, and thus I’ve moved to other games (and Plutonium). With that lack of interest in the game itself, watching isn’t a priority like it used to be. Something exacerbated by the CDL era making the decision to get rid of the old teams (and thus storylines) and with the extremely limited player pool a lot of the interesting player dynamics from the middle-tiers who could occasionally compete or more streaky players. In short: they lost what they had and couldn’t build something before the game killed my interest.
My nephew started playing valorant when he was 14-15 years old and now switched to cs:go at the age of 16 because all his friends play cs:go now. From my understanding some popular streamers starting playing cs:go because of skin openings so that probably influnced them.
1915 btw. :D
Hey I noticed that when you looked at Blast, you were grabbing statistics on their Blast Shorts channel. Could that be affecting the age range? I don't know much about the demographics of short-form vertical video but I'd guess that it skews younger.
Dope rundown on the data and your insights @devinnash I can say you definitely come thru when I need info on influencer marketing and e-sports related stuff for my own ventures. Thx bro'