The funniest part about the "esports bubble" popping is the people who seem the most upset about it - North American org owners - are the ones who mostly caused it. It was the child CEOs that misrepresented the size of esports to the VC groups and other investors. It was the child CEOs that took that money and then overinflated every single salary in every single esport because they just wanted to have the players they wanted. It was the child CEOs that took on every sponsorship going with no forward thinking about deliverables. It was the child CEOs that continued to raise money desperately thinking the sinking ship could be bailed out. It was the child CEOs that then hitched their businesses to bullshit like crypto and NFTs. Then, when there are no more lies to tell and no more money to spend they turn around and go "wow this industry isn't sustainable" without even a single brain cell coming to the realisation they made it that way.
richard you having a midlife crisis isnt relevant here. Many of the people that caused this are your age and older who have been doing business longer than you have. Also stop assaulting people at esport events and choking them, its not good for the esports scene to have a clown like you in it that does that 😊
Probably can't save it. The best tournaments have always been the ones run by fans. These tournies also have the highest retention rate of fans. You can't get the same energy or dedication of fans when you have homogenized corporate influence all over everything.
It can be saved, but it requires Players not wanting Upper six-figure contracts going into the Millions, and whoever is hosting said tournies to be actual fans of games, rather than investors who only care about the $$, which in turn makes them lose money, because said tournies lose their attractiveness and appeal.
It's such a hard line to walk. On the one hand you kinda need the corporates people so you have the money to pay for equipment, streaming, venues and staff to run tourneys. But if you let them have too big of a role you get stuff like right now where it feels like Esports is losing its charm at least in the scenes I follow.
even from a monetary perspective perspective, it doesn't matter if it's in the red if the people are just doing it because they love it. It's the only way for "esport" to work
This wont ever die, how can chess tournaments exist if most of people dont even play or even watch chess tournaments? same for so many other sports, e-sports are pretty much all over the internet, and every single kid or pretty much any adult was born in the era of videogames. E-sports wont die.
ALGS is pretty dang fantastic and thats thanks in large part to how professional everything is I like a NiceWigg cast as much as anyone, but the A Stream is what gets me hype and teaches me about the teams and players
The problem started when game companies decided to try to make money from esports. They either took control of the esport for their games or demanded licensing fees that were too high. Grass roots tournaments, where all the passion was, were killed. A great example of this is comparing StarCraft esports with StarCraft 2 esports. Blizzard saw the success of StarCraft esports and wanted to be more in control for StarCraft 2 esports.
Was waiting to get your perspective on this :) 24:46 still here 41:50 fgc mentioned, time to take over esports. I can feel the passion in your discussion about CLG at the end. I was only apart of the org for a short time at the end but to have been steering the ship during its hay day and to see it go down like this there has to be a strong sense of mourning. Sorry things went down the way they did.
hopefully they'll keep stop streamers from being political perverts. Time to tell them to shut the hell up and play the game. You streamers dedicate your time to advertising a product and people being perverts aren't a good look anyways.
Thank you so much for this video Devin. I'm a former professional counter-strike player who went by the alias "Nibbler" and I consider myself a 2nd gen competitor (1st gen were players like Potti, KSharp, Element, Fisker, SpawN, shaGuar to name a few) and I took part in the birth of Esports at it's earliest grass roots days as a teenager hell-bent on becoming one of the best entry fraggers ever, traveling to LAN tournaments all over Florida and the East Coast, sleeping on the floor using my backpack with my gear inside of it as a pillow, getting in a little weight training via-lugging around my CRT monitor and full size tower (lmao) loving every minute of it and also loving the feeling of winning while learning how to love the feeling of losing, too while making life-long friends in the process. It saddens me that it seems the industry is headed down a very bleak road but the part of the video where you talk about how they never told interesting stories about these players and kept it super vanilla/professional to me was such a huge moment of "Holy shit, so freaking true man!". I'm a firm believer that history tends to repeat itself only slightly different each time like some sort of fractal universe, and I hope whenever things come back around for another go, Esports (or whatever it may transmute into) sees a resurgence but done right by learning from their mistakes in the past, shed all desire to replicate/emulate what the NFL and MLB does and tell those stories, make it feel tangible because it is (well sort-of, things have change since back when I was coming up, way less LAN's now) so that the youth can experience all the things I experienced growing up with the opportunity to transform a dream into their reality. Thanks again for this video and the others I've watched - super enlightening and fun! ✌👽
Ok, I am a small business owner and it was apparent that it was Hype and Over-valuation, not Cash Flow or Assets that gave these companies value. But everyone from 2011-2019 borrowed heavily to promote their business/idea/product to appear larger than it actually was. It was a 'How to do business' in that era. Now it's over.
Esports is always good when it is in the grass-root stages. Once it becomes corporate the pure incompetence of these team owners begin to show. Also Riot and Blizzard might be the two worst developers to make an esport. The amount of ego, shady practices and inability to admitting being wrong by the people leading these companies is insane.
How exactly is riot the "worst" developer at making an esport? Blizzard yes they’re bad but they can’t even make a game anymore. Riot on the other hand elevated league of legends esport to where no game touched before other than maybe CSGO but valve has absolutely no involvement in that. They continued to run it successfully do this for several years it is literally the face of esports. While they haven’t always been perfect and especially currently what pioneer of an industry is?
@@school1865good companies are like bandai and capcom, that let the pro be actual pro at the game and simply help them move around the world to partecipate to regional / smaller tourments Riot is one of the garbage companies where they need to constantly buff and nerf characters based around what the """pros""" cry on Twitter because those supposed pro cant adapt to jack shit and waste more time whining on twitter than playing the game
The spirit of competition section at the end hit me. When Fly and Notail bumped shoulders at TI, it was a huge drama moment that was a highlight of the EG v OG matchup. It’s definitely been feeling more disconnected as a fan in the last couple of years.
Frankly, I think e-sports as we know it will cease to exist. The FGC being built from the grassroots is showing us what it requires for e-sports to become sustainable, and entities like BTS are being burned by overextending, becoming too corporate in nature, etc. Smash is just outright fucked. I was talking with Hax during the whole zip situation(and giving him shit for handling it so poorly) and given I've genuinely enjoyed talking with the dude it's a real shame that he finally comes back and the game is in the kind of dead end it's in. No Smash game has ever had "heart" the way Melee has, and now that Melee is likely irrecoverably fucked(it'll stay local and regional and maybe even some majors, but supermajors, crown jewels, 100k viewer events may be a thing of the past) for at least several years on top of the decreasing quality of commentary and lack of soul in production(especially shown when you have absolute units like Mekk or Hbox show up and just steal the show so hard that they've offered more energy in 30 seconds than we've seen in 2 hours of stream) it's just less watchable than it has been for a long time too. I don't think a single major e-sport is going to continue to survive as we know it. CS is imploding in real time. Every single dev-driven competitive league is showing how piss-poor the model of forcing an e-sport in a game that people don't actually want to play competitively is, and how poor the model of sabotaging the existence of grass-roots and the connection between the average player and a league goes. Fully open brackets for every single event ever also isn't a solution(FGC please), but there has to be a medium between league-style events and open bracket events, and even fully grassroots open-bracket super-majors(not every super major though please, there are still downsides to this) offer any game basically free story-lines the likes of which you simply cannot get with what is basically an invite-only game nobody gives a fuck about and nobody can genuinely access. This isn't to say that games with a truly enjoyable competitive experience grow once more like Rocket League, CS, and maybe even Smash in the long run, etc., but I don't know that e-sports can ever be the size it is today without running into these same problems which prevent e-sports from being more than a quite large niche. Content creation is always the endpoint, and no matter the competition the current form of the attention economy seems to be relegating even competition itself to not much more than a sideshow used as the premise of a few videos here and there. Games are far more difficult to understand than various forms of hand-ball. Games are far more difficult to casually view than various forms of hand-ball. Games are far more difficult to appreciate than the visible mechanics of a peak human body. That is why sports can break through a niche where someone stacking 3 teammates to shoot over a wall or tossing an 8000IQ smoke or defending the indefensible in a fighting game by ungodly execution or someone maintaining absolute control in a game of Quake and running their opponent into the ground mentally and in the game cannot. Your average grandma and grandpa can intuitively understand the scope and power of two muscle monsters in American Football colliding, the difficulty of weaving past people who want nothing more than to grab you and pull you to the ground while holding something, and what it takes to build such a monster physique, etc., but will they intuitively understand the precise technical details someone had to overcome to drive a rocket car through the air while maintaining absolute control over rotation and angle to bounce the ball off the roof at an unholy angle and sneak the ball past any defenders into the goal, the thousands of hours of practice it takes to do so under pressure and outside of a practice map? That is the wall e-sports has to climb. That is a wall which takes substantial saturation of the human population and a game which survives for generations without aging excessively poorly and in a recognizable state. That is the wall e-sports will not climb. VR or some later and greater VR tech surpassing our current screens+haptics setups, honestly, is the only hope of e-sports being capable of climbing that wall, and even then that's going to take market saturation of VR so huge that it's almost incomprehensible with the current size of the entire gaming market before e-sports could even consider making a simple competitive VR game understandable to a level where you can exceed the category of "niche". There is a ubiquity to games like Chess and Go, to Soccer/Football(real), to Basketball, to Baseball, to Tennis, to American football, etc. that literally cannot exist except in a multi-generational context with the frankly obscenely low barrier to entry these games all have. Chess and Go are even fairly struggling in comparison to physical sports just because of the mental barrier to entry in spite of their near total ubiquity in their native regions. Chess in particular at least had quite recent massive breakthroughs with the help of absolute units like the ChessBase India team and GothamChess becoming huge as well as big names like Hikaru Nakamura and Magnus Carlsen following after realizing that content is king and FIDE is borderline useless if not outright unhelpful/negative for the game degrees of clueless at how to actually effectively promote in the attention era. I feel like this has been one hell of a ramble, but I think the last thing I'd like to note is that perhaps the problem is actually that e-sports as we know it, as we've seen it, as it has been has just been one failed experiment in the future of monetized competitive gaming, and that even if this is all no more than a footnote in history that the eventual large scale monetization of the competitive spirit in virtual spaces is simply an inevitability in a world where tech, games, input devices, etc. become more and more ubiquitous and that perhaps gaming itself as a market hasn't matured to a degree that even with its seeming titanic size we're ready for what people seem to want e-sports to be and for what we've been forcing e-sports, unprepared, to be.
Agreed. It all comes full circle. There will be competitive communities in video games but soon enough, nobody will be able to make a sustainable living off this. Gamers will have to get regular jobs and just compete as a hobby. People that feel entitled to get paid to play a video game are pathetic too (iBDW from Melee). You contribute no value to society, why should you get paid a comfortable living wage for playing a video game at a high level?
24:46 Thanks for taking the time for another video, Devin. I've been following the Smash Bros Melee pro scene for about 6 years now and although I've never been too interested in marketing topics, I have always wondered how the industry works behind the scenes and I've become very invested in the various success and failures of the smash bros tournament scene. It feels like smash can never break into a larger form of relevance akin to the days of MLG. I think Ultimate comes the closest but lately it feels like the players are starting to get shafted left and right. Really glad to hear your perspective on some of this stuff on esports in general.
I can feel your passion coming through the screen. Hope esports can find it way. The 100T model seems to be the most plausible: merch, creators, esports and their own companies (higround, juvee, own game).
I've been involved in Esports for 24 years. It's been interesting watching stars like Fatal1ty come and go along with Orgs. There is constant talk about it dying, the reality is it evolves and changes as games come and go in popularity. Companies die, Leagues and Orgs lie and oversell to sponsors, people lose a lot of money, but gaming continues and when another OW or CS or StarCraft or Quake 3 or whatever comes along, the "Avengers" will assemble and suddenly we will be looking at another Esports market, until it dies again.
That´s definitely a major criticism of the video I have. This is really 80% league, 19% Blizzard, and 1% everybody else. That´s fair given his background, but the salary thing is almost basically only an LCS problem. The top end of OWL for instance makes ~$100k a year with the vast majority of the league being the minimum which is prorated ~$50k a year. He still said a lot of insightful things about why it's not really anything the publishers did (besides not sharing league-wide sponsorship money), but he mostly explained why esports will not ever be a multi billion dollar industry and why it's a bad business compared to being an instagram model or twitch streamer. Not so much why it can't be a business. As for the general idea of competitive gaming, it'll never die like you said. I can't think of any remotely popular competitive game that doesn't have some sort of competitive infrastructure. It's usually for literally nothing, but people like competing.
Tbf riot occupies probably half the current esports market in terms of money going through the system. If the system of big orgs in big leagues like with owl, riot and cod dies, the current ecosystem of esports dies too.
eSports never built a ground for where to stand, they immediately went to pumping the top, they needed to built up bit by bit from the bottom to the top, but the scene got inflated with venture capital money, it's gonna crash hard, so if anyone is still working there leave before you're let go
27:00 - I tried to tell my homie one time, its unsustainable in North America when in games like Overwatch, everyone is from Korea/China. Sure, they're GOOD at what they do, and i'll never knock that, but they are not relatable. Those players don't really desire relatability, because all they do is practice. If OWL was all North America, then you would have those inspiring stories that were relatable. Nobody knows what Koreans/Chinese go through to get to where they were. You didn't grow up seeing those guys on the street, or in pub lobbies, or hanging out with their friends outside of gaming. My Homie Jovi coaches for Evil Geniuses now, formerly Optic Gaming - i know his story and we used to play paintball together. In America, these things are relatable. But do you know what was made unrelatable in North America, particularly in the US? ESPORTS! The idea that gaming would be just as ferocious and competitive as any other sport played on a pitch/field/rink/etc - USA SHIT ON ALL OF THAT. They passed laws outlawing LAN centers due to "tendencies of illegal gambling rings". The internet backbone for the ENTIRE COUNTRY is shitty compared to other competing countries, and you can't have shitty internet playing online games. I lived in Korea during the launch of LOL, and was there again for the launch of Starcraft II: HOTS - you could feel the electricity in the street! Every PC Bang (Lan center) was packed with gamers wanting to try these games, local tourneys would pop up, you even had MANY female fans and cheerleaders. In America, if you were a young kid aspiring to be a pro gamer, this was an offense worthy of bullying and discouragement. Simply put, Esports IS Marketable - but honestly, the US saw dollar signs, and a whole lot of talent that would feed these corporate entities the money that they perceived to be there, only to drain the industry dry with American-level bullshit.
I already left a comment, but I wanted to add something after watching a bit more. If I think back to why I started watching competitive smash melee, there are two interesting things that come to mind. 1) I was never in to Football or Basketball or any real life sports (despite playing a few in school) but I was IMMEDIATELY captured by the smash melee scene. It wasn't even the gameplay or a tournament set that sealed the deal for me. It was the smash brothers documentary. In reality, I knew nothing about the current pro players but the documentary presented me with a huge palette of player story lines, community, game history, competitive philosophy, and so much more. THIS is what pulled me in and what keeps me in the scene to this day. I don't tune into the tournaments during the early pools matches, but I certainly tune in for Top 64 bracket because that's where the most interesting players and story lines come crashing together. Without that draw of interesting people and interesting motivations, I'm not sure I would care as much about melee. 2) In general, gaming has become more corporate. I honestly think the draw of old pro gaming (Halo 3 for example) was a sense of kinship even between casuals and the best players. I wish I had something profound to add to this topic but all I can say is that when I look at old Halo 3 MLG vods, I get this profound LAN party feeling. Even thought the players are competing for big money, It still feels like I'm just in the living room watching the boys goof around. It's crazy to say but that's the vibe I get. The Halo commentators don't talk in these overly sanitized cadences (they may not swear but they sound like normal people and not hired voices). The players will trash talk across the isle to the other team when a play is made. The coms are messy and full of jargon. I don't know where we lost that vibe but I can't find it even outside of esports. I think this is why twitch streamers have exploded so much. They took that cozy community vibe and concentrated it into single individuals. Why would I watch some random group of 5 dudes when I can watch one person play the same game, crack jokes, and talk about life stuff at the same time. Melee for me just barely maintains that atmosphere, but even melee has felt a bit deflated lately. The reality of all this is that games were never meant to be this way. Gaming, at its core, was always an excuse to connect with family and friends, or to make new friends. They are entertainment for the sake of it with a cut of money to the creator just to make sure the art survives. Games began with the arcade, a public place to come together and enjoy the art and fun. A few people would go for the high score and your reward was having your alias at the top of the end screen and maybe some local praise. But we've gone too far with it. Too many people are only interested in the numbers and the paper. Too much focus on the bread instead of the bakery or its bakers. Games used to feel family owned but now it feels like walking to the frozen food section and pulling whatever box has the best picture.
I think this era of eSports is ending and that's depressing. The feeling that eSports was becoming big and legitimate was great. But I think what we're seeing now are the consequences of forcing that "legitimacy" and losing the heart. Let eSports go through hard times. I do believe it will return to the size it has been
Silver Scraps will always jerk a tear from me, there's a lot of realized hope on stage for people who want to feel recognized for their skills and passion for a game that is really lost in online gaming that the professional scene builds on. That can be really exploitative but it can also be a hub for great memories that wouldn't have happened otherwise. I remember Pigglet rolling around in the grass during LCS because that was his big dream and it was just so incredibly wholesome in all of the stress of the event. I never even went to an event but really felt like I was there with how earnest the casters and players were with their humility and passion for making memories and putting their hard work up for public spectacle. i stopped following the scene when i stopped caring about the game, but also because I didn't care about the organizations or players because they felt so replaceable and temporary, which is bad for everyone
Thank you for sharing your passion and love for this, 24:46 - we out here Your comment on the teams international talent, and sharing the stories or lack thereof, has also happened within another previously very popular sport, NASCAR. There is no connect the average viewer (America who is is specifically targeting for) as they have now brought in talent from other regions and became corporate I have been on Smash Boards since 2005, and even went to WCG tournaments for Starcraft Broodwar in the early 2000's. I was one of those kids who hated LoL because it was far too easy (my ignorant thought on comparing any skill level requirement in relation to professional Broodwar). You're comment on Collegiate I too believe is spot on, and even Highschool leagues. I attempted that route and found big hurdles of the NCAA which shuts that down quick too. I still naively believe in the concept of esports, as the life lessons learned early on from my engagement with it is no different than any young folk being into a traditional sport, and as such, still see a path. FGC keeps it real.
I'd really like to hear you talking about OG. Their storied dota team has had several documentaries made about them now, from Valve's "True Sight", to Red Bull's "Against The Odds", to one Red Bull just put out a month ago following Ceb coming out of retirement, to replace their new squads captain, who couldn't get a visa out of Russia, to winning a major.
Devin when I cared about LCS was when Dyrus was streaming, doing VLOGs, making other youtube content, him and oddone were hilarious and cool dudes to see their journey. I definitely agree that we need players creating content so viewers can relate to them in some way and to create a story to follow along. When I watched OWL that was for Seagull for the same reasons, I was pretty sad that (IIRC he could not stream much, or at all? because of being on the team which was terrible).
Coming from the call of duty scene (as a fan) franchising was probably the worst thing that happened. Trying to force esports to be like sports is a terrible idea. Executives need to realize that they are two different things. With franchised cod, the soul of competitive cod died. It’s less fun to watch and hard to care about. It’s been sad to see it happen but it is what it is I guess.
What Toast is doing with DSG and his videos watching the games/explaining who they're going against etc really builds hype and excitement. It is honestly the most excited I've been for eSports teams since ti6 and dota. The stories are 100% what makes a fan want to watch.
dude when you said you cant like TSM cause of your CLG fandom.. i FELT that, to this day I am a TSM fan BECAUSE of that LCS.. This video hits it on the nail on ALL points. I stopped watching LCS as soon as imports became the normal, its sad to see it all die but you definitely earned a subscriber with this one.
As long as multiplayer games exist, there will always be esports, and as long as enough people like it enough to the point where they'd spend cash on tickets to see these players play, there will always be those that want to profit off that success. The esports industry is going to be an up and down slope for the foreseeable future. We'll be in our retirement homes before we get a stable scene and some kind of world catastrophy would have to happen for esports itself to truly end.
I am making an esports platform, I am on a mission to remove issues in esports industry and get rid of cartels and give it the real meaning of esports.
Peak esports to me will always be halo 2. We were playing for peanuts, but the love of competition is what drove us. Corporate money hadn’t made things too sanitary, the trash talk was undefeated, and the overall product was just astounding. Hats off to MLG, they were way ahead of their time. Open tournaments were amazing. I got to play against Final Boss, Carbon, Str8 ect even though I was a nobody. Also having multiple games at the same event was great. Plus the circuit traveled so people all around the country could make it to one. Honestly hoping esports totally bottoms out, get all the VC money and orgs out of it and be player driven again
It can’t succeed because the best don’t have incentive to participate. They can make more focussing on content. It would be like if LeBron could make more streaming pickup games on Twitch than he could in the NBA. That’s what it’s like for professional gamers. xQc went through it back in Overwatch League. He talked about how being in a pro team was costing him tons of money and completely counter intuitive.
24:46 - great video man - ive been following esports since the early COD days, then switched to League. i still follow League just because I love the competition and the people behind the scenes. Sucks to see OG brands dying and the overall scene - hoping that there are better days ahead.
I think your statement on the lack of human connection and storytelling for the individual players is spot on. Just look at the success of the Netflix show 'drive to survive' and the impact it had on Formula 1 viewership. The show does over exaggerate a lot of things for sure, but their success lies in telling the stories of each team, driver etc. This in turn builds a ton of interest, specifically with a younger audience.
But also, because the driver turn over is really low. Only 1 or 2 new driver are coming in each year. In LCS a lot of players come and go. This does not help alot.
As far as the spirit of esports goes, I completely agree with something like the LCS. The one recent event that I felt had that was this past Worlds for league. The storyline of Faker vs Deft was amazing. I think the production team (speaking for the English stream) also did a great job making it a key focus of the event. The hype was real for me during that event and had me on the edge of my seat for that final. Side stories like Pyosik’s was captivating as well. I think the point is that the talents on the LCS/LEC has it in them to tell an amazing story on the world stage, and I guess the difficulty is bringing that to the LCS level. I think that draws on your point about the orgs needing to help tell the stories themselves which the LCS team can piggyback off of. With Bjerg retiring that is a key player leaving the scene which only makes things more difficult given the legacy that he has in the league. I’m not entirely sure what other story lines exist at the moment because frankly, I stopped watching the LCS because it was boring. I’m sure there are amazing personalities in the league that just need to be showcased, and I hope the orgs + the LCS can realize and capitalize off that.
Really appreciated listening to this video Devin - Similar things have gone through my head. Nice to hear this from someone with a significant background and history in this industry like you. I also agree, I struggle to care anymore about LCS etc. 2015 was an amazing time to be invested emotionally into any kind of video game.
I agree that they went too over the top on professionalism and removing drama. As a child I remember growing up HATING the Raiders. Because we were Chiefs fans, and that's what Chiefs fans did! Sports are *supposed* to be tribal. But if there's no rivalry going on, then there's no team loyalty. The end result of that is that people just like whatever team is winning.
Great video. I agree the best thing now is for teams/Content Creators to focus on more grassroots smaller events. Providing the best events for communities and players. Tough pill to swallow.
eSports needs to be more like racing. Ford vs Ferrari, but Blizzard vs Riot. Valorant vs CS:GO. Capcom vs Arksys but they have to use Mugen. Some open source public domain middle game with standardized tools where devs send a team in to show off all aspects of upcoming games. Way more stories to sell when your team is artists and developers and players. It'll never work so long as there are 5 different "soccers."
There is an even more fundamental flaw with the system. Video games have a life cycle while traditional sports don't. If you are a football fan you are a football fan for life, your whole family is a football fan. If you are a league fan there is zero expectation that you are going to stick around. You are a fan till the next big game comes out.
As an eSports owner by myself I can fully understand your points. And yes - there is a huge gap between the perception of players what their responsibilities are and on the other hand the perception of orgs what's operational possible. I'm convinced that the modell of players+trainers+managers get up to 80-90% of prize money is not suistainable. And frankly speaking, I have declined to sign teams who overestimate their marketing value just because they are present in a specific league. So - yeah. I'm also curious where this is going but I have good feeling that the current correction will make eSports better and more solid in the years to come.
It's interesting how with LoL it remains such a huge game globally, but dying off slowly in NA. Venture capital seemed pretty unintelligent thinking NALCS would be the NFL/NBA when they were perennially the 4th best league in the world...And then paid players in NA like they were the best in the world, when they clearly were not. Just completely overinflated the idea of the NALCS and caused its demise.
I remember the days of Gamebattles, making a clan with my boys and playing some matches and making it to a few tourneys and today esports seems to be the opposite of that, big money and very corporate
Loved this very insightful i wish we can know more insider things because it feels like esports is shrouded in mystery about what actually goes behind the scenes and rules
I didn't want to hear anyone's takes on the CLG thing without hearing you first. Quick upload, very informative, sending you lots of love because I know this hurts. Thanks for all you did, have done and I can't wait to see what you will do. 24:46 gang
My take on why the passion for esports has died: On early twitch when actually playing video games was the main focus, and streamers only played one game, the esports players were a large part of the first round of streaming influencers. If you're going to watch someone play the same game over and over, then you'll generally go watch the best. This allowed viewers to develop a strong emotional connection with the players, and made caring about a team easy. As esports became more professional and competitive, and variety streaming + Irl gained popularity, esports players transitioned away from being top influencers (they didn't have to stream to make money anymore, and probably were more focused on hitting performance bonuses). This removed a lot of the personality from the scene, and all you were left with was a corporate wasteland filled by faces you did not recognize. I think this ^ reason is the largest for why passion has left the scene, but there are other factors as well such as how gaming transitioned from being a niche thing for only nerds to becoming mainstream. There was a feeling of excitement from the novelty of seeing your niche hobby gain popularity, and to be able to say that people were playing video games for millions in packed stadiums. My heart goes out to the people who have been laid off, but I am glad this bubble is bursting and the scene can downsize to something more sustainable. I'm predicting that the most successful orgs will be based around consistent influencer owners (ex: moist esports) that viewers can connect with regardless of how players come and go to the team.
24:46 I tend to keep up with only some of your content, but this one was a must watch. As I was starting to get interested in e-sports, players started hopping around, and, after a year or two, the teams I was once rooting for were there in name only, so it just felt kinda dumb being invested in an org rather than a player. Hearing the cost of contracts like Huni's made me question as an outsider, "How are they making this much money? Where is the profit in this if you're not actually winning the tournament?" since sports teams have other ways to get revenue than just tournaments (and even in those they get to house games in their stadiums, so there's some revenue in there), how orgs were supposed to be getting that money for 2/5 people in one of their teams monthly was beyond comprehension for me. I do hope that the scene gets to adapt from this and becomes more interesting in general, but living through this is gonna hurt quite a bit.
Watching this I was reminded of F1. Drive to Survive really helped them, specially in the N/A market. Storylines are important because sports and esports don't exist without spectators. The drivers in F1 have media days and are expected to spend time doing interview. These are some of the most skilled drivers in the world and at the top of motorsport. Max from Redbull doesn't like it but he knows he has to. If you are planning play for an esports team I think you should expect that you will be spending time creating content in whichever way the org. deems benficial. I don't really believe the, I rather be practicing, excuse.
my excitement surrounding esports peaked with the dota 2's 2018/2019 TI, thought the drama-documentaries they put out of those were genuinely incredible and did the "actually telling the players' stories" deal really well. maybe dota would have a shot at overtaking league if they just made the game a little easier to learn and patched more frequently... but yeah really felt the "modern eSports is devoid of these actual human stories" point devin made here
24:46 squad here Thanks once again for making such an informative, on point with 0 bs about topics and issues that interest those of us living in the online world. You have my appreciation for talking about a heavy subject that's close to your heart. In regards to producing deliverables, marketing esports players and achieving a positive ROAS of 5 or even higher, the content creators behind the big organisations are approaching the matter in the traditional way, the way they must've been taught in school or such. The correct way to do it is like how a solo youtuber does it, creating his own content and branding himself, so the approach would be to assign a personal content creator to one or two players on your team, being given the creative freedom to produce GENUINE content. I can't express how much the word genuine matters, it doesn't matter if the content itself is shit or not, as long as it is genuine and it isn't their only to sell a product, but as a means of expression, that content in time will grow a following which then can be greatly marketable, with the promise that the content will continue to be genuine. It is very sad because there is such an influx of people that watch this pro players but they never get to know them more personally through genuine content, while there are countless content creators that have been doing this for years, it keeps working yet nobody tries to implement it in esports, as simple as it and despite being in front of their eyes, Pewdiepie is a great example of genuine content that keeps marketing his stuff and people buy it, I've heard countless times youtubers selling tshirts and being out of stock in a matter of hours.
The biggest issue with esports lies in the root of it. When you compare to league sports like the NFL, NBA, etc., you can go outside and play the game with friends, there is no barrier to entry. There is no publisher that owns football as an intellectual property. The NFL, though now a big corporation, grew through the grassroots of American culture. Esports is necessarily publisher-dependent. Esports for the publisher is strictly a marketing expenditure, and games have a shelf-life. New games come along, new technologies come along, games are upgraded and so-on. Publishers aren’t going to continue committing resources to a marketing expenditure which only accrues revenue to its own division within the company. It can only be re-invested into itself because it’s not profitable enough to go back into the publisher’s business-at-large. This is why content and physical products wins. The org owns the IP. If the orgs don’t collaborate to own a game corporately, but own their content separately, they will never replicate league sports.
Devin, you're spot on with the "spirit" of esports feeling like it was left behind in 2015/2016 (maybe '17?). As you pointed out, there was a sort of "flying too close to the sun" that the industry did. Post-2016, there was rapid growth, arguably too much, and it hindered esports due to how quickly we wanted to be viewed like a "traditional" sport. What saddens me the most is your point on CLG vs. TSM at Maddison Square Garden. I remember watching that for the first time from home as well and felt similarly. It was an incredible feat that a *video game* sold out a venue this massive. For North American regional events, we haven't reached that point again (might just be a bit of nostalgia but whatever) however looking to Europe in CS, they're doing an amazing job and filling massive arenas. As saddening as it is to say, maybe the North American esports scene needs this, as a way to purge out those who don't actually care for the future of the industry. It can be a soft reset to put us back to where we should be. There was nothing quite like watching content from teams like HyperX Gamecribs or tuning into an LCS player's stream where they'd be full of personality all living together and making content while being passionate about what they did. Perhaps it's because the ecosystem and space has changed, but I hope that we can start getting people to care again. Sentinels is an amazing example of what happens when you get people to care, their fanbase is MASSIVE and their tweets eclipse some of the most renown orgs in the space. I know you said that orgs may not be ready to buckle down for the "esports winter", but I feel that if they do, in 5-10 years we can be back to the point of MSG and possibly even more.
You did an awesome job explaining all of this. I'm just a CS:GO watcher, and I feel like it hasn't stopped growing viewership wise. But I do see how the money isn't there. Crazy stuff. 2446
I was in collegiate esports as a production manager (in charge of their livestreams, videos, photography, etc.) and I left the program in December because I could see the signs that this bubble was getting ready to burst in the long term. Love hearing your takes on streaming in general but your perspective on e-sports is so valuable. The scene desperately needs to be willing to take player pay-cuts and start telling more stories. Thanks for a great video.
In the FGC I've heard the concept of not E-Sports but G-Sports that promotes braggadocious, exciting behavior from the high-level players and/or the Commentators. I would suggest taking a look if you havent already at the Leffen vs Go1 DragonBall FighterZ match at CEO 2018 Top 48. While the players are providing maybe the best performances in the games history, I would argue the Commentators(Yipes and HellPockets) themselves and their descriptions of the events happening are the main attraction of the fight. Granted it takes a certain talent to commentate and understand gameplay to that level but they pure ENERGY they bring with it is undeniable. It's like having Wrestling without "Let's Get Ready to Rumble". That is the part that turns the heads of outside people to catch a second of their attention and wonder, "Wait... what's going on over there?" That Magic is what E-Sports can/has/need to keep finding.
Great video. Now that I think of it, as someone who watches a lot of traditional sports and esports it feels weird how I watched and consumed so much esports content but paid very little for it. It's not like I didn't want to support esports, it just felt like I never had to unlike when I watched traditional sports (local tv networks, going to local games, buying jerseys to wear at the games etc). I also feel that loss of passion. I think you're right about player personality, but even more so I think the lack of fan personality is a problem in esports. With little to no live crowd (and even when there is a live crowd they often feel disengaged), there's a lack of emotion in the viewing experience. I think this is why a lot of people disliked watching sports during covid, the fans provide a visual representation of what it feels like to win or lose and helps get us more emotionally invested. It shows us how much the sport means to people. The 2018 csgo Boston major would not have been nearly as hype if it weren't for the fans chanting "sell them home," "USA," and erupting at every kill. Fans also give players an outlet to express their personality. A perfect example is trae young vs the knicks in the 2022 NBA playoffs. If trae young closed the knicks out in an empty building, it would have nowhere near the same feeling and narrative. I think this is also why it's hard to get people who aren't into competitive gaming invested in esports. I could bring my friend who has never watched sports to a playoff hockey game, and they would immediately be invested because they can see how much it means to everyone around them. If I meet up with my friend to watch the lcs quarter finals, I imagine they would be extremely confused as to why they should even care about it.
It's really sad, because theres so much passion there from the fans, players, employees, but it just doesn't come across in the viewing experience. I have so many great experiences watching esports, being invested, and watching the stories unfold. I remember watching riddles win big house and sit there in disbelief that he won before letting out all his emotion for making it there. I still remember what it was like watching melee apex 2015 in middle school, all of the trash talk, crowd going crazy. It's really disheartening to know that we may never get those same experiences back, and even more so that those that created these experiences for us are now put in a horrible position.
24:46 Im at college as a marketing major and minoring in esports management. My dream career since 2018 has been to work in marketing for an org. Now, 2 years before graduation, I'm extremely scared, but at the same time, hopeful. I think things look extremely bleak because of the areas you outlined, but I also see it as a challenge. I want to ask questions like "What can we do to improve ROAS", or "What kinds of deliverables can be successful for brands while also being beneficial for players?". I don't want to accept people who say these are just problems with esports. Its a completely new concept so its gonna require some completely new ideas to make it work. What I also see in esports is growing viewership numbers, increased player numbers, and a massive interest amongst young people who seem like they could be the first generation of many to deeply care about esports. It's not like esports will go away, too many people care. I see an esports problem as one with a solution; One I intend to solve.
A great example to see how the fans care more about a story versus just bleak professionalism is Optic gaming and Scump retiring from CDL. Look at the viewer peak for CDL when optic is playing. The story is what brings the fans. We either need like E sports to create some kind of WWE mentality for heels and faces of stories to keep the fans interested. Or start having big content creators like doctor disrespect start hosting huge rivalry events to keep fans interested. Drama sells good or bad but if they can drive that story it’s a huge improvement.
24:46 Let's go! Esports has honestly lost a lot of that spirit. It used to be a bunch of under dogs rising to victory and showing people that anything is possible. It used to be the socially awkward guy who had a passion for a game pulling out on top of the people that ridiculed them growing up. And I honestly feel that because of covid, it's now a lot more mainstream and so the "underdog story" has been almost eliminated. Nobody struggles any more. And because of the online nature of games, we don't get the "small town hero" story that normal sports get to enjoy. Breaks my heart.
28:00 this is one of the good things in the CDL. Despite the many issues it has, there is a lot of character development and storylines between players and teams, and the on air talent do a great job of keeping track of them and setting the stage before a match. You wouldn't need to be a die-hard reading twitter and Reddit every day to know of most of the drama.
Great video, despite being almost entirely bad news. I think there is another revenue source that could have been talked about and has some potential: preparing and selling players. Here in Brazil there is a team (Red Canids) that is going for this route with relative success. Using strategy from soccer teams (we are well know for selling young soccer talent for incredible amounts of money) they hire young players and invest in their careers. When they win, these players capture attention and can be sold to another teams with an exorbitant fine. It is long term because our region is weak right know, and our player don't have market abroad, but it has some potential and has been done before. Although I think the content route is the only one remotely viable right know.
In my opinion, esports will eventually be one of the biggest sports like football or basketball. Because of the innovation of the technology there’s NO WAY that competitive gaming will die at any point
I think its obvious that there's efforts to turn it around. Prince arrived at the LCS and they're immediately trying to prop him up, Zven at least gets it and got people to care by not shaking Yeon's hand, and the LCS content lately is attempting to be more modern. I know that some people will defend C9 for kicking LS since they have been on top since kicking him but for fucks sake that is literally the one draw that can make LCS interesting enough to watch for new audiences. For those not in the know LS is a content creator who got his start making the most in-depth analytical content and currently bashes everyone for bad drafting and not thinking about their actions and just autopiloting. He arrived at the LCS immediately drafted his way with unique picks that absolutely no one else would draft, and on top of that had the pull to get one of the best ADC prospects in the world to come to the LCS. He was kicked after four games/two weeks and presumably its because he was unprofessional and didn't show up to meetings and such but the exact details other than he didn't work with C9 systems aren't well known. It was so obvious that its exactly what LCS needed, if you saw C9 content before and after it was 160k views on behind the scene content down to 15k. I don't care that they are first place because when the scene is dying ultimately no one will care. People were tuning in to finally see him put results behind his big mouth and he was succeeding. And another sad part was Max Waldo, who was basically LS's underling promoted to head coach after LS was kicked attempt to sell the Microsoft sponsorship. It was clowned but I also know that LS could have sold that.
Why is one of the main reasons why I think the FGC will never die. The developers are mostly hands off and let the players drive their own narratives. The biggest events are run by people not by companies and you can play at the lowest level at a card shop in your town and still feel like a competitor unlike things like LOL or Dota or CS. Grass Roots esports is where the heart is
Facts. The fgc will be the last one standing. Most of the other eSports only blew up once big money got involved, fgc has been chugging along for decades and like you said is still mostly player driven and is the closet to a grassroots feel out of all the "eSports"
We lost this in the COD league where we grew from that online shit talking. Where teams used to scream at each other after a tense series, or like whenever optic had to play against Aches at Champs. But we are fining players left and right for even saying a meta is bad or being displeased with the state of the game & a lack of infrastructure for their challenges. But aside from outside sources telling us what is good for the scene, most of esports has been gutted from what made it great. I always believe like grassroots efforts with sponsorship funding as always been the way.
I think once you get the "magic money" into something, It's really hard to get it back out in any sort of non-destructive way. Basically everyone in the industry agreed that there are unicorns and flying cars, and now everyone competes (as businesses), as if those things truly exist trying to achieve metrics that are pure fantasy. Another issue I think was the false equivalency that was bought into between eSports and traditional sports. There are just so many practical ways in which that comparison breaks down. There aren't a handful of games that persist for decades in established leagues, owned and managed by the teams that they are comprised of. It took a lot of time, money, and consistency for things like the NBA, NFL, and FIFA to become what they are today. I think the best potential model for eSports to potentially mirror, might be something closer to "professional wrestling" and the WWE. Maybe where the games aren't scripted like matches in WWE are, but where the drama and rivalries are tracked and promoted as being as important as the games themselves.
I can't remember what made me start watching LoL esports back in season 1 but I remember staying interested in it because of the rivalries of the teams and players. I miss seeing new teams just pop up out of nowhere and shake up the scene with their gameplay and their personalities, like when Rock Solid showed up and eventually became Dignitas, or when Moscow5 and came up with so many crazy builds and strategies that riot would go out of their way to nerf the things that M5 did (anyone remember ADC kennen or tank ADC urgot?). During that time there was a good amount of drama between teams and within teams, one could argue that it got toxic sometimes like what TSM did with their trashbag system where whoever had the lowest elo in the house had to wear a trashbag but that whole era was unforgettable. The LCS grind really sucked the life and the fun out of those rivalries, there were just too many low stakes matches over and over which I think drained the older players. There was a period where new players popped into the scene and replaced the old guard and it was still somewhat entertaining but it felt like each time new players replaced older players the rivalries got less and less interesting until there were no real rivalries and no stories to tell. The last interesting thing I remember happening in LoL esports in a long time was doublelift joining TSM but that moment just kinda came and went. Apart from Worlds the only esports adjacent thing that I enjoyed in recent years was Tyler1's TCS because it was almost like a window to the past when the scene wasn't so repetitive and corporate.
The last time I watched a championship live was for BO4 (Optic vs splyce hardpoint comeback CWL VEGAS which was INSANE), The only time I relentlessly watched anything of that nature was for CS:GO which was 5+ years ago. Something about it is changing right before our eyes, and I can't place my finger on it either. The passion for a lot of these games are dwindling. I remember being a huge fan of KennyS, I'm not a fan of many players now a days. I think as fans watching, we don't get to know these players well enough to form a hate or love opinion. There's so many constant new pro players in each game every year, I tried watching a live comp game for the new COD mw2 and I don't even know majority of these new players besides OG clayster..
Appreciate the video as a management/economy guy. And thank goodness I'm not in the esports business. The esports business was pretty much held together by a huge bubble and it's bursting as the recession gets worse. I believe there's a way of making esports profitable but all these high cost teams have to go, one way or another.
i miss the esports passion as well. gaming is my biggest hobby and as a fan of a lot of games (CS/League/OW/WoW) it hurts me how the comp scene has been SO cringe for years now. those crazy esports days of early halo/gears of war/cod into counterstrike/wow arena/league/dota were really fond memories of my childhood
30:00 I know what you're talking about. When money, views, and sponsorship is on the line; the art, freedom, and creativity gets stifled. One example of this is EVO being played on ESPN. When it came down to SFV, there was a big censorship on Cammie wearing her default outfit, and they essentially had to cover her up with a different outfit.
I miss the MLG days, that’s what made me fall in love with esports. Open tournaments, cross genre game communities interacting, it was so exciting and competitive. Franchising, deleting relegations, focusing less on personality/brand/fun/etc, overloads of money kinda making players lazy cuz they don’t need to win to be rich or they play safe to protect their checks, it all kinda ruined it imo. That and as you said, having a majority of imports on a region based esport kinda ruined the appeal of the whole system in NA. The idea of “regional appeal” goes out the window when you always need translators and no one sticks around for a long time. Lots of my favorite moments in NA are all from pre-2018 at the latest…not a good sign.
Don't have anything to add but as an OG fan of the LoL esports/LCS, this video really hit home - especially the spirit of esports. It sucks that it is (likely) coming to an end but it was SOOOOOOOO much fun back in the day and I'll be grateful for that. TSM TSM TSM :)
I rarely disagree with Devin, but this is a super biased NA-centric view. Globally, LoL viewership demolishes every sport except for soccer, and on the spirit of esports, last years final was one of the most emotional finals ever
In regards to the spirit of esports... I come mainly from an OW point of view, with a lot of experience in Smash as well. When OWL was first announced, and I'll include the Path to Pro phenomenon in here as well, there was a fascinating level of excitement within the playerbase. The highest levels of ranked were extremely competitive for the most part, filled with people ignited with the desire to make it to the Big Leagues and have their chance on stage. The Tier 2 and Tier 3 competitions were alive and prospering with a ferver from each and every team. For the first two seasons, OWL was doing an okay job at exposing players and creating content with them, telling a few players stories, and maintaining decent levels of viewership. Unfortunately, it really did come down to Blizzard's and Bobby Kotick's complete ineptitude that brought its complete downfall. First off, literally not having a balance team for the game made high level competition turn stale very quickly, forcing bandaid solutions like role lock, when one of the more interesting parts of OW against other games was the ability to flex between roles at a whim. The level of stagnation in the gameplay also removed a lot of the spirit from the playerbase as well. Secondly, Blizzard leaving twitch for YT in a deal that really was just fake money to try and pull more investment was horrific. I'm not even going to think about what it did to Hearthstone, a game that was built on twitch and vice versa. But not having your official games on the platform that all your players stream on made conversions from league watchers to stream viewers and creating a larger community was a failure in its own right. Thirdly, Blizzard giving themselves sponsor exclusivity(meaning no Tier 2 team could have sponsors conflicting with OWL) made the idea of orgs investing into Tier 2 impossible. This also meant that at least in NA, the opportunities for really excellent players to focus on OW were extremely slim, lowering the amount of talent development. That being said, OWL teams overall did not have staff capable of scouting North American talent anyway, instead choosing just to bid on players from the Top 2 Korean teams at any given time. This meant that from Seasons 1-4, the amount of rookie NA talent was extremely extremely little, and the pickings were getting ever slimmer. Coming to today, the NA players that have found their way into the league were mostly just high schoolers from the last few years, who could just play the game relentlessly without needing financial support. Those with veteran talent and more interesting stories to tell with their experience were basically forced out of consider OW, either moving on completely from Esports to moving to Valorant. Fourthly, from the league perspective and its ability to generate talent and stories, they completely fumbled that bag too. Monte Cristo was at first heavily involved in content production, with many ideas that probably could have seen success, but Blizzard got pretty upset at him about his criticisms, eventually forcing him out. Since his departure, I'm not sure if I've seen a single piece of content on broadcast about any individual player and their story, or even anything fun highlighting individuals, outside of some silly trivia games with no real value. Without intriguing things going on, there's honestly no reason to tune into the broadcast day to day. This isn't even mentioning the negative affects of OW2 on the community, where for literal years people were grinding a game while feeling like the developers have abandoned them, further dragging down morale. I have a lot of passion for OW, its players, and what potentially it could be or could've been, but its really been years since it's felt like Blizzard has shared that same feeling.
In order for something to be successful as a spectator sport: 1. I have to know what platform it is on. 2. I have to know what the game is about. 3. I have to know who the teams are. 4. I have to know what is at stake. 5. I have to care. Ask a normal person which of these criteria are met for any e-sport and you will get 0/5.
Do you think this only applies to NA? Other orgs outside US are currently thriving as far as I've seen. I think in NA, its all about clout, that's why DSG and MxM is trying out things in ESports. TSM and Faze is dying because of bad drama recently (either crypto-related or bad PR). At least LCK and LPL., even LEC are still striving.
I think the problem with Esports is that it's trying to be too big too fast. Looking at its history you see peaks and valleys, each time a little bigger. Gaming is huge, people are interested in competitive gaming. You just have to do it slowly. It seems like all these companies think throwing money at Esports will make them popular. I know the players don't want to hear this but we don't need a million-dollar contracts or multimillion-dollar prize pools yet. We don't need housing or training facilities, besides a basic office space. We definitely do not need custom-built buildings for teams and leagues that haven't even been around for 5 years. Do those things help, yes but the question is are they needed when your income is so low. We don't need to rent stadiums when small spaces will do. No one in this industry seems to understand working on a budget. If I'm broke and can only afford a PB&J but go out to 5 star sea food place I can not complain when the bill comes do. They all want to skip o the NFL-level multi-million dollar payouts. The Publishers have the same problem. They want recognition and money but have no desire in taking the slow steps to get there. There is a viable business in Esports, it's just not at these levels yet. I will also say that Esport teams suck at marketing and branding. Way too many of them fail at even naming themselves. How hard is it to look at other sports leagues and figure this shit out? Most of these names Faze, Fnatic, Solomid, FaZe, Cloud9, Liquid look like screen names not team names. Shit 100 Thieves is probably the best name of the bunch and even it has the unscary 100 tacked on. Just imagine Cowboyz or the V1k1ng5, its hard to read, hard to remember harder for your brain to invest in. You need simple iconography and naming to stick in people's heads.
I was shocked when I saw how much money StarCraft 2 tournaments lost this year, GSL has been practically reduced from what used to be "premier" tournament, into an online "major" tournament. But sadly that's how it is. When economy gets bad, sports and art will get hit the most, as advertisers and supporters reduce spending. The whole corruption with making a lot of money doesn't help either. But it's probably for the best. These stupid investment schemes need to go away, even if it means the whole industry gets set back a couple years. Esports need to be supported by passionate fans, either a couple wealthy ones or a lot of fans that pitch in just a little. And the huge payouts for several high-profile players need to go away as well, they are unsustainable. I am excited to see if content creators can boost the viewership and help the scene grow, where investors pumping huge sums of money into it have failed.
There is no way that a player like Jensen is generating more than $400k of value let alone $4M to justify his salary. Any org or industry who creates that kind of scenario deserve to collapse
24:46 Esports is a young industry that is still growing and evolving. Foul play and lack of transparency in Esports, these issues are not unique to the industry, consolidation of teams may increase "brand power" but may also impede new teams to establish themselves Esports will likely never eclipse traditional sports. Esports can carve out its own permanant niche if structed in a way to do so while helping new teams to not get squelched.
This reminded me of your old channel, so I went back and am watching some of your self development videos. Kinda random, but thanks for those, time to make a morning routine
On your topic of "E-sports Spirit", honestly I feel like one of the largest issues these publishers have is changing their games in accordance with statistics and potential to sell/keep playing rather than listening to their communities. Engagement in general between the game devs and the community/pro scene seems to have steadily declined over the last decade. Patches used to be for the sake of balance, "We're making the game better for you guys", but now it feels like change for the sake of change. That isn't bad on its own, but that change was applied to what was fundamentally a good product, and overtime the game(s) are completely different from ~2015. With the community either ousted from the process of improving the game and certain opinions being given far too much relative weight, there is no such thing as "balance" anymore. Players feel disconnected from the games, and inevitably feel less inclined to play them or participate in a community nonetheless watch a competitive version. Combine that with the typical inability of VCs to understand or give a shit about the grassroots, and Riot/Blizzard essentially siphoning money directly out of the orgs THEY FORCED TO FRANCHISE IN THE FIRST PLACE...I mean it's just sad that it got to this point. There isn't just a lack of spirit, rather there has been a growing air of overall dissent towards the scene because the viewers that made these companies what they are, are get shafted along with the orgs they support as their favorite games and leagues slowly die out due to greed. The saddest thing is that there may be no redemption arc, Esports could only be the hot new thing one time and this whole content creator org thing doesn't give me much hope(seems just a fun little thing to millions on for them). The scene was lightning in a bottle from 2012-2016. I remember the first time I ever saw LCS, season 3 all stars where Doublelift got the pentakill on Ezreal. I couldn't believe my eyes and ears, my exact thought was simply "THIS IS ACTUALLY REAL? PEOPLE PLAY VIDEO GAMES COMPETITIVELY FOR MONEY?". They had casters, the crowd was cheering, as a simple Twitch viewer it was electric. I barely even knew why they were cheering, but I didn't care because I had never seen the game I loved so much played at a high level. For me, that's the spirit of Esports, seeing the games we all love taken to the pinnacle of their potential. RIP sweet prince.
min 29:50, I totally get it, in Starcraft 2 I remember Incontrol (rest in peace) and MC brining so much fun to Events, others casters and players acting so human, connecting with fans and making the Esport feel real. Latter I watched the OWL, it felt like something was missing. I understand they have to follow conduct rules, but those rules were making them act like robots. They cut the connection between fans and heroes, them they get rid of the heroes and villain's, now there a not stories anymore, now it's boring and sad.
I can't speak to other games as much, but I really wish league of legends had stuck with smaller tournaments. Being an "esports athlete" always seemed kind of forced to me and I wish it was more qualifier-based for competitions. It shut out a lot of active participants very early (over ten years ago now).
I think another problem with trying to develop storylines and interest around individual players is the fact that those players can often times very easily and very effectively transition into being content creators on their own. Examples of this: xQc, Shroud, Rizzo, Beaulo. These players all develop followings while in esports and grow their games but once they leave, a lot of their viewers leave too. Just a thought I had, let me know what you think of this
As a measurement expert, I'd be really interested to see what kind of attribution model they used for contributing 14 sales to a quarter million campaign. If the whole industry is just using something like last click then those numbers are probably enormously understated, and they should apply a form of incrementality testing (since MMM or MTA would not be practically viable) to derive a more accurate ROAS number. TBH with the common practices of attribution in so many industries being so rudimentary, I wouldn't be surprised if inability to turn a profit might just boil down to a problem with how the attribution of ad spend is measured.
I feel like esports is generally disingenuous in what they'll provide sponsors. In Asia, they have more of an understanding on value and more eyeballs and so the marketing budget makes sense. Burn sponsors stateside and they'll be hesitant for quite a while. America just got super high in its infinite bull market and as the tide goes out we're seeing who has no pants. It's easy to look smart when the markets are red hot. It seems like quite a few owners were hoping to get the big cash out as other teams would validate the ecosystem. There are hotter esports right now in America so those will probably get more allocation. Eventually, if it doesn't just explode then I'd expect it to stabilize in a more reasonable state.
It isn’t much to do with sponsors. It’s that teams and investors predicted huge growth and therefore spent tons of money on things like player salaries, facilities, league spots ($20m for overwatch). A league getting 300k viewers of 18-35 year old men is going to attract a lot of sponsor money. Just not enough to pay players $5m a year.
The funniest part about the "esports bubble" popping is the people who seem the most upset about it - North American org owners - are the ones who mostly caused it. It was the child CEOs that misrepresented the size of esports to the VC groups and other investors. It was the child CEOs that took that money and then overinflated every single salary in every single esport because they just wanted to have the players they wanted. It was the child CEOs that took on every sponsorship going with no forward thinking about deliverables. It was the child CEOs that continued to raise money desperately thinking the sinking ship could be bailed out. It was the child CEOs that then hitched their businesses to bullshit like crypto and NFTs. Then, when there are no more lies to tell and no more money to spend they turn around and go "wow this industry isn't sustainable" without even a single brain cell coming to the realisation they made it that way.
richard you having a midlife crisis isnt relevant here. Many of the people that caused this are your age and older who have been doing business longer than you have. Also stop assaulting people at esport events and choking them, its not good for the esports scene to have a clown like you in it that does that 😊
Bingo! Great comment Rich.
Probably can't save it. The best tournaments have always been the ones run by fans. These tournies also have the highest retention rate of fans. You can't get the same energy or dedication of fans when you have homogenized corporate influence all over everything.
It can be saved, but it requires Players not wanting Upper six-figure contracts going into the Millions, and whoever is hosting said tournies to be actual fans of games, rather than investors who only care about the $$, which in turn makes them lose money, because said tournies lose their attractiveness and appeal.
It's such a hard line to walk. On the one hand you kinda need the corporates people so you have the money to pay for equipment, streaming, venues and staff to run tourneys. But if you let them have too big of a role you get stuff like right now where it feels like Esports is losing its charm at least in the scenes I follow.
even from a monetary perspective perspective, it doesn't matter if it's in the red if the people are just doing it because they love it. It's the only way for "esport" to work
This wont ever die, how can chess tournaments exist if most of people dont even play or even watch chess tournaments? same for so many other sports, e-sports are pretty much all over the internet, and every single kid or pretty much any adult was born in the era of videogames. E-sports wont die.
ALGS is pretty dang fantastic and thats thanks in large part to how professional everything is
I like a NiceWigg cast as much as anyone, but the A Stream is what gets me hype and teaches me about the teams and players
Excellent video. Timestamp callouts are a neat idea.
The problem started when game companies decided to try to make money from esports. They either took control of the esport for their games or demanded licensing fees that were too high. Grass roots tournaments, where all the passion was, were killed. A great example of this is comparing StarCraft esports with StarCraft 2 esports. Blizzard saw the success of StarCraft esports and wanted to be more in control for StarCraft 2 esports.
Was waiting to get your perspective on this :) 24:46 still here
41:50 fgc mentioned, time to take over esports.
I can feel the passion in your discussion about CLG at the end. I was only apart of the org for a short time at the end but to have been steering the ship during its hay day and to see it go down like this there has to be a strong sense of mourning. Sorry things went down the way they did.
hopefully they'll keep stop streamers from being political perverts. Time to tell them to shut the hell up and play the game. You streamers dedicate your time to advertising a product and people being perverts aren't a good look anyways.
My man, I'm a huge fan of yours Sajam
Thank you so much for this video Devin. I'm a former professional counter-strike player who went by the alias "Nibbler" and I consider myself a 2nd gen competitor (1st gen were players like Potti, KSharp, Element, Fisker, SpawN, shaGuar to name a few) and I took part in the birth of Esports at it's earliest grass roots days as a teenager hell-bent on becoming one of the best entry fraggers ever, traveling to LAN tournaments all over Florida and the East Coast, sleeping on the floor using my backpack with my gear inside of it as a pillow, getting in a little weight training via-lugging around my CRT monitor and full size tower (lmao) loving every minute of it and also loving the feeling of winning while learning how to love the feeling of losing, too while making life-long friends in the process.
It saddens me that it seems the industry is headed down a very bleak road but the part of the video where you talk about how they never told interesting stories about these players and kept it super vanilla/professional to me was such a huge moment of "Holy shit, so freaking true man!".
I'm a firm believer that history tends to repeat itself only slightly different each time like some sort of fractal universe, and I hope whenever things come back around for another go, Esports (or whatever it may transmute into) sees a resurgence but done right by learning from their mistakes in the past, shed all desire to replicate/emulate what the NFL and MLB does and tell those stories, make it feel tangible because it is (well sort-of, things have change since back when I was coming up, way less LAN's now) so that the youth can experience all the things I experienced growing up with the opportunity to transform a dream into their reality.
Thanks again for this video and the others I've watched - super enlightening and fun!
✌👽
Ok, I am a small business owner and it was apparent that it was Hype and Over-valuation, not Cash Flow or Assets that gave these companies value. But everyone from 2011-2019 borrowed heavily to promote their business/idea/product to appear larger than it actually was. It was a 'How to do business' in that era. Now it's over.
Esports is always good when it is in the grass-root stages. Once it becomes corporate the pure incompetence of these team owners begin to show. Also Riot and Blizzard might be the two worst developers to make an esport. The amount of ego, shady practices and inability to admitting being wrong by the people leading these companies is insane.
How exactly is riot the "worst" developer at making an esport? Blizzard yes they’re bad but they can’t even make a game anymore. Riot on the other hand elevated league of legends esport to where no game touched before other than maybe CSGO but valve has absolutely no involvement in that. They continued to run it successfully do this for several years it is literally the face of esports. While they haven’t always been perfect and especially currently what pioneer of an industry is?
@@school1865good companies are like bandai and capcom, that let the pro be actual pro at the game and simply help them move around the world to partecipate to regional / smaller tourments
Riot is one of the garbage companies where they need to constantly buff and nerf characters based around what the """pros""" cry on Twitter because those supposed pro cant adapt to jack shit and waste more time whining on twitter than playing the game
The spirit of competition section at the end hit me. When Fly and Notail bumped shoulders at TI, it was a huge drama moment that was a highlight of the EG v OG matchup. It’s definitely been feeling more disconnected as a fan in the last couple of years.
Bring back the wwe style trashtalk, that is hype building shit there
This is why I love the FGC so much. Thuggery is part of the DNA, but still within reason.
Best "league is dying" video on youtube mate. Spot on about the spirit.
Frankly, I think e-sports as we know it will cease to exist. The FGC being built from the grassroots is showing us what it requires for e-sports to become sustainable, and entities like BTS are being burned by overextending, becoming too corporate in nature, etc.
Smash is just outright fucked. I was talking with Hax during the whole zip situation(and giving him shit for handling it so poorly) and given I've genuinely enjoyed talking with the dude it's a real shame that he finally comes back and the game is in the kind of dead end it's in. No Smash game has ever had "heart" the way Melee has, and now that Melee is likely irrecoverably fucked(it'll stay local and regional and maybe even some majors, but supermajors, crown jewels, 100k viewer events may be a thing of the past) for at least several years on top of the decreasing quality of commentary and lack of soul in production(especially shown when you have absolute units like Mekk or Hbox show up and just steal the show so hard that they've offered more energy in 30 seconds than we've seen in 2 hours of stream) it's just less watchable than it has been for a long time too.
I don't think a single major e-sport is going to continue to survive as we know it. CS is imploding in real time. Every single dev-driven competitive league is showing how piss-poor the model of forcing an e-sport in a game that people don't actually want to play competitively is, and how poor the model of sabotaging the existence of grass-roots and the connection between the average player and a league goes. Fully open brackets for every single event ever also isn't a solution(FGC please), but there has to be a medium between league-style events and open bracket events, and even fully grassroots open-bracket super-majors(not every super major though please, there are still downsides to this) offer any game basically free story-lines the likes of which you simply cannot get with what is basically an invite-only game nobody gives a fuck about and nobody can genuinely access.
This isn't to say that games with a truly enjoyable competitive experience grow once more like Rocket League, CS, and maybe even Smash in the long run, etc., but I don't know that e-sports can ever be the size it is today without running into these same problems which prevent e-sports from being more than a quite large niche. Content creation is always the endpoint, and no matter the competition the current form of the attention economy seems to be relegating even competition itself to not much more than a sideshow used as the premise of a few videos here and there.
Games are far more difficult to understand than various forms of hand-ball. Games are far more difficult to casually view than various forms of hand-ball. Games are far more difficult to appreciate than the visible mechanics of a peak human body. That is why sports can break through a niche where someone stacking 3 teammates to shoot over a wall or tossing an 8000IQ smoke or defending the indefensible in a fighting game by ungodly execution or someone maintaining absolute control in a game of Quake and running their opponent into the ground mentally and in the game cannot.
Your average grandma and grandpa can intuitively understand the scope and power of two muscle monsters in American Football colliding, the difficulty of weaving past people who want nothing more than to grab you and pull you to the ground while holding something, and what it takes to build such a monster physique, etc., but will they intuitively understand the precise technical details someone had to overcome to drive a rocket car through the air while maintaining absolute control over rotation and angle to bounce the ball off the roof at an unholy angle and sneak the ball past any defenders into the goal, the thousands of hours of practice it takes to do so under pressure and outside of a practice map? That is the wall e-sports has to climb. That is a wall which takes substantial saturation of the human population and a game which survives for generations without aging excessively poorly and in a recognizable state. That is the wall e-sports will not climb.
VR or some later and greater VR tech surpassing our current screens+haptics setups, honestly, is the only hope of e-sports being capable of climbing that wall, and even then that's going to take market saturation of VR so huge that it's almost incomprehensible with the current size of the entire gaming market before e-sports could even consider making a simple competitive VR game understandable to a level where you can exceed the category of "niche".
There is a ubiquity to games like Chess and Go, to Soccer/Football(real), to Basketball, to Baseball, to Tennis, to American football, etc. that literally cannot exist except in a multi-generational context with the frankly obscenely low barrier to entry these games all have.
Chess and Go are even fairly struggling in comparison to physical sports just because of the mental barrier to entry in spite of their near total ubiquity in their native regions. Chess in particular at least had quite recent massive breakthroughs with the help of absolute units like the ChessBase India team and GothamChess becoming huge as well as big names like Hikaru Nakamura and Magnus Carlsen following after realizing that content is king and FIDE is borderline useless if not outright unhelpful/negative for the game degrees of clueless at how to actually effectively promote in the attention era.
I feel like this has been one hell of a ramble, but I think the last thing I'd like to note is that perhaps the problem is actually that e-sports as we know it, as we've seen it, as it has been has just been one failed experiment in the future of monetized competitive gaming, and that even if this is all no more than a footnote in history that the eventual large scale monetization of the competitive spirit in virtual spaces is simply an inevitability in a world where tech, games, input devices, etc. become more and more ubiquitous and that perhaps gaming itself as a market hasn't matured to a degree that even with its seeming titanic size we're ready for what people seem to want e-sports to be and for what we've been forcing e-sports, unprepared, to be.
Agreed. It all comes full circle. There will be competitive communities in video games but soon enough, nobody will be able to make a sustainable living off this. Gamers will have to get regular jobs and just compete as a hobby. People that feel entitled to get paid to play a video game are pathetic too (iBDW from Melee). You contribute no value to society, why should you get paid a comfortable living wage for playing a video game at a high level?
24:46 Thanks for taking the time for another video, Devin. I've been following the Smash Bros Melee pro scene for about 6 years now and although I've never been too interested in marketing topics, I have always wondered how the industry works behind the scenes and I've become very invested in the various success and failures of the smash bros tournament scene. It feels like smash can never break into a larger form of relevance akin to the days of MLG. I think Ultimate comes the closest but lately it feels like the players are starting to get shafted left and right.
Really glad to hear your perspective on some of this stuff on esports in general.
I can feel your passion coming through the screen. Hope esports can find it way. The 100T model seems to be the most plausible: merch, creators, esports and their own companies (higround, juvee, own game).
I've been involved in Esports for 24 years. It's been interesting watching stars like Fatal1ty come and go along with Orgs. There is constant talk about it dying, the reality is it evolves and changes as games come and go in popularity. Companies die, Leagues and Orgs lie and oversell to sponsors, people lose a lot of money, but gaming continues and when another OW or CS or StarCraft or Quake 3 or whatever comes along, the "Avengers" will assemble and suddenly we will be looking at another Esports market, until it dies again.
That´s definitely a major criticism of the video I have. This is really 80% league, 19% Blizzard, and 1% everybody else. That´s fair given his background, but the salary thing is almost basically only an LCS problem. The top end of OWL for instance makes ~$100k a year with the vast majority of the league being the minimum which is prorated ~$50k a year. He still said a lot of insightful things about why it's not really anything the publishers did (besides not sharing league-wide sponsorship money), but he mostly explained why esports will not ever be a multi billion dollar industry and why it's a bad business compared to being an instagram model or twitch streamer. Not so much why it can't be a business.
As for the general idea of competitive gaming, it'll never die like you said. I can't think of any remotely popular competitive game that doesn't have some sort of competitive infrastructure. It's usually for literally nothing, but people like competing.
Tbf riot occupies probably half the current esports market in terms of money going through the system. If the system of big orgs in big leagues like with owl, riot and cod dies, the current ecosystem of esports dies too.
eSports never built a ground for where to stand, they immediately went to pumping the top, they needed to built up bit by bit from the bottom to the top, but the scene got inflated with venture capital money, it's gonna crash hard, so if anyone is still working there leave before you're let go
27:00 - I tried to tell my homie one time, its unsustainable in North America when in games like Overwatch, everyone is from Korea/China. Sure, they're GOOD at what they do, and i'll never knock that, but they are not relatable. Those players don't really desire relatability, because all they do is practice. If OWL was all North America, then you would have those inspiring stories that were relatable. Nobody knows what Koreans/Chinese go through to get to where they were. You didn't grow up seeing those guys on the street, or in pub lobbies, or hanging out with their friends outside of gaming. My Homie Jovi coaches for Evil Geniuses now, formerly Optic Gaming - i know his story and we used to play paintball together. In America, these things are relatable. But do you know what was made unrelatable in North America, particularly in the US? ESPORTS! The idea that gaming would be just as ferocious and competitive as any other sport played on a pitch/field/rink/etc - USA SHIT ON ALL OF THAT. They passed laws outlawing LAN centers due to "tendencies of illegal gambling rings". The internet backbone for the ENTIRE COUNTRY is shitty compared to other competing countries, and you can't have shitty internet playing online games.
I lived in Korea during the launch of LOL, and was there again for the launch of Starcraft II: HOTS - you could feel the electricity in the street! Every PC Bang (Lan center) was packed with gamers wanting to try these games, local tourneys would pop up, you even had MANY female fans and cheerleaders.
In America, if you were a young kid aspiring to be a pro gamer, this was an offense worthy of bullying and discouragement.
Simply put, Esports IS Marketable - but honestly, the US saw dollar signs, and a whole lot of talent that would feed these corporate entities the money that they perceived to be there, only to drain the industry dry with American-level bullshit.
I already left a comment, but I wanted to add something after watching a bit more. If I think back to why I started watching competitive smash melee, there are two interesting things that come to mind.
1) I was never in to Football or Basketball or any real life sports (despite playing a few in school) but I was IMMEDIATELY captured by the smash melee scene. It wasn't even the gameplay or a tournament set that sealed the deal for me. It was the smash brothers documentary. In reality, I knew nothing about the current pro players but the documentary presented me with a huge palette of player story lines, community, game history, competitive philosophy, and so much more. THIS is what pulled me in and what keeps me in the scene to this day. I don't tune into the tournaments during the early pools matches, but I certainly tune in for Top 64 bracket because that's where the most interesting players and story lines come crashing together. Without that draw of interesting people and interesting motivations, I'm not sure I would care as much about melee.
2) In general, gaming has become more corporate. I honestly think the draw of old pro gaming (Halo 3 for example) was a sense of kinship even between casuals and the best players. I wish I had something profound to add to this topic but all I can say is that when I look at old Halo 3 MLG vods, I get this profound LAN party feeling. Even thought the players are competing for big money, It still feels like I'm just in the living room watching the boys goof around. It's crazy to say but that's the vibe I get. The Halo commentators don't talk in these overly sanitized cadences (they may not swear but they sound like normal people and not hired voices). The players will trash talk across the isle to the other team when a play is made. The coms are messy and full of jargon. I don't know where we lost that vibe but I can't find it even outside of esports. I think this is why twitch streamers have exploded so much. They took that cozy community vibe and concentrated it into single individuals. Why would I watch some random group of 5 dudes when I can watch one person play the same game, crack jokes, and talk about life stuff at the same time. Melee for me just barely maintains that atmosphere, but even melee has felt a bit deflated lately.
The reality of all this is that games were never meant to be this way. Gaming, at its core, was always an excuse to connect with family and friends, or to make new friends. They are entertainment for the sake of it with a cut of money to the creator just to make sure the art survives. Games began with the arcade, a public place to come together and enjoy the art and fun. A few people would go for the high score and your reward was having your alias at the top of the end screen and maybe some local praise. But we've gone too far with it. Too many people are only interested in the numbers and the paper. Too much focus on the bread instead of the bakery or its bakers. Games used to feel family owned but now it feels like walking to the frozen food section and pulling whatever box has the best picture.
I think this era of eSports is ending and that's depressing. The feeling that eSports was becoming big and legitimate was great. But I think what we're seeing now are the consequences of forcing that "legitimacy" and losing the heart. Let eSports go through hard times. I do believe it will return to the size it has been
If I have to be honest, there always will be esport, it will change I guess. Just not the way it was before
Silver Scraps will always jerk a tear from me, there's a lot of realized hope on stage for people who want to feel recognized for their skills and passion for a game that is really lost in online gaming that the professional scene builds on. That can be really exploitative but it can also be a hub for great memories that wouldn't have happened otherwise. I remember Pigglet rolling around in the grass during LCS because that was his big dream and it was just so incredibly wholesome in all of the stress of the event. I never even went to an event but really felt like I was there with how earnest the casters and players were with their humility and passion for making memories and putting their hard work up for public spectacle. i stopped following the scene when i stopped caring about the game, but also because I didn't care about the organizations or players because they felt so replaceable and temporary, which is bad for everyone
Thank you for sharing your passion and love for this, 24:46 - we out here
Your comment on the teams international talent, and sharing the stories or lack thereof, has also happened within another previously very popular sport, NASCAR. There is no connect the average viewer (America who is is specifically targeting for) as they have now brought in talent from other regions and became corporate
I have been on Smash Boards since 2005, and even went to WCG tournaments for Starcraft Broodwar in the early 2000's. I was one of those kids who hated LoL because it was far too easy (my ignorant thought on comparing any skill level requirement in relation to professional Broodwar). You're comment on Collegiate I too believe is spot on, and even Highschool leagues. I attempted that route and found big hurdles of the NCAA which shuts that down quick too.
I still naively believe in the concept of esports, as the life lessons learned early on from my engagement with it is no different than any young folk being into a traditional sport, and as such, still see a path.
FGC keeps it real.
I'd really like to hear you talking about OG. Their storied dota team has had several documentaries made about them now, from Valve's "True Sight", to Red Bull's "Against The Odds", to one Red Bull just put out a month ago following Ceb coming out of retirement, to replace their new squads captain, who couldn't get a visa out of Russia, to winning a major.
Devin when I cared about LCS was when Dyrus was streaming, doing VLOGs, making other youtube content, him and oddone were hilarious and cool dudes to see their journey. I definitely agree that we need players creating content so viewers can relate to them in some way and to create a story to follow along.
When I watched OWL that was for Seagull for the same reasons, I was pretty sad that (IIRC he could not stream much, or at all? because of being on the team which was terrible).
Coming from the call of duty scene (as a fan) franchising was probably the worst thing that happened. Trying to force esports to be like sports is a terrible idea. Executives need to realize that they are two different things. With franchised cod, the soul of competitive cod died. It’s less fun to watch and hard to care about. It’s been sad to see it happen but it is what it is I guess.
bro facts, i miss the CWL so much. its so much less fun to watch the CDL
What Toast is doing with DSG and his videos watching the games/explaining who they're going against etc really builds hype and excitement. It is honestly the most excited I've been for eSports teams since ti6 and dota. The stories are 100% what makes a fan want to watch.
Content is king.
dude when you said you cant like TSM cause of your CLG fandom.. i FELT that, to this day I am a TSM fan BECAUSE of that LCS.. This video hits it on the nail on ALL points.
I stopped watching LCS as soon as imports became the normal, its sad to see it all die but you definitely earned a subscriber with this one.
As long as multiplayer games exist, there will always be esports, and as long as enough people like it enough to the point where they'd spend cash on tickets to see these players play, there will always be those that want to profit off that success. The esports industry is going to be an up and down slope for the foreseeable future. We'll be in our retirement homes before we get a stable scene and some kind of world catastrophy would have to happen for esports itself to truly end.
Yeah man i was at the first 3 hearthstone masters tours it was magical, now the state esports is in really is depressing. Thanks for the vid mate
Esports isn’t “dying” anywhere except in NA. The world of esports includes much more than just North America.
I am making an esports platform, I am on a mission to remove issues in esports industry and get rid of cartels and give it the real meaning of esports.
Very interesting channel, subscribed
Peak esports to me will always be halo 2. We were playing for peanuts, but the love of competition is what drove us. Corporate money hadn’t made things too sanitary, the trash talk was undefeated, and the overall product was just astounding. Hats off to MLG, they were way ahead of their time.
Open tournaments were amazing. I got to play against Final Boss, Carbon, Str8 ect even though I was a nobody. Also having multiple games at the same event was great. Plus the circuit traveled so people all around the country could make it to one.
Honestly hoping esports totally bottoms out, get all the VC money and orgs out of it and be player driven again
It can’t succeed because the best don’t have incentive to participate. They can make more focussing on content. It would be like if LeBron could make more streaming pickup games on Twitch than he could in the NBA. That’s what it’s like for professional gamers.
xQc went through it back in Overwatch League. He talked about how being in a pro team was costing him tons of money and completely counter intuitive.
24:46 - great video man - ive been following esports since the early COD days, then switched to League. i still follow League just because I love the competition and the people behind the scenes. Sucks to see OG brands dying and the overall scene - hoping that there are better days ahead.
I think your statement on the lack of human connection and storytelling for the individual players is spot on. Just look at the success of the Netflix show 'drive to survive' and the impact it had on Formula 1 viewership. The show does over exaggerate a lot of things for sure, but their success lies in telling the stories of each team, driver etc. This in turn builds a ton of interest, specifically with a younger audience.
But also, because the driver turn over is really low. Only 1 or 2 new driver are coming in each year. In LCS a lot of players come and go. This does not help alot.
As far as the spirit of esports goes, I completely agree with something like the LCS. The one recent event that I felt had that was this past Worlds for league. The storyline of Faker vs Deft was amazing. I think the production team (speaking for the English stream) also did a great job making it a key focus of the event. The hype was real for me during that event and had me on the edge of my seat for that final. Side stories like Pyosik’s was captivating as well. I think the point is that the talents on the LCS/LEC has it in them to tell an amazing story on the world stage, and I guess the difficulty is bringing that to the LCS level. I think that draws on your point about the orgs needing to help tell the stories themselves which the LCS team can piggyback off of. With Bjerg retiring that is a key player leaving the scene which only makes things more difficult given the legacy that he has in the league. I’m not entirely sure what other story lines exist at the moment because frankly, I stopped watching the LCS because it was boring. I’m sure there are amazing personalities in the league that just need to be showcased, and I hope the orgs + the LCS can realize and capitalize off that.
Really appreciated listening to this video Devin - Similar things have gone through my head. Nice to hear this from someone with a significant background and history in this industry like you. I also agree, I struggle to care anymore about LCS etc. 2015 was an amazing time to be invested emotionally into any kind of video game.
I agree that they went too over the top on professionalism and removing drama. As a child I remember growing up HATING the Raiders. Because we were Chiefs fans, and that's what Chiefs fans did! Sports are *supposed* to be tribal. But if there's no rivalry going on, then there's no team loyalty. The end result of that is that people just like whatever team is winning.
Great video. I agree the best thing now is for teams/Content Creators to focus on more grassroots smaller events. Providing the best events for communities and players. Tough pill to swallow.
eSports needs to be more like racing. Ford vs Ferrari, but Blizzard vs Riot. Valorant vs CS:GO. Capcom vs Arksys but they have to use Mugen. Some open source public domain middle game with standardized tools where devs send a team in to show off all aspects of upcoming games. Way more stories to sell when your team is artists and developers and players. It'll never work so long as there are 5 different "soccers."
There is an even more fundamental flaw with the system. Video games have a life cycle while traditional sports don't. If you are a football fan you are a football fan for life, your whole family is a football fan. If you are a league fan there is zero expectation that you are going to stick around. You are a fan till the next big game comes out.
As an eSports owner by myself I can fully understand your points.
And yes - there is a huge gap between the perception of players what their responsibilities are and on the other hand the perception of orgs what's operational possible.
I'm convinced that the modell of players+trainers+managers get up to 80-90% of prize money is not suistainable.
And frankly speaking, I have declined to sign teams who overestimate their marketing value just because they are present in a specific league.
So - yeah. I'm also curious where this is going but I have good feeling that the current correction will make eSports better and more solid in the years to come.
I was screaming my lungs out during that clg v tsm match. Love your work Mr Nash.
It's interesting how with LoL it remains such a huge game globally, but dying off slowly in NA. Venture capital seemed pretty unintelligent thinking NALCS would be the NFL/NBA when they were perennially the 4th best league in the world...And then paid players in NA like they were the best in the world, when they clearly were not. Just completely overinflated the idea of the NALCS and caused its demise.
I remember the days of Gamebattles, making a clan with my boys and playing some matches and making it to a few tourneys and today esports seems to be the opposite of that, big money and very corporate
Sad video, sorry for your loss. Keep adding value to the world, you do that well, thank you.
Loved this very insightful i wish we can know more insider things because it feels like esports is shrouded in mystery about what actually goes behind the scenes and rules
I didn't want to hear anyone's takes on the CLG thing without hearing you first. Quick upload, very informative, sending you lots of love because I know this hurts. Thanks for all you did, have done and I can't wait to see what you will do. 24:46 gang
My take on why the passion for esports has died:
On early twitch when actually playing video games was the main focus, and streamers only played one game, the esports players were a large part of the first round of streaming influencers. If you're going to watch someone play the same game over and over, then you'll generally go watch the best. This allowed viewers to develop a strong emotional connection with the players, and made caring about a team easy.
As esports became more professional and competitive, and variety streaming + Irl gained popularity, esports players transitioned away from being top influencers (they didn't have to stream to make money anymore, and probably were more focused on hitting performance bonuses). This removed a lot of the personality from the scene, and all you were left with was a corporate wasteland filled by faces you did not recognize.
I think this ^ reason is the largest for why passion has left the scene, but there are other factors as well such as how gaming transitioned from being a niche thing for only nerds to becoming mainstream. There was a feeling of excitement from the novelty of seeing your niche hobby gain popularity, and to be able to say that people were playing video games for millions in packed stadiums.
My heart goes out to the people who have been laid off, but I am glad this bubble is bursting and the scene can downsize to something more sustainable. I'm predicting that the most successful orgs will be based around consistent influencer owners (ex: moist esports) that viewers can connect with regardless of how players come and go to the team.
24:46
I tend to keep up with only some of your content, but this one was a must watch.
As I was starting to get interested in e-sports, players started hopping around, and, after a year or two, the teams I was once rooting for were there in name only, so it just felt kinda dumb being invested in an org rather than a player.
Hearing the cost of contracts like Huni's made me question as an outsider, "How are they making this much money? Where is the profit in this if you're not actually winning the tournament?" since sports teams have other ways to get revenue than just tournaments (and even in those they get to house games in their stadiums, so there's some revenue in there), how orgs were supposed to be getting that money for 2/5 people in one of their teams monthly was beyond comprehension for me.
I do hope that the scene gets to adapt from this and becomes more interesting in general, but living through this is gonna hurt quite a bit.
Watching this I was reminded of F1. Drive to Survive really helped them, specially in the N/A market. Storylines are important because sports and esports don't exist without spectators. The drivers in F1 have media days and are expected to spend time doing interview. These are some of the most skilled drivers in the world and at the top of motorsport. Max from Redbull doesn't like it but he knows he has to. If you are planning play for an esports team I think you should expect that you will be spending time creating content in whichever way the org. deems benficial. I don't really believe the, I rather be practicing, excuse.
my excitement surrounding esports peaked with the dota 2's 2018/2019 TI, thought the drama-documentaries they put out of those were genuinely incredible and did the "actually telling the players' stories" deal really well. maybe dota would have a shot at overtaking league if they just made the game a little easier to learn and patched more frequently... but yeah really felt the "modern eSports is devoid of these actual human stories" point devin made here
24:46 squad here
Thanks once again for making such an informative, on point with 0 bs about topics and issues that interest those of us living in the online world. You have my appreciation for talking about a heavy subject that's close to your heart.
In regards to producing deliverables, marketing esports players and achieving a positive ROAS of 5 or even higher, the content creators behind the big organisations are approaching the matter in the traditional way, the way they must've been taught in school or such. The correct way to do it is like how a solo youtuber does it, creating his own content and branding himself, so the approach would be to assign a personal content creator to one or two players on your team, being given the creative freedom to produce GENUINE content. I can't express how much the word genuine matters, it doesn't matter if the content itself is shit or not, as long as it is genuine and it isn't their only to sell a product, but as a means of expression, that content in time will grow a following which then can be greatly marketable, with the promise that the content will continue to be genuine. It is very sad because there is such an influx of people that watch this pro players but they never get to know them more personally through genuine content, while there are countless content creators that have been doing this for years, it keeps working yet nobody tries to implement it in esports, as simple as it and despite being in front of their eyes, Pewdiepie is a great example of genuine content that keeps marketing his stuff and people buy it, I've heard countless times youtubers selling tshirts and being out of stock in a matter of hours.
always love the wise words from a Devin Nash video
Me too!
The biggest issue with esports lies in the root of it. When you compare to league sports like the NFL, NBA, etc., you can go outside and play the game with friends, there is no barrier to entry. There is no publisher that owns football as an intellectual property.
The NFL, though now a big corporation, grew through the grassroots of American culture. Esports is necessarily publisher-dependent. Esports for the publisher is strictly a marketing expenditure, and games have a shelf-life. New games come along, new technologies come along, games are upgraded and so-on.
Publishers aren’t going to continue committing resources to a marketing expenditure which only accrues revenue to its own division within the company. It can only be re-invested into itself because it’s not profitable enough to go back into the publisher’s business-at-large.
This is why content and physical products wins. The org owns the IP. If the orgs don’t collaborate to own a game corporately, but own their content separately, they will never replicate league sports.
Devin, you're spot on with the "spirit" of esports feeling like it was left behind in 2015/2016 (maybe '17?). As you pointed out, there was a sort of "flying too close to the sun" that the industry did. Post-2016, there was rapid growth, arguably too much, and it hindered esports due to how quickly we wanted to be viewed like a "traditional" sport. What saddens me the most is your point on CLG vs. TSM at Maddison Square Garden. I remember watching that for the first time from home as well and felt similarly. It was an incredible feat that a *video game* sold out a venue this massive. For North American regional events, we haven't reached that point again (might just be a bit of nostalgia but whatever) however looking to Europe in CS, they're doing an amazing job and filling massive arenas.
As saddening as it is to say, maybe the North American esports scene needs this, as a way to purge out those who don't actually care for the future of the industry. It can be a soft reset to put us back to where we should be. There was nothing quite like watching content from teams like HyperX Gamecribs or tuning into an LCS player's stream where they'd be full of personality all living together and making content while being passionate about what they did. Perhaps it's because the ecosystem and space has changed, but I hope that we can start getting people to care again.
Sentinels is an amazing example of what happens when you get people to care, their fanbase is MASSIVE and their tweets eclipse some of the most renown orgs in the space. I know you said that orgs may not be ready to buckle down for the "esports winter", but I feel that if they do, in 5-10 years we can be back to the point of MSG and possibly even more.
You did an awesome job explaining all of this. I'm just a CS:GO watcher, and I feel like it hasn't stopped growing viewership wise. But I do see how the money isn't there. Crazy stuff. 2446
24:46 still here, thank you so much for your knowledge... your perspective on this... it really makes me sad to see this downfall...
I was in collegiate esports as a production manager (in charge of their livestreams, videos, photography, etc.) and I left the program in December because I could see the signs that this bubble was getting ready to burst in the long term. Love hearing your takes on streaming in general but your perspective on e-sports is so valuable. The scene desperately needs to be willing to take player pay-cuts and start telling more stories. Thanks for a great video.
In the FGC I've heard the concept of not E-Sports but G-Sports that promotes braggadocious, exciting behavior from the high-level players and/or the Commentators. I would suggest taking a look if you havent already at the Leffen vs Go1 DragonBall FighterZ match at CEO 2018 Top 48. While the players are providing maybe the best performances in the games history, I would argue the Commentators(Yipes and HellPockets) themselves and their descriptions of the events happening are the main attraction of the fight. Granted it takes a certain talent to commentate and understand gameplay to that level but they pure ENERGY they bring with it is undeniable. It's like having Wrestling without "Let's Get Ready to Rumble". That is the part that turns the heads of outside people to catch a second of their attention and wonder, "Wait... what's going on over there?" That Magic is what E-Sports can/has/need to keep finding.
Great video. Now that I think of it, as someone who watches a lot of traditional sports and esports it feels weird how I watched and consumed so much esports content but paid very little for it. It's not like I didn't want to support esports, it just felt like I never had to unlike when I watched traditional sports (local tv networks, going to local games, buying jerseys to wear at the games etc). I also feel that loss of passion. I think you're right about player personality, but even more so I think the lack of fan personality is a problem in esports. With little to no live crowd (and even when there is a live crowd they often feel disengaged), there's a lack of emotion in the viewing experience. I think this is why a lot of people disliked watching sports during covid, the fans provide a visual representation of what it feels like to win or lose and helps get us more emotionally invested. It shows us how much the sport means to people. The 2018 csgo Boston major would not have been nearly as hype if it weren't for the fans chanting "sell them home," "USA," and erupting at every kill. Fans also give players an outlet to express their personality. A perfect example is trae young vs the knicks in the 2022 NBA playoffs. If trae young closed the knicks out in an empty building, it would have nowhere near the same feeling and narrative. I think this is also why it's hard to get people who aren't into competitive gaming invested in esports. I could bring my friend who has never watched sports to a playoff hockey game, and they would immediately be invested because they can see how much it means to everyone around them. If I meet up with my friend to watch the lcs quarter finals, I imagine they would be extremely confused as to why they should even care about it.
It's really sad, because theres so much passion there from the fans, players, employees, but it just doesn't come across in the viewing experience. I have so many great experiences watching esports, being invested, and watching the stories unfold. I remember watching riddles win big house and sit there in disbelief that he won before letting out all his emotion for making it there. I still remember what it was like watching melee apex 2015 in middle school, all of the trash talk, crowd going crazy. It's really disheartening to know that we may never get those same experiences back, and even more so that those that created these experiences for us are now put in a horrible position.
24:46 Im at college as a marketing major and minoring in esports management. My dream career since 2018 has been to work in marketing for an org. Now, 2 years before graduation, I'm extremely scared, but at the same time, hopeful. I think things look extremely bleak because of the areas you outlined, but I also see it as a challenge. I want to ask questions like "What can we do to improve ROAS", or "What kinds of deliverables can be successful for brands while also being beneficial for players?". I don't want to accept people who say these are just problems with esports. Its a completely new concept so its gonna require some completely new ideas to make it work. What I also see in esports is growing viewership numbers, increased player numbers, and a massive interest amongst young people who seem like they could be the first generation of many to deeply care about esports. It's not like esports will go away, too many people care. I see an esports problem as one with a solution; One I intend to solve.
A great example to see how the fans care more about a story versus just bleak professionalism is Optic gaming and Scump retiring from CDL. Look at the viewer peak for CDL when optic is playing. The story is what brings the fans. We either need like E sports to create some kind of WWE mentality for heels and faces of stories to keep the fans interested. Or start having big content creators like doctor disrespect start hosting huge rivalry events to keep fans interested. Drama sells good or bad but if they can drive that story it’s a huge improvement.
24:46 Let's go!
Esports has honestly lost a lot of that spirit. It used to be a bunch of under dogs rising to victory and showing people that anything is possible. It used to be the socially awkward guy who had a passion for a game pulling out on top of the people that ridiculed them growing up. And I honestly feel that because of covid, it's now a lot more mainstream and so the "underdog story" has been almost eliminated. Nobody struggles any more. And because of the online nature of games, we don't get the "small town hero" story that normal sports get to enjoy. Breaks my heart.
I completely agree that the spark of Esport excitement is gone. The Publishers sanitized and monopolized the passion of competitors and fans.
28:00 this is one of the good things in the CDL. Despite the many issues it has, there is a lot of character development and storylines between players and teams, and the on air talent do a great job of keeping track of them and setting the stage before a match. You wouldn't need to be a die-hard reading twitter and Reddit every day to know of most of the drama.
Great video, despite being almost entirely bad news. I think there is another revenue source that could have been talked about and has some potential: preparing and selling players. Here in Brazil there is a team (Red Canids) that is going for this route with relative success. Using strategy from soccer teams (we are well know for selling young soccer talent for incredible amounts of money) they hire young players and invest in their careers. When they win, these players capture attention and can be sold to another teams with an exorbitant fine. It is long term because our region is weak right know, and our player don't have market abroad, but it has some potential and has been done before. Although I think the content route is the only one remotely viable right know.
In my opinion, esports will eventually be one of the biggest sports like football or basketball.
Because of the innovation of the technology there’s NO WAY that competitive gaming will die at any point
Hard not to agree, it will be just in completely different way I thing than it is now
I think its obvious that there's efforts to turn it around. Prince arrived at the LCS and they're immediately trying to prop him up, Zven at least gets it and got people to care by not shaking Yeon's hand, and the LCS content lately is attempting to be more modern.
I know that some people will defend C9 for kicking LS since they have been on top since kicking him but for fucks sake that is literally the one draw that can make LCS interesting enough to watch for new audiences.
For those not in the know LS is a content creator who got his start making the most in-depth analytical content and currently bashes everyone for bad drafting and not thinking about their actions and just autopiloting. He arrived at the LCS immediately drafted his way with unique picks that absolutely no one else would draft, and on top of that had the pull to get one of the best ADC prospects in the world to come to the LCS. He was kicked after four games/two weeks and presumably its because he was unprofessional and didn't show up to meetings and such but the exact details other than he didn't work with C9 systems aren't well known.
It was so obvious that its exactly what LCS needed, if you saw C9 content before and after it was 160k views on behind the scene content down to 15k. I don't care that they are first place because when the scene is dying ultimately no one will care. People were tuning in to finally see him put results behind his big mouth and he was succeeding. And another sad part was Max Waldo, who was basically LS's underling promoted to head coach after LS was kicked attempt to sell the Microsoft sponsorship. It was clowned but I also know that LS could have sold that.
Why is one of the main reasons why I think the FGC will never die. The developers are mostly hands off and let the players drive their own narratives. The biggest events are run by people not by companies and you can play at the lowest level at a card shop in your town and still feel like a competitor unlike things like LOL or Dota or CS. Grass Roots esports is where the heart is
Facts. The fgc will be the last one standing. Most of the other eSports only blew up once big money got involved, fgc has been chugging along for decades and like you said is still mostly player driven and is the closet to a grassroots feel out of all the "eSports"
We lost this in the COD league where we grew from that online shit talking. Where teams used to scream at each other after a tense series, or like whenever optic had to play against Aches at Champs.
But we are fining players left and right for even saying a meta is bad or being displeased with the state of the game & a lack of infrastructure for their challenges. But aside from outside sources telling us what is good for the scene, most of esports has been gutted from what made it great. I always believe like grassroots efforts with sponsorship funding as always been the way.
I think once you get the "magic money" into something, It's really hard to get it back out in any sort of non-destructive way. Basically everyone in the industry agreed that there are unicorns and flying cars, and now everyone competes (as businesses), as if those things truly exist trying to achieve metrics that are pure fantasy. Another issue I think was the false equivalency that was bought into between eSports and traditional sports. There are just so many practical ways in which that comparison breaks down. There aren't a handful of games that persist for decades in established leagues, owned and managed by the teams that they are comprised of. It took a lot of time, money, and consistency for things like the NBA, NFL, and FIFA to become what they are today.
I think the best potential model for eSports to potentially mirror, might be something closer to "professional wrestling" and the WWE. Maybe where the games aren't scripted like matches in WWE are, but where the drama and rivalries are tracked and promoted as being as important as the games themselves.
I can't remember what made me start watching LoL esports back in season 1 but I remember staying interested in it because of the rivalries of the teams and players. I miss seeing new teams just pop up out of nowhere and shake up the scene with their gameplay and their personalities, like when Rock Solid showed up and eventually became Dignitas, or when Moscow5 and came up with so many crazy builds and strategies that riot would go out of their way to nerf the things that M5 did (anyone remember ADC kennen or tank ADC urgot?). During that time there was a good amount of drama between teams and within teams, one could argue that it got toxic sometimes like what TSM did with their trashbag system where whoever had the lowest elo in the house had to wear a trashbag but that whole era was unforgettable.
The LCS grind really sucked the life and the fun out of those rivalries, there were just too many low stakes matches over and over which I think drained the older players. There was a period where new players popped into the scene and replaced the old guard and it was still somewhat entertaining but it felt like each time new players replaced older players the rivalries got less and less interesting until there were no real rivalries and no stories to tell. The last interesting thing I remember happening in LoL esports in a long time was doublelift joining TSM but that moment just kinda came and went.
Apart from Worlds the only esports adjacent thing that I enjoyed in recent years was Tyler1's TCS because it was almost like a window to the past when the scene wasn't so repetitive and corporate.
24:46 squad. Love your unique insights into the eSports scenes.
The last time I watched a championship live was for BO4 (Optic vs splyce hardpoint comeback CWL VEGAS which was INSANE), The only time I relentlessly watched anything of that nature was for CS:GO which was 5+ years ago. Something about it is changing right before our eyes, and I can't place my finger on it either. The passion for a lot of these games are dwindling. I remember being a huge fan of KennyS, I'm not a fan of many players now a days. I think as fans watching, we don't get to know these players well enough to form a hate or love opinion. There's so many constant new pro players in each game every year, I tried watching a live comp game for the new COD mw2 and I don't even know majority of these new players besides OG clayster..
24:46. Always down for a great D.N. video. Your deepdives, and immense, comprehensive knowledge of the industry always fascinates me.
Appreciate the video as a management/economy guy. And thank goodness I'm not in the esports business.
The esports business was pretty much held together by a huge bubble and it's bursting as the recession gets worse. I believe there's a way of making esports profitable but all these high cost teams have to go, one way or another.
i miss the esports passion as well. gaming is my biggest hobby and as a fan of a lot of games (CS/League/OW/WoW) it hurts me how the comp scene has been SO cringe for years now. those crazy esports days of early halo/gears of war/cod into counterstrike/wow arena/league/dota were really fond memories of my childhood
30:00 I know what you're talking about. When money, views, and sponsorship is on the line; the art, freedom, and creativity gets stifled. One example of this is EVO being played on ESPN. When it came down to SFV, there was a big censorship on Cammie wearing her default outfit, and they essentially had to cover her up with a different outfit.
I miss the MLG days, that’s what made me fall in love with esports. Open tournaments, cross genre game communities interacting, it was so exciting and competitive. Franchising, deleting relegations, focusing less on personality/brand/fun/etc, overloads of money kinda making players lazy cuz they don’t need to win to be rich or they play safe to protect their checks, it all kinda ruined it imo.
That and as you said, having a majority of imports on a region based esport kinda ruined the appeal of the whole system in NA. The idea of “regional appeal” goes out the window when you always need translators and no one sticks around for a long time. Lots of my favorite moments in NA are all from pre-2018 at the latest…not a good sign.
Don't have anything to add but as an OG fan of the LoL esports/LCS, this video really hit home - especially the spirit of esports. It sucks that it is (likely) coming to an end but it was SOOOOOOOO much fun back in the day and I'll be grateful for that. TSM TSM TSM :)
I rarely disagree with Devin, but this is a super biased NA-centric view. Globally, LoL viewership demolishes every sport except for soccer, and on the spirit of esports, last years final was one of the most emotional finals ever
In regards to the spirit of esports...
I come mainly from an OW point of view, with a lot of experience in Smash as well.
When OWL was first announced, and I'll include the Path to Pro phenomenon in here as well, there was a fascinating level of excitement within the playerbase. The highest levels of ranked were extremely competitive for the most part, filled with people ignited with the desire to make it to the Big Leagues and have their chance on stage. The Tier 2 and Tier 3 competitions were alive and prospering with a ferver from each and every team. For the first two seasons, OWL was doing an okay job at exposing players and creating content with them, telling a few players stories, and maintaining decent levels of viewership.
Unfortunately, it really did come down to Blizzard's and Bobby Kotick's complete ineptitude that brought its complete downfall.
First off, literally not having a balance team for the game made high level competition turn stale very quickly, forcing bandaid solutions like role lock, when one of the more interesting parts of OW against other games was the ability to flex between roles at a whim. The level of stagnation in the gameplay also removed a lot of the spirit from the playerbase as well.
Secondly, Blizzard leaving twitch for YT in a deal that really was just fake money to try and pull more investment was horrific. I'm not even going to think about what it did to Hearthstone, a game that was built on twitch and vice versa. But not having your official games on the platform that all your players stream on made conversions from league watchers to stream viewers and creating a larger community was a failure in its own right.
Thirdly, Blizzard giving themselves sponsor exclusivity(meaning no Tier 2 team could have sponsors conflicting with OWL) made the idea of orgs investing into Tier 2 impossible. This also meant that at least in NA, the opportunities for really excellent players to focus on OW were extremely slim, lowering the amount of talent development. That being said, OWL teams overall did not have staff capable of scouting North American talent anyway, instead choosing just to bid on players from the Top 2 Korean teams at any given time. This meant that from Seasons 1-4, the amount of rookie NA talent was extremely extremely little, and the pickings were getting ever slimmer. Coming to today, the NA players that have found their way into the league were mostly just high schoolers from the last few years, who could just play the game relentlessly without needing financial support. Those with veteran talent and more interesting stories to tell with their experience were basically forced out of consider OW, either moving on completely from Esports to moving to Valorant.
Fourthly, from the league perspective and its ability to generate talent and stories, they completely fumbled that bag too. Monte Cristo was at first heavily involved in content production, with many ideas that probably could have seen success, but Blizzard got pretty upset at him about his criticisms, eventually forcing him out. Since his departure, I'm not sure if I've seen a single piece of content on broadcast about any individual player and their story, or even anything fun highlighting individuals, outside of some silly trivia games with no real value. Without intriguing things going on, there's honestly no reason to tune into the broadcast day to day.
This isn't even mentioning the negative affects of OW2 on the community, where for literal years people were grinding a game while feeling like the developers have abandoned them, further dragging down morale.
I have a lot of passion for OW, its players, and what potentially it could be or could've been, but its really been years since it's felt like Blizzard has shared that same feeling.
In order for something to be successful as a spectator sport:
1. I have to know what platform it is on.
2. I have to know what the game is about.
3. I have to know who the teams are.
4. I have to know what is at stake.
5. I have to care.
Ask a normal person which of these criteria are met for any e-sport and you will get 0/5.
when i sit down for a video i sit through it all. the insight and opinion is alwayts
😢 I just want starcraft 2 pro scene to continue...
Do you think this only applies to NA? Other orgs outside US are currently thriving as far as I've seen. I think in NA, its all about clout, that's why DSG and MxM is trying out things in ESports. TSM and Faze is dying because of bad drama recently (either crypto-related or bad PR). At least LCK and LPL., even LEC are still striving.
NA orgs pay way too much.
I think the problem with Esports is that it's trying to be too big too fast. Looking at its history you see peaks and valleys, each time a little bigger. Gaming is huge, people are interested in competitive gaming. You just have to do it slowly. It seems like all these companies think throwing money at Esports will make them popular. I know the players don't want to hear this but we don't need a million-dollar contracts or multimillion-dollar prize pools yet. We don't need housing or training facilities, besides a basic office space. We definitely do not need custom-built buildings for teams and leagues that haven't even been around for 5 years. Do those things help, yes but the question is are they needed when your income is so low. We don't need to rent stadiums when small spaces will do. No one in this industry seems to understand working on a budget. If I'm broke and can only afford a PB&J but go out to 5 star sea food place I can not complain when the bill comes do. They all want to skip o the NFL-level multi-million dollar payouts. The Publishers have the same problem. They want recognition and money but have no desire in taking the slow steps to get there. There is a viable business in Esports, it's just not at these levels yet. I will also say that Esport teams suck at marketing and branding. Way too many of them fail at even naming themselves. How hard is it to look at other sports leagues and figure this shit out? Most of these names Faze, Fnatic, Solomid, FaZe, Cloud9, Liquid look like screen names not team names. Shit 100 Thieves is probably the best name of the bunch and even it has the unscary 100 tacked on. Just imagine Cowboyz or the V1k1ng5, its hard to read, hard to remember harder for your brain to invest in. You need simple iconography and naming to stick in people's heads.
I was shocked when I saw how much money StarCraft 2 tournaments lost this year, GSL has been practically reduced from what used to be "premier" tournament, into an online "major" tournament. But sadly that's how it is. When economy gets bad, sports and art will get hit the most, as advertisers and supporters reduce spending. The whole corruption with making a lot of money doesn't help either.
But it's probably for the best. These stupid investment schemes need to go away, even if it means the whole industry gets set back a couple years. Esports need to be supported by passionate fans, either a couple wealthy ones or a lot of fans that pitch in just a little. And the huge payouts for several high-profile players need to go away as well, they are unsustainable. I am excited to see if content creators can boost the viewership and help the scene grow, where investors pumping huge sums of money into it have failed.
There is no way that a player like Jensen is generating more than $400k of value let alone $4M to justify his salary. Any org or industry who creates that kind of scenario deserve to collapse
24:46 Esports is a young industry that is still growing and evolving. Foul play and lack of transparency in Esports, these issues are not unique to the industry, consolidation of teams may increase "brand power" but may also impede new teams to establish themselves Esports will likely never eclipse traditional sports. Esports can carve out its own permanant niche if structed in a way to do so while helping new teams to not get squelched.
This reminded me of your old channel, so I went back and am watching some of your self development videos. Kinda random, but thanks for those, time to make a morning routine
As a big esports/fgc fan this hurts to see. But, even if the teams and big events go, the players and communities will still be around
On your topic of "E-sports Spirit", honestly I feel like one of the largest issues these publishers have is changing their games in accordance with statistics and potential to sell/keep playing rather than listening to their communities. Engagement in general between the game devs and the community/pro scene seems to have steadily declined over the last decade. Patches used to be for the sake of balance, "We're making the game better for you guys", but now it feels like change for the sake of change. That isn't bad on its own, but that change was applied to what was fundamentally a good product, and overtime the game(s) are completely different from ~2015. With the community either ousted from the process of improving the game and certain opinions being given far too much relative weight, there is no such thing as "balance" anymore.
Players feel disconnected from the games, and inevitably feel less inclined to play them or participate in a community nonetheless watch a competitive version. Combine that with the typical inability of VCs to understand or give a shit about the grassroots, and Riot/Blizzard essentially siphoning money directly out of the orgs THEY FORCED TO FRANCHISE IN THE FIRST PLACE...I mean it's just sad that it got to this point. There isn't just a lack of spirit, rather there has been a growing air of overall dissent towards the scene because the viewers that made these companies what they are, are get shafted along with the orgs they support as their favorite games and leagues slowly die out due to greed. The saddest thing is that there may be no redemption arc, Esports could only be the hot new thing one time and this whole content creator org thing doesn't give me much hope(seems just a fun little thing to millions on for them).
The scene was lightning in a bottle from 2012-2016. I remember the first time I ever saw LCS, season 3 all stars where Doublelift got the pentakill on Ezreal. I couldn't believe my eyes and ears, my exact thought was simply "THIS IS ACTUALLY REAL? PEOPLE PLAY VIDEO GAMES COMPETITIVELY FOR MONEY?". They had casters, the crowd was cheering, as a simple Twitch viewer it was electric. I barely even knew why they were cheering, but I didn't care because I had never seen the game I loved so much played at a high level. For me, that's the spirit of Esports, seeing the games we all love taken to the pinnacle of their potential. RIP sweet prince.
min 29:50, I totally get it, in Starcraft 2 I remember Incontrol (rest in peace) and MC brining so much fun to Events, others casters and players acting so human, connecting with fans and making the Esport feel real. Latter I watched the OWL, it felt like something was missing. I understand they have to follow conduct rules, but those rules were making them act like robots. They cut the connection between fans and heroes, them they get rid of the heroes and villain's, now there a not stories anymore, now it's boring and sad.
I can't speak to other games as much, but I really wish league of legends had stuck with smaller tournaments. Being an "esports athlete" always seemed kind of forced to me and I wish it was more qualifier-based for competitions. It shut out a lot of active participants very early (over ten years ago now).
24:46 bro, just found your channel. I love the insight, watched this and the smash bros vid.
I think another problem with trying to develop storylines and interest around individual players is the fact that those players can often times very easily and very effectively transition into being content creators on their own. Examples of this: xQc, Shroud, Rizzo, Beaulo. These players all develop followings while in esports and grow their games but once they leave, a lot of their viewers leave too. Just a thought I had, let me know what you think of this
^^^ this.
Esports brand names don't hold as much weight vs traditional sports aka esports players get a huge chunk of the fanbase when they leave
As a measurement expert, I'd be really interested to see what kind of attribution model they used for contributing 14 sales to a quarter million campaign. If the whole industry is just using something like last click then those numbers are probably enormously understated, and they should apply a form of incrementality testing (since MMM or MTA would not be practically viable) to derive a more accurate ROAS number. TBH with the common practices of attribution in so many industries being so rudimentary, I wouldn't be surprised if inability to turn a profit might just boil down to a problem with how the attribution of ad spend is measured.
I'd be interested in a case study into CSGO in relation to this decline and how its affecting that scene, especially now that CS2 is on the horizon
is it dying, or is it that sponsors just figured out it was never profitable?
The latter is the cause of the former.
I believe sponsors and investors realized that it’s not profitable / realistically profitable within the near future, thus causing the first option
I feel like esports is generally disingenuous in what they'll provide sponsors. In Asia, they have more of an understanding on value and more eyeballs and so the marketing budget makes sense. Burn sponsors stateside and they'll be hesitant for quite a while. America just got super high in its infinite bull market and as the tide goes out we're seeing who has no pants. It's easy to look smart when the markets are red hot. It seems like quite a few owners were hoping to get the big cash out as other teams would validate the ecosystem. There are hotter esports right now in America so those will probably get more allocation. Eventually, if it doesn't just explode then I'd expect it to stabilize in a more reasonable state.
It isn’t much to do with sponsors. It’s that teams and investors predicted huge growth and therefore spent tons of money on things like player salaries, facilities, league spots ($20m for overwatch). A league getting 300k viewers of 18-35 year old men is going to attract a lot of sponsor money. Just not enough to pay players $5m a year.