Schetter posted posted a great article on TGBF I wanted to point out to people: READ HERE
As he points out, MLG is ignorant in their remonstrations that ever single sport has grown underneath one league. As schetter points out every major sport has had its share of league mergers. Even with UFC and MMA, there are a multitude of smaller leagues that help support talent and bring fans into the sport. While MLG is bringing in a lot of players and expanding coverage, the Major League games Halo, Call Of Duty, and Gears of War are not going to result in eSports crossing over.
The use of consoles grants them the ability to setup large events rather easily, but also come with major drawbacks. League administrators have minimal control over game settings. I don't follow MLG so I can't recall the exact match, but I witnessed a Halo CTF game where inches away from scoring the final cap, the X-Box seized up and the whole game was restarted. The about to win team ended up losing in the replay. The PC scene features more complex games due to the superiority of the Mouse and Keyboard control scheme and promotes community involvement. Certainly MLG is the big boy league right now, but that's due to the large numbers of Halo and CoD players, not necessarily better game play or better spectating. CGS failed for many reasons, but it's failure isn't representative of the chances for eSports overall. While competitive gamers might unite under one flag in the future, the first step is to form a strong community around each game. If MLG thinks they can drive every other eSport league out of business through a huge community of Halo and CoD players they are sorely mistaken.
PC FPS eSports can succeed in the states at a large scale. Besides Counter-Strike's poor spectator status (for non-players, in my opinion), CGS's coverage of it was watered down by giving equal coverage to Forza, Fifa, and Dead Or Alive in the same broadcast. A market for eSports coverage exists, but the game and the coverage, have to be right. With expanded coverage comes more willingness from Sponsors to be involved, and inevitably larger cash prizes for the gamers themselves.
Comments
This creates a lack of emphasis and focus, leagues are unsure which "events" or titles deserve more, less, or equal attention.
It seems e-sports have yet to recreate the "ball". In that, I mean, you make a baseball once and gradually refine the rule set designed around that ball. With games, a new one is created every 2-3 years (or sadly sooner) constantly muddling the the player pool and attention of audiences.
Games also exist outside the realm of competition, single player is something you just dont get to do in baseball…So their seems to be an inherent identity crisis built into the whole "e-sports" system.
Which genre to play, Which titles in that genre to play, Which leagues to play it in, When to move to a new game, etc…
no more running around BXR-ing people :(
It's actually a lot harder to update a console game (as far as I'm aware, correct me if I'm wrong) because a lot of the data is being read off of a CD instead of a HD that can be changed. This might be changing with the newer-generation 360, but PC games still take the lead in modification abilities.
Of course, this also makes it easier to use haxx D:
LoL @ Traced
With TF2, you can play a match, record mumble, add commentary on top, and upload it to where everyone can see it less than three hours after the match begins. Try doing that on a console :\
I'd say the primary concern is that the cost of a good gaming PC is significantly higher than a 360/ps3, which offers the graphic standarization Chip mentions. The price for performance drops about as consistent as system requirments rise for new games. For long term games like SC, CS, and TF2, the overall increase in computer performance means the new cheap entry level computers will be able to better run the game as the years go by. This leads to people joining even years after a game has come out. Computers are still expensive though.
With consoles, you have the $$$ commitment of paying for the new update of your game over and over. Look at Halo. Is anyone going to be playing Halo 3 when Halo Reach comes out? Is it REALLY gonna be that different? No, it's simply going to be maybe a few weapons, but not much deviation from the already standardized Halo DM format. With PC's, although some company's do charge ridiculous DLC price ($10 gearbox), at least we get community content.
All this talk begs the question, how should we look at MLG? We should consider Console FPSs as a completely different scene, such as StreetFighter or StarCraft, then examine it, incorporating the best elements and ditching the worst. What are your thoughts on the Console FPS scene and MLG?
Interesting Wand. The MLG guys chose to follow their rules, as misguided as they were in this case.
Coincidental article:
http://kotaku.com/5484112/deal-brings-mlg-tournaments-to-ea-sports-titles-in-2010
this happened on starcraft a few months ago at the [url=" http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/viewmessage.php?topic_id=110541"]MSL finals, where Flash's computer crashed in game 3 and KeSPA decided to give the game to Jaedong because of "competitive advantage", even though Flash wasn't completely out of the game yet.
So by comparison I guess KeSPA went the other way compared to the MLG's decision… and I think the MLG should've let that team who almost won get the victory, based on the description.
seriously WE ARE THE FUTURE
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