SmedBlog: eSports Support

[Clik]

Not every game has to be an esport. I've been into competitive gaming since the dawn of Quake and The CPL. Back in the early 2000's listening to TSN shoutcasts of Tribes and staying up until 4:00am on GTV spectating Q3 CTF matches while listening to Wheat cast them. I was a CAL admin briefly for Painkiller, I've even competed in LAN tournaments for Q3 TDM. I love esports just as much as the next guy.

Smeds idea of watching kids play Dayz being an esport is just mind blowing. To me that is just people watching someone play a video game casually like I watch my nephew color in his Sponge Bob coloring book. Sure there is a lot of grey area on what a sport or esport is but lets be honest it's a competition between people with a winner.

It just seems that these companies hear the word "esports" and watch a Day9 Daily then think they have it all figured out. It's almost as if the new buzz word is "esports". I guess that's not a bad thing however you begin to see authentic games that offer a unique experience transformed into something generic that kind of has the idea, but not fully there because of limitations just to slap the word esport on it. Everyone watched blizzard do this with World of Warcraft. Though briefly successful it ultimately failed.

Planetside is a very unique experience for an MMO. No other MMO offers a huge world of non stop, deep, rich combat, with 100% player vs. player. Be careful and don't bite off more than you can chew and end up ruining something so precious for a buzz word.

[NewSith]

Originally Posted by super pretendo

Speedruns and recordings of records are not what esports are; neither are PvP videos in early wow. You can be competitive and showcase high skill outside in anything, that doesn't make it a sport or esport.

Speedruns are esports. Setting the record is a part of the sport. It has nothing to do with videos, the vids are just a proof of a beaten record.

I won't even quote the rest, because you're saying, that "my argument is invalid" while it is valid.


Almost every multiplayer game has a documented form of eSport. PlanetSide 1's documented form is Outfit Wars.

eSport is competitive play, first and foremost. Broadcasts, money, prises and twitchskill wankership come second.

[Stardouser]

Originally Posted by super pretendo

Speedruns and recordings of records are not what esports are; neither are PvP videos in early wow. You can be competitive and showcase high skill outside in anything, that doesn't make it a sport or esport.

You are giving contradictory explanations to support your flawed premise; if anything can be made into an eSport by showcasing skill, then you've completely undone any argument for SOE officially supporting planetside. So if people want esports, they can, by your definition, just make community made videos showcasing their skill in the planetside game.

If this is not what eSports is, and you are wrong, then eSports being supported would in fact change the game of PlanetSide 2.

So it looks like the pro-eSports argument crumbles under any sort of scrutiny from both possible sides

Just making videos of gameplay isn't e-sports, and this goes for Smedley as well, since their idea of e-sport apparently is just some kind of televising.
Would televising pickup basketball games at the local basketball court suddenly turn that into an organized sport? No, of course not.

E-sports would mean setting up controlled and standardized conditions, everyone has the same weapons, that kind of thing, victories count, and you're competing against other teams. Doing something else wouldn't really be e-sports. Traditionally, it means something on the order of 5 vs 5, or 8 vs 8, etc.

In theory, it could be made 500 vs 500 for Planetside, but if people retain their ranks from the main game and thus have different stuff unlocked as a result, it's a bit tainted as a competition. And also, did the 1000 people sign up? Are there 8 teams of 500 each playing in an organized league and victories count? If not, it's a tough argument to call it e-sports.

[FuzzyandBlue]

I do have to agree that people are putting the E-Sports concept in far too small a box. I agree with those who are saying that the arena style would not work for PS2. But when I first read Smeds blog I wasn't thinking small arena based combat. That isn't what Planetside is, Planetside is about massive scale combat in a large open world. Any E-sports would need to focus around that large scale combat.

You look at BF3 and its competitive scene is nothing like the core game. It focuses on 4 v 4 Squad Rush, which is why it fails as an E-sport IMO. It doesn't at all reflect what BF3 is all about. Imagine if there we organized 32 v 32 battles where the 4 man squads worked to accomplish specific goals. Where team leaders would give orders based on what needed to be done to secure the win. This could be made even better by giving proper casting tools to those who want to use them.

Now move that to the scale of PS2 where you could have, like Smed said, 500 v 500 v 500 large scale battles. It could be a lot of fun to watch so long as the proper tools are given to those who want to cast that sort of thing. It wouldn't affect the core game because it would be the core game.

For the less inclined to read, TL;DR As long as any broadcasted form of PS2 focuses on what the game is all about it could be really cool.

[Kyros]

As long as you keep the e-sports crap out of the primary game and give them their own servers I don't mind. Otherwise HEEELLLL NO.

[SFJake]

You build a game to be an esport or you don't.

Wannabes don't go anywhere.

Trying to shove PS2 down a esport road is the stupidest thing on Earth, I have to say. It'll backfire big time.

[super pretendo]

Originally Posted by NewSith

Speedruns are esports. Setting the record is a part of the sport. It has nothing to do with videos, the vids are just a proof of a beaten record.

But it does, showcase high skill or being competitive isn't what the term esport is used for. Read the post below yours.

I won't even quote the rest, because you're saying, that "my argument is invalid" while it is valid.

uh, ok, I guess that's settled then, lawl. funny that there are people that are so caught up in themselves that they think they can appeal to their own authority to decide what is valid arbitrarily without any proof

[Syphus]

Originally Posted by Stardouser

Would televising pickup basketball games at the local basketball court suddenly turn that into an organized sport? No, of course not.

I have no idea what you are trying to say. It would make it an organized sport because playing basketball is an organized sport. This would just allow people to watch people play it. Therefore it is televised sport.

I don't know why you people are like THIS IS ESPORTS AND IT CAN'T BE ANYTHING ELSE RAAAAAAAGE

[Baneblade]

Originally Posted by Kyros

As long as you keep the e-sports crap out of the primary game and give them their own servers I don't mind. Otherwise HEEELLLL NO.

Terrible idea.

Because then you get actual player segregation and not imagined player segregation.

[Sunrock]

Originally Posted by ThGlump

You picked sports that are far away from similar. From golf you should switch to minigolf, but its really more like going from one car racing to another car racing. something that has similar or almost same base mechanics. You can switch because you like new one better, but you will still miss something you were used to. And if enough new players will miss that too, they could change it.

Ok lets use the racing car analogy then. If Planetside is like F1 racing then Counter strike (that has an e-sport around it) is like rally cross. Now if you drive rally cross and is #1 you would still not have a chance in hell to get a F1 car around the first corner without any schooling in how to drive a F1 car first. And even after learned how to drive a F1 car you still would suck at it until you get some real experience driving it.

Now if we where going to dumb down the F1 car to be able to drive like a rally cross car we would not have a F1 car would we?

Here is Richard Hammond explaining how hard it is to drive a F1 car.

PS: I maybe should show what rally cross is for you americans as it's not a car sport that exist over there.

[Piper]

They did try and set up "outfit wars" (were they called that? memory failure) a few times if I recall in PS1. It was a small collective e-peen-fest over a weekend or two, nothing more.

That it to say, with fourth empiring, and the empire level game being on life support (it isn't going to start live in PS2 from what we know about F2P accounts) they attempted to juice up the idea of an outfit level game.

To my mind outfits can best "prove" themselves by being of service to their empire, good outfits were known by this method in PS1 just fine.

My main concern about this and that the team want to put a lot of resources behind it is that of loosing sight of the scale again. Where's the primary focus here? On PS1 like global level strategic play (and the brain cells that need to be exercised over it) or bracketing us up into mini 32v32 games and potentially urinating over your own chips in the process.

Meh, in a word. Just because every other game is doing this is perhaps the best reason not to. To instead really focus, and focus the resources, in on the scale of PS2 and make it stand out.

[RoninOni]

Originally Posted by super pretendo

Speedruns and recordings of records are not what esports are; neither are PvP videos in early wow. You can be competitive and showcase high skill outside in anything, that doesn't make it a sport or esport.

You are giving contradictory explanations to support your flawed premise; if anything can be made into an eSport by showcasing skill, then you've completely undone any argument for SOE officially supporting planetside. So if people want esports, they can, by your definition, just make community made videos showcasing their skill in the planetside game.

If this is not what eSports is, and you are wrong, then eSports being supported would in fact change the game of PlanetSide 2.

So it looks like the pro-eSports argument crumbles under any sort of scrutiny from both possible sides

Lets make 1 thing clear... even high intensity counterstirke 'eSport' matches ARE NOT SPORTS. Period.

Personally, I hate the word with a passion. I hate the entire concept that skill at video games is in any way significant. It's FUN to be good... but really, am I going to put that into a resume? Hell no. Now if I won the Bronze in the 400m of a national level or higher race, you can bet your sweet tukus that's goin in my resume.

So, if you strip away this fake, inaccurate attachment of actual sports to 'eSports' then it opens up the definition to basically any video game being broadcast for the purpose of entertaining viewers.

EDIT: oh and competitive minesweeper is todays first facepalm

[Notser]

Won't happen, fps games are terrible spectator esport and a game like planetside will require teams too large to gain support from many sponsors. Only positive vibe of working on your game as a esport is the hopeful importance on gameplay and variety.

[FortySe7en]

Originally Posted by RoninOni

It's FUN to be good... but really, am I going to put that into a resume? Hell no. Now if I won the Bronze in the 400m of a national level or higher race, you can bet your sweet tukus that's goin in my resume.

Stupid.

It's a sport. People compete, people spend hours of training to get good. To say that you don't learn anything from this either means you are ignorant or naive, your choice.

[Piper]

Originally Posted by Smed

Dissapointed a lot of folks? For throwing an idea out?

This whole developer/player relationship thing has to be better than that. We have ideas. We throw them out. You like them or not. We make them or not. You play the game or not. We need the feedback loop and we are trying to go way above anything we've ever done and frankly we want to raise the bar in this industry (and there are developers that do this very well so that is a high bar indeed) for interaction with our player community.

I look at this very simply. We make this game for you. You vote both with your feet and your pocketbook. If you don't play, we're screwed.

so let's be able to discuss ideas and not assume the world is coming to an end on December 22, 2012 (launch date for PS2).

Smed

While heartening to read, and the comment about not making it like an arena game, (and as someone who would have liked to have seen that approach being taken in PS1. As in, "We had an idea, we haven't coded a single line yet, what do you think?") it does also sound (from the quote in the OP) like this (E-sports) is now committed to? In terms of planning and resource allocation? You wouldn't now change your mind no matter the feedback?

Don't get me wrong, your game, your funding, you guys 'n' gals do as you please but er.....I'm just curious if you're going to be doing more opinion sounding on big ideas for development well ahead of code/resource allocation time in the future?