The General "E-Sports" Thread, or 'making a living from being dead good at games'. - The Bear and Badger

dynamiteReady

Back on topic, Starcraft 2 is a great game to watch. Borne of experience, the presentation (commentary, screenshot selection, replays) is very slick indeed.

A world apart from the fighting game community stuff, but they are obviously very different games.

Tempy

The big PC eSport games, Dota2, LoL, CS:GO and SC2 are all very well presented. It's a scene that's definitely coming to grips with the maturity it needs to survive in a million dollar world of casting, especially as it grew from bedroom seeds. Still, the co-ordination is impressive, and the masterstroke for me was the Beginner's Stream from this years International, sadly it wasn't a very exciting tournament overall - meta issues there though rather than base game/stream issues.

mk64

Davy, tetris is problematic. Players are hard dropping bricks at 3+ a second. Its barely impossible for the eye to track that properly. The problem (that i've experienced so far) is lag. Even a milisecond of lag on a stream and you can miss pivotal moments. Its must less impacting than a game like COD or Halo.

The other problem with tetris is that 99% of the population think they know tetris, think they are good at tetris and in reality know fuck all. For instance I would wager that most people on this forum (who are generally gamers) would still think that a tetris is the highest scoring/most powerful move in tetris. It's a legacy hard to shake as so many people have only played it on the O GB.

It is very very heavy on acronyms and terminology. There are other games which have lots like Street Fighter but somehow people have trended more with SF over the years than they have with Tetris.

I'm not saying its impossible, just very very hard to implement. Your points about Game B etc make it watchable as its slowed down but anything in TF or faster is hard to follow.

nick_md

I really dislike the term 'e-sports' but I've made that rant before.

I watch SF and the odd iidx/bms stream, that's it really. Would watch Gears and some Halo too, but really there needs to be a free-floating spectator-cam that covers the action from above, sweeping into the action or into 'player mode' for key moments for it to be really decent. Would suit gears particularly.

MK - what's the highest Tetris move then? Is Lockjaw the go-to at all for tetris high level play? Seem to remember that being touted as the srs bsns tetris thing.

hylian_elf

Anyone heard of GFinity? I hear there is an imminent IPO on the LSE AIM. This kinda thing could get big, right? Buy a few GFinity shares, wait for someone to pay billions for it???

davyK

mk64 wrote:

Davy, tetris is problematic. Players are hard dropping bricks at 3+ a second. Its barely impossible for the eye to track that properly. The problem (that i've experienced so far) is lag. Even a milisecond of lag on a stream and you can miss pivotal moments. Its must less impacting than a game like COD or Halo. The other problem with tetris is that 99% of the population think they know tetris, think they are good at tetris and in reality know fuck all. For instance I would wager that most people on this forum (who are generally gamers) would still think that a tetris is the highest scoring/most powerful move in tetris. It's a legacy hard to shake as so many people have only played it on the O GB. It is very very heavy on acronyms and terminology. There are other games which have lots like Street Fighter but somehow people have trended more with SF over the years than they have with Tetris. I'm not saying its impossible, just very very hard to implement. Your points about Game B etc make it watchable as its slowed down but anything in TF or faster is hard to follow.

Quite right. I think if Tetris has a chance the game needs to be changed so that it is slowed down. The hard core don't like that but if it is to have a chance then that's what is needed.

I have tried watching streams and as you say video glitches means you miss a big move. All down to the inhuman speed these guys play at. For beginners to have a chance and follow attacks generated by t-spins for example, the speed has to drop.

One idea is I think some sort of race to the bottom of the pit partially filled with random garbage (same for each player of course) could be followed. Of course that largely dispenses with garbage attacks which is a fun part of the game.

ChopperByrne

Commentary is what makes something work or not for viewing.

Starcraft should not work as you cannot view everything at once, but the commentary is so good that it makes it work.

dynamiteReady

hylian_elf wrote:

Anyone heard of GFinity? I hear there is an imminent IPO on the LSE AIM. This kinda thing could get big, right? Buy a few GFinity shares, wait for someone to pay billions for it???

That would be an interesting investment idea, but then, what happened to MLG?
If anyone was going to make a squillion out of federating pro gaming, you'd have expected it to be them...

dynamiteReady

mk64 wrote:

Davy, tetris is problematic. Players are hard dropping bricks at 3+ a second. Its barely impossible for the eye to track that properly. The problem (that i've experienced so far) is lag. Even a milisecond of lag on a stream and you can miss pivotal moments. Its must less impacting than a game like COD or Halo. The other problem with tetris is that 99% of the population think they know tetris, think they are good at tetris and in reality know fuck all. For instance I would wager that most people on this forum (who are generally gamers) would still think that a tetris is the highest scoring/most powerful move in tetris. It's a legacy hard to shake as so many people have only played it on the O GB. It is very very heavy on acronyms and terminology. There are other games which have lots like Street Fighter but somehow people have trended more with SF over the years than they have with Tetris. I'm not saying its impossible, just very very hard to implement. Your points about Game B etc make it watchable as its slowed down but anything in TF or faster is hard to follow.

Fucking. Cray.

So what exactly is the highest scoring move in Tetris?

davyK

That video is well known but quite old. There are a large number of Tetris players who can play at insane speeds and will notice frame level differences in games. It's incredible.

Think if you t-spin twice in a row some games score high for that (and attack the opponent heavily too). I would defer to @mk64 on that though..

Dark Soldier

I absolutely fecking love watching speedruns, must watch (well, have on in't background) 2/3 hours a day of those streams. Actual, competitive streams though bore me senseless, even when I have some understanding of the games and mechanics. Don't know why, it all just feels a bit daft.

Blue Swirl

Elmlea wrote:

Swirl, this title annoys me. You now know we don't have an e-sports thread, so can you change the title to just "E-sports" or something?

I've changed the title now, which was the original plan, but no, I didn't know. Hence asking. Madness how that works. Sorry if the delay annoyed, but a) I'm on the wrong side of the planet so you can expect a 12 hour delay, b) I'm coming to the end of my PhD so I might not have the time to check the forum every five minutes and c) the internet here is wonky at best. I tried checking earlier but couldn't get online.

nick_md wrote:

I really dislike the term 'e-sports' but I've made that rant before.

Me too, but it does seem to have become the accepted name for professional competitive video gaming. I'll keep putting it in inverted commas to show my distaste, though.

Seems to be a fairly wide range of games that people watch on here, everything from Street Fighter to StarCraft. I've tried watching the latter but RTS games are incomprehensible to me. My poison of choice for a long time was MLG Halo, until they dropped it after Reach killed viewer numbers. I stayed up until the wee hours and paid money to watch the ad-free live stream. I'm excited to see what happens with the new Halo league run by 343. For a brief period I watched Call of Duty stuff, but not for very long. It's a bit too fast to watch and understand what's happening, while the slightly slower pace of Halo was perfect for spectators. (IMHO, YMMV.)

Knight

ChopperByrne wrote:

Commentary is what makes something work or not for viewing.

Starcraft should not work as you cannot view everything at once, but the commentary is so good that it makes it work.

Neither can the player. I thought Id made this thread but perhaps it was back in the day on the old forum. I'm a big fan of competitive Halo but unfortunately 343 have killed the momentum that it had when MCC came out, the twitch viewer numbers are so sad. When SC2 is good it's very very good indeed. Don't get these MOBA games, they're so boring to watch and yet so insanely popular.

mk64

Davy, youtube at my work is blocked now, can you put up the video of the 40 line clear wr? Or link the harddrop championships (anything with blink in tbh)

Thats the speed, finding other ways to play may arguably not be in the truest nature of the game. The tetris world championships on the snes (the one from the film in the US) seems a bit weird.. I get the impression that blink and co would murder them score wise.

Yes, a T-spin Tripple would be the single highest drop score.

Diluted Dante

I've only ever been able to watch Halo really. Don't like Street Fighter, and never played Starcraft or any MOBA. Not really seen anything else.

Dark Soldier

For those wondering about the insanity of Tetris, just watch Ecstasy of Order. Shit is fucking mental.

nick_md

For tetris I always liked this:

...with special mention to this:

Know nowt about top level play though.

Tempy

Knight wrote:

When SC2 is good it's very very good indeed. Don't get these MOBA games, they're so boring to watch and yet so insanely popular.

See I can understand why people find them boring to watch, but then again I find most FPS games boring to watch too. Being invested in the game is a big help, because although matches are often meta-orientated, players often manage to execute outrageously ballsy, skillful or just damn lucky plays, strategies etc

Now this probably happens in competitive FPS too, but I couldn't understand it, I can understand how a team fight in Dota2 works though.

Brooks

Lords management games look too much like WoW, that's the end of that for me.

Tempy

Hah, i'd forgotten that was your go to name for them. Conjures something different in the mind than Dota2 though.

It is definitely WoW/WC3 but it's easy enough to understand why thanks to the development process/the fact nerds don't like things changed. There's no reason the format couldn't be mixed up at all, but IceFrog and Valve are definitely chasing that perfect numbers game.

Brooks

It's not my invention, I nicked it offa Idle Thumbs.

Incidentally that show's only got better since they brought Riendeau on board.

davyK

mk64 wrote:

DThe tetris world championships on the snes (the one from the film in the US) seems a bit weird.. I get the impression that blink and co would murder them score wise.

That's the NES version championship and I think comparing elite TGM or Tetris Friends players and classic NES players is problematic. NES Tetris has no modern features like hard drops , charging and perhaps even wall kicks (haven't played it in a while). With old school Tetris the entry, shift and lock delays would be way out and probably not conducive to modern speeds.

The NES game is all about maximising the score before hitting level 30 which is effectively the kill screen as pieces can't be manoeuvred in time - during level 29 top players stack at the side and leave the pit in the centre to try and deal with it…so it's hard to compare.