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

Blue Swirl

Facewon wrote:

doesn't cost anything though.

Yeah, I know. Just seemed a bit much. Like when I downloaded the Weather.com app and I needed to sign into that.

dynamiteReady wrote:

@Swirl No, no... I'm a British tax payer... This is a gift. Foreign relations.

I ain't foreign, I'm British. I'm just living with foreigners. I'll be back to Cameron's Dream Utopia No Complaining Plebs Land soon.

mk64

davyK wrote:

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.

I think it would be much easier to adapt to the slower pace than the other way around

davyK

Not just the pace though - it's the limitations imposed by the controls.

In my mind there's no contest re skill level btw. The GDQ exhibition speaks for itself.

mk64

inputting at speed on tgm with reflexes must be harder imo than the dpad rubbing to get bricks where they are needed on the snes versions. Just seems odd none of the best players are involved..

davyK

Watched the film, Ecstasy of Order. A TGM player competed in that but he didn't do well. Nothing to do with skill - just I reckon he hadn't adjusted to the slower pace of the controls.

I could be wrong but I think NES Tetris has a really short lock delay. I know TGM has that too at the higher grades but with the slower control on NES Tetris it presents its own difficulties to deal with. TGM games are designed to be played fast and old NES Tetris just isn't.

dynamiteReady

Is that beeb documentary any good?

davyK

It's OK. The presenter is a wee bit annoying (e.g. when he appears to not know what augmented reality is) but seems interested which helps.

For once the people speaking aren't socially inept.

Blue Swirl

davyK wrote:

The GDQ exhibition speaks for itself.

I saw a bit of the four player race those guys did for this year's event. Mind blowing. They were purposefully playing with the pieces built up right up into the top third of the screen to minimise the amount of time it takes a piece to drop.

Knight

There's 400,000 people watching the English stream of some CS:GO event's finals right now. CS has exploded recently. Over half a million people watching CS:GO altogether.

TheDJR

The UK scene is poor though, there's money to be had.

Diluted Dante

Will be interesting to see how Game go with Multiplay.

Anything in particular behind the CS explosion?

Blue Swirl

Diluted Dante wrote:

Anything in particular behind the CS explosion?

I know MLG have been pushing it recently. Might be part of it - I think they're hedging their bets that CoD isn't going to be popular forever, and they've completely given up on Halo.

TheDJR

CS was always popular competitively, it's just that CS:GO has now been accepted as the successor to 1.6 after Source didn't take off.

Diluted Dante

Blue Swirl wrote:

Diluted Dante wrote:

Anything in particular behind the CS explosion?

I know MLG have been pushing it recently. Might be part of it - I think they're hedging their bets that CoD isn't going to be popular forever, and they've completely given up on Halo.

A sound position really.

Multiplay seem to be very PC focused. I suspect that Game will try and introduce more console stuff. Nintendo events are always our most popular and easy to organise. I suspect that we will see some Smash Bros and Mario Kart stuff work its way in.

Knight

Blue Swirl wrote:

Diluted Dante wrote:

Anything in particular behind the CS explosion?

I know MLG have been pushing it recently. Might be part of it - I think they're hedging their bets that CoD isn't going to be popular forever, and they've completely given up on Halo.

MLG won't have had much, if anything, to do with it. All of the top teams, and the majority of the viewers I suspect, come from the continent. There are 3 or 4 massive tournaments a year which give out huge prize money and have thousands of people watching live, those really drove the hype. Then there's the fact that GO has unified a divided community and the weapon skins economy that has exploded around GO has been integrated into the competitive side really well.

A polish player on one of the top teams had 50,000 people watching his twitch stream yesterday. That guy could never win any prize money again and he'd still be making great money off CS.

TheDJR

Which Polish player? I used to be in the UK division of Pentagram in 1.6, we used to practice against them so I regularly played against NEO who might be the greatest CS player ever. He was amazing.

Knight

Haha really? Cool. Erm, Pasha, who was apparently a teammate of NEO in 1.6. They still play together.

TheDJR

Yep, I don't remember him but he might have joined after, only really remember NEO, TaZ and LUq, it was a long time ago now.

Blue Swirl

BBC has an interesting video about the e-sports, specifically Starcraft 2, scene in South Korea.

Article here.

Five or six days a week practicing, for 10 to 12 hours a day. No wonder the top guy got a muscle injury and had to have surgery. Left him with an impressive scar.

I fear the day South Koreans discover other games. The rest of us won't stand a chance.

WorKid

It must be quite annoying as a top gamer, you put all this effort into the sport then periodically the entire game is changed and you need to learn the maps or courses again and look for the exploits and new strategies etc.

Imagine if they kept releasing sequels to "football" every five years or so.

WorKid

Actually just realised that's basically what happens in Formula 1.

Blue Swirl

WorKid wrote:

It must be quite annoying as a top gamer, you put all this effort into the sport then periodically the entire game is changed and you need to learn the maps or courses again and look for the exploits and new strategies etc. Imagine if they kept releasing sequels to "football" every five years or so.

Yeah, there was a seminar about this at PAX Aus last year. Interesting stuff. Tennis players don't have to worry about Tennis 2 being incompatible with their current racquet. The very best players though do have the talent to move from game to game - Justin Wong and Jonathan Wendel for example. I don't think there's been anyone who's been a champion across genres yet, though.

Blue Swirl

Looking at my last post, it looks like you have to have the initials JW to be a multi-game competitor.

Bollockoff

Daigo Umehara has yet to beat me at Real Puncher.

Blue Swirl

That's because his initials are DU. Science, innit.

GurtTractor

Blue Swirl wrote:

BBC has an interesting video about the e-sports, specifically Starcraft 2, scene in South Korea.

Article here.

Five or six days a week practicing, for 10 to 12 hours a day. No wonder the top guy got a muscle injury and had to have surgery. Left him with an impressive scar.

I fear the day South Koreans discover other games. The rest of us won't stand a chance.

This is also in tech programme BBC Click, saw it the other day. My jaw dropped when I saw the scar on his arm, at first I thought it was a mark left by an armrest or something, a repetitive strain injury is much worse obviously.

Blue Swirl

GurtTractor wrote:

My jaw dropped when I saw the scar on his arm, at first I thought it was a mark left by an armrest or something, a repetitive strain injury is much worse obviously.

It's a ridiculous scar, absolutely insane. I've known people with RSI (professional coders and the like), they've usually just taken a few days off work and/or had a wrist brace. Shows you just how hard their practice regimen is, I guess.

Blue Swirl

Swedish media group buys 74% share in ESL for €78m.

"eSports is already bigger than ice hockey. However, the average revenue generated per eSports enthusiast in 2014 was just over $2, compared to $56 for traditional sports enthusiasts, so this global phenomenon has tremendous potential."

Prepare to get fleeced, people.

Bollockoff

Pay per view streaming I assume. Though how do they get data for "enthusiast" revenue? I'm sure Valve make a bundle in The International season just on digital purchases.

Oh god are we going to see LoL on Sky Sports.

dynamiteReady

I've seen The Sun sponsorship on LoL and Counter Strike tournies already...

Front and centre shit.

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