Comment by arciini | Hacker News Reader

Comment by arciini | Hacker News Reader

I think it's especially interesting that this showed up on the player's tribune, which includes gems like Kobe Bryant's letter to his younger self. Esports is being treated like a conventional sport here

The fact that e-sports has exploded I think has a lot to do with how they've become more similar to real-world sports. We've moved from very artificial e-sports like Starcraft, fighting, racing (usually 1v1 games with extreme focus), to distinct role-based "MOBA" games like Overwatch, League of Legends that are much more similar to popular existing games like soccer and baseball.

Unlike in the earlier games, they rely slightly less than pure mechanical skill, which makes the sports accessible. They're team games with differentiated roles, allowing beginners a way into the game playing with, rather than against their friends. Sounds familiar? This could describe soccer, basketball, football, and all of the top spectator sports today.

Their only real substantial difference is that they're far more accessible, requiring only equipment that many already have (the games intentionally minimize system requirements) and don't require real physical athleticism.

I think it's no surprise they're becoming popular as spectator sports: they're building on a proven formula, but adding a dash of accessibility.

I wouldn't get too carried away.

During the height of the Texas Hold 'Em boom a decade ago, "Poker" was one of the top-level nav items on ESPN's website ("WWE" is one today).

As another comment reply has already alluded to, chess was frequently labeled a sport during its heyday in the years between Bobby Fischer and Garry Kasparov.

What is a "sport"? Any form of competition that makes money from spectators, and from which writers can make money writing about. Period. It fluctuates over time, often quite rapidly.

The strike had a lot to do with the raise in popularity of poker.

Which strike?

Companies like Riot and Blizzard also spend lots of money to support today's e-sports scene. While Starcraft: Brood War was always a "very artificial" e-sport in the West, it was a real e-sport in Korea, where broadcasting companies were willing to spend money promoting it.

It's the short-term nature of them I don't get. Football would suck if the top athletes were playing entirely different games in five years and leagues around existing sports were gone after twenty. The market need (perceived or real) for major publishers to replace their games every few years diminishes how seriously I can take them as competitive endeavors. It's fun watching greats like Brady and comparing them to other greats, and if I couldn't recall the greatness of the Cowboys from 20 or 40 years ago and use them as a measuring stick, it would be much less interesting as a fan.

Overwatch will probably be dead in ten years as a "sport". It's even more jarring with games that come out every year. There's really no reason for players to get professionally good at Battlefield 3 (Madden 14) if Battlefield 4 (Madden 17) is the same game but not. It's also less interesting as a fan.

Games like league rely on micro transactions and merchandising to make money, additionally a new patch roles out every 14 days keeping the game fresh. Riot has 0 incentive to make LoL2: electric bugaloo.

Imagine if the NFL changed rules every two weeks to keep things fresh. People get pissed off at good (or bad) tweaks to CS:GO and those tweaks can make for very different games. Riot still has an incentive to make money short term over building something that will be around in twenty years. Unsolvable? Maybe. But whatever Riot is working on now won't be what they are in five years.

I guess what drove that statement was the StarCraft -> StarCraft 2 transition, both of which are shadows of their former selves because the business model of a game publisher is not that of a sports league. They have conflicting needs.

Can confirm the rule changes are a pain. Ex dota 2 player and I tried to watch some games recently after a few years break. I couldn't really follow what was happening. The map was different, new items, heroes. Existing items and heroes all different in assorted ways.

I felt like Grandpa Simpson: "I used to be with it but then they changed what it was."

Frequent tweaking might be great for active players but I think it will be a pretty big block to ever allowing esports to compete as a casual viewing event alongside regular sports.

You can look at Super Smash Bros Melee for a game that has a competitive scene that has lasted a long time. It's more popular than ever at the moment with no updates or patches.

Even there the meta game is constantly evolving, look at the rise in popularity of shield dropping, I haven't been in that scene in a while but I was around it long enough to realize that there was an ever evolving meta-game. There's that entire joke in the community about the post-apocalyptic universe of 20xx [0] where the game has devolved into a rock paper scissors meta game for port priority. Additionally new rules do emerge in the scene, is chain grabbing ICs okay? what about Onett? etc. These serve to keep the game fresh by introducing a variance of popular strategy. This is what the semi weekly patches do in LoL. They keep the meta ever changing and even if you get out of the game the meta game is nominally important for spectators because the casters will pretty much explain it to you as the game goes on.

[0] https://www.reddit.com/r/smashbros/comments/1qixpa/the_year_...

>artificial esports like starcraft 2

So chess isnt a sport?

It's definitely not popular as a spectator sport.

It definitely was with chess competitions broadcast live on TV.

It’s a sport in the same way that a tomato is a vegetable; by some definitions it is, by others it isn’t. What annoys me is that videogames have a chance to be themselves without glomming onto “sports” like chess and other games. Chess doesn’t need to be called a sport to be worthwhile and respectable, and neither do videogames.

For the sake of money and “mindshare” though? Chess and Starcraft are sports, and tomatoes are veggies.

Theres a set of defined rules where outcome is exclusively impacted by the participants alone, no chance.

The better player wins.

It is a sport

https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/sport

You seem to have invented criteria with meaning to you, but that’s all. Then again, people have decided that tomatoes are vegetables, and that’s fine I guess. Mostly though it just seems that “sport” has a certain cache and “not a sport” is often used in a derogatory manner, which is a shame. A lot of people seem to have accepted the notion that the only skillful, valuable forms of competition are sports, and their language reflects that.

ESPN has a much simpler definition based on a, “can we make some money here?” test. For me? I’m not a fan of most popular sports, but I do love games. I don’t see the need to butcher the language for the sake of broad acceptance, or a buck.

Brood War is the only true eSport. It reached levels of success that most eSports could only dream of, including having two+ television channels dedicated to it. With Brood War, even non-players could watch and follow along, but League, DotA, Overwatch, etc draw their viewers from the massive playerbases that they enjoy. It's impossible to understand at anything but the lowest level what is happening in a MOBA unless you are a devout follower of the game. I say all of this as a long time player of DotA (1,000+ hours) and CS:GO (250+ hours)

On the one hand, having seen a number of people who haven't played bw at all watch professional games and being absolutely confused with the jumping screen and random terminology, I'm skeptical.

On the other hand, having watched European friends watch baseball for the first time...

And the lack of production tab and even sometimes supply counts. I'm a serious StarCraft 2 player and trying to watch Brood War games is still immensely confusing.

Yep Broodwar is the only non athletic sport I've ever followed. I used to barely play broodwar but I watched it all the time with my friends. All the excitement and commentary and so on was fun. Then blizzard came out with starcraft 2 and it was all over. The minute they announced it had no LAN play, I knew I wouldn't buy it. And don't get me started on all the other things wrong with sc2 including pre-annouced 3 game money grab, the barely visible on the map creatures, etc.

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