With the recent explosion of multiplayer functionality in almost every recent game that gets released, it is surprising that the one player group consistently overlooked is that of the serious competitive player. In the early days of gaming, of course, single player games dominated the market. Multiplayer gaming happened mostly locally, with players sharing a screen, controller(s) or keyboard. As networking technology finally managed to catch up, however, multiplayer gaming over the internet exploded onto the scene. Early games like Quake, Counterstrike and Starcraft thrived due to their multiplayer. Competitive scenes quickly grew up around many of those early games. Leagues, competitions and LANs formed and it wasn’t long before companies realized that there were strong benefits to investing in the scene. Id software and similar companies held events like Quakecon where teams would fly in from around the world and compete for prize money. Top teams gained the attention and sponsorships of hardware giants like NVIDIA and Intel who happily paid to have their name advertised in the professional gaming world. Players like Fatal1ty earned not only millions but also the respect and adoration of thousands of fans. It was the ‘Golden Age of Competitive Gaming’ and it was big. With the inclusion of multiplayer in almost every AAA game currently released, the assumption would be that competitive gaming has only gotten bigger. Things nowadays, however, are very different. For a variety of reasons publishers in today’s age often overlook the benefits that a competitive community can provide and leave the hopeful competitive player without many options.
The competitive player is something of an anomaly. In the early days of gaming, Richard Bartle categorized the community of a game into four types of players. The socializers, who played mainly to interact with others, the explorers who enjoyed discovery and exploration, the killers who solely played to defeat other players, and the achievers who played to be the best. Admittedly, Bartle originally created these terms to describe the players of early MUDs (and their modern incarnation, the MMO), but all of these player types can all be applied in some way to almost every modern game. Because most non-MMO games already have the goal of defeating the other players, the competitive gamer is somewhat of a mix between the killer and the achiever. They want to defeat other players, and what’s more, they want to be the best at it. A more modern, but also extremely simplified version of Bartle’s player types is the division between casual and hardcore players.
While the question of what makes a ‘casual’ or ‘hardcore’ game is still a matter of some debate, there is no doubt what the difference between a casual and a hardcore player are in the world of online gaming. While a casual player logs on occasionally to play when they are in the mood, a hardcore player dedicates his free time specifically to the game. A casual player might go on a random public server and mess around for an hour or so, where a hardcore player spends his game time playing practice matches and honing his skills. A casual player might switch between 3 or 4 games they currently have and move on to new games when they come out, whereas a hardcore player plays their game of choice relatively exclusively and might still be playing years after release. At the end of the day, a casual player plays the game for fun. A hardcore player plays for sport. And when he finds a game worthy of his time he plays it for as long as he can. The only problem is that for a game to be attractive to the average competitive player, the publishers need to make the game accessible to the competitive crowd. There are a few publishers who continue to do this, but for the most part it is a lost practice.
In countries like Korea, and to some extent in America, professional gamers are paid salaries and treated like athletes. For someone who looks at current competitive gaming, however, they might notice something odd. Many of the games that have the biggest player base with the biggest prize money on the line are also extremely old. This occurrence is most obvious in the First Person Shooter industry. Games like Counterstrike and Quake are all over ten years old and continue to be played in tournaments and LANs. In the game industry this makes these games ancient. Why is it that ten year old games are still played by millions around the world when countless new ones have come out in the years since? On paper the hardcore player sounds like exactly what publishers would want. Why wouldn’t they want extremely dedicated players who will continue to play and support the game years after its release? The heart of the matter, as it so often does, has to do with money. In terms of target audience, most publishers view the hardcore competitive gaming crowd as too small of an overall market share to bother catering to. It’s true after all. The contingent of gamers who play competitively is a much smaller relative market share compared than the casual gaming market. While this is an opinion held by many publishers, it represents a widespread lack of understanding of what makes a game’s multiplayer compelling.
If done right the investment in a good competitive multiplayer is one that can turn a good game into a great game. It is no coincidence that some of the best selling games of all time also had some of the most active competitive communities. Counterstrike is one of the best selling PC games of all time. It also had one of the largest and most active competitive communities of any FPS game. This still holds true today, as even 13 years later tournaments are held all over the world and the multiplayer community continues to stay alive. After Valve bought the game they worked hard on it over the years to continue to support the online community and strive to improve multiplayer balance. They stumbled a bit with the release of Counterstrike: Source, a remake of the game with better graphics meant to attract all the old Counterstrike players as well as appeal to new ones. They failed to take the views of the competitive community into account, however, and the scene largely stayed with the older game. Learning from their mistakes Valve actively sought out feedback from top competitive players from the ground up during development of their newest incarnation in the series, Counterstrike: Global Offensive because they realized how important the competitive community is to the success of their game.
Another excellent example of this is Blizzard’s Starcraft. Like Counterstrike, Starcraft was a 10 year old game that still enjoyed incredible competitive success. Arguably the biggest e-sport game in the world, Starcraft became more of a sport than a game in Korea where matches were broadcast on live television and top players became celebrities. Blizzard spent years developing Starcraft II with a competitive atmosphere in mind, and just like the original game it paid off incredibly. Starcraft II went on to not only dominate the RTS market but become one of the best selling PC games of all time. Additionally it sports arguably the strongest e-sports community currently existing.
While these two examples by no means prove that a strong competitive element is a necessity for good sales, it does drive home a strong point. A game that is able to provide good competitive play almost always has fun casual play as well. If a game can offer an experience that is compelling to both casual and competitive players then the publishers are able to tap one hundred percent of the market (and appeal to all of Bartle’s different player types). Additionally, having a strong competitive scene often provides incentive for new casual players, or new hopeful competitive players to pick the game up. Online coverage of Starcraft II Major League Gaming events has exploded, and many players who will probably never play competitively tune in to watch professionals play. This in turn provides incentive for them to play on their own and try to improve their skills. Tapping the competitive market can be a very valuable thing if done correctly.
Unfortunately, many publishers continue to remain blissfully unaware of this fact. The key to a successful competitive game isn’t a secret; it just takes a little extra work and therefore money. The main thing that is necessary for a game to be successful competitively is ongoing developer support. It’s as simple as that. If the developer is willing to continue patching the game in order to fix bugs, imbalances and provide fresh content, then it already becomes attractive to competitive gamers. Command and Conquer 3 could easily have become a giant in the competitive RTS genre, but it failed because EA neglected to fix imbalances in the game and stopped providing continued support for it. The game went on to fall into obscurity, a shame considering the weight that the C&C brand name carries with it.
Another feature that is surprisingly often overlooked in game development is the ability of players to develop modifications for the game. In fact, some of the strongest competitive PC games of all time were birthed from mods. Counterstrike was originally created as a mod for Half-Life before Valve hired the modding team and adopted the brand as its own. Defense of the Ancients, or DotA, originally started out as a mod for Blizzard’s Warcraft III before Valve hired its designer and it spawned multiple spin-offs that all continue to be successful today. Mods also allow the competitive community to tailor the game to their precise needs in ways that the designers are often incapable of doing. The first Modern Warfare game for PC birthed a very successful competitive community due to the ProMod that was created by players in order to balance the game for intense 5v5 competition. The community eagerly awaited Modern Warfare 2, but were disappointed to find it to be a shoddy console port with no modding capabilities and lack of dedicated servers. To all the players who invested hundreds and often thousands of hours into the first game, this was like a slap in the face. All the competitive players stayed with the original game and the viability of the CoD series as an e-sport for PC rapidly declined. Infinity Ward missed a great opportunity to nurture the competitive community, and was instead greeted with lackluster PC sales of their game.
Fortunately, as mentioned before, there are companies like Valve and Blizzard who continue to ensure that their games are competitively viable. Competitive first person shooter fans eagerly await the release of Counterstrike: Global Offensive, and RTS fans have embraced Starcraft II just as warmly as its original. The current market, however, has room for many more competitive games to show fill the holes. Hopefully other publishers will take note of the success of games like Starcraft II and make an effort to produce competitive games of similar quality. E-sports have only continued to grow in America, and while it might never reach the same level of success as in Korea, it has nowhere to go but up. It only needs the help of developers who are willing to embrace the competitive community. After all, if 5-10 years after the release of the game players are still willing to devote hours a day into practicing, improving and competing, then the game must have done something right. Once other players might have moved on to different games the competitive crowd will still be there supporting the game, playing it and loving it.
NOTE: I wrote this as an assignment for a class and figured it was worth sharing. I didn't fact check most of this stuff, it was mainly just pulled off the top of my head. Feel free to point out any inaccuracies that any of you guys spot and let me know if there are any points you disagree with. Hope it wasn't too long of a read.
The competitive player is something of an anomaly. In the early days of gaming, Richard Bartle categorized the community of a game into four types of players. The socializers, who played mainly to interact with others, the explorers who enjoyed discovery and exploration, the killers who solely played to defeat other players, and the achievers who played to be the best. Admittedly, Bartle originally created these terms to describe the players of early MUDs (and their modern incarnation, the MMO), but all of these player types can all be applied in some way to almost every modern game. Because most non-MMO games already have the goal of defeating the other players, the competitive gamer is somewhat of a mix between the killer and the achiever. They want to defeat other players, and what’s more, they want to be the best at it. A more modern, but also extremely simplified version of Bartle’s player types is the division between casual and hardcore players.
While the question of what makes a ‘casual’ or ‘hardcore’ game is still a matter of some debate, there is no doubt what the difference between a casual and a hardcore player are in the world of online gaming. While a casual player logs on occasionally to play when they are in the mood, a hardcore player dedicates his free time specifically to the game. A casual player might go on a random public server and mess around for an hour or so, where a hardcore player spends his game time playing practice matches and honing his skills. A casual player might switch between 3 or 4 games they currently have and move on to new games when they come out, whereas a hardcore player plays their game of choice relatively exclusively and might still be playing years after release. At the end of the day, a casual player plays the game for fun. A hardcore player plays for sport. And when he finds a game worthy of his time he plays it for as long as he can. The only problem is that for a game to be attractive to the average competitive player, the publishers need to make the game accessible to the competitive crowd. There are a few publishers who continue to do this, but for the most part it is a lost practice.
In countries like Korea, and to some extent in America, professional gamers are paid salaries and treated like athletes. For someone who looks at current competitive gaming, however, they might notice something odd. Many of the games that have the biggest player base with the biggest prize money on the line are also extremely old. This occurrence is most obvious in the First Person Shooter industry. Games like Counterstrike and Quake are all over ten years old and continue to be played in tournaments and LANs. In the game industry this makes these games ancient. Why is it that ten year old games are still played by millions around the world when countless new ones have come out in the years since? On paper the hardcore player sounds like exactly what publishers would want. Why wouldn’t they want extremely dedicated players who will continue to play and support the game years after its release? The heart of the matter, as it so often does, has to do with money. In terms of target audience, most publishers view the hardcore competitive gaming crowd as too small of an overall market share to bother catering to. It’s true after all. The contingent of gamers who play competitively is a much smaller relative market share compared than the casual gaming market. While this is an opinion held by many publishers, it represents a widespread lack of understanding of what makes a game’s multiplayer compelling.
If done right the investment in a good competitive multiplayer is one that can turn a good game into a great game. It is no coincidence that some of the best selling games of all time also had some of the most active competitive communities. Counterstrike is one of the best selling PC games of all time. It also had one of the largest and most active competitive communities of any FPS game. This still holds true today, as even 13 years later tournaments are held all over the world and the multiplayer community continues to stay alive. After Valve bought the game they worked hard on it over the years to continue to support the online community and strive to improve multiplayer balance. They stumbled a bit with the release of Counterstrike: Source, a remake of the game with better graphics meant to attract all the old Counterstrike players as well as appeal to new ones. They failed to take the views of the competitive community into account, however, and the scene largely stayed with the older game. Learning from their mistakes Valve actively sought out feedback from top competitive players from the ground up during development of their newest incarnation in the series, Counterstrike: Global Offensive because they realized how important the competitive community is to the success of their game.
Another excellent example of this is Blizzard’s Starcraft. Like Counterstrike, Starcraft was a 10 year old game that still enjoyed incredible competitive success. Arguably the biggest e-sport game in the world, Starcraft became more of a sport than a game in Korea where matches were broadcast on live television and top players became celebrities. Blizzard spent years developing Starcraft II with a competitive atmosphere in mind, and just like the original game it paid off incredibly. Starcraft II went on to not only dominate the RTS market but become one of the best selling PC games of all time. Additionally it sports arguably the strongest e-sports community currently existing.
While these two examples by no means prove that a strong competitive element is a necessity for good sales, it does drive home a strong point. A game that is able to provide good competitive play almost always has fun casual play as well. If a game can offer an experience that is compelling to both casual and competitive players then the publishers are able to tap one hundred percent of the market (and appeal to all of Bartle’s different player types). Additionally, having a strong competitive scene often provides incentive for new casual players, or new hopeful competitive players to pick the game up. Online coverage of Starcraft II Major League Gaming events has exploded, and many players who will probably never play competitively tune in to watch professionals play. This in turn provides incentive for them to play on their own and try to improve their skills. Tapping the competitive market can be a very valuable thing if done correctly.
Unfortunately, many publishers continue to remain blissfully unaware of this fact. The key to a successful competitive game isn’t a secret; it just takes a little extra work and therefore money. The main thing that is necessary for a game to be successful competitively is ongoing developer support. It’s as simple as that. If the developer is willing to continue patching the game in order to fix bugs, imbalances and provide fresh content, then it already becomes attractive to competitive gamers. Command and Conquer 3 could easily have become a giant in the competitive RTS genre, but it failed because EA neglected to fix imbalances in the game and stopped providing continued support for it. The game went on to fall into obscurity, a shame considering the weight that the C&C brand name carries with it.
Another feature that is surprisingly often overlooked in game development is the ability of players to develop modifications for the game. In fact, some of the strongest competitive PC games of all time were birthed from mods. Counterstrike was originally created as a mod for Half-Life before Valve hired the modding team and adopted the brand as its own. Defense of the Ancients, or DotA, originally started out as a mod for Blizzard’s Warcraft III before Valve hired its designer and it spawned multiple spin-offs that all continue to be successful today. Mods also allow the competitive community to tailor the game to their precise needs in ways that the designers are often incapable of doing. The first Modern Warfare game for PC birthed a very successful competitive community due to the ProMod that was created by players in order to balance the game for intense 5v5 competition. The community eagerly awaited Modern Warfare 2, but were disappointed to find it to be a shoddy console port with no modding capabilities and lack of dedicated servers. To all the players who invested hundreds and often thousands of hours into the first game, this was like a slap in the face. All the competitive players stayed with the original game and the viability of the CoD series as an e-sport for PC rapidly declined. Infinity Ward missed a great opportunity to nurture the competitive community, and was instead greeted with lackluster PC sales of their game.
Fortunately, as mentioned before, there are companies like Valve and Blizzard who continue to ensure that their games are competitively viable. Competitive first person shooter fans eagerly await the release of Counterstrike: Global Offensive, and RTS fans have embraced Starcraft II just as warmly as its original. The current market, however, has room for many more competitive games to show fill the holes. Hopefully other publishers will take note of the success of games like Starcraft II and make an effort to produce competitive games of similar quality. E-sports have only continued to grow in America, and while it might never reach the same level of success as in Korea, it has nowhere to go but up. It only needs the help of developers who are willing to embrace the competitive community. After all, if 5-10 years after the release of the game players are still willing to devote hours a day into practicing, improving and competing, then the game must have done something right. Once other players might have moved on to different games the competitive crowd will still be there supporting the game, playing it and loving it.
NOTE: I wrote this as an assignment for a class and figured it was worth sharing. I didn't fact check most of this stuff, it was mainly just pulled off the top of my head. Feel free to point out any inaccuracies that any of you guys spot and let me know if there are any points you disagree with. Hope it wasn't too long of a read.
Esports is still on the rise. Prize pools get bigger, viewership numbers rise and better investment transactions are signed. We currently have more games that are played on a professional level than ever before. I don't know where you got that idea, it's just plain wrong.
There are buttloads of American (and European) gamers that get paid or make money by streaming. Twitch and own3d are a good source to monetize gaming on all levels and much more prevalent in the western hemisphere than South Korea. It's a known fact that some Koreans join foreigner teams because that's where the money is.
Yes there are still tournaments, but both of these games are just shadows of their former selves. Their viewership numbers are way below SC2 and LoL for example, both newer and visually pleasing games, making your 'longevity of esports title'-argument moot. Good competitive games can and will be made every couple of years and there will always be a shift from one to another. What one can say, though, is that FPS of all genres are worst off. Their communities are dying and except for perhaps Tribes and CS:GO there are no viable options for future esports titles (and even these two haven't made the expected splash, leaving fans dissatisfied).
This may just be semantics but what the hell is this supposed to mean? With the rise of Twitch and own3d the coverage of every tournament in every game has exploded. The way you put it makes it seem like there's only one major tournament, at least in the US. A bigger generalization would be more adequate in this case I would say. IEM, for example, with a combination of LoL, SC2 and CS blew most other tournaments out of the water.
The text seems like a collection of information snippets without any real rooting in facts. You ramble about your hobby without any real depth or value to it, I feel.
How's you doing?
This assumption is the correct one, unless you're using a really peculiar definition of "big". The peak years for everything relevant - sales, viewer counts, prize pools of events are pretty much precisely the last year. People usually assume things are getting worse with no basis in reality:
"There's more violent crime than before": http://www.disastercenter.com/crime/uscrime.htm everything receding since 1995
"There are more disasters than before" (absurd because volcanoes and tectonic plates don't give a fuck about what's going on on the surface): http://earthquake.usgs.gov/learn/faq/?categoryID=6&faqID=110
"Competitive gaming isn't getting bigger": http://www.d-esports.com/5499/ipl-4-sets-record-for-highest-viewer-count , http://www.complexitygaming.com/news/3216/
The only problem is that for a game to be attractive to the average competitive player, the publishers need to make the game accessible to the competitive crowd. There are a few publishers who continue to do this, but for the most part it is a lost practice art
I think design teams lack minds like Carmac's, and they suffer under the role of not being able to do anything but please the masses. We need a new michaelangelo of the game design team to replace him.
I think competitive players need to have less good players around in order to enjoy being really good as well. And they sometimes need to let some space to less good players in order to keep them in the circle. Do not beat to much your friend if you want him to play again with you somehow.
I am totally new at reading here, but it looks like some people and a good spirit can make a difference. I have just read the post of TosspoT, and apparently, it is also a key to having more goodtime!