IPL announce $100k for Shootmania
•
25 Sep 2012, 10:32
•
News
The IGN Pro League (IPL) has announced today that it is to launch, in conjunction with Ubisoft, a $100,000 Shootmania tournament at Novembers IPL finals in Las Vegas. The tournament is the biggest prizepurse for a death match game in many years and continues Ubisofts support of Shootmania as an eSport title with support starting at E3 this year and extending to ESWC beyond.
The IPL Announcement reads:
"This ShootMania tournament marks IGN Pro League's first foray into the field of FPS competition and qualifiers will begin on Monday, October 1st. Elite mode will be the official mode used for the tournament, which is played by two teams of three players each and is a return to classic FPS action that is great for players and spectators alike! ShootMania is being developed with eSports in mind. While the game is still in beta, new eSports-friendly features are being added constantly. Maps and even new game modes can be created easily by the community as the game progresses!"
What do you think, Is Shootmania ready to sit on the same stage as Starcraft 2 and League of Legends? The Man from Del Monte, he say, No.
The IPL Announcement reads:
"This ShootMania tournament marks IGN Pro League's first foray into the field of FPS competition and qualifiers will begin on Monday, October 1st. Elite mode will be the official mode used for the tournament, which is played by two teams of three players each and is a return to classic FPS action that is great for players and spectators alike! ShootMania is being developed with eSports in mind. While the game is still in beta, new eSports-friendly features are being added constantly. Maps and even new game modes can be created easily by the community as the game progresses!"
What do you think, Is Shootmania ready to sit on the same stage as Starcraft 2 and League of Legends? The Man from Del Monte, he say, No.
Didn't like spectating at 'big' matches and didn't like playing it myself.
In my opinion this game will be just one of those that had a good start and perhaps a bright future but in the end turned out to be dead before it even really started.
will focus on BF3 for dreamhack and then firefall! :D
That being said I do agree that backing the wrong FPS title does effect the FPS genre.
Next year will be sicker since they gonna have weekly tournaments in their office and the prizepools gonna be even higher than this year ( 5m$), etc etc.
The fact that they push their game forward more than any other company and aim to have more viewers than ESPN top sports says alot, they wanna make esports main stream and thus they give out salarys to top teams who make it season 3, rumoured to be 25k$ monthly for five players, have u seen anything like this before? They wanna make players to be able to play be professional about esports, just like in any sports.
Even if u dont like LoL i think it shouldnt be flamed due the work they put on esports in general. Next year gonna be crazy year for LoL and ppl who play it, and esports ( moba ) in general
Newsflash - I'm the man from del monte, this is me in one of my videos: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YqmpVWzH4FM
Too many games that get financial support in tournaments(sup WCG) are bad and most are gone after one or two seasons due to the lack of casuaLoLs playing the game.
One could also argue about game being good, after all its the biggest game in the world at the moment (afaik), how does shit game get that far
riot took a competitive game, made it scrub proof and mass-marketed it.
now they are swimming in money and are trying hard to buy their own esports scene.
LoL is entry level esports, nothing more.
"they are doing their best to make esports big"
you clearly have not the slightest idea what you are talking about. riot is strategically putting money out there (amounts that they dont actually care about) to get headlines, it is about marketing not about their love for esports.
riot even foces events to accept LoL as the only moba and locks competitions out.
riots business tactics are aggressive and do harm do esports.
if an FPS title had a developer that dedicated (Quake live was closest I guess, but they made it harder for LAN events / didnt give much back in comparison - read: bad marketing perhaps?) it wouldnt be dead within esports right now.
It is just ridiculous to say that quake devs (browser based f2p fps arena shooter) could have done the same. No they could not have done that, they lack the money.
riot is in this unique position where they can announce those prizepools but its still peanuts to them.
and the origins and ideas that made LoL what it is the the completele opposite of competitive.
it is a cusual version of a competitive game type.
Check out the profit margins of Valve, Activision & Blizzard, Yearly income for their games is in the hundreds of millions and they know / make games for the eSports communities - they don't give back nearly as much as riot do. If riot is "about marketing and not love for esports" I truely wish every other company had the same strategy too - because they must truely hate esports to do less.
And the argument about LoL being a casual game is redundant, it has over 4million players a day of course its majorly casual - but the pro scene skill level is insane and ofc it is, the incentives are huge to do well. Gamescom finals last month SK who are a really, really good team got torn apart by moscow5 who right now are just amazing. The levels of competitive play in LoL have never been seen in any other team based game apart from maybe 2002/2003 era games (1.6/rtcw) but that wasnt due to money that was due to 512k becoming common inet speed and suddenly everyone wanted to go hard.
cause i cant see how you can be this missinformed.
if you think that blizzard can invest millions into prizemoney for sc2 you could not be any more wrong.
if you honestly think that in 2012 blizzard is still making millions with sc2: you could not be more wrong.
sc2, unfortunately, is a very outdated business modell. they have no way to monetize after initial sale. they do maintain login and stats servers, maintenance of the game (pachtes) and are in development for expansion. they are also part of activision so i bet they have quite the demanding profit margins to live up to.
if you think they dont care about that sort of money you are majorly mistaken. if you think that this sort of money can in any way be justified as marketing expense and that it will pay out for them in the long run you are mistaken again, learn about product life cycle.
"they must truely hate esports to do less." is such a ridiculously informed statement it makes me feel sick a little bit.
Let me get back to an argument i made in the shootmania thread:
prizemoney like this kills the industry. there is not enough publishers around who think in these amounts of money (only 3: valve, blizzard, riot) and people start to think they are entitled to this kind of cash or that a game at least has to have something like that to offer in order to be worth while. i get mad when i see 16:9-eyed nerds picking up thousands of dollars in sc2 and i get really mad when i see some soviets getting millions from dota2. this has gotten completely out of hand and it makes people oblivious to reality.
also, regarding your vivid defense of competitive LoL:
http://mbcarmac.com/post/32470599012/omg-my-game-is-better-than-yours
1) LoL is has a lower skill ceiling than competitors
2)its original appeal is aimed at a casual audience
3)no matter, you can still have fun
4)even if there are harder games to master you can still play it competitively
those are facts. no need to get mad about them. but lets not pretend that the LoL competitive scene is anywhere close to what dota2 and sc2 has. they are getting there, in a speed yet to be matched by any other community, but it takes a while to get there. (MLG Raleigh ARAM anyone?)
In terms of the Carmac blog post you linked, why would I be mad? That seems 100% correct to me. Solo or 'Duel' games will always have a higher skill ceiling as improving is more isolated where as a team game needs much, much more. I think a better comparison would be say CS and ET.
ET players need to understand much more to become good players - even some top players may well not master it all - where as CS players have less of an all round game to master in comparison (still all-round in terms of CS itself). This is to say ET Skill ceiling is much higher, but people rarely ever have reached it - its practically impossible due to the range of the game where as CS needs effectively less but many players have become as good as they pretty much could have become - but check some CS streams and the tactics, strategy and work involved. Generally lower skill ceilings make people work harder as a team, as that's where it makes the most difference (even in these 'low ceiling games').
Easy comparison to something already cemented is sports itself. Football is probably the most casual sport to have ever been invented. I see people playing it in the park, schools - children with jumpers for goal posts in the playgrounds - we have all been there. Does that mean to be the best you don't need to have immense ability? exactly. The basics of LoL are very easy to pick up, to master it, just like any game, takes immense ability. Now it may take a longer time or more ability to become the best in something else but the fall off for LoL is not in the ceiling it is in the entry level to the game - it is easier to understand the basics as pointed out before, but this allows even knew players to appreciate gameplay very quickly. (This being said, before I played any of those sorts of games I could understand HoN streams pretty well - but that had a lot to do with its caster who was fantastic, forget his name).
the had qualifiers upcomming for the championship season and did not want to show their builds to the dominant team.
that could never happen in dota2 as it is a lot less static, the meta-game has been figured out a lot better.
LoL is getting there.
and forgive me for saying "no reason to get mad" but LoL players are incredibly butthurt and in denial when confronted (by elitists). even you picked up solely on that aspect of my post and you have been justifying....
that being said i see where you are comming from and i do believe that not only will LoLs esport community grow and mature but people will eventually come to terms with what they like and dislike.
apart from everything regarding gameplay and community i must admit that i despise riot for their business tactics. they have repeatedly tried to force event organizers to take on LoL as only moba.
they can never be outdone, headline wise and they are trying incredibly hard to force a fast development in esports. i mean they are paying streamers themselves and are setting up clan-houses like we know them from broodwar and sc2. it just isnt natural for the dev/publisher to speed things along without giving the community the chance to catch up.
the prizemoney and "featured pro"(player sponsored by riot) salaries are nowhere near what third parties can provide and the scene is competely dependant on riot.
we will have to see of that will work out for them but that can not be seen as a possible business decision for any other company out there.
I don't mind either way, high level competition in the genre is enjoyable to watch no matter what the game (hon/lol/dota) it is perhaps a shame, like you say, that others arent featured as much due to the tactics of riot - but imo for eSports to go main stream we need a stupidly high level of money thrown at it by devs and big companies within the PC world.
http://www.ign.com/prime/promo/iplshootmania
will know soon :>
a game needs more than one heavily loaded launch tournament.
actually id argue it doesnt even need that. what the point of throwing 100k at people in a game that barely anyone knows about? does that improve peoples interest in it? i doubt it...
They said they have not enough money to support lans.
That's why we had a shit stand @ Gamescom
The game has barely got any coverage. So little people are playing it.
They will spend 100k and expect stream numbers like the big events would get but they have no exposure.
Why isnt there a representative on any "quake3-engine-game-community-site" (likt ehtis one) talking to the only people who are inherently interested in their game? Why dont they give out more keys to actually get people to play it?
they expect to get a return for throwing a large amount of money on one single event rather than using the same amount sensibly. cause it makes for a nice headline. RIOT style (but they are lacking the player base).
So I don't think Nadeo brings the money for IPL, but IPL will use their own money
shootmania does not have a community yet.
But I agree, some Nadeo cup could bring most ppl.
this shit wont be interesting or have any kind of bigger effect on the game unless they can make continues effort with tournaments and prizes which they dont. props on free trips and guaranteed prizes on IPL tho, should be a blast for those who qualify!
I have not touched the game for a bit though, maybe it has changed?
this game is rather boring and also competitive games are really lacking quality. aiming and hitting got a way too big randomfactor and the variety of different situations in the game is really low.
Prolly im wrong or too harsh but i guess these 100k are a waste of money since the game wont be any more than a timekiller-fungame.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VnlBlyP_hXo&feature=g-all-u
You can't hide behind some sort of meta game item control fluff stuff in Shootmania. It's all about the shooting, of the manias. It simply comes down to: can you handle your way around a railgun or not. And that gets them all shook, see, cause they got that doubt in themselves.
Free your mind of these mental chains, y'all. You can rise above, that's what the French are trying to show us here. They brought us Edith Piaf, Serge Gainsbourg, Daft Punk, and now Shootmania. It's big and goofy and red and blue and you shoot rockets out of your fingertips. If you're in North America, check out NASC every Saturday night, more teams getting involved every week. I'd say give the game a chance to do its thing, especially as more mods and maps come along...