ESPORTS: How Far Off the Mark Was the CGS (Championship Gaming Series)?

[CrimsonShadow]

Ah, the CGS. At the time of its inception (and its eventual rapid demise) it was the pinnacle of e-sports organization and production. Although other operations and leagues had garnered varying degrees of support from corporate backers, the CGS was the first time in the "modern gaming era" (think Counter-Strike, rather than Super Mario Bros) that US e-sports received the full level of professional production typically reserved for traditional spectator sporting ventures (the slick sets and TV motion graphics, dedicated studios with audience, professional-style announcers, in-depth player profiles, competitor/team salaries, franchise-style team setup).

Explore: Championship Gaming Series on Wikipedia

For those of you who missed the CGS while it was around, it was one of the first landmarks that signaled that something much bigger and better might be just around the corner for our passion. And then.. It all fell apart. Likely too much money spent on the lavish provisions, and not enough earned in return; as quickly as it came, it was gone. In its wake, it left questions about the viability of this model; would it ever work? Was it possible to convert something from a hobby in arcades, living rooms and bedrooms across the world, into a legitimate top-level TV-style draw?

As you can probably see, the CGS helped pave the way for a number of organizations that are now doing similar things with games like Starcrat II, LoL, CoD and DotA. But given that this is a fighting game forum, my question is tailored to all of you who specifically care about the fighting game genre:

Is this a model that can work for fighting games? Is it possible for our beloved genre of choice to eventually stand on its own as a marquee attraction, complete with all the bells and whistles? Or is it something we'll never be able to attain, for various reasons? While we've been in the shadow of other games at events like MLG and Dreamhack, fighting games have not yet separated themselves to stand alone as a spectator sport. Most of our events are community-driven and community-attended.

Do we have it in us? Or is this level of production something that will never work for a fighting-game based event?

I'm curious to hear everyone's thoughts on the matter; so let me know what you think.

Also for anyone who participated in the CGS, like @Perfect Legend, it'd be great to get your thoughts as well.


Fun Note: I hadn't realized that Swoozie (from the DOA video) is the same Swoozie who is now a multi-million-viewed top Youtube personality who gives relationship advice (see: https://www.youtube.com/user/swoozie06) until I went back and watched this vid.

 

[funkdoc]

one of my friends often said that he felt like esports is an industry built on nothing, and i can't really find evidence to the contrary in most cases.

the issue for us is, what do the sponsors really gain from this? do they seriously think that seeing justin's evil geniuses shirt on a stream will make people buy more intel products? i understand the incentive for a game that can sell out the staples center, but with something like fighting games it just seems based on blind hope that there will be money in it someday...

 

[Euphoric]

one of my friends often said that he felt like esports is an industry built on nothing, and i can't really find evidence to the contrary in most cases.

the issue for us is, what do the sponsors really gain from this? do they seriously think that seeing justin's evil geniuses shirt on a stream will make people buy more intel products? i understand the incentive for a game that can sell out the staples center, but with something like fighting games it just seems based on blind hope that there will be money in it someday...

This is why eSports succeeds in the PC realm, you have more range of products to sell to the target audience coupled with the fact it is a stay at home competitive gaming realm, so it has a wide range of players.

This is why I also find it funny when people claim that FGC sponsors should be paying sponsored players real money and such. Yeah, the money a player gains from traditional sponsorship is through sales and marketability, people expect money to appear out of thin air to give to the FGC community. It trickles down.

The answer to this is probably a PC fighting game, maybe with customization. Consoles won't cut it.

 

[Tom Brady]

CGS paid its audience to attend events. It was all smoke and mirrors. Players weren't even paid their full salary from season one or two. The top executives bled all the money dry while the players made very little.

The top brass and Fatal1ty made millions and hundreds of thousands while the players made $22,500 out of the $30,000 they were supposed to make from season one and $13K out of the $18K they were supposed to earn for season two.

You may never see anything as corrupt as CGS. They even rigged their pre CGS events known as CGI (Championship Gaming Invitational) and even tried to blackball PL.

The corruption of CGS killed any hope of DOA ever becoming a main stream game. To this day players still have a bitter taste from the corruption.

Myself and PL could tell you some shit about all the CGS bullshit.

 

[Icy Black Deep]

I wasn't around for it, but didn't Tom Brady have something to say about CGS and DOA?

Edit: Damn me and taking time to research.

 

[FrothyOmen]

I don't think that even Starcraft, LoL, or DOTA have the potential to ever be "top TV draws"... I'm not sure any game does. The fact that it's a "game" and not a "sport" is honestly enough to keep people from caring too much about it. Look at professional bowling, they get to show up on ESPN2 every Sunday afternoon, and do most of their events as YouTube livestreams. Only the top few are making respectable money, the rest are barely making enough to live decent lives and provide for their families. The rest are paying out of pocket to get to tournaments just like we do in the FGC. What about professional chess players, billiards players, and more? Poker seems to have left as quickly as it came, and it was only really popular in my opinion because of the personalities, and the fact that anyone can learn to play Hold'Em with a deck of cards and some spare change. FGC can definitely bring the personalities, but it lacks the relatability (is that a word?) to mass audiences. It's a lot harder to get Aunt Edna to pick up a controller for a $200 system to play a $60 game, assuming you have both. But she'll definitely be down to play with some cards.

When we look at video games, most people immediately stereotype it and don't give it a chance. It's not relatable to a lot of people, and honestly many will find it weird to see two black dudes fighting it out with 2 skinny white girls with EEEE cups and an overall weight of 95 pounds and bright purple hair, then performing fatalities by ripping said breasts off and stuffing it down their throats or somesuch. I don't think that trying to get on TV is the answer, TV is going the way of the dinosaur anyways. Twitch is the perfect avenue, and the future of eSports as a spectator event should remain there. Most people our age don't even buy cable or a landline phone when they get their own place, it's all internet. Netflix, YouTube and Hulu. For us, toss Twitch in there and we're golden. All the content we could ever need.

So, with all of this said, how do we monetize all of the FGC to the point that it, as a whole, is making enough to sustain itself and bring production values to a really high level? I think that's where we need to be looking. Get away from TV, embrace the internet. It's where we started out, and it's where we should continue to go.

 

[KIllaByte]

Corruption probably isn't the answer--
Though, as an outside spectator, CGS looks awesome.
The FGC is growing. More people are buying consoles, and hearing or learning of and about the FGC is getting easier as well, with all of the different internet avenues that host its content. Twitch, youtube, IGN, twitter, Facebook all host FGC related stuff. Pretty much everything is on the internet.
If developers of fighting games start directly promoting the FGC by, say, adding message of the days that are actually updated and link people directly to streams where people see how cool the FGC is, or showcasing live streams within the menu of the game... Sony and Microsoft using their new livestream and internet capabilities on PS4 and Xone to put FGC streams in their "what's new" tabs.. We can keep growing as we are.
While the player count grows, the global internet speed average grows, it becomes easier to compete and find players and/or friends.. games get better, players more connected with devs... things will be awesome.

 

[Perfect Legend]

Without saying much. The face value of CGS was ahead of his time but because it failed and did many things wrong it set the entire competitive gaming community back for years. We could be way more ahead right now than we are.

 

[SonicBoomBrad]

Man I miss when Swoozie still competed in shit. I loved watching that dude play.

 

[Insuperable]

I stopped watching after I heard 5-3 matchup

 

[rev0lver]

As far as CGS goes, I think their model was all wrong to start with. The team concept was stupid. While this works (obviously) with team-based games, when you combine multiple games together to form a team it doesn't make any logical sense. You have coaches screaming at their players "GO! ....BE MORE DEFENSIVE! YEAH GET HIM!" not knowing what the fuck they're talking about. We make fun of Triforce but then watch that. With fighting games in particular, it doesn't work. We saw the same thing happen with the International Fight League for MMA, you can't make it work like a traditional sport.

The way that all went about was all wrong. It was way too early. You can't throw a bunch of money out and expect people to take an interest and watch. If there's no major spectator following for a game, people aren't going to suddenly watch it when it's on TV. That's why I'm always skeptical of new major partnerships in esports, even with MLG. Do you really think MLG sees Injustice as a game to help carry their events and bring in significant ad revenue? They realize we're not there yet, they're only trying to help pique interest for fighting games, so that we can eventually reach something greater, but it's not going to create that overnight. They can only do it because they have other games with an established massive spectator base at those events. We're not actually doing anything for them the way we are now.

eSports needs to be based around the individual teams/players. I don't see it working any other way. To be successful, it still needs the model of these individual tournaments, and keep the player salaries with sponsorships and tournament winnings. I don't think we're that far away from having dedicated competitive gaming channels on TV, at least for the bigger games. But it needs to take from established bases. If a game is only getting 25,000 viewers at its biggest event on Twitch, that game isn't going to consistently hold a number much higher than that on TV.

tl;dr There's no reason why high production value can't work for fighting games (but not with that particular model). But unless we start picking up consistently high viewer counts, we're still a long ways away.

 

[RM Jonnitti]

Black Mamba also participated. idk if he has an account on here but if someone can tag him im sure he can throw in his input

 

[DarthArma]

I feel like fatality barley spoke during that match.
And when he did speak (at 3:00) all I could think of...

I loved the intro that explained a little about the characters and their unique abilities and attributes. I think I need to talk to jaxel about making something like that for the break.

 

[CrimsonShadow]

I loved the intro that explained a little about the characters and their unique abilities and attributes. I think I need to talk to jaxel about making something like that for the break.

Yeah, it's the perfect way to help bring people who are less familiar with the game into the fold. Both the player intros and the character intros give a casual observer some insight into what's going on, and that's pretty cool.

Management issues aside, just conceptually it's cool to see fighting games receive that level of promotion. Like PL said, the league was ahead of it's time; it's a shame that it fell prey to dishonest/overspending management. But with great money comes great responsibility

However, it'd be nice to see fighting games presented in a way that helps attract and educate more viewers again. On the Capcom Pro Tour, they have little overlays that explain bits and fundamentals to people, and that's cool; but it seems like the video format is the best for briefly giving people some insight into what's going on.

I don't think that even Starcraft, LoL, or DOTA have the potential to ever be "top TV draws"... I'm not sure any game does. The fact that it's a "game" and not a "sport" is honestly enough to keep people from caring too much about it. Look at professional bowling, they get to show up on ESPN2 every Sunday afternoon, and do most of their events as YouTube livestreams. Only the top few are making respectable money, the rest are barely making enough to live decent lives and provide for their families. The rest are paying out of pocket to get to tournaments just like we do in the FGC. What about professional chess players, billiards players, and more?

The LoL finals drew 32 million viewers over a 2-hour timeslot. Imo that's right on the borderline of crossing over into mainstream-type numbers, especially when you consider that most of the world (the general public) has no clue what LoL is yet. Also with the International, the LCS and the CoD championships all sitting at over a million dollars each, these amounts of money are bound to be noticed soon. Playing for a mil in this kind of sport is a big deal.

I don't think it's far-fetched to say that as more people find out about what's going on, some games in the near future will cross the boundary from cult phenomenon to something like the NHL (not necessarily in terms of player salaries, but in terms of fan support levels). I have no doubt that eventually we'll be seeing some of these things featured on TV as well as the internet.

Or at least, some of these reality shows and documentaries that are competitive-gaming focused. Or maybe some sort of game show based around competitive gaming? Who knows.

 

[G4S KT]

snip

That's all true for right now, but as time goes on all those people will be dead and the world will enter a golden age of peace where not one person doesn't know the joy of vidya games

I loved the intro that explained a little about the characters and their unique abilities and attributes. I think I need to talk to jaxel about making something like that for the break.

This would help a casual audience, but it has to be more than just describing what a character CAN do, but how they want to play overall.

I know how all the pieces of chess move but don't have a clue what's happening in a high level match.

Describe how a character is "supposed" to be playing, then the narrative of a match can come across easier. Knowing that Ryu can throw a fireball doesn't mean anything unless the viewer knows what the fireball is supposed to do.

 

[FrothyOmen]

That's all true for right now, but as time goes on all those people will be dead and the world will enter a golden age of peace where not one person doesn't know the joy of vidya games

We'll be old and decrepit by that time

 

[NRF CharlieMurphy]

Video games will always be stuck to the stereo type until you break it.

 

[FinalBoss_FGC]

I feel like fatality barley spoke during that match.
And when he did speak (at 3:00) all I could think of...

I loved the intro that explained a little about the characters and their unique abilities and attributes. I think I need to talk to jaxel about making something like that for the break.

Your Gif game...
I am not worthy...

 

[KH StarCharger]

The moment I saw this being about CGS was the moment I was thinking: "@Tom Brady and @Perfect Legend could tell us everything we would have needed to know since they were two of the main guys around that scene."

 

[Tony at Home]

The big issue, which someone brought up earlier, is there's really not much for sponsors to use their players to market for.

Basically, the only thing I can see that would probably be likely to sell based on seeing a top player use it is a fight-stick. But seeing fight-sticks advertised between Street Fighter sets in Evo just serve to remind me I need to spend an additional $100 or so just to be able to do the techniques I'm seeing on screen.

And fight stick sales just aren't going to be huge either way, certainly not enough to give a player a decent payout apart from tournament winnings.

There's only ONE thing that really can possibly benefit from being advertised, that advertisement sales COULD be enough to start sponsoring more players- giving them enough money to compete and be at more tournaments.

The game itself.

Seeing the game being played is like a big advertisement for the game. It can help generate sales. The issue most people will find is that the people watching the tournament stream are only watching because they already own the game anyway. But why is this? It's because you can't have fun watching if you don't own the game, or know what's going on. Even worse, seeing the game being played competitively is NOT a good indication of what your experience will be if you buy it. Because you just can't play the same way the pros can. Many people watching Street Fighter 4 at Evo aren't going to be able to play as well as those pros. Not when they start out, and in all likelihood, not even if they play the game for a year. They know this, and that's why they don't watch for that purpose, hence it makes no sense for devs to spend too much money sponsoring tournaments.

But if you think about it, Injustice doesn't really have this problem. It's not like Street Fighter where everyone playing is using combos that are nigh-impossible for the average Joe to do. There's a 90% chance if you see an Injustice combo on a tournament stream, even the average joe can do that combo as well. They can with some success replicate the cool stuff they see the pros do themselves, and this means showing the game is actually an effective advertisement.

Basically, it would help to get casuals involved by making it enticing for them to watch the game, even if they don't own it yet.

Capcom games aren't good for this, since they are often "Player vs Controller" games, but NRS games are almost pure "Player vs Player" and therefore it understandable why NRS and the NRS community has been so open to the idea of MLG, while the Capcom community has issues with it.

 

[RM Jonnitti]

Without saying much. The face value of CGS was ahead of his time but because it failed and did many things wrong it set the entire competitive gaming community back for years. We could be way more ahead right now than we are.

i think he meant 5-3 like it was first to 5 and that was the score

 

[CrimsonShadow]

The big issue, which someone brought up earlier, is there's really not much for sponsors to use their players to market for.

Basically, the only thing I can see that would probably be likely to sell based on seeing a top player use it is a fight-stick. But seeing fight-sticks advertised between Street Fighter sets in Evo just serve to remind me I need to spend an additional $100 or so just to be able to do the techniques I'm seeing on screen.

And fight stick sales just aren't going to be huge either way, certainly not enough to give a player a decent payout apart from tournament winnings.

The thing is, traditional advertising is centered around 1) the number of viewers, and 2) the target demographic. So, they don't show you car commercials during football games because football is about cars; they do it because football games attract a large number of the same demographic that is likely to be shopping for or interested in cars at some point.

So the main issues gets back to what I was saying in the topic post; which is "can we attract an audience for these games", outside of the base hardcore community. If we can, than anyone who wants to reach predominantly young males (and some females) aged 14-37 (or whatever our typical demographic is) will have a financial reason to invest.

You see this now, with brands like Coke, Flipz and Bic razors becoming involved in e-sports, etc. It's not just keyboard/mouse/monitor companies. Anything from pizza, clothing, tv shows, phones, or whatever else younger people buy has a valid sales link.

 

[DarthArma]

i think he meant 5-3 like it was first to 5 and that was the score

Wrong post to quote

Lay off the Bong Spicoli

 

[Eric The Scruffy]

Fun Note: I hadn't realized that Swoozie (from the DOA video) is the same Swoozie who is now a multi-million-viewed top Youtube personality who gives relationship advice (see: https://www.youtube.com/user/swoozie06) until I went back and watched this vid.

Lol, second I saw Swoozie I did a double take. One of my favorite youtubers by far. If anyone's interested I'd recommend checking out his videos on the behind the scenes shenanigans that he went through as a disneyland employee. I'd heard him casually mention something about competitive DOA at some point before but it was still a bit of a shock to see.

I don't think that even Starcraft, LoL, or DOTA have the potential to ever be "top TV draws"... I'm not sure any game does. The fact that it's a "game" and not a "sport" is honestly enough to keep people from caring too much about it. Look at professional bowling, they get to show up on ESPN2 every Sunday afternoon, and do most of their events as YouTube livestreams. Only the top few are making respectable money, the rest are barely making enough to live decent lives and provide for their families. The rest are paying out of pocket to get to tournaments just like we do in the FGC. What about professional chess players, billiards players, and more? Poker seems to have left as quickly as it came, and it was only really popular in my opinion because of the personalities, and the fact that anyone can learn to play Hold'Em with a deck of cards and some spare change. FGC can definitely bring the personalities, but it lacks the relatability (is that a word?) to mass audiences. It's a lot harder to get Aunt Edna to pick up a controller for a $200 system to play a $60 game, assuming you have both. But she'll definitely be down to play with some cards.

When we look at video games, most people immediately stereotype it and don't give it a chance. It's not relatable to a lot of people, and honestly many will find it weird to see two black dudes fighting it out with 2 skinny white girls with EEEE cups and an overall weight of 95 pounds and bright purple hair, then performing fatalities by ripping said breasts off and stuffing it down their throats or somesuch. I don't think that trying to get on TV is the answer, TV is going the way of the dinosaur anyways. Twitch is the perfect avenue, and the future of eSports as a spectator event should remain there. Most people our age don't even buy cable or a landline phone when they get their own place, it's all internet. Netflix, YouTube and Hulu. For us, toss Twitch in there and we're golden. All the content we could ever need.

So, with all of this said, how do we monetize all of the FGC to the point that it, as a whole, is making enough to sustain itself and bring production values to a really high level? I think that's where we need to be looking. Get away from TV, embrace the internet. It's where we started out, and it's where we should continue to go.

There was a really good presentation from one of the major representatives of MLG posted here a while back that made a really good point about this. Everyone who is asking when MLG and esports are going to be big enough for TV have missed the forest for the trees. TV is a red herring for Esports and MLG because the primary demographics that they want to reach and invest in don't watch TV in the first place.

 

[CrimsonShadow]

Also, as a side note: I think we are raising a generation of gamers. A study done last year estimated that there are currently about 1.2 billion gamers in the world. About 700 million of them play online games.

The truth is that people being addicted to even the most basic of typical cell phone games (say, Angry Birds or Temple Run) opens the door for them to eventually try other things. Now that everyone seems to have smart phones, tablets, handheld gaming devices, laptops, desktops and consoles, total gaming saturation is higher than its every been. It's now normal to see commercials for games in prime-time slots at major sporting events -- rather than just on Saturday morning kids' TV.

I feel like we're just seeing the tip of the iceberg now; what happens when you have a whole generation of people who grew up completely surrounded by video games of one type of another?

Although shooting games have been around forever, Call of Duty really sparked a revolution that has gotten bigger year by year; so although fighting games may never be as big as other genres, I wonder if we still have room for our own level of exponential growth in the years to come. At any rate, I feel like we could be reaching a lot more people than we currently are.

The biggest factor in my case was actually being exposed to high-level play. I've loved fighting games for years and always purchased them, but it was never more than a passing hobby until I finally saw what top-level competition (with an audience and commentators to boot) actually looks and sounds like. At that moment, after watching footage of PDP and EVO, I was hooked; because I realized there was a whole other world out there I'd never known about.

How many people like fighting games but haven't had that same experience yet?