eSports and the Importance of Dev/Publisher Support.

[Zyphox]

I know this has been brought up many times, and i'm just hopefully something similar is implemented in MKX and NRS can be the Pioneers in the FGC. What i'm talking about is eSports Support from the Developer/Publisher. take a look at this Article by Ign if you have a chance and you'll have a clue as to what i'm talking about.

http://www.ign.com/articles/2015/01/15/1-in-10-developers-are-making-an-esport-game


This article is great in showing the Rise in eSports in gaming as a whole. But why is the FGC the most poverty of all the gaming Genres even though its one of the most IF NOT THE OLDEST competitive scene of all. lets take a look at other genre's real quick

-MOBA
Dota 2, LoL and Smite round out this list and are the biggest Esports title Currently. the earliest you have seen these games being competitive is early 2000's where the Mod for warcraft 3, Defense of the ancients was made. Before that it was an RTS. fast forward 2009 with League of legends and later Dota 2 and you have the biggest games of recent memory with LoL having 64 million unique players online every month and dota 2 with 10 mil. now these are free to play games but i'll tell you why that doesn't matter later on. Dota 2 had a $10,000,000 tournament last july. most of it was funded by the Community and pretty much made the Blueprint for future Funding in the realm of eSports IMO. all of these games are supported for eSports by the developer and even fund these tournaments. they have in game support for tournaments and you can even purchase event tickets to watch the game on your dota client.

prime example of what could be done

-Shooters
Right now CS:GO, COD and Halo are the main shooting eSports games. i Came from the Halo Community and its the scene i know most about. COD has had $1,000,000 tournaments for like the past few years now every year called Cod Championships. Halo was the first MLG flagship title and many top players received 3 yr $250k contracts for MLG playing halo 2. the HCS currently Being supported by 343i is brilliant giving grass root tournaments the ability to hold sponsored tournament with a playoff at the end of the year. COD is supported each year with COD championships made possibly by activision and each developer always incorporates eSports as a focus for the past few titles. CS:GO is also huge especially internationally. Valve always supports the game just like dota and the prize pots for CS:GO are always huge. CS:GO also has in game tournament support and Halo 5 has spectator mode so anyone can watch a series going down on their xbone.

-RTS
Currently the most popular game in this genre is Starcraft 2. this is the closest genre to fighting games because its a 1v1 fight. i don't know to much about the Competitive starcraft community but i do know MLG still holds StarCraft 2 tournaments and invites the best players from Korea. for a non team game the pots are pretty big compared to Fighting games with top SC2 players making hundreds of thousands of dollars in tournament winnings. Star Craft is supported by blizzard for eSports as well.

If you read everything above you see there are a lot in Common and i'll past this data from the top 100 prize pools for tournaments ever.
http://www.esportsearnings.com/tournaments

Every single tournament here out $'s every EVO ever held by a large Margin and evo is for MULTIPLE Fighting games, these are all just one game events for a few winners, while EVO had $100k total prize for a bunch of different winners in different games. This is the first year a huge support from Capcom will happen with Capcup being $500k in winnings across the season. all the other fighting games will still be stagnant unless we get Developer and/or Publisher Support to make NRS games an eSports title.

My Solution
Why do Companies make video games? for money right? without profit there wouldn't be an MKX or LoL (indie games are different lets not talk about those). do you guys know how much Valve made by making The Compendium last year? it was estimated over $20mil and thats after the $10mil payout to the winners and the production cost and such. (can't find the article where i read it from) if you guys don't know what the Dota 2 Compendium is click here. http://www.dota2.com/international/compendium/
Basically it was like a kickstarter of sorts for there biggest Tournament ever. they just released stuff like items and Costumes and such for a price of $9.99. and every time someone bought that $2.50 was added to the pot of their tournament. its so genius and everytime a milestone was reached more stuff was added until the prize pot became over $10,000,000.00. Now i'm not saying Copy Valve NRS and i know its a little wishful thinking that something like this could be pulled off, but wouldn't it benefit WB and NRS if they released something Similar? for MKX get the EVO Costume Pack for $5. give $1 to the pot bonus for EVO or even an NRS Cup or something. not only will people buy because new costumes, but you will also get Supporters for the tournament to buy it and Publicity for releasing something like this. the more prize money and Production goes toward this, the more sales MKX gets. its a never ending Cycle, time and time again, the More Support the Devs give towards eSports and the Community the more they get in return. I Know NRS/WB aren't stupid, they probably weighed their Options and have already ran the Numbers and yadayada. Capcom can do it, i think NRS/WB has the ability too. not only that but they can show in game tournament footage to promote it, get Sponsorships (i'll gladly run no blood or no fatalities all day to see this happen) and get that WB Support too.

is this all wishful thinking? will this ever happen? look at Boxing its a 1v1 Sport that is still super Popular, MMA as well, its not all about Team Sports so why can't Fighting games Find success Similarly? all the genres i listed above are all supported heavily by the makers of the game for eSports, i think NRS can too.

Also INB4 this will never happen, get a job stop trying to beat a dead horse.....we don't need your negativity here. take that Opinion write it down on a piece of paper and mail it to IDGAF town, NY 11207.

 

[TopTierHarley]

Nice write and I couldn't agree more. I would love for WB/NRS to something like this.
Granted they have a business model already, I don't see why MKX can't become what SF4 has. I would like to play a game for more than 2 years that is still highly competitive which brings in new blood all the time.

 

[kabelfritz]

Long time balance support would be a first step to keep people interested.

 

[Zyphox]

Nice write and I couldn't agree more. I would love for WB/NRS to something like this.
Granted they have a business model already, I don't see why MKX can't become what SF4 has. I would like to play a game for more than 2 years that is still highly competitive which brings in new blood all the time.

thats the thing, all these games above besides COD are always played and Supported for more than a year at the least. H3 was for 3 years, Counter Strike since early 2000's and Starcraft as well. thats why SFIV has this Capcom Cup, because their games has had some much time to grow. i would love to see support for more than 6 months with MKX. don't even make a new game until like 2018 or something.

 

[zaf]

Long time balance support + new costumes every now and then + one character every 3-4 months = a fighter being an e-sport game IMO.
Pretty much what dota does.

 

[Mst]

The easiest thing to grow the tournament scene and later down the road increase the price pool would be if every game promotes ongoing tournaments in the client. Similar to how Valve is doing it with DotA, Riot with LoL and Blizzard with SC2 and i think DoA did this aswell. At the end the game being shown of on a tournament stream is free promotion for the game.

 

[trufenix]

NRS scene has YEARS of growth to go before it can ever hope to have a piece of what Street Fighter has.

 

[CrimsonShadow]

I think the main hitch in fighting games becoming bigger spectator e-sports is in the way they're presented. Most every company that's tried has just put them out into the market, said "here they are", and accepted whatever came. But what's missing is a key piece: education.

If you want people to enjoy watching fighting games, on a larger scale, you need to *educate* them on what the heck is going on, so that they know what they're seeing. I think our community and the way it operates has a lot of fantastic, interesting things about it; but they're mainly interesting to people who know what to look for. Which means both the personalities and the nuts and bolts of competitive play. So this means 2 things:

1) Fighting game companies need to do a much better job of introducing regular people to the nuances and mechanics of play that make it exciting. This doesn't just mean tutorial mode; it means the need to put content out. Videos, blogs, articles.. Tons of them. Help people learn and understand why the people who love fighting games love them.

2) Someone needs to do a much better job of introducing the world to the players' personalities that make this community so vibrant. I can only speak for myself, but what makes this community fascinating is 50% about the game, and 50% about people and storylines.

I know that for a game publisher this is tricky, as you can't control people and you don't know what they might say or do. But at the end of the day, someone needs to do it. People love controversial personalities too -- as proved by Jersey Shore, Flavor of Love and all kinds of other modern TV shows. The idea that a person needs to be a complete boy scout in order to be marketable obviously isn't true. But without this kind of window, anyone looking from the outside will have no clue as to what they're missing.

The Smash Bros. was a first step toward this end, but it was a small project done by an independent filmmaker with a tiny kickstarter budget; where is the rest of the industry?

Education + illumination. Those two things can break open a whole new world.

 

[Shaazzyam]

Nice write and I couldn't agree more. I would love for WB/NRS to something like this.
Granted they have a business model already, I don't see why MKX can't become what SF4 has. I would like to play a game for more than 2 years that is still highly competitive which brings in new blood all the time.

thats neat or whatever, but you should play my Melody deck.

 

[Juggs]

The first step is growing the tournament scene. You're looking at the endzone before you have even caught the ball. Of course this would be great, but I don't think the NRS tournament community is big enough right now. Despite what your GF says, size matters. I think we should focus on expanding the scene and making it appealing enough to warrant something like this.

 

[TopTierHarley]

thats neat or whatever, but you should play my Melody deck.

I'm still on poverty status lol

 

[Icy Black Deep]

The easiest thing to grow the tournament scene and later down the road increase the price pool would be if every game promotes ongoing tournaments in the client. Similar to how Valve is doing it with DotA, Riot with LoL and Blizzard with SC2 and i think DoA did this aswell. At the end the game being shown of on a tournament stream is free promotion for the game.

Agreed. The massive viewership of the first League of Legend finals (or whatever they call it) was largely attributed to the fact that they advertised it in-game.

Personalities are good too, but a lot of what's going on now is too much. There's a line between interesting and bullshit and NRS probably doesn't want anything to do with a number of the people who consider themselves "personalities".

Long time balance support + new costumes every now and then + one character every 3-4 months = a fighter being an e-sport game IMO.
Pretty much what dota does.

A new character every 3 or 4 months is pretty much a recipe for balance disaster. Maybe it works for DotA but I've seen enough broken DLC characters in fighting games.

I do not think that all of this monetization is necessary for eSports, but longevity is. To keep the publishers involved in the long term they need to keep making money, so I think that's why this stuff tends to go hand in hand. But if the game can stand on its own the eSports money can come from anywhere--the original Starcraft being the prime example of this.

 

[haketh]

DOTA doesn't introduce a new Hero every 3 or 4 months really. It's very rare they they port the heroes from DOTA 1 over to 2

 

[chemist4hire]

I

1) Fighting game companies need to do a much better job of introducing regular people to the nuances and mechanics of play that make it exciting. This doesn't just mean tutorial mode; it means the need to put content out. Videos, blogs, articles.. Tons of them. Help people learn and understand why the people who love fighting games love them.

NRS is kind of bad at this. All their challenges for injustice online ( example, use only special moves to win and get x amount of xp) where things that would get you destroyed in a real match.

 

[STORMS]

Note: we've HAD the first step. NRS' competitive support. They support EVO like crazy, local events and majors.

We're doing really all we can. The thing is, we just gotta keep doing it and keep making noise.

 

[roosTakk]

When I win the powerbpower ball I will host outrageous mkx tournaments

 

[Shaazzyam]

I'm still on poverty status lol

When I see your avatar, I'm not actually reading your posts. It doesn't matter what you're saying, my plan is to keep reminding you to sign into DN so that you can play my Spirit Beasts deck and I don't plan to stop until I see your name pop up online.

Just fyi

 

[Scott The Scot]

When I win the powerbpower ball I will host outrageous mkx tournaments

I would host a tournament and fly all the top players out for all over the world and have a HUGE prize for the winner,; the best stream - and a staff to do it - that money can buy; and for months I would have a huge marketing campaign. There would also be side tournements where you play with outrageous Kombat Codes, and playing blind side tourneys and maaan everything!!

I wish I was a bullionaire. I should work on that probably....

 

[chemist4hire]

Just saw this on srk. http://shoryuken.com/2015/01/15/wecg-2014-grand-finals-postponed-indefinitely-due-to-sponsor-issues/

 

[Eji1700]

The compendium was by far one of the most brilliant things ever done for esports. I honestly think games should have an "EVO" costume pack, where a portion of the purchase price will go towards the prize pool of the respective game.

 

[Juggs]

Note: we've HAD the first step. NRS' competitive support. They support EVO like crazy, local events and majors.

We're doing really all we can. The thing is, we just gotta keep doing it and keep making noise.

Exactly. I don't necessariy believe we're doing "all" we can, but we are for the most part. We have to earn it, we can't just expect it to be given to us. We need to start by having our own events, then go from there. Time and patience @Zyphox, I know that's not the fluffy ideal answer, but it is the realistic one.

 

[Barrogh]

Long time balance support would be a first step to keep people interested.

And profiting model like most of these games have is necessary to make long term balance support financially viable.

So the answer is always hats

 

[NoobHunter420]

I just don't see it working with fighting games.
people care about MOBAs that's why publishers support it
95% of people who buy fighting games aren't so dedicated
WB has much to lose and nothing to gain by supporting events that aren't run that well

 

[d3v]

Somebody forgot to mention that, thanks to Sony's $500,000 pot bonus, next years Capcom Cup will likely have the largest individual payout for any esports event barring TI4.

 

[Zyphox]

Somebody forgot to mention that, thanks to Sony's $500,000 pot bonus, next years Capcom Cup will likely have the largest individual payout for any esports event barring TI4.

not quite, its being spread out through the season, and this list here have multiple tournaments past 500k.
http://www.esportsearnings.com/tournaments