SC2SEA.com - Starcraft 2 SEA eSports Community Site

My thoughts on growing eSports in 2013
 

This is a semi-long read and my opinions and might come across as too drastic to some but these are at the moment what I believe is needed to further grow the scene. Its growing well yes, but it can be better. When I talk about "growing eSports" I refer to growing the Starcraft 2 industry as a whole. Not the small subset of top players or any specific state.

---

1. Invest more in accessible mainstream media

---

Community's Part
This is what gets new blood. Why? Because it makes the game ACCESSIBLE to the casual viewer. It becomes easy to follow, and people from all walks of life have the opportunity to get exposed to Starcraft. Basically all these are some form or other related to casting.

• Husky / HD youtube videos - Brought in a huge wave of youtube users
• Day 9 Dailies - Getting single players / beginners more involved and helping them understand the game.
• Tastosis Casting GSL - Basically made Korea competition accessible to the world.
• Barcrafts - Turned Starcraft into a mainstream social activity.

Now imagine that none of these existed. Where would the scene be? Then imagine they were doubled or quadrupled thanks to people / sponsors recognising this and investing in these areas. This is hands down the best channel to get Starcraft more mainstream and the casual / single-players more invested in the game. I would love to see more of these types of high quality mainstream media.

Blizzard's Part
I would also want to see more integration with battle.net and mainstream media like this. They have been doing great by linking barcraft events and what not in the battle.net interface. But they could still improve it much further to a level of functionality similar to Steam / Dota 2.

I think Blizzard had huge potential to capitalize on "social media" with their facebook integration. Because obviously facebook is the biggest marketplace in the world. For e.g a option to toggle your ladder ranking display (#1 gold sounds fantastic to normal people doesn't it?) on facebook. That way they can compete with their own group of friends as well as advertise the game more to facebook friends of the user instead of god damn farmville requests. A quick "print screen" share to facebook feature. Or have single player achievements cross-posted to Facebook or just a custom ladder thing that shows who is the top among your friends. All toggable on/off of course. But the way they implemented it (just as a friend finder) and the lack of chat channels initially was a complete disaster. Another case of the top executives being so detached from the community and having the wrong reference points. More on that later.

TLDR: Growing eSports and attracting new/casual players is enhanced by having high quality mainstream media and more integration with Starcraft and mainstream channels.

---

2. Invest more into communities

---

The Importance of Community Sites
If media provides growth, community sites provide "retention". They take players interested in the game and provide them a platform. You want people thinking about the game even when they are not playing it. At work, at school, or when they just don't feel like playing games. It gets them more involved into the game. I would say 60% of forum readers are still lurkers. They don't own an account, they don't post. And when they finally start to, thats when you have a tangible measure of involvement. Because these players have actively decided to become part of the community and by posting their thoughts, joining a clan, joining a tournament etc they automatically become much more involved, get their friends to be involved and it grows the scene.

Encouraging Participation
And once the initial hurdle of their first post is done with they usually are committed to the scene / game and this affiliation could last for years. What can be done to help this? Well Blizzard beta keys or other special privileges are ALWAYS an amazing way to get these lurkers posting in the first place. Blizzard ends up helping communities but the sad thing is they are not even aware of it. What I would like is for Blizzard to be aware they are helping us, and then start moving towards the direction of supporting communities more because that in the end they are going to see a much higher return thanks to that growth. There could also be free retail HoTS give away opportunities etc and stuff that doesn't cost blizzard any money.

A world without TL / SC2SEA?
Without TeamLiquid, the scene would be vastly different. Korean news / gaming news would be hard to find. There will be no liquidpedia or database of results. Players signing / leaving major teams? Who even cares there is no news anywhere! And who are these players again? Nobody knows because Blizzard does not cover "community news". Now what if we had liquipedia 5 years ago? Or Team Liquid Star Leagues before there were even any major tournaments? Remember the first one and how amazing it was? Growth would have been much more facilitated with external support.

Same thing for sc2sea. House clans, Race Wars, our sea clan league, whos who profile databases etc all these things would not existed. Basically what I'm saying is once the game is out, it is no longer the game that grows the community. It is the community sites that do it. They significantly prolong a players gaming life with a particular game and grow the database of players. IMO Blizzard should be using a some of their marketing dollars to invest in community sites.

Because facilitating this will inevitably lead to more long run growth/profits, making it business sense for Blizzard to be investing more in communities. Right now they have chosen not to actively manage their communities on their own - blizzard forums have been disorganised and the same for last 10 years, whether its deliberate to discourage participation i do not know. But rather they get communities around the world that basically does their job for "free" for them but it does not always work out. I remember it was a sad day then when EvilMetal's broodwar.com which was the biggest starcraft 1 news site closed down, because it was not sustainable. Many community sites around the world are not well maintained because the owners and staff have no incentive to continue and are given no help. They do it for passion but if your job suffers because of it and you have a family to feed, you stop. It is a thankless job with no return for 90% of the community sites out there, and that is partly why only 10% of them are worth visiting.

Top executives at Blizzard do not value community sites
In nearly every single instance where I've met with blizzard non-community managers - be it the top blizzard people in the region of those from the USA who have flown down - one thing is constant. They do not regard community sites as important. Every top "regional" personal I have talked to have never even visited SC2SEA.com. Of course they heard of it, but they have never themselves been to the site. its disheartening they place such low importance on them. i bet the same can be said for TL and the NA non-community managers high up in blizzard.

A top executive recently declared wanting to have more barcrafts in XXX in 2013. He made this statement without knowing who organised the only 2 barcrafts we have ever had, or even visting our site. And why did our barcrafts stop? Who will be organising barcrafts in 2013 then? lol. Its always just 1-2 people going out of their way, and if they don't do it, no one will. Thats why there are no more barcrafts in Singapore, its as simple as that. And of course we would have benefited from help for e.g using their network to secure a good location, getting in interested clients / sponsors to brand the event and make it a regular sustainable occurrence. Basically sites need more support so we can continue to grow the community in Blizzard's interests.

Listening to the community
There is a big detachment that exists, the big guns simply do not care about community sites, only community managers do. The community managers i'm friends with are all fantastic and want the best for the community too. But their hands are tied because its the big guns who decide everything and they don't listen to them. They listen to "real world" people and not the community. Hence the abomination that is bnet 2.0 and the oversized WCS budget which could have been so much better used imo and more evenly spent on grassroot tournaments all around the world to grow the community. They do things the other way round, do stuff based on real word references, and then when the community complains, then they adopt and try to change it. re: Diablo 3 disaster. Of course they make profit either way but sometimes this results in missed opportunities and growth. Why not listen to the community in the first place the first time round?

They also make decisions such as shelling out 6 figure sums at booth rental and exhibition events that really.. does not grow the community in anyway. Why does this happen? Because Top execs in Blizzard value these events and not community sites. Community sites/tournaments get nothing and have to depend on random acts of goodwill from the public to sponsor tournaments. And no sponsor = simply no tournament!

If there was no Arnor, Soulja, JoFrtiz etc there would be no SEAL#1 #2 #3, SEASL #1, #2, etc!

Take a portion say even 10% out of there exorbitant marketing fees and instead invest that in community sites. Imagine a Blizzard supported community tournament or clan league?! Even if they are just as a silent sponsor with the community doing all the admin work. And the mainstream attention they could bring with proper liaising their website / facebook pages with community sites and with the event being called a Blizzard event. Now that would facilitate growth throughout the whole scene and that will actually grow the community. The Blizzard SEA Clan League? Hell yeah!

TLDR: Community sites work hand in hand with accessible media to bring new players in. The simple fact is these sites retain and grow the community more then anything else. Blizzard does not recognise this and probably never will.

---

The Tournament issue

---

I do not have a solution for this. To keep it short, on one hand tournament's force the skill level of players to grow which is great. The skill level in the nation rises. But it soon reaches a point where the gap widens, new players stop going to the event to try their luck. Entrance fees are expensive. The end result is only the cream of the crop seems to benefit from this and it does not grow the scene. In fact you could call this an "inefficient" use of sponsor money.

And having the "true top players" is not a priority for sponsors - they want numbers and exposure, hundreds of people not 8 of the best fighting it out with 5 of their friends watching. The best thing that can come out of this is if a singular talent emerges that can compete on an international scale, getting more locals casual players to be more involved and support him and encouraging them to play. Getting coverage in mainstream news media, etc.

This is a tricky spot where you have to justify the use of sponsor money through attendance numbers. If its not justified it won't be sustainable and you don't have events. Their marketing dollar would be better spend elsewhere e.g - international player sponsorships that go to the very best. I think online events are far cheaper and accessible to watch and provide a far better marketing return but marketers will never consider it as they always value physical events over this, and well most players do too.

Re: My thoughts on growing eSports in 2013
 

i hope you posted this in TL as well.

Blizzard has a terrible habit of being really detached from their player base. This has been happening since forever.
Pretty damn stubborn in their ways and only favouring hard numbers/statistics over player sentiments.
And most of the time, they dismiss "player sentiments" quickly by saying we are the "vocal minority".

That's not to say that Blizzard does not create great products. It's just that they have flaws that could be fixed/avoided if they weren't so detached from the community.

Re: My thoughts on growing eSports in 2013
 

Very good blog ^^

I agree Blizzard should do more with the community :/ they only post really really big events...

Re: My thoughts on growing eSports in 2013
 

I agree with everything, they need to take a page from Riot's book and actually put more effort in, instead of relying on the community it self.

Re: My thoughts on growing eSports in 2013
 

Haven't paid any attention to Blizzard's plans in 2013 or HOTS, have you?

Re: My thoughts on growing eSports in 2013
 

yeah they have put a lot of effort in to HoTS/2013

Re: My thoughts on growing eSports in 2013
 

You're kidding right? They tweet when Ninja, PiG, deth or Mafia are streaming. They tweet the NZ BarCraft Finals. They write articles about inFeZa's observing. They reach out to the community on a bloody monthly basis and get no recognition for it. People need to open their eyes instead of blindly complaining. I don't mean any disrespect in this post, just trying to be succinct.

Re: My thoughts on growing eSports in 2013
 

Dox so angry :S

Re: My thoughts on growing eSports in 2013
 

Like almost anything in life there's two sides to the story. Both as valid as each other and both as important as each other (in each person's mind). Dox is simply trying to have people see the other side of the equation.

It's great and important to put thoughts/concerns/feelings out in the open (otherwise nothing shifts and it all stays in people's heads) but it is also important to step in the shoes of whoever you are talking/complaining about not necessarily to justify their position but to look at what actions could be taken to grab their attention and do so in a way where they see it as a valuable idea. Clashing heads with idea vs idea and opinion vs opinion just leads to a slow improvement.

I agree wholeheartedly with a lot of what nirvAnA says moreso for taking an action called writing it out and putting it into existence vs complaining about it amongst friends.. but I definitely do not feel like I am in a position to point a finger at either party - nor really are any of us.

Thank you for taking the time to make this nirvAnA! I enjoyed the read!

Re: My thoughts on growing eSports in 2013
 

Re: tournaments, middle class players need to be getting prize money. There is simply no incentive for middle class players - say the M/GM of clans, those who generally hang around RO32-16 in wT but struggle to crack top 16-8 consistantly - to practice and train to the same degree as those consistantly making the top 8. They will never get the money, because it's all going to the top 3 people, so why bother? Having said that, the top players don't wanna play for small amounts all because their prize money has been spread over a larger number of spots (and without big names comes reduced viewship and therefore reduced sponsor money). So I fail to see a solution other than just having so much money around that it becomes feasible for middle class players to earn enough money to make the time investment pay off.

Re: My thoughts on growing eSports in 2013
 

I agree with a bit of what is said here but I also have to agree with Dox.

It's easy for us as a community to bitch and moan about what we want. This is a good thing because it gets the message across to Blizzard about what we think they could improve. At the same time, I feel too often we get carried away with our pessimism and end up mostly ignoring the things that have been done for us under the premise of "could be better".

Re: My thoughts on growing eSports in 2013
 

I said I was just trying to be succinct.

I just see the same old statements being repeated about Blizzard not caring about eSports / not connecting to the community / and people are clearly living with their heads in the clouds without getting informed. If people opened their eyes, they'd see a growing trend that has gained traction throughout 2012, and shows significant promise in 2013.

Re: My thoughts on growing eSports in 2013
 

The problem is we have companies like Riot and (I have no idea who makes DoTA I dont play it ) who have better support, and we compare them to Blizzard. There was never too much ruckus about until we saw the support these games had from their producing companies.

Albeit not right now I think blizzard are heading in the right direction. Yes we want more and blah blah blah but some more time and I think we will see more support come in! eSports is young we just have to support it and enjoy it!

Re: My thoughts on growing eSports in 2013
 

I think there's a lot of room to compare Blizzard and Riot. There are many, MANY things that Blizzard does better than Riot. But Riot has its positives as well. I'm sure there's room for both to learn from each other.

I definitely think the whole "Riot loves esports, Blizzard doesn't care" argument is a bit ridiculous though. I'm with Dox - I don't know how a sadly all-too-common opinion like this spreads, but it does.

Re: My thoughts on growing eSports in 2013
 

Example of Riot support being better than Blizzard? This is another statement that has grown very popular over the last 6 months but I don't see any true weight behind it.

Comparing the two companies is ridiculous from the get-go. One is a multi-award winning, multi-best selling multi-genre developer that has been around for over 25 years. The other is a company who released one single-genre free-to-play MOBA title in 2009 and is now being heralded as the messiah of gaming and eSports.

They've had a very good two years, there's no arguing that. But come on. Apples and Oranges people.

Re: My thoughts on growing eSports in 2013
 

Thats what i meant to say (I dunno if it came across that way though) the reason behind all this Blizzard doesnt care comes from people comparing two very different companies.

Anyway Blizzard has time still to show itself to the MOBA fanboys, the problem is that most of the MOBA fan base are very young, opinionated people (my thoughts). Regardless I still think that Blizzard could do more, which has been done in HoTS i jsut think it should have been sooner

Re: My thoughts on growing eSports in 2013
 

Oh I think some people completely missed the point of the blog. Its not an anti-blizzard post, but one that discusses how eSports can be further grown next year. Right now the discussion has derailed into the good ol' "Blizzard good/bad" thing. Its more about what do you think should be done to facilitate growth next year. Since it is their game / market, is Blizzard doing enough? Is it even their responsibility? What else can be done by other parties? e.g my point on day9/tastosis etc and how they play a huge part in bringing in new players. And my stance is the "decision making" people in Blizzard should be more involved in community affairs, and provide communities more support - simple as that. And this is even more true in regions like ours which are still developing and need that help.

First of all, saying Blizzard should be more involved is NOT equal to "I hate blizzard" so do not lump this blog under the "pessimistic / anti-blizzard" crap on Reddit because it is nothing like it. I love Blizzard and that should be evidenced enough by playing their games for 15 years. Secondly, sometimes people go into Blizzard white knight mode at the first sight of criticism. If attitudes like that continue, constructive discussion can never take place because it will always end up being derailed into "Blizzard good/bad" (like this thread) with "look how much blizzard has done blabla" rather then its original topic of intention - How to grow eSports in 2013?

Community managers do this, and I think all our regional community managers do a fantastic job. Many of them push for stuff but it always needs HQ approval first. When I talk about "Blizzard" i refer to the higher ups in Blizzard who make the decisions and are in charge of the overall direction of the company. When I talk about "disconnect" I am referring to how the higher ups do not listen to the community managers (who represent the community) but rather external sources. Community managers feel frustrated and do their best but their hands are tied.

A good example of this was when they got the guy who designed the xbox console interface to design battle.net based on his past xbox credentials rather than listening to the community. In the end they decided to change it after much criticism, my point is, why not get it right the first time round? Value the community feedback more! Don't make a product then change it later after outcry, theres a lot of potential growth being wasted. Another example is Diablo 3. That is where the change of attitude in terms of "disconnect" and undervaluation of community needs to be addressed or its going to keep happening in the future. And I would love to see more integration with community sites as that is really what grows the existing player base.

Also, there is a difference between senseless complaining / whining and providing proper feedback.

So basically, after the community voiced their concerns they recognised there was a problem, have taken steps to fix it and looking to improve 2013. So what's wrong with having more discussion so Blizzard becomes even better in 2013? This isn't the toxic "lets bash blizzard" bandwagon like Reddit so don't make it out to be that way - this is healthy and rationale discussion.

I am very much looking forward to Blizzard becoming better next year and HoTS bringing in a whole wave of players, working hand in hand with community sites to be able to retain and grow this wave of players. I absolutely love that they started HoTS beta so early and have been tweaking it since. I would love to see stuff like Blizzard funding SEA Clan leagues, (look at the money they spent on wcs) etc and adding substantial value because they certainly can. Which was basically the gist of my whole post - these are decisions the higher ups must approve and that will come with an attitude change when they value community more.

Lastly, the tournament "top heavy" syndrome has not been discussed at all in this thread yet. This is something which Blizzard is well aware off too. When the top get constantly rewarded but there's nothing to help the bottom. Nobody knows the solution for this.

What else do people think can be done to facilitate growth in 2013? Lets stick to the topic guys please no more "Blizzard is bad" crap I'm sure the vast majority of us love Blizzard otherwise we won't be here!

Re: My thoughts on growing eSports in 2013
 

Just to clarify, my posts were in direct response to the people I quoted. Context!

Re: My thoughts on growing eSports in 2013
 

Dox is right.
PJ is our SAVIOR
However I don't feel that there is as much support in the American departments in terms of player promotion in comparison to other regions, it might be just me though.

Re: My thoughts on growing eSports in 2013
 

For those who didn't read the thread, everyone agrees our community managers are great! i.e PJ and co. Thats not the point of discussion, rather its if the blizzard higher ups / decision makers should be more involved with community efforts. There is a disconnect there between them and community managers and therefore community.

Nom right now everything is left to the community to do so if there isn't a strong standalone NA community I guess it won't feel that way. Thats what I was getting at. Its just left to the random chance of there being a community. Its the communities that do the retention and grow the scene and if theres no site then just too bad for that scene. Without sc2sea our scene would be so different, and sc2sea could very well have not happened. So should it still be left to random chance? Or should there be a dedicated effort - this is a call higher ups must make.

Anyway I guess the americans have TL but then everyone has TL too so its hard for there to be an NA identity there.

Re: My thoughts on growing eSports in 2013
 

Here are some thoughts purely from a fan/spectator point of view

Would love to see even more focus on local/grassroot events. Blizzards WCS was awesome for this. It kind of saddens me when people don't really care about a player unless they're Code S level or w/e.

In an ideal world (for me) fans would follow a local team and cheer them on. Like the college basketball scene or whatever. Yeah, they aren't the best players in the country, but people go out and cheer them on because they are their team. It's also exciting to see which players work their way up to the big time. Funnily enough, I think we here in the SEA region are probably the most loyal to our local scene from what I can gather reading reddit and TL (which is awesome).

As blasphemous as this may sound, I want to see less of the big names. There is pretty much a major event every weekend through the year which I find just too much to follow. It's so hard to create storylines, which is a big part of the whole thing for me, when there is a three day elimination tournament every week or so. A unified circuit/league system of some sort would be fantastic for me. I believe Artosis pointed out that if tournaments were more spread out, it gives more time for the meta to change up, and keeping things fresh. Players don't have enough time to experiment if there's an event every few days, so they practice what they know.

I know streaming is a big thing, but I'd personally like to see less of it. I know, this is a business and it's a fantastic way of making money/promoting your brand, but when Jaedong started streaming, along with many of the other superstars, I feel it kinda cheapened the experience. I don't want to see the best players in the world 24/7, it makes it more exciting for when we do finally get to see them. People used to flip out when any pro bw replays leaked, now if you miss Polt's stream, doesn't matter, you can probably catch it tomorrow.

I'd love to see even more team focus. It's why I love following proleague. It's so much easier to get behind and root for a team of players than just an individual player.

This is all just how I feel, and I realize that it's not exactly possible for this kinda thing to happen overnight, but maybe in five or so years this could become a reality

I'm personally going to do as much as I can to help out around here! I'll probably start admining some online tournaments again. I've missed them. If you wanna get involved to help grow this thing, just do something! I like to think that I've helped out a bit, and honest to god, if I can, pretty much anyone can.

Re: My thoughts on growing eSports in 2013
 

Thank you this is so true!!

So many locals refuse to have anything to do with our scene because we aren't world famous. Like you're not important if you're the best in your country, but if you're the best in the world then you're something to them. ice gets far more recognition overseas than from fellow Singaporeans. I never understood it and wonder what can be done to help steer away from this mindset.