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.

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1. Invest more in accessible mainstream media

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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.

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2. Invest more into communities

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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.

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The Tournament issue

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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.