Improving Starcraft 2 eSports: Sanctioned Tournaments

In the World Rankings post, I explained how professional tennis has a set of sanctioned tournaments and a world ranking. This makes it easy for players to see what they need to do to get into almost any tournament. In order for this to work, we need sanctioned tournaments. As Starcraft 2 eSports have grown, the amount of tournaments going on has ballooned. However, not all of them are prestigious enough to consider part of the world ranking.

If a pro player wipes the floor with random players in a small, community tournament, he or she should not gain a higher rank. Ranking points should only be earned from the big tournaments, the ones where a lot of professionals are expected to play. This makes it so players cannot artificially inflate their ranking. The whole world ranking falls apart if players can game the system. If a player can get any ranking they want with ease, the ranking becomes worthless. It ceases to serve its function of comparing player skill.

So I propose a set of organizations and tournaments that will be considered sanctioned. Any game played in these tournaments increases points for wins and decreases points for losses. These organizers put on the tournaments of the year in Starcraft 2 eSports.

• Global Starcraft 2 League (GSL) – Korea
• Electronic Sports League (ESL) – Europe
• Dreamhack – Europe
• IGN Pro League (IPL) – USA
• Major League Gaming (MLG) – USA
• Assembly – Europe
• North American Star League (NASL) – USA

I would consider these tournament organizers to be sanctioned. Some of their tournaments would not be sanctioned such as small, community Battle.net tournaments and showmatch tournaments. Everything else I would consider sanctioned, so players could build their ranking when playing in them. Most of the tournaments have an open portion. Anyone interested in becoming a pro would have their shot and playing against other pros and getting a rank. This rank could then be used to get into other tournaments.

Most of these are leagues with a series of smaller tournaments leading up to one big one for the year. These yearly, end-of-season tournaments I would consider “the majors” of Starcraft 2 eSports. The best players from the whole season finally meet at the same time to see who is the overall champion. The most points would be awarded for these tournaments. These tournaments are invite-only right now, but I think they would be better with a simple world ranking requirement. The top 128 based on ranking would be better.

These are just my opinions on which tournaments should be sanctioned. The main hurdle to overcome in naming sanctioned tournaments is a governing body with the authority to do this. Right now each league feels disconnected from the others. They do not feel like part of the same eSports scene. A worldwide eSports governing body would connect all of the leagues, each having a stake in this group. The group would decide which tournaments each year were sanctioned and the weight for each tournament.

The tennis organization that does this is the Association of Tennis Professionals. We need an organization like this for Starcraft 2 eSports. The ideal governing body would be trusted by both players and fans to represent the needs of everyone involved. There are already some connections being made between leagues. The GSL team league finals were played at the IPL in Las Vegas, and the GSL invited a few top MLG players to their big tournament. We need more of this though. A worldwide eSports governing body would be perfect.

Improving Starcraft 2 eSports is an ongoing series where I discuss how the eSports scene could be improved. You can read all of these posts by heading to the category page.

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Improving Starcraft 2 eSports: World Rankings

If we want eSports to be successful, the first step is seeing what works for other sports. That means looking at sports with similar requirements to Starcraft 2 professional play and making changes to emulate the success and popularity those sports have. Starcraft 2 has solo play and team play.

Solo play is just like chess. Two players play against each other. Tournaments are setup with various formats (single elimination, double elimination, round robin). Some are invite only, others are open. In solo play, it is every player for themselves. There is no team to help. It is just the player, their equipment (mouse & keyboard), and the other player.

The closest sports to this are golf and tennis, but golf is probably not the best to emulate since it is more about beating the course than the other players. In tennis, there are two players to a game, a similar tournament bracket system, and several tournaments throughout the year, but tennis has a very important system that Starcraft 2 eSports does not: a world ranking system.

Starcraft 2: Our Best Hope for eSports in America

I wrote a short opinion last week about using more real names to refer to professional players than of nicknames. This got me thinking about what could be done to make eSports more popular in America. Between Europe, America, and Asia, America is the furthest behind in terms of accepting eSports as a real sport and valid profession. eSports have definitely grown in America, but the average American still does not know what eSports is and how much fun it is to watch.

The first-person shooter (FPS), fighting, and real-time strategy (RTS) game genres are the most popular within the eSports community, but RTS, or strategy in general, has the best chance of going mainstream. This is because America has a history of rejecting violent videogames. It just so happens FPS and Fighting games are the two most cited game genres by the press and worried parents as “violent” and not suitable for children to play or view. It is hard to justify shooting people in the head or beating them up to parents, even if they are not real people.

Real-time strategy does not have that baggage to deal with. It is easy to draw comparisons with chess, a respected game in America. There are already professional chess players. RTS would just be seen as the electronic extension of chess. Now, you might think turn-based strategy would be better. Chess is turn-based, so a turn-based game would be even easier to compare to. Well, turn-based games are just too long to keep viewers interested. A typical Civilization game takes 4 hours, and there is not much action.

So right now Starcraft 2 is the game of choice for eSports in America. It is always possible another game will come along that is even better than Starcraft 2 for eSports, but right now Starcraft 2 is our best hope. It is definitely not the perfect, especially since Blizzard Entertainment does not really foster the eSports environment. They do not do any advertising really, even for their own tournaments. Battle.net does not have tools to make tournaments easy to setup and execute. Blizzard refuses to add a LAN mode for tournaments. Maybe in the future we will have a better game, but Starcraft 2 it is for now.

What this means is that the eSports community needs to support Starcraft 2 eSports as much as possible. It has grown quite bit already since the game’s release in 2010, but it is still far from being considered legitimate by the average American. Putting money into many different games will splinter the eSports community. We need to focus on one game, and right now that should be Starcraft 2.

Starcraft 2 as an eSport is already doing well compared to other eSports, but it could be improved quite a bit with a few key changes. Over the next few weeks I am going to write a series of “Improving Starcraft 2 eSports” posts on the changes I think will push eSports to the mainstream in America.

Making eSports More Professional: Real Names

Even though I had heard about eSports for a while, I never got into watching it until Starcraft 2. About a year before its release I had finished my undergraduate degree but was having trouble finding a job. I started looking for any kind of job that did not involve menial labor. eSports looked like an exciting field, so I practiced a lot during the Starcraft 2 beta to see if I was good enough. I was not, but one activity it got me into was watching matches between the professional players.

I think it would be really cool if eSports becomes really well-respected in the US culture. Right now it is not at all. There are quite a few fans among the gamer population but very few among the non-gamers. One thing we can do is just look at the popular physical sports and see if there is anything we can emulate within the eSports realm. There is a key difference between player names in physical sports and eSports.

In physical sports players go by their real name. Most people when referring to that player will use their real name. Most players do have nicknames of some sort that fans will use or sometimes the media for a fun headline, but most people talk about the player with their real name.

On the other hand, eSports players go by their nickname. The eSports scene starts online with players competing over the internet. Naturally, everyone uses a nickname for privacy. However, when a player starts getting good and competes at LAN tournaments, the nickname still seems to have prominence.

I feel the eSports community should be moving towards using real names for professional players. I think it is more professional to use a person’s real name instead of their nickname. The nicknames should still be included with the name in quotes (e.g., Chris “HuK” Loranger and Jung “Mvp” Jong Hyun). I see some media outlets do this with their eSports stories, but it needs to be more prevalent within the broadcasts.

When the casters are talking about players, they should use the real name more than the nickname. The nickname can still be used for entertainment or comedic effect much like how basketball announcers sometimes to refer to Kobe Bryant as the Black Mamba. All the additional info they put on the screen for the broadcast should also be using the real name with the nickname in quotes.

My main reason for this is connecting eSports to non-gamers. When casters and eSports websites are talking and writing about MarineKing, IdrA, TLO, White-Ra and all the other pro players, it really turns off non-gamers. They immediately think “What do these words mean?” and “Who are these people?”. Real names give a stronger connection about who a person really is. Nicknames are fine within the actual games, but the eSports industry should strive to use real names more when talking and writing about players.

If we want eSports to become mainstream, we needs to cater a little bit to non-gamers. Not everyone wants this, but more mainstream means more money. That means higher quality broadcasts, casters, eSports writers, advertising, everything. Using real names is an easy change to start the transition to mainstream.

I am not saying we should abandon nicknames. I definitely want players to keep using them and casters to keep use them, but real names need to be given more importance. Right now it seems like most tournament organizers as well as eSports websites focus too much on the nickname, and the real name is seldom used or displayed.

A combination is really the best to me. Players still get to forge a nickname when they start playing the game. If they get really good, they can keep it even after turning professional. All their original fans keep that original connection. At the same time non-gamers see the real name and make the connection that way. It really satisfies everyone. I hope that in the future when eSports becomes more prominent all the various aspects of the industry will be using both real name and nickname.

Improving Starcraft 2 eSports is an ongoing series where I discuss how the eSports scene could be improved. You can read all of these posts by heading to the category page.

Prediction: The Future of Digital Distribution

Although console games are still largely tethered to the retail market, PC games are slowly moving away from the retail market. In fact, PC game unit sales from digital have surpassed retail since 2010. Retail sales still bring in more revenue due to fewer markdown sale periods, but revenue, too, will shift towards digital sales in time. Valve was really the driving factor behind this when they created Steam.

When released in 2004, there was little interest from fans and developers for Steam, but Valve kept marketing and adding features to it. They eventually found the key to profit: lots of competitive sales. These really pushed Steam to the forefront of consumer’s minds. They started buying more and more digital games instead of retail because the sales were just so good. They could find fairly recent games at half price or even less when retail stores were still selling it near full price.

Events in Single Player Games

If you have ever played an MMO, you have probably experienced holiday events. Many times they correlate with real life holidays, but there are also original holidays based on the games own in-game story and lore. Not only does it bring the world alive, it also keeps your interest in the game longer. Good MMOs have events going on pretty much every month of the year. There is always something to look forward to. Even after you have obtained all the best items, killed all the bosses, and seen all the story, there is a reason to stick around and see what is going on in the game.

One day I thought why not have holiday events in single player games? It would be a lot of fun to have things to look forward to. Most single player game world feel really static. Everything happens in a certain order every time you play. You might get some choices in the quests or missions that make it interesting to replay, but once you finish the content it is mostly over. Even Skyrim stops being interesting once you complete all the quests. There are “radiant” quests that randomly give you tasks to do. There could also be holiday events.

Previously, single player games were played offline, but more and more single player games require you to be online these days for their DRM schemes. Developers may as well use our internet connections if they are available. Most people get automatic updates that patch up all of their games. Holiday events would just be small content updates to the game. Most holiday events would be included in the base game, but small free updates would include new ones as the year goes by.