reddit.com/r/GlobalOffens… -lol, Hid a bitcoin miner in the client, that’s great

— Dakota Watterson (@G2Wolf) May 1, 2013

ESEA recently found it prudent to use idle machines connected to their matchmaking client for bitcoin mining.

Rather than outline the reasons why this is incredibly stupid, or potentially criminal, I’d rather call attention to the reaction to the discovery that this was going on.  They’re essentially trying to pass this off as an inadvertent deployment of bitcoin mining routines cooked up as an April Fools joke.

An April Fools joke?  How would “lol we ran everyone’s GPUs at 100% for a day to get some magic fairy e-money!” in any way boil down to a thinly veiled absurd practical joke. No, don’t think so, not buying it.

If the revelation was that they had discussed the possibility of entering the malware business by turning their PUG system into a botnet, but ultimately nixed the idea because holy shit can you possibly be that stupid, I could buy that.  People inadvertently come up with horrible, user-abusive ideas for software all the time.  Usually they’re quickly recognized as such, and scrapped.

Not in this case.  Code for mining on subscriber machines was written, tested, deployed, and seemingly ran for weeks before some people got hip to what was going on and demanded it stop.

That’s where it breaks down.  Bugs are accidental, functional code that executes properly towards a particular goal isn’t accidental.  Code is deliberate.  This was deliberate.

ESEA has long considered themselves to have a permanent position as a profitable fixture of the esports scene, and their administrators have acted for years as though completely untouchable.  I don’t think they should enjoy such a position much longer.

Esports wants, and thinks it deserves, an ever-expanding audience, more resources, more money; and maybe above all, thinks it deserves more respect than it gets.  For the most part, I agree.  There’s lots to love, enjoy, and respect about esports.

But damnit, it goes both ways.  A scene that still operates like an ad-hoc neighborhood sandlot shindig when it comes to team formation doesn’t warrant respect, serious consideration, or million dollar tournaments.

There’s always internal politics in team sports.  It’s the same at all levels, from recreational leagues to the topmost professional divisions.  But even in recreational leagues, I can’t be wantonly thrown off a team for poor performance by the other players, at least not until the end of a season when everyone can just reform without me if I’m that bad.

That there isn’t even the possibility of such a thing happening at the professional level is just one of the positive side effects of having an ownership cartel.  Can you imagine ‘pro’ baseball teams just popping in and out of existence, ruled via mob, forcing players out for a single poor performance?  What kind of clusterfuck would that look to be?

And yet, this is perfectly acceptable here in esports, where there’s no script and the points don’t matter.

The event isn’t even over – it isn’t even over - and these kids are huddled around a laptop camera in their hotel room, presumably where their former fourth was staying (was still staying?) as well, like rebel lieutenants who just staged a successful coup.

So much for all the lofty platitudes about cohesion and teamwork and working hard in this video, huh?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BoJbUuuzMvE

This particular portion of the scene has always had a chip on it’s shoulder about not being taken seriously.

Well…should we?

@keekerdc Do you take requests? What do you think of the amount of influence, money and infrastructure Riot Games is injecting into pro LoL?

— Bijan Mousavi (@Bijan_Mousavi) March 21, 2013

I don’t particularly mind it, but I also haven’t been paying a heck of a lot of attention, either.

If you’re asking on principle, I think a reasonable case can be made that no individual game will be able to establish a significant esports following without some sort of direct developer involvement.  That’s just the lay of the land at this point; Valve, Blizzard, Activision, and Riot have all obviously made involvement in esports a notable part of the overall strategy for key IP.  To expect to launch a new title and have it spontaneously grow an esports following in a completely organic, laissez-faire manner isn’t realistic any longer.  Cash is needed at the outset to kickstart a scene if you’d not like to be playing fifth fiddle.

Two cases in point on opposite ends of the spectrum: Shootmania and TF2.  One is a cream puff of a game with a developer that just wants it to be an esport, and will throw good money after bad to achieve it.  The other is a rather robust title that’s still getting updates six or seven years on, with a competitive scene just as old and a format that hasn’t really changed since the outset, and has an esports scene that’s really just been dusting crops the whole time.

So, to that end, until a completely open-source game is released that doesn’t have a weird look or wonky feel, and can captivate hearts and minds like leading commercial titles do, I think what we’re witnessing in terms of direct publisher involvement is the new normal.  Titles that don’t have it won’t make it.

Really, the largest concern is exploitation of the competitive tier through false promises of timely prize payouts or other financial support.  The danger of that coming from a publisher towards their own player base seems pretty remote.

I also think that direct publisher involvement is a strong incentive for players to fully invest in a game, as it seems less likely that a publisher would abandon support for a house-run professional tournament series as it is that an independent tournament circuit would abruptly switch games and leave a scene in the lurch.

On the whole I find it to be a pretty positive development.

Yet here we are, yet another week of hanging all sorts of fun, arbitrary catches onto the activity of writing about a scene, courtesy of yet another faux pas (twice in a row from the same team!)

Precious.

Need to drag a debate from substance to drivel in esports?  Bring up someone’s credibility as a journalist.  Debate’s over!  How tidy.  Instead of maybe trying to arrive at a reasoned conclusion about something, let’s instead rehash the full implications of that word; as if we’re the first humans ever to have encountered the consequential dynamic between a group of people and someone who journals the goings-on of that group; as if there’s totally not hundreds of years worth of study, literature, and prior art on that subject; as if there’s not a constantly burning debate over these issues in the world of actually journaling actual news.

Nah, I’d rather read what some fuckwit on /r/starcraft has to say about these problems.

Garfield had no leg to stand on in his spat with Slasher.  It is not the fault of Slasher, or anybody who writes on the scene, that the business model of the esports team is predicated upon having exclusive domain over scene news.

That’s indicative of a broken business model, not broken journalism.  Yet what was everyone talking about?

The box.

People trying to punch back against Lewis in recent days after getting called out (and, on balance, rightfully so) – what’s the line of attack?

That he’s not worthy of being considered in the box.

It seems that those who have been pressing hardest against the walls of that box, lobbying for the dimensions to be smaller, more restrictive, and more cubic, seem to be doing so because the journaling of events in the scene is somewhat against their interests, or flat out overlaps with their business model.

And that’s the fault of journalism?

It’s hard to define this segment of human activity.  That’s probably because its nature is constantly shifting, and that change is accelerating, if anything.  That’s really what irks me the most about esports’ general obsession with trying to define that box.  Journalism is what journalism does.  Your definition is irrelevant, because who really cares what label anybody affixes to anything said about the scene?  It’s about what’s said, and why it’s said.

Yet, that’s not satisfactory for some.  Simple people absolutely must put things in simple boxes in order for them to be comprehensible.  That journalistic endeavors require a box that cannot be defined by six flat surfaces is apparently too much to handle.

I’m not quite sure how to wrap this up, other than with a general appeal to knock this shit off.  Esports is lucky to be large enough to be worthwhile to write about.  Those people who write about it are going to have opinions, and those opinions will be expressed from time to time.  And that’s the way it is.

Was poking back around in the archives a bit and came across my previous flippant post on this.  Their website is dead, and some googling turns up some mentions of promised entry fee refunds that never materialized.

Has thee been some resolution to this, or is this another loose end flapping about?

Also, lol.

I last wrote this sort of post a few months before we made the trip out here, a year and a half ago.  I remember being cautiously optimistic about fitting in here, and really fared well in that regard, though I underestimated tremendously the depths of the passive-aggressiveness that dominates Seattle.  You hear about it, and you’re like ‘yea sure’ – and then the daily occurrences begin to pile up.  I really can’t explain it.

I will miss the food, though.  Oh man, will I miss the food.  DC’s getting better, but there’s still entirely too many chains kickin around there.  I hope, once we get back, that we get into the city and eat more.

I was worried about finding real worthwhile work once out here, and lucked out there too.  ’Headquarters’ is still DC, strangely enough, so I won’t be on the job hunt yet again on the other side of this.  That I’m really happy about.

In the end, there were too many things pulling both me and my wife back to DC, more than it was a case of being repelled from Seattle.  We have no family on the west coast, and that was particularly weighty, as any visit or event cost several limbs and an entire day of travel on either side, and it’s becoming increasingly important to be closer than 2000 miles.

Lastly, but certainly not least, I get to see my team play at home again, hopefully in some new digs soon.

We hit the road in a month.  The ‘pet tube’ that we’re hauling the cats in just arrived, and it is ridiculous.  I really hope Henry doesn’t lose his shit the entire way.

It was really great that we did this, no regrets, but it’s time to be getting home.  Thanks, Seattle; it’s been real.

Some supporting data has come via some plucky Facebook searches.  Turns out there’s a quite visible correlation between an NFL team’s respective fan population in a given county, and the distance between that county and nearby NFL teams.

Crazy, huh?

Say hello to the brand new PBA League!

PBA CEO Geoff Reiss and Commissioner Tom Clark have joined the likes of the MLB, NFL, NHL and NBA and started a PBA team concept, bringing back a legendary format first developed in the 1950s—PBA Teams. 

This not just a bunch of teams thrown together; it’s about a brave new world and creating new excitement and interest.

Each team has its own geographic identity; is linked to major city or area. There are celebrity owners, uniquely designed team logos and t-shirts—all done with hopes of gaining exposure to new audiences, increasing attendance, viewership and of course sponsorships.

Oh, but it is just a bunch of teams thrown together.

I saw the opening broadcast Sunday, aired on ESPN, while having breakfast out.  I nearly choked on some hash browns when I figured out just what exactly I was watching.

It seems professional bowling is repeating the Championship Gaming Series experiment.

They are feigning locality by simply slapping a city’s name on a neon-colored jersey, and selecting five warm bodies to fill them.  With names like the Dallas Strikers, the Philadelphia Hitmen, the L.A. X, the Brooklyn Styles; most of these teams will never throw a single frame in the cities they’re said to represent.  The exception is that the opening rounds were played in Allen Park, Michigan, a little ways out from Detroit, adopted home of the Motown Muscle, ‘owned’ by Detroit native Jerome Bettis.

The other three rounds are being played…somewhere, I guess, I really can’t find anything outlining where…and they will be taped and aired later.  A few things are certain, they won’t be broadcast live, and they won’t be playing on any team’s ‘home turf.’  The next league broadcast they’re currently plugging on their site is the ‘Chris Paul League All-Stars’, it airs on Sunday…and it actually happened four weeks ago.

You read correctly earlier, they’re taking things a step further and replacing the whole ‘knowledgable but ultimately powerless GM figurehead’ role with actual celebrity figureheads.  Tennis great Billie Jean King made headlines last week for lining up the league’s first trade with Bettis.

Would you really have me believe that fellow ‘team owners’ and comedians Chris Hardwick and Kevin Hart really scraped together the money to pay for any part of this, even the fifty-odd thousand dollars in base salary the players on each team are getting (collectively) to participate?  Or would you have me believe that they’re in any way knowledgable about the bowling scene to the point that they’re helping make trade decisions?

Obviously, it’s a marketing play, just like the CGS was.  Some wide-eyed finger-gunning third-five-hour-energy-this-morning account exec must have gotten a wild hair up their ass and excitedly blurted out ‘OMG TEAMS LIKE THE NFL’ in a brainstorming meeting; and here we are.

This will fail not because of the teams.  It will fail, like the CGS did, because people don’t have time for inauthentic, manufactured bullshit whose sole purpose is to optimize key performance indicators, and pander to a mass market that increasingly doesn’t exist.  People only have time for the real thing, and only the real things they like, because there’s so many likable real things out there that there’s no time for chintzy garbage.

Mostly though, people aren’t receptive to being told what they should like, at least not anymore.  And that’s exactly what all the bloviating around this bowling league and the CGS boiled down to: that you should like it because it’s a thing you already maybe like, combined with mocked parts of another thing that a lot of people like, so you should like it.  Are you excited?  You should be.

The entire purpose of adopting a home town as a sports team is to play a lot of games there, and build a following there, so as to pull a crowd to sell tickets to, and so as to find companies who wish to advertise to your crowd and support your team and sport.  That’s all there is to it; intro to the business of team sports, right there.  This doesn’t change with the advent of television, or the jet, or the internet.  People still live in towns, not in the cloud.  People like attending events.  People like supporting their home team, in their home city, with their friends.

There’s no corners to be cut on this formula; and that’s why this is extra bizarre.  I don’t expect anyone in the bowling sphere to have known about the CGS enough to loudly throw the brakes on what is a carbon copy.  I do expect people leading sports ventures to show more sense than their esports counterparts, though.

If my kids ever act the way some of the jackasses in the halo community do I will beat their asses with a beltI blame the parents

— Sundance DiGiovanni (@MLGSundance) January 20, 2013

An early candidate for esports tweet of the year; all other tweets refused to be included in the same post.

Can anybody explain this to me? It’s one aspect of game design I just simply do not understand. I understand why a developer would implement it (the audience seems to like it), what I don’t understand is why any audience would give a damn.

I just read a Steam forum comment (I know, I should know better) by someone expressing dissatisfaction with having played a game, and completed it, without getting any achievements.

And that made me realize, that I just don’t – at all – understand the desire to get achievements.

Would the concept of achievements work for other forms of entertainment or services? Like a drama icon on facebook, a bad taste in reality tv achievement on Hulu, or a bargain hunter icon on Amazon?

What am I missing, why does this matter?

Ok.

First, LOL you’re so old.

But seriously; I find they add a bit of extra humor, when done right.  They can have the effect of a well-timed punchline that you don’t see coming.

Above and beyond that, I don’t get them much either.  Then again I usually play games to get enjoyment out of the mechanics of the game itself, not jumping through hoops.

For some, I’d imagine, a large list of achievements probably hits certain personality types square in the completionist cortex.  I also know that many systems of achievements allow you to hook them into social media profiles, so it continuously tickles the ‘LOOK AT ME’ impulse that so many people seem to indulge.

In general, I find the whole ‘gamification’ movement to be a load of sugary extrinsic bullshit.  But that’s just me, I guess.

EDIT: Excuse any typos, I’m having to run out so I was in a rush… TL;DR; Starting, growing, and operating a global team isn’t easy or trivial, it’s bloody hard as hell, even if you are fortunate to have luck and money behind you, and bring demonstrated small business expertise to bear – you have a long hard road ahead, if you make it at all – even those appearing to “do well” right now, are making meager wages at best, hanging on to some hope of future return, to justify the arduous grind that seemingly never ends…

Alright Reddit – I don’t know why this Chris guy’s blog postings don’t seem to do well on Reddit – maybe it’s because he asks more questions than provides answers, or maybe it’s his writing style, or people just don’t know of him, REDDIT HERE THIS! -> This guy actually is asking all the right questions, knows a ton about the dynamics of sports business as they apply to this activity, and in the case of this specific post, couldn’t be more spot on.

Even long ago established teams like Dignitas started with a very local focus, then regionally, then slowing expanding to become a global giant. But the difference is that today’s teams are very much competing in global market, and there is no choice about it, if you want to be a commercially viable alternative capable of delivering both the reach and engagement metrics and behaviors needed to curry both favor and $$$ from much needed sponsors.

People see all these teams failing, and quickly draw conclusions based on the most visible differences between <team that just failed X> and <incumbent well-established market leader Y> and over-simplify that to extrapolate some explanation that makes sense of the madness. But simply put – being like the incumbents, doing everything they do, as well as they do it – takes money – everything takes money, from competitive participation, to player and partner promotion, staff, brand building, everything. Those teams have those relationships, and revenue sources, already well established and working, while newer teams have to build that revenue stream, while also building a brand and roster and media capability, and marketing business, all at the same time – or they don’t stand a chance at ever seeing those dollars.

This creates an environment, where bold and hungry entrepreneurs, like myself, have to go big or go home, making high risk all-in play after play, engaging unreliable private funding sources who lack the same commitment and belief in the business model we do, and learn from making mistakes, some big, some small, innovation without a net – to somehow stand out and command the needed buzz to raise the eyebrows of those with what has become the lions share of operating revenue industry wide – sponsorship – only in eSports it’s different, it’s not sponsorship for goodwill or the easily measured and well reported on metrics while doing well at large competitive events which are highly produced and broadcast to a massive viewership – rather sponsorship for engagement based deliverables, content, appearances, and social campaigns – all activities requiring both earmarked budget, high value personas, and experienced marketing delivery staff and management – oh, and you still have to pay players, outfit them, get them to any number of events all across the world, cultivate their both skill and their brand, and get them to do these things they in most cases clearly don’t enjoy doing – and all this, before you can even ask for money that is coming from a somewhat finite pool for a space that is growing but in which all or most of the endemic money is already spoken for, and a viewership which is fragmented, at war with one another, and moving between titles constantly…

Starting a team today – either takes landing a large lifestyle non-endemic brand sponsors to do safety, or it requires a 3-year timeline, both requirements the incumbent teams have in many cases met long ago – leaving the newer teams at the whim of private money, scratching for both the talent access, sponsor attention, and organization capability needed to make the model work globally, right off the bat -it’s a tall order, one that even with a lot of luck, and a lot of money behind you, isn’t easy to fill. So when team after team isn’t making it, because they invested heavily in SC2, a title which showed a lot of growth in 2011 with no sign of slowing down, only to see comparatively far less growth in 2012, a impending shift in the entire funding model, and a future 2013 filled with massive uncertainty, in a somewhat saturated and largely unregulated marketspace, largely dominated by incumbents who just keep getting bigger and more powerful, controlling even more mindshare and market share daily – as a team owner, you are left asking yourself “where is the growth?” – “does taking more unreliable private funding even make sense?” – “will the revenue ever come to cover my positions taken” – “will I ever be able to get what is needed to satisfy sponsors while I’m struggling monthly to keep operating, while investors, players, and fans are losing confidence?” -

These closures are in part because of the clearly obvious missteps and failures of management, sure, but it’s unfair not to acknowledge the fact the underlying business model, changing market dynamics, and the ever increasing list of expectations and demands required to even have a shot at becoming a sustainable global team, media company, and marketing agency all in one. It’s no wonder team after team are throwing in the towel – saying “maybe this can’t work, or maybe the opportunity costs are just to high to justify continuance without some visible positive change in performance indicators”. It’s not a lack of will, or commitment – It’s just good sound business decision making. In life, poker, and StarCraft – you gotta know when to flod’em, as they say…

But we can do it, right?  Travel to every event, with a ten percent chance of making that back through prizes, if we’re being generous.  No worries, the sponsors will pay for it.

Maybe we can Darwin our way through, chalking up team flameouts to weakness of resolve and aptitude.  On the surface, it may seem the promotion-relegation systems of football in Europe are doing much the same thing; rarely a month goes by without hearing a team of some stature reporting face-melting losses or money problems brewing.

Difference is, they typically don’t fold quite as quickly, because their benefactors are loooooaded.  But let’s not delude ourselves, people don’t own sports teams as a convenient way to quickly dispose of burdensome cash.  It’s not just a status symbol, like a yacht.

An esports team blows through a couple few hundred thousand dollars and can’t bring back even a tenth of it?  Even half of it?  Damn right they’re folding, and they’re not the exception.

Yea, there will be some winners, because someone has to win.  It doesn’t excuse the rest of the goings-on.  Really, we can’t expect much better when everyone fighting the battle for fiscal survival, is doing so without a fortress.  Esports is a turf war of global scale, where everyone calls the internet home.

You can’t all be the home team.

Less hype, less expense, more frequent, more local. Give a town many evenings of lightweight entertainment, rather than blowing in for one ridiculous weekend every few years, doing so really just to produce a video feed, making the locale practically irrelevant. Become part of a community, many times over in many different places.

I’ll keep saying it ’till we get it, because it’s really the only way to generate stories like this. Even the most prolific of global sports properties, which are anomalies themselves if we’re being honest, all started from humble non-global beginnings, working regional rivalries towards a solvent business; and they still have their home today (which they obviously still pack to the gills on match day).

It’s all been done before, but we’d rather not. Why? I really don’t know. A desire to be absolutely separate from the world of traditional sports in every way?

This debate in two tweets:

@sirscoots @keekerdc @prophet4profit match day income is not realistic at all. Don’t build any plans around that. esports is same as tennis

— Michal Blicharz (@mbCARMAC) December 28, 2012

@keekerdc @sirscoots @mbcarmacin soccer its roughly quater each: tickets & hospitality , sponsorship , tv , merchandising & licensing

— Ralf Reichert (@RalfReichert) December 28, 2012

.

Next week, maybe we’ll get angry about the lack of people over 40 in top-level Starcraft play.

Another year is coming to an end, and once again we get treated to a barrage of retrospectives. Did this year turn out to be ‘the year‘ as we heard predicted by leading figureheads through saccharin blogs posted to the Team Liquid forums? In ways, it was; and in others it wasn’t; a mixed bag of sorts that I think we’ve come to find the scene holding each December for the past few years, each of which were supposedly going to be ‘the year‘. We are again able to celebrate evidence of genuine growth and many individual stories of success, but see also plenty of waste in the way the scene carries on; with notable teams folding; with the scene grappling with perrenial issues of professionalism and basic decorum ‘off the field’; with ends still not meeting for many established parts of the scene’s business machinery, big and small, old and new, while we fret about the seemingly contradictory notion that the scene suffers from an oversaturation problem.

So, what I really don’t want to know is whether this year, too, will be ‘the year‘. I want to know whether this year will be the year the scene faces up to the difficult questions it ignores year after year.

Is it reasonable to expect that simply scaling outwards the current way the scene operates will produce a greater ratio of solvent teams? If it takes ten small insolvent teams to keep the machine moving enough to keep one team solvent, is that an acceptable way forward? What is there to suggest that as ‘the esports pie’ grows, that the number of hungry teams fighting over it won’t grow also? Is there any reason to suggest the leading leagues actually give a damn about this issue?

If a professional league is really a traveling event production team, and if it and the teams it is supposed to represent share literally no equity or concrete sense of a shared future, on what foundation can it be said their value rests on?

If a professional team travels to every event it participates in, has no means of identifying a distinct market over which they have exclusive domain, and no means of deriving revenue directly from that market (which doesn’t exist) through ticket sales and becoming part of the fabric of a community they’re not constantly fighting a global turf war with other teams over, on what foundation can it be said their value rests on?

Can esports find long-term solvency for a robust professional tier of just one game, when the primary channel through which fans interface with it is a video stream? Have the many well-produced and well-attended single-game events this year made a dent in our perspective?

Are there any sports that were explicitly built primarily towards remote screen viewership and are still around to tell the tale? Can the examples of which be counted on more than one hand? Is there something to that?

What is the path to deep cultural acceptance and integration for esports, to the same degree that many traditional sports enjoy around the world, when esports operates nomadically – without home bases, without home teams, or even consistently held annual events around the same time of year at the same location each year – when it’s so obvious that all of the above are the very factors on which that cultural integration hinges? Can esports skip entirely the notion of establishing a bulkhead for a sport in a major city, say like Seattle, in a team that would host scores of small events every year, and expect Seattleites to embrace esports like they do the Seahawks, or the Sounders?

Yet, that’s exactly what the defacto leader of esports in the Americas just told PC Gamer was entirely feasible.

I don’t think these problems have solutions that can consist entirely of growth and scale. They’re problems that require careful consideration of everyone’s business model, and admissions that we’re traveling in the wrong direction in some areas, and are knowingly working against ourselves in others, simply to preserve a state of the scene that, as a whole, consistently spends more than it makes, year after year.

Is 2013 the year we come to grips with that?

I still think people don’t focus enough on the issue of content over saturation and its effect on streaming numbers.

— djWHEAT (@djWHEAT) October 24, 2012

This topic has gained some steam as of late; this is far from the only mention I’ve seen of it, it was just the most convenient to quote, and some of the ensuing conversation was useful (in other words, click through on that tweet). I also think this topic deserves a bit of a breakdown, as it’s almost universally been mentioned with an implied obviousness and an implied negative bend; that it’s on the whole a bad thing that needs some sort of immediate correction.

But first, are we actually over-saturated?

In the sense that there is now far too much content being produced that it’s impossible for any one person to keep up with it all, sure, we’re well past that point. I’d say we’ve been past it for about a year now, shortly after the DIY streaming boom really started to pick up pace, and more players and teams moved streaming to a central place in their overall business strategy.

Thus, at it’s core, we’re discussing a simple issue of supply and demand. More specifically, we have found that increasing the supply of content has no effect on the demand for the same.

The saturation

I think it can be assumed that the overall demand for esports content stays fixed relative to the total audience size; while it may vary in response to specific large tournaments rolling around, over extended periods of time I think the total appetite for content finds a distinct value that only increases by the addition of new audience members, a value that can be described in viewer hours. Whether it’s specifically three hours, thirty hours, or something in between per person per week isn’t particularly important for this thought experiment, only that trying to get the existing audience to consume more, more, more, more has rapidly diminishing returns.

So, before the arrival of all the conditions that make for widespread ability to stream (processors that can crunch a game and encode simultaneously, simple streaming software, affordable broadband connections with greater than 2mbps upload, and a free-to-stream platform on which to distribute video), the barriers to entry for streaming esports content were quite high. This meant that if you had the resources to produce a video stream, gaining an audience was pretty easy. Even my own outlet, geared towards being ridiculous and entertaining over being serious, routinely filled our capacity of several thousand viewers in these conditions. With plenty of demand for content and only a few outlets able to fill it, choices were slim for viewers, and it was a perfectly reasonable task for a fan of esports in general to take in everything being produced.

Now, largely due to Twitch and XSplit, the ability to produce a stream is largely commoditized; anybody can do it on the cheap. This has resulted in an explosion of content that has far surpassed the demand for it. More players are streaming practice sessions, smaller tournaments can pretty easily add video coverage, and even the larger tournaments and leagues are streaming on a very agressive schedule. The result is that it’s no longer possible for any one esports fan to keep up with everything being produced, thus viewers have to begin making choices in what they want to watch and what they want to skip.

And if that’s what we’re basing our diagnosis of over-saturation on, we now need to look at the conclusion that it’s a problem we need to directly address.

The un-problem

The fact that it’s no longer enough to put up a stream of middling quality to attract a decent audience is really a good thing. That esports viewers have choices to make is a good thing. The notion that all streamers are more or less entitled to some sort of audience just by virtue of existing and producing content is being challenged, and it is definitely a good thing.

We’re never going to find ourselves in a situation where the demand for esports content is met perfectly by production, and that everyone producing content gets the audience they feel they deserve. It’s simply not feasible to coordinate a match between those two variables for any length of time, and the only way to address the issue directly would be to start placing limits on who can and cannot stream, and start rationing viewer hours, and that’s just a ridiculous thing to suggest.

And I’ll be frank about this: it’s really not possible to make wholesale complaints about content oversaturation being a problem we need to address, and not carry the implication that the creation of esports content needs to be regulated and controlled somehow. They’re two sides of the same coin.

That’s not to say that the assertion that we’re past a reasonable equilibrium between the demand for content and the supply of it is an incorrect assertion. It’s that this imbalance will create the conditions for self-correction, and I think the self-correction may have some positive effects over the next several years.

The positive deflation

It should result in a lift in the overall quality of content, as the audience won’t feel compelled to pull up sub-par shows to get their fix simply because it’s live and because esports. Streams and shows that aren’t cutting it won’t fall off immediately, but this is more a matter of attrition over time. Producers will either step things up to stay competitive with other shows to retain their audience; try to get innovative with different formats, topics, or methods of delivery to find or create new audiences; or just hang it up from lack of audience, concluding that it’s just not worth the time spent. This I think will be the primary force behind a return to equilbrium, and it’s a positive thing.

It should simliarly result in the emergence of some sort of pecking order amongst the several ‘major’ tournament circuits still jostling for dominance, particularly in the Starcraft scene, as growth there calms and there’s no longer a thirty-foot wave for everyone to ride on. I don’t think it’s a stretch to say that a good deal of the over-saturation people are feeling are due to existing tournaments and leagues massively out-producing the demand for tournament content as well. I think this also is a reflection of the audience seeing more or less the same group of players being featured in every last competition, and we’re running up against the audience’s capacity for what can only be described as a lack of variety between the events each circuit is putting on. At some point, both the players and the audience are going to start making choices towards which tournaments they’re going to play and watch, respectively.

I also suspect it should result in the emergence of more unique fanbases around particular games, with the notion of the general esports fan weakening as a demographic that can be effectively targeted. If there are several games each of which are producing enough content to easily fill the demand from a single individual fan, the more likely it may be that each individual fan will choose to spend most of their attention toward a single game while keeping a loose engagement with others, instead of trying to keep a good grip on everything going on as the esports ecosystem continues to expand. If this becomes the case, I see it as a massive positive, as it would naturally follow that leagues would shift to try and meet the needs of a single community more completely, instead of every event trying to shotgun esports as a whole, resulting in the single-sport leagues we desperately need in order to accelerate growth past the point we’re in now.

So while it can be argued that the scene as a whole is devoting too much time and resources to the production of content, and that the supply of esports content is outpacing the demand for it, we should find that it’s only natural for this to occur given the explosive growth over 2011 and 2012, and the other technological hurdles that were leaped to make it orders of magnitude simpler to produce a stream. It’s actually a good problem to have, and it’s one that will resolve itself in time, and could help produce the conditions for future growth as it self-corrects.

EG.Stephano has been suspended for the month of October due to his recent inappropriate comments. Press release: evilgeniuses.net/ilyes-stephano…

— Evil Geniuses (@EvilGeniuses) October 12, 2012

If you want to know what was said, it can be found here.

So, for the worst reaction I’ve seen fly across my feed, the award goes to:

What Stephano said was obviously a joke to a friend, and people who send angry letters to sponsors are real fucking idiots.

— Carlo Giannacco (@ClouDsc2) October 13, 2012

@gubbernecco You sir are retarded. He was joking PRIVATELY with a friend, who happened to be streaming. You have a brain, use it. Thanks.

— Carlo Giannacco (@ClouDsc2) October 13, 2012

I see.  So since he was unaware it was being broadcast, it’s everyone else’s fault, then?

I guess this is supposed to be the default reaction whenever someone in esports crosses a line:

And seriously, do we really need to re-hash this whole ‘writing anything other than lavish praise to sponsors is killing esports’ bullshit?  Because that’s what it is: bullshit.  Like I’ve written before: it’s out of your hands.

A leading public figure in a nacent industry is going to be held to a different standard than your average pub scrub.  That’s reality.  There’s a phrase for thinking otherwise, and it’s something about having a food stuff in your stomach and your hand simultaneously.

I’m not saying athletes and esports stars alike can’t be afforded personalities and attitudes.  But the thing about esports is that it largely lives on the internet, where anything can be documented and distributed – sometimes in real-time to hundreds of people.  You must be under the assumption that you’re in mixed company at all times, because you most likely are.  If that means you have to assume your pro player buddies are streaming until they tell you otherwise, so you cross the line and crack an off-color joke with a good friend who you’re familiar with on that level, then it’s on you to do that; it’s not on the rest of us to play “didn’t see nuthin” if you don’t.

EG’s reaction is most appropriate.

This is for Monday and Tuesday, is what I’m trying to say.

anyone else notice the razer products (mouse, headset, and laptop) in tonights Dexter premiere?

— JP McDaniel (@itmeJP) October 1, 2012

They’re doing this thing called product placement on TV nowadays. It’s the nineties, people.
Razer has been doing well lately; is this really that noteworthy?  This was just one of several mentions of this I saw on my feed.

Hey @mlgsundance @russalo @dting888 @ralfreichert Let’s steal the Ryder Cup idea…

— BossDH (@robertohlen) October 1, 2012

Would certainly make a metric fuckpile more sense than the everyone come to everything intergalactic kegger we insist on carrying on with currently.

The #IPL5 ShootMania EU Qualifier begins in about 10 hours! Here is the official bracket and starting maps! challonge.com/ipl5smeu1

— IGN Pro League (@IGNProLeague) October 1, 2012

Hooray Shootmania!

Avengers and webSPELL Gaming, please e-mail jsutherland at ign dot com about the IPL5 EU Qualifier! The e-mail you listed did not work.

— IGN Pro League (@IGNProLeague) October 1, 2012

…

Wow @darryh knocks em down again in his insightful piece looking at the current state of Tekken and perhaps its future? shoryuken.com/2012/10/01/get…

— Andry Kane (@Magus1234) October 1, 2012

My latest column talks about what CS:GO really needs… And no, it isn’t a fucking silencer – cadred.org/News/Article/1…

— Richard Lewis (@Richard_A_Lewis) October 2, 2012

Please don’t make scripted reality out of live esports events.

— Michal Blicharz (@mbCARMAC) October 2, 2012

@mbcarmac sorry :/

— BossDH (@robertohlen) October 2, 2012

https://twitter.com/kimrom/status/253254757714649088

Does anybody give a shit about IeSF?

— Mike (@AdebisiSC) October 2, 2012

Posted a guide on how to go pro in eSports at @fnatic- fnatic.com/news/10121/car…

— Patrik Sättermon (@cArnCS) September 28, 2012

Prize money overview of the German #ESL #ProSeries – bit.ly/QA6d1R #CSGO #SC2 #LoL

— Alexander Nehr (@crtmN) September 28, 2012

What today’s world is in short supply; Boisterous laughter, Quaffing barrels of wine and saucy tavern wenches.

— BossDH (@robertohlen) September 28, 2012

Uranus Travel Agency. ”If you don’t fly with us, you’re an asshole.”

— BossDH (@robertohlen) September 28, 2012

Dreamhack boss I think is aiming for a second career in standup comedy.

.@hellspawnlord queing WoW MoP on the subway. #itsfriday instagr.am/p/QH_x7Nwd5K/

— Tomas Hermansson (@greykarn) September 28, 2012

should i do an ama? woof if yes, meow if no.

— alexander ὁ μέγας (@supimreallycool) September 28, 2012

Oink.

I may have picked up a cartilage injury to my left knee. Wish medivacs existed.

— Michal Blicharz (@mbCARMAC) September 28, 2012

Why the DotA 2 vs. LoL discussion is pointless. esl.gg/S6SWjx

— Michal Blicharz (@mbCARMAC) September 28, 2012

@mbcarmac You’re so wrong. QW was just for casual players with its 3D engine and mouse control. Doom 2 required a lot more skill!

— David Hiltscher (@affentod) September 28, 2012

@affentod @mbcarmac only a noob who failed at wolfenstein would even dream of saying such a thing.

— Michael Radford (@Zechleton) September 28, 2012

#FF @keekerdc nobody cuts through #esports bullshit like Schetter.

— z1n0 (@z1n0) September 28, 2012

@keekerdc @kimrom I only follow you for the rage, never change!

— SirScoots (@SirScoots) September 28, 2012

Welcome to the big time, Scoots, you made it. And thanks for the ups.