Are esports dead? Just a couple years ago they were talking about airing CS:GO and League of Legends alongside apehoop and handegg on ESPN, now you barely even hear about esports even in gaming community unless it’s some skins gambling controversy or something.
>>750243336Not really. The Covid Bonus is just over.
>>750243336Mostly. The 2010s MLG era was a bubble and most esports of the era (League, Overwatch, and their 1000 clones) were shitty cash grabs meant to hook in audiences with big twitch numbers and then gut them with cash shop/gacha/predatory practices. Now people are tired of esports games, they want casual games they can hop in with any of their friends instead of dealing with EOMM ranked grinds. There are still a few holdovers, of course. League/CS will always remain popular. AoE2 is still huge but that's not a forced esport, it's an actual grassroots community. A lot of Dota players are moving over to watching deadlock. But new companies aren't trying to burst in on the esports bubble anymore, we're going to see a shift towards even MORE ai slop and friendslop products being shoved down your throat, because you can now make a game for $1000 and win the lottery of an e-celeb promoting it to make millions in revenue. Or just buy a bunch of viewbots and hope that works.
>>750243336USAID got cut
A bunch of venture capitalists thought it was going to be the next big thing but they were mistaken. Esports doesn't work like normal sports as you really need to have played the game to understand what you're watching.
>>750243717Covid started in 2014?
>>750245665People just go back to work, and more with the recesion.Even the Competitive Scene of Fighting games are feeling the hit with the viewers.
>competitive slop is getting less relevant good
esports are inorganic. it was just a different angle the marketing department tried out. but like remember how the whole overwatch esport scene dissolved overnight when Blizzard stopped paying for it? nobody gives a fuck about sweaty esports shit unless they're being paid to care.
>>750243336they feel dead to me as someone who used to watch lol and street fightercapcom doesnt even show their announcements in tournaments anymore
Wait a minute, that chart...
the world is universally worse and nobody feels like slaving away at a game when their spirit is crushedprosperity is gone and people would rather doomscroll goon and play incremental games
>>750243336espurz will never be viable because of a very simple reason:>you need game knowledge in order to know what the fuck's going on>knowing the rules is not enough. you NEED to know the strats, builds, matchups, viability of the characters, etc.Corpos are to blame by designing games for data-mining, lab-grinding wiki autists (animation cancels, frame values, hitboxes, iframes, damage thresholds and other undocumented shit) and constantly "rebalancing" the game (i.e. making constant changes in order to maximize the frequency of BIG FLASHY PLAYS)
>>750243336there's only so many times I can watch 20 year olds shoot each other on cache and dust 2. it's just gotten old. I have no idea how people call who watch sports can remain entertained
>>750247073>I have no idea how people call who watch sports can remain entertainedI never like sports when I was younger, but I do like esports. It's more fun if you've played the game, and you understand what's happening. Another thing that makes esports better is following teams and players. You feel more invested in the matches.
>>750247316never liked sports*
>>750247316For example, if you haven't played Dota and someone does something cool, it doesn't mean much to anyone who hasn't played. For someone who has played, you would think>oh wow, that was sick. it's not easy to do at allYou have a higher appreciation for what's happening.
>>750243336People realized there isn't any money to be made in this shit, finally. I hope it dies, esports are a plage
>>750243336didn't valve soft-cap the prize pool for TI since it was making all other tournaments during the year basically irrelevant?
>>750243717>>750244342>>750244454TI was 90% Saudi money thougheverbeitafter 2022 it went to Esports World Cup instead
Valve themselves decided to scale back The International and the annual Compendium.
>>750246263The Korean Starcraft 1 scene was organic, but it made Blizzard seethe and mald because broadcasters would make tons of money and Blizzard wasn't entitled to a cut. So when they came out with Starcraft 2, it came with a bunch of strings attached giving Blizz complete control of any broadcasts, tournaments, or custom content. Which made SC2's popularity tank hard after the first year or so. They squeezed too hard and ended up killing it. Its similar to how Nintendo would send a C&D to every Twitch streamer when it was starting up, so now nobody streams Nintendo games. If I were to make a watchable game today, I'd liberalize the hell out of the ToS and let everyone advertise it for me for free.
>>750247316>It's more fun if you've played the game, and you understand what's happeningYou just explained why espurz will never ever workThe vast majority of people on Earth haven't played (nor are interested in playing) video games>>750247513And they usually result in jewish, controlling companies locking down games>no self-hosting>live-service/always online>kernel anti-cheat>attracts obnoxious, insufferable frat-dude types and tourneyfags>attracts min-maxers, who suck all the fun out of the game>sponsors dictating the direction of the game>cancerous codes of conduct that cuck the shit out of comms. people are free to shit up your games and you're just supposed to grin and bear it>copying the worst parts of sports, including the nepotism and cronyism when it comes to reserving sponsorships for the most marketable (presentable) players (i.e. they pick insufferable e-celebs with 6 gorillion subscribers over the chill no-life kissless fatso autists)>balance revolves around flashy plays and discouraging tactics that look bad on TV (e.g. stalling, battles of attrition). fun goes out the window>jewish-approved kosher designs (no sexiness, man-faced women, etc.)>no custom anything (avatars, sprays, anything). fuck your OC, we don't want to scare away sponsors>and so on
>>750247775is it really that different from real sports though? I have no idea how refball is played so when I see it on the tv I have no clue what's going on. I sort of know how ape hoop is played since I was forced to in gym class, but it's still just 10 guys throwing a ball around for people who aren't really into it. I haven't played starcraft in 20 years but it's still fun to watch.
>>750248135yes. most of the world's male population has played soccer.
>>750248135Everyone has played a sport in their lives and knows what's involved and there's only 1 thing to look at at a time (the ball)When you see 2 dudes sending off their units, you don't know their effects, range, AoE, damage, or which one beats which, or what research or items do or what they mean. You don't even know the odds each side has to win. All you see are gooks pressing 200 buttons per minute and the camera jumping all over the mapIn short, it's much easier to know what's going on in a sportsball game than vidya
>>750243336They don't translate well into spectator sports, for people who aren't knowledgeable about them (knowledgeable because they play them and understand what's going on). Compare this to the NBA, for which any spectator with a functional brain understands that the team in the blue jerseys is trying to put the ball in the hoop, while the team in the yellow jerseys tries to stop them.
>>750243336All the money pumped into vidya for over a decade is finally funneling back out after the retarded investors have realized after many many failures that they couldn't make return off of simply copying the playbook from the film and sports industries.
>>750247570Might be true but valve still willingly gutted the prize pool and revenue by decoupling cosmetics and ingame events from it
>>750247536yeah they stopped putting stuff in the compendium so people stopped buying it and whaling for skins
I only follow the fighting game scene and I can say that e-sports ruined locals and the pro scene. Every tournament streamed is full of ads, casters are safe and predictable and the most entertaining players have been banned long ago. Also they made the dumbest decision ever by taking a famous, well regarded major like EVO and making it happen like thrice a year
>>750243336This particular example is misleading because Valve used to ask for donations to put into the prize pool and that's why it was so huge, now they don't care so they just pay with sponsor money or something
>>750250297>I only follow the fighting game scene and I can say that e-sports ruined locals and the pro scene>Every tournament streamed is full of ads>casters are safe and predictable>the most entertaining players have been banned long ago.See, this is what I'm talking about. They suck the fun out of the hobby and turn it into an ad money machine, curbing anything that might offend the hand that feedsIt stops being a community event and turns into corporate promotion
>>750250901cs casters are the best in the business and are not corporate at all
>>750244509>That's because the people of /v/ don't like Dota 2.nu/v/ in general is completely filtered by anything competitive or even just PvP that's not Mario Party-tier.
>>750245665That's when they started experimenting with that strain, yes
>>750243336Everything is failing.EVERYTHING
>>750243336E-sports was an aging millennial interest, gen Z/A don't care. It was propped up by VCs when interest rates were 0% now its just gambling sponsors, even the Saudis are pulling out.
>>750244509No, its because Reddit kicked out all the fun Dota 2 personalities (because they were heckin unprofessional and not wholesome chungus).No one wants to watch talentless unfunny autistic faggots like sheever or cap or godz broadcast tournaments.
>>750250297Yep, exactly this. Everything became too corporate and too safe. There's no excitement from the casters anymore, which plays a LOT into making esports enjoyable to watch.Mike Ross and "Gootecks from the future" tried to warn us about this over 10 years from, but we were too dumb to listen. Plus it couldn't really be stopped anyway.Something like the Viscant vs. LTG showmatch with all the shit talking they did to each other could NEVER happen these days.
>>750256318It also doesn't help when a lot of the 2010s esports were infested with import culture. Every team was so busy chasing wins that they treated it like sportsball, every season you had a different lineup and there was no team chemistry. No rivalries spanning years. No comradery. Just endless gooks filling slots in every esport team, clashing european/american hybrid teams, no reason to care.
>>750243336I think COVID was a massive spike since so many people got into gaming as they were inside quarantine. And even before COVID around 2015-2016 there was a lot of hype and unrealistic expectations about esports growth. I think esports is doing pretty well, and I do think it'll be massive in the future. You just can't force it to be like that over a few years, it takes decades or centuries. Counter-Strike 2 has a pretty healthy scene in East/North Europe, and to a lesser degree but decent in rest of Europe, Turkey, China, Mongolia, Kazakhstan, and also Brazil and some other Latinx Countries.League of Legends is massive in South Korea, still big in China, and decently popular still in Western Europe especially France and Spain it seems like, but to a smaller degree in rest of Europe and Asia too. Valorant is kinda similiar, maybe stronger BR and TR scene and kinda like budget/lite LoL scene.The only real esports that flopped is DOTA and that's since LoL kinda overtook and killed it everywhere outside of Russia and like SEA. Overwatch kinda flopped too I suppose with the insane potential it had, but the devs honestly strangled it on their own by making the new characters unappealing woke slop for brown gay nonexisting playerbase.R6S, Rocket League, Fortnite, etc. all have regional decent scenes too.
