Tidal Blast, what you are describing is one skill, okay fps need good reflexes. Mobas and any other genre require a mastery of other skills. Things aren't so black and white.
This
Quake 3 = 100m dash.
DOTA2 / LOL = Full team game like Football or Hockey, chock full of defensive strategy, offensive strategy, regrouping, deception, team coordination, map awareness, economic management, etc etc.
There isn't much 'randomness' in MOBA's at a high level.
Fnatic
Invictus Gaming
Natus Vincere
Ninjas in Pyjamas
OpTic Gaming
Samsung Khan
San Francisco Optx
Serious Gaming
SK Gaming
SlayerS
StarTale
StK/Team 3D/Final Boss
Team
Team Forsen Boys
Team Liquid
Team MadCatz
Team Solo Mid
VapourX
Interesting anecdote: when I was studying videogames art at university, the LAN cafe across the road from my university (Starbytes in Southampton UK) was actually owned by the guy who ran Fnatic, the top floor of the 2 story building was the Fnatic office. The stairwell between the two floors was all bare concrete and had like a 10ft high Fnatic logo spraypainted all over the wall. Super cool guy they used to host 8-team invite CSS tournaments there with top teams. Extremely surprising for a small "middle of nowhere" town that I grew up in
5 minutes of Quake or Street Fighter can teach us more about life than 20 minutes of Star Craft. Someone who can grasp how a video game can be used for self-development would realized that games like Street Fighter and Quake 3 and learning tools on steroids.
I disagree. They are different.
I've played Quake, Street Fighter (to this day), and Starcraft on a serious competetive level (Counter-Strike for 11+ years to international level), and frankly they all require a very similar outlook and mindset. Some aspects shine more in some games than others. It's the same attitude you need though in all of them that you'd be fucked if you tried to get anywhere in professional baseball or basketball or cricket without.
Quake, Street Fighter, Counter-Strike ... yeah these games very obviously reward confident decisive play in a way which is extremely obvious to a spectator. You hit that flick rail, or you clutch that 1v3 defuse or you read that wakeup meaty and reversal FADC ultra that shit.
These things are extremely fast and exciting to watch.
Is it quite as exciting to watch someone go 3 cannons on a forge FE because they just know something non-standard is coming? No, of course not. But that isn't to say that the read matters less. It's just a slower game (ironically) which promotes different skills, for example multitasking. When do you ever need to multitask in Quake or CS? Never.
Also this, possibly one of the most epic moments in SC2 history - GSL code S finals, match point, squirtle coming back from an almost unwinnable situation with a clutch archon toilet:
Tidal Blast, what you are describing is one skill, okay fps need good reflexes. Mobas and any other genre require a mastery of other skills. Things aren't so black and white.
FPS games need good reflexes? Yeah, sure. I can get behind that. But let's be really honest about it, to play at top level in an FPS game - having good aim and reactions doesn't make you good. It is literally an entry-level requirement.
Speaking about Counter-Strike (as that's where most of my experience and knowledge of FPS is drawn from) ... are people with the best aim and reflexes the best players? No. Not even fucking close, about a million miles away from that. There are players who play for absolutely awful teams who have better snap reflexes and reactions than many of the top players in the world. Many top players would not argue that. The reason why top players are top players, is because of everything else that factors into your decision making process while you're playing the game.
It doesn't matter how good you are at aiming, or how fast your reflexes are - if you play against a top CS team and don't know what you're doing, you won't even get a chance to out-aim someone. You'll be flashbanged, and shot from 3 different directions at once. Because that's how CS works. Watch a high-level CS player and ... watch what they don't do. Notice what they don't look at, when they don't throw counterflashes or countersmokes. The benefits of experience mean that they will almost always be stood in the right place, looking in the right direction, at the right time. That is an enormous part of what makes a competetive player actually good. Strategic decision-making, informed by experience, gamesense and metagame awareness.
Nobody cares about an inconsistent awp player who gets a huge 4-man clutch once in every 10 games. If you watch any of the seriously good awp players in CS, what they do is position themselves for the most simple, easy shots imaginable. And then hit those shots 80+% of the time. Every. Single. Game.
They make a dangerous peek? Watch how a pop flash magically goes off right in the doorway they're going to peek, thrown by their teammate. CT bombsite retake on pistol round? Watch how the one guy with the kit gets on the defuse, and the others cover him by watching the correct positions. It isn't magic or luck, it is huge amounts of practice, strategic analysis and preparation that enables these people.
FPS are just like any other competetive (and/or team-based) game. What really makes you good is practice, teamwork, experience and critically metagame strategic knowledge which provides foresight.
This is probably one of the best examples I know of, if people are interested and have time to watch it. Cloud9 dismantling another one of the top CSGO teams in the world - and the video including their voice comms during the game. It gives a lot of insight into just how much research and strategy goes into high-level FPS games.
Strategic decision-making, informed by experience, gamesense and metagame awareness.
This x100. Most people simply overlook the subtle details of playing at a competitive level least when it comes to CS. Whether it be gamesense or sound ques(being able to tell the difference between a flash/smoke by the noise it makes when hitting a surface).
I am curious though since you said you played at an international level back in the 1.6 days what team you were on .
Also if you haven't watched the Frag documentary, you totally should. It isn't completely relevant nowadays, but it paints a VERY true picture of what esports was really like back in the 2000-2010 kind of era.
I mean most "documentaries" I wouldn't endorse at all, I think most of them are really misleading. But I can really get behind this one, it shows a very sobering perspective. Just skip the first 20mins or so lol
Would you say this is right? its an amalgamation from all the videos and links above.
eSports, its growth in the last two years is huge, ESPN say eSports is massive ... and growing! with each of the top games getting more views the main stream sports like the NBA and Baseball finals combined! This is bringing in huge sponsorship deals.
The top teams have managers, coaches, producers, social network PR pros, each team have groups of players focusing one their game play, they exercise in the morning at the gym, they have a clean lean focused diet to help their brains cope with the pace of the game, specialist team focus on one game each, they stopping play during the day to so coaches and the team can analyses the data so they can sharpen their game for competitions, lots of money is going into sponsorship and some of the games competitions had $18 million in prize money last year. And ESports professionals now P1 Visa for eSport Professionals.
Forgive my ignorance but I am not familiar with the system in the USA, what does Scholarship for athletes bring to the Universities? is it bums on seats at stadiums or is there an ulterior reason? obviously its great for the students.
Redbull have an eSports page to highlight the latest news, tournament coverage, interviews, video features and live digital broadcasts for the eSports community. Its hard to keep up with the rate this is taking off!
"gg" means "Good Game" according to the Vice documentary (see first post), in Korea the Shoutcasters scream "GG!" at the end of the game when the Towers blow up.
And by "Shoutcasters" I mean - commentators.
And by "Towers" I mean - Inhibitor Towers and Nexus Towers
One of the quotes from the Vice documentary, more people play LOL then the population of France. In the final LOL World Championship Match there was a 5v5 match in a full football stadium of the best players in the world from that population and why there is such intense fandom around those teams.
jobs in eSports, I feel like I have been under therapeutic hypothermia and just come out of a very long sleep! so much to read up and learn about! but then I guess a lot of these guys are making it up as well as 'LOL' only came out a few years ago so the industry is just finding its feet but to think it can fill a 40,000 seat stadium in Korea just 5 years after release, that's more than the NBA finals! and another 26 million tuned in online, what will happen when mainstream TV picks this up! it will make F1 look like chicken feed.
Schedule of the week for 12/09/16 to 18/09/16. Stay updated on upcoming events at Meltdown London via Facebook, Twitter or website & weekly newsletter!
If you're looking for players, here's a few NALCS players that are quite notable or popular (Note quite a few of these guys are EU/KR imports but currently or previously played in the NALCS:
and much much more That's all I can think of, off the top of my head. I know you posted that link previously but there are thousands of esports players in league of legends alone but few actually gain notoriety or fame at the LCS level. I'm sure there are more that I'm missing but these are the major players I can think of.
So its a thing. Interesting that when ESPN started covering the
sport, on its first day it received more views then the NBA finals. http://www.espn.co.uk/esports/
"In 2015, Heroes of the Dorm shocked the world as the biggest collegiate tournament on National Television. The following year, the Heroic Four aimed to take the spirit of competition to higher heights. This is their story. "
They're going to apparently be showing this documentary at BlizzCon although I imagine it will also be available afterwards on youtube or something.
This esports business is very confusing First the mobile Mobas evolved from the RTS, then the tough guys congregated while playing the counter-strike and then everything went all haywire.
Yugi-oh predicted this more than 15 years ago; but who would have thought these ones would have occurred on the PC instead of consoles and cards. This is an interesting development indeed.
But tell me fellows, what makes some games more competitive than others? Many fellows play Pokemon, and that is very confusing with all the stats and evs; but you don't hear much of that outside of their small competition, but the league of fellows and defense of the ancient guys seems to garner more of an audience.
Also how do these teams like fellows on cloud nine and illogical gamers find time to play all of these games?
Also do you think there will be a game where there are entire teams making characters from scratch? Concpet/Modeling/Animating/vfxing the characters Programming various attack effects to ensure they aren't broken or whatever and implementing into a game?
@valuemeal There's a huge correlation between number of players and number of viewers. Which is kind of natural, so any game that is popular enough and has a competitive element, will become an e-sport. It doesn't matter if it's Pokemon or Counter-Strike. Look at Super Smash Bros for example, I think it's hard to argue that it isn't the most casual fighting game there is, huge e-sport. League of Legends, unarguably a less complex and "easier" version of the DotA format. Huge. Pretty much ALL Blizzard games, because they are so easy to pick up and have huge playerbases, are e-sports at this point.
What I find fascinating about this correlation is that it's often NOT the hardcore games with high skill-ceiling that become e-sports, because they aren't "easy" enough to play and get into to get a big playerbase. So we end up with this weird dynamic where a game needs to cater to a huge number of players and still be complex enough to be balanced for the highest level of play. I think Starcraft is the only exception to this? Where the playerbase is smaller than the number of viewers? Especially if we're talking golden era Brood War. ( WHICH IS ON THE RISE AGAIN!?!??!! :D:D:D )
But what you said about Pokemon being something you don't hear about outside their bubble, Morris, I think it's very personal. I hear alot about Starcraft : Brood War for example, alot more than I hear about League of Legends or Pokemon, but that's just because that's what my circle of friends enjoy watching! I think it's very interesting too!
EDIT : LOL just read the page of this thread, wooops. Not to make this another competition about what's skill and not.. but. To me SC:BW will always be the godfather of e-sports and the pinnacle of skill. Look at the players sitting at 300+ APM and tell me that a FPS requires more reflexes or multitasking. (You need to be able to detect 1 red pixel in the far left corner of the screen and act accordingly or you'll loose your mineral line and the game.) There's a team aspect in LoL and Counter-Strike and that makes it an entirely different beast, but if you played LoL 1v1 or Counter-Strike 1v1, it wouldn't even compare.
I care very much about player expression in e-sports. Remove the name plates and team names, can you still tell which players are playing? In Starcraft this is very easy to do, because there are so many actions you're required to do that a human LITERALLY can't do everything. So you start to see different players prioritize different actions, such as micro-management of workers or army, or a specific unit composition. And this is without talking about the strategy aspect.
While these lines get blurrier and blurrier the less complexity these is in the games. This comes down alot of familiarity with the players obviously, but if we look at Hearthstone for example. There's no way to tell one player from another in-game.
Another thing I value is the skill-gap between pros. Hearthstone is another bad example, even an average player like me can sit on a slightly above 50% winrate at Legend. wtf, that's stupid. It should be 0% winrate for someone that doesn't play that much.
Look again at SC:BW :
Look at Flash. Atheists were wrong, there is a god. 5 years of consistently being the best player. I don't know of any other e-sport today where that level of consistency is even possible.
So there it is. I value the skills showcased in Starcraft alot more than those in team based games. Which is why I find it much more impressive and fun to watch!
TL;DR : I like Starcraft : Brood War, I think it's the best e-sports, if that's a competition. =P It is most skill intensive of the skills I personally value the highest. Which is why I can appreciate it more than any other e-sport!
As an old ex-q3 sponsored/pro player this conversation makes me laugh my ass off
Mechanical executions and mindgames go hand in hand, just for the record. Fighting and fps games are the purest. FPS games are the purest genre. There is more skills involved in 5 minutes of Quake 3 or Street Fighter than there are in 20 minutes of Mobas.
Actually, koreans are better than the rest of the world in competitive games because of theoryrafting/spreadsheets. They are better at maths and they calculate which is the best combination scenario in terms of resourses(resourses being anything like gold health mana and time management) they literally train even the fastest way to get from point a to point b.
Actually, koreans are better than the rest of the world in competitive games because of theoryrafting/spreadsheets. They are better at maths and they calculate which is the best combination scenario in terms of resourses(resourses being anything like gold health mana and time management) they literally train even the fastest way to get from point a to point b.
Actually, koreans are better than the rest of the world in competitive games because of theoryrafting/spreadsheets. They are better at maths and they calculate which is the best combination scenario in terms of resourses(resourses being anything like gold health mana and time management) they literally train even the fastest way to get from point a to point b.
No definatelly not. Every continent has their own servers and in tournaments they are all playing in lan. It has nothing to do with internet speed. I was playing League of legends to a very top level and i was watching/learning everything i could to reach top players in my server. This information is what i gathered throughout the years i have been playing, and many many discussions on why nobody can beat koreans in e-sports
Here in AUS motorsport underwent an enforced covid hiatus so petrol heads searched for their pure octane...er, albeit stonking full bore V8 Supercar fix elsewhere - https://www.supercars.com/allstars/
A nice virtual diversion at the very least but nuth'in beats suck'in fumes track side and thankfully (everything crossed) the boys will be back swapping paintwork, fer real later this month
Replies
This
Quake 3 = 100m dash.
DOTA2 / LOL = Full team game like Football or Hockey, chock full of defensive strategy, offensive strategy, regrouping, deception, team coordination, map awareness, economic management, etc etc.
There isn't much 'randomness' in MOBA's at a high level.
BTW How can you say a game like starcraft requires less skill:
[ame]
I was hoping you would be so kind as to hyperlink them all
What is it with me and lists? I must have some kind of issue :poly136:
List of ESports Players
The Teams
[A]lliance
Cloud 9
Counter Logic Gaming
Evil Geniuses
Fnatic
Invictus Gaming
Natus Vincere
Ninjas in Pyjamas
OpTic Gaming
Samsung Khan
San Francisco Optx
Serious Gaming
SK Gaming
SlayerS
StarTale
StK/Team 3D/Final Boss
Team
Team Forsen Boys
Team Liquid
Team MadCatz
Team Solo Mid
VapourX
Fnatic: http://www.fnatic.com/
I disagree. They are different.
I've played Quake, Street Fighter (to this day), and Starcraft on a serious competetive level (Counter-Strike for 11+ years to international level), and frankly they all require a very similar outlook and mindset. Some aspects shine more in some games than others. It's the same attitude you need though in all of them that you'd be fucked if you tried to get anywhere in professional baseball or basketball or cricket without.
Quake, Street Fighter, Counter-Strike ... yeah these games very obviously reward confident decisive play in a way which is extremely obvious to a spectator. You hit that flick rail, or you clutch that 1v3 defuse or you read that wakeup meaty and reversal FADC ultra that shit.
These things are extremely fast and exciting to watch.
Is it quite as exciting to watch someone go 3 cannons on a forge FE because they just know something non-standard is coming? No, of course not. But that isn't to say that the read matters less. It's just a slower game (ironically) which promotes different skills, for example multitasking. When do you ever need to multitask in Quake or CS? Never.
The games are different. Treat them as such.
[ame]
Also this, possibly one of the most epic moments in SC2 history - GSL code S finals, match point, squirtle coming back from an almost unwinnable situation with a clutch archon toilet:
[ame]
FPS games need good reflexes? Yeah, sure. I can get behind that. But let's be really honest about it, to play at top level in an FPS game - having good aim and reactions doesn't make you good. It is literally an entry-level requirement.
Speaking about Counter-Strike (as that's where most of my experience and knowledge of FPS is drawn from) ... are people with the best aim and reflexes the best players? No. Not even fucking close, about a million miles away from that. There are players who play for absolutely awful teams who have better snap reflexes and reactions than many of the top players in the world. Many top players would not argue that. The reason why top players are top players, is because of everything else that factors into your decision making process while you're playing the game.
It doesn't matter how good you are at aiming, or how fast your reflexes are - if you play against a top CS team and don't know what you're doing, you won't even get a chance to out-aim someone. You'll be flashbanged, and shot from 3 different directions at once. Because that's how CS works. Watch a high-level CS player and ... watch what they don't do. Notice what they don't look at, when they don't throw counterflashes or countersmokes. The benefits of experience mean that they will almost always be stood in the right place, looking in the right direction, at the right time. That is an enormous part of what makes a competetive player actually good. Strategic decision-making, informed by experience, gamesense and metagame awareness.
Nobody cares about an inconsistent awp player who gets a huge 4-man clutch once in every 10 games. If you watch any of the seriously good awp players in CS, what they do is position themselves for the most simple, easy shots imaginable. And then hit those shots 80+% of the time. Every. Single. Game.
They make a dangerous peek? Watch how a pop flash magically goes off right in the doorway they're going to peek, thrown by their teammate. CT bombsite retake on pistol round? Watch how the one guy with the kit gets on the defuse, and the others cover him by watching the correct positions. It isn't magic or luck, it is huge amounts of practice, strategic analysis and preparation that enables these people.
FPS are just like any other competetive (and/or team-based) game. What really makes you good is practice, teamwork, experience and critically metagame strategic knowledge which provides foresight.
This is probably one of the best examples I know of, if people are interested and have time to watch it. Cloud9 dismantling another one of the top CSGO teams in the world - and the video including their voice comms during the game. It gives a lot of insight into just how much research and strategy goes into high-level FPS games.
(game starts at 27mins)
[ame]
This x100. Most people simply overlook the subtle details of playing at a competitive level least when it comes to CS. Whether it be gamesense or sound ques(being able to tell the difference between a flash/smoke by the noise it makes when hitting a surface).
I am curious though since you said you played at an international level back in the 1.6 days what team you were on
[ame]
Counter Logic Gaming
Evil Geniuses
Counter Logic Gaming (CLG)
[ame]
TI5 Evil Geniuses Team Interview
[ame]
http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2015/may/07/vainglory-esports-mobile-games-league-of-legends
[ame]
I mean most "documentaries" I wouldn't endorse at all, I think most of them are really misleading. But I can really get behind this one, it shows a very sobering perspective. Just skip the first 20mins or so lol
[ame]
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=of1k5AwiNxI
Would you say this is right? its an amalgamation from all the videos and links above.
eSports, its growth in the last two years is huge, ESPN say eSports is massive ... and growing! with each of the top games getting more views the main stream sports like the NBA and Baseball finals combined! This is bringing in huge sponsorship deals.
The top teams have managers, coaches, producers, social network PR pros, each team have groups of players focusing one their game play, they exercise in the morning at the gym, they have a clean lean focused diet to help their brains cope with the pace of the game, specialist team focus on one game each, they stopping play during the day to so coaches and the team can analyses the data so they can sharpen their game for competitions, lots of money is going into sponsorship and some of the games competitions had $18 million in prize money last year. And ESports professionals now P1 Visa for eSport Professionals.
Video Vice -The Celebrity Millionaires of Competitive Gaming (Full Length)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=of1k5AwiNxI
Data from espn - http://espn.go.com/espn/story/_/id/13059210/esports-massive-industry-growing
eSports Explosion
http://espn.go.com/video/clip?id=12097064
Forgive my ignorance but I am not familiar with the system in the USA, what does Scholarship for athletes bring to the Universities? is it bums on seats at stadiums or is there an ulterior reason? obviously its great for the students.
[ame]
eSports London Pub, "Meltdown London" interesting development.
https://www.facebook.com/MeltdownLondon/photos_stream
http://www.redbull.com/uk/en/esports
@homrighausen3d - Thanks, just added a few more teams.
The Teams feel free to add hyperlinks to this thread and I will update this list.
[A]lliance
Cloud 9
Counter Logic Gaming
Evil Geniuses
Fnatic
Invictus Gaming
Natus Vincere
Ninjas in Pyjamas
OpTic Gaming
Samsung Khan
San Francisco Optx
Serious Gaming
SK Gaming
SlayerS
StarTale
StK/Team 3D/Final Boss
Team
Team Forsen Boys
Team Liquid
Team MadCatz
Team Solo Mid
VapourX
http://www.teamliquidpro.com/ - Team Liquid
http://www.tsm.gg/ - Team Solomid
Ha! dot .GG
I am not sure to be honest haha. But I would imagine its an esports thing given the context of what "gg" means in esports/videogames :P.
Samsung Khan
San Francisco Optx
Serious Gaming
SlayerS
StarTale
StK/Team 3D/Final Boss
Team
Team Forsen Boys
Team MadCatz
VapourX
cool I was just hoping I could reserve some goodgame domain ideas without gamers assuming that meant the site was eSport centric?
And by "Shoutcasters" I mean - commentators.
And by "Towers" I mean - Inhibitor Towers and Nexus Towers
One of the quotes from the Vice documentary, more people play LOL then the population of France. In the final LOL World Championship Match there was a 5v5 match in a full football stadium of the best players in the world from that population and why there is such intense fandom around those teams.
Behind the Scenes: NA Shoutcasters
[ame]
Project Analyst
https://blizzard.taleo.net/careersection/2/jobdetail.ftl?job=84161&src=JB-1052
Social Media Specialist
http://www.roberthalf.com/creativegroup/job-search/43416621?referrer=www.indeed.com&referrer=www.indeed.com
Community Manager
https://blizzard.taleo.net/careersection/2/jobdetail.ftl?job=84081&src=JB-1052
Community Manager, StarCraft II eSports
https://blizzard.taleo.net/careersection/2/jobdetail.ftl?job=76441&src=JB-1052
General Editor eSports
http://jobs.espncareers.com/us/bristol/cross-platform-media-%EF%B9%A0-content/jobid8270086-general-editor-esports
Project Manager, eSports
https://blizzard.taleo.net/careersection/2/jobdetail.ftl?job=85601&src=JB-1052
Loads more here - http://www.indeed.com/q-Senior-Manager,-Esports-jobs.html
And finally
How to make it in eSport
http://www.redbull.com/uk/en/esports/stories/1331681196477/how-to-make-it-in-esports
https://www.facebook.com/MeltdownLondon/photos_stream
Schedule of the week for 12/09/16 to 18/09/16. Stay updated on upcoming events at Meltdown London via Facebook, Twitter or website & weekly newsletter!
DoubleLift
Darshan
Aphromoo
Kobe
Bjergsen
Sneaky
Meteos
Sneaky
Lemonation
Dardoch
Rush
Impact
Huni
Wildturtle
Pobelter
Reignover
Link
Stixxay
Seraph
Imaqtiepie
Oddone
Reginald
Hotshotgg
Jatt
Piglet
Nien
Nintendosh
Scarra
Dyrus
Hauntzer
Huhi
Xmithie
Jenson
Hai
Chauster
and much much more That's all I can think of, off the top of my head.
I know you posted that link previously but there are thousands of esports players in league of legends alone but few actually gain notoriety or fame at the LCS level. I'm sure there are more that I'm missing but these are the major players I can think of.
http://www.espn.co.uk/esports/
"In 2015, Heroes of the Dorm shocked the world as the biggest collegiate tournament on National Television. The following year, the Heroic Four aimed to take the spirit of competition to higher heights. This is their story. "
They're going to apparently be showing this documentary at BlizzCon although I imagine it will also be available afterwards on youtube or something.
And there is also some Shorts Valve did for some CS:GO Players
Skip to about 28 mins - http://www.redbull.tv/live/AP-1PSKKEEQS1W11/red-bull-battle-grounds-street-fighter-v
http://www.esports-news.co.uk/2016/11/28/ukie-esports-whitepaper-analysis/
First the mobile Mobas evolved from the RTS, then the tough guys
congregated while playing the counter-strike and then everything went all haywire.
Yugi-oh predicted this more than 15 years ago; but who would have thought these ones would have occurred on the PC instead of consoles and cards. This is an interesting development indeed.
But tell me fellows, what makes some games more competitive than others?
Many fellows play Pokemon, and that is very confusing with all the stats and evs; but you don't hear much of that outside of their small competition, but the league of fellows and defense of the ancient guys seems to garner more of an audience.
Also how do these teams like fellows on cloud nine and illogical gamers find time to play all of these games?
Also do you think there will be a game where there are entire teams making characters from scratch?
Concpet/Modeling/Animating/vfxing the characters
Programming various attack effects to ensure they aren't broken or whatever and implementing into a game?
What I find fascinating about this correlation is that it's often NOT the hardcore games with high skill-ceiling that become e-sports, because they aren't "easy" enough to play and get into to get a big playerbase. So we end up with this weird dynamic where a game needs to cater to a huge number of players and still be complex enough to be balanced for the highest level of play. I think Starcraft is the only exception to this? Where the playerbase is smaller than the number of viewers? Especially if we're talking golden era Brood War. ( WHICH IS ON THE RISE AGAIN!?!??!!
But what you said about Pokemon being something you don't hear about outside their bubble, Morris, I think it's very personal. I hear alot about Starcraft : Brood War for example, alot more than I hear about League of Legends or Pokemon, but that's just because that's what my circle of friends enjoy watching!
I think it's very interesting too!
EDIT : LOL just read the page of this thread, wooops. Not to make this another competition about what's skill and not.. but.
To me SC:BW will always be the godfather of e-sports and the pinnacle of skill. Look at the players sitting at 300+ APM and tell me that a FPS requires more reflexes or multitasking. (You need to be able to detect 1 red pixel in the far left corner of the screen and act accordingly or you'll loose your mineral line and the game.) There's a team aspect in LoL and Counter-Strike and that makes it an entirely different beast, but if you played LoL 1v1 or Counter-Strike 1v1, it wouldn't even compare.
I care very much about player expression in e-sports. Remove the name plates and team names, can you still tell which players are playing?
In Starcraft this is very easy to do, because there are so many actions you're required to do that a human LITERALLY can't do everything. So you start to see different players prioritize different actions, such as micro-management of workers or army, or a specific unit composition. And this is without talking about the strategy aspect.
While these lines get blurrier and blurrier the less complexity these is in the games. This comes down alot of familiarity with the players obviously, but if we look at Hearthstone for example. There's no way to tell one player from another in-game.
Another thing I value is the skill-gap between pros. Hearthstone is another bad example, even an average player like me can sit on a slightly above 50% winrate at Legend. wtf, that's stupid. It should be 0% winrate for someone that doesn't play that much.
Look again at SC:BW :
Look at Flash. Atheists were wrong, there is a god. 5 years of consistently being the best player. I don't know of any other e-sport today where that level of consistency is even possible.
So there it is. I value the skills showcased in Starcraft alot more than those in team based games. Which is why I find it much more impressive and fun to watch!
TL;DR : I like Starcraft : Brood War, I think it's the best e-sports, if that's a competition. =P It is most skill intensive of the skills I personally value the highest. Which is why I can appreciate it more than any other e-sport!
Just because you prefer them doesn't make it so.
http://nomadcapitalist.com/2013/12/01/top-5-countries-fastest-internet-speeds-world/
Although a Uni in the UK just managed 1tb per second through 5G
https://www.computerworld.com/article/2889154/uk-researchers-shatter-world-record-by-hitting-5g-speeds-of-1tb-per-second.html
Epic Games will provide $100,000,000 (One Hundred Million in prize fund money) for Fortnite.
https://www.epicgames.com/fortnite/en-US/news/epic-games-will-provide-100-000-000-for-fortnite-esports-tournament
Arlington Announces Largest Esports Stadium in U.S.
The Future of eSports
https://www.miamiherald.com/sports/article241320741.html
Also interesting new area...
The Esports Journalist of the Year Awards
https://www.esportsawards.com/esports-journalist-of-the-year/