Hello! I haven't seen a topic with questions about the e-sport scene. So I'm starting one where we can discuss questions around it and come with ideas! I'm very interested in e-sport myself since I'm chairman for a Swedish e-sport association! So my first question is how much will you invest for pa to be one of the games in top of the e-sport with tournaments, rating system and achievements for example? Second question is how much will you encourage tournaments held by other parts such as other organizations? Feel free to open up discussion I'd be happy to discuss with you -- Niller Leaf-gaming Swedish e-sport
I will actually attempt to commentate for PA. I am generally a terrible competitive player especially for Supreme Commander but I love watching replays and talk about it. I will soon start commentating over some Forged Alliance Forever replays (their replay system is pretty awesome) to prepare for PA. I am hoping that the replay feature in PA will be very good and easy to control for us wannabe commentators :mrgreen:
Yes a well built replay feature is a really important part of a game, I'd say the feature should be built so that you can see the whole map and move around yourself and not only see the game out of a one player view! This could also be combined with a spectate mode that works the same way as the replay feature tho you can not view the unplayed part "duh". This will help both people like you to maybe live stream other games while you commentate them and help people like me to live stream our tournaments!
Don't forget the replay feature you can also replay it and begin playing it half way as a saves game could start a new trend taking over when the pro begin dominating you take over
We can start breaking this discussion down... - Fun to play (at the casual level) - Fun to watch - Balanced at the casual level - Balanced at the professional level I'd like to comment on "Fun to watch". If PA is going to have a scale of anything like SupCom, some sort of unit, building, worker and constructing tracker should be a must. Ditto with
p.s. SC2 is incredibly fun to watch. It's an incredibly straightforward game, rock paper scissors mentality. It's somewhat predictable like chess. And all the pieces when viewed are clear and distinct (as is the terrain battleground), again, like chess, clear and distinguishable.
I think casters of PA will have to get used to dividing the screen into different views focusing on different areas. I've seen it happen sometimes in SupCom but it isn't used that much and when you enable it, I think the views go out to strategic zoom so you have to zoom in again breaking the flow. If multiple views are easy to set up I think it will get used more in PA. It is still unclear how the whole spherical map should be displayed at once and sometimes the players will switch focus between several orbital bodies. I think using multiple views is the best approach to make PA commentating accessible for the viewer.
I'm not sure how to combine all these elements in a large scale game like PA. Personally I enjoy watching Starcraft(especially Starcraft1) more than I enjoy watching SupCom even though I don't play Starcraft.
I consider Starcraft 2 incredibly boring and messy to watch. The view is horrible and the game looks horrible. I never have a clear idea of whats going on on either side of the map. Dunno why billions of people are liking it so much, I hated it from day one.
Depends on the caster, HuskyStarcraft seems to do a good job and his casts are always entertaining, even in the downtime.
That's just it I think, I don't think a lot of non-playing viewers have a lot of fun just grabbing a replay and watching it. Like unless I'm watching a replay to better my gameplay or something, I wouldn't have fun. On the other hand, I watch the Day9 Daily consistently and enjoy many of Sean's non-daily casting as well, like for Tournaments or the AHGL. Mike
Well maybe a build in live (replay-)streaming system for esports. So you can actual view a plyaed match live in the game itself and dont need streams, build in a chat and the possibility to cast too. maybe use Voip but with only casters not muted. To make money with it, allow advertisment maybe by popups, Landmarks, Unit textures or special Advertisment structures like the McDonalds Mc Pylon or stuff. Also Uber could get its share so too. Edit: i made a quick sketch:
You are a wonderful sketch artist. I'm liking this idea very much, but I would like to be able to make money as well from casting(literally me, I plan to do this) so I'm not sure how would Uber organize this. Perhaps make some of us their official casters and give us a our cut from the accumulated ad revenue. That is, if the game organizes the tournaments and sets everything up for us. Otherwise its just more convenient to use Twitch along with Xsplit or similar and cast tournies ourselves since many people are used to that. I do hope I don't sound greedy or something :mrgreen:
Yeah, aint I? Well official Casters are usually payed by the hosts of the tournament. They make Ads which therefore they hope to get better sales. Teams are sponsored by Other Company wherefore they hope to get better sales too. What you are asking for is making money with general casts. Therefore with the above system a merge of replay and audiotrack or replay and audio and videotrack would be helpfull(awesome). Meaning you bind a video/audiotrack to the replay jumping in the repay jumps to the same time of video and vice versa. Could also be a good thing for tutorials jump in at some point audio/videotrack keeps on playing, you can do what turor says. So you could have both the straightness of a video and the freedom of a replay.
I found it quite hard to understand the sketch and I'd like to put out my idea of this. (it might be what you just have said) But that you can stream via the game itself, so there'll be a page in the game that shows a list of "hosted" or "streamed" games that are played atm, or replayed and commentated. Before you start the game you could decide if you want a cam, mic etc. I should be good if you could stream it on an website at the same time since it has to become easy to use but not try to win above the already existing streaming since you would want to stream to people who doesn't play the game or just can't see it through the game atm. Do you understand what I mean?
I talk about to stream the data needed for a replay not a video at first. So you are not watching a video, but a replay, though this may just be played live. As it is a replay you can see everything you want concentrate on what you want and dont need to watch what the commentator watches atm. Now if there is a commentator in a livegame, streamed as a replay... there was some talk in the forum about integrating voice over ip direct into the game. if this is done: ... this could be used to also have a audio commentator use the game itself to stream his comment via this VoIP, imagine it as mumble only with the commenators allowed to speak. Next step would be but this is different then the above live commentary. Have a game -commentator, -tutor, let"s player use this system but with integratet video (webcam) or audio(tracking) this then would be a videotrack a audiotrack and the replaytrack all coupled by the timeline. So if you jump to 10 minutes for instance yopu jump there for in the replay, in the audiotrack in the video track. The game shall use a js based UI so maybe include flash for video Or VP8 or H264 so the videos can be played ingame. This would allow for great turorials: You create a game where situations happen you want people to train, you do a voiceover the replay. For instance say: now jump in do A B C you jump in the audio track kkeeps playing etc. With such a system Uber would not only provide a game for eSports it would also provide the infrastructure to host events and stuff. So they have a one hand solution. Whit what they could actually generate income (layerd in ads, ads as textures, ads as buildings...) And watching a game live ingame is something different from watching a replay. It is more active as it is in a stadium vs the passivity from watching a only videostream or TV.
Do we even know that PA will be popular enough to be a viable esport? AFAIK only the very biggest games support Esport scenes. Seems like jumping the gun to start thinking about tournament prizes already.
You are right. But having esports in mind while designing the game may help. If it is desired by the devs to go there eventually.
Yes a game designed to fit esports nicely will most definitely be a good candidate for many tournaments. Over 40k people backed it before even knowing what the game would be like. I image at least twice as much people will get it once it is released. While 120k people may not be comparable to 3 million for Starcraft, it may become more popular exactly due to the esports support and huge possibilities for great multiplayer battles!
The only "requirements" for a Game to become an ESport is the Game being Good, and having a large community. Look at Starcraft 2, Blizzard does almost nothing specifically to promote E-Sports, all the major tournaments are essentially Fan Events. Mike
