eSports?

Just wondering what the community (and the PA Team ofc) think about the rise of eSports like StarCraft 2 and League of Legends, and whether this is something that Planetary Annihilation should be taking seriously?

If so I'd have all kinds of questions ranging from marketing to prizes to keyboard control to networking to... well, let's take it bit by bit.

EDIT: somewhat related to viewtopic.php?f=61&t=33970 (for reference).

I followed Starcraft 2`s pro scene for some time. I like e-Sports, but there`s no way to know if PA is really viable until the game`s pacing is set and known.

It can be a wonderful competitive game, but I don't think it will have chance to become a sport, it's not casual enough to get a immense player base, and the huge scale and the multiple spherical playgrounds thing will almost certainly make it a bit spectator unfriendly, and I highly doubt a non-micro-oriented rts game can fit the average e-sports viewers' taste.

I would personally love it if PA became an esport with casters ala Sc2 =)
The odds of this happening are slim in my opinion though

Stars aligning hopefully we can do some of this at PAX East.

Stack's voice never dies =P

From the scale and what Uber seems to be shooting for, it doesn't look like they envision this out of the box.
But with modding anythings possible. It would probably even be better to create an awesome mod then trying to get it eSport style right away. Maybe even an RTS mod that made people cooperate, 2v2/3v3 or more? Who knows what kind of modding idea lies within the community of PA.

Yeah, co-operative RTS has really just started coming into its own with LOL. SC1 & 2 had Team Leagues but it was still 1v1 games. Sports and Shooter games seem to have a reasonable competitive co-op scene.

Not sure about modding though. Tends to make it harder for competitive standards, i.e. you get fragmentation. Whereas if the game balance and development is kept up with regular official patch releases I would think it's more attractive for competitive gamers as everyone's playing from the same version. Not sure.

To be fair, the eSports thing was never really a goal of the kickstarter. Even the devs admit that large games would be too complex for single players to track everything, so how can an audience make sense of it? Games that stretch on for hours would also be exhausting for all people involved.

Give the game a spectator mode, that is all.

I appreciate that it wasn't an explicit goal. I'm just kicking around the idea is all.

You raise an interesting point though about one of the supposed reasons TA failed commercially outside of Europe/USA, whereas StarCraft became the biggest game of all time and a Korean national sport. I've read a lot on this, and heard from Chris Taylor about when he'd spoken to publishers and marketing people.

It's no coincidence StarCraft was chosen as THE e-sport. However, it's not for reasons you'd think: TA's poor ARM/CORE balance, its heavy CPU usage, lack of its own battle-net system, etc. Nor because of StarCraft's obviously huge budget and amazing polish. It was simply because of the average game length in TA. This is, apparently, what Korean pro-gamers were saying from the notorious internet gaming cafés of the day.

Small maps too often became single-tech-level rush fests, yes (nothing wrong with that IMO!), but due to issues like the 'Flash EMG lag' and such it made it far worse. But even then, apparently being able to handle terrible imbalances and buggyness of early TA (1998–2000), the Koreans and Chinese (and actually most Europeans and Americans) apparently didn't favour such long games. It was that simple.

On anything larger than a 10 x 10 map it got out of control. I recall playing 6hr games, wars of attrition. Average SC1 game? About 15-20 mins. TA was likely double that. And you needed a map at least 10 x 10 to get all the tech stages of the game flowing properly.

TA sold well for an indie title but compared to StarCraft obviously it was a small-time affair. But what surprises me was that it was actually only a few surprising factors that stopped it spreading out into a global phenomenon.

So... can Planetary Annihilation appeal to the casual, high-octane 15-minute game time as well as the long, war-of-attrition style 5-hour epic?!

EDIT: a counter-theory to my own, for fairness, is that StarCraft sold so much because it massively lucked out with release timing... http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4492394

They sound like two completely different games. The rules for making one style possible are going to chip away at the odds of the opposite occurring. Limited resources are the most obvious solution, as the game will naturally draw to a close(or draw) if both sides can no longer fight.

Fortunately, there are different types of competition. A quick "one comm, single planet, final destination" game can easily be part of a larger competitive experience. That was pretty much the point of boneyards.

The design of the replay system is critical for eSports which is one of the reasons we are putting so much work into making it great.

Fundamentally I'm trying to build a base game and an engine that is flexible and scalable. I expect that the community will help to figure out under which conditions and game modes the game is best played from a competitive aspect. For example the esports version of WC3 is called Dota.

What you said here makes me feel very excited and positive about this game neutrino, thank you.

Yes, that's a great counter point. It's an example of a successful third-party mod used almost exclusively for competitive e-sports.

Btw just dug up this comment here from Clayton Kauzlaric. Can't seem to find the old Chris Taylor interview where he talked about Korea and game times.
http://ton-of-clay.blogspot.co.uk/2008/ ... 0034576538

Perhaps the players could have a option to set a hard limit on the match length, like if it doesn't end within 30 minutes, the game will use some statistics to decide which side wins.

I wonder how the smaller 1v1 type games will turn out. If its fun to watch and if this game in general catches on then there is a chance.

Starcraft: Brood War became really popular through UMS (Use Map Settings/Custom Games) and only a very small percentage of the population actually played 1v1 ladder and yet it became massive in Korea. If PA 1v1 or 2v2 games end up being very entertaining, just because its not the game mode the majority of players are playing doesnt mean much. Also, I'd think smaller 1v1 games or 2v2 would catch on better because they would not only be shorter games but it would be much easier for tourneys both online and on lan to coordinate with players and game schedules

If the game is fun and gets a large fanbase I think there is a decent chance, but it is pretty much impossible to tell until post-release. The best "e-sport" games arent really the ones that were made with e-sports in mind. They were simply a lot of fun and people enjoyed watching them.

eSports is a double edged sword.

On the one hand everyone recognizes your game. You get to watch replays of amazing high level play that you might not have other wise known about. And hell who doesn't love more tournaments. We gain more players and more competitions with esports. And Gyle's replay videos are an absolute treat, I would love to see more of this.

On the other hand your community pays a very real price! Have you ever gone online and played a game of DOTA, or Starcraft? How were you treated? Did people say gl hf? Did they offer constructive advise? F-u-c-k No! You get screamed at by a bunch of inarticulate kids. The experience was so miserable I have never played either game again, these days I even refuse to buy any of blizzards games because I know exactly what there community is like, a big steaming pile of ****! Fame comes at a price, be sure your prepared to pay it.

Any popular competitive game would get that problem, and e-sports is a result of popularity, not the other way round, the dota community was like that before it become a e-sport.

Thats not a result of esports, thats a result of popularity. If a game with competitive multiplayer becomes "mainstream" then that will happen regardless of weather or not its an esport. If anything, games like SC2 are more manner than most popular games.

qwerty3w
Any popular competitive game would get that problem, and e-sports is a result of popularity, not the other way round, the dota community is like that before it become a e-sport.

pur3aw3
Thats not a result of esports, thats a result of popularity. If a game with competitive multiplayer becomes "mainstream" then that will happen regardless of weather or not its an esport. If anything, games like SC2 are more manner than most popular games.


Fair enough, I concur that popularity is the root cause of problem. But have you ever seen a game make it to esports that was not popular? No. Popularity is a precondition of esports thus if you have esports you already achieved popularity, and thus the positives and negatives I described will occur. I think it boils down to a view of what you want to get out of the experience of this game, and of course we all have competing interest.

I just played SC2 custom 1v1s yesterday.
All games started with a gl hf, a few games ended with friendly and constructive talk, but always at least with gg.
Sure sometimes there are raging people, but thats not very often.

I am all for competition and I am pretty sure we will have casted tournaments at the release of the game.
Question is how long will the competitive scene last.
SupCom had a few years, I hope PA will reach about the same.
(yes I know supcom still has player, but even though FAF is nice, competitive play is basically dead. I havent played since ages and I am still like top20 in its 1v1 ladder. Thats obviously not an active ladder at all :/)

Yeah that's generally been my experience too. 9/10 games I play on ladder are surprisingly well mannered with glhf and smilies all round.

I used to love watching QuadV broadcast the the SupCom FA tournies. When the competitive scene died down I personally lost interest. I just love watching the semi-pros or pros play, learning from them and seeing the strategic meta-game develop.