An Economist's prospective - Page 3
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Jayme
United States5866 Posts
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ETisME
12083 Posts
Improving SC2 is a way to increase demand, increase the whole SC2 population and thus increase some viewers who might be willing to pay for the content, which in turns increase the supply by the tournament. LoL and SC2 might not be perfect substitute but it is definitely a strong competitor. Like you said, people tune in and price is time (assuming there are no other cost like the $60). Opportunity cost shows that when you spent time on playing/watching one game, you could have been watching the other. The market isn't purely financed by fans, I am pretty sure sponsors don't really care about how much we would pay for what tournament, they care more on viewer numbers, the growth on the market. Teams and tournaments are all largely funded by sponsor money and the reason why teams and tournaments don't set up PPV is due to the fact that the market is so competitive. MLG requires PPV? Go watch other big tournaments instead like DH. And right now the problem is not us not spending money, it's about the growth of SC2 popularity is so much weaker in comparison to LoL and way lower than our expectation. We dictate where the money will go and how much. Paying is merely one small way. Letting sponsor know does help because Sponsor don't know how much of a difference there is to their sales. This is coming from a guy who is doing final semester of economics and business analysis (via stats) related major | ||
yeastiality
Canada374 Posts
ebort is dead folks | ||
Phanekim
United States777 Posts
On October 20 2012 10:56 Xeris wrote: There's no math in this post. You just explained basic economic principles that you can learn in any intro course thats my opinion as well. | ||
QuanticCinergy
United States37 Posts
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megacrack
Australia171 Posts
On October 20 2012 11:16 Waxangel wrote: I didn't think there was anything worse than people who took economics in undergrad thinking they understood economics, but apparently there is. lol laughed so hard at this | ||
TheRabidDeer
United States3806 Posts
On October 20 2012 10:05 FabledIntegral wrote: You don't need to consider yourself an economist to write this. Someone who took a single high school economics course could have written this... trying to explain such basic concepts takes up so much of your OP :S. I learned all of this in my first few weeks of macroeconomics. I think most people that play games have a higher understanding of basic economics though. Oddly enough. Anyway, what needs to be done with HotS: 1) Blizzard marketing 2) Huge sale IN ADVANCE of HotS (perhaps even a free to play week before the release of HotS) 3) Bundled WoL and HotS to bring in new people 4) Blizzard having an active role in maintaining esports, more than just the slides in the home screen of SC2 5) Reduction in the amount of content. We are drowned in content, which means people cant watch everything, which means smaller stream numbers to advertise. ie: If you have 100k people and 2 tournaments. 1/3 will watch one tournament, 1/3 will watch the other, and the remaining 1/3 will watch both. This leaves you with 66k viewers to show to advertisers instead of 100k if there were only one tournament. How many league of legends tournaments go on? DotA? Now look at SC2. Just look at the upcoming events portion on the right side of the page. There are like 20 SC2 events in the next 24 hours, and 1 dota event. That is too damn much SC2. | ||
Ethoex
United States164 Posts
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berf
Canada26 Posts
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Tyree
1508 Posts
You people (yes majority of you) were asking for a more hardcore game, that SC2 was too easy, yet that is the very problem, the game is still too difficult for casual players to get into, it is why the game is stagnating, it is simply closed off for new players just like Brood War was. Almost no new players are coming into the game, but slowly and surely the ones here are leaving it, why stress out on ladder when you can just chill in WoW or Diablo 3 or Call of Duty and put little effort for alot of rewards? I am not here to blame anyone but it is so weird watching so many people in tune with the actual game, who follow it and support it, know every build, matchup and have extensive knowledge when it comes to the game. But when it comes to removing yourself from the situation and looking at Starcraft 2 as a videogame for normal people who do not have the time nor desire to take all that seriously, then most of you have absolutely failed to see it from their perspective, how can you not see how utterly unattractive it is to play SC2 for players who likely have 20-30 APM at best? Yelling at them and telling them to practice several hours a day for months just to get any enjoyment out of the game is a great idea tough!! Accessibility is key, like Destiny mentioned Betamax was better than VHS, PCs have always been better than game consoles, some obscure band you like is i am sure much better than Nickelback, some underground rapper i am sure is better than Kanye West and Lil Wayne, some smart phone is surely better than Iphone etc etc. But if these things arent accessible for newcomers, then it does not matter. LoL is immensely accessible for anyone, SC2 (and BW) is the polar opposite. You wanna talk economics, then talk how MLG tried to monetize their tournaments by asking people to pay for something they get on a daily basis. It is like flooding the market then asking you to pay for it. | ||
Destructicon
4713 Posts
He is right in that supply and demand now have reached an equilibrium, and this is because there are enough tournaments to view and enough people to view them. There are two ways to go about growing eSports more, either we pay for it, which no one wants to do, or we get more viewers in, more viewers translates directly into more views, more add revenue and possibly more sponsor sales from those adds. Now lets be real here, no one wants to pay for tournaments at this point, we've become all to used to the current model of free medium quality stream and optional payed HD. MLG's attempt with the PPV for arenas was probably a failure, and as a result those have become free to view now. The only organization with a good working model at the moment is GOM.tv, and even they are hit a plateau now, they only have a small number of GSLs and GSTLs per year, the number of GSLs per year decreased from last year to this year, and they haven't increased their prize pool substantially I believe. So regardless if you add PPV, the matter of fact is, you will still hit a plateau just because you have a small number of people to work with. The real emphasis of the discussion, and the one that has generated the most arguments over time, is how to increase viewer numbers. And this is where differentiating opinions collide the most and people can't seem to reach a consensus. Some people seem to think that, if the game was made more "casual" it would attract more viewers, others believe that fixes and improvements to battle.net would do the job, while others believe the sole entity responsible for growing and promoting SC2 is Blizzard via even heavier and more aggressive marketing and promotions. Well, there are some arguments that are right, some that are wrong, some that nearly hit home, some that are wrong for the right reasons and some that are right for the wrong reasons, but there is also one fundamental thing that people keep forgetting from time to time. SC2 is an RTS game, RTS games by their very nature are harder then other game types, its harder to get into them. Their biggest advantage though is being easier and more spectacular to view. You can't make RTS games easier to get into by dumbing them down, that has just systematically failed since the dawn of time, there have been some good and memorable RTS games over time, like BW. And there have also been some completely forgettable RTS games where you finish the campaign, do some ladder games then are done with it. For a long time devs have tried to make RTS games more appealing by destroying the mechanical aspect involved in playing, and that just hasn't worked, it backfires because, once the game becomes too easy, its fun only for a brief period of time, after which it becomes boring and repetitive, there is nothing to work towards because there is no mastery involved, the game is too easy. The same casuals who will more easily pick up the RTS game because it is easier will just as quickly drop it if there is nothing to work towards or if it is too easy. There are however ways to promote RTS games as well via accessibility and incentives, but you have to go about it in other ways. I won't get too in depth into the UI and B.net issues, even though they are one of the core problems and one of the reasons why more people haven't picked up and come back to SC2. The other problem is price. Another key difference between Dota 2, LoL and SC2, is that you need to fork out some money to play SC2. I am willing to stake anything that, if LoL was 30, 20 or even 15 dollars to buy, it would not even be a 10th of the size it is today. I am confident enough in saying that if Dota wasn't so widespread because WC3 is so easy to pirate, that Dota itself wouldn't be nearly as big. As sad a truth as it is, we have entered the age where free games are much, much, much more popular. SC2's accessibility would greatly increase just if it went free to play with a certain micro-transaction plan and some things to work towards. You'd need to have things to work towards, casuals love working towards their next skin, or runes or item, if you implement a system like that in SC2, without actually making it pay to win, then you greatly increase SC2's casual appeal. Again though this would only be possible if you fix B.net interface first. You'd also say, need to have different ladders, a more casual ladder and the real competitive one. Hell if people like playing with friends, why not make these obtainable (and buy able rewards), available trough playing casual 2 vs 2 or 3 vs 3. This would cater to the casual scene without destroying the core of SC2, the mechanical requirements that make players shine, the very things that make SC2 easy to play but hard to master. The casuals would be happy they get a free game with lots of goodies to work towards and able to do it with friends, and the competitive scene still has the emphasis placed on 1 vs 1 with all the good mechanics and gameplay features still in place. Lastly also have an in game build viewer to see games and tournaments, or follow your favorite player. If you did that, and did it well I'm sure you could bolster the player base and, in time viewership numbers, and by extension the prize pool for tournaments and the production value. | ||
CrtBalorda
Slovenia704 Posts
But blizzard wont do those things because they are "right". | ||
Demicore
France503 Posts
Still thanks for the effort and I definitely agree that we need to spend more money for our content. We are quite spoiled right now. Perhaps the weaker leagues will soon fold and the other ones will find themselves in need of putting up more paywalls. We'll see. | ||
Consummate
Australia191 Posts
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Antylamon
United States1981 Posts
On October 20 2012 20:31 CrtBalorda wrote: Making the game harder and a better bnet is all you need. But blizzard wont do those things because they are "right". Did you see the "HotS UI Update" thread? -.- | ||
Boonbag
France3318 Posts
On October 20 2012 11:16 Waxangel wrote: I didn't think there was anything worse than people who took economics in undergrad thinking they understood economics, but apparently there is. haha the op was so bad i actually enjoyed it | ||
Nyxisto
Germany6287 Posts
1. esport is generally appealing to a young demographic, with most of them still being in school/college, which means they probably don't have that much money to spent anyway. 2. people are already spending the amount of money they wan't to spent, there's no real reason for them to spent more, just a moral appeal for growth isn't going to convince people to fund esports. So the conclusion can only be that a growth of the community is encouraged, cause it brings more money in without needing every individual to spent more.Which most people already seem to agree on, because the tons of threads that are going up at the moment are mostly talking about how to accomplish that. So although the topic is a nice summary of the supply and demand wikipedia page, we're already past that topic i think. | ||
GoldenH
1115 Posts
So yeah, you're right. Some sort of paywalls are a necessity if you want more money in the game out of the same number of viewers, and I think we can all agree that the quality we're getting out of free streams is more than enough. But HOTS being good will bring more viewers, which means that streaming will bring in more money and grow the sport without paywalls. The big thing that's holding the sport back is the mindset the community has that Blizzard has anything to do with it. It doesn't. Any proposed changes HOTS could make, could be done in WOL with the map editor. The map editor is just that good. So Blizzard has no say, and should have no say. And if there are issues like lan and system requirements, frankly, it's just proof that the SC2 engine is just not that good. At this point people should be looking at different games and asking if they can be modded to provide the RTS that the starcraft community deserves. This is the single best way to grow the sport - and if there becomes a market for RTS engines, then different companies can compete to provide the best one, instead of letting Blizzard try and milk it's cash cow dry. | ||
Snorkle
United States1648 Posts
The "economic" information in this post is more like concepts you are taught in week 1 of econ 101. Let me give you a protip from a marketing major, don't call yourself an economist if you aren't an economist. The disclaimer is cute but really not necessary because by reading your post its quite easy to see your are in fact, not an economist. | ||
RvB
Netherlands6079 Posts
On October 20 2012 23:35 Nyxisto wrote: Besides that the topic of this thread is so basic and simple that you can barely call it economics, the "why?" is already answered and i think nearly everyone understands that stagnation is the problem. People are already talking about how to fix it, and "spending more money" is probably not the way to go, because : 1. esport is generally appealing to a young demographic, with most of them still being in school/college, which means they probably don't have that much money to spent anyway. 2. people are already spending the amount of money they wan't to spent, there's no real reason for them to spent more, just a moral appeal for growth isn't going to convince people to fund esports. So the conclusion can only be that a growth of the community is encouraged, cause it brings more money in without needing every individual to spent more.Which most people already seem to agree on, because the tons of threads that are going up at the moment are mostly talking about how to accomplish that. So although the topic is a nice summary of the supply and demand wikipedia page, we're already past that topic i think. Spending more money is useless anyway you're just going to create an inflated tournament scene with the same amount of viewers. Sports draw a huge amount of income out of sponsors and they only care about viewers, everyone spending money for bigger prize pools isn't magically going to increase viewership. | ||
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