Is Blizzard's push for eSports AND accessibility at odds?

[ro9ue]

I was watching the Co-optional Podcast today (awesome stream if you don't know about it) and they were talking about how interesting it is how Blizzard pushes so hard for accessibility and mass audience, but simultaneously tries to create an eSports scene for all of their games.

In particular, they were discussing Overwatch and server "ticks", and how a serious CS:GO player used to 120 tick servers would scoff at 20 tick servers. Extremely large hitboxes create low skill ceilings as well.

However, there's no denying Overwatch's popularity. It has been #2 on Twitch (not a perfect metric) since it's release just behind LoL. Then again, Hearthstone's eSports viability is completely laughable even though it's extremely popular.


Where do you stand on this? Do eSports games need to be popular, niche and with high skill caps, or something else?

[Sonatine185]

I was watching the Co-optional Podcast today (awesome stream if you don't know about it) and they were talking about how interesting it is how Blizzard pushes so hard for accessibility and mass audience, but simultaneously tries to create an eSports scene for all of their games.

In particular, they were discussing Overwatch and server "ticks", and how a serious CS:GO player used to 120 tick servers would scoff at 20 tick servers. Extremely large hitboxes create low skill ceilings as well.

However, there's no denying Overwatch's popularity. It has been #2 on Twitch (not a perfect metric) since it's release just behind LoL. Then again, Hearthstone's eSports viability is completely laughable even though it's extremely popular.


Where do you stand on this? Do eSports games need to be popular, niche and with high skill caps, or something else?

How can you say Hearthstone's esports viability is laughable? If you regularly browse Twitch, its tournaments are extremely successful and popular and it has already been adopted worldwide in Asia, NA, and Europe. That being said, Hearthstone is Blizzard's most successful esports game with hots, sc2, and wow all in the gutter.

[dope_danny]

Blizzard suffers from coasting on success. So they had this great thing going, the money was rolling and then the gaming climate changed and since then they have been struggling to play catch up, only now they are trying to get some of dat esports money and largely floundering when doing so. Even the most hardcore heroes of the storm fans i see online have called their attempts to host streams for it "borderline dead on arrival" and "an embarrassment compared to pro league streams"

They have had great success with hearthstone, half freemium and half lockboxes aka the pachinko of the west game experiences so far, but mmos are on the decline in a big way and we have yet to see if overwatch has legs beyond the first 3 months which makes or breaks a competitive pvp focussed game.

Its a hard pill to swallow im sure, but Blizzard is the master of imitation, not innovation. Which doesnt mean much when you are struggling to play catchup in already over saturated genres in an entertainment medium already full of established names and services they have to try and eke out some small chunk of.

Remember how around 2009 all those wrath clones showed up and died because people werent going to drop WoW for an imitation when they had years invested in it? Now the shoes on the other foot and 'accessibility' to bring in the casual cash whale consumer isn't going to work in a highly volatile, emotional and twitch gameplay based arena like e-sports.

I think they just need to understand, ironically i guess since they are the WoW company that they are not league of legend nor counter strike nor tf2 and they never will be. They should focus on a core audience instead of the current "change to catch a new audience then once you have them disregard them to change to catch another" design ethos that caused staggeringly large player decline in WoW over the last 7 years and counting.

Keep those happy and playing and you have a userbase for sequels and expansions and so on. Try to ride your name and hope that can steal away from audiences like league that largely know your name as "they made the game i dropped for league years ago and i hear is kind of bad now" and they are just going to end up in a far less well off state with things like heroes of the storm than they could do.

I guess we just wait and see.

[ro9ue]

How can you say Hearthstone's esports viability is laughable? If you regularly browse Twitch, its tournaments are extremely successful and popular and it has already been adopted worldwide in Asia, NA, and Europe. That being said, Hearthstone is Blizzard's most successful esports game with hots, sc2, and wow all in the gutter.

Because the biggest factor in win/loss is RNG. Even in games with a healthy amount of RNG, like Poker, will still have familiar faces at final tables. Luck is definitely involved, but its balanced out requiring at least an equal amount of skill.

Hearthstone - the champion of last years tournament can go 3 and out to just about anyone off the street in the first round. That's just the nature of the game.

There's nothing really wrong with that in terms of gameplay, RNG can be fun, but it's not much of a "sport". That requires a degree of mastery to be successful.

[ComputerNerd]

Esports work best when players can understand what is going on.
I would argue that a more distinct range of abilities actually aids that.

[Shinzai]

More realistically, I think that Blizzard's redefining what esports are. Hearthstone has a lower skill-ceiling than most other TCG style competitive games, but it's probably the absolute most entertaining one to watch. Heroes Of The Storm is more of a gaming medley, than a highly precise and intensive MOBA and again, is probably the most entertaining one to watch right now. Overwatch, same as the rest, is not particularly well defined as a FPS game, bordering a line between a MOBA and a casual shooter, it's got enough going on and enough flexibility to constantly entertain.

Blizzard's focus is less on hyper-precision and perfect player vs player conditions and is more focused on entertaining, yet competitive feeling games. In ways, it is kind of at odds with what 'esports' mean for most people, but as I said, I believe they are starting to define esports in a very different way.

Perhaps more in the way that WWE as a 'sport' may compare to Boxing.

[Deleted]

Blizzard should push for single player 2man co-op gameplay, especially in WoW, even if it's an mmo. I'm not saying raids and dungeons should go away, no. But I wish they would extend them into a longer co-op campaign and you can make gameplay much different and interesting (look at sven co-op game for example). There is a reason why is 2v2 arena the most played even when it was without rewards like mounts and titles.
I think this would keep people in the game since you don't need to rely on more than one person and that's much easier.

[Deleted]

I don't see how Hearthstone can be even considered an e-sport. To each his own.

[Very Tired]

Games don't need e-sports to be popular but meeting the requirements for a good game and therefore e-sport is always good. High skill ceiling, balanced content with no cheese metas, acceptable hit boxes, etc, are all needed. Blizzard's popularity and marketing have allowed Overwatch to get where it is now, but yeah, it's shoddy mechanics with no explanations from the Blues aren't going to even attract some of the more serious FPSers, let alone lead this game into being a legitimate e-sport, now matter how hard Blizzard pumps money in it.

[ro9ue]

I don't see how Hearthstone can be even considered an e-sport. To each his own.

I don't think it's an eSport at all, I just think Blizzard is trying to push for it to be really hard. While at the same time, they've developed a game that has little to no value placed on skill for winning, and it relies almost entirely on RNG.

[PACOX]

If e-sports want to become even semi-mainstream, then they must become accessible. The tops sports in the world are popular because they are accessible. You don't need to be a pro to have fun participating in rec leagues or friendly pickup games.

Popular sports are also easy to understand for casual audiences but strategic/competitive enough for the hardcore crowd. Hell, one of the reasons MOBAs blew up is because it meant people could play an RTS without having to be good at base building and resource management, all they had to worry about was fighting.

I think one thing that gamers need to get over as a whole is this elitist attitude that content/games should only be tuned to the 95 percentile (or whatever percentile they think they're in ).

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I don't see how Hearthstone can be even considered an e-sport. To each his own.

Oh course it is an e-sport. If poker can be considered a sport then Hearthstone can be considered an e-sport.

[McLovenIt]

If e-sports want to become even semi-mainstream, then they must become accessible. The tops sports in the world are popular because they are accessible. You don't need to be a pro to have fun participating in rec leagues or friendly pickup games.

Popular sports are also easy to understand for casual audiences but strategic/competitive enough for the hardcore crowd. Hell, one of the reasons MOBAs blew up is because it meant people could play an RTS without having to be good at base building and resource management, all they had to worry about was fighting.

I think one thing that gamers need to get over as a whole is this elitist attitude that content/games should only be tuned to the 95 percentile (or whatever percentile they think they're in ).

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Oh course it is an e-sport. If poker can be considered a sport then Hearthstone can be considered an e-sport.

ha ha ha, yes!!! Poker is a sport where you can be labeled a "pro", so at this point, Stickball could be a real sport if you want it to be. lol

I agree with Pacox in that how does a "pro sport" become what it is to begin with??? It starts with the public being able to go out and play, and have people who strive to get better and better and excel at the hopes of maybe one day making a living from it.

There's no such thing as pro sport that does not have accessibility to the masses. That how it becomes a professional sport, it's all formed because of all the amateurs who want to take the next step to reach that higher level in their field of gaming, whether it be physical or electronic games.

[stellvia]

How can you say Hearthstone's esports viability is laughable? If you regularly browse Twitch, its tournaments are extremely successful and popular and it has already been adopted worldwide in Asia, NA, and Europe. That being said, Hearthstone is Blizzard's most successful esports game with hots, sc2, and wow all in the gutter.

Because calling yourself an esport and actually being worthy of being called a "sport" are two different things. Yeah, Blizzard throws money at it so its an "esport" but that only goes to show how laughable they've made the term. Their games are designed with way too much RNG and far too low of a skill ceiling. It's like having a tournament for playing WAR (old playing card game where highest suit wins and you keep flipping thru the deck).

The "competitive" crowd for Blizzard games is wiffle ball vs. major league baseball.

[bbr]

I was watching the Co-optional Podcast today (awesome stream if you don't know about it) and they were talking about how interesting it is how Blizzard pushes so hard for accessibility and mass audience, but simultaneously tries to create an eSports scene for all of their games.

"all" their games?

Diablo 1-2-3, no.
WoW,. no.
lost vikings? no.

Only starcraft, overwatch, and maybe hearthstone,. though considering how it's random as heck, and heavily dependant on available cards I don't feel it should ever quality as such, any more than MTG can be called an e-sport of any kind.
Never seen any warcraft competitions so far. though im sure theyll exist.

[Fencers]

Technically, you only need willing competitive participants to make a video game an e-sport.

Ideally speaking; popularity, a low barrier to entry and high skill ceiling are all that is required to make any game competitive and thus, 'sporting'.

[McLovenIt]

"all" their games?

Diablo 1-2-3, no.
WoW,. no.
lost vikings? no.

Only starcraft, overwatch, and maybe hearthstone,. though considering how it's random as heck, and heavily dependant on available cards I don't feel it should ever quality as such, any more than MTG can be called an e-sport of any kind.
Never seen any warcraft competitions so far. though im sure theyll exist.

Seriously???? There have been several competitions throughout the years, big and small. Some big championships even held at Blizzcon. WoW Arena games were highly competitive, n might still be these days. But yea that was actually one of Blizzards main "e-sport" game. Not to mention lots of Starcraft 2 & 3 tournaments too.

Diablo I think has/had some tournaments mirroring the Arena play that WoW has. But I'm not too familiar with competitive Diablo, I'm just a super casual D3 player.

[potis]

Technically, you only need willing competitive participants to make a video game an e-sport.

Ideally speaking; popularity, a low barrier to entry and high skill ceiling are all that is required to make any game competitive and thus, 'sporting'.

Which is what Blizzard games lack, high skill ceiling apart from Stracraft (Talking about "live games" so not putting WC3 in) none of the other can be considered "high skill ceiling" games. Its why as the OP mentioned CS:GO players/pro's "scoff" at Overwatch.

Blizzard is really smart last few years making games that cater to the 99% of gamers but it also makes them -not so worth watching a tournament-.

[Steelangel]

Its why as the OP mentioned CS:GO players/pro's "scoff" at Overwatch.

Let them scoff. Some of us were playing FPS's when those "pro players" were in diapers, and twitch reflex times increase proportional to age. I couldn't be competitive in CS:GO, I'm not fast enough anymore, but I do kick a lot of ass in Overwatch.

I have a feeling Soldier: 76 was designed as an homage to all the old guys out there who used to rely on QSpy.

[potis]

Let them scoff. Some of us were playing FPS's when those "pro players" were in diapers, and twitch reflex times increase proportional to age. I couldn't be competitive in CS:GO, I'm not fast enough anymore, but I do kick a lot of ass in Overwatch.

I have a feeling Soldier: 76 was designed as an homage to all the old guys out there who used to rely on GameSpy.

You do realize most CS:GO pro's are in their 25-35's right? Since they were 10-12 when the game started, your post justs shows lack of knowledge and you are only trying to make yourself feel better as to how bad you are.

Also Soldier:76 exists for that reason yes, "so the i cant aim, cant play FPS games but i want to have fun to!" but Blizzard needs to make money somehow, no wonder i didnt pick him and Bastion ever in those 7 months of OW Beta, its called dignity. (Lies picked each once or twice to see how they play and understand, disgusted me, never touched again.)

I scoff at overwatch too, i am not a CS:GO Pro or any type of Pro, i just get disgusted with low skill games, and especially after 7 months in Overwatch Beta and watching how they changed the game to be even more "retard easy", i simple refuse to play it, not because i am "pro" because its a disgusting insanely boring game.

[potis]

Oh yeah, I forgot to add:

As we've seen in this thread, you get people who feel the need to declare one game or the other "for noobs" or something. Of course, since they haven't actually excelled at anything, you wonder why it matters at all if this game or that game is "full of scrubs" or something, and if a specific game IS just "played by retards" and they're so amazing, you'd ask why they can't easily just excel at it?

Of course, the real issue is that - in absence of any actual achievement - people tend to try to prop themselves up as, "talented by association" by playing the game that they think is "for pros".

Or you know, actual facts and i will say it again, i am not a pro at any game, i just have gaming experience and knowledge.

Overwatch: Comes down to who is premade, who is coordinated and smashed their ulties together a few heroes has a higher skillcap , Genji/Widowmaker etc but thats about it.

The skillcap of everything else is "What hitbox and who can kill who really fast" aka Reaper >Winston, you can learn that stuff in 10 games.

CS:GO:Smoke positions, smoke angles, spots between smoke to see, boxes, coverage, timing, sound, knowledge of the maps in terms of "Where can the bullets go pass the building/door" flashbangs and angles of them, how to bounce them and thats before "Aiming".

Of course thats "Training" which in sense of gaming is "skillcap", the difference is simply massive.