Is E-Sports becoming Boring?

by Lawrence Phillips

Original article on SK-Gaming.com


With E-Sports entering its 2nd decade we have seen the community expand with thousands of fans knowing enough about their favourite players to be their biographers. We've seen E-Sports grace the TV with recent creations such as GIGA & XLeagueTV hoping to make it a daily feature but is E-sports starting to lack orginality, creativity and flair? With everybody trying to become more professional, more serious, is the fact that we all started gaming "for fun" being forgotten?

The term playing "for fun" is perhaps only used these days when you want to pretend you were not trying a hundred percent, it is your get out jail free card, "hey wow your stats suck" you can just turn around and say "i play for fun". I still have fun playing Warcraft3 and Counter-Strike even though in the latter I rely on SK crew to carry me, but when is the last time you read a funny E-Sports article? Listened to a shoutcast that made you laugh (with the caster not at the caster) As painful as it is to accept the enemy of most E-Sports fans, even more that Counter-Strike:Source, World of Warcraft seems a place where people seem to remember that fun is most important. So how can we inject E-Sports with the element of fun?

Tournaments

One issue that is draining the fun out of E-Sports in particular in Warcraft3 is the number of invite tournaments, in particular in Asia with some tournaments having only a handful of players seperating them from being clones. The ESWC has already suffered setbacks in its inability to find sponsors resulting in the reduction of prize money, luckily the prestige of the tournament still makes it appealing but what happens if in years to come it is unable to compete? Even the ESWC decided to invite teams this year; 69N-28E, NiP, Mym, H2K, NoA and the winners PGS, but I think this method although assuring that the "giants" of the various E-Sports games are present at their event is a trend that needs to be stopped. The NGLTWO league of Warcraft3 which ideally is a great league for 2nd rate teams to compete saw rising star teams BeT and wNv invited instead of having to qualify like everyone else through qualifiers.

I can see the logic that the previous winner of a tournament should auto-qualify but this invitational method is really stopping us from seeing new and perhaps more "fun" teams from reaching a LAN final. A well known story in Warcraft3 is the tale of the World Cyber Games 2005 where a representative called Luxembourg managed to qualify to represent his own country. A non-profit organisation called LESF contacted the WCG to ask if they could hold a national qualifier in Luxembourg, by default the country would only get 1 spot, Luxembourg accepted however they were never informed which game the spot was for.

Three days before the WCG Finals they were informed it was actually for Warcraft3 not FIFA as they had predicted and they tried to find a Warcraft3 player to attend but due to short notice and other responsabilities they were no-one was able to attend. Then in order not to waste the ticket they asked if anyone could go and in the end found Peter Freitag who simply picked the username Luxembourg.

When it came to the WCG Finals it became apparent Luxembourg had no idea how to play Warcraft at all infact he had actually never played before and it was such a refreshing change to have a "fun" player in such a prestigious tournament. People even uploaded his replays on Replayers.com and he just became a legend, this is the kind of thing that makes E-Sports fun to follow, sure you want the big names but you also need the characters. It will be dissapointing if in the future all teams will be invited and we are stopped from seeing more Luxembourgs present themselves at LAN finals.

We are seeing fewer and fewer opportunies for new players to break into the mainstream because with so many tournaments springing up such as the KODE5 or WSVG these tournaments need to make sure they have the best of the best, with honours, but does that really make it more fun? I would prefer to see these tournaments feature players like Ghost & Axslav just for the fun factor or include more rising talents. A thread was posted a good few weeks ago that covered this very topic, SK users such as Nookie suggested why not have a random race tournament, a ffa tournament or a human only tournament? I agree we need more variation in tournaments, I enjoy the NGL or Stars War style since the format is a refreshing change, with the "fun factor" of silly team names and the opportunity for fans to vote to ressurect one member of the team to fight again.That is the kind of thing we as a community need to promote or organise ourselves and seek sponsorship, variety is the spice of life.

I commend attempts such as the Gamlatour created by SK Forum user Gamlasonn its a "fun" tournament or Incups 2on2 tournaments, even the old school ENC and CB NationsCup still inject some fun into an otherwise monotonous Warcraft3 scene. I always despair for the Counter-Strike scene because everyone uses the same weapons, why not have a tournament where you are not allowed to use certain weapons? Or they could get random weapons each round? Perhaps it even exists but is still very small, whatever happens there is still hope but we need to realise that the opinion of the community counts, we should not just sit back and wait for a random tournament to be organised, why not do it ourselves? Thats why I loved the old Warcraft3 member casts on WCReplays.com where anyone who wanted to take part turned up at a specific time and games would be organised depending on who's there, people could obs and then listen to the shoutcast.

It is crucially important to always try to support smaller tournaments, or send suggestions on how to improve larger tournaments. Perhaps offer yourself to write news or comment on the replays, anything because that is how we will keep tournaments alive and keep them interesting, otherwise we will just continue to suffer with "oh look its another Quake4 tournament with Av3k/Cooler and Toxic" or another Warcraft tournament with 90% of participants being from Asia with the same old crew invited to represent Europe or "the World". Lets see Axslav or ANGRY_KOREA_MAN with his infamous bloodmage or Ghost with his Mountain King. Better still lets get a Counter-Strike team that actually use weapons apart from the m4/Ak47/AWP? What ever happened to trying to win with the duel elites?

Players & Coverage

So we've discussed how we can make tournaments more fun but what about the players, why do players seem so serious these days? Players aspire to be professional but I want to see some craziness, A Zinedine Zidane moment on a gaming scale, headbutting an admin for losing the toin coss, attempting to strangle a nearby opponent with a mouse cable, or a cable being pulled out during a match... oh wait that already happened. I love professionalism but we really need more humour in E-Sports, I do not play or watch games to be serious, I watch and play because they are fun. A typical counter-arguement will be if they are playing for money why would they piss about? The Warcraft3 player mym]moon is the highest earning player in Warcraft3 if and he always puts on a show in tournaments. The Dark Ranger versus ToD in WEG is legendary, or massing glaives in WEG Masters just makes me feel, damn this guy loves this game he still knows Warcraft3 is supposed to be fun! Or better still when Moon supposidly had an arm in plaster after "knocking a wall" but still managing to perform.

What is more am I the only one still dissapointed to not see a "Pro gamer" turn up it a pimp suit or walk through an event with a gang of slaves to carry his gear? We all want to see these gamers spend the thousands of dollars they've supposidly earnt on more than a dodgy asian hair-style. E-sports needs more characters, more heroes and less peons. Whether there are famous or infamous it matters not, we need to remember fun should be the most important factor, not money, target audiences, map pools or competition. There have been recent attempts to create Television shows that follow gamers such as Four Kings CS/ComplexiTV among others but they all seem a little dull. This does not necessarily mean the players are dull just the way they are portrayed, we only see 1 side of these gamers, this zombified look as they stare at their screen.

Coverage is key to making these events fun to watch, it is a shame this is the only thing we see of the gamers in a match, I prefer a more adhoc/spontaneous approach to make it more hip and exciting. GIGA is going in the right direction aside from the cast almost always being in German, and GGL realises that people want to know the person behind the player, we want to see cool stories, funny incidents! The infamous Deadman of Warcraft3, the playboy Forever of Quake 4 or screaming Luq of PGS in Counter-Strike. We need to concentrate on the more interesting characters in E-Sports, not just the people that are winning.

There are too many interviews of the same players, the format of the interviews is the same, there are some great people in the community but they do not have the exposure they need. Take ImbalancedVideo for example, a Warcraft3 style Video news and coverage, a great initiative to do something different and it is thanks to the community that supported them and gave them positive feedback to make them want to continue making it and in the end they have picked up some sponsorship. Everyone can contribute to E-Sports that is what people forget, as Gandhi said "be the change you expect to see in the world", E-sports journalism is becoming like tournaments too similar, too serious we need to continue to break away and create something original. Why try to be like another organization when you could be completely different? The renowned swedish Rataka.se who's sole goal is to uncover the negative things about E-Sports (rumours etc..) is one such example, perhaps its not a positive move for E-Sports but it is nice to see someone doing something different, not trying to clone itself in another websites image and just be proud to be different.

Continuing on the topic of E-Sports journalism, although it is debatable whether everyone who works on a news website could be called a Journalist, it is also in need of a revamp to be more fun. All these serious articles about the obstacles stopping E-Sports from becoming mainstream, I want to see more fun articles to accompany the serious ones. GGL has the right idea although not all the time with articles like Then & NOw showing pictures of gamers when they were younger, or WCReplays.com's Raine with his art drawings of Warcraft3, stuff like this really expands E-Sports to read about other things surrounding the players, clans and the games themselves.

In terms of a conclusion I don't think I should decide it but you the E-Sports public, should we sit back and watch E-Sports fall into a state of dispair? Where everything is so serious and boring? You should decide what can I DO to help E-Sports, if you have a good idea say so, write it down perhaps even get your friends to help organise a fun tournament, it is the community that E-Sports rose from and it should continue to be in the hands of the community to keep it alive and exciting.

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