pro-gaming/e-sports

Memnoch

Hi,
just starting a thread to see how many people here are intersted in it or follow the scene?

I myself follow the korean starcraft leagues as well as some warcraft 3 from time to time. Don't pay as much attention to FPS's eg quake/cs because they aren't as much fun to watch.

Anyway just wanting to see how much interest there is out there.

p.s. I don't consider gambling to fall into this category (eg online poker)

K.O.Kiki

Erm... I try to follow the VF scene in Japan; but since I can't read a word of Japanese, it's kinda hard It's also disheartening to see real pros play games; if only VF4 had online play, I could practice against more real opponents. Because that's how you get good -- and the Japs have arcade scenes where the players can easily go against 200+ different players a week (compared to my... 2-ish)

But what I see as this American "pro-gaming" scene -- a lot of what I've seen is based around sponsorship. Oh, and their training regimes... I'm sorry, I don't seem to have the time to build up the skills to be able to train for competition at the highest level.

Memnoch

well i don't ever plan on playing "competitively" but I enjoying following the scene.

I like watching a great game of starcraft kind of like how I enjoy watching a good game of soccer :P

PiE

K.O.Kiki wrote:

I'm sorry, I don't seem to have the time to build up the skills to be able to train for competition at the highest level.

Congrats on completely missing the point of "Pro" gaming.

K.O.Kiki

Noo... more like "I don't have the willpower to train myself to pro levels".
I prefer to just do lots of time investment into lots of different areas -- kinda like a jack-of-all-trades, I won't be a master, I'll just be -- average to above-average. Which is fine with me.

Creamy Goodness

well your idea of fun is much different to others.

watching someone build up an army of goblins or whatever in a RTS game for half an hour for like 5 minutes of action isn't my idea of fun.

i follow counter-strike as right from the get go there's action and it doesn't stop until someone wins, but i find myself having less and less time to follow it cause of college and the likes.

Memnoch

Cremo wrote:

well your idea of fun is much different to others.

watching someone build up an army of goblins or whatever in a RTS game for half an hour for like 5 minutes of action isn't my idea of fun.

i follow counter-strike as right from the get go there's action and it doesn't stop until someone wins, but i find myself having less and less time to follow it cause of college and the likes.

clearly you've never watched a good game of starcraft.

I'm not trying to oversimplify or play down FPS, I just don't find them as enjoyable to watch. But your view of RTS games is very over simplified and would only be valid if you were watching a bunch of noobs play.

Goodshape

Computer games as a spectator 'sport'? The thought never occured to me.

Could be interesting though. I assume there's leagues to follow and whatnot?

Memnoch

yup, there are. At the moment it's pretty big in Korea, kinda big in Germany and in the US. Catching on elsewhere throuhgout Europe etc.

Depends off course on what sort of game you are into.

Starcraft is probably the biggest one right now. It's like the national "sport" of korea. They have like 2-3 television channels DEDICATED to "e-sports". The top starcraft players earn saliries in excess of $200k a year. I know that's not a lot compared to soccer etc. but it's still in it's infancy as a sport world wide.

But ya it's pretty big, they have the matches in stadium and thousands turn up to watch and support their fav players/teams.

I can give you a link to vods. I'm not sure if these are legal/illegal tbh because they aren't availible to anyone outside of korea any other way except for torrents.

Legally you could get them from MBC game's website but you would have to be able to read Korean. The foreign starcraft community isn't AS big as the korean one yet, so they don't have an english language website. Personally I don't think the koreans would mind since we are growing their market base outside of korea. Currently their revenue comes from sponsership within korea and either there isn't or they don't recognise it as being a big enough market to put in the effort to make thigns easily availible for foreign people.

That being said, MBC game have put up a live stream for their latest Warcraft 3 tournaments which is very popular in Europe.

For warcraft there are numerous sites that host top replays etc.
Same for counter-strike/quake 4. Easy to get demos of top teams for those though I don't follow the FPS scene myself.

The world cyber games is an annual tournament with 70 countries competing (including Ireland and yes we got completely and utterly OWNED this year). in different games. Their official website has a lot of replays and stuff.

Pugsley

Cremo wrote:

watching someone build up an army of goblins or whatever in a RTS game for half an hour for like 5 minutes of action isn't my idea of fun.

If you watched a high skill game of any real RTS (even Age of Empires 2 had quite a high skill scene, no money in it though, unlike SC/WC3) combat starts about 3 to 4 minutes into the game, theres constantly combat, the armies just get bigger. As for FPS e-sports, Quake3 was excellent to watch, CS got very very repetative to watch though, RTCW was a pretty good spectator sport though.

K.O.Kiki

Big 6-page article on eSports in this months Edge (Xmas 06).
Just an FYI.

Memnoch

K.O.Kiki wrote:

Big 6-page article on eSports in this months Edge (Xmas 06).
Just an FYI.

I'm for anything that helps promote the scene in Ireland

Creamy Goodness

the article in edge is based on the wcg i guess?

K.O.Kiki

Haven't read it yet actually; but I think it takes in all the major ones.
Just buy Edge!