This announcement gives me a very nostalgic comfort - As a former competitive Counter-Strike player turned eSports tournament organizer and co-founder of an (in the end) unsuccessful eSports organization, this really reaffirms much of my time spent and makes me really regret leaving eSports when I did. I'm very happy to see Alex Garfield, who I looked up to when almost nobody knew who he was, help turn eSports into a true professional sport that it deserves to be, and even happier to see the huge amount of support that Twitch is providing to the entire community.
Can we fix the title please? Twitch acquired much more than just Evil Geniuses, they acquired Good Game Agency which owns and manages quite a few teams and other e-sports related things. (As he points out in his statement)
They seem to recognize and accept that the market paradigm is rapidly moving from one of dominance of the platform to dominance of content [1]. EG has one of the strongest content and persona (i.e. character driven narrative) in the scene in the world and certainly in the West (not entirely sure how the older European powerhouses like SK Gaming have fared in recent years).
The question to me is whether additional acquisitions may be in order. For example, would they perhaps move to acquire Sean Plott's Day[9] TV?
Even in "regular sports", ratings rise when narratives like rivalries or dynasties are in play. We saw the decline of viewership in Starcraft:Broodwar in Korea when such narratives fizzled and when the old stars faded from relevance, despite the considerable increase in overall skill level. Starcraft 2 has arguably suffered from the relative lack of such a narrative, due in part to the fragmentation of its competitive scene. Blizzard has taken matters into its own hands with WCS, following Riot's lead. The question to me is how, if at all, Twitch will involve itself, given that its success depends on content and content very much hinges on narrative.
[1] I am not sure if Amazon is involved with the decision at all, but since Amazon Prime Instant Video is in a platform and content war with Netflix and others, it wouldn't surprise me if they influenced the move.
Finally, a topic I'm somewhat of an expert in on HN!
>Even in "regular sports", ratings rise when narratives like rivalries or dynasties are in play. We saw the decline of viewership in Starcraft:Broodwar in Korea when such narratives fizzled and when the old stars faded from relevance, despite the considerable increase in overall skill level.
There were new stars and new rivalries. This totally leaves out the Savior scandal, competing games, and how unique and what fluke BW actually was. A game never meant to be played competitively, pushed to it's limits for years and years and years by the players and map makers, broken mechanics that turned out to balance the game near flawlessly. The list goes on and on. BW was an anomoly in the esports world, a game being played competitively 10 years after it's made is not normal. Melee is the only game that comes to mind that is similar. Counter Strike is still being played of course, but not the original game, no patches, like BW or Melee.
>Starcraft 2 has arguably suffered from the relative lack of such a narrative, due in part to the fragmentation of its competitive scene.
I disagree 1000%! SC2 suffered from horrible balance decisions, a battle.net system that was objectively worse than BW and WC3, no LAN, and an over-zealous Blizzards-Activision that wanted to extract as much money as possible as quickly as possible. Things like putting limits on how much a prize pool can be before Blizzard takes a cut actually encouraged tournaments to stay smaller the first year or two of SC2. No LAN meant games would crap out and couldn't be restarted with tens of thousands of dollars on the line. No automated tournaments, no clans, no nothing. Battle.net 2.0 was so bad, such a monumental fuck up, it shows that Blizzard literally had no idea what they were doing and did not care what the community thought. We begged for years for things that were not that hard to implement for a gigantic company like Blizzard. Finally, the balance. When you balance a game for the lowest level player, it may bring a short spike in players but the reward of a high skilled play is gone. There is no reason to work hard and figure things out. The competitive scene suffered due to these decisions. Finally, the worst choice of them all, to let Wings of Liberty (vanilla SC2) fester and die while they developed Heart of the Swarm (the first expansion). Broodlord/Infester became so boring and dull to watch for months and months while Blizzard didn't do anything. They waited for HotS. And guess what? Want HotS? You have to buy the original as well! Good call! Not greedy at all. So many truly terrible decisions killed SC2 and it's a damn shame. As you can tell, I'm bitter. SC2 had great narratives. Huk vs Korea, Boxer coming back, Nada coming back, Idra (love him or hate him), the EG/TL stuff then Huk going to EG!, so many great runs through GSL or MLG, White-Ra beating MC at that worlds game!, MMA the prodigy of Boxer, MMA vs MVP at Blizzcon, so many great stories. The scene died because Blizzard fucking killed it. My beautiful Starcraft destroyed out of greed and shortsightedness.
When I saw the website and the name and the references to counter strike I immediately thought of GG[1] the french team that was #1st for a pretty long time. Also they were renting servers for a lot of money and they were synonyme with quality (it was always a pleasure to play a match on a goodgame server).
GoodGame has a number of other teams (Team Tinker and Alliance on the DOTA scene?) under management. Thus the name change from EG some time back.
Pro gaming is a commercially interesting scene. I'm not involved but I've had some interesting conversations with people involved in the scene (Garfield included). Talk about a capital-limited environment.
Tinker and Alliance are looking pretty shaky in the long term - Tinker just dropped out of a tournament and Alliance was unable to play games of theirs earlier today. It looks right now like they'll soon see major changes, disband, or become one team. Alliance also sponsors a League of Legends team and a few other teams in other scenes though.
Big congrats to Emmett and Alex. I'm thrilled to see EG and Twitch join forces. Alex is one of the best in the eSports business and this will provide a great home to them.
Oops, forgot to fill this in: "I’ll be doing an AMA tomorrow at [time] on [subreddit] for those of you who have questions or who’re interested in learning more."
Smart move. It's amazing how far the e-sports industry has come in the last few years. When I was invited to compete at CGS Combine (which Alex references in this post), I knew it was way ahead of its time. There's a lot of big opportunities and unsolved problems in this space to tackle.
Because then they have control over the generation of some of their flagship content, which in turn drives revenue. It's no different to Apple buying fab labs, sapphire plants, etc. to ensure that they can continue to churn out cutting edge devices.
I am with you in I am happy too with eSports becoming more mainstream. But I disagree with your perception of "sport thugs" and "purely physical abilities".
Traditional sport stars are looked upon because of their skills, not 'pure physical abilities'. See the recent "one hand catch" on american football. Messi on soccer, NBA best plays of the week. Physical abilities are more of a necessity on pro traditional sports rather than the reason the stars are admired.
At the same time, eSports are not totally "intellectually based". FPS, in my point of view, has the same proportion of skills and strategy as any traditional sports. Games like League of Legends have indeed more strategy involved, but still demand skills. No eSports is like chess or traditional card games, and I guess that is why their are such an interesting show.
This is hilarious. Like the e-sport thugs won't fill that thug-shaped hole. Even more hilarious, strategy games are somehow more "intellectually based" than regular sports.
"Oh, you play single player games, what a weirdo!"
[+] [-] danielvinson|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] sysk|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] bob31|11 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] crazypyro|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] LukeB_UK|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] effekt|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] hkmurakami|11 years ago|reply
The question to me is whether additional acquisitions may be in order. For example, would they perhaps move to acquire Sean Plott's Day[9] TV?
Even in "regular sports", ratings rise when narratives like rivalries or dynasties are in play. We saw the decline of viewership in Starcraft:Broodwar in Korea when such narratives fizzled and when the old stars faded from relevance, despite the considerable increase in overall skill level. Starcraft 2 has arguably suffered from the relative lack of such a narrative, due in part to the fragmentation of its competitive scene. Blizzard has taken matters into its own hands with WCS, following Riot's lead. The question to me is how, if at all, Twitch will involve itself, given that its success depends on content and content very much hinges on narrative.
[1] I am not sure if Amazon is involved with the decision at all, but since Amazon Prime Instant Video is in a platform and content war with Netflix and others, it wouldn't surprise me if they influenced the move.
[+] [-] chez17|11 years ago|reply
>Even in "regular sports", ratings rise when narratives like rivalries or dynasties are in play. We saw the decline of viewership in Starcraft:Broodwar in Korea when such narratives fizzled and when the old stars faded from relevance, despite the considerable increase in overall skill level.
There were new stars and new rivalries. This totally leaves out the Savior scandal, competing games, and how unique and what fluke BW actually was. A game never meant to be played competitively, pushed to it's limits for years and years and years by the players and map makers, broken mechanics that turned out to balance the game near flawlessly. The list goes on and on. BW was an anomoly in the esports world, a game being played competitively 10 years after it's made is not normal. Melee is the only game that comes to mind that is similar. Counter Strike is still being played of course, but not the original game, no patches, like BW or Melee.
>Starcraft 2 has arguably suffered from the relative lack of such a narrative, due in part to the fragmentation of its competitive scene.
I disagree 1000%! SC2 suffered from horrible balance decisions, a battle.net system that was objectively worse than BW and WC3, no LAN, and an over-zealous Blizzards-Activision that wanted to extract as much money as possible as quickly as possible. Things like putting limits on how much a prize pool can be before Blizzard takes a cut actually encouraged tournaments to stay smaller the first year or two of SC2. No LAN meant games would crap out and couldn't be restarted with tens of thousands of dollars on the line. No automated tournaments, no clans, no nothing. Battle.net 2.0 was so bad, such a monumental fuck up, it shows that Blizzard literally had no idea what they were doing and did not care what the community thought. We begged for years for things that were not that hard to implement for a gigantic company like Blizzard. Finally, the balance. When you balance a game for the lowest level player, it may bring a short spike in players but the reward of a high skilled play is gone. There is no reason to work hard and figure things out. The competitive scene suffered due to these decisions. Finally, the worst choice of them all, to let Wings of Liberty (vanilla SC2) fester and die while they developed Heart of the Swarm (the first expansion). Broodlord/Infester became so boring and dull to watch for months and months while Blizzard didn't do anything. They waited for HotS. And guess what? Want HotS? You have to buy the original as well! Good call! Not greedy at all. So many truly terrible decisions killed SC2 and it's a damn shame. As you can tell, I'm bitter. SC2 had great narratives. Huk vs Korea, Boxer coming back, Nada coming back, Idra (love him or hate him), the EG/TL stuff then Huk going to EG!, so many great runs through GSL or MLG, White-Ra beating MC at that worlds game!, MMA the prodigy of Boxer, MMA vs MVP at Blizzcon, so many great stories. The scene died because Blizzard fucking killed it. My beautiful Starcraft destroyed out of greed and shortsightedness.
[+] [-] cliftonk|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] bogardon|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] smrtinsert|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Reebles|11 years ago|reply
In fact Disney simultaneously owned both ESPN and the Anaheim Angels for a number of years before selling the team.
[+] [-] ps4fanboy|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] baby|11 years ago|reply
[1]: http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goodgame_%28%C3%A9quipe%29
[+] [-] aeturnum|11 years ago|reply
Pro gaming is a commercially interesting scene. I'm not involved but I've had some interesting conversations with people involved in the scene (Garfield included). Talk about a capital-limited environment.
[+] [-] IanChiles|11 years ago|reply
EDIT: This also includes D2L - a relatively large DOTA league, as well as parts of CLG (CounterLogic Gaming) - http://clgaming.net/news/611-kelby-may-steps-down-as-general...
[+] [-] MysticFear|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] anxman|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] nperez|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] effekt|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] goeric|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] seanalltogether|11 years ago|reply
http://www.reddit.com/r/leagueoflegends/comments/2osl1p/evil...
[+] [-] baq|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] coralreef|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] socialist_coder|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] effekt|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] NamTaf|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] towelguy|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] LandoCalrissian|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] pselbert|11 years ago|reply
A number of those guys (Ricky, Arturo, Justin) were friends of mine back before I left the scene, long before all of the team business started.
[+] [-] ericglyman|11 years ago|reply
(1) Today's Top Product Hunt - http://www.producthunt.com/posts/hidden-founders (2) One of New Yorker's big Nov. 2014 Stories - http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2014/11/24/programmers-pri...
[+] [-] unknown|11 years ago|reply
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[+] [-] soneca|11 years ago|reply
Traditional sport stars are looked upon because of their skills, not 'pure physical abilities'. See the recent "one hand catch" on american football. Messi on soccer, NBA best plays of the week. Physical abilities are more of a necessity on pro traditional sports rather than the reason the stars are admired.
At the same time, eSports are not totally "intellectually based". FPS, in my point of view, has the same proportion of skills and strategy as any traditional sports. Games like League of Legends have indeed more strategy involved, but still demand skills. No eSports is like chess or traditional card games, and I guess that is why their are such an interesting show.
[+] [-] JetSpiegel|11 years ago|reply
"Oh, you play single player games, what a weirdo!"