Immediately what has occurred to me is that professional players can make a living out of this. This will help professionalize gaming. Essentially pro players can now create challenge lobbies for money matches. People will pay to play them, and most likely lose.
I don’t think much of the gambling aspect, or of regular joes doing this against regular joes. I certainly won’t use it, though perhaps using Dan could be done to hustle some unsuspecting guys who don’t know the matchup, but the possibilities that this opens for professional players of all levels to earn a living from their gameplay will allow for far more players to dedicate themselves to the game and actually make ends meet.
I’ve asked several pro players on stream if what pros make is enough to earn a living. All of them said that “for a very select few it is possible”.
Not insofar as it relates to my point. Pro players have consistent win streaks, and typically high BP/PP scores that illustrates consistent online results. Their skills do translate into online results.
With this system, those results translate into money. Daigo x Xian online is a questionable affair, but Daigo x SaikyoForever?
lol, no. Pro players aren’t going to make a living off this. Besides being on questionable legal ground for this thing to even happen, this isn’t the golden hen for players trying to get rich playing video games. It’s essentially still poor people trying to money match other poor people in a shitty competitive environment (online) that doesn’t run stable enough to be taken seriously.
The only way people are going to make money is by attracting sponsors willing to inject money into the scene. Sponsors are only going to put money in the scene if they believe it’s a way to make a return on investment. i.e. the money they put in better get returned to them somehow either through customers purchasing their products, or by increased brand awareness via marketing. It’s usually the first part.
And thus it’s no surprises that sponsors are dropping players like flies. They’re clearly under-performing in terms of promoting their brand to achieve practical results.
Define “good money.” If his stream revenue only comes from ads, I can assure you it’s not even close to anything that even a minimum wage job can provide. Even the e-sports guys, who have way more viewers for their top players and personalities than the fighting game scene, aren’t making much on ads.
I don’t actually watch PR Balrog’s stream, but I’ve heard people mention that viewers will often donate money to him. Again, probably still just a minimum wage job, but that’s not bad for just playing video games online in your free time.
Don’t people “subscribe” on Twitch to get channel specific emoticons to spam? I imagine the bigger Twitch guys actually get halfway decent revenue from that don’t they?