Almost forgot about Cup Stacking. You’d think it’d be easy, but man the pros be layin the 'Stack’down on you in about 5 seconds.
Videogames will never be taken seriously as a real sport. Period.
The average person who watches Daigo parry Chun-Li’s Super doesn’t know what the **** is going on. They don’t know the timing required to do such a thing because they aren’t a fan of FG’s in the first place. The distinction comes from the fact that you don’t really need to be a fan of a specific activity to realize what is happening. You don’t need to be a fan of basketball to realize why Lebron James is a physical beast. You don’t need to be a fan of Football to realize why David Tyree’s Superbowl catch was impressive and so iconic. You don’t need to be a fan of Baseball to see why hitting a ball 450+ feet outside a baseball stadium is ridiculous.
One of the most important barriers that Videogames will never get over is the visual aspect. To the average person when they see a match between two “pro’s” in MvC3, they are just going to see people pressing buttons with a bunch of fast moving characters and flashes on the screen.
People on SRK can downplay the “physical” aspect all they want, but that is primarily why Football, Basketball, and Baseball are the 3 top premiere sports in this country. It’s ALL about the physical aspect because that is what is being showcased on highlight reels. No doubt that playing these games require some mental stability, but that’s not what is going to be showcased if they ever try to market FG’s in the first place.
It’s easy to show Kobe Bryant sinking impossible shot after impossible shot, it’s not easy to show the amounts of training J Wong goes through because the activity in itself is not being taken seriously.
hell yeah cup stacking.
anything at the highest level requires tremendous skill and dedication. who cares if anybody can enter a cup stacking tournament, they’d get raped. just like any idiot can play poker at a casino and get ruined. at the end of the day, it is still a meritocracy, and scrubs in whatever tournament for whatever competition will be the first to get weeded out.
It doesn’t matter if it’s considered a "sport’ or not, although like someone (UltraDavid?) said on the front page, sticking an e in front speaks volumes. There’s a good scene and there always has been. SF will NEVER be like one of the major sports and that’s ok. It’s just about getting together with friends and having fun, and at the same time upping your game. For it to get bigger, it needs more people. They’ll have to give something up or dedicate significant time to SF, and how many people want to do that? Especially considering that the new trend is to never have the same game at major tourneys two years in a row (vanilla, super, AE, AE2012, mega, mega+$5, etc). The scene is fine how it is, there’s no need to fantasize that the American public will someday pay significant attention to SF.
As I understand it, people buy tickets to watch things. If we’re using eSports and not eLottery, why hasn’t anyone suggested gaining viewership instead of goading more people into coughing up money by making them think they have a chance at winning bigger money? People (with money) aren’t dumb, and they will figure it out sooner rather than later. It’s not a sustainable system. People have to actual enjoy their money-well-spent.
If there is no viewership and there’s no way to make it so, then that’s the issue we should be addressing. Not sponsorships and fooling people into giving money to enter tournaments. The large viewership is what drives sponsorships… so, isn’t that where we should be trying to fix things? Am I missing something?
You bring up a very good point, that others in various forums and podcasts have discussed before. The learning curve for even observing a game is a lot steeper. With physical sports, even if you don’t understand the high level mind games going on, its a lot more accessible because a casual fan can just appreciate the physical difficulty of it. With a lot of games, you’d have to at least have played to understand why what’s going on is impressive. You’re absolutely correct.
The thing is though, today’s generation of dudes have all grown up gaming. They’ve had a steady diet of RTS, FPS, fighters, so they are already all up to speed. The other thing of course, is for the commentators to do a good job of explaining why the action going on at any given point is interesting. With fighting games that is difficult, because the matches happen so quickly. With stuff like RTS, there are natural lulls in the action, where it is a lot easier to explain shit.
Don’t forget Ricky Ortiz’s Nazi hat!
As for my personal opinion about EMP, It just looked like to me that it was nothing more than some random shmuck who let a bunch of kids play video games at his house and eluded that he was somehow responsible for Justin Wong’s success.
Large viewership only matters if you can actually sell someone something through it and if it’s worthwhile to the companies involved. The people that want to watch it are the people that want to play it. How are you going to sell shit?
It’s not like sports where you can just sell beer, it’s a narrow group of companies that really can gain from it. Which is why most sponsors tend to sell gaming hardware or PC components. In this aspect PC is worth a ton more than consoles because the gamers tend to have more money and are willing to spend more. So it’s logical why PC has exploded, it’s actually worth sponsoring.
Companies want to sell shit. Unless you can translate viewers into sales, the viewers might as well be your dog and cat.
See now, if Evo was held in PCs, we be in that ass getting paper. But instead we have consoles. What we need to do now is ask Evo to switch to PC.
So really:
PC gaming money = Pussy
PC gamers = Ballers
Console gamers = Nerds
Now we know why we ain’t in it.
Its really not that hard to monetize a large gamer viewer base. Today’s audience is going to consist of males ages 15-30. There are a large variety of products that would appeal to them that have nothing to do with PCs. When I watch players streaming their games, or streams of live tournaments, the advertising is diverse, which is exactly what I’d expect. So saying only tech companies would sponsor pro gaming teams or tournaments is incorrect. GSL, the largest korean starcraft 2 tournament has Pepsi as one of its sponsors. Yeah, Pepsi.
You don’t really get to pick the game on PC, who says they’d even bother with fighters at all? You’ll notice PC gaming teams, like the ones that picked up fighting game players, move to whatever game is on PC. That changes like crazy and the gamers don’t have much say. The hardware companies and other external parties often dictate what is played. This has lead to entire squads for games being dropped once the game was stale and couldn’t get money, or money being tossed at games and people quitting the games they like to play the games where the money is at. Or shit like the 250,000 buck Pain Killer tournament a game nobody liked and everybody hated but was then forced to play, and a game nobody played up till the money went there.
nvidia, intel, asus, corsair, razer, all those companies want to sell you thousands of bucks worth of shit every year, and PC gaming events, LANs and players is a great way to do that. But it’s not as if the gamers get to pick what’s there really, you play what pays.
You can get paid to play games, but you’re probably not going to get paid to play a game you like unless they had another reason to pay for it. Keep in mind the vast majority of games don’t really have events that payout on the PC. But there are some that do, and often it’s the case of a developer throwing the event themselves and getting money tossed in, or a hardware company pushing an event for a game because it really shows off their whizbang new product that they want to make sure you buy 600 bucks worth of video card to play.
I’m sure if Sony or MS could figure out a way to make sure you bought $1000 or so worth of new xbox or PS3 every year and everybody went out and did it they’d gladly throw money a things. But since you don’t need to upgrade an xbox like crazy it’s a non issue for them.
View competitive gaming as a way to sell hardware upgrades like crazy, and keep in mind the price of some of these. That’s really what counts.
Starcraft is again a fluke. That was a miracle and it can’t really be replicated. And compared to say professional sports it is much harder to monetize. There is also the little issue that large viewer bases for sports are static compared to games. Football is football, what game is hot or not changes due to various release dates and hardware changes. So trying to concentrate on that one game that gets a ton of penetration is pretty damn hard, outside of Starcraft.
Yes, the viewer base for football is a lot more static than it would be for games, since what is popular does change over time as you have mentioned. So that would be an argument that gamers would never get multi million dollar contracts that top end athletes do. I would tend to agree. But gaming can definitely sustain itself to the point where pros can make a decent living off it.
While individual games come and go, genres themselves are a lot more stable. Because skills in genres tend to carry over, its not as big a problem as you make it out to be. A top RTS/FPS/Fighter player will always place consistently well in their genre no matter what the game, which would give a reason for companies to sponsor individuals and teams. Also, while games themselves may change, famous name brand tournaments like WCG and MLG do not. Again, companies will want to sponsor the tournaments. So while gamers may never become multi millionaires, they can easily (and some already have) make over six figures a year, which is not too shabby. And the more mainstream and accepted gaming becomes in society, the more people will be able to do that.
Yes, it is an uneven system, where the top 5% will take in most of the money. But that’s how it is in professional sports as well, hell that’s how it is in America in general, so that’s kind of a moot point.
Actually our top sports, like football, socialize their earnings. Since some teams are straight up financial losers, but the other teams need to play them. So earnings are distributed and salaries are set, hence why the players all have unions 
I’m all for people with ambition and a dream. It is one of the reasons why this country is so great. But from what he showed, he had no business model. If he did, it was not well thought out I guess. He had some serious potential in his “empire” as far as recruits go. But once he got them, that’s where shit just stalled out. He did not come off to me as a business man.
From what I’ve heard from people who knew him and spoke with him on a regular basis, he seemed real naive as to how businesses really works. It seemed to be his way, or the highway at times. Did Triforce have (arguably) some of if not the best collective pool of talent under his organization? Yes. But did he have leverage? Fuck no. Because there was no market for what he was doing. Compromise 101. Give a little, get a little. I can have a collective pool of the worlds greatest biscuit kickers. But… unless there is a clear market or need for for people who kick biscuits, or people who want to watch people kick biscuits… that “organization” isn’t going too far. And I’m definitely going to get stalled out going in acting like I want shit on my terms and my terms only. Unless it’s clear to the investors/backers how this is profitable or big without you even explaining it i.e. sitting on an obvious goldmine, you better be ready to negotiate. (and that’s after the unlikely case that you some how managed to convince them that a group of skilled fighting game players in a niche market waaaaaaaaaaaaay before the fighting game scene post SFIV… blew up into a semi-mainstream market, would actually be a profitable investment)
And as far as appearances go. Yeah, that power glove thing was a bad idea. I understand what he was trying to say/do with that look and his persona in general. The whole “I am this scene” or “it’s not a hobby, it’s a way of life” type persona. Cool man. But to the investors/backers, it made him look like a cartoon character, not a business man. If I was an investor, I would think I’m dealing with a 35 year old man-child. Many of us can understand his passion for gaming. But the business world doesn’t give a fuck. All they care about is that bottom line. $$$$$$$$ … And business men, want to deal with business men. They don’t take him seriously, they won’t take his idea seriously.
– Jive
Hey, screw you Acerbic.
Painkiller was awesome.
Investor/banker: So, you’ve told me great things about your business proposal over the phone, may I see your business plan?
Triforce: I don’t believe in a business plan, instead I will show you an exhibition on Mario Brothers using my glove.
That’s what I would imagine if he went to the bank for a loan.
We have championship hot dog eating… so, basically yeah…
And I have to agree with the overall tone of this thread. Tri-Force had a great idea but didn’t know how to successfully translate his ideas into a lucrative business where he could make a living on and support his players. From what I saw, the training house was nothing more than a dingy apartment that was cramped. For those into Star Craft, the Korean training houses are fucking insane and extremely professional.
I’m surprised we aren’t mentioning individuals who have done it RIGHT. Let’s take a look at Mr. Wizard who is able to profit from this community website or the creator(s) of GGPO who is able to market his software to companies. If anything, TriForce needs a mentor and drop the pride. Talk to those who have succeeded, knock the dirt of your shoulders, and get back in the game!!!
What the fuck happened to this thread?
If you were a banker/business would any of you back Triforce in anything?