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Megaton. Overwatch League comes to ESPN(Main ESPN not the Ocho), Disney and ABC!
- Thread starter Parenegade
- Start date
I agree in terms of burden of knowledge, Overwatch is easier than mobas, but in terms of tracking what is going on it's much harder. Trying to keep spatial understanding when the camera is going from first person to third person to top down and all different angles is difficult. When you combine that with the visual noise I can barely keep up even though i've been watching esports for years and played a lot of Overwatch. If you can parse that noise and camera jumping then yeah, it's easier to understand than a League or Dota, but I definitely don't think it's a good spectator game for casual people.
Well yeah RTS definitely has the advantage with the overhead map view but I think shooters will always have an advantage for the casual crowd even if it gets hard to follow. I don't think ESPN would do this deal for a RTS game or something like that.
Did anyone actually ask for this?
We now know why they asked for so much money to participate in the league in the first place, to make those TV deals.
It will still bomb though, to hectic and too deep for the casual tv viewer. Rocket League would be the perfect match to introduce Esports to TV
We now know why they asked for so much money to participate in the league in the first place, to make those TV deals.
It will still bomb though, to hectic and too deep for the casual tv viewer. Rocket League would be the perfect match to introduce Esports to TV
This thread: "But why not the game I like more?!"
Really happy that Overwatch is getting this much deserved attention. They're the only contenders for eSports that are actually trying to put together a viable mainstream product, and I'm excited to see where it goes in the future as it grows.
The big question will be how they progress years down the road (i.e. what type of updates we'll see visually, or do the backend of the game, etc). It's gonna have even longer legs because of this deal.
Really happy that Overwatch is getting this much deserved attention. They're the only contenders for eSports that are actually trying to put together a viable mainstream product, and I'm excited to see where it goes in the future as it grows.
The big question will be how they progress years down the road (i.e. what type of updates we'll see visually, or do the backend of the game, etc). It's gonna have even longer legs because of this deal.
Lol hell no, unless they bring in specialized people for those conversations, they won't touch it outside of maybe subtle digs at it.
Fighting games imo are very easy to follow, but you're right in the sense that you'd have to convey to a casual audience that the players aren't just button mashing.
I'm not sure if I want to make a thread for it, but I think there is an interesting discussion to be had as to why Fighting Games aren't more popular to spectate.
The argument that they are easier to understand while spectating, with a fixed camera with all information available to see, lifebars clearly showing who is winning, etc. is often made in any thread about eSports watch-ability, but the real numbers contradict this, and despite having multiple team members to track, switching view perspectives, etc. other genres like FPS, MOBA, RTS, all trounce fighting games in viewership and eSports size and growth historically outside of the biggest fighting events and more recent games/pushes for bigger eSports status.
People often compare it to the dominance of Football, Basketball, Baseball, Soccer outside the US, compared to the lesser size of Boxing and MMA as a direct comparison. Is that truly the end of it? Are people inherently less inclined to invest in a solo competitor rather than a team?
Are the majority of spectators of Overwatch or LoL players themselves? Could fighting games have a retention issue where prospective viewers are turned away from following the games due to a bad experience getting beat bad in the game when trying it themselves due to the 1v1 nature, poor tutorialization, execution requirements, poor skill matchmaking or other criticized aspects of the genre?
The argument that they are easier to understand while spectating, with a fixed camera with all information available to see, lifebars clearly showing who is winning, etc. is often made in any thread about eSports watch-ability, but the real numbers contradict this, and despite having multiple team members to track, switching view perspectives, etc. other genres like FPS, MOBA, RTS, all trounce fighting games in viewership and eSports size and growth historically outside of the biggest fighting events and more recent games/pushes for bigger eSports status.
People often compare it to the dominance of Football, Basketball, Baseball, Soccer outside the US, compared to the lesser size of Boxing and MMA as a direct comparison. Is that truly the end of it? Are people inherently less inclined to invest in a solo competitor rather than a team?
Are the majority of spectators of Overwatch or LoL players themselves? Could fighting games have a retention issue where prospective viewers are turned away from following the games due to a bad experience getting beat bad in the game when trying it themselves due to the 1v1 nature, poor tutorialization, execution requirements, poor skill matchmaking or other criticized aspects of the genre?
I know this has NOTHING to do with Fortnite, but I have to wonder if Epic will do a similar deal? I mean they are already investing millions of dollars into competitions.
Oddly enough a lot of regular sports fans really liked that SFV tournament last year on ESPN though.
Transaction window hasn't opened up since the last time you ask, next round of signings will be after October 31st. Ask then. and its around 95%.
I hear this a lot too, I wonder if they'll ever expand. This is probably the 2nd thing I hear the most other than 99% of the league being white and asian men.
All of them already are.
They use defaults with team colors.
"Financial suicide" doesn't make sense at all. That's not how this stuff works.
It's also not "difficult-to-follow." At least, not more than any "regular" sport when you first start watching it before learning the specific rules.
Those who know nothing about Overwatch will understand that the goal is to move a vehicle to a certain point or hold a a point longer than the other team -- much like those who know nothing about football will turn it on and understand that the goal is to get the ball into the end zone.
I can't even imagine there being true. A good player on most/all characters is fun to watch.
Fighting games gotta be the easiest competitive games for the totally uninformed to watch and understand. They were designed to stop a 9 year old on his way home from school dead in his tracks when walked by the cabinet at the corner store and instantly know which teenager was getting his ass kicked.
It's here to stay though. Multi-year is the smart thing for everyone involved.
I've played hundreds of hours of Overwatch and I find it even more boring than you! I think I've watched it on 3 separate occasions, 30 minutes each time.
Being upset with esports as if its its getting in the way is pretty funny, ESPN doesnt air anything relevant on fridays anyway. Sunday, Monday and Wednesday nights are their primetime nights for Baseball, Football, and Basketball. Boxing is on Saturdays on occasion, College Football is on Saturdays.
Friday has nothing, why not Esports
Friday has nothing, why not Esports
Friday is usually a dead slot on ESPN anyway outside Basketball season, it's a good timing line-up.
I see this more from the perspective of ESPN being desperate for viewers more than esports "making it"
Were they really? That's crazy, what kinda stuff got through? I still can't get over the fact last year that a Smash player flat out yelled "FUCK YEAH!" on Disney XD because they were airing the Smash finals live with, I guess, no delay?
(I also always loved how there's commenters on this video claiming it was fake lol)
I have a older friend who can't play games at all but can follow SFV pretty easily.
StarCraft
And Blizzard is still trying to make up for it becoming an eSport outside of their control to this day
Primetime ESPN holy shit.
Also players were already starting to be put under heavy scrutiny. Now with prime time television on the table? At least theyll all stop being toxic assholes.
Also players were already starting to be put under heavy scrutiny. Now with prime time television on the table? At least theyll all stop being toxic assholes.
Most are straight forward, especially SF. The aim is to beat the other guy, literally. That's step 1. The rest is then just the viewer slowly getting to understand the intricacies of each game, in SF's case special moves and the V Skills/Triggers. On a casual watch it's still one of the easier to understand games Vs many anime fighters.
To be fair, how many sports fans actually play the sport they passionately view? Surprisingly, I've met many that don't actively do the sport in any form, but are passionate about a team. Like, it's almost opposite ends of the spectrum passion for both - they refuse to play the sport but they'll love to watch someone else. My point is you don't need to be a fan of playing a game in order to understand it well. But I guess other fighting games (to you), is like cricket for Americans, maybe.
That's not true at all, the nuance and deeper strategy is what makes the games worth playing, but just spectating you really don't need to have any understanding of a fighting game's core gameplay to appreciate watching it. Most fighting games are visually fun to look at and at a glance it's really easy to understand who's winning. Additionally the pacing of a fighting game is comparatively pretty fast when you compare it to most other games, there's not a whole lot of downtime where little is happening. The big reason why fighting games aren't more popular is that people primarily watch the esports of games that they actually play (or have played at one point) and fighting games are substantially smaller games in terms of popularity then most of the other really big esport games.
On-topic it's cool that some game is getting recognition but I really wish it was just about any other game besides Overwatch. Despite Blizzard investing millions of dollars into the game and the scene around it Overwatch is still horrid to watch for me. I've watched a lot of different Esports games over the year and Overwatch is easily one of the worst to watch. It's hard to tell what's going on and the pacing is wack. No amount of production values is going to change that.
This! Overwatch was huge at launch but it's not even close to the popularity of Fortnite, especially now when Overwatch esport struggle to get views on twitch, we'll see how it goes.
Fortnite is a phenom. Nothing is close.
Overwatch is still huge. Overwatch deserves it more as it's put the effort and money in it. It's creating the scene.
Watching Disney XD stream and saw something about Street Fighter V in a nutshell.
That's interesting.
That's interesting.