The StarCraft 2 professional scene is coming up on its three year birthday. Over that period, we, the fans, have seen seasoned pros leave the circuit, countless tournaments, and a war against elephants.

The tournament scene has been especially volatile since its inception. The low cost of entry for online events has made it a crowded place. It takes a lot to stand out and different companies have tried crazy things to do so.

More talent behind the camera, exotic locales, hiring professional comedians and recycling popular personalities from the community, every idea was tried at least once in an effort to draw viewers to an event. It’s been an arms race, where the viewers have reaped all the benefits. Broadcasts have gone from standard definition to high definition. Fantastic faces of the community have emerged, with Clutch and Redeye leading the charge, both now treated as old friends by many of the viewers. Interesting packages during downtime and breaks, and unique one offs like mini documentaries and flash animation specials all kept people from closing their browsers.

The competition between GOM, NASL, ESL and others has pushed all of them to put their best product forward. Now, thanks to blizzard and the community creating custom tool sets within the game, we are finally going to see some much needed changes to the user interface.

The experimentation process for the UI has already begun. For example, in the last six months different tournaments have increased, decreased, moved it around and completely hidden the minimap, all in an attempt to better the viewing experience, with the hope to reduce viewer erosion. The in-game clock is another object that has moved around the screen like crazy, each company trying to discover the perfect spot to put it.

More information is being added, while simultaneously taking up less screen real estate allowing the game itself to shine through and dominate. The added information has only served to benefit the high level viewers as they can now instantly tell who is winning and losing without actually looking at the battle, numbers telling the whole story.

This brings up a major issue that has slowly emerged during this Wild West UI period. The idea that, for the viewers, more information is better. Watching a game on GOM, you are inundated with numbers upon numbers. Minerals per minute, gas per minute, what’s the different in supply count between the two players, how many workers are mining at each base, the list goes on, if that data can be pulled real time from the game you can bet its appears somewhere on the screen.

This is a great feature for myself and other former Grandmaster, Masters and Diamond level players, who can actively parse the data that is thrown at us and extract the useful knowledge. For the rest of the viewers, it only serves to hurt the overall experience.

Newer fans are hurt the most. The sheer amount of information, with the constantly shifting variables only serves to confuse them, forcing them to ask questions like which numbers are important which ones are worthless?

I’ve seen this confusion first hand as I’ve attempted to get some of my friends into the scene. Some of them have soldiered through the confusion, as some level of active players of other video games they grasp the basics pretty quickly. The complaints I receive most often have to do with what all the numbers mean.

That’s why I would like to propose a test for a new UI, a minimalistic approach, one that strips all the numbers off the screen except for the game clock. The most important removal, the supply count.

Not only would this serve to reduce confusion amongst newer fans, but it would also benefit the game for older more experienced fans, while simultaneously allowing the casters to provide more thrilling commentary.

As it stands currently there are really only two parts to every game, the lead up to the big battle, and the after effects of the big battle. The supply count serves as a metric, a shorthand for the casters to easily explain who’s ahead and behind. It’s a nice tool to have in the early game, it shows who is macroing better, or who is playing slower. It morphs into a source of frustration after the big battles.

Casters use it as a crutch, no longer surveying the battlefield to guess who has won, but boringly announcing it based off of a number. Then depending on the difference between the two numbers, they might already declare a winner, no matter that some of the players continue playing for up to ten or fifteen more minutes.

It no longer matters that Polt is still in the game, casters have already told us he has lost. Its inconsequential that interesting things are happening on screen, MarineKingPrime should be leaving the game, it has been over for at least five minutes. These early game calls have only served one purpose, to drive always viewers from the back half of games.

If casters are telling us it’s over, or there is nothing that MC can do to win, the viewers begin to ask why they’re wasting time watching this? I personally, may go make myself some lunch so I can watch the next game, or maybe do a quick chore around the house. By removing the supply count from the casting and viewing screen, casters wouldn’t be able to call the game right away, making every moment that much more exciting even after the epic battles, forcing viewers to stay close to their screens to not miss a second.

You want to know the best part of this wild theory? We know it already works. In Broodwar, the parent game of StarCraft 2, for the longest time the supply counts weren’t ever shown. Forcing the casters to never count someone out, and the director of the game to keep an eye on everything, in case one of the players secretly has a big army back at their base. It was an exciting time to be a fan, a time we can easily replicate.

I’m not asking that all tournaments immediately switch over to broodwar style UI’s, but to at least think about it. Think about hiding some information, that maybe not knowing is more exciting for the viewers overall experience than knowing every little detail. That by forcing the casters to discuss the narrative of the game, rather than the raw data, makes for more engaging experience, instead of math class, just with a video game. But no matter what, consider getting rid of the supply count.

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