



TL;DR : The Heroes of the Storm esports scene is so different than the average player's experience that it disincentivizes engagement, perpetuating a cycle of uninformed players and further disinterest.



It's no secret that Heroes of the Storm has been Blizzard's redheaded stepchild. Any self-respecting Redditor has seen the cries of despair from the community: the ghost-town of the merchandise section, the big-brother house that is the HotS staff department and of course, the slap in the face that became the OWL with it's very own battlenet tab.



We can't really blame Blizzard for these things; they are a corporation that seeks financial sustainability and growth. They can't altruistically invest more into a game than it seeks to reward them even if they loved Heroes of the Storm and really wanted to. Even though they've been growing the HGC, the numbers are still nowhere close to other tournaments in the same genre. I'd like to look at some figures and argue their relevance.



Tournament Viewership Calculations

When watching championships and finals for events like DOTA and League of Legends, we see viewership increase by very large proportions.*



League of Legends:

Average Daily Twitch Viewership: 140,000

Average Concurrent Tournament Viewership: 33,000,000

Increase: 23,471% increase



DOTA 2:

Average Daily Twitch Viewership: 56,000

Average Concurrent Tournament Twitch Viewership: 4,700,000

Percentage Involvement: 8,283% increase



Heroes of the Storm: It's no secret that Heroes of the Storm has been Blizzard's redheaded stepchild. Any self-respecting Redditor has seen the cries of despair from the community: the ghost-town of the merchandise section, the big-brother house that is the HotS staff department and of course, the slap in the face that became the OWL with it's very own battlenet tab.We can't really blame Blizzard for these things; they are a corporation that seeks financial sustainability and growth. They can't altruistically invest more into a game than it seeks to reward them even if they loved Heroes of the Storm and really wanted to. Even though they've been growing the HGC, the numbers are still nowhere close to other tournaments in the same genre. I'd like to look at some figures and argue their relevance.When watching championships and finals for events like DOTA and League of Legends, we see viewership increase by very large proportions.*Average Daily Twitch Viewership: 140,000Average Concurrent Tournament Viewership: 33,000,000Increase: 23,471% increaseAverage Daily Twitch Viewership: 56,000Average Concurrent Tournament Twitch Viewership: 4,700,000Percentage Involvement: 8,283% increase

Average (daily) Twitch Viewership: 8,700

Average Concurrent Tournament Twitch Viewership: 50,000

Percentage Involvement: 474% increase



So why are these stats relevant? Well, since Blizzard refuses to disclose the numbers for the HotS population, we have to infer one of two possibilities. Either an unusually high proportion of the HotS population is watching HotS on Twitch every day, or quite the opposite, a very small proportion ever watches HotS on Twitch. I would argue the latter. Since a higher than normal proportion of the DOTA2 playerbase watch Twitch on a regular basis** the discrepancy in % increase is somewhat explained for the DOTA/LoL differential. This is only natural as the level of competitiveness in any given game would mean a higher percentage of people viewing the game on Twitch. More casual games will lead to lesser Twitch involvement. HotS is seen as the more casual version of these games and it therefore makes sense that it has a low tournament viewership compared to average daily viewership, but numerically it's too low. This suggests that something more than just being less competitive is going on.



The Murky or the Egg Problem

So here lies the foundation of my argument: The HGC is underwatched because the average Heroes of the Storm climate is so casual that it's essentially a different game from what's happening in the HGC. Think about it, many people are excited to watch their favorite esports online because they want to see what they could be capable of doing. Quick match doesn't provide a frame of reference for people to understand the HGC, but yet, quick match is the most commonly played game mode by a large margin for most people.



This leads us to wonder, does the HGC fail to thrive because too many people are playing quick match? Or are so many people playing quick match because the HotS esports scene fails to capture people's attention? If I enjoy playing casually with off-meta heroes like Murky, what incentive do I have to watch HGC? I'll never see my favorite heroes or strategy styles represented there.



Moreover, in games like DOTA or League, where strategy is to "hypercarry", players can watch and learn tips and tricks on how to win and advance in ranks based on what strategies and techniques are used to level up or hold lanes. They watch tournaments and see stellar feats that they can replicate in their own games. The same does not hold as true for HotS because in quick match (once again I reiterate, the most popular game mode by far), the likelihood of having to adapt to strange circumstances you would simply never see in the HGC makes it a completely different game.



This effect trickles over to other modes of play (ranked or unranked) where the lack of incentive to watch Heroes of the Storm entails a lack of knowledge about optimal strategies by the average player. Those who do watch tend to get frustrated when they try to implement proper strategies and no one follows their lead. People choose Sylvannas on Battlefield of Eternity, for example, without an understanding that the enemy lineup will win the immortal every time, thus rendering her nearly useless.



Stopping this cycle would require either a massive undertaking to make the esports scene more interesting and desirable to watch (offering skins or mounts, unfortunately, isn't really the solution) for the average player or, conversely, to make changes to the Quick Match mode of play that make it more reflective of optimal strategies. My guess would be a mixture of both. If Blizzard would fine tune this balance to successful levels, I think we would begin to see a large upward spiral in the growth of Heroes of the Storm.



*Numbers taken from Twitchmetrics and esc.watch. Tournament numbers are reflective of the DOTA2, League of Legends and HGC finals for 2017.

**Roughly around 11% based on independent calculations as opposed to League's 3%.