zeppelin Profile Joined December 2007 United States 565 Posts Last Edited: 2010-09-15 03:45:42 #1 Introduction



By now it’s well understood that Battle.net 2.0 has problems. There are many instances where it represents a step back not only from the original version of the service, but also from improvements the community has made over the years through ICCUP and other unofficial additions. I’m going to avoid discussion on those as much as possible. Talking about these issues like no cross-realm play, no multiplayer replays, observers lagging the game, and the map publishing system is a waste of time because it’s all been done to death. I’m also nowhere near a top player so I can’t comment on the state of balance at all, nor am I a sufficiently self-styled game designer to actually recommend changes to address any balance issues.



Blizzard correctly realizes that a major part of sc2’s success as an eSport is whether or not it will live long enough for players to concentrate on it with the same intensity that they would a career. This requires not only that the game be balanced at a high level of play, but that enough people are watching to justify sponsorship money, which justifies player compensation, which drives the competition that get people to watch in the first place. This also has to last for a long period of time or else would-be pros will be timid about making long-term commitments to the game.



This article isn’t about that though. This article is about the fan side of eSports. This is about how to get the fans and how to keep them. Blizzard is trying to force sc2 to grow as an eSport from the top down. Without a similar effort to grow it from the bottom up, it may ultimately be millions of dollars wasted.



1. You Don’t Go if You Don’t Know





Rejected alternate title: Even Coca-Cola Advertises



As of the time I’m writing this, there are about 6,000 people reading TL right now. At the same time, there are about 750,000 people on battle.net. Even if you only include the NA server and exclude WoW players (though if Blizzard is smart they’re trying to make those players into eSports consumers as well), there are about 13,000 games going on right now. This means that at an unrealistically bare minimum there are double that many people online. This is a huge market and judging from how many people watch streamed tournaments right now, most of it has not yet been tapped.



The recent growth of TL as seen in Figure 1 below only serves to emphasize that when people are aware of the product being presented, they’re very likely to become interested in it. Starcraft 2 the eSport’s popularity would appear to be more constrained by its exposure than its quality.





Figure 1: blah blah Alexa, I don’t care it proves my point okay



As good as that growth curve looks it still only peaks at a 0.04% daily reach, and if I’ve learned one thing from reading TL, you can never have too much reach (Figure 2).





Figure 2: still not too much reach



In this case, reach refers to the percentage of your target audience who is aware of your product or service. Consider the recent example of GSL. If you didn’t read TL or reddit, follow Starcraft on Facebook, or know anyone who does these things, how would you know GSL exists? Maybe it was one of the “News & Community” fast flip articles on the game’s splash screen, but if it was it’s not there anymore. The reach of this event so far is very low, especially when compared to the amount of money which has been invested in it. IEM/MLG have had some coverage but these are all persistent events and should get enough coverage so that as many people as possible are excited to tune in and so that they know when and how to do so.



So, a big issue with the popularity of competitive events is that most of the audience simply isn’t aware of them. This appears to me to be a simple problem with a simple solution. Provide a mechanism inside the game client to let all users on a server know when a tournament is taking place like a blinking trophy next to the menu button or something. If Blizzard wants to make a scheme out of it, just charge the tournament organizers $100 or 1% of the purse or something to let them take advantage of this feature. I’m sure sponsors will gladly pay the money if they see huge increases in the number of viewers their tournaments get. Blizzard can even sweeten the deal and integrate some functionality similar to Waaagh!TV into the client. That way, if an event is happening on your server, you can bypass tracking down the livestream channel and dealing with lag. Instead, you can watch it right from inside the game as if you were an observer in it.



Conclusion: if knowledge of competitive events is better distributed and the events are made more convenient to watch, more people will watch. More viewers = more sponsors = happy eSports community.



2. The Community Wants To Do Your Job





If anyone builds it, they will come.



Blizzard is lucky. They have some of the most talented, dedicated, and ambitious fans in the world. With the release of sc2, the community is creating tons of content. This may be out of genuine interest, but it could also be in the hopes of being on the ground floor of what everyone hopes is an eSports phenomenon. Regardless of the motive, it’s there. Why not tap it? As Michael Eisner said when he plagiarized Bill Gates, who probably stole it from someone else, “Content is king.”



This point isn’t necessarily about the battle.net site linking to TL write-ups about tournament results though; it’s about something more ambitious. The reason I used user streams for the heading of this section is because people love making them and people love watching them. Every single time you play a game on battle.net, you are creating potential content. It’s time to realize the potential.



Building on the concept of Waaagh!TV, battle.net should allow players the ability to observe random ladder games live. Put it on a delay, disable chat, make the player names anonymous, do whatever needs to be done to reduce the risk of cheating to an acceptable level, but let people do it. You could even let the observer specify filters: games with certain race matchups, games on certain maps, and player skill level such as “lowest possible”, “highest possible”, or “closest to me”. This has benefits both in player retention and in getting players used to the idea that watching others play can be a fun activity (similar to what I imagine was the aim in the battle reports).



Conclusion: People love observing games but many of them may not realize it. Use the functionally limitless content the player base is already generating to get them hooked. Once that happens, they'll be much more likely to tune in when money is on the line.



3. Give People An Excuse To Slack Off





The last thing someone wants to do at work is their job.



In the US, the most popular computer game that did not originate on Facebook is fantasy football. There are many reasons for this, but one of the biggest ones is that it gives bored office workers something to do at work. Everyone has sites they look at during the day to kill time for one reason or another, but they only have so much time to kill. If you’re not engaged by what you’re looking at, you’re going to go to the next site on your rounds.



Blizzard obviously understands this to some extent. Both war3 and sc2 have had user profile pages online and the battle.net site is updated almost daily with articles and polls. In my opinion, this is a good start, but it is not a complete picture of the browser-based experience that can and should be associated with the game. I’ve listed below the things that I think are essential to be able to follow online, how they are currently being implemented, and what improvements could be made.



How am I doing?

Currently, if I’m anything but a top player and I want to go online to see how I’m doing, these are my options:

• Player stats on profile page identical to in-game profile, provides a glance view but not much else

• sc2ranks.com provides a better view of overall standings but because the rating system only provides absolute ratings relative to the player’s own division, many of the comparisons are inaccurate



Suggestion 1: Currently missing huge opportunity for statistical analysis. Why can’t I see what my worst map is, my best racial matchup, or even what my record is against 6poolers? Depending on what statistics Blizzard is keeping internally, this is almost trivially easy to do.



Suggestion 2: I can’t claim to know what Blizzard is planning on for pro league, but in my opinion it should be a single division that anyone in diamond league can opt in to. Whatever rationale they have for the current system can remain applicable to the target audience for that system, and the people that want a system like ICCUP are given a choice to participate in one.



How are my friends/rivals doing?

If I want to see how people I know or people I might be playing against are doing, what can I do?



Most of this was already covered by the points above. Sure, you can see where your friends are ranked in their divisions but what if you want to grudge one of them and want to know their worst map? What if you want to size up your clan against a rival? I will discuss rivals in the next section. The absence of clan support is a gaping hole in Blizzard’s eSports strategy right now.



How are the pros doing?

If I want to see how a top player or team is doing, these are my options:

• Blizzard Top 200 posts and major tournament recaps provide per-player information but in an infrequent and incomplete form

• TL provides a comprehensive view of the tournament scene with weekly Tournament Roundup article series

• sc2ranks.com gives a persistent view of rankings, but again, lack of absolute consistency in the rating system makes this less authoritative



If Blizzard doesn’t want to create this content themselves, then at the very least they should provide links to the people that do. This goes back to points 1 and 2. People are willing to do the work for you, so if you make people aware of that work, you will be rewarded with increased publicity. It’s win-win for everyone.



Conclusion: there is not a shortage of bored people in the world. Develop content for people to follow or acknowledge what is being done by the community. Your spectator base will go up and they will be more enthusiastic about it.



4. Emotional Investment



http://www.thepyramid.info/asp/pyramid3.asp

I was going to put a picture of the pyramid here but it would have been larger than the rest of this article.



Finally, we have the last point: emotional investment. People are more likely to be interested in competing in something when there is some formal nature behind it. This is why the rec league sports teams I’ve played in where we get uniform shirts and a website with division standings have a lot more interest than when everyone is told to show up wearing whatever red t-shirt they have and no one knows what place the team is in. As an American, I have always been jealous of the structure of the Football Association, because every team, no matter how insignificant, has a direct connection to the Premiership. Feeling like you’re actually part of something motivates competitors, and when competitors are motivated, they will be more likely to show interest in watching competitions.



How can this be done in the context of sc2? The obvious answer is by actually implementing a clan system first, but it should be done in a way that gets people involved. Take a page from Dawn of War’s book. Let clans specify their own sets of team colors and decals to use. I loved the green laser protoss in the campaign. Why not let a clan choose that look or develop our own? Let them only use them in clan league matches if you feel like it doesn’t have a place on ladder, and let observers have the ability to turn them off if an offensive decal is used. You could even require clans to specify ‘home’ and ‘away’ colors so that if two clans use a similar color scheme, one will randomly be chosen to use their alternatives to keep things looking clean.



Once you’ve done that, make the pro clan league opt-in and now everyone involved can feel a little bit like EG or whatever when they compete. You can set up clan tournaments and division systems as well. Couple that with point 3 and you’ve got people spending time on your website because they’re sizing up their clan opponents for their next match. This has a feedback effect because players develop rivals, which means they develop emotional interest in the outcome of matches, which means they’re more interested in watching them. You now have more dedicated eSports spectators.



As a personal example, I love watching college football regardless of who is playing. I started by only following my alma mater's team, but that grew into a general interest in the game itself.



Conclusion: clans by nature are going to have more competitive players than the general ladder population. The regular rules applied to ladder games should not apply because the intent of the clan system should be to keep clans interested in competing.



Wrap-Up



It’s still very early in the history of sc2 as an eSport. We all certainly hope that it has a long history. I personally feel that it’s just as important to get these sorts of things right as it is to make the game itself as balanced and engaging as can be. It’s frustrating to me that issues like this are not given the attention they need, so hopefully this was a step in the right direction for that. The reason I think this is so important is it because it benefits everybody. Aspiring top players have motivation to be noticed by a larger audience. People from outside the starcraft community get the potential to discover a new hobby. Lower tier diamond players get the thrill of feeling like they’re part of something. All of this keeps people coming back for more, which is what needs to happen to truly solidify sc2 as a successful eSport.



Feedback is welcome. I realize some of my ideas may seem difficult to implement, but Blizzard is a company with virtually infinite amounts of development resources. If their stated goal is to make sc2 the ultimate competitive game, then we’re within our rights to hold them to that standard in every aspect of the game’s design and presentation. There also may be some privacy concerns with ladder games being observable (even with anonymous player names), but even if this was made opt-in I think enough people enjoy sharing their games with the community that it would be sustainable. By now it’s well understood that Battle.net 2.0 has problems. There are many instances where it represents a step back not only from the original version of the service, but also from improvements the community has made over the years through ICCUP and other unofficial additions. I’m going to avoid discussion on those as much as possible. Talking about these issues like no cross-realm play, no multiplayer replays, observers lagging the game, and the map publishing system is a waste of time because it’s all been done to death. I’m also nowhere near a top player so I can’t comment on the state of balance at all, nor am I a sufficiently self-styled game designer to actually recommend changes to address any balance issues.Blizzard correctly realizes that a major part of sc2’s success as an eSport is whether or not it will live long enough for players to concentrate on it with the same intensity that they would a career. This requires not only that the game be balanced at a high level of play, but that enough people are watching to justify sponsorship money, which justifies player compensation, which drives the competition that get people to watch in the first place. This also has to last for a long period of time or else would-be pros will be timid about making long-term commitments to the game.This article isn’t about that though. This article is about the fan side of eSports. This is about how to get the fans and how to keep them. Blizzard is trying to force sc2 to grow as an eSport from the top down. Without a similar effort to grow it from the bottom up, it may ultimately be millions of dollars wasted.As of the time I’m writing this, there are about 6,000 people reading TL right now. At the same time, there are about 750,000 people on battle.net. Even if you only include the NA server and exclude WoW players (though if Blizzard is smart they’re trying to make those players into eSports consumers as well), there are about 13,000 games going on right now. This means that at an unrealistically bare minimum there are double that many people online. This is a huge market and judging from how many people watch streamed tournaments right now, most of it has not yet been tapped.The recent growth of TL as seen in Figure 1 below only serves to emphasize that when people are aware of the product being presented, they’re very likely to become interested in it. Starcraft 2 the eSport’s popularity would appear to be more constrained by its exposure than its quality.As good as that growth curve looks it still only peaks at a 0.04% daily reach, and if I’ve learned one thing from reading TL, you can never have too much reach (Figure 2).In this case, reach refers to the percentage of your target audience who is aware of your product or service. Consider the recent example of GSL. If you didn’t read TL or reddit, follow Starcraft on Facebook, or know anyone who does these things, how would you know GSL exists? Maybe it was one of the “News & Community” fast flip articles on the game’s splash screen, but if it was it’s not there anymore. The reach of this event so far is very low, especially when compared to the amount of money which has been invested in it. IEM/MLG have had some coverage but these are all persistent events and should get enough coverage so that as many people as possible are excited to tune in and so that they know when and how to do so.So, a big issue with the popularity of competitive events is that most of the audience simply isn’t aware of them. This appears to me to be a simple problem with a simple solution. Provide a mechanism inside the game client to let all users on a server know when a tournament is taking place like a blinking trophy next to the menu button or something. If Blizzard wants to make a scheme out of it, just charge the tournament organizers $100 or 1% of the purse or something to let them take advantage of this feature. I’m sure sponsors will gladly pay the money if they see huge increases in the number of viewers their tournaments get. Blizzard can even sweeten the deal and integrate some functionality similar to Waaagh!TV into the client. That way, if an event is happening on your server, you can bypass tracking down the livestream channel and dealing with lag. Instead, you can watch it right from inside the game as if you were an observer in it.Conclusion: if knowledge of competitive events is better distributed and the events are made more convenient to watch, more people will watch. More viewers = more sponsors = happy eSports community.Blizzard is lucky. They have some of the most talented, dedicated, and ambitious fans in the world. With the release of sc2, the community is creating tons of content. This may be out of genuine interest, but it could also be in the hopes of being on the ground floor of what everyone hopes is an eSports phenomenon. Regardless of the motive, it’s there. Why not tap it? As Michael Eisner said when he plagiarized Bill Gates, who probably stole it from someone else, “Content is king.”This point isn’t necessarily about the battle.net site linking to TL write-ups about tournament results though; it’s about something more ambitious. The reason I used user streams for the heading of this section is because people love making them and people love watching them. Every single time you play a game on battle.net, you are creating potential content. It’s time to realize the potential.Building on the concept of Waaagh!TV, battle.net should allow players the ability to observe random ladder games live. Put it on a delay, disable chat, make the player names anonymous, do whatever needs to be done to reduce the risk of cheating to an acceptable level, but let people do it. You could even let the observer specify filters: games with certain race matchups, games on certain maps, and player skill level such as “lowest possible”, “highest possible”, or “closest to me”. This has benefits both in player retention and in getting players used to the idea that watching others play can be a fun activity (similar to what I imagine was the aim in the battle reports).Conclusion: People love observing games but many of them may not realize it. Use the functionally limitless content the player base is already generating to get them hooked. Once that happens, they'll be much more likely to tune in when money is on the line.In the US, the most popular computer game that did not originate on Facebook is fantasy football. There are many reasons for this, but one of the biggest ones is that it gives bored office workers something to do at work. Everyone has sites they look at during the day to kill time for one reason or another, but they only have so much time to kill. If you’re not engaged by what you’re looking at, you’re going to go to the next site on your rounds.Blizzard obviously understands this to some extent. Both war3 and sc2 have had user profile pages online and the battle.net site is updated almost daily with articles and polls. In my opinion, this is a good start, but it is not a complete picture of the browser-based experience that can and should be associated with the game. I’ve listed below the things that I think are essential to be able to follow online, how they are currently being implemented, and what improvements could be made.Currently, if I’m anything but a top player and I want to go online to see how I’m doing, these are my options:• Player stats on profile page identical to in-game profile, provides a glance view but not much else• sc2ranks.com provides a better view of overall standings but because the rating system only provides absolute ratings relative to the player’s own division, many of the comparisons are inaccurateSuggestion 1: Currently missing huge opportunity for statistical analysis. Why can’t I see what my worst map is, my best racial matchup, or even what my record is against 6poolers? Depending on what statistics Blizzard is keeping internally, this is almost trivially easy to do.Suggestion 2: I can’t claim to know what Blizzard is planning on for pro league, but in my opinion it should be a single division that anyone in diamond league can opt in to. Whatever rationale they have for the current system can remain applicable to the target audience for that system, and the people that want a system like ICCUP are given a choice to participate in one.If I want to see how people I know or people I might be playing against are doing, what can I do?Most of this was already covered by the points above. Sure, you can see where your friends are ranked in their divisions but what if you want to grudge one of them and want to know their worst map? What if you want to size up your clan against a rival? I will discuss rivals in the next section. The absence of clan support is a gaping hole in Blizzard’s eSports strategy right now.If I want to see how a top player or team is doing, these are my options:• Blizzard Top 200 posts and major tournament recaps provide per-player information but in an infrequent and incomplete form• TL provides a comprehensive view of the tournament scene with weekly Tournament Roundup article series• sc2ranks.com gives a persistent view of rankings, but again, lack of absolute consistency in the rating system makes this less authoritativeIf Blizzard doesn’t want to create this content themselves, then at the very least they should provide links to the people that do. This goes back to points 1 and 2. People are willing to do the work for you, so if you make people aware of that work, you will be rewarded with increased publicity. It’s win-win for everyone.Conclusion: there is not a shortage of bored people in the world. Develop content for people to follow or acknowledge what is being done by the community. Your spectator base will go up and they will be more enthusiastic about it.Finally, we have the last point: emotional investment. People are more likely to be interested in competing in something when there is some formal nature behind it. This is why the rec league sports teams I’ve played in where we get uniform shirts and a website with division standings have a lot more interest than when everyone is told to show up wearing whatever red t-shirt they have and no one knows what place the team is in. As an American, I have always been jealous of the structure of the Football Association, because every team, no matter how insignificant, has a direct connection to the Premiership. Feeling like you’re actually part of something motivates competitors, and when competitors are motivated, they will be more likely to show interest in watching competitions.How can this be done in the context of sc2? The obvious answer is by actually implementing a clan system first, but it should be done in a way that gets people involved. Take a page from Dawn of War’s book. Let clans specify their own sets of team colors and decals to use. I loved the green laser protoss in the campaign. Why not let a clan choose that look or develop our own? Let them only use them in clan league matches if you feel like it doesn’t have a place on ladder, and let observers have the ability to turn them off if an offensive decal is used. You could even require clans to specify ‘home’ and ‘away’ colors so that if two clans use a similar color scheme, one will randomly be chosen to use their alternatives to keep things looking clean.Once you’ve done that, make the pro clan league opt-in and now everyone involved can feel a little bit like EG or whatever when they compete. You can set up clan tournaments and division systems as well. Couple that with point 3 and you’ve got people spending time on your website because they’re sizing up their clan opponents for their next match. This has a feedback effect because players develop rivals, which means they develop emotional interest in the outcome of matches, which means they’re more interested in watching them. You now have more dedicated eSports spectators.As a personal example, I love watching college football regardless of who is playing. I started by only following my alma mater's team, but that grew into a general interest in the game itself.Conclusion: clans by nature are going to have more competitive players than the general ladder population. The regular rules applied to ladder games should not apply because the intent of the clan system should be to keep clans interested in competing.It’s still very early in the history of sc2 as an eSport. We all certainly hope that it has a long history. I personally feel that it’s just as important to get these sorts of things right as it is to make the game itself as balanced and engaging as can be. It’s frustrating to me that issues like this are not given the attention they need, so hopefully this was a step in the right direction for that. The reason I think this is so important is it because it benefits everybody. Aspiring top players have motivation to be noticed by a larger audience. People from outside the starcraft community get the potential to discover a new hobby. Lower tier diamond players get the thrill of feeling like they’re part of something. All of this keeps people coming back for more, which is what needs to happen to truly solidify sc2 as a successful eSport.Feedback is welcome. I realize some of my ideas may seem difficult to implement, but Blizzard is a company with virtually infinite amounts of development resources. If their stated goal is to make sc2 the ultimate competitive game, then we’re within our rights to hold them to that standard in every aspect of the game’s design and presentation. There also may be some privacy concerns with ladder games being observable (even with anonymous player names), but even if this was made opt-in I think enough people enjoy sharing their games with the community that it would be sustainable.