It’s not that hard to understand. MOBAs are very popular to play. The people who play them understand the game, and can watch it. The people who watch are also the people who play. There’s a very large number of such people.
I have an anecdote… Myself.
As a wee lad I was already familiar with the more conventional RTSs of the times. Starcraft BW, Warcraft 3, Command and Conquer etc.
I was also internet and I heard about this new game people were playing DotA, looking it up didn’t yield much (pre google) and it took asking around at my after school program where kids of all ages were left while their parents finished doing their jobs to come grab em.
Older kids came to my rescue and told me about modding. The rest comes from what I’d call the ‘senpai effect’ If there’s something the cool kids are into, you wanna be into it.
I do distinctly remember it took seemingly years (was probably only a few months) to understand last hitting and why it was good, I somehow disconnected the fact that the little gold that popped up actually went to you.
My core motivation was impressing the cool kids. I imagine that holds a lot of weight to this day.
I thought of another example of a more information rich sport, and that’s road cycling. At any moment there are five or six different competitions ongoing, with action happening up and down a huge stretch of road. You need to know which group you are watching, how far back from the leaders, how far until the finish line, if the group has a GC contender, or is it a breakaway going for sprint points, what classification hill climbs are ahead, what day of the tour, how many stages to go… and each stage can last up to six hours, spread over three weeks.
Imagine all of that information on screen the entire time, and then you understand what it’s like for a new viewer to watch esports.
It took Juliane many days last year to understand CS:GO streams, and a lot of that was working out which bits of information to ignore at the current time. And there is a lot of information to ignore!
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Oh, yeah, none of that is wrong. I want to see a historical analysis of the month-by-month events that caused the sudden massive explosion. MOBAs did a fantastic job of having the fans playing the game also support the esport, which itself then transcended that base and attracted new people to the game. They primed their own pump in a way I’ve never seen before.
I want to read expert analysis on exactly how that went down blow-by-blow. This is a sports documentary from the future.
I’m thinking about this mostly because Battleborn (and some other similar games) didn’t attract that group at all despite being essentially in the same genre and being very well made. MOBAs evolved into a stable ecosystem incredibly fast. Innovation in the games themselves doesn’t seem particularly necessary now to sustain that ecosystem.
I kinda want to make a video called “if traditional sports looked like esports” and go crazy with onscreen stats, mini maps, floating labels above players, team colour overlays, etc. This is the wrong thread for that though, it should go in the shit talk of your day thread instead.
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We could change the name to “Fix” a sport.
PUBG weekly survival matches for week 2 are now happening for those who were interested in checking it out.
I can’t be sure because I’ve never watched Mobas without having played them, but I feel that if you ignore the specifics and details there are enough interesting big picture moments, that are easy to grasp. Like seeing a character of one team hiding behind trees stalking a character of other team on the road, pretty easy to see what’s going on and what is going to happen. Or when all members of both team meat somewhere and clash, even if you don’t know exactly what happens during the fight, there is explosion of excitement and soon other team has three dead and two desperately running away, while other team takes an objective. I assume that mobas can be watched and enjoyed on that level.
The PUBG Weekly Survival is a crazy qualifying format!
Team Soniqs was the top seed after the opening weekend, and then won their first ever Survival match to be the first to qualify for the Weekly finals. And now, in Week 2, they only have two remaining Survival matches to qualify for the Week 2 Finals. Judging by the way they are playing, and how the other teams have adapted to the format, I don’t think they are going to make it.
Meanwhile, Multi Circle Gaming were seeded 32 out of 32 after the opening weekend. They didn’t play a single Survival match in the first week. And then, in Week 2, they got an opportunity and WON THEIR FIRST GAME! So the 32nd seed is now the only team with a 100% winning record in Weekly Survival.
I love it.
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I will never forget watching the big LoL tournaments at an early PAX. It was a lot like a crowd at an American football game.
A small number of people in the crowd would react to the game. But, their reaction would trigger a larger wave of people who I suspect didn’t quite get what the big deal was. I got the distinct impression that a lot of the people there only had a vague idea of what was going on, but took their cues from the rest of the crowd. They’d react directly to big flashy obvious things.
You see the same thing with American Football. Even in a small group setting. A small number of people understand the game very well. They react to non-obvious events in the game. They’d anticipate big moments due to their knowledge and fluency with the game. (E.g., Scott getting excited and telling everyone they might do an onside kick).
Everyone else has shallow knowledge of the game. (Totally fine and expected). But they learn it over time by sharing the spectation space with the more fluent viewers.
It’s easy to get caught up in a crowd. That excitement leads to curiosity, which leads to knowledge and eventually often fluency.
Some sports have better onramps for this. American Football is odd in that most of what’s happening that’s interesting is invisible to a casual viewer. However, at a zoomed out purely superficial zero-knowledge level, there is still good viewing to be had for a lot of people.
- Both sides are trying to get the ball to the other side
- Big strong people are hitting eachother
- Every now and then the little guy does a kick, and it is worth points
- The whole crowd is suddenly going crazy. I don’t understand why, but I see a bunch of flags and the referee is about to explain a rule?
- Everyone I know is so into this that I can’t ignore it! There’s a whole culture here!
I think MOBAs have an extremely similar onramp to American Football. They share many characteristics (e.g., most of what’s happening that’s interesting is invisible to a casual viewer, huge fan culture around the game, etc…).
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Yea, I also feel that good announcers can fill same role as knowing audience. Announcers getting excited is a sign that something important is going on, on top of their normal role of talking about what’s going on.
I remember as a kid I had a pretty clear picture of the momentum of hockey games purely from radio.
Sure, I didn’t actually know where the puck was other than vaguely. But the tone of the announcers voice told the most important story.
I’ve spent the last day arguing with chuds who would rather never see a woman go pro OWL than even consider a woman who isn’t the best player in the league.
This is self-harm. I should stop doing this to myself. /sigh
The PUBG Weekly Survival qualifying format continues to be a real winner for me. The basic idea is “you win, you qualify for the weekend finals”.
It creates a fantastic dynamic where everyone is playing the same game in the qualifying and finals, but are being tested for slightly different things. And some teams are having a lot of trouble switching between the play styles that are needed to do well in both.
The closest comparison I can come up with is motorsport. Most races also have a similar structure of qualifying and competing use all the same equipment, and have the same tracks, and mostly test the same skill. But:
- in qualifying you are racing the clock, and it’s fastest goes at the front.
- in the race lap time doesn’t matter in and of itself, you just need to be in front at the end of the race.
However, in this PUBG format it doesn’t matter which order you qualify, just that you make it in at all. Most motorsports qualifying determines the grid order, but sometimes it decides who even makes it to the race. Like in the Indy 500. There are 33 places on the grid, but more than that try to qualify. If you’re not in that top 33… sorry go home! Even if your name is Alonso!
But it doesn’t matter how well you do in the weekend finals in terms of qualifying for the next weekend finals!
The Week 4 winners of the finals were Zenith E-Sports, and they won about 350,000 dollars! That sounds great!
But after 16 qualifying matched in week 5, Zenith didn’t make it to the weekly finals. And the top prize money for week 5 finals is probably going to reach about $700,000.
And this keeps happening. A lot of teams are making back to the finals each week, but they have to completely change their style of play, and they’ve had to learn that over the last 5 weeks. As the strategies have evolved, those who did well at the start are being left behind:
- Four Angry Men won in week 2, and haven’t made it to the finals SINCE WEEK 2!!!
- Faze Clan won in week 3, and haven’t made it to the finals SINCE WEEK 3!!!
- And now Zenith won in week 4, and didn’t make it to the finals in week 5!!!
In other words, except for the winner of week 1, every team that has won a weekly finals hasn’t made it back to the starting lineup for any finals since then.
The first place prize keeps increasing every week until week 6, growing from about $50,000 to over a million dollars. So really, doing well in the final week is what will count the most… but to have a chance at the million dollars you have to qualify!!!
PUBG Global Invitational Survivor series enters its final day tomorrow, with the last five matches to determine the week 6 winner. And as the overall champion is crowned based on dollar winnings totals, and the prize pretty much doubles each week, whoever wins tomorrow get the money.
And as far as I can tell, it’s the single largest prize in esports history. Other tournaments have had bigger prize pools, but this one is the biggest single payout. Something like 1.4 million dollars to the winner of week 6 finals.
GenG won week 5 finals, but are now in last place after 5 games in the week 6 finals.
The top team at this half way point are Soniqs. They were seeded first after the opening weekend 6 weeks ago, and then sucked for the entire middle part of the tournament. They kept saying “It only really matters in week 6” which was, of course, a joke. But now it’s week 6 and they are really making it count!
Looking forward to catching the last five games tomorrow.
https://liquipedia.net/pubg/PUBG_Global_Invitational.S/2021/Weekly_Finals/Week_4-6
A suitably dramatic end to 6 weeks of drama.
Turns out this is just the biggest prize in first person shooter esports, which makes more sense as I was sure LoL had gone bigger in the past.
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ESL Pro League 13 grand final and we’re in FOURTH overtime in map three of five. It’s going looooong.
After seven hours, and well into map five, the ESL Grand Final ended in one of the most epic plays I’ve ever seen. Seriously crazy. On match point, it involves a 1 vs 4 situation with a spectacular knife kill…
Just watch:
The final moment with the team cameras a coms:
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