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S2 Ep180: Esports
68 Plays4 years ago
Join Dave and Jake as they talk about the serious business of competitive video gaming in this week's episode!
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Thoughts? Comments? Requests for new episodes? Feel free to email them in!
SoapstonePodcast@gmail.com
Like our podcast? Like our podcast! We'll post when new episodes are uploaded!
https://www.facebook.com/SoapstonePodcast/
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Transcript
Introduction and Greetings
00:00:34
Speaker
Come around again
00:00:50
Speaker
How's it going, everyone? Welcome to another episode of Soapstone. My name is Jake and I'm joined by my co-host is always Dave. How's it going tonight, Dave? It's going delightful. How are you? I'm also doing well, I think. Wait, no, that's...
00:01:06
Speaker
I'm doing well. There you go. I don't know how to respond to what you're saying. Delightful. If I'm doing delightful and you're doing well, well, I don't know what to tell you, buddy, but I think I'll win it. That's true. I don't know what the, um, standard response would be for delightful. It's like, it was like, well, great, good, not so hot, little chilly.
00:01:34
Speaker
It's going hot. It's going hot. It's going so hot. It's so hot right now. It's so hot right now. That's good. Glad that you're doing well and delightful. Eyebrows, eyebrows, eyebrows. Honestly, like my default response for when anybody asks that is I would just say peachy.
00:01:58
Speaker
Yeah. Mm hmm. If I think of anything on the spot or found out that well, I say peachy and they're like peachy. Apparently, like nobody else says anything besides like good. How are you? So they're like throwing off. Yeah. My favorite is the we've discussed this is probably the most discussed thing on the show, just because we talk about it very often. But
Compliments and Social Interactions
00:02:19
Speaker
the.
00:02:21
Speaker
synchronized non-requited asking how the other person is doing with no response. How's it going? What's up? Boom. Pass. Strangers in the night. Even during the day, it turns to night. It's a new mechanic in Magic called Nightbound. Just kidding. It's not that new. It's from the original Innistrad.
00:02:45
Speaker
But I went to CVS today just to grab a seltzer because I'm a thirsty boy and seltzer is delicious. And we had that exchange at the counter. They said good. I'm like, oh, good to hear. Right. Like I'm acknowledging their statement back. And then I'm like, and I will conclude. Yeah.
00:03:05
Speaker
And they're like, oh, I like your shirt. It brightened my day. Now I'm wearing a space hoodie. I guess they'd like that. I was like, oh, nice. I didn't have any more responses. I was like, oh, thank you. Yeah. Or you're welcome.
00:03:23
Speaker
How do you feel when people say that though? Because I've gotten that a couple of times. It's usually like a nerdy shirt or something, little standout-ish. When someone's like, hey, I like your shirt. Just a random stranger, absolutely. You mean, how do I feel about compliments? I like them, Jake. I like them a lot.
00:03:42
Speaker
They're very few and far between. Like I'll take positive energy. I do like that, though. I like that people specifically randomly, you know, comment on appearance or something. I try to also do that occasionally, not frequently. But I think like the reason it's so good is one, it's a positive thing. Always good. But two, for how we are and how like it's hard to bridge that
00:04:10
Speaker
social anxiety of like talking to a stranger of like, Hey, I'm going to give you a positive affirmation, even though I don't, I don't know you makes it much more weighted. Right. There's always the risk that they'll actually talk to you back, which may not be what you're going for. That's the fucking words. Okay. Like cool things. Like, Oh, nice. Thanks. And they're like, do you like this thing too? And you're like, ah, this is in passing. The time is, the time has passed. Um,
00:04:40
Speaker
Yeah. Like I think, uh, one of the, the last one I was at Wawa and a guy had a final fantasy 14 shirt and I was like, Hey, cool shirt. He's like, Oh, thanks. And it's basically always the, the only response I would ever give also, but I dunno, it's nice to provide a little bit of cheer.
00:05:00
Speaker
Hey, Jake. I like your shirt. It's nice. Oh, thanks. This is the most plain shirt I have. It is. It is completely white or beige. Yeah. There's no design on it. Nothing. And I can see his elbows because he's a whore. It's pure comfort, though. It is so ridiculously comfortable. Is it something besides cotton or is it just? I think it's basically cotton, but.
00:05:27
Speaker
I don't know. It's just a very basic lounge about shirt, not going anywhere, not doing anything.
00:05:36
Speaker
A pillory, if you will. I'm stuck here. But I mean, one of the real things that usually the topic I would comment on somebody's shirt, if I did really like it is if they maybe played a game that I like.
00:06:01
Speaker
No, okay, I'm getting the head shake. All right, let me try that again. It's just me going like there's the intonation shift. Maybe a game, like. Perhaps a game. Additionally, like I have an Overwatch jersey, which we got when we went back to the world championship in Philly in the before times. And I literally had a guy ask me one time, he's like, oh, are you a player? And I'm like,
00:06:29
Speaker
No, you say yes at that point. Yeah, if someone asked to ask, give them the oh, I got to meet a celebrity today feeling they're not going to look it up. Do you want me to sign something for you? Oh, my God, that would be that would be even better. Just sign is like Poco or another like literally South Korean player. I know in South Korea. Mm hmm.
00:06:59
Speaker
Anyways, esports, that was the segue. How do you feel about
Overwatch as an Esport
00:07:04
Speaker
Overwatch as an esports? Do we need to define esports? I hope not, because I won't be able to. All right, let's move past that. How do you feel about Overwatch as an esports? That knowing thing that everyone knows? Yeah, I mean, we could take a shot at trying to define it and then talk back to Overwatch. I mean, like we so some of the aspects of esports are
00:07:26
Speaker
You make, you get rewards for doing it. There's got to be a prize of some sort. It's got to be competitive and it has to be, I guess, at a scale that's at least recognized, I would think. Can you think of any other criteria?
00:07:46
Speaker
I'm trying to figure out what the last one means. So it's like if you were playing pinball against your friend, it's not an esport. That's competitive, but it's not. You don't get something afterwards. Like chess is not an esport.
00:08:03
Speaker
Unless it's electronic, and then it's an East Point. I mean, careful who you say that to. But no, I think that does cover the bases. It has to be competitive. They actually have to have tournaments. It can't just be like two people who are like, I challenge you. I win. OK. That's not the sport. There needs to be an idea of teams or regions. It needs to be an actual structure to hold those larger competitions.
00:08:31
Speaker
Right. To theoretically have pro players who you know. Yeah, I think that's pretty accurate. To your original question, Overwatch. I mean, it was literally designed, I feel, as
00:08:45
Speaker
entry into esport. It's literally boardroom. Hey, our next IP needs to be esport compatible. And that's what they did. I mean, they've poured ridiculous amounts of money into establishing it as an esport, whether to what extent they've been successful was probably, you know, a question, but
00:09:12
Speaker
It's not underfunded. No, definitely not. But. So you said like to what degree it's been successful. So my question for you is like directly. Do you think it's been successful? Do you think it works as an e-sport?
00:09:27
Speaker
Yeah, I think so. I think personally, my skepticism is more coming from the place of like long-term viability. But that's always a question in esports. I mean, it has to have been successful. They've had
00:09:45
Speaker
many seasons. They've had plenty of reward prize money. It's also hyper, I want to say, speculative. The teams when they started out were literally like, pick a bunch of rich people with disposable money that want to make teams. Those people will hire a bunch of South Koreans onto the roster.
00:10:06
Speaker
And that's not racist. It's just literally how the teams were set up. If you looked at season one, it was like... The US team for Philly was just six people from South Korea, not people who live near and who happen to be South Korean. It was like all the teams were imported and not from the actual region. Exactly. And New York, Excelsior,
Esports League Structures
00:10:27
Speaker
was also 100% South Korean. Philly had a couple locals eventually put
00:10:33
Speaker
It was very much buy your way in. And I think it was like a $20 million buy-in from the managers to actually get the teams. So everything was very much inject money into this up and coming thing.
00:10:50
Speaker
I mean, that'll help get it going for sure. It just feels artificial. Sorry, go ahead. Oh yeah, it does. We'll touch probably more on Dota 2 in a little bit, but with Dota 2, they have specific regions and those regions have local teams. Yeah.
00:11:08
Speaker
it seems to fit at least versus you can't really just like buy your way in like you have to win up the ladder essentially get invited to bigger tournaments that's another thing like a lot of these tournaments are based off of invites
00:11:27
Speaker
If you've won previous tournaments, you'll get your name out there. Maybe if it's something really big, you'll have to get nominated by Twitter. Enough people vote for you and be like, we'd love to see so-and-so at this tournament. Or you can just be MK Leia and they'll be like, yep, he's in. Right. How do you feel about that system?
00:11:48
Speaker
Just contrasting the two, Overwatch is a completely closed system. They're all official teams. The league is operated 100% by Blizzard. There is no external... I guess there is a minor leagues thing, sort of, but it gets none of the exposure compared to the actual Overwatch league. Whereas Dota has this more hybrid approach, I would say.
00:12:16
Speaker
Uh, it's, it's a bit of a shit show. Like it never feels fully organized on Dota side. Cause you'll have different majors that have different like prize pools and they're usually not necessarily all valve organized. It might be, I can't think of one of the companies right now.
00:12:36
Speaker
like 10 San subsidiary or something for China. I mean, statistically, everything is like any company will have organizations run tournaments. Yeah. And like if you win a tournament or like a major, you can get like essentially what are like tournament points. And like the more you have of that, the more likely you are to get invited to something like TI, which is like the the year end to be all tournament with like the biggest prize pool, biggest notoriety.
00:13:05
Speaker
Yeah, the international. It's just the whole thing feels a little unorganized. So like if you are a smaller team, I don't really know how you get into that space. Yeah.
00:13:21
Speaker
Cause you have to like, I guess qualify for the majors or get invited. That was always the part that was nebulous to me was like Valve literally has invite spots for top contenders from the previous year, but it is not like set in stone. It's fairly arbitrary. No one's tremendously surprised by the people that got direct invited, but there's always before teams that you can like rattle off and be like, yep, they'll be there.
00:13:46
Speaker
Yeah, you're like, uh, O.G. Navi, O.G. like a secret. Yeah. Yeah. Navi a lot less now. I don't know if they're still participating or not, but for a while, uh, like seven years ago, they
Team Allegiance vs. Player Allegiance
00:13:59
Speaker
were pretty competitive. Well, also like those teams change a lot. So like the swap out players go under a different name. Like I used to really like team Liquid because they were just very aggressive and they were feast or famine for their play style. I'm like, that seems fun and cool and fun to watch.
00:14:16
Speaker
And now Team Liquid is all these other people who are not the same people. Yeah. And Team Liquid now is under a name called Team Nigma. Nigma no name. And I'm like, oh, I didn't even know that. But I guess that's the team I kind of like now. We'll see. But like
00:14:35
Speaker
I guess where does the allegiance split? Is it with each player individually or is it with a team? Because obviously a player will probably keep their play style for the most part, but they could swap between teams.
00:14:49
Speaker
Yeah, I think that's I mean, it's the fact that that's more of a question now is a sign that maybe esports is growing a little bit more into the sports space because trades happen, you know, all the time. Right. And like actual IRL sports, flesh sports, if you will.
00:15:10
Speaker
based off the facial expression I got, you won't, but if you will. Hard pass, hard pass. But I mean, yeah, if everybody on the team is gone, then how do you really hold allegiance to them? Unless they're just like a local thing and you're just rooting for the sports group, right? Like, so Overwatch for a second, like Philadelphia Fusion,
00:15:35
Speaker
We like a lot of the players, but you know, half of them have been swapped out. A lot of people have been traded away. And I feel that it has more to do with that regional identity that we can all kind of like group around than the individual players.
00:15:54
Speaker
But I mean, if ever there's a complete roster shift, then that's a test at that point, right? Because there's no rational reason to continue to root for the team if you don't know any of the players.
00:16:09
Speaker
watching a sport or an e-sport and you don't really have Anybody or a team that you're following just like what's my closest? Oh Philly, right? Yeah, so like it makes sense to like see what they're doing and be happy when they win Be happy when they lose And that's the other aspect of it is like overwatch does have regional teams right like dota They completely are divorced from the idea like the team might be
00:16:38
Speaker
Based in a geographical region like this is a US team. This is a you know SEA team or something like that EU team, but They're not like oh, this is team France Right. You have to go to like liquid Wiki to actually see the nationality of all the members of the team so it's much easier to like track the individuals they're like PPD and
00:17:03
Speaker
I'm pretty sure at one point was team liquid when they won one of the internationals and he's gone to like all these other teams. I think he was on secret. He was like heading up secret for a while there. Um, and you can follow the individual players a lot more for something like Dota, I think.
00:17:21
Speaker
Yeah. Like if you say puppy, you're like, Oh, a support. I get it. Um, from Navi originally been at every single TI. Yes. Yeah. Navi into secret. He's had a very storied, uh, like, um, career in Dota.
00:17:43
Speaker
But that's the thing. The only reason we know that name is because we've seen them at these big tournaments. And we've seen them pull off some really crazy shit. I know we've talked about fountain hooking for the longest time. It almost comes up. But it was a really hype moment. And it was in TI. And it shifted the meta. We're like, oh my god, this is possible in pro play. And they're doing it.
00:18:08
Speaker
Good, is that bad? When they had the, what was it? The $6 million dream coil? Yes. Where somebody was like back drawing their base and then for anybody who doesn't play Dota 2, there's a little fairy dragon called Puck and their ultimate puts on a little circle and it will tether and like break any or give like a brief stun to anybody who's within it.
00:18:31
Speaker
So basically, Puck's team is attacking the other team's base. And it's looking pretty bad, pretty dire, if you will. That's one of the teams. Not the team team, but the two sides are radiant and dire. Yeah. It's a joke that nobody's going to appreciate. Nope. But
00:18:52
Speaker
When they were chipping back to try and get back to their base, they stunned the whole team with that one ability. I thought it was Dendi. Really? I'm pretty sure it was Dendi on puck. Yeah. Dendi also from Na'Vi, a really big personality in the Dota 2 space. But that led to them winning
Community and Commentary
00:19:11
Speaker
that game and winning the tournament. So it's stuff like that that happens where it's on such a scale where the hype grows
00:19:21
Speaker
Like, if I ever beat Jake in Smash, it's cool. And I did something really flashy and awesome and it wasn't an SD. But imagine we had like a thousand people behind us who were watching and cheering us on, right? Right. And I do. Follow Jake on Twitch.tv.
00:19:41
Speaker
But yeah, like there's something about experiencing it with people or if you like go to a show or at some type of event, you feel the energy of the other people and it really, it heightens the whole experience. Oh yeah. I've only been to one live video game esport event. Like I said, it was the Overwatch grand finals.
00:20:01
Speaker
in Philly. And it was awesome. Like there is, we got like some merchant things there, got our pictures taken. And then the event itself, they had like these massive screens up and they had everybody wear wristbands that corresponded to their seats so they could like flash, they could strobe patterns in the night crowd, which was really cool.
00:20:26
Speaker
And the game itself was good. But yeah, so much of it's based around the community. I mean, it's entirely the community. There's some games that we'd consider esports that have very little official support, Super Smash Bros.
00:20:48
Speaker
But they're 100% still in eSport because the community provides all of that structure. We were talking about being a prerequisite to really be considered in eSport. They have people who play, run tournaments. The people who commentate, play the game. But that's all done from a player base.
00:21:10
Speaker
I'm sure there are people who just get hired as administration and stuff, but it's all from the community. It's not from Nintendo at all. They're not trying to promote anything with this tournament. They're like, you'll buy our 60 dollar game, now fuck off. Yeah, that is the Nintendo stance. It's like you can contrast that against something like
00:21:29
Speaker
Overwatch, obviously, the people are familiar with the games, the commentators, and Dota 2, space, Redeye. He comments a bunch of different games, and for a while there, he was also commentating.
00:21:44
Speaker
But like he didn't have any familiarity with it before starting his prep, literally as a commentator, right? He's hired into the spot. So there is a difference, I guess, between like the grassroots esports community versus the one that's kind of built up there. In Dota's case, it would, it would exist regardless, but Valve are just,
00:22:07
Speaker
not going to let all of that pass them by and have the community run with it. They're only game that's really going and doing stuff? Yeah. Throw some money at it, please. But another thing that's cool about that is both of these communities have actual commentators. I don't know if you've ever watched a
00:22:31
Speaker
Here's a finalist of like Yoshi versus Mario and it's silent. It's the worst fucking thing. Yeah. Give me like two people who are like hype commentating what's going on for like the play by play of like, oh, they did a B reversal. I'm like, the fuck is a B reversal? How do I do that? Yeah. I don't know. It's just it's nice to make it an event. And it's something that I'll watch frequently on YouTube because of that.
00:23:01
Speaker
Yeah. There's literally like, I had to look this up to make sure I have the right terminology, but it's usually a two person crew. So like you can do solo commentating, but somebody has to fulfill two roles. It sounds good. It's hard usually. Um, but you have the play by play commentator.
00:23:19
Speaker
Um, who is the person who takes over when like the action kicks in and like go to two, this is like a team fight. Um, or CS go like when the engagement starts, um, person talks, you know, pretty quickly. They describe it to you. They're the.
00:23:34
Speaker
I was about to try to make an analogy to radio voice. No one knows what radio is anymore. That doesn't make any sense. That connects zero points for people. And the other one is the color commentator, which is the person who's filling in details about the game, like during the downtime, they're keeping the pace going. So you're not sitting there listening to silence.
00:23:58
Speaker
Yeah, they usually talk about the mechanics of the game for people who might not be aware like even myself with that be reversal or they'll say like, oh, this character is a preferred in this matchup versus somebody else. And here's why. But here are some of the tools they can possibly utilize to get around that to kind of close that gap. Yeah, or the players even write like talking about the players records, some of their behaviors.
00:24:23
Speaker
By the way, this is done in all sports, not just esports, but it really fits to keep you engaged. And you don't need to necessarily have a years of background of following something to kind of like get in and be a part of the experience. Yeah, it is a lot better with two people. Like you can tell a lot of people start as basically volunteer commentators. A really common thing talking about like Starcraft or something like that is people will just
00:24:53
Speaker
ask for clips of games interesting games to commentate on and then just do it just practice commentating and upload it upload it upload it a lot of people out there and sometimes they break out and they get more exposure but they basically are just boots on the ground
00:25:12
Speaker
like doing all of the work before there's any payoff for it. And if you're covering both roles, it's just going to destroy your voice, right? You're both you're handling the highs and lows. And it's just it's not good. No, it's it's a lot. Sometimes we'll even put like three people on for something like Dota. So you'll have like some I don't want to say roundtable discussion, but some talk. Well, I guess it is still color commentary as far as
00:25:42
Speaker
But it's more of a discussion between the panelists to kind of give you an idea of what the teams might be doing, what individual player might be doing, the items for this patch, other things, matchups. There's so much of a wealth of things in Dota that if there's not an active team fight engagement, you can fill the time. Yeah. And then when things are going on, you have one person who's like, this is my jam. Cody Pixel. Exactly.
00:26:11
Speaker
And he raps about everything and gives you an idea of what all abilities are being used and gets you hype. Yeah.
00:26:20
Speaker
Yeah, I remember a story I remember hearing at one point was like in the early Starcraft. It was probably brood war days, but maybe even before that, it was back when tasteless and Day 9 were brothers in esports and gaming. They're both commentators now.
00:26:44
Speaker
they were competing in a tournament and tasteless got kicked out day nine proceeded and They were like short one commentator. So there was a guy up there and Actually, I guess he was the the soul. He was like the solo commentator something. We had no idea like about the game he didn't know about strategies six pool zerg rush any of this stuff and so tasteless went up to help him out and the guy
00:27:12
Speaker
kind of pivoted in a good direction and just started asking questions about the game, like from Tasteless so that he could start answering things like, oh, I don't think that this is going to be a rush because for this reason and this reason and this reason, it's actually impossible or like a suicidal strategy or something like that. You know, friendly, you know, not like antagonizing the guy for clearly not knowing anything about the game, but provides a nice input, like
00:27:41
Speaker
introduction to the people who might not know all those concepts off the bat. And that's really where that analyst can come into play, like having somebody in that position is great.
00:27:51
Speaker
You remember our previous guest format? That's a lot of times what we would end up doing for, if you have two people who have experience on a given topic, and somebody who doesn't know as much, or even if they do, they can still fill the role as the audience, essentially. Kind of ask some of those more basic questions for like, hey, I really don't have a background in this. Could you explain this thing that you're saying like common terminology, but I might not know what it is. Yeah. And it's just like getting some of those other things, the sonologist,
00:28:21
Speaker
High level, you have to be a part of this for 15 years type thing. It's good to have some perspective and be able to mix it up a little bit. The Dota tournaments, they'll oftentimes have a newbie stream where they just go into a lot more detail about the mechanics of the game.
00:28:43
Speaker
And you can tune into that one specifically if I think Purge is oftentimes on it with someone else. If you want, somebody is going to give you a lot of detail. Seven hours. But it's a great way to still participate, like be part of the community observing the tournament, but not have as many assumptions about preexisting knowledge.
00:29:11
Speaker
Which I think is cool. It's good when your community is big enough that you can do that and have, you know, simulcast games, essentially. But we're not, they're not all there yet. It also kind of helps counterbalance gatekeeping.
00:29:29
Speaker
Because with something like Dota, there's a lot of stuff in it. There's like 120 characters now. There's probably way more items than 120. And then it changes like every patch. So a lot of it is just like you're on board. You've been on board. You kind of like pick up a lot of that information.
00:29:49
Speaker
Yeah, so it can be kind of daunting for somebody to get in. But this is something like that is fucking huge. Oh, yeah. It's it's almost impossible to like just watch a Dota tournament and have any idea what's going on without a lot of guidance if you're not familiar with the game.
00:30:12
Speaker
because it prides itself on being the most dense, impenetrable, least beginner-friendly of all MOBAs. It's true. We even tried to... I think we streamed TI one year at your place.
00:30:31
Speaker
And we had some other people over who were not as Do to die hard as we both were But I think they had a good time and we're like we explained some stuff or they asked some questions Bruce was a nice fun Experience to watch the eye together. Yeah, and I think that's basically like the heart of eSports like if I mean completely honest, I
00:30:53
Speaker
My interest in Overwatch has waned over the years. But the reason, and I'm not like a sports guy, but the reason I got involved in Overwatch as an esport, not as a player, but as an observer, you know, we'd had a channel where spamming out our Discord reactions and things like that was because it was fun to be part of that group.
00:31:17
Speaker
And that local event like it's it's basically the heart of East the heart Osborne Like getting people who have passing interest more excited about it the people who are really interested in it feeding off of each other like in this this interest feedback hype feedback loop that Just really elevates it and it's so much better than just like sitting down and watching a sport by yourself and being like
00:31:47
Speaker
That's
Spectator vs. Player Experience
00:31:48
Speaker
good. Yeah, it's a community driven thing. Like I'll still say I don't give a shit about CS go, but I'm so much more willing to experience it or live vicariously through if like Eric's playing or talking about it. Oh, yeah. Because like he loves that shit. Yeah, he's very excited about it. And that excitement rubs off on me a little bit.
00:32:18
Speaker
Is there, um, can you think of an example of a game that you basically only observe? Cause I have one, but I want to introduce it as a question to you first for the purpose of being generous with time. Um, I think typically, um, I'm more likely to watch something that I have experience with so I can just appreciate it more.
00:32:43
Speaker
But I've definitely gone down a rabbit hole of some fighting games, like 2D actual legit fighters, where I'm just like, I have no idea what's going on, but it's impressive and cool and hype. So I forget, I always forget the name of like Xboxes or Microsoft's fighting game. Trying to think. It had a battle toad in it. Oh, I have no idea. It's not battle toads, is it? Microsoft's fighting game.
00:33:16
Speaker
I'm not sure it's not as specific of a search, but a lot of things like Mortal Kombat, Tekken, Street Fighter, like I can't play that one shames. All right. The supers look cool. The Mortal Kombat and Tekken. Yeah, that definitely comes up a lot. Anything that we've played at that tier.
00:33:37
Speaker
Oh yeah, it's so much, it's more enjoyable to watch those played at a high tier than it is for me to play at my own, wherever my own tier is. It's less stressful, it's more enjoyable, and I don't know, there's a sense of satisfaction you tend to arrive from seeing something with such a high skill ceiling played to its full potential, even knowing that I'm not a contender for it, right?
00:34:08
Speaker
That sounds obvious now that I've said it out loud, but it applies to like Smash as well, right? Like we've been playing Smash Ultimate for what, three years? Something now? Two or three years? At least, yeah. And like I think that we're pretty good, which is like places in the hierarchy of people that think that they're pretty good based off of local comparisons.
00:34:31
Speaker
I don't want to play it against one person for three years. And then we then we watched like MKLeo and like Mars and all these other people, these top tier players play. I'm like, why are there characters so fast? Like I've played that character and they're not supposed to be that fast. Legitimately, like Byleth has always been like the clunkiest piece of shit whenever we've used them. And you watch MKLeo do it and it's like,
00:35:03
Speaker
He's on just a completely different level. There's no delay between inputs. It's like, oh, tech this move here, roll here, input aside the up B. It's just another Joker skin for layout. But it kills people. It does kill people.
00:35:19
Speaker
Yeah, it's insane. And we appreciate it because we have a rough idea of the mechanics. And we've had that first-hand experience to know this character plays slower than other characters, but in the right hands is doing devastating things. But even if you're an outsider, you can still see what's happening at the pace that it's happening, even if you don't know how to physically do it yourself.
00:35:41
Speaker
So I would agree with your point that having familiarity with the games makes them more enjoyable to spectate. But my answer for games that I don't like to play but I do like to spectate is Magic the Gathering Arena. Love to watch that.
00:35:58
Speaker
don't particularly have that much interest in playing magic because although I can pick up mechanics it's just so much but also I just get it's just such a great observation thing like I've watched people play Hearthstone
00:36:17
Speaker
more like in a streamy than competitive sense. But magic in particular, seeing some of these crazy interactions completely pop off, people could play at a pace that I can't comprehend given the amount of information that they have to process when going through magic. And it just makes it very entertaining to observe.
00:36:41
Speaker
It's really good. But like I said, you have that experience like watching Hearthstone. So you get to like observe a board state change at a time, like, okay, here's what I think their options are based on what I can see and just kind of like build it out from there. So it's like you get to play along with them in a sense. So like watching chess or something else, you're like, I see the strategy unfolding slowly. Here's what I would do in the situation. Oh my God. I didn't even see that. Yeah.
00:37:08
Speaker
For chess, I would say the difference is I see zero moves ahead in chess. It's like I don't even know what their immediate options are, let alone what they're planning for. What does this short one do?
00:37:23
Speaker
but yeah and Hearthstone is very much more straightforward as far as maintaining knowledge of state some of the cards were weird or you could go one hit one turn combo zero deaths things like that but those are very uncommon in a game like Hearthstone whereas like in Magic it's all about
00:37:43
Speaker
How do I minimize the amount of time that my opponent actually gets to do anything, right? Yeah, it's basically like here's my win condition. How do I build triggers around getting the win condition out or pumping something up? I was playing against somebody today and they were doing green, white and shaman life game. Wow, original.
00:38:03
Speaker
All my decks are also pretty standard as well. Yeah, I was going to just bandwagon on criticizing them arbitrarily with no knowledge of it. Yeah, I hate those guys. Shaman. But each card was having an interaction with another card. Whenever I gain life, this happens. Whenever a creature enters the battlefield, this happens.
00:38:23
Speaker
So like their turn took like a minute and I was just like watching a YouTube video. I'm like, I'll just I'll check it when they're done if I'm alive even. Yeah, because like so much can stack upon each other and then it's hey, do I also have interactions with that? Yeah, or no, I do not which makes it easier to just like let it all resolve like let me know when you're done.
00:38:44
Speaker
And that's something that like magic, you actually have to be cognizant of is the opportunity to interrupt people. And then, you know, not always having it auto, uh, just like the difference between Hearthstone. You can only do things on your turn flat out.
00:39:03
Speaker
magic, there's all of these opportunities to interrupt the resolution of things on the stack. I remember there's a story of, and that makes it more engaging, actually, because it can swing back and forth to the observer. Like you don't know if someone's going to interrupt with a, you've triggered my trap card and here's Exodia. Again, not super familiar with magic, but I remember I think it was like F2 or some button like that was the proceed
00:39:30
Speaker
button in like magic, the old magic online. And, um, Brian Kibler, um, he was like MTG hall of famer and does a lot of streaming now for Hearthstone. But, um, he was up against like, I think it was a storm deck or something like that, where it was.
00:39:53
Speaker
potentially the end of the game but it was indeterminate they had to play out this chain of events to see if they actually won or not and it took like a notorious amount of time it could be storm you can correct me if i'm wrong but um that sounds right and he literally just wrote like on
00:40:10
Speaker
a piece like a post-it note was just like F2 and he just put it on the table in front of him and he walked off and bought hot dogs ate them and came back and like it was still resolving. Oh wow. It was such a hilarious story. I mean it could be Storm. It's it's not about magic. I'll let it slide. Yeah.
00:40:36
Speaker
But that's the key of it, I think. Stories are what, and you've already addressed some of them, right? Like the $6 million Dream Coil. Like those are moments
Memorable Esports Moments
00:40:45
Speaker
that can be profoundly cool or interactive. He just walk up slowly and down smash, memed on for eternity. How many times have you heard Wombo combo? Wombo combo, I think it felt good. But to be part of that community is just exciting.
00:41:06
Speaker
You get to share in the stories. And like, why would you not want to be a part of that? Because I'm shy. But no, it is nice to have like a community like that where essentially you build your own language. Like we have English as our spoken language. We have memes that we share. But that deeper etymology is really around. The experience and other things from that common interest.
00:41:36
Speaker
Yeah, like the amount of time that we say like fair or bare your things and then like we make dumb jokes about it all the time still like
00:41:47
Speaker
It's part of how we communicate as being part of that community. And one day I'll meet other members of this community in the theoretical after times. You can join the Rob Discord with me and then also muted. What has been your favorite esport to be a part of as a player? Ah, hmm. Probably a 50-50 split on games that I'm interested in watching. Race is actually playing.
00:42:18
Speaker
I'm going to disqualify Starcraft because I basically only play co-op. Love to watch it. I don't play the same game that those pros are playing, literally. And I don't have any allusions to that fact. Hmm. It'd probably be either Dota or Overwatch. I realize we've already covered them, but
00:42:44
Speaker
It's not going to be Call of Duty back from when I played that. Or Smash. I was going to say, if he mentions Dota and not Smash for enjoying playing, I'd be like, we've been playing the wrong game after recording. It's not about enjoyment. That's how you know you're getting, getting somewhere in these points. Do you have the same answers? Do you have another one you would mix in there?
00:43:12
Speaker
I can play Smash literally anytime. I don't know why, but it was like the basement game with friends for so long where you just go down there, play for like five hours until somebody's mom's like, I need to feed you kids, otherwise your parents will be angry when I send you home type thing. You take a brief break and then go back.
00:43:31
Speaker
But it just has such a replayability and also I really like the competitive nature of it. I love a good grudge match. Like I like when we go back and forth on certain interactions. I like talking shit. I still want to get you to talk shit on me at some point. So I have to make even meaner and meaner comments to draw that out of you.
00:43:54
Speaker
I do enjoy playing Dota 2, but it's much better as a spectator sport, seeing it at the high level. And I can kind of just dip in between patches and stuff if we have a group playing together. But I would say those are the top ones. For something like Overwatch, it feels too cluttered of an FPS.
00:44:13
Speaker
Cause like it's just the hero major players perspective and everybody's different with different abilities or having something overhead. Switching between that feels a little weird versus let me like see us go where it still has big first person or like top down for the view, but it's a lot more straightforward of they have guns. What are the angles type thing, right?
00:44:36
Speaker
It's honestly, I'm glad you brought that up because it was one of the biggest challenges in like getting Overwatch
00:44:45
Speaker
onto people's screens was literally like, how do we spectate this game? There's a lot of verticality. There's, you know, heroes that can fly at least temporarily. People moving really quickly, a bunch of potentially game-changing abilities that it's really hard to have in frame all the time.
00:45:07
Speaker
And so a lot of things get caught in like a replay Instead of like the actual like what the camera was focused on at the time and they were really bad at it like at the launch and I don't say that that I don't mean that personally against the Observers hats off to observers in any game. It's a thankless job and people only notice when you miss things that's true but
00:45:33
Speaker
like it was just very difficult, a very difficult problem to solve where you're like, OK, Widowmaker is about to shoot someone in the head from across the map, but maybe she literally doesn't. You know, like, how do you spectate that versus people fighting up in the in melee? And they had to just develop a bunch of like prefixed camera positions for a whole bunch of different maps and do the best that they can. And I still don't think it's great.
00:46:03
Speaker
Like, why aren't they affix positions? Right.
Game Version Transitions
00:46:09
Speaker
Oh, sorry. Dota's solution for that has been like, let's say there's an engagement in middle lane. Maybe there's an engagement at top lane. They essentially do like a triple slanted bar where you kind of get like snippets of the fight. So you don't have like a full camera on it where it's taking up the whole screen.
00:46:27
Speaker
But they might split it into thirds. Like these things are going on simultaneously. See, they probably took him like five years to get that feature. Wasn't immediate. But it kind of gives you a flavor for the important parts of the action. Like you don't need to know if like Johnny's stacking camps, per se, or just like in the jungle. It's not exciting. You usually want the attention on what's actively happening. What's going to play versus players? Exactly. Yeah.
00:46:56
Speaker
Yeah, that's fair. I wish fighting games could figure that out, that camera shit. Right. How do you always like, where's it going? It would be funny if it just like drifted out of the way from the fighting. It's when you pause on melee and then you do you fuck her out the sea stick.
00:47:14
Speaker
actually um one of the things not to rag on overwatch too much one of the things they did that was really nice was the um the overwatch essentially season pass i'm not saying that's really nice but um for the overwatch league uh they had it so if you were in there in the client maybe it was even on twitch i don't remember exactly how the integration worked it was either youtube or or twitch um
00:47:41
Speaker
there would be like a box boxes above for all the players. And you could literally just click them to switch to their perspectives, like basically in real time, which was really cool. They literally just had a mirrored stream for every player's perspective. And using that integration, you just swap right over to the stream. Damn, that's actually an interesting idea.
00:48:06
Speaker
Yeah. They also had it for like, if you were only interested in the play style of like, I want to track tanks or I want to check DPS or healers, you could click that. And then it would move you between just the healers or the tanks or the DPS, depending on where the action was. It was clearly a lot of effort. They probably overcompensated for their camera problems. But, um, each, each blade of grass and each asset now has its own camera. Uh-huh.
00:48:33
Speaker
We've designed an AI to figure out the most encompassing camera shot per play. Yeah. Cameras can be hard.
00:48:44
Speaker
But, um, but at least I said, fighting games have that figured out. It's there's only one view at a given time. It's always PvP. And it's well, again, for fighters, smash is not a fighter, a platform. It's a platform fighter, but it's, it's not that same fixed position where it's literally two people are engaged in deadly combat. Yes. Just we're all the action will always be on them.
00:49:13
Speaker
And the game actually can be punishing if you have hazards or items or anything, any other casual crap, if you do get too close to the one other fighter, if it's a 1v1. Because the game's like, all right, let's bring the screen in. And then you don't see an R-Wing fly by shooting everybody or something. Literally a balancing concern with the frame in that type of game. But true fighting games don't really have the problem.
00:49:44
Speaker
Yeah, but they'll always have the option to like remove those. I think for the sake of competitive play or just you don't want to deal with that bullshit. Yeah. Which is nice. Because if you still want to just mess around on a hand and bow, uh, you could. Um, but it's like the worst stage known to man. Right.
00:50:06
Speaker
So I did have a note here. I did want to cover. So it starts with a question. Um, how long should a game be played competitively as kind of open as the community gives a shit about it? Right. So like, say, say you're playing Dota two for instance. Um, and it's been out for eight years, as I believe it has, um, involves like, Hey,
00:50:36
Speaker
Great work. We appreciate everybody's time, all of their efforts, but Dota three on the horizon, and we are going to switch the international over to Dota three. Um, like the same year it launches. How would you feel about that? I mean, I'm not a player, obviously at professional level, so that wouldn't affect me directly. Um,
00:51:05
Speaker
But as far as like the community and the player base is concerned, a lot of people aren't going to initially just switch over day one. Right. So I feel like you'd have to do things in tandem to really keep your audience together and then say like, hey, here are the better things about Dota 3. Here's why you should switch over and then maybe like slowly sunset supporting Dota 2.
00:51:29
Speaker
competitive, but if you just do like a knee-jerk snap, people are going to keep playing Dota 2 and be like, well, fuck your Dota 3. Because people have spent those eight years like giving a shit about that game, being passionate about it.
00:51:44
Speaker
So yeah, I think it's really community driven. Obviously, if there's no interest and nobody wants to buy AdSense or any type of advertising for your tournament, that might also be a sign that it's not as active as it once was, and maybe you should let it go.
00:52:04
Speaker
Yeah, I think
Corporate Influence in Esports
00:52:05
Speaker
that that's like what you're describing works best for games where their community has all of the tournament ownership like Smash, right? Smash Ultimate came out. Some people switched over to Ultimate. Some tournaments started up. A lot of people stayed on Melee and all of the Smash iterations that people actually play. Yeah, Melee still happens all the time. Because like there's not really an incentive for them to move away and they're in control of the tournaments anyway, so why change it?
00:52:33
Speaker
But like what I'm describing the situation and your reaction to it could actually be like basically copy pasted. I feel to Overwatch 2 where that is essentially what they're doing. In fact, there was an announcement that the I think it's the next season could be the season after that like of tournament play will be in the Overwatch 2 engine.
00:52:57
Speaker
And like perhaps before the games even out basically since you know, these teams all have to 20 million dollar buy-in. Yeah, that's bad. That's dumb, right? I understand from a business perspective you want to promote the new product and get people excited about it have them purchase buy-in Get switch over your community to the new thing
00:53:22
Speaker
So you don't have to support the old thing. It makes sense. But if pro players are playing in a game that you're not a part of, and again, you spent however many years in the base game, it feels like a huge disconnect from an audience standpoint. Right. Because it's literally they've taken the one thing from you and they're not giving it back. Right. Like there needs to be like a transition period.
00:53:50
Speaker
They need to have Warcraft vanilla before that whole debacle, you know? Right.
00:53:58
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, I agree. It's kind of a crappy situation, but it's perhaps one of the downsides to the eSport being owned by the parent company. I mean, like, I haven't heard of anything like this through League of Legends, but presumably Riot could do the same thing, right? Like, they own their whole tournament. They own every, like, tournament that feeds into their grand finals. So if they release a new game, they could make the jump where
00:54:27
Speaker
have a transition period or whatever, and hopefully they would do a little bit better of a job with it than Blizzard. Blizzard doesn't have a good track record for esports, since this is the esports episodes worth at least mentioning that they completely dropped the Heroes of the Storm scene. They just like disconnected it overnight, essentially. Which I don't think they needed to. Like, I think there was viewership, a player base, people who cared enough about it to make it viable.
00:54:54
Speaker
Even if it wasn't like a more casual mobile, like it was still there. Yeah. And like, they still have it basically on life support heroes come out periodically, all like overwatch for the most part, I guess, but, um, like, but the e-sport part of it is not supported. They're not, you know, running tournaments or anything like that.
00:55:16
Speaker
And then another example, Starcraft 2, I think they still run the global tournament, like the grand final in Katowice usually, but they're not developing maps, assets, co-op commanders, any more content for Starcraft 2. So that's basically handed back over to the community and South Korea runs with it, basically. I think it's fine. I'm thinking you need to actively
00:55:46
Speaker
support everything. I just as long as you're not nuking an existing and profitable scene for you. Right. That just seems like a bad call. But I'm not a real risk.
00:56:01
Speaker
for first party ownership, like if ever Blizzard was just like, oof, Overwatch isn't really working out for us and they decided to stop supporting it as an esport. Like, yes, there would be a gap where the private community could come in, but it's essentially kind of been choked out by all of this first party support. Right. And arguably that could be worse, you know, long term.
00:56:32
Speaker
I think as long as the passion's there, regardless of if it's first party or not, it can still be viable. But I feel like in either case, you still need to have some degree of community engagement, whether it's through memes, whether it's through like a costume competition, right? Something where like you're listening to the player base and getting their input or feedback or having to be a part of the event.
00:56:58
Speaker
instead of just here's a thing. Right. Because really, at the end of the day, it's the people behind the scenes. Like, if nobody gave a shit about a game, you can't have it be a viable e-sport. Nobody wants to watch it. Nobody wants to be a part of it. Yeah. So the money you dump into it doesn't matter if people don't care about the game.
00:57:20
Speaker
Yeah, it's an investment to do other things slightly outside of that to get that engagement or have it be more accessible to people who are not yet a part of the community.
00:57:30
Speaker
and just bring it all together. And maybe that's
Conclusion and Community Engagement
00:57:34
Speaker
the end of SA, like, summary, basically, to a lot of those questions you were asking. Like, if you want your community to switch over to a new version of the game, make sure it's a better version of the game. Make sure there's a reason that people are playing Ultimate instead of Melee, or Overwatch 2 instead of Overwatch, or Dota 3 instead of Dota 2.
00:57:57
Speaker
Vashnet. I mean, yeah, obviously that basically answers that. But yeah, if you give them a better game and say, like, here you go, improved experience, we would love to have you in this one. Then you don't have to make enemies of your own community if you do incentivize a Switch to a new game.
00:58:23
Speaker
So I did have one more question. So if you could make any game an esport that's not currently an esport, and this could just be like at a multiplayer mode. Maybe this is competitive. Minesweeper, I was going to say Minecraft, and I was like, wait a minute, that actually exists. Minesweeper or something else that you've played that you've enjoyed.
00:58:52
Speaker
What would be something that you would like to turn into an e-sport or maybe something that you're good at and you're just like, this is it. This is my one chance to, uh, you only get one shot. I feel like for a lot of the single player games, it immediately just becomes speed running. Yeah. Which is an e-sport as you know, we all know. I mean, it definitely is, but I mean, as far as something I'd want to see more of.
00:59:21
Speaker
You have to choose your words wisely as members of our friend group are literally speed rides. Member, at least. I mean, the last thing I played today was Dark Souls 3.
00:59:37
Speaker
So maybe having like a best of three duel and like a certain area where people are trying to do things like, oh, they're doing a cat's ring before jumping off a ledge, like reposition to try and then like aggro and NPC to get them to kill somebody. Oh, they've now turned into a barrel. They're hiding. And there's the backstab. I think it's kind of interesting.
01:00:05
Speaker
Like people have had PvP videos of Dark Souls for forever, but like very few very few members of the community actually use the PvP arenas and developing some sort of community around that would actually be kind of cool. I would just flush it out so that they're bigger arenas, so there's possibility for more play styles and it's not just. Oh, they're going to roll through everything and then hit me with their big sword and I'm going to roll back and use magic. What's kind of funny here is this is
01:00:35
Speaker
This is almost For Honor, right? I realize it's probably been a long time since we thought about For Honor, but honestly, yeah. That game was designed to be like an arena fighter with objectives, all of this stuff. I don't know how it's doing now.
01:00:50
Speaker
But I'm sure it's still played competitively, although I doubt Ubisoft would actually know how to turn into a full esport. No, definitely not. No friends to friends at Ubisoft. But that's Dave just said.
01:01:06
Speaker
There's shit and I hate you. Um, yeah, that was really fun because you had given maps. Um, you could pick different characters to like, I mean, the game mechanics are still all the same, but certain ones had different play styles, different advantages, different weaknesses. Um, it was more standardized, which made it easier to balance to be an actual competitive nature, which Dark Souls would always struggle with. It's like.
01:01:37
Speaker
I don't know. It could be cool. A better for honor. I'd like to see that. Yeah. Left for honor. Back for honor. Back for honor. There you go. Back to honor. Because it's the second one. Anyways, any other any other thoughts for esports? Maybe people in the audience who aspire to become e-sportiers, professional athletes of the electronic variety?
01:02:08
Speaker
fuck around, find out how much you care about. No, seriously, if it is something you enjoy, stream it on Twitch, just have a good time with it. I really enjoy watching people who make curated videos of whether it's them playing on Twitch or just a cool compilation smash because I know they're having fun with it and they're doing cool stuff. I'm like, I know what that is. That's really cool. I want to try and do it myself.
01:02:33
Speaker
So a lot of times if I watch pro play of like Ness, I'm like, Oh, I didn't know you could do that. And then I will try and do it. I'm like, Oh, that's really cool. And Jake's like, you've been watching videos. I'm like, no. Yeah, just have fun with it. Check out a scene. Maybe do it yourself. Right.
01:02:56
Speaker
I was going to say, don't quit your day job, but I mean, that's less positive, I guess. Also, don't quit your day job. Yes. Make sure you have sustainable income before you make any major life decisions. It's true. Most people listening to this podcast make more than the average esports player. I don't even need numbers or math or science to back that up because this is our podcast. But if you guys have any thoughts on esports, maybe a particular one that you appreciate, but we didn't mention, you'd like us to check out.
01:03:25
Speaker
Um, can't promise that we will, but you could send that in to soapstone podcast at gmail.com or you can join the discussion on Facebook, which is the platform's not called meta now, but the company is at facebook.com slash soapstone podcast. And as always, we'll see you in the next one. Have a good night.