Hello! In touch Nikita Bokarev, creative producer of the game direction Mail.Ru Group. It's time to continue the interrupted story about eSports. The first article about the history of this phenomenon can be read here .

The crisis of the world, the crisis of eSports

In the last post, I talked about the birth and flourishing of cybersport, the appearance and take-off of the first major competitions. We stopped around 2007, from which we continue the story.


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In 2007-2008, everything suddenly became worse. With the advent of the financial crisis, a cyber sports crisis began. To begin with, Samsung has withdrawn its money from the industry, saying that it is refusing to support World Cyber ​​Games. This was done because of those considerations that the company had mobile phones in the foreground. Samsung even organized large-scale mobile games competitions, where venerable cybersportsmen came. Nevertheless, the general attitude in the industry regarding such championships was extremely skeptical. The players who came to the World Cyber ​​Games to compete in other games clearly hinted that after the Starcraft battles, the mini screen screens looked somehow faded. As a result, Samsung questioned the image feasibility of the whole venture with eSports. Add to this the very complex and expensive organization and holding of championships with the participation of more than 200 teams, and the decision of the company's management becomes more understandable.

A little later, in early 2009, nVidia merged, which did not come up with special excuses, but directly stated that it had a crisis. The company lasted a long time: nVidia was the only sponsor of the American Electronic Sports World Cup in 2008. One by one, partners began to disappear from eSports, venders were withdrawing their assets, serious money disappeared. The level of international competitions of the World Cyber ​​Games and the Electronic Sports World Cup has decreased, and local championships, such as the favorite tournaments of the Asus Cup series in Russia, have closed. Due to the lack of sponsorship and a bad situation in the global economy, the tournament industry has begun to stagnate.

It seemed that this was a complete collapse, but in fact something continued to happen, even in Russia. However, eSports enthusiasts managed even before the crisis to bring the industry to the level where it was noticed by the game publishers themselves. Developers began to think that such events have their coverage with very pleasant numbers in statistics. The transformation of eSports began slowly: now financing was provided not by partners, but by publishers and developers. Actually, the well-known company Riot Games was the first on this path.

Million there, million here

League of Legends is probably the most popular game in the world today. The project in the Multiplayer Online Battle Arena genre was created by Riot Games under the inspiration of games such as Heroes of Newerth (HoN) from S2 GAMES, the leader of the genre, and DotA, which initially was just a mod for Warcraft 3 and could not boast the money invested in it .



At one time, the audience distribution between DotA and HoN was 25% and 75%, respectively. It is important to consider that we are talking about millions of players. At some point in S2 GAMES decided to make HoN paid and set a price tag of about 30 euros. This is a great check for a gamer, and the consequences were not long in coming. A few weeks later, after setting the price tag, HoN and DotA switched places: the first game had 25% of the audience, and the second, 75%. For S2 GAMES, it was a complete disaster, the worst marketing decision in the history of the gaming industry. So Heroes of Newerth merged with the “big arena” and moved into the piggy banks of connoisseurs of the genre of the genre, ceasing to bring substantial money to the creators. DotA, on the contrary, confidently went up.

A little later, the League of Legends, already mentioned by me, appeared on the scene, which from the very beginning became a competitor of DotA. The new game was released by the company Riot Games, which had not previously declared itself on the market. Partly, and therefore, the first reaction to LoL was somewhat puzzled: what is it all about? But as soon as people started to play it, many people understood that the new product is cooler than DotA, and remained forever.

Having gained a certain critical mass of players, Riot Games announced that it will play $ 400K in League of Legends tournaments. It was a completely new information field, which set new rules for the game. The creators of LoL added one zero to the maximum prize rates up to that point. The DotA audience reacted in a completely natural way: “400k? I'm already there! ”, And a significant part of the players darted to LoL - to play and to occupy empty seats of leaders with the motivation to win a large cash prize. From the eSports point of view, Riot Games did a very good thing, declaring five tournaments: in this way, the players understood that they had a time period during which they could prepare and perform adequately in one of the competitions. Actually, the migration that took place, first from HoN to DotA, and then from DotA to LoL, is a good example of how the conversion of the audience works: first people left the game, which became paid, and then they came to a similar game, which beckoned a chance to win a huge amount.



After this powerful performance of Riot Games, Valve began to fuss: how, a powerful competitor has entered the market, and they are not ready! However, Valve had a pair of trump cards up its sleeve. Just a couple of months later, the DotA tournament with a new prize bar was announced: the winner got one million dollars. No “prize money for everyone” is simple and clear: one winner - one million. The effect was expected: a reverse conversion immediately occurred, the people reached for DotA. In addition, along with the announcement of the tournament, Valve announced DotA 2, the continuation of the game. It was a low blow for Riot Games: they didn’t even plan a second LoL, and their competitors have already announced a sequel.

A small digression: the whole story with extraordinary prizes from the creators of LoL and DotA is actually a vivid example of two titans of the market, in which there are no other players. If Valve did not have Riot Games, while Riot Games did not have Valve, then there would be no million prizes: the winners would have managed with their pitiful thousands and tens of thousands. As a result, we have the following: two large companies with large budgets butt for users and market share, and all the cream - championships, contests, prize money, and so on - are removed by players.

At this, surprises from Valve are not over. The first tournament in the series of The International was a secret scheme; The 16 teams that passed through the DotA competition got access to the brand new DotA 2, which no one has ever seen. In it were the final matches, which were then shown all over the world. Just imagine: the announcement of the second part of DotA took place in the format of a game of professional eSports teams for a million dollars (which was eventually taken by the Ukrainian team NaVi).



It was something unthinkable; The event gathered a lot of spectators and the press. By announcing five tournaments with a prize pool of $ 2 million, Riot Games won the attention of the gaming press all over the world; Valve with their tournament with $ 1 million for the first place attracted the attention of the entire press in general - even Forbes wrote about them, if I'm not mistaken. The boom was unreal: everyone who needed sharp material wrote that a million were playing at computer games contests. It was a very strong PR move that conveyed information about DotA not only to every gamer, but also to everyone. Valve's official broadcast from the tournament was watched by an unrealistic number of spectators: more than 1,500,000 people.

As a result, it was The International that raised e-sports to a fundamentally different level. The organizers worked brilliantly both before the event and after it. As a result, the vendors, who had once left the industry, once again became interested in eSports; Publishers and developers began to allocate money for holding tournaments in their own games. In some cases, it was a very winning strategy: for certain games, this format fits perfectly. Thanks to The International, a new bar was set in e-sports competitions: millions in prizes, millions of viewers, unreal media coverage. The image of eSports has changed: it ceased to be strictly niche.

Stream more, Stream better.

Not to mention another phenomenon that has incredibly powerfully advanced e-sports in the last four years. This is broadcasting, streaming and streaming. This technology gave event organizers the opportunity to cover cyber sports competitions at a new level. In addition, streaming is available not only to corporations, but also mere mortals. Now I can not just play - no, I can play and show everyone how I do it. I can open the video player on YouTube, Twitch or anywhere else, and broadcast the process of my game, accompanying the show with my own comments. All very quickly and firmly seized the opportunity, and for this there is another reason: the whole story is very easy to monetize through advertising.



Now everyone is streaming everything. Generally everything. You can go to the stream aggregator and see: they have five or six hundred broadcasts hanging from a variety of games. To any of them you can connect and watch the process of passing the level, the removal of the boss and so on. At the same time, our passion for streaming doesn’t compare with what hysteria prevails in Asia. For an example, not far to go: we recently did a large-scale event on the online shooter Cross Fire and invited a top world team to the show match. I wanted to show our competition to the audience in China, so before holding this whole event, we discussed with the Chinese colleagues the possibility of bringing a local streamer to Russia, which would have a joint broadcast with the Russian host. We ask: who is your Cross Fire top streamer? They say: we have 296 top streamers. With this example, it is easy to imagine the overall scale of the phenomenon, isn't it?

By the way, the dominance of streamers gives the audience one very important thing: the choice. Ability to choose which broadcast to watch, whose comments to listen to and so on. For example, there is an official stream at a large eSports event. Organizers bring the coolest streamers from all over the world to it. Here they were brought, and in China there are still 295 tough guys. They did not get into the official clip, but this does not prevent them from streaming the same event. Just take the signal, turn off the sound on it, turn on your own and arrange for yourself and your fans a cozy tube broadcast. True, without the sound of the game.

People listen and watch different things, find what they like, become loyal fans, give out their favorite streamers. As a result, all this adds up to a fantastic amount of views for each major e-sports event. The industry has already overtaken most traditional sports in this indicator. Now publishers are actively engaged in streaming, which means that in the future we will have even more broadcasts, activities, money invested in all this and new perspectives.

In addition to eSports, streaming greatly helped the gaming industry as a whole: top streamers played in different projects, helped in their promotion, and most importantly, they allowed people to make a choice. The viewer can take a look at the game even before its release (the developers willingly give eminent streamers the alpha version of their projects), ask the price and understand whether he wants it or not.

Subtotals

So, we got to 2010. At that time, the industry had the following situation: eSports, like a phoenix bird, rose from the ashes of old, somewhat naive ideas of enthusiasts and rose to a new level. As a result of all that I described in this post, game publishers got a powerful new tool for promoting their projects, and e-sports came out of a niche and became a phenomenon that people who had recently heard nothing of him began to show interest. Streaming acquired unprecedented scale and strongly moved both gaming and cybersport industry forward. IT-vendors, who came after the crisis, again paid attention to the tournaments and were pleasantly impressed with the direction and intensity of e-sports.

And finally

Now absolutely all publishing companies and developers make tournaments. No one even asks the question, to do or not to do, just necessary. However, such an exciting and exciting activity as cyber sports has a problem. The fact is that it is impossible to calculate the effectiveness of tournaments in relation to operating the game in terms of the money that the game brings. What is a championship? This is what you can do after the user's life cycle in the game comes to an end: the game content is completely absorbed, the clothes are collected, the instances are cleaned. The player understands that now, when everything is drained from the project, you can compete with other users - this is the logical next step. If you think globally, tournaments can not be considered an effective tool to attract an audience in comparison with advertising. To do this, you must be first in your segment, that is, repeat the feat of LoL with a million-plus prize tournament or the feat of DotA with their first The International.



The bottom line is that, over the years, eSports from a kind of naive dream of epic global tournaments around the whole turned into point events, which usually featured one game from one developer. Of course, enthusiasts continue to make "hodgepodge", which presents several different games, but most of the developers are trying to distance themselves from each other. Riot Games will not want to get up to a tournament where there is DotA; Valve will refuse to participate in the championship, in the grid of which there is a LoL. As a result, both companies proudly turn their nose, snort and go to organize their own events, at which the degree of their control over what is happening will be much higher. Nobody wants to risk for nothing.

To summarize, it will be as follows: global tournaments, supported by sponsors, have been replaced by large-scale events related to individual products. What happens in these tournaments is worthy of attention and interest - both professional players and outside spectators. The trend extends around the world: in Europe, the States, Asia, dozens of competitions are held in a variety of games - from the most popular to projects with a very narrow circle of fans. The same Korea still remained the mecca of e-sports, picking up the main trends, but also not forgetting about the favorite game of all Koreans - Starcraft, which never lost the status of the main game in the country.

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Friends!

About everything that is happening in the industry right now, we will talk in detail in the next post. But in the comments to the previous article there were many requests for more details about what happened in the old days. If there really is such an interest, leave your comments, and the fourth issue of our series of articles will be a nostalgic post.