It's hard to believe someone could be this short-sighted. You appear to fail to grasp basic aspects of the concept.
Plenty of people want to be able to watch competitions on TV. It's not too much different from how hundreds of thousands of people watch them online right now. ESPN makes a lot of money from advertising, so broadcasting e-sports is like making free cash compared to NFL, NHL, etc. People don't care what TV channel they're watching. This bizarre 1960s fever dream you're stuck in where these "nerds" won't watch ESPN because it's a sports channel has got to be the dumbest thing I've heard in a while.
You can bitch and moan about e-sports, but that's not going to stop it from being a multimillion dollar industry. Also, it's ESPN2 lmfao. They show bowling and darts on ESPN2. Who gives a fuck
Besides that, here's a newsflash: it's not just nerds that play video games. I doubt you'd walk up to guys like Martellus Bennett or Cam Newton, guys that have competed in Madden tournaments before, and call them nerds.
Daigo would be garbage at it if it's not fighting. He rarely ever plays anything other than Capcom fighters and he's ranked no where near the top in the Street Fighter 5 tournaments. I'm sure many of us that are naturally good at gaming would be this good if we've only played the same game day in and day out.
Maybe people just watch and are like. "Man, I wish I was this good, but I'm just a shitty gamer." They wouldn't be garbage if they actually played instead of watching someone else play on Twitch all day long.
This is still mystifying to me. I mean, clearly by the reactions in that video, there's an audience, but I really don't get it. The rush in a 2D fighter comes from playing for me, not watching. To me, watching a 2D fighter has always meant "waiting my turn." The stutter step/parry/light hit into super combo here is dull as fuck, but that audience sure was into it, so I think that this is a case where I just don't get it, likely never will, and have to just step aside and let these folks have their fun.
Shitty fight like that gives me false hopes and makes me think I could play some fighters competitively, though, if that's high level play in Street Fighter. Lord knows I won't, but I guess I'm just surprised that such a simple formula is top level.
Last edited by celerystalker; 02-17-2017 at 09:50 AM.
Might not look like theres alot going on, but there is. Alot of technique and strategy are required to play fighters at a competative level.
http://sonichurricane.com/?page_id=1702
if you wanna be seriously good at fighters you gotta work on your footsies
TBH watching *any* gameplay video bores me to tears and reminds me of that exact same thing: waiting on my turn with the controller. Sure I can get some enjoyment or information from watching some high-level play or glean some strategy from actually seeing gameplay techniques in action, but that's 5-second highlight reel clip material. A multi-hour live stream of Juan Doe slogging through Pokemon Ruby from the title screen? 2 dudes poorly playing co-op in a game that neither one is knowledgeable about nor did any prepwork or practice runs beforehand? Faceless Youtuber #984509's live stream impressions of a 30 second reveal trailer?
Here's something I don't get on esports. Like mentioned before, big tymers of the 80's score attack games attracted people to the arcades. But, in those instances, people cared only about the end result (or the last few seconds) not the entire gameplay session. Nobody gives a shit about the first 10 hours of your perfect Pac-Man game, they only want to see that killscreen or the final high score.
With fighting games you can at least see everything that is going on. You see everything happening at once in realtime and you're also seeing the exact same thing the competitors are seeing. In a weird way it's not too far removed from watching a real fight, boxing, or MMA match. Watching it live and unfolding right before your eyes obviously adds to the enjoyment.
Now, imagine I herded 12 of the best Call of Duty players into a room. These guys have legitimate skills in the game. The know the maps, they know the strategies, they know what techniques to use and when to use them. Once the game starts, how can I even possibly convey this to any audience, especially a live TV one? It's totally impossible. All you can to is skip between viewpoints, praying the one you're on does something cool, and if not throw up a highlight clip *after* it's happened.
Normally I'd concede that there's probably a lot I just don't know about, I'm pretty well-versed in ground-based Street Fighter, and these guys are using the same old stuff that's been practiced for pretty much as long as the Alpha games came around. Maybe it's just because I'm more used to Guilty Gear's more robust cancelling and perfect blocks/counters that open up the game to a wider variety of approaches in high level play, but I feel like Street Fighter play has been stagnant for ages. I was kinda surprised that it took until the third round in that video for any projectile play to control distancing to be used in conjunction with all of the usual ground feints. I know it's a tad riskier with recovery times, but much higher reward in forcing jumps and forcing the other player to change tactics.
I dunno. I don't want to sound cocky. I'm sure they could whip me pretty well. It's just weird to me to see the same approach being used in that game for nearly 20 years now. Remember back when everyone was working at mastering invincibility frames to get in for devastating combos? Footsies has always felt like the soft approach that replaced turtling.