eSports coverage
Increasing the attractivity of eSports coverage, for sponsors, and the specattors.
Stage 1.
Bringing in the sponsors.
A while back ago, I was seriously considering getting involved in eSports. One of my first thoughts was, why would a sponsor invest in a clan? unfortunately the reality is that there where not many good reasons I could offer the sponsors. Sure, the demographic and numbers are excellent, but unless clans have a community based site (like SK) as opposed to a regular clan site, chances are that only few people will visit regularly the clan page. (With out visiting the clan pages of TeamNOA, Mousesports, Mibr, Titans, how many of you can list more than 1 or 2 of their sponsors with out guessing)? How ever since the sponsors of the clans are the ones which allow clans to travel and attend events. It is important for the community to make sure that they are getting their money's worth. So I hope this will make it more attractive for future potential sponsors. After all not everyone might visit the joeblow clanpage, but they might watch joeblow, getting owned by SK-gaming on HLTV. Besides compare it to real life sports, where the sponsor of the athlete or team also receives coverage, by having their brandname on the car/jersey/boat....
In fact as long as the sponsors for the clans are the ones paying the athletes to attend the event (as opposed to receiving paid invitations like WCG) clan managers should insist that their sponsors get this type of coverage. Hopefully this will attract more sponsor money to esports. THis can only be a good thing.
As for technical implementation, either it will be an animated gif (series of sponsors displayed), or a pic that contains all the sponsors. Clans will have to make these themselves, to a pre-arranged format, and max-limit size. Obviously the sponsor of the clan would be in the picture of the player/clan you are following at that moment.
IT would be cool if we could actually include an animated gif, with all the sponsors of SK. When we release the "official article" of the image
Player/Clan info...
Sometimes esport can be a very remote experience. How ever like every popular sport. Esport needs it stars, and stars need to be recognizable. An inclusion of a picture can go a long way. I know there are players who rather be anonymous. Well then my advice is, remain an amateur. For the pro-players, raising your profile can only be a good thing. The more people know you, the better. It increases the chance of players receiving corporate endorsements.
Also a few minor details of the players cant hurt. How ever it is about time that we get to see the URL of the clan page. I cannot say how often, I watched a match on HLTV and afterwards spent valuable time searching for the clan page, to find out more information.
I took the image from Ahl´s profile. Better would be an image of one of the SK players with their SK T-shirt. Feel free to change any info, or include anything else.
Ammo/Health
Part of the excitement is knowing that there are 4 enemies left, and our protagonist (the guy we follow) only has 20 health, 4 bullets in his colt and 1 HE left... I have a feeling we sometimes miss out on excitement because we don't realize the urgency of the situation when watching via HLTV.
I was thinking it would be cool if we could add the following:
a 2d image of the primary and secondary weapon (like the ones used when you see that a player has been killed. Next to the weapons their should be a number, which represents the amount of ammo
Health, and ammo should be displayed with according icons, and with it the numerical amount the player has left.
Grenades. It would be cool if we could see how many grenades the player has. So if the palyer has 3 grenades, we see 3 grenade icons. For a HE the color of icon should be red, Smoke Green, Flashbang blue. If a player has used a grenade, the icon should turn grey.
The tournament banner
Hey Tournament sponsors enable the prize money, they get 2 fields for advertising. btw I prefer this, as opposed to the prospect of seeing the sponsors name all over the map. The latter can be way to annoying, and it prevents immersion into the game.
Don't you hate it when you are not sure wether you are not connected to the right game, and only after 10 minutes you realize you are waiting for some clan war from liechtenstein to start, when you where hoping to be connected to grand final. So lets have the tournament name. Also include the names of the clans playing.
We need to place the score, and time left. Again like with the clans sponsors, it would be cool to include an animated gif. BTW I was thinking of using the CPL Summer Tournament 2005 as an example. But I think you would need permission of the CPL, etc.. But feel free to change the title of the tournament..
Stage 2
Player models:
The pro players should play with default models. How ever as viewer it would be nice if we could have more distinction between players and team. It should be possible that I can recognize each player form watching the game. Also Clans could have the models in the "clan Colors" each year they change them slightly so that the fans have to buy the new shirts... It works in soccer...
If would be cool if you could graphically display what I mean. Either we see the name of the Player ("HEaton") on the back of his suit, or some number (so if HEaton always plays with number 3, the audice will know he is number 3) . How about some SK initials on the arms, maybe even the sponsors (that might be taking it too far). What also would be cool if you could make the models in SK colors!!!!!
Obviously you need to use a picture where you can see the back of the palyer.
Stage 3
Replacing the image with the player, with a video stream from the player playing. Right now, the viewer misses a lot of emotion. Spectators want to see a player curse, break in sweet, loose his temper etc.. we need and want emotions. These are essential part of sports. Lets not forget we are watching humans play, but we might as well be watching two teams of programmers having their "bots" fighting it out...
I am not sure we can display this graphically. Anyway this would be one of the fianal steps.
Realize that some of these suggestions are obvious, many of you will find them unnessary. My personal goal is to make eSport more accessible to people who do not necessarily play computer games. As I believe this is important for eSports to break through. Not everyone is a hardcore player, like some of you freaks are. How ever I believe that the market for esport spectors is larger than simply the market of active gamers.
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