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.
The Total Cost of Attending Summer CPL for Counterstrike Clans.
The purpose of this little commentary, is to get a good idea of how much clans (and their sponsors) are investing in the CPL Summer. Lets first of all look at the current situation. As the situation stands for the up coming tournament, the prizes on the line are:
Counter-Strike Cash Prize Distribution for 2004 Summer CPL
Total Purse: $100,000
1 - $30,000.00
2 - $21,000.00
3 - $14,000.00
4 - $9,000.00
5 - $6,000.00
6 - $5,000.00
7 - $3,000.00
8 - $2,000.00
9 thru 12 -$1,500.00
13 thru 16 - $1,000.00
Source
List of Confirmed Teams contains roughly 120 teams, however only about 30 of the teams are really important. For a successful tournament from a spectators point of view the other teams would not be required. A short list of some of the more popular teams.
Schroet Kommando Sweden
Four Kings United Kingdom
Team 64 Sweden
Lehnitz*e2sports Germany
Boomtown.cph Denmark
ALTERNATE aTTaX Germany
G3X Brazil
Adrenaline Sweden
mousesports Germany
mibr Brazil
tec USA
Team 3D USA
United 5 USA
NoA USA/Norway
Source of Participating Teams
What makes this tournament big and important, are the international clans and few top domestic clans. There are at least 25 clans flying in from all over the world, to participate.
Now I want to illustrate the total cost of the tournament per clan. Note, this is an estimate. Now I want to use some basic math to give a rough idea, how much the clans are contributing to this event. Each team consists of 6 people (5 players and a manager/trainer).
1) Cost for accommodation:
A Hotel room costs about 100$ for a double. The Tournament will last from Wednesday 28th until Sunday August 1. So most international teams will arrive on Tuesday, and leave on Monday. So for 6 people accommodation will cost =>
=>number of rooms * price of room * amount of nights spent
=> 3 * 100$ * 6
=>
1800$ pet team (without food)
2) Cost of airfare:
This one is difficult, but I think if we estimate 700$ per person, we should be close(for International Flights). Since their will be about 6 people per clan flying in:
=> people per clan * cost for ticket
=> 6 * 700$
=>
4800$
3) Daily expenses:
Just to make it easy, lets say each person spends 40$ per day. Breakfast, lunch, dinner etc...
=> days * avg. daily expenese * people
=> 7 * 40$ * 6
=>
1680$
Total cost for a non-American clan
=>accommodation + flights + daily expenses
=> 1800 + 4800 + 1680
=> 8260$ Sum of all expenses for a non-American clan
So unless a clan achieves a better end result than 5th place, they will be making a loss!
Total sum invested by all 25 international clans:
=>Total cost for a non-American clan * 25
=> 25*8260=
206,500$.
Off course this is excluding the sum that has to be paid by all the other domestic clans attending.
Sum of all costs Domestic clans (100 domestic clans attending):
=> (accommodation for 7 days * number of clan) + (daily expenses * number of clans)
=> (1800$ * 100) + (1680$ * 100)
=> 180,000$ + 168,000
=>
348,000$ (and this is without traveling expenses!)
So the total sum that all clans investin the Summer CPL
=> Sum of all costs for International clans + Sum of all costs for domestic clans
=> 206,500$ + 348,000$
=>
554,500$
Now does
100,000$ prize money still look like a good deal, when the total amount invested by the clans is
554,500$? Off course the real calculation is not that simple.Still some more parts missing :D
Total value of all the CPL Qualifiers
There will be 13 CPL qualifiers , around the whole world. Each qualifier is worth around 15,000$ (on average).
=> 13 CPL Qualifiers * Prize money (for tickets and accomodation)
=> 13 * 15,000$
=>
195,000$
Total Sum of costs after the CPL qualifiers
So technically we should substract the value of the
CPL Qualifiers from the
total sum that all clans investin the Summer CPL
=> 554,599$ - 195000$
=>
359,500$
Then again teams like titans (Denmark) and mousesports (Germany) had to travel all the way to Greece to attend a qualifier. I am sure that this Trip cost each team a few thousand Euros too. In fact this can be applied worldwide. However I don't want to make the calculation more complicated.
Conclusion: The final result!
In conclusion we are left with 359,500$ subtract the 100,000$ total prize winnings, and you still have the counterstrike teams all making a loss.
=>
Total Sum of costs after the CPL qualifiers - total prize winnings
=> 359,500$ - 100,000$
=>
259,500$ This is what the clans are investing into the CPL
If one considers the amount of time that the players invest, the infrastructure and the bootcamps, then I can easily imagine that the figure would be even higher, way beyond 350,000$.
In most cases the players are not financing 259,000$. The money is financed by the sponsors of the clans. The question the clans have to ask themselves:
Are the sponsors getting a good return (exposure) from their 259,000$?
How much are the sponsors of the CPL investing, and equal amount?
How much might the CPL be making?
Is the deal really fair between all parties involved?
Too be honest I am eager to see about the details about the "World Tour". 1 Million devided by 10 = 100,000$ per tournament. Does this still sound rosy, considering all the costs involved in running a clan?
The idea of the blog is to try and quantify the figures involved. MAybe raise a few questions.
Please send me a comment if you find any irregularities, and have any other suggestions. As I stated this is just a rough estimate.
c4urself, we cheat...
Once in a while the counterstrike gaming scene goes through a little earthquake. In this case it involved an internationally fairly unknown clan, c4urself. In the UK they where quite known, for several reasons. It is fair to say that the clan did not enjoy the best reputation. Most of the UK gamers, considered them to be pricks. Unfortunately, I never had the displeasure of meeting them, so I can cannot confirm whether that being said about them is true or not.
Like most people I will judge others by their actions. Unfortunately c4urself have committed the ultimate sin within competitive online gaming, they cheated. To be specific, one of their players was found to be cheating in an online match against UK`s most prominent counterstrike team, 4Kings. Now this is not the first time that cheating has occurred with in the scene. Several matters, make this more severe. First of all, 4Kings belong to the worlds top 8 of counterstrike teams. So any team to beat or tie against the 4Kings will cause quite a sensation, in this case c4urself drew a tie against 4Kings. Secondly, this is not the first time members of c4urself have been accused of cheating, albeit it was a different member (Kritikal) who had been notorious of using cheats in the past in a previous team. In this specific case the player wilzOOO was found to be cheating. He was found guilty of using a program, a wallhack. There are different versions of these types of programs. Lets just say it gives the player using it such a great advantage, that most of the time he will spend trying to cover up the use of this program during a match. The end result of this scandal, effects the player wilzOOO, the clan c4urself, and once again will question the credibility of online matches.
wilzOOO, will have trouble trying to re integrate into the scene and gain back his credibility, just read the community`s response to this article published at ukterrorist. It should be noted that in this case we are talking of a player who is only 14 years old. There is no doubt that the player should be punished, despite his young age. As of today he has been banned from playing in the clanbase online leagues, and he has been dropped from his team. I think it is fair to say that currently in the UK and world wide gaming scene, he has to be the most hated person, Recon form CXG will be glad for the current relief. I am sure that it wont be easy for a 14 year old to deal with. It´s best if wilzOOO apologized to everyone publically and then avoided the internet for the next 2 weeks until the scene focuses on the next scandal. One thing is for sure, should he ever become a successful eAthelete (some one who`s profession is a gamer) he will still have to bear wearing that scarlet letter for the rest of his career. That's the drawback of the internet and google, this one will go down in history, and the story will resurface as long as someone types in wilzOOO into a search engine. Life could be worse I suppose...
For c4urself, life wont be easy either. Every time they win legitimately there will be a foul after taste in the mouths of the community. People will obviously question the legitimacy of the win. This foul after taste is further fueled by the clan leader stating that he was sitting behind wilzOOO during the online match, and saw no indication of him using any cheats. Which raises the question, is the man blind, stupid, a liar, or was he in on the scam? What ever the answer may be, there is no way the manager will look good? Not to forget when one considers Kritikal`s history, one cannot help but wonder if the entire team was somehow involved in the scam. How convenient it would be to then let a 14 year old, wilzOOO, take the fall for the team. I fear though that this might be carrying the thought to far, and lets not forget, my name is not Mulder, nor is it Columbo, but the truth is out there.
Once again this scandal proofs that any result achieved online is to be taken with a grain of salt. All too often the following proverb applies
"online a hero, on LAN a zero"
Sebastian aka Smack
Small Introduction
This blog will follow and contain a critical commentary on the changes and developements that occur with in the esports community. The blog, will mainly cover the counterstrike scene, but occansionally will dabble into the areas of other computer games too. So if you are familiar with counterstrike, and Schroet, Gotfrag, and theCPL, all ring a bell then stay tuned and enjoy the blog.
Sebastian
Visit the links to get a better idea
