Nintendo best PR ever?

[smackababy]

It looks like MLG's highest concurrent viewers were around 97,000 which was during their championship of their season. That is lower than EVO, which also has a season.

One cannot argue the FGC is the smallest of the eSports, but it still has one of the largest tournaments. EVO, as I have said, is easily in the top 10 yearly tournaments. Claiming it is a niche (within the niche of professional gaming) is rather silly.

 

[gothamhunter]

It looks like MLG's highest concurrent viewers were around 97,000 which was during their championship of their season. That is lower than EVO, which also has a season.

One cannot argue the FGC is the smallest of the eSports, but it still has one of the largest tournaments. EVO, as I have said, is easily in the top 10 yearly tournaments. Claiming it is a niche (within the niche of professional gaming) is rather silly.

http://mashable.com/2012/11/14/major-league-gaming-numbers/

"The most recent tournament, MLG's Fall Championship, was held in Dallas on Nov. 2 through Nov. 4. In addition to the above games, players fought it out in Halo 4 days before it was released. MLG gave out $180,000 in prizes in Dallas, and saw 1,500 entrants across all games. About 4.8 million people tuned in online to watch them play over that weekend."

Again, I'm not saying FGC is niche, nor that it doesn't have a good following, but EVO does not compete in viewership numbers with MLG.

If you want to get into semantics that FGC as a genre (not EVO) has larger numbers than another genre, that might be possible if we can get accurate numbers.

 

[blackened23]

http://mashable.com/2012/11/14/major-league-gaming-numbers/

"The most recent tournament, MLG's Fall Championship, was held in Dallas on Nov. 2 through Nov. 4. In addition to the above games, players fought it out in Halo 4 days before it was released. MLG gave out $180,000 in prizes in Dallas, and saw 1,500 entrants across all games. About 4.8 million people tuned in online to watch them play over that weekend."

Again, I'm not saying FGC is niche, nor that it doesn't have a good following, but EVO does not compete in viewership numbers with MLG.

If you want to get into semantics that FGC as a genre (not EVO) has larger numbers than another genre, that might be possible if we can get accurate numbers.

You are discussing total viewership while I am discussing concurrent. MLG's concurrent viewership is mainly in NA and has never exceeded 100k while EVO easily does 300-400k worldwide. Extrapolating that, their total viewership is larger. But my entire point is semantics. This is completely stupid, and honestly i'm surprised by how annoyed I am at folks that have NEVER played tournament level fighting games (and some who don't play fighting games period) asserting that EVO is small.

Anyway, they are BOTH BIG tournaments for their respective genres. There is not a single world tournament minded fighting game player that doesn't know about EVO. You could say the same about SC2 players and MLG. They both have their specific niche and genre. Alrighty? Different tournaments, different genres. We could say both tourneys are big or that they're both a niche. It's all about perspective and context - if you think something like NFL is huge, and then go to an empty venue for an MLG event, then of course it's small. But it's still huge for SC2..... EVO is huge for fighting games. MLG is huge for strategy games like SC2. They both have their place. But to say that MLG or EVO are a "niche", very annoying. Because it's not true in the context of a video game tournament - they're both major events.

 

[gothamhunter]

EVO is huge for fighting games. MLG is huge for strategy games like SC2.

We can agree on that

 

[Arkaign]

You are discussing total viewership while I am discussing concurrent. MLG's concurrent viewership is mainly in NA and has never exceeded 100k while EVO easily does 300-400k worldwide. Extrapolating that, their total viewership is larger. But my entire point is semantics. This is completely stupid, and honestly i'm surprised by how annoyed I am at folks that have NEVER played tournament level fighting games (and some who don't play fighting games period) asserting that EVO is small.

Anyway, they are BOTH BIG tournaments for their respective genres. There is not a single world tournament minded fighting game player that doesn't know about EVO. You could say the same about SC2 players and MLG. They both have their specific niche and genre. Alrighty? Different tournaments, different genres. We could say both tourneys are big or that they're both a niche. It's all about perspective and context - if you think something like NFL is huge, and then go to an empty venue for an MLG event, then of course it's small. But it's still huge for SC2..... EVO is huge for fighting games. MLG is huge for strategy games like SC2. They both have their place. But to say that MLG or EVO are a "niche", very annoying. Because it's not true in the context of a video game tournament - they're both major events.

They are big for their genres, but tiny overall as tournaments. Ask the average CoD player and maybe you'll find 1 in 100 who has even heard of Evo. Ask a random person on the street? Maybe 1 in 100,000 if that.

What gaming needs is companies like EA (yes, they have the money to make this work), Sony, or Microsoft, someone THAT big, to spend the tens of millions to get a real serious tournament with serious prizes in action. Run ads, have sponsors galore, make in into a real sport. All we're waiting on is the companies to make the investments. The thing about things like Evo and even MLG is that they're mostly the pet projects of passionate people rather than seriously supported corporate efforts.

We need 1M+ prizes and massive tours. Hell, fill stadium arenas and have the football field lined with massive screens and smaller quarterfinal setups. Tour the country before a gigantic globally televised final series. Gaming makes more $$ than movies these days, why don't they give us the competitive leagues that it deserves?

Niche is niche, and one subset of a gaming competition with tiny prizes is not really even up to the level of something 1/100th of say the X-games, which gets 100k+ people to converge on a city. And the X games looks like two guys in clown costumes compared to the actual Olympics.

 

[Arkaign]

I guess what I'm trying to get across is that we need these things to cross over from niche gamer subculture to mainstream culture. For example, I don't GAF about Baseball, but I know what the World Series is, and I know it's a huge deal to win that sucker. Ditto Stanley Cup, Nascar, F1, etc, etc.

The numbers of gamers are there, the interest is there, the companies just need to grow a pair and build the infrastructure, partnerships, and the whole shebang will come together.

It WILL happen, the question is only how long we have to wait for it to get legit.

 

[cmdrdredd]

I guess what I'm trying to get across is that we need these things to cross over from niche gamer subculture to mainstream culture. For example, I don't GAF about Baseball, but I know what the World Series is, and I know it's a huge deal to win that sucker. Ditto Stanley Cup, Nascar, F1, etc, etc.

The numbers of gamers are there, the interest is there, the companies just need to grow a pair and build the infrastructure, partnerships, and the whole shebang will come together.

It WILL happen, the question is only how long we have to wait for it to get legit.

The real problem I would think is that gaming in general is not looked upon with the same reverance as Football, Baseball, Hockey etc. You have to get gaming to be accepted as a form of competition and not just a "time wasting hobby". Win the minds of people who don't play.
Part of this is like you said, commercializing it. However, then you run into the problem of people in gaming who don't really think commercialization will help but rather ruin it (look at CoD hate. for as popular as it is).

 

[Arkaign]

The real problem I would think is that gaming in general is not looked upon with the same reverance as Football, Baseball, Hockey etc. You have to get gaming to be accepted as a form of competition and not just a "time wasting hobby". Win the minds of people who don't play.
Part of this is like you said, commercializing it. However, then you run into the problem of people in gaming who don't really think commercialization will help but rather ruin it (look at CoD hate. for as popular as it is).

That's a fair point.

The thing is that all of these media corporations (and oftentimes gaming companies!) are still run by old guys who didn't grow up gaming. They don't really 'get' what it is they're doing, but they handle the direction of the companies and the financial choices/etc.

When it comes time (and it will) when all of the board members/etc are guys/gals that grew up as gamers and kept gaming into adulthood, we'll start to see gaming completely differently in pop/media culture. I'd say right now the guys in their late 30s to early 40s are about the oldest people that grew up watching gaming in almost it's entirety, with the early-thirties and younger set pretty much having gaming be a big deal for their entire lives. In 15 years, those 30 year olds will be 45ish, and starting to fill major positions at the tops of corporations. You'll also have many many more people in the general audience who can at least relate to gaming media. Right now the average 45yo wouldn't know the difference between CoD and Contra unless you really explained it to them, and likely they still wouldn't care. And advertisers know that you need a wide demographic appeal for something to be truly mainstream, say get ages 8-55 or so covered bigtime and you're gold.

As far as commercialization, sure. There will always be critics, and many of them will indeed have valid points. But mark my words, it will get bigger, a LOT bigger as things move forward, for better or worse.

 

[ImpulsE69]

and really..do you want it to be? I for one don't. The "mainstreaming" of gaming is the same thing that people say is ruining gaming. Let alone the uber commercialization of it.

 

[Arkaign]

and really..do you want it to be? I for one don't. The "mainstreaming" of gaming is the same thing that people say is ruining gaming. Let alone the uber commercialization of it.

We can't avoid it. Look at the most popular movies/music/tv/etc, it's just the way of the world. Gaming will always be large enough now to find good stuff regardless. It may not be the most popular stuff, but who cares Let the masses continue to shovel crap, and pick out the gems. After all, Justin Bieber sells more records than probably 1,000 awesome indie rock bands combined, but he's garbage. I don't care though, because great music still exists.