11 replies to this topic

[NotKjell]

With all the talk about thing like what game mode people think would be best for e-sports, I was curious what the general feeling about the e-sports scene was.

If you're not familiar with other e-sports, have questions or concerns please voice them here. If you are familiar with parts of the scene and have thing you'd like to see from Hawken that'd be great too. Probably try and keep away from the long discussions on what gametype is best or whatnot, those can be left to more specific threads.

Also, any feeling the developers browsing the forums would like to make us aware of would be awesome.

[AsianJoyKiller]

Spectator features are key to my enjoyment of the comp scene.

[Lazoraz]

Chances are I'd watch high level play of this a lot. I'd even try my hand at lower level compedetive play. But I don't want to go any higher than that.

[Tezkat]

Funnily enough, eSports is actually what brought me to Hawken.

I've been actively following the professional gaming scene--mainly StarCraft 2--for several years now. I spend more of my time tuned into people streaming than I ever did on the couch watching television. It's very engaging, and I find the business aspects of how it's influencing the entertainment landscape fascinating as well.

I'd been aware of Hawken for some months. I've been following the development of Mechwarrior: Online for a while, and Hawken occasionally came up on the forums there as that other mech game. I checked it out, watched the now famous YouTube trailers, and came off with the impression that it was pretty cool but probably not for me. (Historically, I haven't been much of an FPS gamer--strategy games and RPGs are more my thing.)

Then came the Valencia eSports Congress in September, where Meteor's Kristin Reilly (we know her here as Batgirl) was on a panel with Blizzard's Dustin Browder and other game developers talking about how important it was for games to be as fun to watch as they were to play. So I thought, Huh... I need to take a second look at this game. I signed up on the website. A week later, I had an invite to the second alpha, which turned out to be a lot of fun. A week after that, I was at New York Comic Con chatting with Khang Le and the Meteor folks there. By then, I was pretty much sold on the game.


So yeah... I'd definitely follow competitive level Hawken games and tournaments. As of a few weeks ago, I finally have a PC capable of streaming without sputtering and choking like a wounded animal, so I'd even consider hopping on to the content creation side as well. (I actually streamed almost all of my CB1 gameplay. It was a lot of fun even though it was mostly just a few friends tuning in to watch me fail in entertaining ways. ) I'm really excited to watch this game develop, especially as a spectator sport, and I'd be willing to do whatever small part I can to help that grow.

[NotKjell]

Tezkat, on November 01 2012 - 03:46 PM, said:

I've been actively following the professional gaming scene--mainly StarCraft 2--for several years now. I spend more of my time tuned into people streaming than I ever did on the couch watching television. It's very engaging, and I find the business aspects of how it's influencing the entertainment landscape fascinating as well.

I just wanted to say yeah, once I found twitch, I watch that and particularly SC2 more than I ever watched TV. I'll generally have 1 stream up in the background while I'm online. If you told me 2 years ago I'd watch Super Mario 64 speedruns online, I'd of told you you're nuts. But I'm currently watching that (siglemic) and the greatest sc2 streamer White-Ra.

[RedVan]

maximum interest

[Arcana13]

MLG is streaming today : ). Imma hope the bosstoss is gonna pull off a show. And here is one of my all time favorite SC2 battles (hype at the last game was awesome)

As for hawken I'll prolly check it out casually only. May change my mind if the hype gets on it

[NotKjell]

I must say I am surprised by the amount of people who would heavily follow the scene/ areinterested in playing professionally  Though I guess the people who stick around on a closed beta discussion forum while there isn't a closed beta are going to be the committed ones. If this thread survives until the next closed beta period, I'm curious what would happen to the ratios.

The amount of people thinking about commentating/casting is cool too. But then that made me think about streaming hawken. In most of the current large games - LoL, DOTA, SC2 - the players point of view isn't different at all from that of a caster. Watching Pro-players stream is a good way to get your fix in between large casted tournaments. For hawken though, watching the POV of a player would be nothing like watching a tournament  I don't know if this will be too bad, as watching mechs zoom around from any angle can be cool but I think it makes having good spectating features even more important. Things like DOTA and LoL have the live-streaming of replays inside the game client, which might be a nice way to let players have a spectators view of pro-players games.

[AsianJoyKiller]

I'd just say you have to look at what happened with Tribes: Ascend to know the importance of having good spectating features for esport viability.

[Dbes]

I'd love to get into the e-sport Hawken scene. However I'd absolutely love to get a dedicated server up and running. Getting something up that contains fun and balanced game mechanics that people would enjoy would be pretty awesome too.

Backing that off with spectating streams of people playing, maybe even clan matches.
Running a dedicated server where clans come to fight each other would be even more fantastic.

I just want to be involved in the scene in the server side of Hawken.

[Tezkat]

NotKjell, on November 02 2012 - 10:53 AM, said:

I must say I am surprised by the amount of people who would heavily follow the scene/ areinterested in playing professionally  Though I guess the people who stick around on a closed beta discussion forum while there isn't a closed beta are going to be the committed ones. If this thread survives until the next closed beta period, I'm curious what would happen to the ratios.

Heh. It's not surprising at all given the sample population. Those of us still here are the evangelists who will be preaching Hawken to the masses when the doors open in December.


What might the numbers look like when this thing goes live_ Let's take a look at the current record holder.

As of October 15, 2012...

8 million people tuned into the last League of Legends championship.
12 million people play LoL each day (up to 3 million peak concurrent).
32 million people log into LoL at least once a month.
70 million total LoL accounts.
1 million results for "League of Legends" on YouTube.

Riot promots these events very heavily within the game client itself. From those figures, we can garner that the number of players who at least pay attention to major tournaments is maybe 1/4 of the active population and 1/10 of the total player base. And the hype surrounding such events probably attracts a number of non-players, though the level of engagement for that group is probably much lower given the steep learning curve in MOBA games.

The ratios for SC2 are probably similar, though it likely has a much higher interest among non-active and non-players.

Meteor/Adhesive's capitalization is up to around $30 million now, which means that jumping in on the "$1 million tournament season" bandwagon sometime next year could potentially be in their price range should that be how they choose to invest their money.

Dbes, on November 02 2012 - 11:05 AM, said:

I just want to be involved in the scene in the server side of Hawken.

It will be interesting to see what level of private server support they provide for Hawken. F2P games have lately been leaning in the direction of maintaining tight control over all of the servers, though the central accounting model in TF2 demonstrates that a more relaxed alternative is certainly viable.

We do definitely need some kind of custom server support for training and tournaments, though. Perhaps they'll go the Tribes: Ascend route and rent out server space.

Edited by Tezkat, November 02 2012 - 03:45 PM.

[NotKjell]

I hope they go the TF2 rout with the servers. So much more fun, and probably the hands-down king of F2P FPS's. Honestly if I get bored of hawken, the game I'll probably go back to is TF2. Even if that's in a few years I know there would be new content waiting for me and plenty of full servers.

With so many people interested in playing competitively I'm sure some of you are in teams. I'm curious, amung your team (or any teams) have you seen much hype for hawken, or people looking forward to an e-sport scene_ Does anyone know if there are teams or leagues looking to prepare for hawken_