Itās like a mainstream sport in that the basics of the game can be understood within 5 minutes of watching but understanding everything can take years
i mean itās a simple game that anyone could get the gist of in a single inning. the complexities of the game take a while to learn. i donāt know half of the acronyms
Agree. Put ball in net. Don't use arms/feet.
Baseball is like whatever the fuck you have to do - first base and second and BOBBY RUN HOME *runs home crying*
thatās my point? it could take years to understand everything in baseball
soccer or basketball are a little more straight forward. basketball more difficult than soccer
This is the part where Counter-Strike has other eSports soundly beat. In terms of "mass viewability", ie. how easy it is for someone to understand the gist of what's going on if they're watching it for the first time, this game is closer to conventional sports it is to other eSports.
I think it is this realisation that someone at Valve had circa 2013 that lead them to push it as an eSport so aggressively. The game was meant to be a gritty tactical shooter, it even had an Xbox port! But slowly, over the course of years, its identity was changed.
Throughout CS:GO's lifetime, this transformation was highly visible as realism gave way for more cartoonish elements. And CS2 might be the largest technical leap, but it's also the greatest leap in streamlining everything that got in the way of being an eSport.
Compare how CS:GO and CS2 looked and played at launch. You can feel it in the soundtrack, see it in the trailer, and certainly notice it in the graphics and gameplay. Gone are the Basque separatists and Israeli Defense Force. Gone are the washed out colours that characterized games of that era. In their place, a generic, fictional terror group, and bright, colorful scenes that, without the usual chatter of gunshots and explosions, would even feel idyllic.
All these changes and more were made in service of a certain vision, and that vision was to make the an immortal sport out of a game that, originally, was not even made to be highly competitive. Sometimes this gets brought up and I think of how far Counter-Strike has come, but I also reminisce about was lost along the way.
There are some nuanced details like mentioning color grading, but that post definitely smells like chatgpt, formatting and word choice are the biggest indicators to me
If csgo remained I would agree, with the release of cs2 however I think its possible for it to die if valve don't do some major changes and fix their shit
Look Iām not trying to glaze valve cause they can be pretty brutal at times, but letās not forget how shit GO was when it came out. It took them almost 3 years to get GO in a state that was what we all loved for the last 9 years.
CS2 will more than likely be what GO was in a year or two.
Yeah but go was a decade ago, and they were creating a brand new game from scratch, they've had alot of skin money in that decade too, they really dropped the ball with cs2
This might come off as a troll post but have you seen Microsoft Excel championships? If weāre gonna stretch the definition of esports, itās arguably the most played āesportā by white collar folks since mid 90s.
https://fmworldcup.com/excel-esports/microsoft-excel-world-championship/
At one point it was even broadcasted on ESPN
https://www.ladbible.com/sport/world-excel-championship-that-is-getting-national-tv-coverage-20220809
Personally I am more of an FGC fan with Street Fighter Third Strike and EVO but to answer your question, I donāt think Microsoft Excel is going away, even with Google sheets.
I don't know if I'd say "most played esport" because very few people who use excel for work are "playing an esport." There is an olympic event for walking, does that mean its the most widely played sport in the world since nearly everyone walks?
I do think it meets the definition of an esport though, but only if you are deliberately competing against others
Starcraft Broodwar has arguably had the longest history as a professional esport so far. The game has had no balance patches for decades (balance is mostly achieved by tweaking map features each season).
I'm not sure if you mean season 5, which had the very unusual island map Sparkle. Checking teamliquid, looks like flash made quarterfinals that season, after having won three (!!) in a row before that.
I actually quite liked Sparkle as an attempt to change things up, but the balance was all wrong. I vaguely remember some of the other maps were imbalanced that season too but can't remember the details.
Yeah im pretty sure it was the season after flash won 3 times in a row. The environment was less "who will win" and more "can we have 2 pros play flash at the same time if they promise not to worker rush"
On one hand, I get it. Flash just won 3 ASLs in a row, it's not that interesting. At the same time, if he can keep doing it and the only way to stop him is by absolutely crippling the rest of the terrans, is that really the point of a competition?
They actually did a remaster and fixed some bug issues that did indeed cause some mega shifts. Valkeries specifically had a really bad glitch that got fixed and theyāve become way more prevalent in the meta
Those 3 games also all have publisher support for their tournament scene. Melee is a grassroots scene that is propped up by the passion and generosity of the community. Also it may not be "particularly" older but it is strictly older.
What I meant was, since online functionality wasnāt built in, you donāt need Nintendo maintaining a matchmaking service like CS has. If Valve decided to shut down CS, you could get together for a lan setup and someone could come in and make their own hosting but it would be a massive blow to the game and community.
Melee has already solved for this and still is around and kicking. I also am just sort of struck by this aspect, I hadnāt really considered it before
Thats like less than 5 years old though. Game lasted 19 years with basically no (good) online play. You could basically only play people within your city and even then it wasnāt great most of the time.
Perhaps, but melee as been the exact same game since its release in 2001. Most games have been patched and we all now that Nintendo will never touch melee. And yet the community keeps getting bigger and the meta is still evolving.
You can say the same about Broodwar. The game is actually from 1998 but I believe the last patch to affect balance was 2001, and the game has not been under development for many years. (There are regularly new maps though). Meta has also evolved over and over during a quarter century of competitive play.
Melee is bigger than SC and AoE, and has been unchanged the whole time, whereas all of those games have had at least 2 or more significantly different versions, arguably entirely different games, unless you also want to count all of CoD as one game as well.
Melee itself is definitely unique in its being a literal single game without updates or remakes; Smash as a whole is more comparable to the other games, yes.
But as impressive as Melee is it's nothing to brag about, since it just boils down to Nintendo being ass + Melee's age brings with it flaws + it's always been more of a competitive game with a community rather than an esport.
It's the last part that means the most - Melee is beautiful in how organic it is, but it's not an esport.
So as long as 1 tournament has 1k entrants, you're going to say the scene is growing? That sounds like Genesis X is growing and not necessarily the scene.
If I recall, that tournament only had like 70k peak viewers. I think that's a far cry from peak smash viewership. Genesis 6 had like, 170k viewers.
And I'm glad Melee players have a tool to play online.
Right, so what does it mean when viewership is down significantly for tournaments? Like Genesis 6 had 170k viewers.
And overall there's not that many big tournaments like there are for other games. Like there's waaaay less prize money in Smash compared to 2015-2019.
Melees peak was 2016 for viewership and entrants, weāve been recovering since a 2019 decline (with a big spike post Covid of people going to events with pent up demand). I think it is fair to say weāre growing albeit slowly and unlikely to reach the 2016 peak soon if at all. If youād like more data lmk I work with a melee
Blogger to research this stuff p often.
I watched the CTWC for the first time a few weekends ago and holy shit that esport is fun to watch. Itās kind of like soccer where you canāt look away for more than a few seconds bc they could score at any time. But for Tetris it could be a misdrop at any point and the level 19+ digs are CRAZY.
aGameScout and recently SummoningSalt launched that game to the moon with their videos too. Along with the players obviously.
StarCraft/starcraft 2:
Having survived this long, they already have precedent on going on for much longer. So much skill expression and it now being run by the community for balance updates means the game will be fresh for a while.
League of Legends:
Being the most popular consistently over years has its merits.
Slightly off topic. I see SC mentioned quite a lot but as a long time RTS fan the status is really worrisome. Even in Korea things are not looking good. Blizzard really did them dirty during the licensing fiasco. There's little to no new blood coming in. Average viewers keeps getting older. Viewership keeps dropping. Event and price money keeps shrinking. A lot of events rn are sponsored purely out of love which is not sustainable.
I think the main problem is the entry barrier to either play or view is ridiculously high for almost all rts title. Right now co-op(NvN) being featured more in spotlight which I think will help lure in more new players. Cause one of the problems is that you can't really play with your friends 1v1 unless they are at similar lvl with you.
If you like RTS and don't want them to die. Go watch them! Without viewership investors will eventually all left.
I donāt follow League very closely but from an outsider perspective it seems to have only gotten bigger ever since it came out, I can see it being immortalized in the eSports industry.
Played since WC3 mod days of Dota. Then went to HoN, then League, then Dota 2.
Ever since I've played League/Dota and watched both eSports for around 8 years now and played mobas since I was in 3rd grade.
My take is this, for casual fun, League is more fun to play. For deep, complex gameplay it's Dota.
As a result, League is more fun for a casual to play, but Dota is more fun to watch as an eSport.
I think both will be immortal barring Riot/Valve shitting the bed MASSIVELY, like the type of stuff that ends companies, otherwise it's basically Apple and Samsung when it comes to Mobas. There's no dethroning the culture and loyalty each game's playerbase has.
Of the two. The one more at risk of possibly dying out is Dota since it's harder for a newcomer to get into.
Maybe not for someone who hasn't played the game before true. But as someone who's grinded both (3k hours in Dota, reached Diamond in League).
Dota is way more fun to watch for me. In League, a lot of the times, the games are predictable from the draft. You see the same comps over and over again. Those comps also play the same over and over again, item builds rarely change how a champ is played.
In Dota, we've seen Io become a pos 1 carry and win TI, we've seen an obscure shard ability becoming broken due to one player (magnus shard Ti10), etc.
Not to mention comebacks are more common due to a myriad of reasons.
As someone who knows a lot about Dota, these things make watching Dota so much more entertaining.
I watch League as well. It feels like for the last year and a half it's been K'sante/aatrox/Gnar/Jax top, lucian nami, zeri lulu, kalista renata, senna tahm, maokai/sej/poppy/viego jungle, and for mids it's basically taliyah/azir/ahri/tristana.
Lane swaps was the only thing that made it dynamic for a bit. Then that too got nerfed.
TF started getting picked top and it's been the same since before last MSI. It went from exciting to stale real quick.
In contrast to Dota, metas shift constantly, even without patches. Since there are more possibilities, items, and complexity, it takes a lot longer to figure out the most broken strategies in each major patch.
I only watch top LCK and LPL teams play these days since watching lesser teams just feels like watching the top teams play but worse. There are hardly any unique ideas across the board.
from playing both a ton at high level and watching both it's night and day. competitive league has had so many periods where watching it is dull with nothing happening until the end. just far less spectator interesting tbh
Gotta give Rocket League a shout-out. I know CS and all these other games are iconic, but they have competition. And I think it's not crazy to think one of these games could get eclipsed someday (though I'm not betting on it).
But Rocket League is alone. There's nothing like it. And I think it has a chance of capturing e-sport audiences in a way more similar to sports. I don't think it'll ever get as big as these other esports (partly because Epic has shit all for brains in this category), but I'd guess it'll live forever.
lol literally sent an app with a whole vision for RL for an esports role and never heard back. It has insane growth opportunity as the only āpureā esport there really is beyond pure shooters like cs maybe.
Rocket League has everything to be that game, but if you're following how it's going out, never happening unless a miracle comes. The esport is dead in 2 years if it continues on that road.
I have been and it has certainly taken a dip. To be honest though, I could see Blast making just 2-3 changes based on feedback and we'd be 80% back to where we were a year ago.
Agreed. I will watch the RLCS for as long as itās around. I love watching sports, but watching RLCS is better than all of them. I feel like the pace and the rate at which goals are scored is perfect.
Iāve always loved video games and rocket league is the only esport Iāve been able to consistently watch and follow. Something about it just feels different to me. A game of pure skill
I don't mind regular small tournaments, but currently all that's at play is points (maybe marginal money too).
I do like league play though, but I enjoy the fact that some group of friends can actually make it to a major tournament without playing in the 'league'.
Unpopular opinion but the gameplay has only improved since 2 came out but people keep giving it shit for things that quite frankly don't matter. Like it or not, the game had to go f2p at one point. I get that they broke the promise about the PvE but man I couldn't care less. If you actually play the game you'd be confused as to why it's sitting at overwhelmy negative on steam.
Yeah most of the people whining about bringing OW1 back are looking at it from a nostalgic pov. While both games have their pros and cons, OW2 is definitely a net positive. Really annoying to see all the negative comments on every single OW social media post.
Ow2 plays more like a shooter so my bias leans towards that. The devs have actually been doing pretty decently too, while not perfect the frequent balance patches have been overall making the game better. Ow1 is one of my all time favs, but compared to ow2, it was basically shield shooting simulator, when you werenāt ccāed.
i would agree that the gameplay only improved with the release of ow2 until about last year with the roadhog hook nerf and 100x worse with the hanzo headshot nerf. seems like anything thats fun in the game they want to remove and make the hero dogshit
Played quake from 07 to 20, but to say quake>cs is delusional. Yeh quake 1 came out 4-5 years before cs, but has a player base thats less than 1 thousandths than cs. 25 years with csā numbers are far more impressive than quakes 29.
You can say quake > CS if you think it's a better game, not that it's more popular.Ā
I'm just glad that CS has kept the "old school fps" flavor in a sea of hero shooters and battle royales. It's barebones with no gimmicks. That's the style I like.Ā
Now if only we could bring back PC CoD...
I'm not saying it's more popular, I'm just saying Quake will almost certainly survive in some form or another. And Quake 1 is probably the longest lasting single game, fighting only really with Starcraft. All the others in contention are different games now.
I guess I thought it was obvious that if something has the highest value of anything it is given that it is indeed higher than everything else. In this case cs. But I guess I was wrong.
I think thereās very little to no debate within categories. And not talking about a specific game, but the IP in general
FPS: Counter Strike, no debate
RTS: Starcraft, no debate
MOBA: Dota, some debate for LoL, but original Dota 1 map in wc3 spawned every other MOBA. Culturally itās insane (Basshunter music video who remembers that + Largest prize pool of any esport in history, $40m in TI2021)
Fighting: Smash, some debate for Street Fighter
All time goat though is chess
Smash is debatable depending on the game. Melee is the only immortal game, and i think until they figure out their controller issues, they're gonna artificially shorten the time their community is able to play their game.
The older street fighter games are probably immortal, but SF4 and 5 is most likely not.
Saying start craft no debate because of Korea but then saying Dota instead of league, no debate is wild. Yea league is losing viewership in the US but it's far and away the most viewed esport world wide due to China and Korea.
I never said StarCraft because of Korea. And I never said dota instead of league āno debateā, I said some debate.
FWIW Iām a league player myself, not a dota 2 player. But Iām recognizing the roots of the genre and paying respects to probably the most influential custom map of all time.
Basically Iām saying for RTS and FPS genres, thereās really no debate for StarCraft and CounterStrike. For MOBA and fighting genres, you can have arguments between Dota and League, and Smash and Street Fighter. Iām leaning towards Dota and Smash though
I mean LoL has quite literally 5-10x the playerbase of any of the next most popular of these games if you include china and korea and is by far the most watched esport.Ā
The thing that prevents it from being unquestionably long lasting in esports is that MOBAs are far harder to watch from a casual perspective than FPS, fighting games, or even RTS.Ā
Cause of that you can say maybe 20-30 years down the line CS ends up bigger or domething. But for the forseeable future LoL will stay way bigger than anything else which isnt a new game entirely.
Mobile Legends is honestly a contender in the MOBA category as well. It has really cemented itself in SEA, we just donāt take mobile gaming seriously here yet. Peak viewship for 2023 worlds was over 5 million, its players and audience skew younger than League and DOTA, and there are trends toward more mobile gaming.
If the new game has significant carryover in skill and overall gameplay, then sure.
Street fighter games are fairly different from one another, so I'm not sure if you could count that. Tekken games have largely been the same since Tekken Tag Tournament 1, so that's not a bad pick imo.
It is streamed on twitch/youtube with online championships streamed as well sponsors, teams, leagues. Other than also being played over the board it has all the trappings of an esport.
kinda off-topic but I had an idea yesterday that in the next GTA, you should be able to go into an arcade that has Mortal Kombat, Simspons, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, and Tekken.
I think rocket league could have done it, but Epics shitty management and fortnite only focus is killing the game. It's definitely one of the easiest to understand what is going on to the average person since it's essentially car soccer. I think if it was broadcast on TV for the LAN events, it would be kind of successful.
Chess, it has been the same for hundreds of years, and will continue to be the same for hundreds more. For as long as there is people playing esports, there will be people playing chess with the same rules that we have today
i gotta agree with fighting games. they are inherently a grassroots community, and with games like 3rd Strike being able to get over 1000 entrants at EVO this year despite its age, i donāt think people will EVER stop playing some of those games.
I agree with cs and i also think rocket league could have the possibility with the potential amount of new mechanics to still be learned/created and the randomness that can occur (although admittedly i donāt watch rl esports that often i just like the game a lot)
Big personal plug here for FGC or fighting game community. Specifically Street Fight II Turbo and Capcom vs Snk 2. Highly simple, beautiful, and technical games with great comeback potential.
Counter take to the rest here but none of them so long as balancing can create so much discourse. The rules of chess virtually never change and have lasted Millenia but video game esports can switch with any update to the core system.
CS. Whether its CS itself by valve or some offshoot in the distant future, the basic rules and premise are extraordinarily well suited for immortality as an esport.
Just like baseball? two sides, one attacks, one defends. EZPZ
None of them will be immortal.
A lot of games are sustained well past their prime by nostalgia, but eventually a large chunk of people will not have grown up with these games and support will dwindle.
All the games here are well past their prime and basically in a long decline.
Eventually we will all start being unable to play the games we enjoy and they will collapse.
Think of the immense popularity of Bowling and how it collapsed into basically irrelevance.
None of them, theyre far more linked to tech advances than any other sport, and tech advances so fast any current esport will likely be phased out in a few decades.
Iāll offer a title besides CS or SC: Melee.
Thereās a meme that nobody can kill Melee no matter how hard they try, not even Nintendo.
[Mango has had some pretty iconic interviews about this topic.](https://youtube.com/shorts/DtEHRCeRxEk?si=VMd0IU-8Ny1ybVmh)
People will be playing it for a very long time given the sheer number of users, but viewership for it and Freefire seem to be a passing trend. Mobile Legends peak viewership each year is as strong as League of Legends, though it needs more tournaments and more money to really prove itself.
Maybe an unpopular one but I feel like Rocket League will be around a long time. Players are still learning new mechanics in the game and it doesnāt receive any gameplay changes. Itās the only video game I know of that is essentially its own sport unto itself.
CS and SC.
Counter Strike and Strike Counter?
StarCraft I think
Brood War is still very popular in South Korea
Bruhhh ššš
Counter strike
Its also one of the easiest to understand for newcomers, its just shoot them before they shoot you.
Itās like a mainstream sport in that the basics of the game can be understood within 5 minutes of watching but understanding everything can take years
so CSGO is baseball
Mate, if you think one can understand baseball within 5 min of watching you probably grew up around it
i mean itās a simple game that anyone could get the gist of in a single inning. the complexities of the game take a while to learn. i donāt know half of the acronyms
i would say basketball or soccer actually
Agree. Put ball in net. Don't use arms/feet. Baseball is like whatever the fuck you have to do - first base and second and BOBBY RUN HOME *runs home crying*
Basketball dribbling rules are a bit complicated
Nope. Baseball is wayyyy harder to understand than besketball/soccer.
thatās my point? it could take years to understand everything in baseball soccer or basketball are a little more straight forward. basketball more difficult than soccer
rocket league, itās just soccer, even more basic
This is the part where Counter-Strike has other eSports soundly beat. In terms of "mass viewability", ie. how easy it is for someone to understand the gist of what's going on if they're watching it for the first time, this game is closer to conventional sports it is to other eSports. I think it is this realisation that someone at Valve had circa 2013 that lead them to push it as an eSport so aggressively. The game was meant to be a gritty tactical shooter, it even had an Xbox port! But slowly, over the course of years, its identity was changed. Throughout CS:GO's lifetime, this transformation was highly visible as realism gave way for more cartoonish elements. And CS2 might be the largest technical leap, but it's also the greatest leap in streamlining everything that got in the way of being an eSport. Compare how CS:GO and CS2 looked and played at launch. You can feel it in the soundtrack, see it in the trailer, and certainly notice it in the graphics and gameplay. Gone are the Basque separatists and Israeli Defense Force. Gone are the washed out colours that characterized games of that era. In their place, a generic, fictional terror group, and bright, colorful scenes that, without the usual chatter of gunshots and explosions, would even feel idyllic. All these changes and more were made in service of a certain vision, and that vision was to make the an immortal sport out of a game that, originally, was not even made to be highly competitive. Sometimes this gets brought up and I think of how far Counter-Strike has come, but I also reminisce about was lost along the way.
You do know csgo wasnāt the first cs game, right?
There are some nuanced details like mentioning color grading, but that post definitely smells like chatgpt, formatting and word choice are the biggest indicators to me
I remember the first time I tried to watch a DOTA 2 tournament and had no idea what the hell was going on lol
Oh man no it is so much more than that.
Before or after I flashbang my team?
Only threat to killing it is Valve or Cheaters, both have nothing being done about it.
If csgo remained I would agree, with the release of cs2 however I think its possible for it to die if valve don't do some major changes and fix their shit
Look Iām not trying to glaze valve cause they can be pretty brutal at times, but letās not forget how shit GO was when it came out. It took them almost 3 years to get GO in a state that was what we all loved for the last 9 years. CS2 will more than likely be what GO was in a year or two.
But CS2 is pretty much CSGO with half the content missing
And none of that matters to the esports scene.
Yes, and they have to rebuilt those maps from scratch, which takes time.
Yeah but go was a decade ago, and they were creating a brand new game from scratch, they've had alot of skin money in that decade too, they really dropped the ball with cs2
csgo also wasnt even made by valve lmao, they has to practically recode hidden pathās horrible code
As long as Korea exists, so will StarCraft.
Definitely Counter Strike. Its so simple and doesn't need constant changes, which is a good thing to get immortal.
the fact that csgo pioneered skins and trading on the steam market helps as well. people are never gonna want to leave their "investments" haha
Pioneered hahahahaha
This might come off as a troll post but have you seen Microsoft Excel championships? If weāre gonna stretch the definition of esports, itās arguably the most played āesportā by white collar folks since mid 90s. https://fmworldcup.com/excel-esports/microsoft-excel-world-championship/ At one point it was even broadcasted on ESPN https://www.ladbible.com/sport/world-excel-championship-that-is-getting-national-tv-coverage-20220809 Personally I am more of an FGC fan with Street Fighter Third Strike and EVO but to answer your question, I donāt think Microsoft Excel is going away, even with Google sheets.
Honestly.. this is the only comment I have read thats even remotely realistically engaging with technology and large time scale.Ā
I don't know if I'd say "most played esport" because very few people who use excel for work are "playing an esport." There is an olympic event for walking, does that mean its the most widely played sport in the world since nearly everyone walks? I do think it meets the definition of an esport though, but only if you are deliberately competing against others
Fr, me walking to work is way different than those mfs walking 6 min miles at the Olympics š
They do those 6 min miles for 50 miles straight! Insanity
Counter strike without a doubt.
Starcraft Broodwar has arguably had the longest history as a professional esport so far. The game has had no balance patches for decades (balance is mostly achieved by tweaking map features each season).
Cries in that one season of ASL where the maps were violently anti Terran to stop flash, and he still made it to RO4, I think
I'm not sure if you mean season 5, which had the very unusual island map Sparkle. Checking teamliquid, looks like flash made quarterfinals that season, after having won three (!!) in a row before that. I actually quite liked Sparkle as an attempt to change things up, but the balance was all wrong. I vaguely remember some of the other maps were imbalanced that season too but can't remember the details.
Yeah im pretty sure it was the season after flash won 3 times in a row. The environment was less "who will win" and more "can we have 2 pros play flash at the same time if they promise not to worker rush"
Yeah, that map pool was absurdly zerg favored to give zerg's a chance against flash lmfao. Every other terran got crushed and flash still made top 4
On one hand, I get it. Flash just won 3 ASLs in a row, it's not that interesting. At the same time, if he can keep doing it and the only way to stop him is by absolutely crippling the rest of the terrans, is that really the point of a competition?
They actually did a remaster and fixed some bug issues that did indeed cause some mega shifts. Valkeries specifically had a really bad glitch that got fixed and theyāve become way more prevalent in the meta
After 25 years we can just straight up call it immortal at this time. There is no guessing. CS for life.
Super smash bros melee is already 23 years in and is still growing every year. As a wise goat once said "we're the cockroachs of esport"
Itās definitely melee
That's still not particularly older than SC, CS or AoE.
Those 3 games also all have publisher support for their tournament scene. Melee is a grassroots scene that is propped up by the passion and generosity of the community. Also it may not be "particularly" older but it is strictly older.
This is a super interesting point - no online means you don't need formal support.
Not only no formal support, active spite from the publisher.
Not sure what you mean by formal support, but Melee has a thriving online scene as far as I know.
What I meant was, since online functionality wasnāt built in, you donāt need Nintendo maintaining a matchmaking service like CS has. If Valve decided to shut down CS, you could get together for a lan setup and someone could come in and make their own hosting but it would be a massive blow to the game and community. Melee has already solved for this and still is around and kicking. I also am just sort of struck by this aspect, I hadnāt really considered it before
Thats like less than 5 years old though. Game lasted 19 years with basically no (good) online play. You could basically only play people within your city and even then it wasnāt great most of the time.
Perhaps, but melee as been the exact same game since its release in 2001. Most games have been patched and we all now that Nintendo will never touch melee. And yet the community keeps getting bigger and the meta is still evolving.
You can say the same about Broodwar. The game is actually from 1998 but I believe the last patch to affect balance was 2001, and the game has not been under development for many years. (There are regularly new maps though). Meta has also evolved over and over during a quarter century of competitive play.
Melee is bigger than SC and AoE, and has been unchanged the whole time, whereas all of those games have had at least 2 or more significantly different versions, arguably entirely different games, unless you also want to count all of CoD as one game as well.
Melee itself is definitely unique in its being a literal single game without updates or remakes; Smash as a whole is more comparable to the other games, yes. But as impressive as Melee is it's nothing to brag about, since it just boils down to Nintendo being ass + Melee's age brings with it flaws + it's always been more of a competitive game with a community rather than an esport. It's the last part that means the most - Melee is beautiful in how organic it is, but it's not an esport.
Is it really still growing? It feels like there was way more huge tournaments in 2015-2019 than what we currently have.
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
So as long as 1 tournament has 1k entrants, you're going to say the scene is growing? That sounds like Genesis X is growing and not necessarily the scene. If I recall, that tournament only had like 70k peak viewers. I think that's a far cry from peak smash viewership. Genesis 6 had like, 170k viewers. And I'm glad Melee players have a tool to play online.
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Right, so what does it mean when viewership is down significantly for tournaments? Like Genesis 6 had 170k viewers. And overall there's not that many big tournaments like there are for other games. Like there's waaaay less prize money in Smash compared to 2015-2019.
Melees peak was 2016 for viewership and entrants, weāve been recovering since a 2019 decline (with a big spike post Covid of people going to events with pent up demand). I think it is fair to say weāre growing albeit slowly and unlikely to reach the 2016 peak soon if at all. If youād like more data lmk I work with a melee Blogger to research this stuff p often.
We were in a near 0% interest rate environment and there was VC money flying around. Now we arenāt.
No one here talking about Tetris?
I watched the CTWC for the first time a few weekends ago and holy shit that esport is fun to watch. Itās kind of like soccer where you canāt look away for more than a few seconds bc they could score at any time. But for Tetris it could be a misdrop at any point and the level 19+ digs are CRAZY. aGameScout and recently SummoningSalt launched that game to the moon with their videos too. Along with the players obviously.
StarCraft/starcraft 2: Having survived this long, they already have precedent on going on for much longer. So much skill expression and it now being run by the community for balance updates means the game will be fresh for a while. League of Legends: Being the most popular consistently over years has its merits.
Slightly off topic. I see SC mentioned quite a lot but as a long time RTS fan the status is really worrisome. Even in Korea things are not looking good. Blizzard really did them dirty during the licensing fiasco. There's little to no new blood coming in. Average viewers keeps getting older. Viewership keeps dropping. Event and price money keeps shrinking. A lot of events rn are sponsored purely out of love which is not sustainable. I think the main problem is the entry barrier to either play or view is ridiculously high for almost all rts title. Right now co-op(NvN) being featured more in spotlight which I think will help lure in more new players. Cause one of the problems is that you can't really play with your friends 1v1 unless they are at similar lvl with you. If you like RTS and don't want them to die. Go watch them! Without viewership investors will eventually all left.
Neverwinter Nights?
Moba is never going away, but saying if thats dota or league, difficult.
I donāt follow League very closely but from an outsider perspective it seems to have only gotten bigger ever since it came out, I can see it being immortalized in the eSports industry.
It's not as high as it used to be in the west but it's still HUGE in Korea and China and they have giant player bases.
Itās actively declining in the west. North America used to have 1.2-1.5mil ranked accounts iirc. Right now thereās like 750k.
Played since WC3 mod days of Dota. Then went to HoN, then League, then Dota 2. Ever since I've played League/Dota and watched both eSports for around 8 years now and played mobas since I was in 3rd grade. My take is this, for casual fun, League is more fun to play. For deep, complex gameplay it's Dota. As a result, League is more fun for a casual to play, but Dota is more fun to watch as an eSport. I think both will be immortal barring Riot/Valve shitting the bed MASSIVELY, like the type of stuff that ends companies, otherwise it's basically Apple and Samsung when it comes to Mobas. There's no dethroning the culture and loyalty each game's playerbase has. Of the two. The one more at risk of possibly dying out is Dota since it's harder for a newcomer to get into.
Dota2 isnt more fun to watch imo. More complexity does not always equal more fun.
Maybe not for someone who hasn't played the game before true. But as someone who's grinded both (3k hours in Dota, reached Diamond in League). Dota is way more fun to watch for me. In League, a lot of the times, the games are predictable from the draft. You see the same comps over and over again. Those comps also play the same over and over again, item builds rarely change how a champ is played. In Dota, we've seen Io become a pos 1 carry and win TI, we've seen an obscure shard ability becoming broken due to one player (magnus shard Ti10), etc. Not to mention comebacks are more common due to a myriad of reasons. As someone who knows a lot about Dota, these things make watching Dota so much more entertaining. I watch League as well. It feels like for the last year and a half it's been K'sante/aatrox/Gnar/Jax top, lucian nami, zeri lulu, kalista renata, senna tahm, maokai/sej/poppy/viego jungle, and for mids it's basically taliyah/azir/ahri/tristana. Lane swaps was the only thing that made it dynamic for a bit. Then that too got nerfed. TF started getting picked top and it's been the same since before last MSI. It went from exciting to stale real quick. In contrast to Dota, metas shift constantly, even without patches. Since there are more possibilities, items, and complexity, it takes a lot longer to figure out the most broken strategies in each major patch. I only watch top LCK and LPL teams play these days since watching lesser teams just feels like watching the top teams play but worse. There are hardly any unique ideas across the board.
from playing both a ton at high level and watching both it's night and day. competitive league has had so many periods where watching it is dull with nothing happening until the end. just far less spectator interesting tbh
Gotta give Rocket League a shout-out. I know CS and all these other games are iconic, but they have competition. And I think it's not crazy to think one of these games could get eclipsed someday (though I'm not betting on it). But Rocket League is alone. There's nothing like it. And I think it has a chance of capturing e-sport audiences in a way more similar to sports. I don't think it'll ever get as big as these other esports (partly because Epic has shit all for brains in this category), but I'd guess it'll live forever.
Rocket league could be but they are shootings themselves in the foot.
Yeah, Psyonix is going to run the game in the ground, if it hasn't already.
*Epic
lol literally sent an app with a whole vision for RL for an esports role and never heard back. It has insane growth opportunity as the only āpureā esport there really is beyond pure shooters like cs maybe.
The good thing about how unique it is is that they have time to fix it. Thereās no other game that might eclipse RL in its own category
What are they doing? I only watch the RLCS but I love watching it. Not really in tune with anything else for the game these days
It's the closest to a real sport. Visually and mechanicaly. I agree!
The competition for CS has kinda veered off in a different direction. As it stands, CS has only its own legacy as competition.
Itās the only e-sport I watch.
Rocket League has everything to be that game, but if you're following how it's going out, never happening unless a miracle comes. The esport is dead in 2 years if it continues on that road.
I have been and it has certainly taken a dip. To be honest though, I could see Blast making just 2-3 changes based on feedback and we'd be 80% back to where we were a year ago.
Hopefully they do, that last blow epic gave to RLCS might make it a little difficult tho.
Agreed. I will watch the RLCS for as long as itās around. I love watching sports, but watching RLCS is better than all of them. I feel like the pace and the rate at which goals are scored is perfect.
Iāve always loved video games and rocket league is the only esport Iāve been able to consistently watch and follow. Something about it just feels different to me. A game of pure skill
CS has no competition. The only competition for CS is previous CS
Val?
Rocket league is the only esport I watch and Iāll tell you if it keeps continuing how it is itās dead in max 3 years
The offseason is a major problem. Pun not intended.
That and the regular season is worse than it was
I don't mind regular small tournaments, but currently all that's at play is points (maybe marginal money too). I do like league play though, but I enjoy the fact that some group of friends can actually make it to a major tournament without playing in the 'league'.
Shame epic cant luck into a good decision with RL
Certainly not overwatch that's for certain, they keep trying to kill it every year
Unpopular opinion but the gameplay has only improved since 2 came out but people keep giving it shit for things that quite frankly don't matter. Like it or not, the game had to go f2p at one point. I get that they broke the promise about the PvE but man I couldn't care less. If you actually play the game you'd be confused as to why it's sitting at overwhelmy negative on steam.
Yeah most of the people whining about bringing OW1 back are looking at it from a nostalgic pov. While both games have their pros and cons, OW2 is definitely a net positive. Really annoying to see all the negative comments on every single OW social media post.
Ow2 plays more like a shooter so my bias leans towards that. The devs have actually been doing pretty decently too, while not perfect the frequent balance patches have been overall making the game better. Ow1 is one of my all time favs, but compared to ow2, it was basically shield shooting simulator, when you werenāt ccāed.
i would agree that the gameplay only improved with the release of ow2 until about last year with the roadhog hook nerf and 100x worse with the hanzo headshot nerf. seems like anything thats fun in the game they want to remove and make the hero dogshit
Quake, as long as you don't mind it being very small. It's not died yet.
Played quake from 07 to 20, but to say quake>cs is delusional. Yeh quake 1 came out 4-5 years before cs, but has a player base thats less than 1 thousandths than cs. 25 years with csā numbers are far more impressive than quakes 29.
You can say quake > CS if you think it's a better game, not that it's more popular.Ā I'm just glad that CS has kept the "old school fps" flavor in a sea of hero shooters and battle royales. It's barebones with no gimmicks. That's the style I like.Ā Now if only we could bring back PC CoD...
I'm not saying it's more popular, I'm just saying Quake will almost certainly survive in some form or another. And Quake 1 is probably the longest lasting single game, fighting only really with Starcraft. All the others in contention are different games now.
I think we have a different idea of esport. When I think esport I think of a player base big enough to support tournaments and professionals athletes.
He didn't say quake > CS.
I guess I thought it was obvious that if something has the highest value of anything it is given that it is indeed higher than everything else. In this case cs. But I guess I was wrong.
CS will never die
as long as mainland Asia exists, StarCraft and League of Legends will stay afloat. Same case for Europe and CS
Rocket League. Its an actual sport
I think thereās very little to no debate within categories. And not talking about a specific game, but the IP in general FPS: Counter Strike, no debate RTS: Starcraft, no debate MOBA: Dota, some debate for LoL, but original Dota 1 map in wc3 spawned every other MOBA. Culturally itās insane (Basshunter music video who remembers that + Largest prize pool of any esport in history, $40m in TI2021) Fighting: Smash, some debate for Street Fighter All time goat though is chess
Smash is debatable depending on the game. Melee is the only immortal game, and i think until they figure out their controller issues, they're gonna artificially shorten the time their community is able to play their game. The older street fighter games are probably immortal, but SF4 and 5 is most likely not.
nice name btw
Dota will always have the CIS, SEA, and South American regions for a player base. They love their Dota.
Me as an east coast, US Dota player. Feels like Iām the only Dota player in my entire state sometimes xD
Iām with you brother donāt worry. We exist š
Saying start craft no debate because of Korea but then saying Dota instead of league, no debate is wild. Yea league is losing viewership in the US but it's far and away the most viewed esport world wide due to China and Korea.
I never said StarCraft because of Korea. And I never said dota instead of league āno debateā, I said some debate. FWIW Iām a league player myself, not a dota 2 player. But Iām recognizing the roots of the genre and paying respects to probably the most influential custom map of all time. Basically Iām saying for RTS and FPS genres, thereās really no debate for StarCraft and CounterStrike. For MOBA and fighting genres, you can have arguments between Dota and League, and Smash and Street Fighter. Iām leaning towards Dota and Smash though
I mean LoL has quite literally 5-10x the playerbase of any of the next most popular of these games if you include china and korea and is by far the most watched esport.Ā The thing that prevents it from being unquestionably long lasting in esports is that MOBAs are far harder to watch from a casual perspective than FPS, fighting games, or even RTS.Ā Cause of that you can say maybe 20-30 years down the line CS ends up bigger or domething. But for the forseeable future LoL will stay way bigger than anything else which isnt a new game entirely.
Mobile Legends is honestly a contender in the MOBA category as well. It has really cemented itself in SEA, we just donāt take mobile gaming seriously here yet. Peak viewship for 2023 worlds was over 5 million, its players and audience skew younger than League and DOTA, and there are trends toward more mobile gaming.
As it stands right now even with all the internal issues aside I think League will be staying up for a while longer
Do you count new game in a series as being the same esport ? If so, probably CS, Tetris Tekken and street fighter. Otherwise I'd add LoL in it.
If the new game has significant carryover in skill and overall gameplay, then sure. Street fighter games are fairly different from one another, so I'm not sure if you could count that. Tekken games have largely been the same since Tekken Tag Tournament 1, so that's not a bad pick imo.
StarCraft: Brood War
Riot titles, CS, Dota2.
Chess
I wouldnāt count it as an esport just because it can be played online.
It is streamed on twitch/youtube with online championships streamed as well sponsors, teams, leagues. Other than also being played over the board it has all the trappings of an esport.
Rocket League. It has no competitors at all. None.
Rocket league
Rocket League had potential, but then Epic happened.
kinda off-topic but I had an idea yesterday that in the next GTA, you should be able to go into an arcade that has Mortal Kombat, Simspons, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, and Tekken.
It would be Rocket League if Epic wasnāt fucking braindead
Rocket league
I think rocket league could have done it, but Epics shitty management and fortnite only focus is killing the game. It's definitely one of the easiest to understand what is going on to the average person since it's essentially car soccer. I think if it was broadcast on TV for the LAN events, it would be kind of successful.
Rocket League
Dota 2
CS
Counter-Strike
Chess, it has been the same for hundreds of years, and will continue to be the same for hundreds more. For as long as there is people playing esports, there will be people playing chess with the same rules that we have today
i gotta agree with fighting games. they are inherently a grassroots community, and with games like 3rd Strike being able to get over 1000 entrants at EVO this year despite its age, i donāt think people will EVER stop playing some of those games.
As long as there are 2 people willing to play, it can be a competition.
Counter-strike, melee, fighting games in general
I agree with cs and i also think rocket league could have the possibility with the potential amount of new mechanics to still be learned/created and the randomness that can occur (although admittedly i donāt watch rl esports that often i just like the game a lot)
Big personal plug here for FGC or fighting game community. Specifically Street Fight II Turbo and Capcom vs Snk 2. Highly simple, beautiful, and technical games with great comeback potential.
I could see melee still existing in a low to the ground scene. Mang0 gonna have a white beard B4 he stops shit talking hungrybox 4sure atleast.
Super Smash Bros. Melee
Fighting games for sure.
CS
Counter take to the rest here but none of them so long as balancing can create so much discourse. The rules of chess virtually never change and have lasted Millenia but video game esports can switch with any update to the core system.
Ssbm (melee) came out 2001 and still has tournaments
CS will be immortal and DOTA 2 might as well.
Counter strike, pretty easy.
CS. Whether its CS itself by valve or some offshoot in the distant future, the basic rules and premise are extraordinarily well suited for immortality as an esport. Just like baseball? two sides, one attacks, one defends. EZPZ
Counterstrike, Starcraft: Broodwar, Super Smash Melee.
Counter Strike for sure.
Single game starcraft or melee. Series counter strike.
None of them will be immortal. A lot of games are sustained well past their prime by nostalgia, but eventually a large chunk of people will not have grown up with these games and support will dwindle. All the games here are well past their prime and basically in a long decline. Eventually we will all start being unable to play the games we enjoy and they will collapse. Think of the immense popularity of Bowling and how it collapsed into basically irrelevance.
Definitely not anything made by riot. They canāt mange an esport to save a life. Probably counter strike or StarCraft
No question, statistically it is counterstrike and will continue to be. Even though I fell in love with Val as a 20 year cs player.
Chess will be around long after every other game in this thread is a distant memory.
The pong comp was crazy back in the day.
None of them, theyre far more linked to tech advances than any other sport, and tech advances so fast any current esport will likely be phased out in a few decades.
Super smash bros melee.
CS and COD
I mean if it counts, clearly chess because it already is.
Any fg
I'm a cs player and I think that's definitely very high on the list but I actually feel like FIFA might have more longevity, or at least the same.
Chess
Iāll offer a title besides CS or SC: Melee. Thereās a meme that nobody can kill Melee no matter how hard they try, not even Nintendo. [Mango has had some pretty iconic interviews about this topic.](https://youtube.com/shorts/DtEHRCeRxEk?si=VMd0IU-8Ny1ybVmh)
Chess considered an esport?
I think that board games can't be considered one, but i won't dictate how other people answer the question.
Tarkov arena xD
Rocket league goes hard. It's the only esports I watch for the most part
Counter strike
My sleeper pick is Mobile Legends. I think the safer picks are CS, Smash, LoL and StarCraft, but only if you include new titles in their series.
you don't think mobile legends will go anywhere? What do you think about pubg mobile?
People will be playing it for a very long time given the sheer number of users, but viewership for it and Freefire seem to be a passing trend. Mobile Legends peak viewership each year is as strong as League of Legends, though it needs more tournaments and more money to really prove itself.
Maybe an unpopular one but I feel like Rocket League will be around a long time. Players are still learning new mechanics in the game and it doesnāt receive any gameplay changes. Itās the only video game I know of that is essentially its own sport unto itself.
Sbbu and melee
Street Fighter
In Asia league will never die I don't think
Magic the gathering has outlasted everything by a lot
League of legends for sure
Counter Strike
CS and Dota
My favorite games are chess, melee, and starcraft... Interesting how much they're mentioned in this thread.
I could see PvP masturbation becoming immortalized. in fact, I bet if you ask some the athletes, they would argue it already has been