The king of Esports analysis, Blake Robbins, had a great tweet a few days ago about how esports needs to stop trying to copy what worked in traditional sports and instead embrace what makes it unique. I chimed in with a few of my thoughts and wanted to use this post to go into a bit more detail.
The Veil of Reality
Esports is a bit of a misnomer. The best comparison we have to gaming is traditional sports, but the reality is that esports are as different from traditional sports as email is from paper stuffed into envelopes. If you look at the growth of traditional sports vs. esports it’s pretty hard to make the argument that esports will not shortly eclipse many of the powerhouse traditional sports leagues in a meaningful way. It probably has a long way to go before it eclipses ALL of traditional sports, but the writing is on the wall.
So why is this?
I believe the reason that esports are so compelling is a concept I call the Veil of Reality and just how thin it is compared to traditional sports.
What exactly is this “Veil of Reality”, Erik?
So glad you asked.
It’s a concept I have been playing around with for a while but it was lacking a really cool and mysterious sounding name until this post.
The theory is this: With any sort of spectator entertainment, the quality of the experience directly correlates to how close watching the event is to actually doing it yourself.
When I watch football sitting on my couch Sunday afternoons, I am about as far as physically possible from playing in the games. These guys are modern gladiators that are 6 foot 17 inches of pure speed and athleticism. They perform superhuman feats of strength and agility while playing as pawns in what amounts to the world’s most violent game of chess. The gap between playing and watching is massive. The Veil of Reality is extremely thick.
Esports is different. My favorite game to watch is the digital card game Hearthstone. The difference between watching a game of Hearthstone and playing a game of Hearthstone is so little it rounds down to zero. In fact, with hearthstone (and many other games), the viewing experience is actually SUPERIOR to the playing experience. You often have increased visibility vs. what the players themselves can see, you have expert commentators breaking down each play, and for any turn-based game, you can speed up the action immensely. In esports, the Veil of Reality is extremely thin.
Now, as you know, I love traditional sports. I ride or die with Arsenal (admittedly been doing more dying than riding recently) and I’m a big Broncos fan as well (Drew Lock is the greatest football player of all time don’t @ me). But even I can’t argue that anyone watches sports for the viewing experience itself. Instead, we watch because of the pageantry, the nostalgia, and the emotion that being part of a tribe bigger than yourself creates.
Esports is different. For anyone who likes to play games (which I would argue is everyone, some people just haven’t found the right game yet), the viewing experience, in and of itself, is compelling. Layer on top of this the usual drama, rivalries, and personalities of sport and it’s not hard to see why esports are growing the way they are.
Bug or Feature
As esports and gaming have started to gain mainstream momentum, the obvious first place to look for ideas on how to structure and monetize this new form of entertainment was traditional sports. It’s not something we should complain about, it just was simply the case of humans pattern matching as best they could to something that seemed, on the surface, to be similar. I agree with Blake, esports’ differences compared to traditional sports are not a bug, but a feature. If esports is going to sustain the growth I know that it is capable of, it will need to stop trying to mimic what worked for traditional sports and to instead lean on what makes it unique.
Here are a few ideas:
Unique rules for individual tournaments
The benefit of being largely tournament-focused instead of league-focused means that esports have a level of flexibility that traditional sports simply don’t. There is a lot of opportunity to use this flexibility creatively. Each tournament could include different rules, requirements, and formats. This would lead to an added level of freshness in a medium that already has the benefit of regularly adding new content such as characters or maps. Anytime a game’s meta starts to smell stale at all, tournament organizers can, and should, play around with creative rules to liven things up. Players will love it. Fans will love it.
Co-Ed Teams
Another thing that esports has going for it is a level of accessibility that traditional sports simply cannot match. Most traditional sports require athletes to have won the genetic lottery and then commit years to mastering their craft. Esports still requires incredible amounts of hard work and skill, but the physical requirements alone make it far more accessible. I hope this leads to an increased level of diversity among professional players that we don’t see in traditional sports. Someone who knows more about the space could probably give you ten structural reasons why this may or may not happen, but from the outside looking it, esports definitely has an advantage when it comes to accessibility.
Audience Impacting Live Games
Ok, I got some flak for this one on twitter. Just because something CAN be done, doesn’t necessarily mean that it SHOULD be done. No one wants sports of any kind to devolve into popularity contests. But I do think there is potential to do audience participation in live games in a compelling way. So long as the effects are symmetric in impact, this could be a great way to drive additional spectator engagement and make people feel like they are part of the action. Let spectators choose maps, ban heroes, or activate unique events that impact everyone equally. Audience members in traditional sports make an impact based on yelling or jeering the loudest. Audience members in esports have the potential to be actual participants in the games themselves.
Asynchronous Matches
Now, this is an idea that would not be a fit for most games, but I do think it has potential in niche circumstances. In esports, there really wouldn’t be a technical barrier to having two people participate in the same game at different times. I currently can’t think of a game where this would work super well, but I think that it could be an interesting design white space to explore in the future. I foresee a match could play out between two players over the course of a week and then it could be broadcast to fans in one seamless segment. Where would this work? Why would this be superior to having a game take place live? No clue. But the fact that you could do this is kinda cool is it not?
Remote Tournaments
This is already such an ingrained part of the esports and gaming experience I questioned even including it, but I do think that it merits mention. Due to the constraints of physical sports, you need to have all contestants somewhere in the same place at the same time. Even for more individual sports, weather and other factors mean contestants need to compete within a relatively tight window of time and definitely in the same place. This constraint simply does not exist in the same way for many games. There are definitely some where lag is such a serious consideration that you need to have players in the same (or at least a consistent) proximity to each other, but for other games, this may not be necessary at all. Not only can this lead to better viewing experiences and lower the bar for tournaments, but it is another contributing factor towards the increased access of esports compared to traditional sports. If you have an internet connection, you can play. This is a total game-changer compared to many sports. Does access like this matter? Ask soccer. Why is soccer the world’s game? Because it is the best sport? I’d argue yes, but that is because when it comes to soccer I am not a rational actor. It’s really because anyone with a circular object anywhere in the world can play. Access matters and the potential for remote gameplay blows access wide open.
Gaming Triathlons
Ok, this one is admittedly a little bit goofy and probably my weakest differentiator since this is very much a thing in real sports too, but come on! How cool would it be to see people go head to head in League, before watching them duke it out in Overwatch, before having them finish with a game of Rocket League?!? I don’t know how realistic this is or if it will ever happen, but I think it would be pretty cool. Similar to traditional sports, specialists would probably be better 1v1 than a more generalist gamer, but it is relatively normal for gamers to bounce from game to game throughout their career. Even between different genres of games! I think it would be awesome for esports to open up avenues where people can showcase this skillset which is different, but in my opinion no less impressive, than the ability to become a master at one single game.
Keeping the ‘Games’ in Video Games
The things that make esports unique should be celebrated not derided. Video games are fun. Even as they become serious business, we can’t forget that fact. There is so much potential to do cool things with a medium that does not have many of the same constraints that traditional sports do. We know that whatever ideas people dream up in the future, viewers will keep coming because the Veil of Reality is so thin and the viewing experience is so compelling.
So go crazy.
You can always go back to level 1.