To Travis
-
IamLEAM1983
- Site Admin
- Posts: 3710
- Joined: Tue Jan 08, 2013 4:54 am
- Location: Quebec, Canada
To Travis
How's the eSport scene in 2025?
-
IamLEAM1983
- Site Admin
- Posts: 3710
- Joined: Tue Jan 08, 2013 4:54 am
- Location: Quebec, Canada
As Travis
"It's pretty much parallel to standard sports, now. ESPN has its own eSport sub-network, there's regional and national championships on a yearly basis - plus the usual Olympics-style international event that goes on once every four years. Star strategy gamers have image rights in pretty much the same way baseball or football players do - the difference being that nobody's itching to stick ItalianVenom94 or PraZZa on game boxes. Cameos and callbacks are more likely, with the most recent MMOs being pretty quick to plug in a few name-drops to either specific individuals or teams in their flavor texts or in some less-serious corners of their lore.
Things are getting better in terms of gender and species representation, too. It used to be vampires were pushed back from the scene because of their pretty sick keyboard speeds. Stick a Guildmate in front of the latest World of Warcraft expansion - it's in its third version, so the engine and graphics got massively better - and you're guaranteed some pretty sick APM. Translate that to an actual strategy game? Massive advantage over mortal players, right there. Blizzard solved the problem by sticking a pretty harsh key-press buffer in, so being able to type faster than your rig can process means nothing in Azeroth. Women broke past the parity barrier a long time ago, at least in the industry itself. It never really was a problem as far as the player base is concerned - women have been splitting that pie fifty-fifty since the mid 2010s.
Age parity is what's really surprising, and what's helping to change the attitude of some contentious players. Lose to a sixty-something when you're a fresh-faced pre-teen, and you're likely to rethink your approach. Real-life veterancy is starting to mean something in virtual worlds, so a lot of the hateful idiots you're still familiar with are starting to figure out they're better off keeping their mouth shut. Misogynistic attitudes get called out, sexism is shot down as soon as it rears its ugly head - and aging gamers means you can't rely on Battle Bras or jiggle physics anymore.
Well, there's always going to be a caste of really high-strung guys who seriously need their cheap stimuli - but they're not the average statistic anymore. Female characters are continuing in the same basic motion that saw them getting deeper treatments, and game scenarios are reaching deeper than your usual "Scruffy brown-haired Caucasian Shoots Enemies Over Chest-High Walls" approach. Grief, regret, anger, happiness, release, love, whatever - there's more of the human experience that's being translated in game form than ever before. The old fears about anti-games being the only ones who could explore the human condition proved wrong. All it took was a new generation of ballsy developers who grew up wanting to tell stories, instead of shooting guys in the face with no context.
The geeks are ruling Earth, Luna and Mars, and they've got a foothold on Paradise. The old days from Revenge of the Nerds are long past."
Things are getting better in terms of gender and species representation, too. It used to be vampires were pushed back from the scene because of their pretty sick keyboard speeds. Stick a Guildmate in front of the latest World of Warcraft expansion - it's in its third version, so the engine and graphics got massively better - and you're guaranteed some pretty sick APM. Translate that to an actual strategy game? Massive advantage over mortal players, right there. Blizzard solved the problem by sticking a pretty harsh key-press buffer in, so being able to type faster than your rig can process means nothing in Azeroth. Women broke past the parity barrier a long time ago, at least in the industry itself. It never really was a problem as far as the player base is concerned - women have been splitting that pie fifty-fifty since the mid 2010s.
Age parity is what's really surprising, and what's helping to change the attitude of some contentious players. Lose to a sixty-something when you're a fresh-faced pre-teen, and you're likely to rethink your approach. Real-life veterancy is starting to mean something in virtual worlds, so a lot of the hateful idiots you're still familiar with are starting to figure out they're better off keeping their mouth shut. Misogynistic attitudes get called out, sexism is shot down as soon as it rears its ugly head - and aging gamers means you can't rely on Battle Bras or jiggle physics anymore.
Well, there's always going to be a caste of really high-strung guys who seriously need their cheap stimuli - but they're not the average statistic anymore. Female characters are continuing in the same basic motion that saw them getting deeper treatments, and game scenarios are reaching deeper than your usual "Scruffy brown-haired Caucasian Shoots Enemies Over Chest-High Walls" approach. Grief, regret, anger, happiness, release, love, whatever - there's more of the human experience that's being translated in game form than ever before. The old fears about anti-games being the only ones who could explore the human condition proved wrong. All it took was a new generation of ballsy developers who grew up wanting to tell stories, instead of shooting guys in the face with no context.
The geeks are ruling Earth, Luna and Mars, and they've got a foothold on Paradise. The old days from Revenge of the Nerds are long past."