Could Esports Be Overinflated And Be About To Pop Again?

Lots of game are pushing to setup ESports leagues and there is lots of money rolling in to inflate the events, however is there enough of a fanbase and following for those investments to pay off?

This article discusses the alarming bubble like properties of the ESports industry...

https://kotaku.com/as-esports-grows-experts-fear-its-a-bubble-ready-to-po-1834982843

Could the Esports industry be going through another boom and burst cycle similar to the one around 2008?

It's food for thought before you convert your latest gaming multiplayer masterpiece into an ESports platform.

On the one hand you could go big and make lots of money on the wave of investment, with the potential for a boom and bust cycle.

Or would you be better off longer term to go for a more grass roots competitve scene to grow from your games player base?

 

I haven't heard of an indie dev building a game specifically to be a big time ESport, so I don't see how this really should advise the decision making process when planning your game. Indie games that would become an ESport would typically have a more organic evolution, rather than a top down ESport plan.

 

If you are making a game around being a big esport, you are going to be buying a lottery ticket. You have no control over whether people want to play it competitively, or for fun. Yes you can do some common sense things that just make the game more skill-based and encourage competition, but in the end, you are hoping your game has a massive enough following to warrant the time people put in to a game to be good enough to compete for money.

People really do do that as a career. And you not only want to play a game that you have fun playing, but also a game that you think will be around long enough to not have wasted all of the training to find that it is already fizzling out.

And that can, itself, be a negative feedback loop. Why even take part in the trend if you think it really is just a trend? Then, those people that think like this won't be playing it competitively, and streaming gameplay. That is less free advertising and hype. Then, you have less people interested in it as a serious esport; it's a viscous circle.

The games that are successful as an esport are going to overcome this problem. In part by luck. The stars aligning. But also It requires an extremely tight game loop, tons of content updates, and extensive esports-centered support (heavy marketing, event planning) from the developers if you want to foster a community as intense as that of an esport. And most indie devs won't have their own marketing and strategy team at beck and call that is ready for this. You need these things to be the next big esports game; not as a result of record revenue, being able to afford marketing and strategy AFTER making it big in esports.

If you want to do that as an indie developer, you are buying a lottery ticket. Good luck hitting the jackpot. Oh, and if you design your game specifically like this, you will undoubtedly sacrifice in other areas. You will likely lose out on casual multiplayer gamers who want a less competitive scene, or you will likely forgo a single player altogether. When your esports community fails to materialize, you will quickly lose the more competitive players, and you are left with a game not quite designed for any of your remaining players.

Just my two cents.

 

I though ESports was just a trick to sell more energy drinks.

 

The Schick Hydrobot would like to have a word with you

 

Don't forget the doritos

 

Poor "gaming chair"-factories, they pour their <del>heart</del> infinite money into eSports and you don't even mention them...

 

I cant think of something more tasteless than a gaming chair Maybe a gaming chassi

 

What if you target the game not at players but at ESports investors, they have all the money and then you can get them to fund not only the game but also it's marketing and release via popular twitch channel celebrities.

 

But why though?

 

If you target the investors and not the gamers (essentially your audience), you're making S***ty games. Just look at the recent AAA titles with tremendous problems, scandals, outcry.

If you have a lot of money and you can invest to make even more money, then yeah, of course, but why would you do that? And if you have a lot of money, you need to look for a better investment. Or invest in decent games.

 

I mean if you're targeting investor funds/returns generally you are doing exactly what a corporation does... the profit gained from selling products/services/etc. goes to paying back investors. Customers are kind of not the target...

Whether that means S***ty games or not is up to him/herself to figure out.

Man 2019 is turning out to be a crazy year already... EA's shares tanked because customers didn't want their titles as they didn't fit their political expectations, instead of ya know, actual the merit of how fun the gameplay is...

"I'd rather be angry about politics than play the game I disagree with even though it may be fun..."

 

No, EA's shares tanked because their earnings report came in well below expectations because they had made unreasonable sales and earnings expectations, as did near the entire industry.