Curse

*Darcy* · Apr 04, 2007, 12:29 PM // 12:29

The big money arrives with televising a competition. That supplies sponsors with the visibility for which they will shell out money.

To get the TV coverage, the game needs to be well-known so the broadcaster can guarantee a large audience. And the action needs to be easy for the audience to understand.

Even with the broadened marketing ANet is doing to widen awareness of GW, I don't think the general gaming public would understand the PvP competitions enough to encourage televising it.

elektra_lucia · Apr 04, 2007, 12:48 PM // 12:48

I never took part in other MMORPGs that seriously so when I think of pro gaming I think of FPS games. Now pro-gaming has two meanings really. There are players I know who are extremely skilled. By the literal definition you could say they are professional. However, you can be bad at something and also be professional (as long as you reach pay for it). You could be a gardener and make lots of money from this, you may be bad or not the best at it but you could classify yourself as a professional gardener.

If you are to take professional to mean highly skilled. Then how would you define that in guildwars? Anyone in a top five guild? Supposing they ran a lame build which helped aid them to get to their place? What if their ping was 18, to the server and most other players were around the 150 mark? I'm in no ways saying this is the case, but with not even a simple ping chart - I don't see how you could take professional gaming seriously.

There is a LAN this weekend (I can't get time off work to go >.>) called i30. One of the biggest LAN (local area network) in England. You will be paid for winning and such, not the greatest prizes like CPL or WCG but it will be something. Now there are many more events like this in sweden (dreamhack is a big one). The point being, because they are so popular, many enter these tournaments. They arn't officially supported by the game, either.

You don't have to be on TV to make a living, but it helps. Fatal1ty has probably reached the most media coverage compared to any other pro-gamer that I know.

Now, guildwars (as far as I'm aware) does not support any other events other than official. You can make scrims which I guess you could use to run a tournament. The problem being, you'd need your own server to run it, I think. There is not something which allows you to host your own server.

The good things with multiple lan events are you can have sponsors and premote their product. Sure you can get sponsored in guildwars I should think, but it'd be a nightmare to do.

If you could have a little title come up by your flag or something for GVG, or something for HA. Then the game may support sponsors because nvidia would be wanting to put it's title on the number1 guild.

Pro gaming doesn't give a pention plan which is quite bad =P. Very few reach enough to get serious money from it. I know many people who've been paid say, 25 thousand dollars for a win in a game but they haven't had a lot else. 25 thousand is nice, but for the hard effort and such - it's not going to get your life very far.

In my opinion pro-gaming needs to have a lot more media, and I don't think guildwars supports it that well.

Quote:

P.S. To lazy to find the one for Madden but it's out there. ESPN advertised one Madden tourney that gave away $100,000 to the winner.

www.worldcybergames.com
www.thecpl.com

Maybe them?

Darksun · Apr 04, 2007, 02:13 PM // 14:13

Quote:

Originally Posted by Zinger314

The first, first prize for the WoW tournement is $5,000, plus travel expenses. Incredibly ironic, compared to the prizes for the Guild Wars tournements.

Uh, Blizzard charges a monthly fee to 6 million plus people, besides being an already huge company with an established franchise. ANET is a new company with 1 game line. Where is the irony?

Theosebes · Apr 04, 2007, 02:26 PM // 14:26

A couple of people have alluded to Anet opposing sponsership. I am not aware of anything that Anet does or has done to discourage this. In fact, in some other countries they have worked directly with 3rd part businesses for promotional purposes. (Coke Items anyone?)

With WoW, the player base is many times that of GW, built by years of having thier game out there, (it was released almost a year before GW) and even more years of a product name with a loyal following. (the original Warcraft game was released more than 10 years ago) The "Competitive PvP" portion of WoW is an add-on as a direct response to GW, and has the attention of the progamers for the simple reason of a huge player base that is willing and able to pay a monthly fee for thier games.

The way that a business looks at the two games is: GW has gamers that pay a one-time game fee, and then don't pay for thier game, they may not have money to spend on the product I am hawking. On the other hand, the WoW players pay a monthly fee, so they are willing and able to pay for thier gaming addiction, and would be willing to pay for the products that sponsor those progamers. Plus, from a sheer numbers perspective, there are just over 3 million sales, and even if that translated to 3 million unique users (and it doesn't) that pales in comparison to 8.5 million unique subscribers that WoW boasts.

It is not Anet's place to encourage or discourage progamers in thier game, and as far as I can tell, they don't actively discourage anything. They sponsor tournaments that have real cash prizes, and work with businesses that aproach them, but as for an ongoing sponsored team, that is the place of a business. It would take a 3rd party sponsor to do that, and Anet has nothing to do with it. If a company doesn't see the benefit (see above) they don't do it. And that doesn't necesarrily translate to a direct in-game ad. The product name as part of the Guild name, t-shirts on the players at events like the tournaments, and announcements on the guild's public website is usually all they need to sponsor something like that.

If GW players want to see pro gamers in GW, the high-level players should get on the phone with companies, and hitting them up for sponsorships. Imagine a guild: Bawls Esoteric Warriors [Bew]

It's not up to Anet to make it happen it's up to EW and Bawls.

Zinger314 · Apr 04, 2007, 02:33 PM // 14:33

Quote:

Originally Posted by Darksun

Uh, Blizzard charges a monthly fee to 6 million plus people, besides being an already huge company with an established franchise. ANET is a new company with 1 game line. Where is the irony?

Look at the prizes for the Factions Championship, and it'll be quite obvious.

eightyfour-onesevenfive · Apr 04, 2007, 02:57 PM // 14:57

Pro gaming? As in making a living by playing a game? Well, we got that! What? Never heared about chinese gold farmers?

scnr.

elektra_lucia · Apr 04, 2007, 03:55 PM // 15:55

Quote:

If GW players want to see pro gamers in GW, the high-level players should get on the phone with companies, and hitting them up for sponsorships. Imagine a guild: Bawls Esoteric Warriors [Bew]

It's not up to Anet to make it happen it's up to EW and Bawls.

Do you know how sponsorship works? :s. My experience is that I've helped write an email in order to gain sponsorship from razer, nvidia etc. Firstly, you don't pickup the phone. Usually you write an email in which you can give reasons as to why you should be sponsored.

Say in an FPS game, I go to a LAN. I can have a big f*ck off sign on my shirt saying 'sponsored by nvidia'. Now going to many lans and such, the product is going to be more well known. With online tournaments, the product will be all the more well known.

With guildwars, there is not private servers as I've said before - there isn't even a ping chart. It'd be hard to run your own LAN tournament. So from nvidias point of view, this is what I'd be thinking :

Sponsor: Can you promote our product during a game? EW: We won't be going to lans and only the 8 people during the match can see the text we write.
Sponsor: If we are to give your guild/team money and help pay for flights to travel to tournaments. Just exactly WHERE will you be flying? What tournaments? EW: Pretty much none
Sponsor: can you promote our product with links on your web page and how will this web page be seen? EW: Sure we can; however, we're not on any un official leagues; therefore, the only time people will get our web address is if someone asks us for it.

Obviously there is more to it than that, it's just a basic idea. Guildwars doesn't really support such stuff.

Further more, you play football, cricket, anything. Unless you're some dodgy team the game doesn't usually change e.g. the ball doesn't usually change shape? Right.
You get sponsored in an FPS game and the rules don't really change too much. They've worked out that in 1vs1 matches your brain can concentrate for about a maximum of 15 minutes; however, in team games your brain can concentrate at best for around 20 minutes. This is why 1vs1 matches are usually 15 minute long. Maps change, but they don't go and make a weapon suddenly shoot bullets that only kill if your crosshair pointer is within 1/10 of a milimeter of the persons left eye. Where as before, the weapon would kill everyone within a five mile radius.

My point, well, guildwars skills get nerfed. Changed. For the truely competitive professional gamer it'd be absolutely hell. They can't keep practising the same stuff and improving, because it can all be changed at any point. To me changing skills - adding addons to the game is like changing a football from leather into plastic and drilling a few holes in it too.

Quote:

You mean kinda like him?

Anyone who claims Fatal1ty is crap, is a complete idiot. Sure he's over rated, but he's not 'crap'. His mousemat is really good. Rest of his stuff is over rated media hype, but then that's no surprise. Cough.

I do find some of his stunts absolutely stupid. He isn't crap.

Quote:

Fatal1ty is probably the only well-known American video-game player with his own line of gaming accessories (which are mostly crap).

Americans (from a statistic point of view) arn't as good at games. I would bet money on it that if say HeatoN, Lauke, Vo0, lived in America and not holland/sweden they'd have a whole lot more media coverage.

From what I can gather though, Americans are more into media and stuff.

Quote:

The big money arrives with televising a competition. That supplies sponsors with the visibility for which they will shell out money.

Dreamhack doesn't get put on TV o.o I don't think you'd need TV, sure it'd help but it's never been needed before.

So who here would want to write on their C.V/resumé. For the past few years I've been practising 4+ hours a day in order to win a competition in a computer game on the off chance that the creaters do not 1) change the skills and 2) I do not err7 out of a match. I am a professional gamer!

. Rofl.

Ensign · Apr 04, 2007, 05:37 PM // 17:37

I've had conversations with Mike Gills about sponsorships in Guild Wars. Again, the big reason they haven't happened is because they haven't been needed, as travel expenses have all been paid for by Arena.net. In the future that might not be the case, but if that happens Arena.net won't just endorse sponsored teams, but will actively help teams get sponsored to cover the trips.

Endorsements are a different beast. They're less about costs, and more about individual branding. Basically to get endorsement deals you need to be a well known and respected player that is a 'brand' unto itself - then businesses might want to associate themselves with that brand. Pretty simple, really. Logic being something like 'Player X is awesome, player X uses Y (because he's paid to say he uses it etc), Y gains heightened prominence and hopefully better sales.'

Peace,
-CxE

HawkofStorms · Apr 04, 2007, 05:57 PM // 17:57

Quote:

Originally Posted by wetsparks

Ever heard of Madden and Halo? The pros there actually have websites and charge people for an hour of "tutoring" so they can be better at the game.
http://www.halo-pro.com/cgi/index.php
http://www.mlgpro.com/

P.S. To lazy to find the one for Madden but it's out there. ESPN advertised one Madden tourney that gave away $100,000 to the winner.

Yes I have. Neither of which is as big of a professional circuit as StarCraft, the number 4 video game of all time accoridng to IGN.com (super mario brother 3 holding the number 1 spot). ScarCraft games are actually televised in Korea. Also, StarCraft is an 11 year old game and still has massive popularity. That's why I pointed it out. It has staying power and was also a pioneer in the gaming industry.

Way to point out Halo though. I mean, yeah its a fun game, but it was not revolutionary. Oh boy, a futuristic first person shooter. That hasn't been done before.

It was only good because it was the first console game to properly uses 3 axises and allowed people to aim a gun with a second thumbstick to mimic the movement of a mouse.

Nekretaal · Apr 04, 2007, 08:19 PM // 20:19

2 separate issues:

(1) Endorsements and Professional Gamers: who really cares about this? I dont think that it matters either way.

If Subway sponsors Esoteric warriors and they become "Subway Esoteric Warriors" with their guild name on observer mode gvg, flashed to the entire poputlation everytime they win hall of heroes, or on the permanant map of factions if they control a town: is anybody helped or hurt by this and does it even matter? Do we even want this?

(2) Absense of Guild wars in emerging Proffessional Gaming legues / tournaments: I think the professional gaming league players ignored Guild wars, probably due to "MMORPG Genre" marketing, even as Guild wars would have been a good cantidate for these games. It's too late for guild wars, which, no offense to today's top guilds, never really attracted those considered to be the world's top gamers to its pvp.

If GW2 intends to attract these gamers it ought to be courting them now. But is it worth it: tStrictly from a cost perspective, it may not make sense to "buy into" the emerging gaming leagues when all of your competitors can and will do the same thing. What do you really get for GW by courting these players amounts to a temporory amount of publicty to a very narrow spectrum of people. There is a PvE side of guild wars to consider as well, and some pvp imbalances are what make pvE fun.

Yunas Ele · Apr 04, 2007, 08:42 PM // 20:42

Guild Wars will never have pro-gamers. Why? One reason, its not that fun to watch. Make no mistake, its fun to play but lets be honest, is watching obs matches really that fun? Okay, so one or two of you may think so but thats certainly not enough to have pro-gamers.

On the contrast, a game like Starcraft.... IMO, almost every single pro-gamer match (that I've watched) was damn fun to watch. And I'm not the only one who thinks that, considering how there are a couple TV channels in Korea purely dedicated to Starcraft.

That being said, I doubt most people would consider WoW matches worth watching either, but I guess thats why the prize is so low....

Longasc · Apr 05, 2007, 06:57 AM // 06:57

Maybe GW2 will become more successful at e-sports. Were they not shooting for this with their "balanced" PvP? Balance still being balanced after the successor has already been announced, btw.

With the advent of automated tournaments, ANet will probably not host GW1 tournaments anymore.

Maybe we find the faces of War Machine players on cereal packages in 2010/11. Always assumed North Korea does not nuke them before.

Ss Executioner · Apr 05, 2007, 05:44 PM // 17:44

Two words:

Team Everfrost.

Other guilds in the past sponsered that comes to mind would be EvIL and WM. (I do believe RUS as well?)