Get this shit off your website, ESPN

[Am_I_Anonymous]

http://espn.go.com/esports/story/_/id/17098033/infiltration-begins-dynasty-evo-2016

Nobody who has any money to buy anything gives a fuck about this shit. Nobody.

[Phoenix Dark]

Not nearly as embarrassing as First Take, the lack of quality of Monday Night Football scheduling, or just about any original ESPN programming except for Outside The Lines and 30 For 30.

[Rufus]

Video games are prime poverty entertainment, man. Not as cheap as playing ball, but pretty fucking close, provided you're into the right genres, of which fighting games are one.

[fistfulofmetal]

old man continues to tell at clouds

[Am_I_Anonymous]

old man continues to tell at clouds

Young man continues to show his lack of cognitive development by repeating the same joke well past the point of critical impact.

It's quite squiddy-like. You should take a nap.

[Am_I_Anonymous]

old man continues to tell at clouds

Young man continues to show his lack of cognitive development by repeating the same joke well past the point of critical impact.

It's quite squiddy-like. You should take a nap.

uh, it was me who made that joke, not him

speaking of cognitive development (or decline, rather)

No it wasn't.

Stop posting.

[mormapope]

Something I don't like is on a website that probably has a ton of other shit I'm not interested in and don't like
 

[CatsCatsCats]

[Tasty]

http://espn.go.com/esports/story/_/id/17097836/new-melee-king-crowned-evo

On a scale of 1 to [ T R I G G E R E D ] how much does Smash coverage on ESPN make you feel, AiA?

[kick51]

[Rufus]

Wtf is that background picture. Jesus.

[Olivia Wilde Homo]

ESPN has been shit for a long time.  Get owned by Disney, bryhs

[Phoenix Dark]

ESPN has been shit for a long time.  Get owned by Disney, bryhs

the tears when they ruin Star Wars in a year or two

[bork]

Clearly nobody cares, which is why ESPN has an entire eSports section on their website. 

[kick51]

Wtf is that background picture. Jesus.

that's how she gets her powers

[Atramental]

It's 2016. Video games are sports now.

[Rufus]

Wtf is that background picture. Jesus.

that's how she gets her powers

I thought all Brazilians were part electric eel.

[demi]

http://espn.go.com/esports/story/_/id/17098033/infiltration-begins-dynasty-evo-2016

Nobody who has any money to buy anything gives a fuck about this shit. Nobody.

Send all questions and concerns here:

http://espn.go.com/espn/news/story?page=contact/index

[Tasty]

It's 2016. Video games are sports now.

It's 2016, eSports are sports

[Human Snorenado]

This is a disturbing new development, nerd shit on ESPN2. What's the world coming to???

[Kara]

1997 was legit. B/r/u beatdown.

[Kara]

If you call it Grixis I will fucking cut you.

[eleuin]

Things people give a shit about? I gotchu fam

http://espn.go.com/moresports/story/_/id/16763727/joey-chestnut-eats-70-hot-dogs-wins-nathan-famous-crown
http://espn.go.com/espn/story/_/id/15756953/scripps-national-spelling-bee-crowns-nihar-janga-jairam-hathwar-co-champions

[bluemax]

http://espn.go.com/esports/story/_/id/17098033/infiltration-begins-dynasty-evo-2016

Nobody who has any money to buy anything gives a fuck about this shit. Nobody.

The guys who invested in the last startup I worked for bought a League of Legends team that was one of the top teams in North America this past year. I actually spoke with a bunch of the dudes on their board about it at their party and they all see big money in eSports, saying the sponsorship revenue alone is probably going to be race car levels if not higher.

So I think it's pretty disingenuous for you to say no one who has money to buy anything is disinterested in eSports.

Or maybe you're just made that Rick Fox is richer than you and bought a team and all you're doing is posting on the fucking Bore.

The list of investors includes power players in the sports and technology industries. Peter Levin, the president or Lionsgate Interactive Venture and Games, who previously built the Nerdist into a geek empire; Allen Debevoise, a chairman at Machinima; Steve Kaplan, a co-owner of the pro basketball franchise Memphis Grizzlies; Brian Lee, famous for co-founding startups with celebrities like Kim Kardashian; Paul Rappoport, COO at the XPRIZE; and many more comprise the ownership group. A group called Machine Shop Ventures is also investing—it's better known as the business alter-alias of band Linkin Park. (That's right: Linkin Park, the band whose music was pretty much the soundtrack of mid-2000s frag videos, now co-owns an esports team.)

What a bunch of poors!

[Am_I_Anonymous]

Id rather invest in bunion research then own a team doing video game shit for a fad that will die before 2020.

[sarslip]

This is a disturbing new development, nerd shit on ESPN2. What's the world coming to???

ah yes, The Rumble in the Bunghole, what a battle. 

[thisismyusername]

http://espn.go.com/esports/story/_/id/17098033/infiltration-begins-dynasty-evo-2016

Nobody who has any money to buy anything gives a fuck about this shit. Nobody.

Id rather invest in bunion research then own a team doing video game shit for a fad that will die before 2020.

[CatsCatsCats]

Your wife make you rub her bunions? Cuz then I would understand

[eleuin]

If only a bunch of dota players followed AIA around all day and told him how much more money they made than him last year

[Your Stalker]

Rick Fox owns an esports team.

[Am_I_Anonymous]

If only a bunch of dota players followed AIA around all day and told him how much more money they made than him last year

https://m.

Son you ain't even hit the elevator yet, be calm.

[Am_I_Anonymous]

Rick Fox owns an esports team.

I got more than him. He ain't shit on the scale. Keep supporting a dying cause, that's fine. But let me know when real money gets there, thanks.

[archie4208]

To be fair esports viewership is down in the west quite a bit this year across all the big games.  It's probably a mix of oversaturation, Twitch cracking down on bots and the CSGO scene shitting the bed.

Esports won't die in the next few years, but the days of exponential growth are over.  Unless a new game takes over, things will be steady or slightly decline.

[naff]

If you call it Grixis I will fucking cut you.

[Your Stalker]

To be fair esports viewership is down in the west quite a bit this year across all the big games.  It's probably a mix of oversaturation, Twitch cracking down on bots and the CSGO scene shitting the bed.

Esports won't die in the next few years, but the days of exponential growth are over.  Unless a new game takes over, things will be steady or slightly decline.

What happened to CSGO besides all that gambling shit?

[VomKriege]

To be fair esports viewership is down in the west quite a bit this year across all the big games.  It's probably a mix of oversaturation, Twitch cracking down on bots and the CSGO scene shitting the bed.

Esports won't die in the next few years, but the days of exponential growth are over.  Unless a new game takes over, things will be steady or slightly decline.

Wasn't there an eSport crash 10 years ago just before everyone thought it was gonna go big ?

[archie4208]

To be fair esports viewership is down in the west quite a bit this year across all the big games.  It's probably a mix of oversaturation, Twitch cracking down on bots and the CSGO scene shitting the bed.

Esports won't die in the next few years, but the days of exponential growth are over.  Unless a new game takes over, things will be steady or slightly decline.

What happened to CSGO besides all that gambling shit?

Oversaturation.  Top teams playing in minor cups dilutes the product and makes things unexciting.  The same shit happened in Dota.

To be fair esports viewership is down in the west quite a bit this year across all the big games.  It's probably a mix of oversaturation, Twitch cracking down on bots and the CSGO scene shitting the bed.

Esports won't die in the next few years, but the days of exponential growth are over.  Unless a new game takes over, things will be steady or slightly decline.

Wasn't there an eSport crash 10 years ago just before everyone thought it was gonna go big ?

That's before my time but there was a circuit called Championship Gaming League (CGS) that aired on TV and was supposed to go mainstream.  As far as I understand, things fell through and it set back the industry a few years.

That won't happen now due to Twitch and devs on board, but the esports industry is nowhere near the size of other sports, despite what promoters want you to think.

[bluemax]

Rick Fox owns an esports team.

I got more than him. He ain't shit on the scale. Keep supporting a dying cause, that's fine. But let me know when real money gets there, thanks.

Define real money. The winning team for last years TI made over $6 million dollars. The top League tournament handed out a million to its winners last year. The best League probably pull in at least a million a year in sponsorship money (in addition to his base salary and tournament winnings). The top DotA and LoL tournaments attract millions of viewers worldwide. They moved the LoL finals out of Staples Center after the first year it was there because the venue is too SMALL.

Is it Roger Goodell and the NFL big? No. But right now it probably has better revenue potential for ESPN than WSOP reruns or the WNBA.

To be fair esports viewership is down in the west quite a bit this year across all the big games.  It's probably a mix of oversaturation, Twitch cracking down on bots and the CSGO scene shitting the bed.

Esports won't die in the next few years, but the days of exponential growth are over.  Unless a new game takes over, things will be steady or slightly decline.

What happened to CSGO besides all that gambling shit?

Oversaturation.  Top teams playing in minor cups dilutes the product and makes things unexciting.  The same shit happened in Dota.

Yup, hence why Valve instituted the Major system and now most of the tier teams only play in majors or tournaments with actual prize pools.

[Kara]

Can there be an e-sports equivalent to TVG? The degeneracy on display would be unrivaled.

[Cerveza mas fina]

calling it e-sports just harms the whole endavour and shows our need as nerdlings to fit in some society construct of what is meaningfull, its like overcompensating

you don't see the poker or darts crowd hell bent on calling their games card sports or pub sports

[curly]

calling it e-sports just harms the whole endavour and shows our need as nerdlings to fit in some society construct of what is meaningfull, its like overcompensating

you don't see the poker or darts crowd hell bent on calling their games card sports or pub sports

Fwiw I've never heard of an e-athlete () that actually cares if it's labeled a sport.

[Cerveza mas fina]

Well maybe it's the media trying to sell it like that then

[Yeti]

E-Sports gets a pass from me because there is still a certain degree of physical athleticism involved with performing well. You need to have good hand eye coordination, you need good dexterity in your wrists and fingers. You don't really need that kind of physical prowess for card games or chess.

[VomKriege]

I'm a bit skeptical eSports will make it really big, to be honest. Too much stuff is happening under the hood in videogames, and to make it worse games rotation means that the set of rules and knowledge needs to be refreshed and updated. It also lacks the sheer photographic quality of athletes physically performing and overall there's an unsolvable problem of not being able to focus both on the player and its performance on screen. It lacks the raw, intuitive and visual spectacle and some stuff often needs to be explained explicitly ("It's a frame perfect trick").

[bluemax]

I'm a bit skeptical eSports will make it really big, to be honest. Too much stuff is happening under the hood in videogames, and to make it worse games rotation means that the set of rules and knowledge needs to be refreshed and updated. It also lacks the sheer photographic quality of athletes physically performing and overall there's an unsolvable problem of not being able to focus both on the player and its performance on screen. It lacks the raw, intuitive and visual spectacle and some stuff often needs to be explained explicitly ("It's a frame perfect trick").

Eh I dunno, I bet if you ask a long time fan of DotA if they know about "Liquid are doing! It! " or "The six million dollar echo slam " or "The play " they would nerd out about it in the same way people do about things like "The Drive" or "The flu game".

[benjipwns]

Even after reading an explanation for what was happening in those videos I can agree with the idea of the disconnect between what the players are doing and what's on the screen.

I don't know if that divide can be crossed if you haven't played the games to know how they work unlike the most popular sports. Of course, as an audience that has played the games grows...

It doesn't help that in games like DOTA or StarCraft the screen is a mess of stuff unless you know what to watch. Shooters have a bit more accessibility in that regard. You can watch say a Battlefield video and get the jist of what the player is doing that's cool or awesome without necessarily knowing how the game itself functions outside of "you shoot dudes" generally.

The echo slam one was probably the most enjoyable for me. "The play" one you really need to watch not just the game but the guy in headphones on the left teams hands when he does it to "get it" I think.

One thing it has in common with "regular" sports though are clueless announcers who can be entirely detrimental to understanding what is actually happening on the field.

Who is the Skip Bayless of e-sports? Is that something I could still become?

[benjipwns]

Do any of these e-sports organizations plan to add clicker games to their roster?

Asking for a friend.

[kick51]

Not before Future tone gets picked up and broadcast on espn

[bluemax]

Even after reading an explanation for what was happening in those videos I can agree with the idea of the disconnect between what the players are doing and what's on the screen.

I don't know if that divide can be crossed if you haven't played the games to know how they work unlike the most popular sports. Of course, as an audience that has played the games grows...

It doesn't help that in games like DOTA or StarCraft the screen is a mess of stuff unless you know what to watch. Shooters have a bit more accessibility in that regard. You can watch say a Battlefield video and get the jist of what the player is doing that's cool or awesome without necessarily knowing how the game itself functions outside of "you shoot dudes" generally.

The echo slam one was probably the most enjoyable for me. "The play" one you really need to watch not just the game but the guy in headphones on the left teams hands when he does it to "get it" I think.

One thing it has in common with "regular" sports though are clueless announcers who can be entirely detrimental to understanding what is actually happening on the field.

Who is the Skip Bayless of e-sports? Is that something I could still become?

You could probably still become the Skip Bayless I guess. Most of what we have right now are PbP guys, Color commentators and Analysts. Just like real sports whenever a PbP guy tries to do analysis its usually bad. Color guys are often former players and they range from clowny cringe to Merlini. Analysts are numbers guys like Nahaz, Bruno (who got hired by Valve) and Dan Symborzski (who used to write about real sports).

There are a lot of weird clowny guys like James Harding (called out by Gabe Newell) or SirActionSlacks (who for all his cringe moments is one of the few people able to get all these autists to actually do decent interviews).

There's a lot of room for growth in the commentary realm, but obviously until there's enough money to keep the people who are good around.

[benjipwns]

There are a lot of weird clowny guys like James Harding (called out by Gabe Newell)

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1B061Rs4gw4zkCec35Q5v2r576e_Jd6pJfrT_5_GZ74I/preview

 

[bluemax]

Even after reading an explanation for what was happening in those videos I can agree with the idea of the disconnect between what the players are doing and what's on the screen.

I don't know if that divide can be crossed if you haven't played the games to know how they work unlike the most popular sports. Of course, as an audience that has played the games grows...

It doesn't help that in games like DOTA or StarCraft the screen is a mess of stuff unless you know what to watch. Shooters have a bit more accessibility in that regard. You can watch say a Battlefield video and get the jist of what the player is doing that's cool or awesome without necessarily knowing how the game itself functions outside of "you shoot dudes" generally.

The echo slam one was probably the most enjoyable for me. "The play" one you really need to watch not just the game but the guy in headphones on the left teams hands when he does it to "get it" I think.

One thing it has in common with "regular" sports though are clueless announcers who can be entirely detrimental to understanding what is actually happening on the field.

Who is the Skip Bayless of e-sports? Is that something I could still become?

Sorry my point with those videos wasn't that they might be hype for the casual viewer, but that they were hype moments that people who were fans will talk about for years etc.

Also apparently almost 2 million people watched the Evo finals on ESPN2:

http://www.eventhubs.com/news/2016/aug/01/nearly-two-million-people-watched-evo-espn2-see-viewership-details-here/

[bluemax]

https://twitter.com/darrenrovell/status/770058348209266688

[seagrams hotsauce]

I'm not huge into the scene but I can't think of any progamers actually referring to themselves as athletes. This whole topic is dumb though, espn would air competitive horse fucking if it got ratings

[Syph]

LCS Finals were awesome today come at me bros

[benjipwns]

http://www.espn.com/esports/story/_/id/17553192/shaq-nrg-expands-gears-war

The Gears of War esports scene just downed an energy shot courtesy of traditional sports. NRG Esports, whose investors include sports greats Shaquille O'Neal, Alex "A-Rod" Rodriguez and Jimmy Rollins, has signed a competitive squad for the upcoming Gears of War 4. The announcement, posted Wednesday on the Gears of War website, lists the new five-man roster: Christopher Stephen "Xavier Celsius" Hill, Marvin "Sir Sicamore" Moya, Yadiel "Sleepytime" Hidalgo, Frank Wesley "KO" Tibbs Jr. and Marion "Twist3DShot" Haynes.

The team will compete in the upcoming Gears Esports Pro Circuit, an international tournament series with an overall prize pool of $1 million.

The newly minted NRG squad is no pushover either, with five players who have competed at the highest level in Gears. Every member of the team boasts a top-four finish at a previous tournament, and all are early frontrunners in the Gears 4 scene.

[thisismyusername]

A_I_A: [TRIGGERING INTENSIFIES]

[archie4208]

Personally, I'm triggered NRG can get into fucking Gears of War but not Dota. 

[Syph]

Personally, I'm triggered NRG can get into fucking Gears of War but not Dota. 

or LoL

[archie4208]

http://www.espn.com/esports/story/_/id/17637299/76ers-acquire-esports-teams-dignitas-apex

Thoughts on this, AiA? 

[thisismyusername]

http://www.espn.com/esports/story/_/id/17637299/76ers-acquire-esports-teams-dignitas-apex

Thoughts on this, AiA? 

"It's the only way the 76ers can be relevant."