Why People Watch StarCraft, Instead of Playing 122
generalepsilon writes "Researchers from the University of Washington have found a key reason why StarCraft is a popular spectator sport (PDF), especially in Korea. In a paper published last week, they theorize that StarCraft incorporates 'information asymmetry,' where the players and spectators each have different pieces of information, which transforms into entertainment. Sometimes spectators know something the players don't; they watch in suspense as players walk their armies into traps or a dropship sneaks behind the mineral line. Other times, players know something the spectators yearn to find out, such as 'cheese' (spectacular build orders that attempt to outplay an opponent early in the game). Rather than giving as much information as possible to spectators, it may be more crucial for game designers to decide which information to give to spectators, and when to reveal this information."
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Mods, really? How the hell is this offtopic?
"Welcome to the 4th annual cider making conference, hosted at 1 Infinite Loop, Cupertino, CA"
"I brought some apples."
"Sorry, those are offtopic."
Really? (Score:5, Insightful)
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Not to mention that sometimes it's nice to sit back and watch the big picture. When you're playing it's easy to get caught up on minutiae and miss important story elements, complex action sequences, or beautiful scenery.
Also, many players add a fun commentary track. [lparchive.org] A good "Let's Play" can add a lot of humor and personality to any game, and IMHO is usually more fun than playing the game itself.
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Or maybe it's like any other competitive sport, there are people who enjoy watching it being played at a higher level than they themselves are able to participate at?
I feel like this with League of Legends. The top players streaming is a completely different game than when I play. The strategies are very different and the games have a more natural flow to them. When I play as a "baddie" the games are often just a lot of discord.
Beyond that, there are players who don't like each other and sometimes they end up on the same team. It probably wouldn't work if the players were all anonymous and I didn't know who I was watching. Beyond the soap opera and the drama it's a goo
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I like watching some Street Fighter 4 (or SF3) matches. Some of the things these guys pull off are amazing.
And there is always the famous Daigo vs Justin Wong match.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XeM0rH_4ung
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How the hell!? I wasn't aware you could counter that move in such a way, wow, just wow.
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I have to say, I love watching others play. No matter if they are highly skilled or not. It's great to watch people's reactions to situations, maybe learn a little in the process. I've always enjoyed watching quake rolls, raid run downs, and the like. Having gamed for over 20 years, once it's in your blood you kind of enjoy everything about them.
One thing I find is it's hard for traditional media to cover events that have more than 2 players. Switching between 8, 16, or even 32 players would give anyone a h
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I especially liked this about some of the commentary from people like Day[9]. I loved the way they commented on the meta-game, or on fundamental concepts of the game that aren't really visible to scrubs like me until (or unless) we go looking for them.
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Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar, but someone's always going to be able to blog / get research grants about the possiblity that it's something else!
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The real problem is that someone hasn't killed you yet.
Once, I saw a guy racistly badmouth a black lady for being clumsy when she almost tripped on him. While his back was turned to the crowd someone threw a huge rock at the guy. It missed his head and caught him in the neck, breaking (we later read) two vertebrae and leaving him paralyzed for life. The hilarious thing is that even though at least five hundred people must have seen it, and someone must have seen who threw it, nobody "saw" anything. The only
Thinking way too hard (Score:5, Interesting)
Like most academics, I think they have put way too much thought into this.
Outside of Korea I imagine people for the most part watch this stuff because it’s awe-inspiring to see someone playing who has literally dedicated a huge chunk of his life to the game and as a result is mind blowing skilled at it. Inside of Korea they watch it for the same reason everyone else watches hockey, soccer, football, etc
These guys really do treat it as a professional sport in Korea... with training camps, massive salaries, licensing and a _draft_. Spectators are just a part of that. Whether or not you take the “esport” seriously, it’s still something to see at least once, even as just a novelty.
As for playing vs watching, I assume it’s the same as any other “sport”. I can play hockey with the guys at work, and still enjoy watching professional hockey players who dedicate way more time to the game and are better at it then I’ll ever be. One can play starcraft with their friends while still having an appreciation for people who take it seriously.
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"Outside of Korea I imagine people for the most part watch this stuff because itâ(TM)s awe-inspiring to see someone playing who has literally dedicated a huge chunk of his life to the game and as a result is mind blowing skilled at it."
But there must be more to it than that. How many people watch World of Warcraft? Or Command & Conquer, or Team Fortress 2? Far fewer than Starcraft.
There is something about Starcraft that makes it more fun to watch. IMO it's one of the rare games with both lots of st
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At BlizzCon every year, Blizzard puts on a SC2 tournament, a WC3 tournament, and a WoW arena tournament. The SC2 tournament is well attended most of the convention, and packed for the big matches (as in, you're not getting close to a chair unless you've been camping one all day). The WC3 tournament would be fairly sparsely attended if it weren't in the same place as the SC2 tournament, so people will be camping out there and either lamenting how boring WC3 is to watch or getting someone to hold their seat
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Not to mention TotalBiscuit's channel [youtube.com] - while not as technical as others, he more than makes up for it in entertainment value :)
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http://sc2casts.com/ [sc2casts.com]
ist pretty nice. i think sc2 is a magnificent spectator sport, lots of tension and uncertainty with few, if any, dull moments.
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Irrelevant (Score:2)
There is a magic to watching it than playing it - first it saves the hassle, second, its good to see people use their brain and wits to match against other. and indeed, there can be a lot of humor in between spectators while watching.
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So Starcraft is the "best" because you really like and are good at it
No, thats not what I said. Can you read? Specifically this part:
Starcraft is the best balanced RTS out there, and other RTSes might be more fun for you to play, but thats because you're bad and haven't found the One True Way that is unbeatable and makes the game boring
What that means is RTSes that are often times called more fun than Starcraft are only fun at the low end of the skill tree. I am also at the low end of skill, but I can at least recognize that starcraft is competitive at very, very high levels, and the professionals play very differently. In most other RTSes, good players will unearth a single good strategy that dwarfs others. Think Tic-Tac-Toe. When you are young and don't understand the game,
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Starcraft is the best RTS of all time.
Starcraft wasn't even the best RTS of its own time. But hey, I clearly value different things to you.
Do you think Korea just missed these other "great" RTSes while they devoted their lives to Starcraft?
Sorry, we're talking about a country that went insane over Lineage II? Forgive me if I don't share their cultural background and enthusiasm for twitch micromanagement attention to detail boring clickfest nonsense. It fails my 'fun' test.
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I clearly value different things to you.
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It would be good for Starcraft to receive an update. Monitors that work at 1600x1200 or 2400x1800 are rare, and controls could be better.
Oh, you might say "but there is one". Sorry, I mean one that is capable of network play. As long as Starcraft 2 has no reliable and low-ping way of playing, it is unfit either for serious competitive play nor for a number of home setups.
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Monitors that work at 1600x1200 ... are rare
Used to be a fairly common resolution from the late 90s thru mid 00s until HDTV came along and ruined it.
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this is a phenomenon unique to starcraft, and absent from more strategic and better designed RTS games where playing the game is much more popular than watching experts
It is not. I've seen many times in many games. I've done it myself for a variety of reasons. Seeing someone pretty skilled at RTCW:ET was very entertaining to watch in a Saturday afternoon (sometimes with a big cup of coffee on cold days where your fingers could barely move).
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For example, Supreme Commander:
Whereas in Starcraft:
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I would argue that the user interface was a conscious choice by the developers. When your tools are limited, there's a much higher "skill ceiling" (the best you can get) than when simple things are handled for you. In Starcraft, you have to make conscious decisions on what to focus on. Do you want to make sure that your economy is strong and that you're constantly producing fighting units (macro)? Do you want to manage your units and get the most efficiency possible out of them (micro)? Do you want to
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Cheese? (Score:5, Funny)
"Such as 'cheese' (spectacular build orders that attempt to outplay an opponent early in the game)."
I'm going to start canon-rushing just so I can quote that line when I get raged. "Sorry you were no match for my spectacular build order, NOOB".
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'spectacular' doesn't mean awesome, it means 'creating a spectacle', 'an event with striking effects', 'dramatic and eyecatching'. Cheese is 'spectacular' because it completely changes the the early game from a slow build up to large armies, into an edge of the seat, do or die confrontation with minimal forces.
Really though, the odds of success in pro games is pretty low for those kinds of plays, opponents are too good at scouting them and deflecting them; I suspect that pro level players continue to mix t
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Yeah. I actually enjoy getting cheesed. As a lower-tier player, I find it to be a good exercise. Instead of getting mad, I change gears. My "success" metrics turns into "thwart the cheese". Even if I lose the match in the end, I have gotten some good practice in.
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Like this [youtube.com]?
Epic cheesing in that video :)
I wish they would include that in more games (Score:5, Interesting)
I wish they would include a "spectator" mode in more online games. I'm not very twitch quick, but I do enjoy *watching* a lot of FPS multiplayer (where you can see the really quick and clever guys pull off some amazing stuff). I wish there were more games with a mode that let me walk around as a "ghost" in the game, just watching without having to worry about getting killed and tea-bagged over and over again by 14-year-olds.
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I wish they would include a "spectator" mode in more online games. I'm not very twitch quick, but I do enjoy *watching* a lot of FPS multiplayer (where you can see the really quick and clever guys pull off some amazing stuff). I wish there were more games with a mode that let me walk around as a "ghost" in the game, just watching without having to worry about getting killed and tea-bagged over and over again by 14-year-olds.
Heh, Left 4 Dead is good for that... actually it's sort of integral to the learning experience. When you die you're sort of forced to spectate so you can take some time out to watch how the rest of the team handles things.
It's also one of those games where there's much less stress on twitch reflexes, and more on learning the game mechanics and how to handle particular situations. Wish more games were like that... (Tribes 2 also comes to mind... where you can kinda see the opponents coming long before you'
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Because they don't have a guaranteed salary and 100% medical?
And the TL streams.... (Score:2)
So there are also these things where you can watch other people play. There is no "information asymmetry". And thousands of people watch those, too.
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This is a valid point. Tens of thousands watch tournament games every single night, whereas you'll be hard pressed to find streams that reach 5K viewers. Even the ones that do often feature players who discuss the game and their decision making which provides an alternate avenue for entertainment than just watching with excitement while waiting to see if the Protoss saw the medivac or if the Zerg will respond to the Dark Templar in time.
Similar to Poker (Score:4, Insightful)
Some differences between Starcraft and Poker (Score:2)
Speaking as someone who played in a reasonably high level in both: Made the first Blizzard world championships in Brood War, and made 1000x my initial bankroll in Poker:
In Starcraft, you will only win tournaments if you're really good. In Poker, you don't need to be the best to win tournaments.
Because you need to be really good in Starcraft to win, there isn't much money for players who aren't top 1000 players.
B
Being a spectator is less stressful (Score:2)
I love StarCraft 2, however it is extremely stressful to play. Sometimes I just want to chill, so I bring up the teamliquid.net stream list and watch my favorite players instead. Note that this is different than spectating a match as an observer/referee because you are essentially looking over the players shoulder and aren't privy to what his opponent is doing.
That being said, watching live cast games from the observer point of view (such as the recent TSL3) is a lot of fun as well. It really amazes me how
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I only skimmed the article, but I didn't see any mention of watching "instead of playing" as the Slashdot article is titled. They listed 9 types of spectators, but none of them were people who liked the game for a while, but find it more enjoyable to watch than to play, due to the stress. I think part of the reason I stopped playing is because a single mistake can (and often will) cost you the game. Not many games are that unforgiving.
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it's a strategy game, but not for me (Score:2)
As a Starcraft player, I suck.
At my level (bronze), Starcraft is primarily not a strategy game, it's a "push buttons faster" game. The best thing I could do to improve my play is to make more stuff and spend more money. At low levels it's a game of who can make the most stuff (almost ignoring what that stuff is). If I had perfect macro, made only marines and did absolutely 0 micro I'd probably at least move out of bronze and maybe further.
Watching Starcraft is the only way I get to enjoy the game as a strat
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First of all, it's a bit hard to get into it but you should try using the full array of game controls and you'll boost up to Gold level easy even if you have low APM (Actions Per Minute). Simply putting your buildings on a hot key does wonders. Heck, there are players in the pro-level that have a mediocre APM (Axslav for example has ~80 APM), they just have well-thought out strategies and know what they're doing. Bronze yielded me some good games since everybody's trying stuff out, Silver and Gold is for ch
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While i agree with your general point as to why watching the game can be more interesting than playing, in bronze it is anything but a push buttons faster game...the strategy is all that matters.
I got my wife to gold just by telling her what strategies to do. You could do it without using the keyboard, no shortcuts, no hotkeys, just the mouse... because the core strategy is so important at that level.
I'm platinum at the edge of diamond, and this is still true. I have trouble against diamonds, but if my frie
Yet people don't watch Chess (yet watch football) (Score:2)
It is interesting what people like to watch and why.
It always intrigued me that a whole bunch of people who don't play football or baseball watch those things on TV.
Yet not many people watch live chess matches, etc.
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Chess is relatively "boring". It's gameplay is very abstract and doesn't involve a whole lot of action since it's Turn Based, it's also very focused and can be completely cast with a single camera. StarCraft is a Real-Time Strategy Game with a huge area of play, lots of possibilities and a lot more things going on at once and every caster can bring their own viewpoint, change camera's and it will be a completely different cast every time. Chess also has very few 'units' and not a whole lot of animation.
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Ordinarily I would say this is because when we sit down for entertainment, we expect a minimum rate of feedback per unit time. Things don't necessarily have to constantly be happening, but things have to happen fast enough. And even when things aren't happening for long stretches, that's why we have color commentary.
For chess, unless you have timers set short enough to speed matches up, there's not going to be that rate of feedback most folks want. Yes, some would still find it entertaining, but you have to
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Re:Yet people don't watch Chess (yet watch footbal (Score:4, Insightful)
I've been to a chess tournament with some of the world's top players (Kasparov, Anand, Kramnik included). The hall was packed pretty full of people watching the game boards on the big screen. So yeah, people watch even chess.
Of course chess doesn't really make a good spectator sport. One problem is the speed - a single move will take several minutes, can take half an hour even, that isn't exactly fun to watch even if you're into chess. The other problem is the level of skill involved. You have to be a very skilled player to see the reasoning behind Kasparov's moves. If you're an enthusiast, 90% of moves at that level will leave you clueless as to why they were made. This is rather different from Starcraft, where a bronze-level player may understand what the pro player is doing, or from football, where a fan can appreciate quality passing without being able to do anything remotely similar.
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In chess, there are no psychic commandos shooting nuclear bombs.
Frustrating to Lose (Score:4, Interesting)
I think another key issue is that StarCraft is one of the more frustrating games to lose for some people. When I play a game of Ultimate and my team loses, I can usually understand what mistakes we made, what plays we let go that we should have stopped and where we were outplayed. It's still disappointing to lose, but it's readily understood when it happens.
SC2, in particular, has a lot of information asymmetry between the individual players, not just the spectators and players. When I lose a match in SC2 I feel dumb. I still know there's something I should have scouted, a change I should have made in my build order, somewhere I could have had some better micro, or even when I fell behind on my macro, etc, but I don't really know what, at the moment of my defeat, I should have done differently. So I go back, and I watch, and I see all my mistakes, and I see my opponent's mistakes, and I think, "Why didn't I push then? Why did I leave this point undefended for so long? Why did I make unit x instead of unit y?"
One figures out why one lost, but one has to go through the process of watching it all over again, and watching all one's chances to win just stroll on by.
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I play very little SC online, but have played other RTS games more (and now play Company of Heroes, best in the genre IMHO), and this appears to be rather common to the genre.
The key, of course, is that this is exactly how you become better. At first you're completely oblivious as to why you lost at all. Then you pick up on those things, and after a losing game are usually able to quickly identify the main reason you lost, even if you need to see the replay for subtler elements of the loss. And then eventua
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I think the other thing is stress. Starcraft is a very stressful game to play - unlike many FPS, RPG, etc. I know a mate of mine in Diamond League, who's pretty decent, but these days barely plays any 1v1s at all, instead preferring to either play team games, watch professional matches on GomTV, or even just watch his friends play each other. He says its just way too stressful.
Poker (Score:2)
You can probably describe the same thing in TV poker. Everyone watching can see all the players hands, and can see a train wreak coming. Players also like to think how they would react to the same plays given the amount of information.
I own the game, but play rarely, mostly because I suck.
Why are they researchers if they only theorize (Score:2)
I can theorize as well. Their methodology doesn't seem much more accurate than an educated guess.
As for the topic itself, from personal experience, watching has not much to do with the additional info that the audience has, because most live streams aren't good enough at highlighting such things. The players themselves are much more attuned to the timing and rhythm of their game and even if one player can't see what the other is doing directly, he is usually more expectant of it happening than the audience
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Also most people don't watch and hope for cheese. They watch hoping for a good show - some new variation on a well known strategy in the current metagame or some novel response to a build order. They want to see mind games going on without the players directly communicating with each other. None of that is information asymmetry.
Last point is, playing at anything above diamond level is exhausting. After a few games I just want to relax. Then sometimes I'll play less serious formats like custom games or 4v4 g
Huh? (Score:2)
People watch people play Starcraft? Oh this is just a Korean thing...they have weird fascinations with games that other cultures don't.
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People watch people play Starcraft? Oh this is just a Korean thing...they have weird fascinations with games that other cultures don't.
Nope, not just a Korean thing (Although moreso a Korean thing). Starcraft 2 actually has a pretty big following of people watching it (For a video game). There's a North American [nasl.tv] pro league, a good number of English-language casters on youtube who get over 100K viewers per game they cast (like Husky [youtube.com]), and people like Day[9] [day9tv.blip.tv] who get a huge following casting games and talking about strategy.
Sure, it's small compared to mainstream things like real sports, but it's gotten surprisingly big.
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People watch people play Starcraft? Oh this is just a Korean thing...
Actually, a lot of [youtube.com] people [youtube.com] watch [youtube.com] other people [youtube.com] play Starcraft 2 professionally and non-professionally outside of Korea. Look at the number of views in the videos in these channels: most of them have tens of thousands, some exceed 100,000. These are just some of the biggest channels, there are many others in youtube.
Not to mention the SC2 competitions outside of Korea: MLG [majorleaguegaming.com], NASL [nasl.tv] and IPL [ign.com] -- these are the big leagues, there are many other smaller competitions going on every week.
And the dozens of SC2 streams in
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It is Fun to Watch if You Know How to Play (Score:1)
Meh (Score:2)
I was thoroughly unimpressed with Starcraft 2, because the developers seem almost hell-bent on refusing to innovate. If you really want to see something amazing and you're pointing your eyes at the RTS industry, be sure to take a look at the mod developers, because they've done far more impres
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I was thoroughly unimpressed with Starcraft 2, because the developers seem almost hell-bent on refusing to innovate. If you really want to see something amazing and you're pointing your eyes at the RTS industry, be sure to take a look at the mod developers, because they've done far more impressive work.
Why does new stuff always have to "innovate" to be good? Even if SC2 did bring a whole lot of "innovations", what good would it be in the long run? People that always want "new and shiny" would abandon it the moment something newer and shinier hits the market, because what was new and shiny at SC2's release is now old and boring in comparison. That is not the audience SC2 is made for.
What Blizzard wanted to do with SC2, and I think they did a good job, is aim for the long run by taking elements that are kno
Commentators (Score:2)
I've never played SC2, but I enjoy watching it sometimes because a talented commentator can bring so much life to the game. Having played other RTSes in the past, I can understand what's going on to a degree by myself, but a great commentary to go with a game adds so much.
By the way, it's amusing that this should be posted on FUNDAY MONDAY: look up "day9 funday monday" if you need a compelling reason why SC2 can be fun to watch.
Tying It All Together (Score:2)
Keep your pants on. He'll get back to coding in just a minute.
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Let's Play (Score:2)
It's not just Starcraft tough. I'm not the only one who enjoys watching other people play games, that why the entire genre of "Let's Play" exist.
Let's see (Score:2)
People like to watch others do cool things better themselves.
It's cheaper and less time intensive than to do it yourself well.
Commentaries are fun (as others have said).
Researchers are idiots who come up with idiot ideas so they can get paid.
But my question is- how much money did they spend on this. What's next, why do we like watching pro football rather than playing? Hopefully, it wasn't federal taxpayer's money, so it was contained to the student's and/or the states money (I don't live there).
Starcraft I (Score:1)
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And? Did you find an answer?