The Plan To Bring Analytics To eSports 72
An anonymous reader writes: We're used to seeing instant replays, halftime analysis and in depth analytics in traditional sports, but now they're coming to eSports too. A new start-up, Dojo Madness, is hoping to bring the same techniques to games like League of Legends and Dota, in the hopes players can learn from their mistakes in a game when shown them. In a new interview, founder and former Electronic Sports League boss Jens Hilgers reveals that the company's main product, Dota training and replay site Bruce.GG, will use machine learning to teach itself what are good and bad plays — and he hopes to bring the tech to other games, like Counter-Strike, too. "The feedback of the users watching these videos, these input points, are allowing us to determine the relevancy of what we have done and the system will learn from that and get smarter," he says.
eSports commentary is already superior (Score:2)
Ever listen to football commentary or basketball? Its all color commentary or idiotic observations like "team X won because they scored more points"... no shit, fucktards.
The eSports commentary is vastly more incisive in most cases. They'll talk about tactics and strategies... they'll get into issues like the micro if we're talking about starcraft.
We don't need analytics and the last thing we want to emulate is the professional sports commentary for ANYTHING besides the quality color commentary.
And the issu
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The only thing you need to reach that demographic are naked tits on a screen.
esports are dirt cheap to produce, like reality TV shows and pop music. Don't ask anyone to take it seriously.
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both esports and regular sports are very popular in 21st century planet Earth.
Where are you from?
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You must have lousy sports coverage in your town, or maybe you just haven't listened to a game in a long time. You get continual analytics in most cases, and statistics that actually mean something. Occasionally, you'll get a fossil like Hawk Harrelson who's just a curmudgeon but even in that case, they teamed him with Steve Stone, who
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No, I've watched national sports coverage of major games.
Compare them to what you get out of esports and you'll see esports for MAJOR games is already better.
As to dumb fucks... your inability to think rationally and instead descend into emotionalism is not helping you. It is ironic that people that make such insults tend to have to have them be more applicable to themselves than anything. ...Watch this:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
Now... you show me a clip of a sports game that gives better coverage of
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That was actually my point... You're done. Shoo. *makes brushing motions*
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No, I've watched national sports coverage of major games.
Compare them to what you get out of esports and you'll see esports for MAJOR games is already better.
As to dumb fucks... your inability to think rationally and instead descend into emotionalism is not helping you. It is ironic that people that make such insults tend to have to have them be more applicable to themselves than anything. ...Watch this:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
Now... you show me a clip of a sports game that gives better coverage of a game.
You lose. Don't be stubborn. Just surrender. You're idiotically wrong.
That was terrible, I just watched two kids play a video game for ten minutes and one of them cried.
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You want me to show you professional players... grown me.... crying? Because I can.
The point captain non sequitor is the commentary of the matches and not your impressions of the games or the players.
What are we talking about? Analytics in esports to make them more like traditional sports.
And my point was that esports coverage is already superior.
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First, you're making the outdated association of video games = kid's stuff. It was kids stuff... then the kids grew up and kept playing the same games. When the kids were playing baseball and then grew up to play in the MLB... would it make sense to point at the crowd and talk about kids?
Second, as to the amount of skill required... how many people can honestly even compete for an F1 tourny? The number of people permitted to even try is so restrictive that you can't even really say it is that competitive. W
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Second, as to the amount of skill required...
For Starcraft in particular there is also a very apt comparison to chess, which is usually taken seriously and has at times been considered a sport. Of course, unlike chess, in SC it matters how well you can move the pieces. SC also has more strategic depth and a virtually infinite number of possible unique games.
I actually found my chess had improved considerably just from moving up to Gold in SC2.
Nobody owns baseball (Score:2)
When the kids were playing baseball and then grew up to play in the MLB... would it make sense to point at the crowd and talk about kids?
There's a difference. Activision Blizzard owns the exclusive rights to its games and has shown itself eager to enforce them (as in the bnetd case). Publishers of fighting games have been known to demand public performance royalties from tournament organizers or even to deny a license entirely and shut down a tournament's stream. I can fetch citations from Ars Technica and elsewhere if you want. By contrast, nobody owns the exclusive rights to baseball. Leagues like MLB can't ban people from baseball; they c
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that is different from professional sports in what way?
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Activision Blizzard owns the exclusive rights to its games [...] Publishers [can] deny a license entirely and shut down a tournament's stream. [...] By contrast [...] Baseball leagues independent of MLB have existed and continue to exist.
that is different from professional sports in what way?
I just explained that. In professional sports, no entity has a government-granted exclusive right that lets it act as a gatekeeper for that sport. MLB has no power to prohibit another league unaffiliated with MLB from forming, playing baseball, and selling tickets to watch the match or stream matches on Twitch. Nor did the USFL and XFL need the NFL's permission to commence operations. Broadcast a video game, on the other hand, and expect a copyright strike.
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... which means what? This lack or presence of ownership allows or disallows you from doing what exactly?
The kids need to buy baseballs and bats. And if you play professionally you're going to sign on with an official team or you won't be professional.
You're citing distinctions without meaning.
Competing leagues and competing equipment mfrs (Score:2)
This lack or presence of ownership allows or disallows you from doing what exactly?
The lack of ownership of a sport allows a competing league to begin operation without having to first seek permission from the owner of the sport. This allows for competition among leagues.
The kids need to buy baseballs and bats.
From any of several competing equipment manufacturers. Only Blizzard can sell copies of StarCraft.
And if you play professionally you're going to sign on with an official team or you won't be professional.
In any of several competing leagues, not just the one endorsed by the owner of a sport.
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No one needs Blizzard's permission to have a SC tourney... so... again... what is the restriction?
Exclusive right to perform a video game publicly (Score:2)
No one needs Blizzard's permission to have a SC tourney
Technically they do, at least if they're streaming the tourney to the public. The graphics of StarCraft and StarCraft II are copyrighted.
so... again... what is the restriction?
It's considered performing the video game publicly. Video games are considered audiovisual works in U.S. copyright law, and the owner of copyright in an audiovisual work has the exclusive right to perform that work publicly. Doing so without express permission is copyright infringement, as if you were offering to stream . Please see the article "Why Nintendo can legally sh [arstechnica.com]
Blizzard sued (Score:2)
No one needs Blizzard's permission to have a SC tourney
Blizzard disagrees. It filed suit [harvard.edu].
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cite an instance of Blizzard either demanding money for a tourney or denying someone a right to have a tourney.
As to dumb things Nintendo has done recently... everyone in the gaming world is well aware of that. And honestly... after some bitching no one cared because Nintendo's most recent offerings have been garbage. They just had a really bad generation.
I hope they do better next time but ... they're having a hard time.
Anywho... when it comes to esports we're talking about SC, Counterstrike... etc So... c
"Crafting an Industry" by Jacob Rogers (Score:2)
cite an instance of Blizzard either demanding money for a tourney or denying someone a right to have a tourney.
From the article "Crafting an Industry: An Analysis of Korean Starcraft and Intellectual Properties Law" by Jacob Rogers [harvard.edu]:
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touche... I would point out however that while any given company can do that... you can shift to other games in the same genre if you need to put leverage on a particular company that is being irritating.
With blizzard specifically that is likely to be hard but with the FPS esports games that shouldn't be a big deal.
Furthermore, the issue there is more about people making money off the league and less about the amateur tourneys which I'd be very surprised if Blizzard even is really aware of on a discreet lev
Could MLB switch to cricket? (Score:2)
you can shift to other games in the same genre if you need to put leverage on a particular company that is being irritating.
For one thing, a lot of skills won't transfer, especially the need to re-learn how everything is balanced. It'd be like trying to switch from Tetrinet to Puyo Pop or from baseball to cricket or from soccer to Gaelic football. For another, once a league switches to a different game, how can the league be sure that the new game's copyright won't get sold, such as at acquisition or bankruptcy, to another "company that is being irritating"? I can't see any way other than making sure the game is free software [wikipedia.org] or
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In FPSs that isn't the case especially if they're all copying each other and balanced similarly which many of them are.
Also... I think you have to admit that Blizzard's actions in that case were an exception even for blizzard and the rest of the industry doesn't do that.
Regardless... your objections don't show why esports are bad or invalid as sports simply because some corporation has control over various versions of the game.
The sports leagues control all professional sports. You possibly could set up you
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I think you have to admit that Blizzard's actions in that case were an exception even for blizzard and the rest of the industry doesn't do that.
Yet. A league for a given game needs a plan for its long-term existence should the game's publisher get bought by a holding company unfriendly to the league. Besides, if the exception were to stop being the exception and start being the rule among major video game publishers, how would leagues react? And the Ars Technica article I linked earlier states that Capcom also requires royalties for Street Fighter tournaments.
You possibly could set up your own league but no one will pay any attention to it.
"No one will pay attention to your league" is not the same thing as "you would be sued for
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Whilst I'll give you some skill is involved
More than "some." Think chess, but with about 100 times as much strategic depth, an infinite number of possible unique games and it matters how well you can move the pieces.
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Naw man, there hasn't been a "Team X won because they scored more points" in a long while.
What, did Madden finally kick the bucket?
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He retired in 2009. Chris Collinsworth, who is competent, replaced him.
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He retired in 2009. Chris Collinsworth, who is competent, replaced him.
"Collinsworth" just doesn't have the same ring to it, how do you hang a franchise on that?
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I'm not even terribly serious, and I remember most multiplayer or skirmish matches having an end-of-match display of CPM, units built/lost, structures built/lost, resources gathered/spent, graphs of all these variables over time, and so on.
Nobody even bothers to call that 'analytics'; it's just a summary of the salient aspects of the ga
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Yep. And more detailed than anything you find in sports. Clicks per minute for example is a thing in RTSs... that's insanely anal.
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Heatmaps of kills (killer location), deaths, assists, cap points
Not just for commentary - data like that can be really helpful for mapmakers and balance teams.
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Think what you will, but the scene speaks for itself. Writing it off as "playing games" is disingenuous.
esports is just a popular label for it, and no professional gamer gives a shit if they're "officially" in the same category as Football/F1 or not. But again, the scene speaks for itself in that it has:
events with over 1 million concurrent viewers
events with a prize pool over 10 million dollars
pros who train in regimented schedules down to what meals they eat, with coaching staff, dedicated practice partn
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If you can be beaten in your "eSport" by a random 12 year old kid then its not a sport. Oh and show me a game where someone had a million viewers.
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Actually the pros do care a lot if it considered a sport or not, it can make it a lot easier to travel (getting visas for example), get incentives from their governments (tax breaks and such), companies can have a "sports budget" to sponsor sport teams and guess what, they can not use that budget if it is not an sport.
In short, the pros don't care what it is labeled as long as their governments (and the governments of the countries they will visit) recognize them as sports or at least have a specific rules
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as long as their governments (and the governments of the countries they will visit) recognize them as sports
And many people are probably unaware that the United States does recognize eSports, and there are at least a few dozen progamers living in the United States on athlete visas.
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I am not from the US, but do they recognize eSports as actual sports or is it a different category? If so what are the difference between each category?
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I wasn't familiar with the specifics so I found this Wiki page [wikipedia.org]. Apparently P visas are a general category for athletes, entertainers and their families who either represent something culturally unique, are part of an exchange program, or are internationally recognized (the main kind, P-1).
According the LA Times article [latimes.com] linked in the Wiki page, programers have received P1-A visas specifically - the same subcategory as for any athlete.
Copyright strike (Score:2)
But again, the scene speaks for itself in that it has:
...copyright strikes from a game's publisher against a league for broadcasting the league's matches.
That's the one big difference between physical sports and electronic sports: electronic sports are almost always non-free. See "Why Nintendo can legally shut down any Smash Bros. tournament it wants" by Kyle Orland [arstechnica.com].
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It's certainly true that the impact of playing a field game vs. playing a computer game is likely to be different for the player(whether it will actually be healthier depends on how brutally the field sport chews up the human resources vs. how badly inactivity and carpal tunnel syndrome get you); but from the perspective of the audience there isn't much difference.
It's not as though watching intense phsyical exertion gives you exercise by osmosis; so while I'd t
This should read (Score:1)
E-Sports (Score:2)
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt00... [imdb.com]
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And, like, everyone else in the arena?
There is one inherent problem with eSports (Score:1)
I don't question it being competitive. Or requires training and skill. Hell, I even don't question that it's a sport. Or rather, I don't want to get into a discussion about it because, well, it's useless. There still is a reason why your playing of DOTA or whatever else the game du jour is will replace Superbowl Sunday any time soon: It's boring to watch.
And sadly that's true for ALL so called eSports. It simply isn't interesting to watch someone play a computer game. Yes, maybe due to novelty some people w
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I think this might be a generation gap issue or something, I have lots of friends who have no interest in watching regular sport coverage but find well commented e sports entertaining.
What is boring and what isn't really depends on tastes, the fact that twitch streaming of e sport tournaments is successful should speak for itself.
They should start with Counter Strike (Score:2)
Counter strike is far more limited in the range of possibilities of what that can happen in a single match. Not only are the matches far shorter (and as such does not have phases like dota) given a map there are only a handful of strategies possible to use. A bunch of other reasons too, statistically mine a game like dota to me seems to be an impossible task, there is just too much variation between matches.