

Twitch acquires eSports pro-gaming team Evil Geniuses - coralreef
http://www.goodgame.gg/twitch/index.html

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danielvinson
This announcement gives me a very nostalgic comfort - As a former competitive
Counter-Strike player turned eSports tournament organizer and co-founder of an
(in the end) unsuccessful eSports organization, this really reaffirms much of
my time spent and makes me really regret leaving eSports when I did. I'm very
happy to see Alex Garfield, who I looked up to when almost nobody knew who he
was, help turn eSports into a true professional sport that it deserves to be,
and even happier to see the huge amount of support that Twitch is providing to
the entire community.

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sysk
CALeague?

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EA
CAL was the online version of the Cyberathlete Professional League (CPL).
Angel Munoz was the owner for all that.

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crazypyro
Can we fix the title please? Twitch acquired much more than just Evil
Geniuses, they acquired Good Game Agency which owns and manages quite a few
teams and other e-sports related things. (As he points out in his statement)

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LukeB_UK
Why do sites feel the need to hijack and speed up the scroll. DON'T DO IT!

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effekt
I'm sorry.

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hkmurakami
They seem to recognize and accept that the market paradigm is rapidly moving
from one of dominance of the platform to dominance of content [1]. EG has one
of the strongest content and persona (i.e. character driven narrative) in the
scene in the world and certainly in the West (not entirely sure how the older
European powerhouses like SK Gaming have fared in recent years).

The question to me is whether additional acquisitions may be in order. For
example, would they perhaps move to acquire Sean Plott's Day[9] TV?

Even in "regular sports", ratings rise when narratives like rivalries or
dynasties are in play. We saw the decline of viewership in Starcraft:Broodwar
in Korea when such narratives fizzled and when the old stars faded from
relevance, despite the considerable increase in overall skill level. Starcraft
2 has arguably suffered from the relative lack of such a narrative, due in
part to the fragmentation of its competitive scene. Blizzard has taken matters
into its own hands with WCS, following Riot's lead. The question to me is how,
if at all, Twitch will involve itself, given that its success depends on
content and content very much hinges on narrative.

[1] I am not sure if Amazon is involved with the decision at all, but since
Amazon Prime Instant Video is in a platform and content war with Netflix and
others, it wouldn't surprise me if they influenced the move.

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chez17
Finally, a topic I'm somewhat of an expert in on HN!

>Even in "regular sports", ratings rise when narratives like rivalries or
dynasties are in play. We saw the decline of viewership in Starcraft:Broodwar
in Korea when such narratives fizzled and when the old stars faded from
relevance, despite the considerable increase in overall skill level.

There were new stars and new rivalries. This totally leaves out the Savior
scandal, competing games, and how unique and what fluke BW actually was. A
game never meant to be played competitively, pushed to it's limits for years
and years and years by the players and map makers, broken mechanics that
turned out to balance the game near flawlessly. The list goes on and on. BW
was an anomoly in the esports world, a game being played competitively 10
years after it's made is not normal. Melee is the only game that comes to mind
that is similar. Counter Strike is still being played of course, but not the
original game, no patches, like BW or Melee.

>Starcraft 2 has arguably suffered from the relative lack of such a narrative,
due in part to the fragmentation of its competitive scene.

I disagree 1000%! SC2 suffered from horrible balance decisions, a battle.net
system that was objectively worse than BW and WC3, no LAN, and an over-zealous
Blizzards-Activision that wanted to extract as much money as possible as
quickly as possible. Things like putting limits on how much a prize pool can
be before Blizzard takes a cut actually encouraged tournaments to stay smaller
the first year or two of SC2. No LAN meant games would crap out and couldn't
be restarted with tens of thousands of dollars on the line. No automated
tournaments, no clans, no nothing. Battle.net 2.0 was so bad, such a
monumental fuck up, it shows that Blizzard literally had no idea what they
were doing and did not care what the community thought. We begged for years
for things that were not that hard to implement for a gigantic company like
Blizzard. Finally, the balance. When you balance a game for the lowest level
player, it may bring a short spike in players but the reward of a high skilled
play is gone. There is no reason to work hard and figure things out. The
competitive scene suffered due to these decisions. Finally, the worst choice
of them all, to let Wings of Liberty (vanilla SC2) fester and die while they
developed Heart of the Swarm (the first expansion). Broodlord/Infester became
so boring and dull to watch for months and months while Blizzard didn't do
anything. They waited for HotS. And guess what? Want HotS? You have to buy the
original as well! Good call! Not greedy at all. So many truly terrible
decisions killed SC2 and it's a damn shame. As you can tell, I'm bitter. SC2
had great narratives. Huk vs Korea, Boxer coming back, Nada coming back, Idra
(love him or hate him), the EG/TL stuff then Huk going to EG!, so many great
runs through GSL or MLG, White-Ra beating MC at that worlds game!, MMA the
prodigy of Boxer, MMA vs MVP at Blizzcon, so many great stories. The scene
died because Blizzard fucking killed it. My beautiful Starcraft destroyed out
of greed and shortsightedness.

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kevinflo
I disagree with almost all of your comments about SC2. All of the things you
mentioned (no lan, no clans, allowing blord/infestor to go on too long, etc.)
are just red herrings for the greater factors at play that kept SC2 from
exploding. It was instead that the landscape of both SC2 and gaming as a whole
changed.

As far as your complaints about westerners not winning anymore, that's proof
that the game is good, not bad. Westerners lost in BW as well. All it shows is
that the winner of the game accurately reflects which player is more skilled.
Korea has a decade and a half of infrastructure and training behind their SC2
players. This makes their players more skilled and makes them win. The period
where westerners were winning consistently was just a blip on the history of
SC before 1) KESPA players switched to SC2 and raised the bar for KESPA
players, ESF players, and westerners alike and westerners couldn't keep up 2)
before the game was figured out. It would attract more viewers if other
nations could compete with Korea, but for that to occur either the game would
have to be unfair or westerners would have to actually be as good as Koreans.

Finally, gaming as a whole changed. SC2 came out four years ago, before the
rise of MOBAs. Honestly, MOBAs are just better suited to mass audiences as far
as esports is concerned. SC2 is an brutal, unforgiving, extremely difficult
1v1 game. MOBAs are free-to-play team games. In SC2 you are a commander of
units. In MOBAs you play a single actual character with a personality and
style you can identify with. Life's lings have personality, yes. As do
MarineKing's marines. But Insec's Lee Sin? Madlife's Thresh? Those are actual
characters people can latch onto. League/dota also generate many more
highlightable moments, whereas SC2 is more of a tug-of-war.

SC2 is falling into its rightful place among esports... as tennis. A difficult
1v1 game. MOBAs are football. I'll keep watching SC2 because I love it and
it's a beautiful game. It's a better game than it ever has been, and the
amazingness of recent tournaments is a testament to that. I just don't expect
it to explode any time soon.

Also, while not achieving the cultural status it did during wings of liberty,
SC2 is at least maintaining its audience if not slowly growing. That's more
than most games 4+ years in. I don't blame the slowing of this growth on the
game, or on blizzard. It's just that the times have changed.

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invesari
I think that both you and chez17 are listing factors that contributed to the
decline of SC2. Design errors made by Blizzard cannot be dismissed.

Idra leaving the game because he hated it. Sea lasting about a week on Liquid
before going back to play BW. Naniwa being forced by Alliance to play at IEM
despite not having practiced for months due to Swarm Host infestation of EU
ladder. Artosis pitching Starbow to prominent eSports organizations. Not to
mention never ending community complaints about Protoss design. These are not
signs of a beautiful game.

With Legacy of the Void alpha reveal Blizzard themselves have addressed many
of existing design concerns. Breakable force fields, Swarm Host redesign,
warp-in nerf, powerful defensive Zerg unit and even major economy adjustments.

You are correct, SC2 will never surpass MOBAs, but it can do much better than
it is doing now.

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ajuc
SC2 has one huge advantage over MOBAs I've seen - it's interesting to watch
when you don't play it. I've played original sc campaign for a few weeks when
it was published, then had no contact with the game for several years,
recently I've discovered sc2 tourneys streamed by ZeddSC (great Polish sc2
commentator) - I was hooked immediately, despite knowing next to nothing about
the game, meta, players etc. It's just fun to see players microing 100+ units
at the same time.

I've tried to watch lol and dota2 tourneys, but it's soo boring. I don't know
what any of the skills does, nobody is explaining them, everybody assume I
must play the game to watch this, I don't even know who's wining except if the
frag difference is big.

Even CS streams are better than MOBAs.

I sincerly hope sc2 wil have some revival, it's great game, I started to play
multiplayer because of watching it. The design decisions that people cry over
- I don't think they matter that much for average Joe, games in silver or gold
league aren't decided by balance.

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cliftonk
I played CounterStrike competitively against EG more times during my college
years than I can count. Congratulations on the acquisition!

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bogardon
what team

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smrtinsert
bizarre. isn't this like espn buying an nfl team?

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Reebles
Plenty of media organizations have owned and continue to own sports teams.

In fact Disney simultaneously owned both ESPN and the Anaheim Angels for a
number of years before selling the team.

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billhendricksjr
And the NBA owned the New Orleans franchise for a few years.

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baby
When I saw the website and the name and the references to counter strike I
immediately thought of GG[1] the french team that was #1st for a pretty long
time. Also they were renting servers for a lot of money and they were synonyme
with quality (it was always a pleasure to play a match on a goodgame server).

[1]:
[http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goodgame_%28%C3%A9quipe%29](http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goodgame_%28%C3%A9quipe%29)

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aeturnum
GoodGame has a number of other teams (Team Tinker and Alliance on the DOTA
scene?) under management. Thus the name change from EG some time back.

Pro gaming is a commercially interesting scene. I'm not involved but I've had
some interesting conversations with people involved in the scene (Garfield
included). Talk about a capital-limited environment.

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IanChiles
Tinker and Alliance are looking pretty shaky in the long term - Tinker just
dropped out of a tournament and Alliance was unable to play games of theirs
earlier today. It looks right now like they'll soon see major changes,
disband, or become one team. Alliance also sponsors a League of Legends team
and a few other teams in other scenes though.

EDIT: This also includes D2L - a relatively large DOTA league, as well as
parts of CLG (CounterLogic Gaming) - [http://clgaming.net/news/611-kelby-may-
steps-down-as-general...](http://clgaming.net/news/611-kelby-may-steps-down-
as-general-manager)

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bdz
I think Alliance will be fine. There was a really good interview with Loda at
the Summit where he said that he has a plan/vision but Chessie's medical
problems were a big blow to them (remember they were beating VG and Mushi's
Team Malaysia 2-0 in China just 2 months ago). That's why Bulldog is also on a
break, they don't want to play with standins.

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britknight
Loda also had a good performance at the Summit recently, standing in for
Tinker. Even if Alliance may not be so hot on the scene right now, the talent
at the core of their team is still present.

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MysticFear
Amazon the General Electric of the internet

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anxman
Big congrats to Emmett and Alex. I'm thrilled to see EG and Twitch join
forces. Alex is one of the best in the eSports business and this will provide
a great home to them.

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nperez
Oops, forgot to fill this in: "I’ll be doing an AMA tomorrow at [time] on
[subreddit] for those of you who have questions or who’re interested in
learning more."

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effekt
D'oh!

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goeric
Smart move. It's amazing how far the e-sports industry has come in the last
few years. When I was invited to compete at CGS Combine (which Alex references
in this post), I knew it was way ahead of its time. There's a lot of big
opportunities and unsolved problems in this space to tackle.

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seanalltogether
Some interesting conversations happening in the league of legends subreddit

[http://www.reddit.com/r/leagueoflegends/comments/2osl1p/evil...](http://www.reddit.com/r/leagueoflegends/comments/2osl1p/evil_geniuses_gg_agency_bought_by_twitch_tv/)

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baq
smart move for twitch. they have a platform, an audience and some among the
top performers in the scene.

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coralreef
Seems almost like a conflict of interest though. Like the NBA owning one of
its own teams.

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thisone
wouldn't it be more: Like NBC owning a team?

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sachinag
Fox used to own the Dodgers. Disney used to own the Angels and the Ducks.
Liberty Media still owns the Braves (I think). MSG owns the Knicks and
Rangers. And a bunch of other teams own their networks - the Red Sox own NESN,
the Yankees own a large part of YES. Fox owns half of the Big Ten Network.
ESPN owns a large part of the Longhorn Network and the SEC Network. I could go
on and on, but suffice it to say that there's a ton of precedent.

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thisone
not quibbling about precedent or anything along those lines.

I'm just interested in the correctness of the metaphor.

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socialist_coder
Hmm, why would Twitch want to own multiple eSports teams? How does that
advance Twitch's goals?

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effekt
It's not about the teams - it's about the people that handle the teams.

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socialist_coder
That makes total sense.

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LandoCalrissian
Justin Wong is playing for twitch now. Didn't expect that.

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pselbert
I skimmed through the article expecting to see mention of some of the notable
Capcom/Marvel players. I'm still not sure why that wasn't mentioned.

A number of those guys (Ricky, Arturo, Justin) were friends of mine back
before I left the scene, long before all of the team business started.

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ericglyman
Echoes of the agency-ization happening in other areas of tech

(1) Today's Top Product Hunt - [http://www.producthunt.com/posts/hidden-
founders](http://www.producthunt.com/posts/hidden-founders) (2) One of New
Yorker's big Nov. 2014 Stories -
[http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2014/11/24/programmers-
pri...](http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2014/11/24/programmers-price)

