
How eSports are saving the PC industry - sophcw
http://www.hopesandfears.com/hopes/culture/video-games/216719-esports-competitive-gaming-pc-nvidia
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duiker101
I think that the base concepts of this article are wrong. eSports is not
saving PC gaming because the games require the best hardware. In fact
competitve games have some of the lowest requirements possible. Riot(League of
Legends) goes out of their way all the time to make sure that their game will
work even on the most outdated computers and really none of the competitive
games have the most astonishing graphic.

For the pros too it's not about the hardware or graphics, many use the lowest
possible settings to make sure they get a decent performance. I don't know if
it's still a thing but in Counter Strike people use very low resolutions to
enhance performance, have better vision and reduce mouse movement. We are
talking about games where a few ms can make a difference.

What is selling hardware is not eSports. It's all those games that look
amazing and perform the best on great hardware. Skyrim(or even GTA V) for
example, on a console will never look as good as on a PC. A recent controversy
was that on PC Watchdogs was "downgraded" before release to look more like the
console version because they weren't powerful enough.

Here's another thing that is saving the PC industry, the mod community.

If there is one thing for sure is that phone gaming wont destroy PC gaming.

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kin
You make a good point but all the best streamers absolutely need good hardware
to be able to a stream high quality video feeds at a good frame rate. In
addition, they get sponsored by hardware companies to mention what hardware
they're using. There is no doubt eSports is selling hardware. Counter Strike
is really not as popular in eSports nowadays as moba.

~~~
eterm
Counter-strike global offensive is actually one of the fastest growing
esports. It gets more monthly viewer hours than DOTA (outside of The
International, DOTA doesn't get many viewers), although is still some way
behind LoL.

However, CSGO majors viewing figures went from ~150k to ~300k to ~1mil to
~1.2m for the last few majors, so it's growing really fast.

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ddorian43
I think you get (random?) items in the game when you view these events in
CSGO, so many people are viewing with multiple accounts.

~~~
danielvinson
There is a small chance that a case drops for you which is worth $5-$40
depending on which map you are watching that contains "Souvenir" items for the
event signed by the players.

You only get drops if your Steam account that owns the game is linked to a
twitch account that is watching, and is IP restricted (you won't get more
drops unless you watch from different IPs at the same time). View botting
exists, but it requires a lot of time/money to do, and the Twitch viewership
numbers are actually more accurate than you would think.

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TheCapn
Did anyone _ever_ believe PC gaming was dieing besides those who wrote hype
headlines? CounterStrike/Starcraft have been dominant eSports for over a
decade and that was when PC gaming was "strong". They gave headway to the MOBA
genre with LoL and DotA but they never really dwindled. Year after year gaming
grew but so did the other platforms. People assumed PC gaming was dieing
because console/mobile markets flourished? Its not a 0-sum market

~~~
kllrnohj
I think a lot of people really did believe it, but they vastly underestimated
how much Steam was displacing vs. consoles displacing in the major stores like
Best Buy and whatnot. Like, you'd go to the store, see rows and rows of PS3 &
XBox 360 games and practically nothing for PC games. It's not a big leap to
say pc gaming is dying based off of that, as obviously stores are going to
sell what people are buying.

Digital distribution is obvious _NOW_ but back in the day there were a loooot
of people scoffing at paying the same price for the digital version and making
fun at people for not getting the obviously superior physical version.

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debaserab2
My friends and I were very excited when we could start a download to get a
game instead of have to go to a physical store. None of us thought of this as
a change for the worse.

Digital distribution was obvious back then; it took about half a decade for
them to get it right though. Steam was plagued with all kinds of issues, and
in the early 2000's broadband wasn't quite ubiquitous in the speed we expect
from it today. I remember it took a full day to get Half-Life 2 downloaded.

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cryoshon
Dota/CS:GO are a couple of my favorite games, and excel in eSports because
they have impeccable balance, a huge fanbase, and extreme depth of
play/recurring novelty. I think eSports wise both franchises are in for the
long haul; the real challenge is to deal with the game-release-mediated ebb
and flow of relative popularity.

There's also a ton more investment in the quality of the games themselves
relative to console/cross released titles. The Battlefield and CoD series are
great examples of titles completely incompatible with competitive play:
there's hardly any balance, no spectator mode, games and DLC churned out every
year, distant/apathetic devs/producers, made to be 100% approachable rather
than engaging for people who invest more time, and buggy as shit without
exception. Valve has found ways around these problems, and that is why they
excel at eSports titles.

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redml
My biggest surprise is how this all runs on Microsoft's operating system and
Microsoft does very little to nothing to facilitate this as a potential
revenue stream. In fact they're just sitting by and watching as the biggest
player, steam, is slowly taking their library off of windows and onto mac or
linux.

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moistgorilla
Microsoft have the biggest IP that could turn into an esport (Halo) and all
they would need to do is put it on PC and Xbox one for free, throw in cosmetic
microtransaction ala CSGO and they would make billions. But they will never do
it.

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rasz_pl
> esport ......Xbox

:), I dont think you understand what esports is about, it is not about playing
with a pad with huge autoaim.

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moistgorilla
The professional matches wouldn't be played on xbox obviously. I understand
Esports probably better than you do, I am on a team in ESEA Open (We aren't
good though)

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TTPrograms
Just wait until gamers start interacting with VR en-masse. The massive
framerates required to make a transparent viewing experience (60-100 FPS)
combined with the ultra-high limits on resolution perception at that FOV means
that electronic entertainment enthusiasts will have big boxes in their homes
for another decade or so at least.

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kibwen

      > Defense of the Ancients 2 (1,262,612 daily players)
    

Curiously, "Dota 2" is not actually an abbreviation for "Defense of the
Ancients 2", the full name of the game is just "Dota 2". Valve did this
because they weren't capable of trademarking the term "Defense of the
Ancients", whereas they were eventually able to procure the commercial
trademark for "Dota" (which caused a stir in the greater community at the
time, which had been using the initialism in a general capacity for ages).

~~~
taurath
I still don't see exactly how they were able to "own" the trademark. They
didn't create the mod or the game, they just hired the 3rd developer who was
mostly doing balance improvements during his tenure. There was a whole
community around DotA that suddenly had to migrate to "official" channels.

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wnevets
The PC gaming industry didn't need saving. Console publishers tried hard to
spread the FUD that it was dying but the numbers told a different story.

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api
Design and education kept Apple alive through the dark years. I can see gaming
doing the same for the PC industry through the dark years of Cloud ("Mainframe
2.0") until "PC 2.0" arrives.

~~~
saiya-jin
don't worry about PC itself, all offices around the world will make sure this
won't die soon even if all gaming went bust. Heck, even myself at home, I
haven't yet met a good enough replacement of my do-it-all-super-fast desktop
back home.

~~~
Majestic121
I would not be so sure about that.

Sure, there is a real comfort to work when you have big screens and a
mouse/keyboard, but you don't actually need a PC for that, a tablet is enough.

Right now, PC are still way cheaper and the difference in power is still
sensible, but I think this will change very quickly.

Of course, this is true for basic office work : if you need power, as a
dev/graphist/whatever, a PC will still be the way to go.

However, most office job don't actually need that much power, and the
flexibility offered by a tablet is huge : being able to work from anywhere,
bringing your whole computer to take notes/read mails during a reunion, etc...

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moistgorilla
> Sure, there is a real comfort to work when you have big screens and a
> mouse/keyboard, but you don't actually need a PC for that, a tablet is
> enough.

I can hardly get work done on my laptop let alone a tablet.

~~~
Majestic121
I think I was unclear about what I meant.

I meant you don't really need the power of a PC to work with a big screen : a
tablet has/will have enough power to handle it, all you need is a dock for
your tablet and and a cable between the big screen and the tablet. Same goes
with keyboard.

The upside of a tablet is that while you can dock it and have basically the
same comfort you have with a regular PC (minus raw power), you can also unplug
it and use it pretty much anywhere.

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Tiquor
PC doesn't need saving. ESports has the penetration it does because of a
saturation of hardware in the market and slower upgrade cycles. ESports is
benefiting more from the PC market than vice versa.

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dvt
As a former pro gamer (CS 1.6 and CS:Source), I'm happy to see eSports become
more mainstream. However, I think there's still a lot of work to be done as
far as general viewership and standardization.

Twitch and Youtube Gaming I think validate eSports as an emerging industry.

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Loque
Sorry if this incorrect of me to do, but shouldn't the title be: "How eSports
is* saving the PC industry"?

Unless of course it is "All your industry are belong to us" :`)

Thanks for the post!

~~~
pmlamotte
Depends on if you look at eSports as an all encompassing entity, or as a
collection. If you swap out "eSports" in the title with "sports" it works.

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yongelee
should be titled: how STEAM is saving the PC industry.

~~~
Zikes
Given their work with the Steam Link and Steam Controller, I think you have a
valid point. Steam Link supports DualShock and XBox controllers, and can
stream via network from a PC located elsewhere in the house, making PC a
viable competitor in the "couch gaming" space that consoles have thus far
dominated.

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tychuz
Erm. When you play Call of Duty on PS/xBox, you're playing with controller
against other people with same controllers.

When you'll join a PC server with your steam controller, you will have 0 kills
and 20 deaths, because everyone is playing with a mouse.

That is not fun.

Steam controller helps with, I don't know, 10% of the gaming - the single
player. And if you're casual and single player is 100% of your games - hell,
buy a Wii U, because PC has zero split screen games.

~~~
jstelly
There is a lot of user customization possible with the steam controller
though. e.g. This guy is trying out layering inertial control on top of the
touchpad for aiming. Generally I do prefer using a mouse to aim instead of a
controller for first person games, but I will try this out:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GKuO9M0WuMg&feature=youtu.be](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GKuO9M0WuMg&feature=youtu.be)

(disclaimer - I work at Valve but not on the steam controller so this
technique was a surprise to me)

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Zikes
For all the innovations in the hardware, it was the software that really blew
me away. The amount of customization available is staggering, along with the
ability to share profiles online and see which ones are the most popular for a
given game.

If any of the popular game consoles were to implement something similar for
their own controllers, it would be considered a "killer feature".

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huac
"H&F: Do you see the PC gaming market being eclipsed by mobile or console any
time soon?

JG: I think mobile has it since the install base is massive and people have a
lot of spare time sitting around where they have their phone right with them.
Mobile has a fantastic growth opportunity."

~~~
rasz_pl
You missed the part about keyboard and mouse being essential for any kind of
precise control

~~~
huac
That hasn't stopped console games in the past, why should it matter for
mobile?

(all console games rely heavily on 'aim-assist')

