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General8 years agoGosu "GosuGamers" Gamers

ESports don't need a unified league and Chris Kluwe shouldn't be the commissioner

Retired NFL punter Chris Kluwe wrote an article about the state of eSports recently, largely due to the banning of TDK, Renegades and Team Impulse from the League of Legends Championship Series weeks ago. Kluwe is obviously a big gamer and is a professed fan of eSports. However, his suggestions for what an eSports league should look like, borrowing largely from the NFL, completely misses what makes the industry so entertaining. Let’s take a look at the points he flubbed, the ones he got right and where that leaves eSports:

 

Where Kluwe fumbled:

All of eSports into one league
We have separate leagues for football, basketball, hockey, baseball, etc. as each of those sports is vastly different and need their own governing body. DOTA2, Counterstrike, and Hearthstone may all be video games, but, outside of that, they’re all completely different. For the same reason we don’t lump all traditional sports together, we shouldn’t be lumping all eSports together. Kluwe seems to take the stance that a fan of one eSport is a fan of all eSports, which isn’t normally the case. More on this further down, but not all gamers watch all eSports, just as all sports fans don’t watch all sports.
 

Audience fragmentation
This seemed to be one of the major issues Kluwe saw with the current state of eSports. Last year, the League of Legends World Championship series saw 36 million viewers. The 2014 series saw 27 million viewers. DOTA2 has lower, but nonetheless impressive, viewership numbers for The International 2015 with 20 million viewers. The 2015 NBA finals highest viewership count? 24 million. What Kluwe is missing is that League of Legends and DOTA2 are already some one of the most watched sports in the world. Fragmentation isn’t an issue when the eSport series being watched is at equal or greater viewership than current professional sports.

But what about games with smaller audiences? There will always be sports/eSports that have smaller, niche viewership. How many of us watch lacrosse, darts or billiards when they’re on one of the ESPN channels? The number of people who watch those sports may not be as large as the NFL or MLB, but there is clearly a demand by a specific group of people who want to watch those sports. And that group is large enough to warrant air time.
 

Lack of incentives to watch other eSports
If I go to a football game, I would be very confused if the event started by showing a tennis match before the game. The two don’t really go together and quite likely have very different core audience members. I would be equally confused if I went to a League of Legends series and they had a pre-show of some Counter Strike games. Some games are destined to have smaller, more niche audiences, just like darts or billiards on ESPN and that’s not a bad thing.

Just because they’re video games doesn’t mean all gamers want to watch all eSports

 

What Kluwe got right:

Lack of stability, competitive fairness and legitimacy
Kluwe was right on the money in identifying this core issue. There is currently a lack of stability in many eSports. The dramatic (and last minute) trading of players in DOTA2, the oddly timed team bans in League of Legends, and match fixing in Counterstrike are all good examples of events that have happened recently. There is clearly a need for stronger oversight over each game's pro scene; however, the oversight for those games should come from those game companies or a league dedicated to each game, not an all-encompassing eSports league as Kluwe suggests.
 

Gaming companies don’t want to give up control
Having worked with numerous gaming companies, I can tell you they’re fanatical about protecting their IPs and won’t give up an ounce of control on that front. Kluwe correctly identified that it would be a massive hurdle for publishers to overcome if they were asked to give up control of their games and is very likely something they will never do. Unfortunately, this would be the required first step in the creation of Kluwe's esports league, essentially reducing the whole concept to nothing more than fantasy. This is especially true for Riot or Valve as they have invested a large amount of money into creating their eSports followings and have been very vocal about their visions of eSports for the future.

 

Still TBD:

Obsolescence
This is an area where the jury is still out. Yes, video games do age and do need to be replaced or updated. But if a game garners a large eSports following, you can guarantee a gaming company will want to retain that audience. League of Legends and DOTA2 both released large updates to their graphics and gameplay, making the games able to update as time goes on, essentially removing an expiration date. Additionally, games like Call of Duty will release new and updated version of the original, allowing the COD franchise to live on as an eSport. Thus far, we’ve seen most eSports live on via game updates or releases of sequels that allow fans to continue watching.

 

Final Thoughts

Kluwe’s intentions are very much in the right place. Stability and legitimacy to eSports would help it to continue securing funding and present a more secure future; However, he misses the mark in lumping all games into one league and claiming viewership is fragmented. ESports is still young and we will see dramatic changes over time (just as football did), but I think in the short term we’ll see the majority of the issues addressed by the companies themselves. Riot and Valve both have a vested interest in making the games entertaining and appear legitimate. With both games having fairly young championship series, we’ll be seeing changes incoming that provide both clarity and more structure to their games pro scenes and they won’t have to all consolidate into a single league to do it.

Sorry, Chris Kluwe, you don’t get my vote.

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