Valves Free to Play documentary is out

Tar.Aldarion

Follow three professional video game players as they overcome personal adversity, family pressures, and the realities of life to compete in a $1,000,000 tournament that could change their lives forever.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UjZYMI1zB9s

Magill

Watched this last night, would highly recommend it to anyone with an hour to spare. Really good insight into top end competitive gaming. Well put together by Valve too.

KilOit

Was very good,

glad EHOME lost! so up themselves hope they threw their 2nd place trophy in the bin at the Airport like they said

Only gripe is that you'd swear this was the first gaming tournament ever the way some of the players talked about it, they're not pioneers and CS tournaments have been established well before these kids playing Dota 2 were out of playschool

Tar.Aldarion

Well it was the first one of it's kind, big difference between 5k and 1.6 million prize pools

Mikeyt086

Was looking forward to this and am happy to say I really enjoyed it. I have absolutely no interest in Dota and honestly the footage in that doc was the first time I've kind of known what was going on, but I have previously competed at World Cyber Games events in Seattle and Cologne (the same event centre as the doc actually) and while I was there I became fascinated with e-sports, after seeing the ridiculous interest in the likes of Starcraft and CS. Made me miss it if I'm honest.

Cuddlesworth

Tar.Aldarion wrote: »

Well it was the first one of it's kind, big difference between 5k and 1.6 million prize pools

http://www.esportsearnings.com/players

Its pretty obvious that valve are trying to make it the no1 esport by throwing money at it in terms of prize money.

At a guess though, the real day to day earners would be the LOL guys. I've seen 3 members of TSM streaming with nearly 100k viewers between them. Ad revenue combined with subscriptions for a year or two would wipe the floor with those winnings. And then they get a wage from riot for the championship, the tournament winnings, the sponsorship.

Magill

Cuddlesworth wrote: »

http://www.esportsearnings.com/players

Its pretty obvious that valve are trying to make it the no1 esport by throwing money at it in terms of prize money.

At a guess though, the real day to day earners would be the LOL guys. I've seen 3 members of TSM streaming with nearly 100k viewers between them. Ad revenue combined with subscriptions for a year or two would wipe the floor with those winnings. And then they get a wage from riot for the championship, the tournament winnings, the sponsorship.

While streamers do earn a lot more money than most of the other pros... its really only a very small percent(Relative to the number of professionals playing the game) that earn those huge pay checks. Also I'd imagine most of the decent pro teams in Dota also get salaries (Some players, like dendi, probably get substantially more than Riots standard salary).

Its not even that Valve are throwing money at competitive Dota2.. its just the way valve have set up the competitive side to DotA. Its just a far more sustainable approach. Most of the prizepools for these big tournaments is funded by players through tournament tickets and ingame items. I think its only a matter of time before DotA2 takes over from LoL as the #1 eSport game.

Even competitive counterstrike is getting pretty damn big because of the same approach. With Two completely crowd funded prizepools of 250k in the last 3 or 4 months.. At IEM over the weekend the final had like 220k viewers on twitch alone, which is insane considering its relatively small playerbase compared to Dota and LoL.

Cuddlesworth

Depends on how you view it. LOL is appearing as far more consistent from a professional point of view. They are not relying on large tournaments instead they are separating 10 teams from the pack and giving them consistent work and consistent money as well as increased wages for the winners.

For now they are doing it right, similar to Starcraft back in Korea. Its reaching a much wider audiance then Dota or other MOBA's. And CS has a huge following, just a small active base left. So I'm not that surprised about it.

Magill

Cuddlesworth wrote: »

Depends on how you view it. LOL is appearing as far more consistent from a professional point of view. They are not relying on large tournaments instead they are separating 10 teams from the pack and giving them consistent work and consistent money as well as increased wages for the winners.

For now they are doing it right, similar to Starcraft back in Korea. Its reaching a much wider audiance then Dota or other MOBA's. And CS has a huge following, just a small active base left. So I'm not that surprised about it.

I'm talking more about how the actual game supports it, Dota with its client and spectator options are something i've always been jealous of as a league player. Valves game clients are amazing, like the ability to watch a match ingame and choose which commentator you want to listen to is class. And then just how they fund these huge prizepools with "Esport" packs and tickets is really smart.

I do like the whole LCS/OGN systems in that they provide a much more stable scene for each major region as it provides even low quality teams earn a living whereas Dota and CS have more top heavy earning structures, plus the LCS and OGN have really good production quality now. Lends itself more to the streaming community too as NA teams are just as popular as any other region, despite being nowhere near as good as the best teams in the world.

Its pretty cool how far competitive gaming has come since the old days of CPL !