Forbes: LoL Rises as SC2 Flails

[TheEconomist]

In other derp news, more people watch TV for free than pay for movie tickets.

[Gifted]

A few of you have understanding of the points you are focusing on, but it's generally the following reasons that allow League of Legends to surpass StarCraft II in terms of it's e-Sports right now:

1. League of Legends is the most played game on the planet right now. [Source: Current 2012 Statistics - 2011 statistics for growth comparison]
2. Free to play model assisted in this popularity
3. Ease of entrance by team assisted in this popularity (Team games allow for noobs to "learn from friends")
4. Game genre assists in lower skill requirement for play entry assisted in this popularity. (Moba vs oldschool RTS, by design is easier)
5. Skill involves team play vs solo play (Typically thought of as a more accessible to watch sport. Think "Football/Soccer vs Boxing")
6. There are multiple goals in a game that are clearly identified every game, allowing for milestones to be easily identified to a viewer. (SC2: Kill all buildings to win, this differs every game as destroying critical units from group comp, building orders, varied strategies can change priorities drastically between games/ LOL: Kill heros, kill towers, kill priority creeps, kill inhibitors, kill nexus.. EVERY game.)
7. Metrics are more clear in League of Legends (All you truly need to do is compare gold in each game to clearly show where advantage lies. It's the true "score" between teams / SC2 metrics have caveats. Terrans can kill 100 zerglings to 10 seige tanks, and the metrics show a different story than what's truly happened because it changes per game/matchup)
8. Less units to watch means more clarity for the viewer to understand.
9. Cleaner/more visual look appeals to casual gamer/viewers
10. One core "league" that spans the course of a season makes for a relate-able sport.

Do I agree with the article that StarCraft II is failing? Not in the least. It's simply the high skill, "hardcore" e-Sport. As I noted above, it's comparable to real sports today. All one on one sports are considered more hardcore sports to follow in a sense, while all team sports are more mainstream. To compare the popularity of Singles Tennis vs American Football shows Tennis as an "inferior" sport if you look at that statistic on it's own, but tell that to a Tennis fan to their face and you'll probably be missing a few teeth at the end of the night.

Disclaimer: Despite the claim of one-on-one sports vs team sports, It's important to note that all sports have their dedicated hardcore, but even this is comparible to e-sports as they stand as well.

That's an inkling of my thoughts on it.

[Twilice]

One thing everyone have forgotten to factor in is the amount of heavy promotion by riot themselves for it to try and be an e-sport.

Most other games have their tournaments and active e-sport from a third party and the generall "want-part" for people to watch. (starcraft 2, dota 2)
While lol didn't really start of as an e-sport until riot started to create a lot of tournaments and pooled their own money into them as price money.

[TheEconomist]

Very, very nice post Gifted. About time someone wrote that since I'm just too damn lazy these days.

[The_Blade]

Great post gifted. I have to agree fully on it.

Now, what if this cash flow gives Riot the resources needed to knock Blizz off the MMO Kingdom? IIRC, they hired the guy who developed World of Starcraft. SC2 and LoL might be independent from each other, but e-sports change faster than sports. I belive the headline should be renamed "Blizzard struggles as Riot rises".

[Twilice]

I hope not, I dislike Riot as a company (or rather the pr approach)
The game is fine, but it's like everything they do is trying to promote how bad dota is. They even have dota examples and clarify them as bad as justifications for their own designs.

Also I would like to know how they got their numbers, dota 2 got about 60-150K concurrent players each day. So using "top 100" steam games is a bit misleading, seeing only a few of the games might have a lot of concurrent players.

It's also very hard to actually check the current concurrent players in lol, which I'm interested in.