OT: Introducing Your Vancouver Titans (Overwatch League)

[member 105785]

Love that Canada is doing well, however I hope the Vancouver team does not sign xQc. He's one of those toxic gamers and would not represent the team well.

he would do well with a mentor, if they could find a teammate to keep him under control then he could be an elite talent in OWL. he has an incredible eye for the game and can play many of the games most valuable heroes at an elite level

 

[WTG]

I can't help but think NA-Esports is just bubbling out of control. So much money in such a short period of time... All betting on it becoming the next best thing, which it will be considering the growth. But it isn't worth 50 million NOW that's for sure.

Maybe the NA-LCS told Aqualini to go Sealion somewhere else.

 

[member 105785]

Vancouver's GM is going to be KyKy who coached both the Fuel and the Outlaws at points last season and was one of the masterminds behind team USA's world cup team in 2017, who was probably the second best team in the tournament after SK, even though they lost in the first round to... well, SK. His coaching was suspect last season but he could do well in the GM role

 

[member 105785]

for people who don't know much of Overwatch, here is imo Canada's best game in the World Cup series vs Russia in the preliminary rounds, Russia was an early favourite to make the finals and Canada wasn't even expected to make it to the final tournament

 

[me2]

People paying money to watch other people play video games is a thing? Jeez.

TBF we pay to watch other people play children's sports like hockey and football.

 

[me2]

for people who don't know much of Overwatch, here is imo Canada's best game in the World Cup series vs Russia in the preliminary rounds, Russia was an early favourite to make the finals and Canada wasn't even expected to make it to the final tournament

I find those kind of videos unwatchable, full credit to anyone who keeps up/likes it. Between the hyperactive monkey jumping that permeates modern shooters and constant swinging around of the camera it is hard to keep up with the action, if you can even see it through the OTT special effects. Playing it doesn't seem so bad but watching others, i just can't get into it.

 

[Intangibos]

I can't help but think NA-Esports is just bubbling out of control. So much money in such a short period of time... All betting on it becoming the next best thing, which it will be considering the growth. But it isn't worth 50 million NOW that's for sure.

Maybe the NA-LCS told Aqualini to go Sealion somewhere else.

Yeah 50m is insane. Still though top streamers like Imaqtpie for league supposedly makes 7 figures streaming and he pulls in around 20k viewers. Tyler1 has high numbers as well along with his merchandising. While obviously esports don't have the same daily schedule as streamers they also pull in many time more viewers and get major corporate sponsorships and merchandising. Plus I would assume some type of deal regarding ticket sales.

I think the only way that this even has the chance of being profitable though is if it's meant to be an investment towards future esports. Teams like Liquid, Cloud9 and even teams that were exclusively League of Legends teams like CLG and TSM have branched out into other games. If they actually build a brand through Overwatch it could be a good long term investment. Maybe.

Also, I unironically think that in a decade we'll see some pretty neat VR esports. VR is insanely flawed right now but you can go back and search tech forums 15 years ago and see people saying you will never need more than 512mb of ram. Do you all remember your first ADSL modem and 70GB HD to comfortably fit CS 1.5 and play at a reasonably latency? For VR from the player standpoint both screen resolution and rendering power are issues, but foveal rendering is actually relatively close and will be a huge leap forward towards reducing the computing power needed. Even so that doesn't matter much to an outside observer. Locomotion is another major problem for VR and even though there are kind of solutions nobody wants to see people running on a stationary platform getting sweaty playing some type of FPS game. That being said I think vehicle based games for VR are going to be huge and the only reason they're not now is that on top of the high entry point of VR you need to then get even more peripherals. I bet you it would be cool as shit to play something like a modern Crimson Skies in VR or some space game with some basic motion simulation and watching it could be fun too. Could be fun to watch teams dogfighting in various types of aircraft or even some type of space battle fighting for objectives.

It may not look great in a vacuum, but a large part of the attraction to esports is how you can relate from your own experiences playing the game. If VR comes down in cost and some type of mass produced 3DOF cheap motion sim hits the market it would potentially create a massive market for some games and for the esports that would naturally follow. Obviously a mass produced cheap 3DOF motion sim isn't likely, but like 5 years ago VR headsets were sometimes 5 figures and got absolutely blown the f*** out by a prototype held together with duct tape by a kid who refereed lacrosse games to fund his VR hobby. A motion platform has more moving parts, but people do drop thousands on gaming rigs and if someone could put out a decent motion platform for 3-5k I think it would get quite a bit of traction as VR becomes more mainstream with actual quality content coming out. Again the thing to watch IMO is foveal rendering just because that will increase the quality of graphics in VR far faster than progress towards bigger and better GPUs. When foveal rendering tech is put into a consumer VR headset you're gonna see some real shit.

Getting in on an esport franchise now and laying the infrastructure for the future in various games could be a valuable investment if you think the esport trend isn't going to go away regardless if games come and go.

On the topic of VR did you hear about Elon Musk talking about Neuralink? I'm not a huge Musk fan, not that I dislike him either, but I do think he has interesting projects from time to time. He was talking about how the problem is the way we interface with computers, receiving through sight/sound and input is clearly what's bottlenecking us in regards to being 'more connected', which is quite obviously true. He said within a few months Neuralink will be announcing something that he believes is far beyond what people think is possible today. Obviously I'm sure he's hyping it up, and far beyond what people think is possible today is pretty much anything, but it does pave the way for some really interesting stuff. If you think foveal rendering is going to lead to some serious shit, tricking the brain into receiving sensory input changes the game forever. I don't mean changes games forever, I mean life forever. As soon as you can simulate any type of experience you want, you can quite literally do anything you want and it will look and feel as if it is real. Kind of too far away to really be relevant to the esports conversation, but given my opinion on the future of VR I think it's interesting nonetheless and might help sell my idea on why VR isn't just a meme and will continue to grow. Tinkering around in the brain is pretty hard since the brain is still a big mystery, so this would be many many decades away if it's even possible, but just the idea that it's kind of starting to appear within the realm of possibility means sooner or later some serious money is going to be invested into the field.

 

[Zombotron]

I like how the OP somehow thinks the Aquilini Investment Group and the Canucks are the same thing

 

[RandV]

On the topic of VR did you hear about Elon Musk talking about Neuralink? I'm not a huge Musk fan, not that I dislike him either, but I do think he has interesting projects from time to time. He was talking about how the problem is the way we interface with computers, receiving through sight/sound and input is clearly what's bottlenecking us in regards to being 'more connected', which is quite obviously true. He said within a few months Neuralink will be announcing something that he believes is far beyond what people think is possible today. Obviously I'm sure he's hyping it up, and far beyond what people think is possible today is pretty much anything, but it does pave the way for some really interesting stuff. If you think foveal rendering is going to lead to some serious ****, tricking the brain into receiving sensory input changes the game forever. Kind of too far away to really be relevant to the esports conversation, but given my opinion on the future of VR I think it's interesting nonetheless and might help sell my idea on why VR isn't just a meme and will continue to grow.

I haven't heard of the Musk stuff you're talking about, but while it may still be decades away that would definitely be the holy grail here. On that topic I've always gotten a kick how maybe the last 10 years... maybe about the time the Wii came out, when VR or similar tech comes up you always get a few people who'll say 'I'll be interested when we have holodecks'. The Star Trek holodeck would actually be pretty crappy, simply from a space and resource perspective. If we could make them they'd be toys exclusively for multi-millionaires.

That's what makes the "Neuralink" type stuff the holy grail. We can do a pretty good job at VR today but it requires a good amount of space and a lot of expensive hardware & peripherals, so as good it can be for the time being it remains a luxury setup that won't get mass adoption. And without mass adoption, you don't get the best software. But if you could get into the neural stuff, not only would it be all around better but it has the potential for mass adoption like a standard game console.

 

[member 105785]

Team OW WC Canada with 4-0 sweeps of Austria and Brazil yesterday and 4-0 sweep of Norway today, here's the games:

Austria:



Brazil:



Norway:



Brazil took a map off the United States, Canada will play Switzerland and then the United States tomorrow, the top 2 will get to play to go to the championship tournament

 

[canuckfan75]

Good write up on this venture. By buying this Franchise it also gives the Canucks the exclusive rights to Washington and Oregon State that is a market of 16.6 million people. expect the team to be named Pacific Northwest something?

Vancouver seen as fertile ground for expansion Overwatch League franchise

 

[me2]

Can anyone explain what you get from attending a match? Sports and concerts I get the difference, it is real life, you can see the big picture and watch what you want. Attending eSports seems like nothing more than paying money to watch a TV screen showing the same stream as is being broadcast. The equivalent of going to Rogers Arena to watch a broadcast of Canucks game.

 

[lawrence]

I can't help but think NA-Esports is just bubbling out of control. So much money in such a short period of time... All betting on it becoming the next best thing, which it will be considering the growth. But it isn't worth 50 million NOW that's for sure.

Maybe the NA-LCS told Aqualini to go Sealion somewhere else.

it's not "out of control" it is more money then some people think over video games. 50 million is more of a long term investment, since they probably see e sports as something that will continue to grow. Ever since the Starcraft one days, Counter strike days, E sport has done nothing but grow, it has never stepped back once, so an interesting investment from the Aquillini's it's like he has too much money or something, his inner geek is taking over, and I have no doubt in my mind he will see his 50 million he put in, grow, but I think it might take at least 10 years to see a full return.

Can anyone explain what you get from attending a match? Sports and concerts I get the difference, it is real life, you can see the big picture and watch what you want. Attending eSports seems like nothing more than paying money to watch a TV screen showing the same stream as is being broadcast. The equivalent of going to Rogers Arena to watch a broadcast of Canucks game.

when you pay to watch the Canucks vs XXX NHL team, you are paying to watch hockey at the highest level.

if you attend a e sport match you are paying to watch the best players in the world play that certain game, (shooting game, dota, league of legends, overwatch), that said, if your not interested in that game, you wouldn't attend, I'm not too interested in the B.C Lions I won't go. that said this overwatch thing is rather quite new to me, the e sport industry in Vancouver is not very big, but it's huge in California.

 

[member 105785]

Can anyone explain what you get from attending a match? Sports and concerts I get the difference, it is real life, you can see the big picture and watch what you want. Attending eSports seems like nothing more than paying money to watch a TV screen showing the same stream as is being broadcast. The equivalent of going to Rogers Arena to watch a broadcast of Canucks game.

Being there to support your team + live excitement, see your team play IRL etc. Also remember that Ninja, a twitch streamer, played at Lollapalooza this year, where people watched him play Fortnite on a big tv screen, so there are people who want to see this, especially young people who can't afford to come see hockey games.

In addition, kids worship streamers like we did when we played street hockey in the 90's pretending we were Bure, Linden or Naslund. We played hockey and we like to watch hockey, they play Overwatch and like to play Overwatch.

 

[Intangibos]

Can anyone explain what you get from attending a match? Sports and concerts I get the difference, it is real life, you can see the big picture and watch what you want. Attending eSports seems like nothing more than paying money to watch a TV screen showing the same stream as is being broadcast. The equivalent of going to Rogers Arena to watch a broadcast of Canucks game.

TV broadcasts are superior to live for the most part except for maybe 1 way, though hockey does have 2 bonuses I'll include.

1. You get to see stuff going on behind the play, but I'd argue this is more specific to hockey than other sports as it doesn't matter what's going on 'behind the play' in something like football or basketball.

2. You get more of a "feel" to the game. If you have some American, European or even Canadian friends who just don't get hockey, get them to go to a live game. There is nothing like the ice crunching under skates or the sound of the puck and players slamming into the boards. The game just looks so much faster when you see it live. Again, I think this is more of a hockey specific thing.

3. This is what's relevant to all sports, you get the atmosphere. 15k or more people depending on the sport/arena going bananas is a pretty unique experience when you think about it. This is applicable to esports as well, as long as the attendance is good enough.

Team OW WC Canada with 4-0 sweeps of Austria and Brazil yesterday and 4-0 sweep of Norway today, here's the games:

Austria:



Brazil:



Norway:



Brazil took a map off the United States, Canada will play Switzerland and then the United States tomorrow, the top 2 will get to play to go to the championship tournament

What a dreadful game to watch. I've played Overwatch though I've gotten bored of it so maybe it's just harder for me to follow, but it just seems way too chaotic to be able to enjoy from a first person's standpoint.

 

[WTG]

On the topic of VR did you hear about Elon Musk talking about Neuralink? I'm not a huge Musk fan, not that I dislike him either, but I do think he has interesting projects from time to time. He was talking about how the problem is the way we interface with computers, receiving through sight/sound and input is clearly what's bottlenecking us in regards to being 'more connected', which is quite obviously true. He said within a few months Neuralink will be announcing something that he believes is far beyond what people think is possible today. Obviously I'm sure he's hyping it up, and far beyond what people think is possible today is pretty much anything, but it does pave the way for some really interesting stuff. If you think foveal rendering is going to lead to some serious ****, tricking the brain into receiving sensory input changes the game forever. I don't mean changes games forever, I mean life forever. As soon as you can simulate any type of experience you want, you can quite literally do anything you want and it will look and feel as if it is real. Kind of too far away to really be relevant to the esports conversation, but given my opinion on the future of VR I think it's interesting nonetheless and might help sell my idea on why VR isn't just a meme and will continue to grow. Tinkering around in the brain is pretty hard since the brain is still a big mystery, so this would be many many decades away if it's even possible, but just the idea that it's kind of starting to appear within the realm of possibility means sooner or later some serious money is going to be invested into the field.

I think VR is just too far away, maybe in 20 years. Mostly due to the limitations of space and movement. I haven't heard Elon talk about it though.

Personally I think games like Pokemon GO are going to dominate the market pretty soon. When I was in Japan, you could actively see how popular that game is, you could walk by and everyone was just standing around chilling on their phone for a 15 minutes then leave. Because it's IRL inter-activeness it allow parents to "buy into" the game for their kids.

it's not "out of control" it is more money then some people think over video games. 50 million is more of a long term investment, since they probably see e sports as something that will continue to grow. Ever since the Starcraft one days, Counter strike days, E sport has done nothing but grow, it has never stepped back once, so an interesting investment from the Aquillini's it's like he has too much money or something, his inner geek is taking over, and I have no doubt in my mind he will see his 50 million he put in, grow, but I think it might take at least 10 years to see a full return.

I see the growth as a bubble for now, it's definitely a long-term investement. But investing in E-sports long term is clunky, games have a half-life. For Overwatch, I personally don't think the growth of that game matches something like League of Legends. It also doesn't have the sustainability of a Starcraft/CS which are both still being played competitively today, those IPs have stood the test of time, but can Overwatch reach the peaks of Dota/League? Or have the sustainability of Starcraft/CS? I doubt it.

 

[Intangibos]

I think VR is just too far away, maybe in 20 years. Mostly due to the limitations of space and movement. I haven't heard Elon talk about it though.

Personally I think games like Pokemon GO are going to dominate the market pretty soon. When I was in Japan, you could actively see how popular that game is, you could walk by and everyone was just standing around chilling on their phone for a 15 minutes then leave. Because it's IRL inter-activeness it allow parents to "buy into" the game for their kids.

Pokemon GO was a fad but I think Ingress is still around and was out long before Pokemon Go. Pokemon Go may as well just be an Ingress skin. I heard some crazy stuff in regards to AR stuff coming out but who knows.

I do agree that VR is far away, and I think sensory input spoofing is further than 20 years away. We have to really know what we're doing when we f*** around with the brain / nervous system. But although VR is very limited for regular games do to locomotion I do think that games that use vehicles will be available much sooner. The only thing preventing it right now is cost, which is quite prohibitive both for the PC you need and motion simulation. I'd still put my money on those being the big VR titles though of the future. Honestly even without a sim rig and just something like a chair vibration system I've heard the VR immersion for racing specifically goes way way up.

I want it so bad but I refuse to buy a new GPU for 200% the price it was a year ago because of f***ing bitcoin miners. I can't wait until that meme currency is in the ground. Literally a currency designed to act as a middle man for online drug deals propped up by speculation. I'm also a beginner coder so my billion dollar blockchain game idea isn't doable.

f***ing crypto

 

[WTG]

Pokemon GO was a fad but I think Ingress is still around and was out long before Pokemon Go. Pokemon Go may as well just be an Ingress skin. I heard some crazy stuff in regards to AR stuff coming out but who knows.

I do agree that VR is far away, and I think sensory input spoofing is further than 20 years away. We have to really know what we're doing when we **** around with the brain / nervous system. But although VR is very limited for regular games do to locomotion I do think that games that use vehicles will be available much sooner. The only thing preventing it right now is cost, which is quite prohibitive both for the PC you need and motion simulation. I'd still put my money on those being the big VR titles though of the future. Honestly even without a sim rig and just something like a chair vibration system I've heard the VR immersion for racing specifically goes way way up.

I want it so bad but I refuse to buy a new GPU for 200% the price it was a year ago because of ****ing bitcoin miners. I can't wait until that meme currency is in the ground. Literally a currency designed to act as a middle man for online drug deals propped up by speculation. I'm also a beginner coder so my billion dollar blockchain game idea isn't doable.

****ing crypto

I'm with you on Crypto, screw those guys. I've been looking to upgrade for a while and the prices just spiked. Really frustrating.

 

[Intangibos]

I'm with you on Crypto, screw those guys. I've been looking to upgrade for a while and the prices just spiked. Really frustrating.

I'm not a crypto guy but don't you need to have the entire blockchain to mine it? I recall reading an article about links to CP being put in the blockchain in the 'notes/memos' you can include on a bitcoin transaction. Hypothetically you could include an entire image in binary though with the fees for the notes it would allegedly cost a high amount so it doesn't seem likely. Anyway, I think even links to illegal content are illegal, this is why sites like thepiratebay aren't allowed to operate in the US, and while nobody would be prosecuted under CP laws as it would be ridiculous in this instance, I could see it being used as an argument to ban crypto. I'm pretty sure countries don't like people not using their currency anyway so it gives them a good reason to ban it.

I read that article a while ago though and I haven't heard anything like that since so either it's not true or just nobody cares. Imagine being the one guy that gets prosecuted for it as an example and trying to explain the blockchain to a jury full of boomers to prove you're not a pedophile.

 

[WTG]

I'm not a crypto guy but don't you need to have the entire blockchain to mine it? I recall reading an article about links to CP being put in the blockchain in the 'notes/memos' you can include on a bitcoin transaction. Hypothetically you could include an entire image in binary though with the fees for the notes it would allegedly cost a high amount so it doesn't seem likely. Anyway, I think even links to illegal content are illegal, this is why sites like thepiratebay aren't allowed to operate in the US, and while nobody would be prosecuted under CP laws as it would be ridiculous in this instance, I could see it being used as an argument to ban crypto. I'm pretty sure countries don't like people not using their currency anyway so it gives them a good reason to ban it.

I read that article a while ago though and I haven't heard anything like that since so either it's not true or just nobody cares. Imagine being the one guy that gets prosecuted for it as an example and trying to explain the blockchain to a jury full of boomers to prove you're not a pedophile.

Man, I know next to nothing about it, sounds f***ing nuts though.

 

[Intangibos]

Man, I know next to nothing about it, sounds ****ing nuts though.

https://nypost.com/2018/03/21/blockchain-for-bitcoin-is-infected-with-child-porn/

NY Post though lul

 

[RandV]

Being there to support your team + live excitement, see your team play IRL etc. Also remember that Ninja, a twitch streamer, played at Lollapalooza this year, where people watched him play Fortnite on a big tv screen, so there are people who want to see this, especially young people who can't afford to come see hockey games.

In addition, kids worship streamers like we did when we played street hockey in the 90's pretending we were Bure, Linden or Naslund. We played hockey and we like to watch hockey, they play Overwatch and like to play Overwatch.

I'd add to that, I don't know about everyone but as kids in the 80's/90's it's not really something you think about but many of us actually did sit around watching others play video games. I had siblings, we'd all sit around the TV watching until it was our turn on the controller. Or if you didn't have siblings it would be the same thing when together with a group of friends. That kind of went away when Xbox Live started and friends could play each other from their own home with team chat, but then for the games you don't have kids now can just go onto youtube.

So I personally I can't honestly say I've never 'watched people playing video games', because thinking back I actually did a ton of that as a kid.

 

[me2]

Man, I know next to nothing about it, sounds ****ing nuts though.

It is a bit overrated as an issue, but it sort of true at the same time. You are more likely to get a link, I'm not sure a link actually counts (and the site is likely long dead anyway).

To mine you need a copy of the bitcoin ledger. (Unless you are outsourcing you PC horsepower to a group than runs the full ledger afaik).

Every so often Bitcoin ledgers talk to each other and agree on what transactions match up between them, they decide what history is true to record. Thix is based on the ledger servers doing crosschecks to see they agree with each other, when enough agree it is accepted. The most powerful finish first, AFAIK China contains so much of the bitcoin computing power it can control it completely, any time it wants. "51% attacks" can start writing their own version of bitcoin (and many others) history. Of course that would destroy any Bitcoin value and be counter productive to the Chinese miners. Food for thought.

 

[me2]

Being there to support your team + live excitement, see your team play IRL etc. Also remember that Ninja, a twitch streamer, played at Lollapalooza this year, where people watched him play Fortnite on a big tv screen, so there are people who want to see this, especially young people who can't afford to come see hockey games.

In addition, kids worship streamers like we did when we played street hockey in the 90's pretending we were Bure, Linden or Naslund. We played hockey and we like to watch hockey, they play Overwatch and like to play Overwatch.

Still seems odd to me, the equivalent would be to want to go to an ice hockey game and only ever look at the zombotron not the action on the ice. You could sit at home in a comfortable chair, nice food, some frinds and watch it on a big screen TV and have a better experience than watching it on the Zombotron.

 

[member 105785]

Still seems odd to me, the equivalent would be to want to go to an ice hockey game and only ever look at the zombotron not the action on the ice. You could sit at home in a comfortable chair, nice food, some frinds and watch it on a big screen TV and have a better experience than watching it on the Zombotron.

to each their own, OWL is fun and will be well received in Vancouver