Rich Nixon
No Prior Knowledge of "Flyers"
eSports are such a weird proposition. They're not any one "thing," they're a whole bunch of different games being played on a whole bunch of different platforms and a whole bunch of different competition structures, that big companies are just kind of blindly dumping money into. It's disparate, and I find it odd that we just go "eSports!" when we're really talking about vastly different games being played.
I find most of them impossible to follow in televised events, which I guess is because I've never played the games. But I think things are always gonna be that way, for a lot of people. Like, most people can follow football having never played it.
For them to generate true outsider appeal, as in, not just video game diehards watching, I think the games have to be right. Things that people can sit down and follow. Go watch the world's best button-mashers play Overwatch and you'll just kinda puke, it's a bunch of schizophrenic motion and flashing lights and flailing limbs and different avatar skins. Add that in with the fact that game come and go...
It's gotta be something enjoyable, I think, to a mass audience, that can be followed without having played the game extensively, but is also challenging and enjoyable for the world's best gamers. What the f*** that game is, I don't know, but it just strikes me as odd that it's this huge bucket--eSports!--without even a defined game. There's just a bunch of different ones being competed on in different tournaments and different tiers, it's just a blob of animation and cash and thinkpieces without any unifying core.
I find most of them impossible to follow in televised events, which I guess is because I've never played the games. But I think things are always gonna be that way, for a lot of people. Like, most people can follow football having never played it.
For them to generate true outsider appeal, as in, not just video game diehards watching, I think the games have to be right. Things that people can sit down and follow. Go watch the world's best button-mashers play Overwatch and you'll just kinda puke, it's a bunch of schizophrenic motion and flashing lights and flailing limbs and different avatar skins. Add that in with the fact that game come and go...
It's gotta be something enjoyable, I think, to a mass audience, that can be followed without having played the game extensively, but is also challenging and enjoyable for the world's best gamers. What the f*** that game is, I don't know, but it just strikes me as odd that it's this huge bucket--eSports!--without even a defined game. There's just a bunch of different ones being competed on in different tournaments and different tiers, it's just a blob of animation and cash and thinkpieces without any unifying core.
