Twitch acquires eSports pro-gaming team Evil Geniuses

http://www.goodgame.gg/twitch/index.html

by coralreef • 12 years ago

123 58 12 years ago

goodgame.gg

baq2• 12 years ago

smart move for twitch. they have a platform, an audience and some among the top performers in the scene.

coralreef4• 12 years ago

Seems almost like a conflict of interest though. Like the NBA owning one of its own teams.

thisone2• 12 years ago

wouldn't it be more: Like NBC owning a team?

baq2• 12 years ago

this was already the case, one example: http://d2l.gg/

yuncun• 12 years ago

I'm a business/legal newb, but when you mention conflict of interest, is there any actual real recourse against this?

heyheyhey• 12 years ago

Like the NBA owning one of its own teams.

NBA has owned teams in the past; most recently being the New Orleans Pelicans from 2010-2012.

MysticFear• 12 years ago

Amazon the General Electric of the internet

aeturnum• 12 years ago

GoodGame has a number of other teams (Team Tinker and Alliance on the DOTA scene?) under management. Thus the name change from EG some time back.

Pro gaming is a commercially interesting scene. I'm not involved but I've had some interesting conversations with people involved in the scene (Garfield included). Talk about a capital-limited environment.

IanChiles• 12 years ago

Tinker and Alliance are looking pretty shaky in the long term - Tinker just dropped out of a tournament and Alliance was unable to play games of theirs earlier today. It looks right now like they'll soon see major changes, disband, or become one team. Alliance also sponsors a League of Legends team and a few other teams in other scenes though.

EDIT: This also includes D2L - a relatively large DOTA league, as well as parts of CLG (CounterLogic Gaming) - http://clgaming.net/news/611-kelby-may-steps-down-as-general...

bdz• 12 years ago

I think Alliance will be fine. There was a really good interview with Loda at the Summit where he said that he has a plan/vision but Chessie's medical problems were a big blow to them (remember they were beating VG and Mushi's Team Malaysia 2-0 in China just 2 months ago). That's why Bulldog is also on a break, they don't want to play with standins.

hkmurakami4• 12 years ago

They seem to recognize and accept that the market paradigm is rapidly moving from one of dominance of the platform to dominance of content [1]. EG has one of the strongest content and persona (i.e. character driven narrative) in the scene in the world and certainly in the West (not entirely sure how the older European powerhouses like SK Gaming have fared in recent years).

The question to me is whether additional acquisitions may be in order. For example, would they perhaps move to acquire Sean Plott's Day[9] TV?

Even in "regular sports", ratings rise when narratives like rivalries or dynasties are in play. We saw the decline of viewership in Starcraft:Broodwar in Korea when such narratives fizzled and when the old stars faded from relevance, despite the considerable increase in overall skill level. Starcraft 2 has arguably suffered from the relative lack of such a narrative, due in part to the fragmentation of its competitive scene. Blizzard has taken matters into its own hands with WCS, following Riot's lead. The question to me is how, if at all, Twitch will involve itself, given that its success depends on content and content very much hinges on narrative.

[1] I am not sure if Amazon is involved with the decision at all, but since Amazon Prime Instant Video is in a platform and content war with Netflix and others, it wouldn't surprise me if they influenced the move.

chez17• 12 years ago

Finally, a topic I'm somewhat of an expert in on HN!

Even in "regular sports", ratings rise when narratives like rivalries or dynasties are in play. We saw the decline of viewership in Starcraft:Broodwar in Korea when such narratives fizzled and when the old stars faded from relevance, despite the considerable increase in overall skill level.

There were new stars and new rivalries. This totally leaves out the Savior scandal, competing games, and how unique and what fluke BW actually was. A game never meant to be played competitively, pushed to it's limits for years and years and years by the players and map makers, broken mechanics that turned out to balance the game near flawlessly. The list goes on and on. BW was an anomoly in the esports world, a game being played competitively 10 years after it's made is not normal. Melee is the only game that comes to mind that is similar. Counter Strike is still being played of course, but not the original game, no patches, like BW or Melee.

Starcraft 2 has arguably suffered from the relative lack of such a narrative, due in part to the fragmentation of its competitive scene.

I disagree 1000%! SC2 suffered from horrible balance decisions, a battle.net system that was objectively worse than BW and WC3, no LAN, and an over-zealous Blizzards-Activision that wanted to extract as much money as possible as quickly as possible. Things like putting limits on how much a prize pool can be before Blizzard takes a cut actually encouraged tournaments to stay smaller the first year or two of SC2. No LAN meant games would crap out and couldn't be restarted with tens of thousands of dollars on the line. No automated tournaments, no clans, no nothing. Battle.net 2.0 was so bad, such a monumental fuck up, it shows that Blizzard literally had no idea what they were doing and did not care what the community thought. We begged for years for things that were not that hard to implement for a gigantic company like Blizzard. Finally, the balance. When you balance a game for the lowest level player, it may bring a short spike in players but the reward of a high skilled play is gone. There is no reason to work hard and figure things out. The competitive scene suffered due to these decisions. Finally, the worst choice of them all, to let Wings of Liberty (vanilla SC2) fester and die while they developed Heart of the Swarm (the first expansion). Broodlord/Infester became so boring and dull to watch for months and months while Blizzard didn't do anything. They waited for HotS. And guess what? Want HotS? You have to buy the original as well! Good call! Not greedy at all. So many truly terrible decisions killed SC2 and it's a damn shame. As you can tell, I'm bitter. SC2 had great narratives. Huk vs Korea, Boxer coming back, Nada coming back, Idra (love him or hate him), the EG/TL stuff then Huk going to EG!, so many great runs through GSL or MLG, White-Ra beating MC at that worlds game!, MMA the prodigy of Boxer, MMA vs MVP at Blizzcon, so many great stories. The scene died because Blizzard fucking killed it. My beautiful Starcraft destroyed out of greed and shortsightedness.

kbar13• 12 years ago

competitive CS is dead, it's CS:GO now.

bogardon2• 12 years ago

I watched a lot of SC2 during WOL and I recently went to IEM San Jose. I was reminded of why I stopped watching. Koreans are completely impersonal. You can't even force yourself to become partial to them on any level other than their in game skills. As a foreigner, all the Koreans might as well be clones of each other. The language barrier is simply too much and it makes for a really boring spectator environment.

kevinflo• 12 years ago

I disagree with almost all of your comments about SC2. All of the things you mentioned (no lan, no clans, allowing blord/infestor to go on too long, etc.) are just red herrings for the greater factors at play that kept SC2 from exploding. It was instead that the landscape of both SC2 and gaming as a whole changed.

As far as your complaints about westerners not winning anymore, that's proof that the game is good, not bad. Westerners lost in BW as well. All it shows is that the winner of the game accurately reflects which player is more skilled. Korea has a decade and a half of infrastructure and training behind their SC2 players. This makes their players more skilled and makes them win. The period where westerners were winning consistently was just a blip on the history of SC before 1) KESPA players switched to SC2 and raised the bar for KESPA players, ESF players, and westerners alike and westerners couldn't keep up 2) before the game was figured out. It would attract more viewers if other nations could compete with Korea, but for that to occur either the game would have to be unfair or westerners would have to actually be as good as Koreans.

Finally, gaming as a whole changed. SC2 came out four years ago, before the rise of MOBAs. Honestly, MOBAs are just better suited to mass audiences as far as esports is concerned. SC2 is an brutal, unforgiving, extremely difficult 1v1 game. MOBAs are free-to-play team games. In SC2 you are a commander of units. In MOBAs you play a single actual character with a personality and style you can identify with. Life's lings have personality, yes. As do MarineKing's marines. But Insec's Lee Sin? Madlife's Thresh? Those are actual characters people can latch onto. League/dota also generate many more highlightable moments, whereas SC2 is more of a tug-of-war.

SC2 is falling into its rightful place among esports... as tennis. A difficult 1v1 game. MOBAs are football. I'll keep watching SC2 because I love it and it's a beautiful game. It's a better game than it ever has been, and the amazingness of recent tournaments is a testament to that. I just don't expect it to explode any time soon.

Also, while not achieving the cultural status it did during wings of liberty, SC2 is at least maintaining its audience if not slowly growing. That's more than most games 4+ years in. I don't blame the slowing of this growth on the game, or on blizzard. It's just that the times have changed.

hkmurakami4• 12 years ago

SC2 had great narratives. Huk vs Korea, Boxer coming back, Nada coming back, Idra (love him or hate him), the EG/TL stuff then Huk going to EG!, so many great runs through GSL or MLG, White-Ra beating MC at that worlds game!, MMA the prodigy of Boxer, MMA vs MVP at Blizzcon, so many great stories.

Here's the thing. How long did any of these stories and themes last? Most of them tended to die within a few months of starting. How easy were they to follow? With a whole slew of international events to follow, it was unclear which tournaments even mattered. There was very little continuity from one event to the next. SC2 as a scene has lacked the linear progression that OSL/MSL/Proleague offered viewers (Though I was only around for 2004 - 2010 or so). I feel like even War3 was easier to follow than SC2 as a spectator.

dusklight• 12 years ago

Speaking as someone who used to watch SC2 and now mostly watch DOTA2 only, the reason I stopped was because it got so boring. Blizzard design choices made the games awfully predictable, to the point where I just lost interest. This is in contrast to DOTA2, which continues to be exciting and fresh, with exciting matches and constantly evolving new strategies (not all of them but enough to keep me interested)

cliftonk• 12 years ago

I played CounterStrike competitively against EG more times during my college years than I can count. Congratulations on the acquisition!

bogardon2• 12 years ago

what team

smrtinsert• 12 years ago

bizarre. isn't this like espn buying an nfl team?

ps4fanboy• 12 years ago

I wonder if EG streams will get featured more often now.

effekt4• 12 years ago

No.

Reebles• 12 years ago

Plenty of media organizations have owned and continue to own sports teams.

In fact Disney simultaneously owned both ESPN and the Anaheim Angels for a number of years before selling the team.

billhendricksjr• 12 years ago

And the NBA owned the New Orleans franchise for a few years.

LukeB_UK• 12 years ago

Why do sites feel the need to hijack and speed up the scroll. DON'T DO IT!

effekt4• 12 years ago

I'm sorry.

socialist_coder2• 12 years ago

Hmm, why would Twitch want to own multiple eSports teams? How does that advance Twitch's goals?

towelguy• 12 years ago

That way they make sure those teams stay on their platform?

effekt4• 12 years ago

It's not about the teams - it's about the people that handle the teams.

socialist_coder2• 12 years ago

That makes total sense.

NamTaf• 12 years ago

Because then they have control over the generation of some of their flagship content, which in turn drives revenue. It's no different to Apple buying fab labs, sapphire plants, etc. to ensure that they can continue to churn out cutting edge devices.

nperez• 12 years ago

Oops, forgot to fill this in: "I’ll be doing an AMA tomorrow at [time] on [subreddit] for those of you who have questions or who’re interested in learning more."

effekt4• 12 years ago

D'oh!

danielvinson• 12 years ago

This announcement gives me a very nostalgic comfort - As a former competitive Counter-Strike player turned eSports tournament organizer and co-founder of an (in the end) unsuccessful eSports organization, this really reaffirms much of my time spent and makes me really regret leaving eSports when I did. I'm very happy to see Alex Garfield, who I looked up to when almost nobody knew who he was, help turn eSports into a true professional sport that it deserves to be, and even happier to see the huge amount of support that Twitch is providing to the entire community.

sysk• 12 years ago

CALeague?

EA• 12 years ago

CAL was the online version of the Cyberathlete Professional League (CPL). Angel Munoz was the owner for all that.

anxman• 12 years ago

Big congrats to Emmett and Alex. I'm thrilled to see EG and Twitch join forces. Alex is one of the best in the eSports business and this will provide a great home to them.

seanalltogether• 12 years ago

Some interesting conversations happening in the league of legends subreddit

http://www.reddit.com/r/leagueoflegends/comments/2osl1p/evil...

LandoCalrissian• 12 years ago

Justin Wong is playing for twitch now. Didn't expect that.

pselbert• 12 years ago

I skimmed through the article expecting to see mention of some of the notable Capcom/Marvel players. I'm still not sure why that wasn't mentioned.

A number of those guys (Ricky, Arturo, Justin) were friends of mine back before I left the scene, long before all of the team business started.

ericglyman• 12 years ago

Echoes of the agency-ization happening in other areas of tech

(1) Today's Top Product Hunt - http://www.producthunt.com/posts/hidden-founders (2) One of New Yorker's big Nov. 2014 Stories - http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2014/11/24/programmers-pri...

crazypyro• 12 years ago

Can we fix the title please? Twitch acquired much more than just Evil Geniuses, they acquired Good Game Agency which owns and manages quite a few teams and other e-sports related things. (As he points out in his statement)

goeric• 12 years ago

Smart move. It's amazing how far the e-sports industry has come in the last few years. When I was invited to compete at CGS Combine (which Alex references in this post), I knew it was way ahead of its time. There's a lot of big opportunities and unsolved problems in this space to tackle.

baby• 12 years ago

When I saw the website and the name and the references to counter strike I immediately thought of GG[1] the french team that was #1st for a pretty long time. Also they were renting servers for a lot of money and they were synonyme with quality (it was always a pleasure to play a match on a goodgame server).

[1] http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goodgame_%28%C3%A9quipe%29

Twitch acquires eSports pro-gaming team Evil Geniuses

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