Brink competitive success limited by its genre

(angeliou) #1

I will try to keep this short and sweet so you guys can contribute.

Dont look at me like a misanthrope who wants to see nothing less than brinks future to burn and crumble. I always love the possibility of fps making their way onto the competitive scene. Let me state that I do not believe that brink is not fit for competition, and I believe that we will see some great teams and great tournaments come up in the future. I can imagine it will run by a round based stopwatch type system which can make for some very close exciting games. There’s a huge amount of room for 5v5/6v6 teams to display team coordination and tactics.

Though I feel this is as far as the brink competitive scene will go, I don’t see it being a huge long lasting hit on the market like say quake or 1.6, and I’m comparing it to the likes of starcraft 2. I don’t think the longevity of brinks competitive scene is being limited by brink itself, but by the pure fact that it a fps. I want to see it gain popularity, but I don’t see it being accessible and viewable by on the large scale like starcraft 2. I’m using sc2 as an example because it is so wildly popular and is the bleeding edge of the E-sports community it really is our shining example of how popular e sports can be.

Unfortunately the fps e-sports scene is…pretty stale right now to not be too harsh. In fact the fps e sports scene is really falling to the way side. Many of the games try and get off the ground but to no success. How many leagues have died and been remade. I just dont think brink has the spectator aspect that is viewable to the mass audience to become as popular as sc2. I realize the many of the forum users here are very focused on the competitive scene which is great, but I think we need to look at exactly what we have to do to make the game accessible to a large community.

anyway I would love to hear your guys thoughts on the potential problems and solutions.

Ohh yeah and 6 more days :slight_smile:

(ed lolington) #2

breaking news brink’s “fun factor” limits it from becoming new esport

(ed lolington) #3

that may have been a little ambiguous but what im saying is esports aren’t fun

(bizznessonly) #4

Dodging bullets while sliding sideways towards another doorway and killing the person sounds pretty amazing if i say so

(trollface) #5

I recall my first time playing the RTCW demo on beach. I had never heard of RTCW until earlier that day when a friend recommended it. It took me probably one round to realize how right that game felt.

I guess there doesn’t have to be great hype before a game is released for it to be sucessful.
It doesn’t have to be among the top 5 most played shooters to be worthwile.

If the game is fun, the community will thrive, both the casual and competitive aspects of it.

(BioSnark) #6

No offense to the RTS genre, which I love, but what games other than sc2 are flourishing in e-sports?

(angeliou) #7

I used sc2 as an example for all e sports, but warcraft 3 was hugely popular as well.

(BioSnark) #8

Same blizzard comp player base tho? except for the those who stayed with sc…

in other words, I’m not convinced that the RTS genre has room for another big competition game/series/company. Don’t follow e-sports or sports in general so could be wrong.

(Mustang) #9

(Chex) #10

FPS competitive is simply much more fragmented then the RTS scene. There is no blizzard-like dominance on the FPS competitive side.
Take a look at FPS competitive scenes: QL, CS and CSS, COD4 and COD:BO, BF 2 and BC2…
Brink has a very good chance to become played competitively.

(Je T´aime) #11

SC2 is kinda huge, if brink have around 10 000 active pc players im happy.

(Linsolv) #12

Warcraft 3 is NOWHERE near SC2 or Brood War. If you’re saying that WC3 counts as a success, then Quake 3 and CS are SMASHING successes.

(GreasedScotsman) #13

To the OP: You asked for solutions and ideas… well, I’ll chime in on an angle from which I’m very well aquanted: Live competitive gameplay with commentary, or shoutcasts. There’s a huge difference between watching FPS gameplay and watching FPS gameplay with play-by-play and analysis intermixed. Without it, spectators unfamiliar with the mechanics of the game will likely be overwhelmed by all that goes on in a fast-paced game. Similarly, newcomers to the scene don’t necessarily know what “amazing play” should look like and may not understand why a mass respawn decision or other less-obvious tactic behind enemy lines is so important.

With decent commentary, all that changes… (I hope! :slight_smile: ) Rather than spectators feeling lost and confused, it’s my job to try to narrate the purpose behind the strategy being executed, raise my voice and yell “Holy ****balls!” when something amazing happens so that the uninitiated can share in the critical moment of a game just as wise and clued in as the hardened Wolf ET veteran.

That said, I really, really hope that Brink TV isn’t the only shoutcasting game in town, because a) we can’t cover it all and b) there are people far more talented than we are… or at least, I always assume that’s the case so we have a reason to continually improve.

One of the reasons why SC2 has taken off is because, from early beta they had people constantly streaming and offering commentary. You can still find a SC2 stream everywhere at any time. Some are terrible… but most are pretty enjoyable. However, the ones that stand out are the ones where the broadcasters are either amazing people in their own right (Sean “day9” Plott) completely and whole-heartedly dedicated to creating something worth watching every single show they do, or they’re simply offering useful insight and quality excitement to the game and people thirst for it.

The other huge reason that SC2 has been so successful is entirely because Blizzard is full of geniuses and they gave the community incredible spectating and replay features… unsurpassed by anyone else, to my knowledge.

I don’t think Brink will have as friendly spectator features when it launches, but from what I hear lately, demo recording is in, free fly cam is in for the PC. For consoles (not sure for PC), a third-person cam is in. That’s enough to do what we want to do at Brink TV, so I’m more than happy.

I just hope other broadcasting crews like ESL, lvl^, TGBF, etc. step up and help give the game a wider audience.

(MatthiasK75) #14

yeah shooters are rarely competitive… thats why i spend all my time playing farmville, now theres a competition! I AM THE BEST FREAKING PLOWER OUT THERE, FOR THE LOVE OF GOD PICK ME

(Mr. Magikarp) #15

Seems to me that the OP is a comment on the state of the comp FPS community as a whole rather than Brink specifically.

(MF Maou) #16

That made my day.

(BMXer) #17

Here is my idea…

id should make 2 games. Quake 5 and RtCW 2. Release them about the same time while announcing a series of LANs and online qualifiers and stuff like that. All ending with the grand super finals for both games at Quakecon.

If id did it right, both games could be perfect for real comp… just like quake3/live is and w:et was/is. And if they backed it with a real tournament series and fallowed up with new content… it could be sick!

Anyhow, I personally just think super high level competitive fps just needs an update to be huge like starcraft… a new Quake(dm game) and a new CS(team game)… except rtcw instead of CS, CS is way boring.

(Luk) #18

I prefered the CS/CSS style of gameplay over quake by FAR, so I’m happy this found a happy medium. Hopefully it’ll pull from both audiences.

(BrigandSk(A)) #19

Brink is way superior to CS:S and COD4 or COD:BO, end of story.

Expect CS:S is a classic specific type of game-play while COD franchise is just a horizontal over-hyped full of eye candy and super powers.

StarCraft2 success is due to StarCraft1 and also because of the competitive scene during beta at South Korea.

At this point Brink is like StarCraft1 before release… no1 knew what it was going to become after years of community and game-play.

Funny that Brink hasn’t been released yet and there’s already tons of people who haven’t played the game and are already trying to burn it down!

Try to guess why Brink had a more than 2 hour wait to be played at the event shows?

(Atavax) #20

the main problem i think with competitive fps’s is its hard to spectate a match…