thesis final avichal singh f2 25thapr 2012 final

7/29/2019 Thesis Final Avichal Singh F2 25thApr 2012 Final

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Avichal Singh Thesis 25th April 2012

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Special thanks Guillaume Benoit (Trainer @ Dsksupinfogame)


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ContentsIntroduction .................................................................................................................................................. 4

Lets talk about some major tournaments happening now ......................................................................... 5

WCG .......................................................................................................................................................... 5

Dreamhack ................................................................................................................................................ 5

MLG ........................................................................................................................................................... 6

ESWC ......................................................................................................................................................... 6

Lets talk about some major companies producing gaming peripherals ...................................................... 7

Razer ......................................................................................................................................................... 7

Steel Series ................................................................................................................................................ 7

Cooler Master ........................................................................................................................................... 7

How big is it? ................................................................................................................................................. 8

Currently famous spectator sport games. .................................................................................................... 9

Starcraft 2.................................................................................................................................................. 9

Dota 2 ........................................................................................................................................................ 9

Counter Strike ......................................................................................................................................... 10

League of Legends................................................................................................................................... 10

How important is it for the games? ............................................................................................................ 11

The connection of Peripherals and Spectator Sport ................................................................................... 11

Personnel opinion ....................................................................................................................................... 14

Conclusion ................................................................................................................................................... 15

Bibliography ................................................................................................................................................ 16


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Introduction

E-Sports A term that entered the gaming industry around 12 years back. What is E-sport? Electronic

sports comprises the competitive play of video game with professional gamers involved ;lets go back to

1980 when Atari hosted The Space Invaders Tournament. It attracted more than 10,000 participants.

This was when competitive gaming was established. It was followed by Video Game Masters

Tournament and later World Championships held by Nintendo in 1990 and then 1994. December 10

1993 saw the release of Doom introducing Multi-player death match games with introduction of

newsgroups, chatrooms resulting in birth of online competitive gaming.

Quake released in 1996 and the co-creator John Carmack promised his Ferrari 328 GTS convertible to

the winner Dennis Fong aka Thresh. Dennis was known as Michael Jordan of video games

In the year 2000, the first World Cyber Games event was held in Seoul, Korea. There were competitions

forQuake III Arena,StarCraft,FIFA 2000, andAge of Empires II: the Age of Kings. The competition

initially had 174 competitors from 17 different countries with a total prize purse of $20,000. In 2006, the

prize purse had risen to $462,000, and the event had grown to 9 different competitions and 700

qualified participants from 70 different countries.

Today E-sport is among the fastest growing industries. The winners are role-models for the people

playing the games.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_Cyber_Gameshttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seoul,_Koreahttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quake_III_Arenahttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quake_III_Arenahttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quake_III_Arenahttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/StarCrafthttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/StarCrafthttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/StarCrafthttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FIFA_2000http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FIFA_2000http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FIFA_2000http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Age_of_Empires_II:_The_Age_of_Kingshttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Age_of_Empires_II:_The_Age_of_Kingshttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Age_of_Empires_II:_The_Age_of_Kingshttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Age_of_Empires_II:_The_Age_of_Kingshttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FIFA_2000http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/StarCrafthttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quake_III_Arenahttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seoul,_Koreahttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_Cyber_Games


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Lets talk about some major tournaments happening now

WCG

Wcg started off in 2000 and this is the description on their website.

The World Cyber Games is the worlds first Cyber Game Festival, designed to build a healthy cyber

culture.

The best gamers around the world gather into different cities to share the excitement and fun of the

game tournaments.

To lead the development of the digital entertainment culture by promotion harmony of humankind

through e-sports and its embodiment in the Cyber Culture Festival.

WCG is a comprehensive Digital Culture Festival, where language and cultural Festival barriers are

stripped away, and international exchange and harmony are promoted through extensive events

including tournaments, conferences, and exhibitions.

The tournament has been a vast success and other organizers have looked down to WCG in the past

following years.

78 countries participated in WCG 2008. The event lasted for only 4 days with 800 participants. Each and

every year WCG is successfully hosted. The show is streamed online for 4 days straight on WCG tv.

WCG is for now the most successful and famous E-Sport.

Dreamhack

Dreamhack boasts to be worlds largest computer festival. It holds the world record for the worlds

largest LAN party and computer festival and also held the record for worlds fastest Internet Connection

for a couple of years. There record was broken by worlds second largest LAN event The Gathering .

Talking of achievements in 2007 Dreamhack received a Diploma of honor from the municipality of

Jonkoping for being important to business, education and society of the local community. In winter 2011

they had a total number of 20,984 participants in the event of 72 hours.

The tournament can be viewed on Swedish National TV. The total number of viewers was over 1.6

million which is another record. The total prize money was 1 million SEK

Dreamhack started in 1994 with just 40 participants.


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MLG

Major League Gaming was founded in 2002 in NorthAmerica. It has been broadcasted on television,ESPN.COM. And other broadband sites. MLGs aim is to elevate computer and console game

tournaments to viable competive and spectator events. They currently hold games for Xbox 360, PC and

PS3.

ESWC

Starting in 2003 ESWC is a Lan event which has had a total prize of 1,721,000 from 2003 to 2010.

In 2003 ESWC had 150,000 players out of which 358 qualified for the finals. The total prize money was

156, 00.

In 2010 ESWC had a prize purse of214,500.

ESWC has a medal tally being followed since 2003 in which currently France, United States and South

Korea are the top three teams.


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Lets talk about some major companies producing gaming peripherals

RazerMeanwhile the market of gaming found a new branch gaming peripherals in 1999, Razera company

marked for its gaming products released Razer Boomslang. This marked the entry of gaming peripherals

with professional gaming in 2000. Professional gamers used these Gaming devices or say promoted

them at the very beginning. Other gamers saw this and started using it. And to their satisfaction it

turned out pretty good.

Razers tagline goes For gamers, By Gamers. All the products are made out of surveys and observation

on gamers and there comfort with the gaming devices. Razer has constantly taken feedback from the

gamers. A recent poll at facebook asked the Left hand gamers if they wanted Left handed Razer Naga

to be manufactured.

Steel Series

Following in Razers footsteps Steel Series was established in 2001 in Denmark. There products vary

from keyboards, mice, gaming surfaces and softwares. The entrance of SteelSeries in the market

marked a competition between Razer and SteelSeries. Today they are among the major manufacturers

and distributors for gaming peripherals.

I have noticed at a local gaming caf how fellow gamers boast about the smoothness of their new mice

and them also theres a fight between people who choose SteelSeries over Razer.

This competition will only grow further and with more companies jumping in.

Cooler Master

Cooler Master is a hardware manufacturer since 1992. Cooler Master saw the increase in the gaming

market for gaming peripherals; this led to a new branch Cooler Master Storm which manufactures

gaming devices for gamers since 2008. This was known as Arming the gaming revolution.

CoolerMaster did enter the gaming peripherals scene late but they did score a good percentage of the

market. There products were different from what Razer and Steel Series deliver.

Just like Cooler Master more companies may follow up and start manufacturing more gaming

peripherals when there is room for them.


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How big is it?

Talking of growth of competitive gaming I will take WCG into account.WCG which has grown

12 X from its origin in just 10 years. When WCG started it had just 17 countries, but now it has some 70

countries participating and the prize money is $462000 more than double from $20,000. I can show

more of these numbers.

WCG compromised of only 5 games in 2000, winning prizes of total $200,000 with 174 participants from

17 countries and only PC platform.

Currently WCG has 10 games, winning prize of more than $ 350, 00 with more than 500 participants and

about 60 countries. In 2009 the winning prize was $500, 00 and the participants reached 800 in WCG

2008 with 78 countries participating. Expanding to 78 countries in just few years has been a major

achievement for WCG. The tournament definitely proved that there can be a large number of people

who want to see how the best players in the game actually play. Live streaming through the internet

was available throughout the tournament.

A recent article at PCworld highlighted how big is the e-sport going to be in 2011

http://www.pcworld.com/article/214432/2011_the_year_of_esports.html

The article features an interview with a e-sport commentator MarcusDjWheat Graham. The interview

talks about how Marcus was involved in the E-Sport business.

Another Interview is with Greg IdrA fields. A professional Starcraft II player for Team Evil Geniuses. He

talks how the game Starcraft II is his full time job.

Wikipedia lists of total 22 International Professional leagues happening around the world for now.

All these tournaments are a proof of the growing industry for E-sport.

Back in the time people used to joke about that no one can make money with throwing a ball around.

Now we know how far Basketball has gone. E-sport is the future.

Major teams participation in E-sports

Fnatic is a team participating in Counter Strike, COD4, Dota 2, Starcraft 2, League of Legends, Halo and

Stracraft 2. They currently compromise of approximate 35 professional players. Fnatic has been

sponsored by SteelSeries and the team uses all the products made by SteelSeries.
http://www.pcworld.com/article/214432/2011_the_year_of_esports.htmlhttp://www.pcworld.com/article/214432/2011_the_year_of_esports.htmlhttp://www.pcworld.com/article/214432/2011_the_year_of_esports.html


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Currently famous spectator sport games.

Starcraft 2Coming back to gaming as a spectator sport I need to give an example to prove it. In Korea the

government provides 300 licenses to Starcraft players termed under professional. A recent article on

Cracked.com mentioned facts about Starcraft.

Starcraft is a career in Korea. In Korea there are 12 professional Starcraft team with top players having a

six figure salary. An average professional gamer makes more than an average Korean. In 2005 a total of

120,000 people gathered in a stadium. Even the Korean Air Force started their own team so that the

young men wont be disappointed while playing joining the Air-Force.

Another fact is half of Starcraft (4.5 million out of 9.5 million) were sold in South Korea. There are an

estimated total 3.6 million active players of Starcraft 2.

Starcraft II is one big chunk of E-sport for the current time.

Dota 2

Recently Valve launched Dota 2 beta directly off with a tournament compromising of prize money more

than worth $1 million which is the biggest cash prize tourney for MOBAS ever (Until their competitors

League of Legend followed in with a tournament with worth $5 million as prize money) .Launching the

game with a tournament of this big scale Valve made a lot of news which resulted in free advertisementfor the game

The tournament was called The International which featured 16 of worlds best Dota teams competing

against each other. The winning team NaVi from Ukraine took the grand prize of $1 million and the

runner ups EHOME from china were rewarded with $250,000. These 16 teams were the best in the

business. This resulted in fans of Dota being drawn into live stream where they could see each and

every match live on there browser. Average 150, 000 players were watching the stream at any given

point of time. Dota 2 was just in closed beta at this particular time. Yes Valve did release a trailer like all

other games. But starting off with a tournament which compromises the best teams from around the

globe and big money acted like catalyst for the hype that was being created for the game. A competitor

League of Legends saw this as incoming threat and also as an ideal marketing strategy. League of

Legends conducted a series of tournaments which had total prize money of $5 billion. The average

estimated no. of players for the tournament was 147, 000 at any given time.

Well Dota2 is sure going to make some new records in the near future and others will follow.


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As of a personnel view, I myself watched the stream for at least 40 minutes. Apart from watching the

amazing display of the skills by these professional players I also wanted to play the game as soon as

possible. The tournament turned out to be a great success, there was discussion regarding the look of

the game, the prize money, the teams, characters in the game etc. All this created so much hype for the

game that Valve didnt have to do any advertising for the game. Almost all MOBA gamers know what

dota 2 now is.

Counter Strike

Coming to a different genre from Dota 2, Counter strike has been around for competitive gaming since

11 years. This FPS game was included in WCG in 2001. Counter Strike is a game where people who play

it love watching it too. The games are short and that is what keeps the spectators tugged in. Talking of

the spectator sport involved in an action shooter like Counter strikehttp://www.hltv.orgis the biggest

streaming website for the game and its sequels. Info like Number of Teams, top players,no. of people

spectating the games is easily available on the website. The site has developed itself and you can alsosee the info like what maps the current teams have been winning or what are the favorite maps of the

players and you can even download old replays of the games known as Demo. The site is the best

example for spectator stats for Counter strike.

League of Legends

After Dota 2 announced their tournament The International where prize money of $1 million was put

on for the winner. League of Legends a competitor to Dota 2 announced a season two prize of $5

million. League of Legends recently went past World of Warcraft in terms of record of most number of

active players for any game in the world. The $5 million prize made the scene more competitive.

League of Legends streamed the full tournament online.

The competition between Dota 2 and League of Legends has boosted the E-Sport in all terms. The

gamers from both the games now expect something bigger happening after one of the games have

organized an event.

This kind of competitions in E-sport where winning prize of millions is thrown in just to increase the

competition of the game tells us how one gaming company can affect others.
http://www.hltv.org/http://www.hltv.org/http://www.hltv.org/http://www.hltv.org/


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How important is it for the games?Starcraft II came after 12 year of release of Starcraft I. Over the years Starcraft established a humongous

audience for Starcraft in E-sport and it boosted the numbers in terms of sales and professional gamers

when Starcraft II was released. Infact Starcraft is now so big that it can standalone apart from all the

other E-Sport and still be as famous it is.

Counter Strike 1.6 is still played even after 12 years of release. This is only because the game has been

involved in E-Sport throughout the years. The game was featured in WCG for all the 12 years and has

been since dominating the E-Sport scene started. It could be possibly the game which would have the

largest amount of players throughout the world. If we combine all those Local Cafs I bet CounterStrike

is more often played than other E-Sport.

As I stated above regarding League of Legends and Dota 2, they are in competition with each other andan event that happens for Dota 2 will affect the next event for League of Legends. This only leads to

promoting E-sport and helping more and more money being involved into games.

The connection of Peripherals and Spectator Sport

Now that we mentioned games which attract a lot of spectator sport like Counter Strike, Dota 2 and

Starcraft 2 now lets talk about the connection between them.

As I said earlier in the year 1999 Razer started the market of gaming peripherals with the introduction of

Razer mice named Boomslang.which started off the market for gaming devices in the Industry. Razer

came up with various products like Viper and Diamondback in 2004, Copperhead in 2005, Death adder

in 2006 etc. Companies like Steel Series and Cooler Master soon followed in. This resulted in products

like Gaming Mice, Keyboards, and Headsets, earphones, Mouse mats and even gaming speakers made in

the last 8 years by all these 3 major companies. Most of these were used for First Person Shooters -

All this was happening at the same time when Major tournaments like WCG were at their peak of their

audience. And it is still increasing in numbers in terms of revenue, players, prize money, etc.

Top players have used these mice, headsets in all the tournaments mentioned above which makes other

players see and buy it. The market expands in a similar fashion. I have personnely used these accessories

and I must say they are made in-order to maximize the experience of the player. I shall take Razer

Naga as an example for how it differentiates from common mice. Released in 2009 Naga was a mouse

built for playing MMOs and RPGs. The mouse has 17 buttons where a special action can be attached to


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each of them. The mice has some 5600 DPI whereas a normal mice would have just 500 -600 DPI. The

mice can also store info (which is profiles of the players) with 64 kb inbuilt memory.

A hardcore gamer would any day prefer Razer Naga over a normal Mice.

Somewhat same kind of information would be delivered if I compare a gaming headgear to a normalone.

All this Information has led to widespread use of gaming devices throughout the word. And now I hardly

see anyone who is playing professionally using a normal mice or headset.

The industry has evolved accordingly by the feedback received by the gamers.

Over the past years Razer and Steel Series have been releasing products based on the games that are

being released. You can find Razer Naga in World of Warcraftedition. A Razer Deathadder Dragon age

2 edition and a Razer Imperator Battlefield 3 edition.

Some of the Razer Mats which signify different games. Most of these games are competitive games.


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Some of SteeSeries products which signify different games and also professional teams.


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The products that you see above not only promote a game/team but also make gamers buy the product

just because they support/like that particular game.

The usual sponsors for the gaming teams are the companies like Razer, Steelseries etc and alsohardware companies like mSi and Eizo. The teams are growing day by day and so does the sponsors this

will result in more companies being attached to the E-sport scene. Which eventually results in the

market growing bigger and bigger.

Today almost anyone who plays any of the above mentioned games knows how big the scene could be if

they become good at that particular game. Due to E-sport professional gaming is a career now. It may

not apply for each and every country but it is surely growing. A good Starcraft player earns a lot just

because of Professional gaming.

Most gamers today can turn gaming into a career once they get really good at it and by turning ti a

career it does not mean that one should only play games, one can be a commentator or into the

management staff for a event(which is a very hard task) or even a translator. E-Sport has opened new

job opportunities for the masses.

Personnel opinionI have been a player of Counter Strike: Source for over 4 years. I had myself joined a professional team

and had participated in Local tournaments and as well International tournaments (only once).

I had myself used gaming peripherals and I must say that once I was used to the game CS then I decided

to buy myself a gaming mice and it greatly boosted my performance. I have not taken part in any majortournament as the scene in India for E-sport is yet to be developed. But anyway I had first-hand

experience, at many places I have noticed failure of management which shows how important event

management could be for E-sport.

A recent failure In India was India gaming Carnival they promised winning prizes of worth Rs 1.5 cr but

utterly failed to deliver as managers. Many games got cancelled and many international teams like

Moscow 5 were pissed off at the management and the organizers. Such incidents only bring shame to a

country and should be avoided at all cost. Management is the key to organize any tournament.

In my college my friends play Il-2 a flight simulation. Most of the times we have good matches we record

them and then we watch them later to see some epic dog fight between two of our comrades.

If ever there would be game based on flight simulation with extreme skill required I am sure that I would

be one of the people viewing it.


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Conclusion

E-sport is growing. It is growing Big. There already half-a-dozen articles over the net which site that E-

Sport is the future. Moreover the events have been successful over the years and in terms of revenue

and each and every number.

This will only grow further with more tournaments being organized and more gamers being added

everyday and more companies joining in to produce Gaming Peripherals.

All this research has invoked me to stick to the news of E-sports and revolution in design for Gaming

peripherals. The companies are surpassing the boundaries of development and now they are coming up

with better and better products.

Events like Dreamhack and the gathering are in competition are to compete against each other.


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Bibliography

www.cracked.com -info for Starcraft II

www.wiki.com -info

www.google.com -info

www.fnatic.com -team info

www.steelseries.com -device info

www.razer.com -device info

www.kotaku.com -facts
http://www.cracked.com/http://www.cracked.com/http://www.wiki.com/http://www.wiki.com/http://www.google.com/http://www.google.com/http://www.fnatic.com/http://www.fnatic.com/http://www.steelseries.com/http://www.steelseries.com/http://www.razer.com/http://www.razer.com/http://www.kotaku.com/http://www.kotaku.com/http://www.kotaku.com/http://www.razer.com/http://www.steelseries.com/http://www.fnatic.com/http://www.google.com/http://www.wiki.com/http://www.cracked.com/

thesis final avichal singh f2 25thapr 2012 final

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