Educate them, stupid!

The Holy Grail of the entire esports industry is bringing competitive gaming to a mainstream audience. Those that try it by dumbing it down for the viewer have got it all wrong. And the evidence to that is right under their noses.

The most prominent attempts at doing so in recent years try it by means of using simpler games and simpler rules in order for the viewer to understand. A paradox is to be found there: the only games so far to have been successful in drawing large crowds to watch live events are RTS games. The most complex ones.

Those games are StarCraft in Korea and Warcraft 3 in China. Tens of thousands come to watch their idols play live, while the most lucrative American league pays their audience to fill a television studio.

Of course, Korea’s ban on Japanese imports (including videogames) or China’s ban on games the government views as harmful were factors that helped. But it was still StarCraft and Warcraft 3 that succeeded, not simple games with simple rules.

Complexity cannot be blamed for games not going to the mainstream elsewhere. Whatever you say about the Koreans and the Chinese, they are not from another planet. Like you, they like to eat, drink, have sex and play videogames.

Europeans like to eat, drink, have sex and play sports just like Americans do, but they do not know the rules and all the intricacies of baseball. Does that make baseball a spectator sport? Is baseball too complex to be watched?

Perhaps baseball should be dumbed down just so everything about it can be understood instantly. Would it then be a good spectator sport for the European audience? Simplicity will not help if you are uninterested.

A friend of mine argued that his mother would not understand a StarCraft game if she saw it but she would understand Dead or Alive 4. But your mother will not watch videogames tournaments. Not even if it is as simple as Pong. I cannot relate to baseball and she cannot relate to Dead or Alive 4.

Simplicity has nothing to do with it. Simplicity does not make a spectator sport. Simplicity is not what we need.

We need great, universally enjoyed titles. We need blooming leagues for thousands of amateurs playing for fun. Because the only audience gaming will ever get are gamers themselves.

Do not ever forget that.

By the way, if you still want to say Asians are a completely different culture, then let me show you Germany: