The NY Times has an article about Major League Gaming today:
… The federal ruling was based on a gaming metric known as APMs, or actions per minute. In StarCraft, for example, a military strategy game, the average player can generally reach about 70 APMs. The world’s most accomplished gamers — like the celebrated BoxeR, who lives in South Korea — can execute as many as 400. That means BoxeR, a master of the game, is able to perform more than six separate keystrokes or movements of the mouse every second. …
Mirroring the ambitions of the industry as a whole, M.L.G.’s next step is to try to break out of the video-gaming ghetto and attract a wider audience. Starting this month, the league will gradually unveil an eclectic, five-hour block of evening Internet broadcasts, adding lifestyle shows to its already popular live-streamed competitions.
Uhhh… Yeah.
Also, interesting that this comes out during the International, but doesn’t even mention MOBAs, considering how much MOBAs are the new pro gaming hotness
Meh, MLG’s been airing LoL for about a year now, but the emergence of the LCS has really wrecked the interest-factor of weekend LANs for that game, seeing as how all the games they’re generally ALLOWED to play are very ho-hum “week 34 quasi-placement matches for region 7, group X!” style series. Nonetheless, LoL’s been their unquestionable top performer in stream numbers ever since it arrived on MLG’s circuit.
What I find more interesting is that this announcement comes about 2 days after MLG CEO Sundance DiGiovanni announced that they had dropped Starcraft II from the lineup for their end-of-year event, MLG Columbus (this was announced in the midst of The International 3 and only 2 days before the beginning of Starcraft’s own “WCS” Finals for NA, EU, and KR). Given that they already canceled their “MLG Summer” event entirely (after 3 reasonably successful years at the Raleigh Convention Center), and that they’ve dropped their old “moneymaker” game Halo more than a year ago, the MLG of 2014 is going to be an extremely different beast than the company that’s achieved the success it has thus far.
Interestingly, to this point, most of the games played at MLG are there because the game makers pay MLG to showcase the game as a form of advertisement–in fact, SC2 was probably the only game not to arrive that way in the last 5 years or so. MLG has a very tight relationship with the devs behind the games showcased during its events, for better or for worse (for instance, Capcom has openly banned them from ever running a Capcom-branded fighting game, leaving their abortive attempt to re-enter the FGC last year to fight over scraps–as far as competitive games go–like KoF and MK)…
Like, I definitely wish them the best, but with the removal of all fighting games and Starcraft from the schedule and the bland watered down LCS LoL matches they get to air, I just have no reason to continue watching MLG after being an avid consumer for 3 years straight. Given that they’ve lived this entire time entirely on the generosity of angel investors (still haven’t turned a year-for-year profit as of yet), I can’t help but think that alienating large communities like the SC2 viewership and FGC can’t possibly be in MLG’s best interest, particularly if they’re pinning their hopes on a sudden break into the “mainstream” that hasn’t panned out in the last decade and a half of broadcasted competitive gaming.
Went to one of these events last year- but for the fighting games, not the traditional fare. Was very pleasant, a much more laid-back affair than the typical major tourney.
My only regret was not getting a chance to play Kayane (Famous female player) in Soul Calibur- was next in line when she quit.
