[wincy]

It was definitely an interesting article but the first sentence of the article proper really grabbed me.

The weird thing to me about the world is you can have an event that literally millions of people watch around the world, and if you had asked me “what’s the International” five minutes ago I wouldn’t have had any idea, and I’m a very online person! I play video games, even, and at one point played DOTA2!

The internet has totally fractionated our culture to subcultures within subcultures, to the point where when people meet in person they have nothing to talk about. Down with the monoculture and all that.

It’s astounding how much money and thought and effort went into building the booths too! This is the least surprising part: there is a lot of money sloshing around in the world. The amount of talent to build soundproof booths so people can comfortably play a video game in front of a bunch of people is wild.

[__s]

TI is a bit notorious because it's prize pool is massive compared to other esports. Winning TI puts someone's prize earnings past lifetime earnings of most other top player's career prize earnings in other games

https://liquipedia.net/dota2/The_International#Tournaments

https://liquipedia.net/dota2/Portal:Statistics/Player_earnin...

https://liquipedia.net/starcraft2/Winnings

https://liquipedia.net/starcraft/Portal:Statistics/Player_ea...

[bspammer]

To hammer it home even more: https://www.esportsearnings.com/players

21 dota players at the top before you get a different game (Fortnite)

[alargemoose]

Wow, Not only are the top 21 dota 2 players, all but *4* of the top 50 earners are dota 2 players

[tym0]

And the top 5 earners for CS:GO are all Astralis players.

[kleinsch]

This is only prize earnings, important to keep in mind that Dota heavily weights prizes from tournaments. Highest total prize earnings on that chart is $7M, Faker pulls in $5M/year in salary alone.

[q7xvh97o2pDhNrh]

Fascinating. This isn't a space I follow, but the data is eye-opening. To contextualize it for myself a bit more, I checked out annual earnings [1] instead of lifetime and compared it to the overall global list [2] of athletes across all sports.

One interesting takeaway is that it looks like eSports are still a couple orders of magnitude away from breaking into that rarefied air — the top eSports athletes earned ~$1.8M over the last year, while the cutoff to make it in the list of top 50 global highest-earning athletes is ~$45M. It wouldn't surprise me to see eSports start making it up there over the next couple decades, though.

The second interesting takeaway is that, for many athletes in the global top 50, their off-the-field earnings are a big part of their total. By contrast, endorsement deals for eSports athletes don't seem like much of a thing nowadays, other than the occasional team-up for a gaming mouse/keyboard. This seems like it'd be a growth area for eSports over the next couple decades, too.

TL;DR: I wish there were some way to buy some ETFs or stake some athletes in the eSports space. It seems like it has a lot of growth ahead of it still.

[1]: https://www.esportsearnings.com/players/highest-earnings-las...

[2]: https://www.forbes.com/lists/athletes/

[Huppie]

You've probably missed that the former website only lists winnings and does not include the player salaries and other income like from streaming.

The numbers are significantly higher for the top players, but sure enough still a lot lower than 'regular' athletes.

[namtab00]

There you go:

VanEck Video Gaming and eSports UCITS (ESP0)

http://www.investing.com/etfs/vaneck-vectors-videogameesport...

[fragmede]

1st place in 2022 got $8,518,822! Nice!

[jon-wood]

Everyone being in different sub-cultures doesn’t mean people have nothing to talk about, it makes conversation way more interesting if you’re just willing to step out of your bubble for a bit. Some of the best pub conversations I’ve had have been chatting to someone about things I’d never even heard of until that moment, and finding out about fun niches that I’d probably still not know about otherwise.

[dubcanada]

That's strange, The International is a very well known esport event, the biggest in it's hayday, it's certainly dropped off, but at one point there wasn't a way to open Steam without seeing details about the International.

While I agree with your premise, The International was heavily advertised on Steam products. Which is the biggest gaming store. Outside of that, there was minimal but anyone who watched esports saw TI stuff, it was always #1 on twitch during its week playoffs/tournament day.

[TheDong]

> The International was heavily advertised on Steam products. Which is the biggest gaming store.

The biggest gaming store is almost certainly the Android Google Play Store's gaming section. It also wouldn't surprise me if the nintendo eShop is larger than the steam store, but at the very least I'm very confident in Google Play and iOS app stores being larger than steam for games.

I think the majority of gamers have never played a PC game or watched esports. The parent post only said "I even played games", and you jumped to "watching esports" and "twitch". Watching esports is a tiny niche of gamers. Watching twitch also is.

[dubcanada]

That's the point, if you don't know about any esport, why would you know about this one? If you do know about esports then you know about The International.

But let's also say that The International was on ESPN, and other "sports" TV channels.

[camtarn]

I watched Overwatch tourneys on Twitch for a bit. And I played a little bit of League of Legends so MOBAs aren't entirely foreign to me.

Didn't know about The International - I had to go look it up.

The world is stranger than you might believe.

[ufo]

And to add to that, Dota e-sports is particularly insular among other e-sports: https://blog.twitch.tv/en/2015/02/04/visual-mapping-of-twitc...

[doikor]

Dota players play/watch Dota. Similar thing also applies to country strike players.

At least this is the experience in my circle of friends. Got a couple friends who have pretty much only played Dota (or CS) for the last 15+ years and have 0 interest in even trying any other game. There is also the crowd (including me) who play video games in general but these are very clearly different groups.

So this is like saying "football fans are insular to football". I mean yeah they are football fans not "sports fans".

[Retric]

Most football fans I know watch other sports, often basketball. If for no other reason than the season is fairly short.

Dora is insular in large part because it’s always available.

[doikor]

I think it also has a lot to do with it being much easier to actually play the sport/game.

When the pros are not playing you can just play yourself. With football/etc playing the game in a proper competitive setup is quite the hassle. In Dota or CS you just get 4 of your friends and press a button and in 2 to 3 minutes you are playing.

[Unfrozen0688]

Mobile games are not real games.

[kibwen]

I assume this is being downvoted because arguments like this are usually either no-true-scotsmanning or borne out of elitism.

However, what is true is that "video games" are so variegated as a medium that it's probably worth splitting it up into multiple mediums, in the same way that television, short film, and feature film are all considered different mediums despite being largely the same in many ways. If The Godfather and Caillou are different mediums, then Red Dead Redemption and Candy Crash can also be different mediums.

[raisedbyninjas]

It's not that candy crush and other casual games aren't real games. It's that the modern versions currently in the app stores aren't games. Original versions of candy crush, angry birds, etc. have been removed. What is available now are time-gated gem stores. Maybe 1% of titles aren't reskinned clones that can be played more than 5 minutes straight.

[flangola7]

No self respecting gamer calls mobile apps true games. No one who gets excited about video game development wants to work on candy crush v400

[ricardobeat]

You might think that, but the “not self respecting” mobile and console gamers out there outnumber you 3:1.

Some of the most popular games have been PUBG, Fortnite, Rainbow Six, Roblox… I don’t play on mobile myself but you can’t deny this new reality.

[bigstrat2003]

Don't just sneak "console gamers" in there, that's disingenuous when the GP didn't say anything about them.

Anyways, statistics aside he's right. Mobile games aren't the same thing as console/PC games. They are, almost without exception, thinly veiled monetization machines designed to be almost fun but not actually fun, just so you will pay money. They are literally designed to be less fun as a business strategy. There are games on real gaming platforms which are just as exploitative and poorly designed, but they are the exception. With mobile games they are the rule.

Given that the nature of the markets is so wildly different, it's perfectly reasonably to say "no, these are different things".

[ricardobeat]

You also seem to be thinking of Candy Crush style games, whereas I was pointing out that in recent years some of the most popular mobile games are FPS, RTS, also things like Honkai: Star Rail and Genshin Impact and other action games. On the other end, desktop games have also become monetization machines in the same fashion - Fortnite, Apex, CS:GO, OW, Minecraft, Roblox are massive money-making machines. Any judgement about mobile games being 'less fun' or 'less serious' is entirely subjective.

This thread started because someone though Steam stands as the universal entrypoint to gaming in general, which is absolutely far from the truth.

[Ntrails]

The growth of mobile gaming in regions that used to be dominated by LAN cafe based gaming is super interesting. Most of the previously buzzing gaming hubs died during covid. PC Gaming equipment is extortionate, even in higher net worth areas, phones are ubiquitous anyway

[danhor]

High-end equipment certainly increased sharply in price in the last few years, but few people gaming on PC spend anywhere near that amount of money. If you just went to play most games on a reasonable framerate (30fps) a Steam Deck for 400$ is perfectly fine.

For those with high-resolution screens and 144fps the equipment is not affordable to most but not necessary.

But an already existing phone is cheaper for sure

[Gabriel_Martin]

Wouldn't be gaming without a healthy dose of gatekeeping ;)

[usrusr]

Never heard of it and I stare at the steam store frontpage more than anyone should. There's a thing called personalization and apparently your dataset triggers the "show The International content" and mine does not. The days of broadcast are gone and whatever you may think is shared media experience is most likely not.

[fragmede]

I played World of Warcraft I and II on an IPX network, but I stopped gaming around when Quake 2 died out in favor of CS. I have steam installed on my MacBook. I used Twitch a lot in 2020 and 2021; less so these days. I spend way too much time on HN; I'm not ill informed about other things.

Probably saw an ad for it sometime in the past but I can't say I remembered its name or anything. The attention economy is real. There are huge swaths of culture that I'll hear about from friends of friends and it's astounding how much is out there and the conventions they have for it.

[taneq]

I'm guessing that was muscle memory sneaking a 'World of' in there. ;)

[IggleSniggle]

That's an interesting take. I've been playing on Steam since HL2, very regularly, and although I remember DOTA2 being heavily advertised, I don't think I ever saw an ad or promotion for The International. Unlike the other poster, however, I never actually installed DOTA2.

[ncphillips]

> very well known

I think you’re illustrating their point. I’m no stranger to internet or video game culture but I’ve never heard of The International.

[amelius]

Another datapoint here: I didn't know about the event either.

[dubcanada]

Perhaps I over estimate it's reach, I don't know. I just find it strange that people don't know much about a esports even that is the largest prize pool in the world, and has been going on for over a decade. It's not like the viewer numbers are low.

But I will say it's like watching chess, some matches can take 1 hour or longer. It's certainly not for everyone and you need deep knowledge of the heroes and items to fully understand what is going on.

[amelius]

Reasonable points, but I don't think prize pool size has anything to do with it. I mean some lotteries have crazy prize money but many people in their right mind couldn't care less.

I think that the age of the internet has brought us the effect that everybody can just mind their own thing. There is not just a few TV stations dictating what everyone should watch, like in the old days.

[fomine3]

I'm too used to ignore irrelevant ads so I've never noticed it on Steam.

[NikolaNovak]

Thing is, millions aren't what they used to be! with world population at just over 8 billion, the viewership of 2 million makes it pretty obscure. World cup final had 1.5 Bil viewers apparently (TIL).

[jack_pp]

Well, can't really compare a fairly complex computer game where you need to actively play in order to even understand the stream with a.. checks Wikipedia.. 2000 year old game with simple enough rules that you can watch without any knowledge.

Football also has the advantage of a fixed rule set. I've played over 4000 hours of dota in my life but none in the last 12 months. I've tried watching it on twitch and the map layout changed, probably new heroes were added or old heroes changed..

[Cyph0n]

That’s why I’m of the opinion that CS is the best spectator esport out there. The rounds are short and the overall barrier to entry for a viewer to enjoy the game is low, yet the skill ceiling is extremely high.

Edit: If you’re not familiar with CS, try tuning in to the ESL stream and see how much you understand: https://www.twitch.tv/eslcs

[matrss]

Makes sense. Trackmania would fit that bill as well: it's just racing, but most often without the burden of following real-world physics too much, which can make it very entertaining.

[thaumasiotes]

> Football also has the advantage of a fixed rule set.

I'd tend to agree that video games are ensuring they can never stick around by constantly throwing the rules in the garbage.

But if you're going to claim that soccer is 2000 years old, you can't also claim that it has a fixed rule set. It changes at a slower pace. The slower pace of change is an improvement over video games. But it still changes. There is not even continuity between an attested 2000-year-old game and soccer.

[walthamstow]

I'd read that article about association football again if I was you. 1) just because kicking a ball is 2000 years old doesn't mean soccer is and 2) offside and backpasses have both changed in my short lifetime, completely changing how the game is played.

[raincole]

By Joel Spolsky: when I say "no one" I mean less than 10 million people.

[walthamstow]

> where when people meet in person they have nothing to talk about.

Not true IMO. My friends are all nerds with widely varied interests, there is no one single interest that we all share. Only one of us is into model trains, for example, but he still talks about it and we still listen and ask questions.

(For reference, we're late 80s/early 90s millennials.)

[Keyframe]

Also, world got a lot bigger (more people) and smaller (a lot of news instant and online) at the same time.