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Hong Kong9136 Posts
Oversaturation
Please read this entire post before replying.
Introduction
The word ‘oversaturation’ has been in vogue within our community for the better part of a year now. Frankly, I am absolutely fed up with it. The term is problematic because its use belies a number of fundamental misconceptions about how to properly grow the activity. Crying about oversaturation has become a serious crutch. It hinders the progression and growth of the activity as a whole. Because discourse helps to shape human action, the following deconstruction of the word ‘oversaturation’ and its use is meant to try to get people to change their way of thinking about the term and question the motives of those who advocate it.
Defining oversaturation
Oversaturation, as a word in and of itself, is a corruption of the term ‘supersaturation,’ which denotes a state in which a chemical solution contains more of a dissolved material than can be dissolved by the solvent under normal circumstances. (1) Supersaturation also refers to a vapor of a compound that has a higher partial pressure than the vapor pressure of that compound. (2) The word itself is neutral, there is no implication of good or bad inherent in its definition, owing to its scientific origins. (3)
This is a far cry from how it has been used in the competitive gaming scene over the better part of a year. Oversaturation advocates argue the following points:
- That there are ‘too many’ tournaments and events existent in the scene right now.
- That the above kills ESPORTS.
- That to not kill ESPORTS, there should be substantially less tournaments and events existent in the scene.
As such the term takes on a wholly negative connotation in our common parlance. It has become part of the common parlance precisely because no one has so far bothered to think about the issue critically.
The problem with oversaturation
Proponents of oversaturation myopically believe that we have enough demand now, and that this level of demand will remain unchanged despite changes in the price level and shocks to supply. This is hardly the case. It has been conceded time and time again that the current level of demand for competitive gaming is still at a low level. ESPORTS is still a small fraction of the actual gaming community, which itself remains a small fraction of the entire population as a whole.
The following shows a theoretical economy of ESPORTS:
The full loss area is actually the entire area until the vertical line finally meets AD1.
The aggregate supply curve (AS) denotes the total output of goods and services (in our case, events and tournaments), produced within an economy at a given overall price level in a given time period and its relationship between price levels and the quantity of output that firms are willing to provide. (4) The aggregate demand curves (AD1, 2, and 3) denote the total demand for goods and services within our ESPORTS economy at a given price level. In this theoretical economy, aggregate demand is made up of the sum total of: consumption of events and tournaments in the form of time, money, and engagement, investment into the scene in terms of marketing and promotion, and external spending in terms of injections of capital into the scene by the game developers. (5) The points at which the aggregate supply curve meet the two levels of aggregate demand are equilibrium points. At these convergences of price and supply, an optimal level of events and tournaments are produced and consumed. The first point (PL1), denotes the current equilibrium level existent today. (6) The second point (PL2) denotes a theoretical equilibrium point reached when the aggregate demand curve shifts to the right. The third point (PL3) denoted on this graph denotes the a theoretical point to which the proponents of oversaturation seek to reduce production artificially. As you can see, it dramatically under-serves the current level of aggregate demand for the sole purpose of increasing the price level.
What happens to the people who would be under-served by this supply shock? When supply is restricted to this point, and everything becomes an $8.95 pay-per-view purchase, (7) people will simply drop out of the formal market. It must be understood that the ESPORTS market does not operate in a vacuum. A large number of things compete for the consumption of the audience our activity relies upon, and these things operate as extremely close substitutes. (8) This dropout factor is what creates the theoretical AD3 curve in the graphic above.
Supply-sided approaches to this matter ignore the fact that demand-side approaches make far more sense in the current environment. Rather than restrict supply (in restraint of trade) to such a level that aggregate demand will be forced to decrease to meet it, our community should focus all of its efforts into building aggregate demand to the point where supply will increase with it sustainably.
Proponents of oversaturation would imply that the problem is that total production right now is too large. They would seek to shift the supply curve to the left, as denoted in the following:
There are only two ways to constrict total output in this manner: some producers of events and tournaments must close shop and leave the economy or all current producers must agree to make less. The way by which this is accomplished can be elective on the part of the producers, coercive, in which larger producers engage in anticompetitive practices to force out competition, or a mixture of both approaches.
This is the logic of oversaturation: to reduce competition in the market substantially. Aggregate demand, to its proponents, is stable and inelastic. It is an approach which labels the entrance of new producers and competitors into the market as harmful to the overall economy. It is an approach that is fundamentally exclusionary and anti-democratic. Forcing producers out of the market is just as bad as forcing consumers out of the market, on both an economic and ethical level. This is especially so when an increase in aggregate demand would solve the supply ‘problem’ that proponents of oversaturation love to isolate in the first place.
Beyond oversaturation
All this focus on oversaturation also ignores the fact that a number of intervening factors (a number of which fall outside of the control of everybody in ESPORTS) can contribute significantly to the decline in engagement that oversaturation proponents point towards as proof of its existence.
Let’s talk about things we can somewhat influence first. Decreased engagement might be as a result of a number of deficiencies that may or may not exist in the status quo. Current tournament production might just not be doing a good enough job of producing storyline and hype in their product. Current progamers just might not be good enough to stir up hype and a following outside of creating petty drama. The current batch of good progamers just may not be ‘exciting enough’ for casual viewers. The solutions for these things are simple, and would be advantageous: (1) make a better product and ensure its quality, (2) play better at the game and show off skill, and (3) marketing deserving players based on skill regardless of their point of national origin. These actions, once again, move towards shifting the aggregate demand curve to the right rather than focusing on restricting supply and trade.
We also have to recognize that StarCraft II is not the only competitive game title which is enjoying an amount of success in the present. Other games exist, most notably Dota 2 and League of Legends, which compete for the viewership of our audience; and it might just be true that they are currently doing a better job of enticing that audience and keeping them engaged than the StarCraft community is doing.
The final intervening factor is something none of us can affect in any way, unless any of you reading this blog on Team Liquid actually happen to be ministers of finance or heads of state in the most powerful countries of the world. The fact is that the economy sucks and will continue to suck for quite some time. In the United States, unemployment has reached 7.8%, (9) and a great deal more are structurally unemployed, meaning they have given up on seeking work in the first place. In other economies, specifically in the Eurozone, the unemployment rate is far worse than what the United States is experiencing. This is coupled with an increased focus on austerity measures which aim at the reduction of sovereign debt and deficits at the expense of growth in at least the short- to medium-term. The euro itself is in danger of collapsing, and there are rumors abound in the market about a Chinese economic recession as their era of sustained double-digit growth eventually comes to an end. All of these things negatively impact the amount of time people have available to the consumption of ESPORTS.
Conclusion
Demand-side approaches are the way to solve the problems in competitive gaming, not supply-side restrictions in restraint of trade. Economics and ethics aside, our community seems to have forgotten the original goal of it all: to get more people involved in competitive gaming and to get more people passionate about competitive gaming. If it turns out that ESPORTS is actually unsustainable, then let it fall. The fans will still be there in the end, and growing their numbers now can only increase the likelihood of a resurgence in the future after a fall.
References and Notes:- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supersaturation
- Ibid
- It does, however, assume steady-state.
- http://www.investopedia.com/terms/a/aggregatesupply.asp#axzz29Q6A6CMi
- In macroeconomics, aggregate demand is equal to the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) of a given economy. ‘External spending’ in the case of ESPORTS is close to the function of the government spending component of GDP. Because there is no real function of international trade and export in ESPORTS, this component is ignored in calculating our theoretical aggregate demand curves within the ESPORTS economy.
- Proponents of oversaturation would have you think that the current equilibrium level is not actually an ‘equilibrium.’ This is a useless value statement. The facts do not change, at the current level of production and consumption, this level remains the equilibrium point for the economy.
- Shoutouts to Canada Cup.
- Examples of alternatives include: movies, television shows, casual video games.
- http://www.bls.gov/
Previous blog: Inflation and Exchange Rates
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Neat blog and analysis I do personally agree that there is an overabundance of tournaments, but that is good for players who are looking for money and recognition, and entertaining for fans as well. However that does kind of cheapen the value of every tournament/win...so it's not a black and white issue by any means.
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great read. we really have to focus on increasing the esports audience before we start making decisions that assume we have all the audience we will ever get.
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Hong Kong9136 Posts
On October 16 2012 13:20 EffervescentAureola wrote:Neat blog and analysis I do personally agree that there is an overabundance of tournaments, but that is good for players who are looking for money and recognition, and entertaining for fans as well. However that does kind of cheapen the value of every tournament/win...so it's not a black and white issue by any means.
I don't claim there is an overabundance of tournaments. I claim there is a current equilibrium between supply and demand currently. I also claim that if people who point towards 'oversaturation' are correct in that there is a surplus of supply, the best way to mediate this issue is to increase demand instead of restricting supply for the reasons I give above.
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Waiting on the boom in demand from HotS that is bound to happen before i decide what my viewpoint on the issue is. The problem with comparing like this on graphs is there is no values you can apply.
Great read though, identifies the problem very well.
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No actually I think you need to spawn more happy drones.
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I totally thought you were talking about mineral line oversaturation. It was a great read though - the hand-drawn graphs were cute.
I've got some non-gamer friends who are interested in giving the game a whirl. I figure that I'll let them play for a good little bit before I introduce TL and the pro-scene bit by bit.
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Fair enough. I have austrian tendencies, but Demand side really does make sense here.
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Such a great blog. Well done, sir.
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Bear in mind that the smaller, $200-300 online tournies have much lower operating overheads and operate almost purely out of use for the players. They also provide much needed exposure to lesser known players, players that are still amateur but skilled enough to compete with lower end pros and casters with the same qualities as both. They consequently involve a much smaller audience but due to the vastly lower overheads can either charge a limited entry fee to fund the prize or require a much smaller sponsor to function.
These tournaments will never outstrip demand because the demand comes directly from players.
What is nearing the point of oversaturation is the major tournament schedule and this needs to be sorted between the various organisations involved. MLG, IPL and Dreamhack need to approach the major gaming conventions and sort out mutually beneficial dates and times. There should also be more crossover between the various events. I know they are technically in competition but the scene isn't really big enough at the moment to support four or five major tournament providers slugging it out with each other over the same identity.
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Make more hatches. Interesting to see this pop up at the same time as Grubby's initiative, it'll be interesting to see what the part of the community willing to articulate an intelligent response think about it.
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Hong Kong9136 Posts
On October 16 2012 18:35 Evangelist wrote: What is nearing the point of oversaturation is the major tournament schedule and this needs to be sorted between the various organisations involved. MLG, IPL and Dreamhack need to approach the major gaming conventions and sort out mutually beneficial dates and times. There should also be more crossover between the various events. I know they are technically in competition but the scene isn't really big enough at the moment to support four or five major tournament providers slugging it out with each other over the same identity.
They aren't technically in competition if your last sentence holds. And the whole point of my writing is to point out that 'the scene isn't big enough' is a lame excuse. Make the scene big enough by investing into it and increasing aggregate demand
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1) There are 14 competing tournaments in Starcraft 2 2) We need a single tournament so good that everyone will tune in! 3) There are 15 competing tournaments in Starcraft 2
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Hong Kong9136 Posts
On October 16 2012 18:44 Fyodor wrote: 1) There are 14 competing tournaments in Starcraft 2 2) We need a single tournament so good that everyone will tune in! 3) There are 15 competing tournaments in Starcraft 2
And your impact to this is.. what exactly? If you imply it is bad, what I've written serves as built-in offense against this. Supply collusion in restraint of trade is a market failure. Increased competition within any market can only be a benefit, unless you are a monopolist.
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I was a bit confused sometimes by your use of "increasing/decreasing supply and demand". Sometimes you are talking about curve shifts (the classical meaning of an increase and decrease) and sometimes you are talking about movements along a curve (i.e. increases in quantity demanded and supplied). Also, when you talk about decreasing production you have a shift in the demand curve - which is wrong. (or are you talking about a "maximum price" model and are just showing the overall effect?) I think a tl;dr would be that, assuming a classical economic model and ceteris paribus, there is no point in making any regulations at all - a classic free market argument (basically, if people were actually supplying too high a quantity, their product wouldn't be met by quantity demanded and they would go out of business anyways).
The only way I can see an economic standpoint behind a "restricting the supply" argument is that somehow an increase in supply (meaning a shift in the curve) reduces the demand (meaning ceteris paribus no longer applies) - a standpoint which I find hard to get behind.
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I think this is assuming that demand is going to rise linearly. My personal opinion is that starcraft is a game that requires significant investment (timewise) to be able to reach a playable level where you understand the game enough to watch it. Very few people who watch starcraft have never played it before, meaning your viewerbase is limited to people who have played the game. Starcraft has an image of being a game which requires a lot of skill to be able to play, and is a game designed for very competitive people, with little to no support for "casuals" compared to a game like league of legends or something like that.
This means that your potential audience is also limited to the "hardcore" gamers, or at least competitive people with casuals not really ever taking the leap to learn the game when there are much more attractive options available if you only want to play maybe a few games a week with friends. This could imply that starcraft is never going to reach the levels of viewers that more mainstream sports are because it is only a specific slice of the population who is "eligible" to become a serious viewer, meaning your demmand curve is incredibly skewed with a steep slope.
Just a point of view :p
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Damnit i thought it was as simple as having 16 drones for minerals and 6 for 2 gas :|
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Let's take arguments that apply to commodities subject to physical scarcity and misuse them to describe digitally distributed products with negligible marginal cost yeahhh
Because you see this is why korea needed over a dozen gaming channels, each with its own brood war tournament: because they required that many in order to satisfy the demand created by the millions of koreans who followed professional starcraft
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The economy is sluggish but that should little affect a market whose main target demographic is unemployed, anyway. And you can't grow the market beyond this current demographic if fans continue to insist on tournament structures that are very unfriendly time-wise to anybody holding a full time job.
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On October 16 2012 21:47 T0fuuu wrote: Damnit i thought it was as simple as having 16 drones for minerals and 6 for 2 gas :| This thread just got infinitely funnier haha, wp wp. I was reading and it was so serious, then I read this and lol-ed
To the OP, I disagree slightly, I don't believe that having many tournaments like we do is a detriment since most pros don't participate in the small ones, (ZEEK etc.) but rather only participate in large tournaments that tend to have a lot of sponsorships and viewers. Also we cannot increase the size of the scene without increasing the amount of tournaments, that is how the fighting games scene stays alive, lots of regional tournaments that have some of the talent at each, and all the talent at the country/worldwide ones.
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Hong Kong9136 Posts
On October 16 2012 22:40 wozzot wrote: Let's take arguments that apply to commodities subject to physical scarcity and misuse them to describe digitally distributed products with negligible marginal cost yeahhh
Because the amount of human beings and their time and attention and money is not subject to scarcity, right? That's the market here, not the video games; read the OP. Even if the market was video games here, marginal cost is not negligible in any serious analysis of their market.
On October 16 2012 23:38 docvoc wrote:Show nested quote +On October 16 2012 21:47 T0fuuu wrote: Damnit i thought it was as simple as having 16 drones for minerals and 6 for 2 gas :| This thread just got infinitely funnier haha, wp wp. I was reading and it was so serious, then I read this and lol-ed To the OP, I disagree slightly, I don't believe that having many tournaments like we do is a detriment since most pros don't participate in the small ones, (ZEEK etc.) but rather only participate in large tournaments that tend to have a lot of sponsorships and viewers. Also we cannot increase the size of the scene without increasing the amount of tournaments, that is how the fighting games scene stays alive, lots of regional tournaments that have some of the talent at each, and all the talent at the country/worldwide ones.
I never claim that it is a detriment. I said that others claim that it is a detriment, and that they are wrong. Re-read the actual OP. I do agree with you in that the fighting game scene is an example of a scene 'doing it right.' They do not cry out for collusion and artificially restricted supply, but rather focus on increasing the scene as a whole instead.
On October 16 2012 21:42 killerdog wrote: I think this is assuming that demand is going to rise linearly. My personal opinion is that starcraft is a game that requires significant investment (timewise) to be able to reach a playable level where you understand the game enough to watch it. Very few people who watch starcraft have never played it before, meaning your viewerbase is limited to people who have played the game. Starcraft has an image of being a game which requires a lot of skill to be able to play, and is a game designed for very competitive people, with little to no support for "casuals" compared to a game like league of legends or something like that.
This means that your potential audience is also limited to the "hardcore" gamers, or at least competitive people with casuals not really ever taking the leap to learn the game when there are much more attractive options available if you only want to play maybe a few games a week with friends. This could imply that starcraft is never going to reach the levels of viewers that more mainstream sports are because it is only a specific slice of the population who is "eligible" to become a serious viewer, meaning your demmand curve is incredibly skewed with a steep slope.
Just a point of view :p
This is valid on the level of just looking at StarCraft. I'll submit that because we only have a small percentage of the population currently involved with competitive gaming, it should at least be tried because the potential audience out there is vast and because the alternative is worse and probably made illegal through antitrust regulation. The goal of it all is to grow ESPORTS out of passion and not monopolistic concerns, if we suddenly think it's impossible just because have reduced viewership then the goal is lost.
It must be understood though that my analysis here isn't strictly limited to StarCraft competition; it takes the entire ESPORTS economy and analyses it as a whole. It is interesting to note here, a point which came up in discussing this with a friend before I published this here: that the growth of other competitive gaming titles and especially a tournament event series like IPL investing in League of Legends makes it substantially more feasible for them to run a StarCraft II tournament alongside a League tournament because of the reduced cost of running production for a multi-game event rather than a dedicated StarCraft event. Growing the ESPORTS scene as a whole improves the viability of potentially all of the other existent titles, up to a point.
On October 16 2012 23:35 andrewlt wrote: The economy is sluggish but that should little affect a market whose main target demographic is unemployed, anyway. And you can't grow the market beyond this current demographic if fans continue to insist on tournament structures that are very unfriendly time-wise to anybody holding a full time job.
Fixing these tournament structures might be part of the investment made. I've actually sort of blogged about this previously here: On Tournament Design.
On October 16 2012 19:51 Lorizean wrote: I was a bit confused sometimes by your use of "increasing/decreasing supply and demand". Sometimes you are talking about curve shifts (the classical meaning of an increase and decrease) and sometimes you are talking about movements along a curve (i.e. increases in quantity demanded and supplied). Also, when you talk about decreasing production you have a shift in the demand curve - which is wrong. (or are you talking about a "maximum price" model and are just showing the overall effect?) I think a tl;dr would be that, assuming a classical economic model and ceteris paribus, there is no point in making any regulations at all - a classic free market argument (basically, if people were actually supplying too high a quantity, their product wouldn't be met by quantity demanded and they would go out of business anyways).
The only way I can see an economic standpoint behind a "restricting the supply" argument is that somehow an increase in supply (meaning a shift in the curve) reduces the demand (meaning ceteris paribus no longer applies) - a standpoint which I find hard to get behind.
Sorry I'm a bit rusty. I'm showing the overall effect after people who cannot consume the good at that price level drop out of the economy or enter a black market.
I never say that "restricting the supply" is a good thing. I agree that it makes no sense, but it is what people in ESPORTS want to do.
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Great read, thank you! Can't say I have much to add.
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Good blog, but I can't help and point out that, at least in my case, seeing multiple tournaments that have a similar size (in viewers, production level, quality players) going on at the same time just makes me feel like not caring much about any of them to watch, which explains why I only watch the premier tournaments, sc2 would lose it's magic if I did otherwise, not sure if many think that way, it's kinda like it would feel if we had flash or mvp streaming regularly, it would make watching almost any sc2 content mundane and uninteresting.Of course this doesn't mean that I believe in oversaturation, nonetheless, perhaps there's a need for change in how the system works, watching a lot of the same except at a different url just doesn't work, despite how hard it is to be unique.
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I expected a blog about whether 17 workers or 25 was a horrible mistake that people should be punished for... what I read was instead far better, and quite thought provoking.
So long as the demand exists for tournaments, they will exist.
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Sorry, I´m not a native english speaker and you as writer failed to meet my particular demand to make things understandable. It´s probably really nice you got some economics or statistics classes, but I can´t be arsed to read through 10 pages of wikipedia to read 3 pages of text(your text minus the pictures).
That oversaturation is bullshit as you can´t force tournament organizers to just stop is self evident. The problem is more or less the saminess of the tournaments. But it doesn´t matter, I couldn´t follow your very verbous discursion on the scientific aspects of oversaturation.
User was warned for this post
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This article is amazing! I will offer my own insight once I have a chance to fully digest it all. This sort of article requires at least 2 reads!
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I think the point being made is that scarcity is relative, and in terms of people in the world... not particularly a limiting factor.
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Hong Kong9136 Posts
On October 17 2012 03:29 Froadac wrote: I think the point being made is that scarcity is relative, and in terms of people in the world... not particularly a limiting factor.
Even on a smaller level, like say getting the gaming audience interested in competitive gaming as opposed to the hostility they exhibit currently, demand-side increases are very meaningful. We are still a subset of a subset of a subset of the population. This shouldn't be used as an excuse to engage in supply-side restrictions because 'the scene is too small,' but it should rather motivate us to expand the scene and the audience instead.
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On October 16 2012 18:49 itsjustatank wrote:Show nested quote +On October 16 2012 18:44 Fyodor wrote: 1) There are 14 competing tournaments in Starcraft 2 2) We need a single tournament so good that everyone will tune in! 3) There are 15 competing tournaments in Starcraft 2 And your impact to this is.. what exactly? If you imply it is bad, what I've written serves as built-in offense against this. Supply collusion in restraint of trade is a market failure. Increased competition within any market can only be a benefit, unless you are a monopolist. This is just an assertion based on unarticulated assumptions. First of all, what is beneficial and to whom? (I'm not trying to argue about free markets, let's focus on esports.)
A better product at a better price produced more cost effectively would be a benefit. Larger market would be a benefit. So far competition has done little if anything to affect these things. These things were happening anyway due to the vision and passion of content producers. Most consumers seem to feel like meaningful improvement has stagnated, and that's as "competition" has increased.
Maybe it's just a phase, but I don't see economic competition as a driving force. The things underpinning esports are passion for the content and a vague promise of a larger market at some point in the future. Esports is a hobby pretending to be a business because it's the best way for it to prolong its existence as a hobby.
(Like you say elsewhere, this value statement doesn't change any of the calculations but tell me I'm wrong.)
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Hong Kong9136 Posts
On October 17 2012 03:50 EatThePath wrote:Show nested quote +On October 16 2012 18:49 itsjustatank wrote:On October 16 2012 18:44 Fyodor wrote: 1) There are 14 competing tournaments in Starcraft 2 2) We need a single tournament so good that everyone will tune in! 3) There are 15 competing tournaments in Starcraft 2 And your impact to this is.. what exactly? If you imply it is bad, what I've written serves as built-in offense against this. Supply collusion in restraint of trade is a market failure. Increased competition within any market can only be a benefit, unless you are a monopolist. This is just an assertion based on unarticulated assumptions. First of all, what is beneficial and to whom? (I'm not trying to argue about free markets, let's focus on esports.) A better product at a better price produced more cost effectively would be a benefit. Larger market would be a benefit. So far competition has done little if anything to affect these things. These things were happening anyway due to the vision and passion of content producers. Most consumers seem to feel like meaningful improvement has stagnated, and that's as "competition" has increased. Maybe it's just a phase, but I don't see economic competition as a driving force. The things underpinning esports are passion for the content and a vague promise of a larger market at some point in the future. Esports is a hobby pretending to be a business because it's the best way for it to prolong its existence as a hobby. (Like you say elsewhere, this value statement doesn't change any of the calculations but tell me I'm wrong.)
Concerted restriction of supply on an industry-wide basis and limitation of entry into the market, which is what people who point towards oversaturation want, is a market failure and also illegal.
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I think that people are taking the feeling of "wow, there is so much content!" and because it is unfamiliar and perhaps uncomfortable territory, turning it into a negative. There are definitely some inefficiencies that can be smoothed out, but in general terms a supply side restriction is not the answer.
I think that you have accurately knocked the support out from under the Oversaturation argument, thank you.
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On October 17 2012 03:58 itsjustatank wrote:Show nested quote +On October 17 2012 03:50 EatThePath wrote:On October 16 2012 18:49 itsjustatank wrote:On October 16 2012 18:44 Fyodor wrote: 1) There are 14 competing tournaments in Starcraft 2 2) We need a single tournament so good that everyone will tune in! 3) There are 15 competing tournaments in Starcraft 2 And your impact to this is.. what exactly? If you imply it is bad, what I've written serves as built-in offense against this. Supply collusion in restraint of trade is a market failure. Increased competition within any market can only be a benefit, unless you are a monopolist. This is just an assertion based on unarticulated assumptions. First of all, what is beneficial and to whom? (I'm not trying to argue about free markets, let's focus on esports.) A better product at a better price produced more cost effectively would be a benefit. Larger market would be a benefit. So far competition has done little if anything to affect these things. These things were happening anyway due to the vision and passion of content producers. Most consumers seem to feel like meaningful improvement has stagnated, and that's as "competition" has increased. Maybe it's just a phase, but I don't see economic competition as a driving force. The things underpinning esports are passion for the content and a vague promise of a larger market at some point in the future. Esports is a hobby pretending to be a business because it's the best way for it to prolong its existence as a hobby. (Like you say elsewhere, this value statement doesn't change any of the calculations but tell me I'm wrong.) Concerted restriction of supply on an industry-wide basis and limitation of entry into the market, which is what people who point towards oversaturation want, is a market failure and also illegal.
...? This doesn't address anything I said about competition.
I don't disagree with you about the proper way to proceed, but that's not what I was talking about. But if you want to take it there, I don't think you can evaluate the economics of esports as though it were a generic commercial enterprise. I would refer to established sports industries if you want to talk about it.
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Hong Kong9136 Posts
On October 17 2012 04:32 EatThePath wrote:Show nested quote +On October 17 2012 03:58 itsjustatank wrote:On October 17 2012 03:50 EatThePath wrote:On October 16 2012 18:49 itsjustatank wrote:On October 16 2012 18:44 Fyodor wrote: 1) There are 14 competing tournaments in Starcraft 2 2) We need a single tournament so good that everyone will tune in! 3) There are 15 competing tournaments in Starcraft 2 And your impact to this is.. what exactly? If you imply it is bad, what I've written serves as built-in offense against this. Supply collusion in restraint of trade is a market failure. Increased competition within any market can only be a benefit, unless you are a monopolist. This is just an assertion based on unarticulated assumptions. First of all, what is beneficial and to whom? (I'm not trying to argue about free markets, let's focus on esports.) A better product at a better price produced more cost effectively would be a benefit. Larger market would be a benefit. So far competition has done little if anything to affect these things. These things were happening anyway due to the vision and passion of content producers. Most consumers seem to feel like meaningful improvement has stagnated, and that's as "competition" has increased. Maybe it's just a phase, but I don't see economic competition as a driving force. The things underpinning esports are passion for the content and a vague promise of a larger market at some point in the future. Esports is a hobby pretending to be a business because it's the best way for it to prolong its existence as a hobby. (Like you say elsewhere, this value statement doesn't change any of the calculations but tell me I'm wrong.) Concerted restriction of supply on an industry-wide basis and limitation of entry into the market, which is what people who point towards oversaturation want, is a market failure and also illegal. ...? This doesn't address anything I said about competition. I don't disagree with you about the proper way to proceed, but that's not what I was talking about. But if you want to take it there, I don't think you can evaluate the economics of esports as though it were a generic commercial enterprise. I would refer to established sports industries if you want to talk about it. Established sports industries have statutory exemptions to antitrust law built over decades of lobbying effort and billions of dollars paid. I'm also not treating this on an individual company (microeconomic) basis, but rather putting a macroeconomic perspective on things.
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On October 17 2012 02:36 Mataza wrote: Sorry, I´m not a native english speaker and you as writer failed to meet my particular demand to make things understandable. It´s probably really nice you got some economics or statistics classes, but I can´t be arsed to read through 10 pages of wikipedia to read 3 pages of text(your text minus the pictures).
That oversaturation is bullshit as you can´t force tournament organizers to just stop is self evident. The problem is more or less the saminess of the tournaments. But it doesn´t matter, I couldn´t follow your very verbous discursion on the scientific aspects of oversaturation.
User was warned for this post its ok im really stupid and I can't read it either, but I'm a native speaker
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Not many people get to put their first macroeconomics to such good use. Nice.
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I just read through your replies and your other thread about tournament design. To me, it highlights the problems the industry is facing rather than solving it. The considerations are too academic, where tournament design focuses more on winning a forum argument on who the best player is rather than focusing on something that will get more spectators hyped up to watch. Similarly, the assumptions made on the demand here is more for the simplicity of capturing people in graph form rather than trying to figure out how people act on real life.
Let's take a mainstream sports league like the NFL as an example. The NFL has a 17-week regular season. After taking into account both the preseason and postseason, the offseason lasts for almost half the year. Yet the NFL is now the most popular sport in the US and has the most valuable teams, outstripping competing leagues like MLB, the NBA and the NHL, leagues that have a much larger international fan base than the NFL.
What the NFL does better than the other leagues is creating must see TV. Your team only has 16 regular season games each year lasting a little above 3 hours each. That takes a smaller time commitment than watching 162 baseball games. The schedule is fan friendly. Your team either plays on a Sunday (a weekend), a Monday (ease the doldrums of starting a work week) or a Thursday (happy hour). Neither the schedule nor the playoff format is the fairest. But it is easy to understand, simple for casual viewers to join in and ensures even fans of the weaker team have reasons to tune in and hope.
In contrast, let's take the GSL, the most prestigious SC2 league in the entire planet. This may not be completely accurate as I don't follow the league as much anymore. Two to three times a week, during the round robin stages, we have four Bo3 series. Because of the variability in game length and results, it is difficult for fans to know precisely when their favorite player will start their games unless their player is first in line. And since these marathon sessions can last more than 6 hours, it is difficult for any employed person to watch the entire thing, even if they live in Korea.
The other tournaments suffer from some similar problems but also have their unique problems. MLG consumes an entire weekend, starting from Friday. The Dreamhacks do something similar. The NASL post pool play tournament that I followed back in the day did the same thing. It's impossible for busy people to plan a time in advance for when they can tune in and watch their favorite player(s).
Oversaturation is a problem not just in terms of the amount of tournaments. It's also a problem in terms of the sheer number of games many tournaments have. There's no way the average working adult can follow so many games. It is difficult to jump in and out of spectating without feeling totally lost. When that happens and when tournaments happen very often, it is very easy for someone to just skip a tournament with the justification that another one will be around the corner anyway. It's how current fans can easily become detached from the scene as they keep finding reasons to skip a tournament rather than tune in.
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Hong Kong9136 Posts
On October 17 2012 06:12 andrewlt wrote: I just read through your replies and your other thread about tournament design. To me, it highlights the problems the industry is facing rather than solving it. The considerations are too academic, where tournament design focuses more on winning a forum argument on who the best player is rather than focusing on something that will get more spectators hyped up to watch. Similarly, the assumptions made on the demand here is more for the simplicity of capturing people in graph form rather than trying to figure out how people act on real life.
Let's take a mainstream sports league like the NFL as an example. The NFL has a 17-week regular season. After taking into account both the preseason and postseason, the offseason lasts for almost half the year. Yet the NFL is now the most popular sport in the US and has the most valuable teams, outstripping competing leagues like MLB, the NBA and the NHL, leagues that have a much larger international fan base than the NFL.
What the NFL does better than the other leagues is creating must see TV. Your team only has 16 regular season games each year lasting a little above 3 hours each. That takes a smaller time commitment than watching 162 baseball games. The schedule is fan friendly. Your team either plays on a Sunday (a weekend), a Monday (ease the doldrums of starting a work week) or a Thursday (happy hour). Neither the schedule nor the playoff format is the fairest. But it is easy to understand, simple for casual viewers to join in and ensures even fans of the weaker team have reasons to tune in and hope.
In contrast, let's take the GSL, the most prestigious SC2 league in the entire planet. This may not be completely accurate as I don't follow the league as much anymore. Two to three times a week, during the round robin stages, we have four Bo3 series. Because of the variability in game length and results, it is difficult for fans to know precisely when their favorite player will start their games unless their player is first in line. And since these marathon sessions can last more than 6 hours, it is difficult for any employed person to watch the entire thing, even if they live in Korea.
The other tournaments suffer from some similar problems but also have their unique problems. MLG consumes an entire weekend, starting from Friday. The Dreamhacks do something similar. The NASL post pool play tournament that I followed back in the day did the same thing. It's impossible for busy people to plan a time in advance for when they can tune in and watch their favorite player(s).
Oversaturation is a problem not just in terms of the amount of tournaments. It's also a problem in terms of the sheer number of games many tournaments have. There's no way the average working adult can follow so many games. It is difficult to jump in and out of spectating without feeling totally lost. When that happens and when tournaments happen very often, it is very easy for someone to just skip a tournament with the justification that another one will be around the corner anyway. It's how current fans can easily become detached from the scene as they keep finding reasons to skip a tournament rather than tune in.
Fixing bad tournament procedure is not the same as constricting supply in restraint of trade. It's simply putting out a better product.It would be good for tournament event series organizers to think up of ways to make their events more understandable and enjoyable, and this is part of my argument for shifting the demand curve to the right. Making it more accessible will allow for more people to enter the market and consume.
The problem is that people who point towards oversaturation do not do this. They don't care about the long term growth of the economy. Rather, they point towards oversaturation and use it as an excuse to establish market failure in the economy. A monopolist or cartelist view would sacrifice a larger market simply to have an artificially smaller yet more 'stable' market where they have unrestricted pricing power because of market share and restriction of supply.
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i thought this blog was about oversaturating your mineral lines but i did read the whole thing before posting
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Hell yeah, chemistry! Supersaturated solutions!
Summary with my thoughts: Let the market decide how many tournaments go on and give the (1) audience a choice of what tournaments they want to watch and (2) the players a choice of what tournament to go to. It forces quality from the tournaments when they have to compete for viewer eyes, and gives more availability for players to get some respectable finishes when they choose a smaller tournament with less big names in it. You bring up a nice (3) of multiple games competing to engage an audience and get them hooked on watching. So boost the demand for the best players competing in the most well-run tournaments, and less moans about how the supply is so high.
On October 16 2012 21:47 T0fuuu wrote: Damnit i thought it was as simple as having 16 drones for minerals and 6 for 2 gas :| Even then, saturation according to our adjusted definition proves you dead wrong. There's a colloquial definition here that conflates the term to almost meaninglessness. At the risk of garnering responses that go completely off topic, I will explain. Supersaturation is more solute that the given solvent can dissolve. Worker saturation is more workers than the mineral patches can be mined from. Aka., extra workers do not increase the minerals mined in a given time frame, but function as undissolved salt in the bottom of the glass, a supersaturated solution. From obtained graphs, this occurs at 24 workers. Adding on workers after that gives no increase in the mineral mining rate for that base. The perversion that happens now a days is in regards of marginal efficiency. The point when adding on an extra worker gives you not the same increase in mining rate as the previous one. This occurs right around 16 workers. So all these gamers and casters talk about over-saturated bases that are undersaturated but in a 16-24 region of low marginal efficiency. Kind of a case in point in people misusing the term oversaturated so the definition becomes conflated.
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On October 17 2012 04:46 itsjustatank wrote:Show nested quote +On October 17 2012 04:32 EatThePath wrote:On October 17 2012 03:58 itsjustatank wrote:On October 17 2012 03:50 EatThePath wrote:On October 16 2012 18:49 itsjustatank wrote:On October 16 2012 18:44 Fyodor wrote: 1) There are 14 competing tournaments in Starcraft 2 2) We need a single tournament so good that everyone will tune in! 3) There are 15 competing tournaments in Starcraft 2 And your impact to this is.. what exactly? If you imply it is bad, what I've written serves as built-in offense against this. Supply collusion in restraint of trade is a market failure. Increased competition within any market can only be a benefit, unless you are a monopolist. This is just an assertion based on unarticulated assumptions. First of all, what is beneficial and to whom? (I'm not trying to argue about free markets, let's focus on esports.) A better product at a better price produced more cost effectively would be a benefit. Larger market would be a benefit. So far competition has done little if anything to affect these things. These things were happening anyway due to the vision and passion of content producers. Most consumers seem to feel like meaningful improvement has stagnated, and that's as "competition" has increased. Maybe it's just a phase, but I don't see economic competition as a driving force. The things underpinning esports are passion for the content and a vague promise of a larger market at some point in the future. Esports is a hobby pretending to be a business because it's the best way for it to prolong its existence as a hobby. (Like you say elsewhere, this value statement doesn't change any of the calculations but tell me I'm wrong.) Concerted restriction of supply on an industry-wide basis and limitation of entry into the market, which is what people who point towards oversaturation want, is a market failure and also illegal. ...? This doesn't address anything I said about competition. I don't disagree with you about the proper way to proceed, but that's not what I was talking about. But if you want to take it there, I don't think you can evaluate the economics of esports as though it were a generic commercial enterprise. I would refer to established sports industries if you want to talk about it. Established sports industries have statutory exemptions to antitrust law built over decades of lobbying effort and billions of dollars paid. I'm also not treating this on an individual company (microeconomic) basis, but rather putting a macroeconomic perspective on things. I appreciate that, I do. But I'm confused by your responses. Are you dodging me because you don't want to be wrong? Do you think this isn't worth discussing? Or do you not understand what I'm saying?
Competition is not in effect in an appreciable way.
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Hong Kong9136 Posts
On October 17 2012 07:37 EatThePath wrote:Show nested quote +On October 17 2012 04:46 itsjustatank wrote:On October 17 2012 04:32 EatThePath wrote:On October 17 2012 03:58 itsjustatank wrote:On October 17 2012 03:50 EatThePath wrote:On October 16 2012 18:49 itsjustatank wrote:On October 16 2012 18:44 Fyodor wrote: 1) There are 14 competing tournaments in Starcraft 2 2) We need a single tournament so good that everyone will tune in! 3) There are 15 competing tournaments in Starcraft 2 And your impact to this is.. what exactly? If you imply it is bad, what I've written serves as built-in offense against this. Supply collusion in restraint of trade is a market failure. Increased competition within any market can only be a benefit, unless you are a monopolist. This is just an assertion based on unarticulated assumptions. First of all, what is beneficial and to whom? (I'm not trying to argue about free markets, let's focus on esports.) A better product at a better price produced more cost effectively would be a benefit. Larger market would be a benefit. So far competition has done little if anything to affect these things. These things were happening anyway due to the vision and passion of content producers. Most consumers seem to feel like meaningful improvement has stagnated, and that's as "competition" has increased. Maybe it's just a phase, but I don't see economic competition as a driving force. The things underpinning esports are passion for the content and a vague promise of a larger market at some point in the future. Esports is a hobby pretending to be a business because it's the best way for it to prolong its existence as a hobby. (Like you say elsewhere, this value statement doesn't change any of the calculations but tell me I'm wrong.) Concerted restriction of supply on an industry-wide basis and limitation of entry into the market, which is what people who point towards oversaturation want, is a market failure and also illegal. ...? This doesn't address anything I said about competition. I don't disagree with you about the proper way to proceed, but that's not what I was talking about. But if you want to take it there, I don't think you can evaluate the economics of esports as though it were a generic commercial enterprise. I would refer to established sports industries if you want to talk about it. Established sports industries have statutory exemptions to antitrust law built over decades of lobbying effort and billions of dollars paid. I'm also not treating this on an individual company (microeconomic) basis, but rather putting a macroeconomic perspective on things. I appreciate that, I do. But I'm confused by your responses. Are you dodging me because you don't want to be wrong? Do you think this isn't worth discussing? Or do you not understand what I'm saying? Competition is not in effect in an appreciable way.
What I am saying is that if you believe in a free market, demand-side approaches work here. As I've said before, the only way to restrict supply effectively in the economy of ESPORTS is to engage in illegal anti-competitive practices. Economic competition is the keystone of a free market. Since you clearly don't believe in it, you are in the camp where market failure is an acceptable expression of our activity. There is no middle ground between these two points.
On October 17 2012 07:44 Barrin wrote: I think I basically agree with what you wrote. But you mentioned the possibility of a 'collapse' of ESPORTS; if something like this were to happen I really don't think it would be as dramatic as you made it seem. Some organizations can weather the storm much longer than others, and as those others drop away guess what.. it's not oversaturated anymore!
The 'collapse' is more of an 'even if'' scenario, although it is very possible if the global economy actually does make a turn for the worse like it looks to be doing in the coming year. The point I was trying to make is that increasing viewership and engagement makes sense economically, but it also just makes sense in terms of being fans of competitive gaming and increasing its visibility.
If you ask me the real problem of oversaturation is that it discourages newcomers already. Newcomers that could potentially have a fresh new perspective on things, or be big enough to bring ESPORTS to the next level. Entrepreneurs and big business are not interested in oversaturated markets, that's the real problem IMO. Untold opportunity cost.
I don't necessarily say that increased supply is necessary, I think. What I do say is that the free market should dictate the amount of supply, and that oversaturation is a smokescreen by which a cartel of large players that hide flaws within our system in order to justify monopolistic actions. Oversaturation does not exist now, but what does exist is the fact that producers are not doing a good enough job competing and improving their product. We as a community are not doing a good enough job increasing education of the activity and especially not doing a good enough job in spreading or reviving passion around the games we enjoy.
The industry should focus on dealing with the existence of competition, not whine about the fact that they aren't monopolies yet. The fact that new players continue to enter the field, and that existing players continue to whine about it, demonstrate that in the economy of ESPORTS, things are still enticing. Only the point at which producers begin to shut down, not because of cartel action but because of their inability to compete, will that be the point of diminishing returns for new entrants.
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On October 17 2012 08:15 itsjustatank wrote:Show nested quote +On October 17 2012 07:37 EatThePath wrote:On October 17 2012 04:46 itsjustatank wrote:On October 17 2012 04:32 EatThePath wrote:On October 17 2012 03:58 itsjustatank wrote:On October 17 2012 03:50 EatThePath wrote:On October 16 2012 18:49 itsjustatank wrote:On October 16 2012 18:44 Fyodor wrote: 1) There are 14 competing tournaments in Starcraft 2 2) We need a single tournament so good that everyone will tune in! 3) There are 15 competing tournaments in Starcraft 2 And your impact to this is.. what exactly? If you imply it is bad, what I've written serves as built-in offense against this. Supply collusion in restraint of trade is a market failure. Increased competition within any market can only be a benefit, unless you are a monopolist. This is just an assertion based on unarticulated assumptions. First of all, what is beneficial and to whom? (I'm not trying to argue about free markets, let's focus on esports.) A better product at a better price produced more cost effectively would be a benefit. Larger market would be a benefit. So far competition has done little if anything to affect these things. These things were happening anyway due to the vision and passion of content producers. Most consumers seem to feel like meaningful improvement has stagnated, and that's as "competition" has increased. Maybe it's just a phase, but I don't see economic competition as a driving force. The things underpinning esports are passion for the content and a vague promise of a larger market at some point in the future. Esports is a hobby pretending to be a business because it's the best way for it to prolong its existence as a hobby. (Like you say elsewhere, this value statement doesn't change any of the calculations but tell me I'm wrong.) Concerted restriction of supply on an industry-wide basis and limitation of entry into the market, which is what people who point towards oversaturation want, is a market failure and also illegal. ...? This doesn't address anything I said about competition. I don't disagree with you about the proper way to proceed, but that's not what I was talking about. But if you want to take it there, I don't think you can evaluate the economics of esports as though it were a generic commercial enterprise. I would refer to established sports industries if you want to talk about it. Established sports industries have statutory exemptions to antitrust law built over decades of lobbying effort and billions of dollars paid. I'm also not treating this on an individual company (microeconomic) basis, but rather putting a macroeconomic perspective on things. I appreciate that, I do. But I'm confused by your responses. Are you dodging me because you don't want to be wrong? Do you think this isn't worth discussing? Or do you not understand what I'm saying? Competition is not in effect in an appreciable way. What I am saying is that if you believe in a free market, demand-side approaches work here. As I've said before, the only way to restrict supply effectively in the economy of ESPORTS is to engage in illegal anti-competitive practices. Economic competition is the keystone of a free market. Since you clearly don't believe in it, you are in the camp where market failure is an acceptable expression of our activity. There is no middle ground between these two points. You seem to be battling a spectre. I think it's my fault for not being more detailed. I am trying to get at two things in relation to the sustainability of content producers (the main point of this discussion?) and competition:
1) Content producers have been improving their product steadily since each began their sc2 life. I am saying this would happen anyway without competition; hence it is not the driving force for better content (right now). If so, this suggests the sustainability of producers based on the quality of their product is not related to competition between producers but a general expectation of the consumer regardless of product choices.
2) From what you've said in the OP and in thread posts, it seems like you recommend that content producers try to build the market in order to be sustainable. But there can only be so much top-level starcraft. So it's self-evident that they should work towards having enough consumers that they'd be sustainable at the least. Beyond this the content is just inferior or novelty quality starcraft. Should we build the market for that? I think that's what a lot of people have a problem with, although they've not quite articulated it in their own thoughts or outward expression.
Aside from this there is a whole discussion about the finite supply of top-level starcraft based on players, and, to a certain extent, the idea itself of a premier level of competition.
In short, it's a no-brainer that we should "increase demand", and I laud your writeup. My personal view about competition in a free market doesn't really have any bearing on what I am trying to say though.
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Hong Kong9136 Posts
On October 17 2012 09:18 EatThePath wrote:Show nested quote +On October 17 2012 08:15 itsjustatank wrote:On October 17 2012 07:37 EatThePath wrote:On October 17 2012 04:46 itsjustatank wrote:On October 17 2012 04:32 EatThePath wrote:On October 17 2012 03:58 itsjustatank wrote:On October 17 2012 03:50 EatThePath wrote:On October 16 2012 18:49 itsjustatank wrote:On October 16 2012 18:44 Fyodor wrote: 1) There are 14 competing tournaments in Starcraft 2 2) We need a single tournament so good that everyone will tune in! 3) There are 15 competing tournaments in Starcraft 2 And your impact to this is.. what exactly? If you imply it is bad, what I've written serves as built-in offense against this. Supply collusion in restraint of trade is a market failure. Increased competition within any market can only be a benefit, unless you are a monopolist. This is just an assertion based on unarticulated assumptions. First of all, what is beneficial and to whom? (I'm not trying to argue about free markets, let's focus on esports.) A better product at a better price produced more cost effectively would be a benefit. Larger market would be a benefit. So far competition has done little if anything to affect these things. These things were happening anyway due to the vision and passion of content producers. Most consumers seem to feel like meaningful improvement has stagnated, and that's as "competition" has increased. Maybe it's just a phase, but I don't see economic competition as a driving force. The things underpinning esports are passion for the content and a vague promise of a larger market at some point in the future. Esports is a hobby pretending to be a business because it's the best way for it to prolong its existence as a hobby. (Like you say elsewhere, this value statement doesn't change any of the calculations but tell me I'm wrong.) Concerted restriction of supply on an industry-wide basis and limitation of entry into the market, which is what people who point towards oversaturation want, is a market failure and also illegal. ...? This doesn't address anything I said about competition. I don't disagree with you about the proper way to proceed, but that's not what I was talking about. But if you want to take it there, I don't think you can evaluate the economics of esports as though it were a generic commercial enterprise. I would refer to established sports industries if you want to talk about it. Established sports industries have statutory exemptions to antitrust law built over decades of lobbying effort and billions of dollars paid. I'm also not treating this on an individual company (microeconomic) basis, but rather putting a macroeconomic perspective on things. I appreciate that, I do. But I'm confused by your responses. Are you dodging me because you don't want to be wrong? Do you think this isn't worth discussing? Or do you not understand what I'm saying? Competition is not in effect in an appreciable way. What I am saying is that if you believe in a free market, demand-side approaches work here. As I've said before, the only way to restrict supply effectively in the economy of ESPORTS is to engage in illegal anti-competitive practices. Economic competition is the keystone of a free market. Since you clearly don't believe in it, you are in the camp where market failure is an acceptable expression of our activity. There is no middle ground between these two points. You seem to be battling a spectre. I think it's my fault for not being more detailed. I am trying to get at two things in relation to the sustainability of content producers (the main point of this discussion?) and competition: 1) Content producers have been improving their product steadily since each began their sc2 life. I am saying this would happen anyway without competition; hence it is not the driving force for better content (right now). If so, this suggests the sustainability of producers based on the quality of their product is not related to competition between producers but a general expectation of the consumer regardless of product choices. 2) From what you've said in the OP and in thread posts, it seems like you recommend that content producers try to build the market in order to be sustainable. But there can only be so much top-level starcraft. So it's self-evident that they should work towards having enough consumers that they'd be sustainable at the least. Beyond this the content is just inferior or novelty quality starcraft. Should we build the market for that? I think that's what a lot of people have a problem with, although they've not quite articulated it in their own thoughts or outward expression. Aside from this there is a whole discussion about the finite supply of top-level starcraft based on players, and, to a certain extent, the idea itself of a premier level of competition. In short, it's a no-brainer that we should "increase demand", and I laud your writeup. My personal view about competition in a free market doesn't really have any bearing on what I am trying to say though.
Ah yes this is more clear. On your first point, what I am trying to say is that 'oversaturation' is being articulated in order to justify cutting corners and fail to improve. Without a competitive free market, there is no incentive to improve the product. What we have now are producers being enticed with the potential of developing a cartel because it would ensure a price floor for supply and establish significant barriers to entry. Establishment of such a cartel will tend towards a lack of innovation and improvement. However, if the status quo holds, I agree that producers will be forced to innovate because they operate in a competitive market.
In terms of building more than just the top-level of StarCraft, I do say we should build the market for that. I disagree with your description of such a scene as being 'inferior or novelty quality.' One of the biggest reasons for the current levels of disengagement I feel is that people don't actually play the game anymore. Building an amateur and a pro-amateur scene can create a path to progaming. It at least provides a space for people who want to play the game but cannot do so at a top, top, level still have a place to have some amount of comparable competitive space. It also ensures continuity in case the current producers of top-level StarCraft competition decide to up and leave the market.
The biggest example I think of an organization trying to do this now (and having worked at this for quite some time) is the Collegiate Starleague. I can see them building almost something like what the NCAA does for many professional sports, and their efforts will certainly stimulate demand.
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This is a very wordy way of saying something very simple: "There are two ways to solve over-saturation: remove some of the dissolved material or add more solvent. We should be adding more solvent, not removing material." Thus the analogy works itself out.
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On October 17 2012 09:32 itsjustatank wrote:Show nested quote +On October 17 2012 09:18 EatThePath wrote:On October 17 2012 08:15 itsjustatank wrote:On October 17 2012 07:37 EatThePath wrote:On October 17 2012 04:46 itsjustatank wrote:On October 17 2012 04:32 EatThePath wrote:On October 17 2012 03:58 itsjustatank wrote:On October 17 2012 03:50 EatThePath wrote:On October 16 2012 18:49 itsjustatank wrote:On October 16 2012 18:44 Fyodor wrote: 1) There are 14 competing tournaments in Starcraft 2 2) We need a single tournament so good that everyone will tune in! 3) There are 15 competing tournaments in Starcraft 2 And your impact to this is.. what exactly? If you imply it is bad, what I've written serves as built-in offense against this. Supply collusion in restraint of trade is a market failure. Increased competition within any market can only be a benefit, unless you are a monopolist. This is just an assertion based on unarticulated assumptions. First of all, what is beneficial and to whom? (I'm not trying to argue about free markets, let's focus on esports.) A better product at a better price produced more cost effectively would be a benefit. Larger market would be a benefit. So far competition has done little if anything to affect these things. These things were happening anyway due to the vision and passion of content producers. Most consumers seem to feel like meaningful improvement has stagnated, and that's as "competition" has increased. Maybe it's just a phase, but I don't see economic competition as a driving force. The things underpinning esports are passion for the content and a vague promise of a larger market at some point in the future. Esports is a hobby pretending to be a business because it's the best way for it to prolong its existence as a hobby. (Like you say elsewhere, this value statement doesn't change any of the calculations but tell me I'm wrong.) Concerted restriction of supply on an industry-wide basis and limitation of entry into the market, which is what people who point towards oversaturation want, is a market failure and also illegal. ...? This doesn't address anything I said about competition. I don't disagree with you about the proper way to proceed, but that's not what I was talking about. But if you want to take it there, I don't think you can evaluate the economics of esports as though it were a generic commercial enterprise. I would refer to established sports industries if you want to talk about it. Established sports industries have statutory exemptions to antitrust law built over decades of lobbying effort and billions of dollars paid. I'm also not treating this on an individual company (microeconomic) basis, but rather putting a macroeconomic perspective on things. I appreciate that, I do. But I'm confused by your responses. Are you dodging me because you don't want to be wrong? Do you think this isn't worth discussing? Or do you not understand what I'm saying? Competition is not in effect in an appreciable way. What I am saying is that if you believe in a free market, demand-side approaches work here. As I've said before, the only way to restrict supply effectively in the economy of ESPORTS is to engage in illegal anti-competitive practices. Economic competition is the keystone of a free market. Since you clearly don't believe in it, you are in the camp where market failure is an acceptable expression of our activity. There is no middle ground between these two points. You seem to be battling a spectre. I think it's my fault for not being more detailed. I am trying to get at two things in relation to the sustainability of content producers (the main point of this discussion?) and competition: 1) Content producers have been improving their product steadily since each began their sc2 life. I am saying this would happen anyway without competition; hence it is not the driving force for better content (right now). If so, this suggests the sustainability of producers based on the quality of their product is not related to competition between producers but a general expectation of the consumer regardless of product choices. 2) From what you've said in the OP and in thread posts, it seems like you recommend that content producers try to build the market in order to be sustainable. But there can only be so much top-level starcraft. So it's self-evident that they should work towards having enough consumers that they'd be sustainable at the least. Beyond this the content is just inferior or novelty quality starcraft. Should we build the market for that? I think that's what a lot of people have a problem with, although they've not quite articulated it in their own thoughts or outward expression. Aside from this there is a whole discussion about the finite supply of top-level starcraft based on players, and, to a certain extent, the idea itself of a premier level of competition. In short, it's a no-brainer that we should "increase demand", and I laud your writeup. My personal view about competition in a free market doesn't really have any bearing on what I am trying to say though. Ah yes this is more clear. On your first point, what I am trying to say is that 'oversaturation' is being articulated in order to justify cutting corners and fail to improve. Without a competitive free market, there is no incentive to improve the product. What we have now are producers being enticed with the potential of developing a cartel because it would ensure a price floor for supply and establish significant barriers to entry. Establishment of such a cartel will tend towards a lack of innovation and improvement. However, if the status quo holds, I agree that producers will be forced to innovate because they operate in a competitive market. In terms of building more than just the top-level of StarCraft, I do say we should build the market for that. I disagree with your description of such a scene as being 'inferior or novelty quality.' One of the biggest reasons for the current levels of disengagement I feel is that people don't actually play the game anymore. Building an amateur and a pro-amateur scene can create a path to progaming. It at least provides a space for people who want to play the game but cannot do so at a top, top, level still have a place to have some amount of comparable competitive space. It also ensures continuity in case the current producers of top-level StarCraft competition decide to up and leave the market. The biggest example I think of an organization trying to do this now (and having worked at this for quite some time) is the Collegiate Starleague. I can see them building almost something like what the NCAA does for many professional sports, and their efforts will certainly stimulate demand.
Okay. There'd be a whole lot to discuss if we got into it about all this stuff. But I am satisfied that at least we are on the same page vis a vis what the topic is, and I think we differ on the first point only in the time scale we are thinking in.
As to sub-pro starcraft, I think it's important to recognize that there is a hardcore... well, core of fans who are here to see the very best starcraft that is possible, and aren't really interested if that isn't present. (They might follow other things from time to time provided the mainstay top-level play is there.) The defining characteristic of this group is love of the game, in arguably its truest form. Now I'm theorizing, but I feel like if you dislocate this core, things will start to unravel. Following that thought, it's important that any sub-pro starcraft funnels people into pro starcraft. (Naturally I wouldn't expect otherwise, but I worry.) And if mediocre competition is acceptable content, then mediocre platforms are economically viable. I don't want a world where game companies make shitty games that the kiddies flock to every development cycle provided the requisite marketing, which I suppose is the root of my obstinancy in pursuing this thought.
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Hong Kong9136 Posts
On October 17 2012 11:49 EatThePath wrote:Show nested quote +On October 17 2012 09:32 itsjustatank wrote:On October 17 2012 09:18 EatThePath wrote:On October 17 2012 08:15 itsjustatank wrote:On October 17 2012 07:37 EatThePath wrote:On October 17 2012 04:46 itsjustatank wrote:On October 17 2012 04:32 EatThePath wrote:On October 17 2012 03:58 itsjustatank wrote:On October 17 2012 03:50 EatThePath wrote:On October 16 2012 18:49 itsjustatank wrote: [quote]
And your impact to this is.. what exactly? If you imply it is bad, what I've written serves as built-in offense against this. Supply collusion in restraint of trade is a market failure. Increased competition within any market can only be a benefit, unless you are a monopolist. This is just an assertion based on unarticulated assumptions. First of all, what is beneficial and to whom? (I'm not trying to argue about free markets, let's focus on esports.) A better product at a better price produced more cost effectively would be a benefit. Larger market would be a benefit. So far competition has done little if anything to affect these things. These things were happening anyway due to the vision and passion of content producers. Most consumers seem to feel like meaningful improvement has stagnated, and that's as "competition" has increased. Maybe it's just a phase, but I don't see economic competition as a driving force. The things underpinning esports are passion for the content and a vague promise of a larger market at some point in the future. Esports is a hobby pretending to be a business because it's the best way for it to prolong its existence as a hobby. (Like you say elsewhere, this value statement doesn't change any of the calculations but tell me I'm wrong.) Concerted restriction of supply on an industry-wide basis and limitation of entry into the market, which is what people who point towards oversaturation want, is a market failure and also illegal. ...? This doesn't address anything I said about competition. I don't disagree with you about the proper way to proceed, but that's not what I was talking about. But if you want to take it there, I don't think you can evaluate the economics of esports as though it were a generic commercial enterprise. I would refer to established sports industries if you want to talk about it. Established sports industries have statutory exemptions to antitrust law built over decades of lobbying effort and billions of dollars paid. I'm also not treating this on an individual company (microeconomic) basis, but rather putting a macroeconomic perspective on things. I appreciate that, I do. But I'm confused by your responses. Are you dodging me because you don't want to be wrong? Do you think this isn't worth discussing? Or do you not understand what I'm saying? Competition is not in effect in an appreciable way. What I am saying is that if you believe in a free market, demand-side approaches work here. As I've said before, the only way to restrict supply effectively in the economy of ESPORTS is to engage in illegal anti-competitive practices. Economic competition is the keystone of a free market. Since you clearly don't believe in it, you are in the camp where market failure is an acceptable expression of our activity. There is no middle ground between these two points. You seem to be battling a spectre. I think it's my fault for not being more detailed. I am trying to get at two things in relation to the sustainability of content producers (the main point of this discussion?) and competition: 1) Content producers have been improving their product steadily since each began their sc2 life. I am saying this would happen anyway without competition; hence it is not the driving force for better content (right now). If so, this suggests the sustainability of producers based on the quality of their product is not related to competition between producers but a general expectation of the consumer regardless of product choices. 2) From what you've said in the OP and in thread posts, it seems like you recommend that content producers try to build the market in order to be sustainable. But there can only be so much top-level starcraft. So it's self-evident that they should work towards having enough consumers that they'd be sustainable at the least. Beyond this the content is just inferior or novelty quality starcraft. Should we build the market for that? I think that's what a lot of people have a problem with, although they've not quite articulated it in their own thoughts or outward expression. Aside from this there is a whole discussion about the finite supply of top-level starcraft based on players, and, to a certain extent, the idea itself of a premier level of competition. In short, it's a no-brainer that we should "increase demand", and I laud your writeup. My personal view about competition in a free market doesn't really have any bearing on what I am trying to say though. Ah yes this is more clear. On your first point, what I am trying to say is that 'oversaturation' is being articulated in order to justify cutting corners and fail to improve. Without a competitive free market, there is no incentive to improve the product. What we have now are producers being enticed with the potential of developing a cartel because it would ensure a price floor for supply and establish significant barriers to entry. Establishment of such a cartel will tend towards a lack of innovation and improvement. However, if the status quo holds, I agree that producers will be forced to innovate because they operate in a competitive market. In terms of building more than just the top-level of StarCraft, I do say we should build the market for that. I disagree with your description of such a scene as being 'inferior or novelty quality.' One of the biggest reasons for the current levels of disengagement I feel is that people don't actually play the game anymore. Building an amateur and a pro-amateur scene can create a path to progaming. It at least provides a space for people who want to play the game but cannot do so at a top, top, level still have a place to have some amount of comparable competitive space. It also ensures continuity in case the current producers of top-level StarCraft competition decide to up and leave the market. The biggest example I think of an organization trying to do this now (and having worked at this for quite some time) is the Collegiate Starleague. I can see them building almost something like what the NCAA does for many professional sports, and their efforts will certainly stimulate demand. Okay. There'd be a whole lot to discuss if we got into it about all this stuff. But I am satisfied that at least we are on the same page vis a vis what the topic is, and I think we differ on the first point only in the time scale we are thinking in. As to sub-pro starcraft, I think it's important to recognize that there is a hardcore... well, core of fans who are here to see the very best starcraft that is possible, and aren't really interested if that isn't present. (They might follow other things from time to time provided the mainstay top-level play is there.) The defining characteristic of this group is love of the game, in arguably its truest form. Now I'm theorizing, but I feel like if you dislocate this core, things will start to unravel. Following that thought, it's important that any sub-pro starcraft funnels people into pro starcraft. (Naturally I wouldn't expect otherwise, but I worry.) And if mediocre competition is acceptable content, then mediocre platforms are economically viable. I don't want a world where game companies make shitty games that the kiddies flock to every development cycle provided the requisite marketing, which I suppose is the root of my obstinancy in pursuing this thought.
I feel that 'sub-pro' or semi-pro competitive gaming will end up being a gateway to competition in games that are more acceptable to purists. At the very least, raising the visibility of competitive gaming in the public mind and increasing the audience for it will increase attention to, acceptability of, and viability of our more hardcore competitive gaming activities.
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On October 17 2012 11:52 itsjustatank wrote:Show nested quote +On October 17 2012 11:49 EatThePath wrote:On October 17 2012 09:32 itsjustatank wrote:On October 17 2012 09:18 EatThePath wrote:On October 17 2012 08:15 itsjustatank wrote:On October 17 2012 07:37 EatThePath wrote:On October 17 2012 04:46 itsjustatank wrote:On October 17 2012 04:32 EatThePath wrote:On October 17 2012 03:58 itsjustatank wrote:On October 17 2012 03:50 EatThePath wrote: [quote] This is just an assertion based on unarticulated assumptions. First of all, what is beneficial and to whom? (I'm not trying to argue about free markets, let's focus on esports.)
A better product at a better price produced more cost effectively would be a benefit. Larger market would be a benefit. So far competition has done little if anything to affect these things. These things were happening anyway due to the vision and passion of content producers. Most consumers seem to feel like meaningful improvement has stagnated, and that's as "competition" has increased.
Maybe it's just a phase, but I don't see economic competition as a driving force. The things underpinning esports are passion for the content and a vague promise of a larger market at some point in the future. Esports is a hobby pretending to be a business because it's the best way for it to prolong its existence as a hobby.
(Like you say elsewhere, this value statement doesn't change any of the calculations but tell me I'm wrong.) Concerted restriction of supply on an industry-wide basis and limitation of entry into the market, which is what people who point towards oversaturation want, is a market failure and also illegal. ...? This doesn't address anything I said about competition. I don't disagree with you about the proper way to proceed, but that's not what I was talking about. But if you want to take it there, I don't think you can evaluate the economics of esports as though it were a generic commercial enterprise. I would refer to established sports industries if you want to talk about it. Established sports industries have statutory exemptions to antitrust law built over decades of lobbying effort and billions of dollars paid. I'm also not treating this on an individual company (microeconomic) basis, but rather putting a macroeconomic perspective on things. I appreciate that, I do. But I'm confused by your responses. Are you dodging me because you don't want to be wrong? Do you think this isn't worth discussing? Or do you not understand what I'm saying? Competition is not in effect in an appreciable way. What I am saying is that if you believe in a free market, demand-side approaches work here. As I've said before, the only way to restrict supply effectively in the economy of ESPORTS is to engage in illegal anti-competitive practices. Economic competition is the keystone of a free market. Since you clearly don't believe in it, you are in the camp where market failure is an acceptable expression of our activity. There is no middle ground between these two points. You seem to be battling a spectre. I think it's my fault for not being more detailed. I am trying to get at two things in relation to the sustainability of content producers (the main point of this discussion?) and competition: 1) Content producers have been improving their product steadily since each began their sc2 life. I am saying this would happen anyway without competition; hence it is not the driving force for better content (right now). If so, this suggests the sustainability of producers based on the quality of their product is not related to competition between producers but a general expectation of the consumer regardless of product choices. 2) From what you've said in the OP and in thread posts, it seems like you recommend that content producers try to build the market in order to be sustainable. But there can only be so much top-level starcraft. So it's self-evident that they should work towards having enough consumers that they'd be sustainable at the least. Beyond this the content is just inferior or novelty quality starcraft. Should we build the market for that? I think that's what a lot of people have a problem with, although they've not quite articulated it in their own thoughts or outward expression. Aside from this there is a whole discussion about the finite supply of top-level starcraft based on players, and, to a certain extent, the idea itself of a premier level of competition. In short, it's a no-brainer that we should "increase demand", and I laud your writeup. My personal view about competition in a free market doesn't really have any bearing on what I am trying to say though. Ah yes this is more clear. On your first point, what I am trying to say is that 'oversaturation' is being articulated in order to justify cutting corners and fail to improve. Without a competitive free market, there is no incentive to improve the product. What we have now are producers being enticed with the potential of developing a cartel because it would ensure a price floor for supply and establish significant barriers to entry. Establishment of such a cartel will tend towards a lack of innovation and improvement. However, if the status quo holds, I agree that producers will be forced to innovate because they operate in a competitive market. In terms of building more than just the top-level of StarCraft, I do say we should build the market for that. I disagree with your description of such a scene as being 'inferior or novelty quality.' One of the biggest reasons for the current levels of disengagement I feel is that people don't actually play the game anymore. Building an amateur and a pro-amateur scene can create a path to progaming. It at least provides a space for people who want to play the game but cannot do so at a top, top, level still have a place to have some amount of comparable competitive space. It also ensures continuity in case the current producers of top-level StarCraft competition decide to up and leave the market. The biggest example I think of an organization trying to do this now (and having worked at this for quite some time) is the Collegiate Starleague. I can see them building almost something like what the NCAA does for many professional sports, and their efforts will certainly stimulate demand. Okay. There'd be a whole lot to discuss if we got into it about all this stuff. But I am satisfied that at least we are on the same page vis a vis what the topic is, and I think we differ on the first point only in the time scale we are thinking in. As to sub-pro starcraft, I think it's important to recognize that there is a hardcore... well, core of fans who are here to see the very best starcraft that is possible, and aren't really interested if that isn't present. (They might follow other things from time to time provided the mainstay top-level play is there.) The defining characteristic of this group is love of the game, in arguably its truest form. Now I'm theorizing, but I feel like if you dislocate this core, things will start to unravel. Following that thought, it's important that any sub-pro starcraft funnels people into pro starcraft. (Naturally I wouldn't expect otherwise, but I worry.) And if mediocre competition is acceptable content, then mediocre platforms are economically viable. I don't want a world where game companies make shitty games that the kiddies flock to every development cycle provided the requisite marketing, which I suppose is the root of my obstinancy in pursuing this thought. I feel that 'sub-pro' or semi-pro competitive gaming will end up being a gateway to competition in games that are more acceptable to purists. At the very least, raising the visibility of competitive gaming in the public mind and increasing the audience for it will increase attention to, acceptability of, and viability of our more hardcore competitive gaming activities. Well, we were talking about viewership right? How many people are really going to watch objectively bad starcraft games? That would only result from being invested in a starcraft culture big enough to make "local heros" or the "local scene" meaningful. In a way it seems like putting the cart before the horse. Starcraft on the big stage has to be great enough that a poor imitation draws people in by association, not the other way around. The effect you're talking about is a very narrow window of opportunity for any given individual seeing a starcraft match for the first time. If small-time starcraft events proliferate, it will create a lot of new exposure, but will it grab people and keep them? For that to happen, watching the game has to be absolutely gripping, or the culture has to be engaging. The latter is a result of the former.
To circle back to the original topic, proposing to grow the market for peripheral starcraft instead of match the appetite for quality starcraft amounts to deluding people into thinking that what they're watching has value. On the one hand, if they are honestly entertained, then great. On the other hand, in comparison to the best content -- the best players on the biggest stage -- they're watching crap. Is this elitist? Maybe. But isn't it also honest? There's a reason the world cup is only every 4 years, to state the issue in an emblematic way.
Taking the above in tow, how do you capture viewers of quality starcraft? Marketing and whatnot being taken for granted, you have to have a quality product. If you don't have a big enough pull, you have to increase the quality of your product. When it comes to starcraft matches, this means relevant spectacle. Unless something about the entertainment of watching competition fundamentally changes, this mean big games between big names. It can't be a big game if the same matchup was just played last week for the same stakes. The people who make money off sports know this.
That, in part, is why competition doesn't correspond with benefit and may in fact be a detriment while it operates. The dynamics of adding more content don't pan out like options between consumer products does. Sports operate on self-regulation, and this works because of the incentive to maintain elite status, which is coupled to fan sentiment. In other words, passion drives the appetite for the game. To make money off the game you have to drive passion.
[edit] The competition that drives product improvement is between a sport and other entertainment. More starcraft matches only affects this by decreasing the core value of the product making it harder to compete with other entertainment.
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First I only read a few lines, but once i read things in direction of demand-side approaches and demand-supply curves with regard to oversaturation i was very happy! :D
Now i read the full post and still agree, very nice blog!
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I never thought i would pay for watching sc2 ... but that MvP MLG tournament for me to shell out 10$ .... but to be honest it was only to see the Kespa players, i had no interest seeing MLG Koreans play for the 100th time.
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i can't believe you just drew graphs with no numbers and put them on the internet, i want to do that all the time!!!!!!
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Hong Kong9136 Posts
On October 18 2012 12:51 xmungam wrote: i can't believe you just drew graphs with no numbers and put them on the internet, i want to do that all the time!!!!!!
The graphs and curves described here depict basic economic understandings and are meant to provide visual aid to what I say in the text.
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