In a world where internet is becoming more and more a substitute of daily communication, eSports is surely one of the frontrunners. Not only can we spend time with people from all across the globe, we usually seek them out in an effort to pick up on different cultures - just look at all those StarCraft fans who idolize Korean culture. And what better way to do all of this than simply log on to different social media?The keyword is interactivity, not necessarily the "social" bit. You can be as introvert on these virtual plateaus as you would be in real life, but nonetheless you will gain more information. On-the-fly and accessibility is the core of social media. If you have a Twitter or Facebook account and let it sit open every day, you have a handy log of what, when and where your friends and idols alike are sharing something meaningful or otherwise with the world.
Heck, it's even a non-effort to share your views on important or trivial matters by spending five minutes creating a Tumblr or Wordpress account, write a few hundred words in blog form and click send. Whoever has similar or even opposite ideas is likely to start a discussion about whatever your likes and dislikes are.
So too in the world of eSports. Make that, especially so in the world of eSports. With a handful of titles and dozens of big name players or teams to follow, the social media are a useful tool to group all of these tidbits together and be as up-to-date as practically any insider. As soon as SC2 pro gamer, Grubby, posted about SteelSeries dropping their sponsorship deal for 2012, Twitter and Facebook were on fire with comments about the affair. So much so, that it prompted Kim Rom of SteelSeries himself to create a blog entry (http://kimrom.tumblr.com/post/15910329308/on-not-sponsoring-someone) about all the negative publicity SteelSeries was receiving on Twitter and Facebook, due to a simple business deal.
the "infamous" Grubby Twitter announcement
COD4 Falls BehindIf Xfire statistics are anything to go by (and yes, Xfire is a very COD4-oriented community, so the numbers might be skewed), Call of Duty 4 is ranked #2 on the entire game list with over 103,177 hours played. Beating titles such as Battlefield 3, Modern Warfare 3, World of Warcraft and others. Does this not show that our community is still a force to be reckoned with, does this not mean we are not yet at the end of our ropes?
Regardless of big numbers, when it comes down to getting in touch with one another, we fail horribly. TEK9 and CyberGamer are arguably the biggest hubs for our competitive niche, but we only seem to reach a big slice of the pie, not the whole thing. We should be devouring it with box and everything. Unfortunately, recent numbers on streams seem to indicate differently.
However big the effort was of the community to get just under 5,000 concurrent viewers for the Grand Final of the Corsair Vengeance Cup, it's nothing to be overly proud of either. Compare this to any Intel Extreme Masters game title and we should ponder no longer as to why Counter-Strike 1.6 is still an IEM title and we have been conveniently laid to the wayside of all of ESL's major tournaments.
So why are we not getting to that final piece of COD4 pie? In hindsight, we are extremely bad at marketing and promoting our game. How few of the current TOP 10 teams have representatives on Twitter and Facebook? Twitter might have ten at most and when, used nearly solely for mindless chatter. Some two months ago, there was an arms race to get some brand profiles made on Facebook amongst the COD4 teams, but only a handful have remained and the community interaction is sporadic at best.
A Few Good MenJust like the movie's protagonist, Fnatic's Stevy is the Tom Cruise of our time. Endless amounts of sixteen year old boys - hopefully for the man in question, some girls too - wonder in amazement when watching the Belgian scope play games or drop jaws at his frag movies. Surely he should have plenty? His Facebook profile has just over 4,250 fans and his Twitter barely cracked 2,000. Our game's undeniable leader is Dignitas' phantasy with a whopping 20,209 YouTube subscribers, proving what kind of e-fame uploading guides and tutorial can bestow on you.
You yourself might like to have so many followers on your social media profiles, but in the end, it pales in comparison with the big boys of eSports. Of course we are not of similar stature in eSports, yet it's striking how badly and vaguely we are represented on Twitter, YouTube and Facebook.
If we want organisations to stay interested in Call of Duty 4 and keep on throwing money our way, we need to keep on par with the information highway and build up fan bases. Is it madness to dream of Stevy reaching 10,000 followers on his Facebook? It shouldn't, if you look at how many views his frag movies usually rack up. If just 10% of them end up following him on social media, he'd hit that number with ease. If Stevy himself can then relay those statistics to Fnatic, I'm sure they'd nod in N*Sync-like choreography, say good job and give him a pat on the back for selling the Fnatic brand so well.
A small overview of other eSports greats and their followers:
Manuel
Grubby Schenkhuizen - StarCraft 2 pro & WarCraft III legend:
Twitter: 14,218
Facebook: 15,364
Chris
HuK Loranger - Evil Geniuses StarCraft 2 pro:
Twitter: 32,049
Facebook: 5,886
Patrik
cArn Sattermön - Fnatic Counter-Strike 1.6 pro:
Twitter: 3,589
Facebook: 17,041
Will
BigTymer Johnson - OpTic MW3 XP winner:
Twitter: 14,758
Sean
Day[9] Plott - StarCraft 2 shoutcaster:
Twitter: 94,045
Facebook: 81,027
Greg
IdrA Fields - Evil Geniuses StarCraft 2 pro:
Twitter: 43,880
Facebook: 24,517
As you can see, we seem to have missed the boat almost entirely. It's all about getting in touch with your fans and realizing that, as a player, a team and even an eSports title, it's all about selling yourself as willingly as Babylon's Whore.
For the pro's: sign up on Facebook and Twitter now. Create accounts and take a wholeheartedly approach to the whole thing, be earnest and true with your fans. See it is a new opportunity to kickstart the Call of Duty 4 Promod scene. If you don't believe me, just take a gander at what true reasons were in play for Team-Dignitas picking up Mark Pinney's team, after they had quite sternly promised not to be involved with COD4 anymore.
For the fans: see this as a chance to get in touch with the greats of your game. You'll have an insight into how they operate, how often they play and be one of the first to see them play via streams, as they'll surely promote it. You'll learn their tricks, you'll get first pick at their configs, tutorials, demos and other nifty things. It doesn't harm you, it costs nothing and you needn't wait on some newspost a day or two after the facts to get all the information.
Get on Twitter & Facebook, share your thoughts and spread the COD4 Promod fun to all those you know.
Twitter.comFacebook.comYouTube.com
But those who saw the potential in entertainment and competition took it a step further. Now these sports get tweeted and posted about thousands of times a day (sometimes millions).
In korea they already do it on a large scale for sc2, and one day esports will have this. But this mind set of "it's just a game" has to go.
edited 2012-02-07 19:28:46
I've followed many pros from other games, be it on twitter or facebook. You just have to get yourself out there and seen by all these other communities. Whilst the bulk of your fans may come from your own game, you'll be surprised at just how many people you can inspire to follow you with a bit of effort from your own part.
And a big point that's missed out is that in Counterstrike (I'm going to ignore starcraft because it is literally massive), the vast majority of its viewers are attracted from the lesser developed technological countries such as Brazil, eastern Europe and central Asia. Little to zero people that contribute to the numbers that counterstrike still attract are actually from the more developed western countries who the sponsors ultimately care about.
Sponsors have more of a chance of selling their stuff to people from countries that can afford their gear then to those that cant. Counterstrike is still racking up those massive numbers because other games like source and Call of Duty is too demanding for the hardware that these countries posses and that's ultimately why the game is going down hill.
Thats pretty much why HLTV.org is earning jack shit money. The majority of its readers are from people that sponsors couldn't give a flying shit about.
So in a nutshell, sure there are a vastly lower amount of people that watch games like cod and CSS, but atleast they can understand fucking English.
u realise how bullshit this sentence is right? half of hardware sponsorships come from companies knowing a new game will require their new products in order to run it smoothly, hence they put a load of money into new games a lot of the time, you would always see a gfx card company shovelling money into a new game rather than CS for example. obviously u are mainly about the lesser countries when u say that but still...:D
edited 2012-02-08 00:25:28
edited 2012-02-09 01:50:08
Who, may I ask?
So perhaps we should call our pros "amateurs"?
Unless we call them pros under this definition:
A professional is an expert who is master in a specific field.
www.twitter.com/reasonbaker
Players like phantasy, choobie, etc. are realizing that not only is producing content for the fans a good way of marketing themselves and their organizations, it's also a great way of getting outsiders interested in the game as well.
If you're a top player, I highly recommend you to follow suit, build up a fan base and keep your followers updated about yourself and the CoD4 scene in general. Your organization and their sponsors will love you for it and you're promoting the game at the same time. It's a win win, really.
edited 2012-02-07 22:26:04
no pro's here.. pro is a different league.. there svery good but no pros
edited 2012-02-07 22:54:46
idd huge thumbs up to maza and phan, I think they made the game far more attractive to outsiders and have done a great job on YT. Phan's also active on twitter so he interacts with his followers often.
People should take a leaf out of these guys' book and at least try to help grow the game they enjoy playing.
Great article Bob in any case.
Great read bob:)
If you make the scene more commercial so more people start following it it should get more sponsors involved and could grow bigger again.
This can be achieved by making use of the tools we have now , and we should be using people who like to help the scene :
Use the cybergamer league's and kaostv , For a cod4 more commercial cod4 competitio by like streaming 1/2 matches a day , so means beside the already great job their doing , they should scout some shoutcasting talent , and help them get even more active.
Make like 1/2 sites that will be the main sites for the scene , so sponsors are like ok we wanna invest to do commercials on that site
Seanza , is organising small lans , that are open for every team atm , wich is already great , but if he put it on a different way like organise online qualifiers where you make a lot of advertising for the lan , then the best teams will participate over a big pot of prize money wich will make it way more exiting to watch.
all thigns that are achieveable with the tools we have at the particulair moment.
I would we need a organisation wich focusses on the populairity of the scene , makes it more commericial and attractive to play and make sure sponsors will get intrested.
But just as i said the people who are already doing thigns keep up the good work, but we need to work toghether instead of making all different individuals.
CoD4 is still a very demanding game, requiring half decent hardware.
Also the lack of a budget for marketing is kinda shite too :P but isn't necessary (would be great though)
Activision divided us into x99 games, how could you even etablish a scene behind that?
The starcraft scene is the same for15 years (sort of joking but you still meet the ancients pro players at GSL or around this.)
Cod4 isn't dead, but i don't think it's gonna grow until a new revolution on it. (codtv new promod?), or maybe cs 1.6 giving up to cod haha ":D"
idd huge thumbs up to maza and phan, I think they made the game far more attractive to outsiders and have done a great job on YT. Phan's also active on twitter so he interacts with his followers often.
People should take a leaf out of these guys' book and at least try to help grow the game they enjoy playing.
Great article Bob in any case.
Twitter: 14,758
should have put hecz since hes the team leader
But this shouldn't be the priority. Game needs:
1) Maps
2) CODTV
Then you have a survival package.
Really, lately I only see him advertising Infected Mushrooms( not sure if epic fanboy) on his facebook and some clips that he made for you and paradox.....
Where are stream links for all those cups on his page, tbh?????????????????????????????????????????????
What about CoD4 movie contest?:)
www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLF02D4E0D64441F94&feature=view_all
or shitloads of videos from lan i recorded and shoutcasted?
www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL899259FD816C1589&feature=view_all
its all on my page on the right in playlists
www.youtube.com/Mazarin1k
*EDIT*
On a more serious note I may need your help with your following sometime soon in the future if possible.
edited 2012-02-08 18:59:19
not your contest's for you fanboys or something......
I've seen every better player with facebook fanpage posting about stream even tho they are not playing that night for team or in that cup, I would like to see from you something of that.
I just support CoD4 in general
>worships FaZe Clan HD xXxqUiCkScOpEzXxxXTeMpeRShAwTz
worth the read