Is Esports Dying? | Asmongold Reacts 

Part of the problem with esports is that games come out now trying to be an esport first instead of trying to make a fun game that can also be an esport

The problem with new E-Sports is that it feels so forced. The more you try to push your game to being an E-Sport, the closer you push it to crashing down.

Every new and exciting sport has 10 years to prove itself. I learned this from Roller Blades

Franchising esports is the entire problem

It worked in Korea because they only played one game for the longest time. Nobody would be invested in traditional sports if everyone stopped playing Basketball and Football when a new sport comes out.

I think something that needs to be said is that this problem mostly applies to NA esports where video games are not only less popular than in EU and in Asia, but the most popular video games are relatively casual (think NBA2K/FIFA/CoD). I just moved to South Korea and eSports are HUGE here. For example, I went on a date with a Korean girl who is a personal trainer, doesn’t play video games or anything, and I asked her if she knew who Faker was and she said “Yeah, Faker, LoL player!” Esports in NA are super overvalued but I don’t think they have no future, I think the creator-backed orgs are the future in NA and Zoomers+the generation after them will be more interested in the concept.

The "3 Ludwigs" human centipede analogy for vertical integration was amazing. Classic Asmon banger, here. We love to see it.

"Is everything you know & love, dying right before your eyes?" Yes! Everyday...

There is a visual issue with esports, to go to an arena (ie sell tickets), I feel the viewer wants a larger spectacle if they are going to pay the money and physically show up; not just what they'd see on screen on a stream

If you look at the history of pro baseball, football etc in america, you'll see that the professional leagues existed several decades before players and coaches were able to have that be their primary job. I'm not saying that these players don't work hard and deserve their fair share, but the value just isn't there yet. The investment of capital should not go to paying salaries. It needs to go into assets and other things going into growth of the company which then allow the growth of salaries.

This is what happens when you keep pushing something and force it to be bigger than it really is instead of letting it happen organically. The cherry on top is the gaming industry forcing diversity and identity politics nobody wants or cares about, while simultaneously cutting costs and taking zero risks. It's a perfect storm of misplaced force, greed, and stupidity and the whole industry is collapsing in on itself because of it.

Major esports leagues first need to have a good community with a lot of active audience on it. Their growth also must be natural and has become recognized by a big organization (say like the sponsors of eSports on S.Korea) so that they can host big events and maintain it. But before that, a community will bring out small tourneys. With no sponsor from big organizations. (An example of these are those small tourneys for fighting games) The major problem these days are the esports league that try to go big asap and push esports to games by artificially putting hype and growth onto it. (We've seen this many times in the last 10 years, one being Overwatch's esports scene) But they forgot the natural growth of a game. (Ie making it fun and making new players pay attention to it)

I orchestrated a partnership between esports team Tempo Storm and a digital autograph called Fangage back in 2018. Fangage had seen a lot of success in traditional ball sports and moving into esports which already interacted in a digital space and had global reach seemed like a logical step. A few of the events were successful, and working with the org and players was a positive experience, but invested parties were expecting the same kind of results they had seen in the NFL, which has a cult-like following - while digital communities are extremely passionate, they don't have the same power as tying a team to a region, which often drives sales via regional identity even beyond the fanbase.

One thing not mentioned that does create at least a possibility for profitability is just overall public interest. Gaming itself isn't going anywhere and will always have some kind of competitive scene. Esports is growing at both a high school and collegiate level with many states starting to recognize it as a varsity sport. That's just in regards to the US not as sure about other places but I assume it isn't too different. With the money that universities pull in annually for athletics programs there is at least another spark of hope for the industry overall.

The International always was good for making money, even the last one. But record breaking 40 million prize pool on TI10 was insane. Team Spirit really hit a jackpot.

Accessibility is a big part why Sports will always be more popular than E-sports. Someone who has never played football can still get a general understanding of what's going on and have a good time with some friends. Depending on the video game if you've never played it before looks like a big clusterfack.

Many esports had forced a profesional way to make tournaments and orgs, and this "bubble burst" was the ultimate result. While Fighting Games are having a slow, yet steady and regular increase on prize pools and tournaments, to the point that Capcom Cup will award 1M to the winner, and EVO finally will have some money to share to their winners.

I think the problem is there’s not a big audience for e-sports. Gaming is extremely popular but most gamers are casual. They might go to the top players to learn how to play better but they’re less interested to watch full matches or tournaments of those players. In a live setting, casuals often won’t even recognize the level of skill being displayed so they’re more likely to watch an entertaining streamer if they want to watch full matches.

I think something huge which Moist and Ludwig benefits with an eSport org as creators is that they are the mascots. Now Moist tried alone but didn't work, but the problem I have with other eSport brands is that they're mostly faceless. Yes you might get to know some of the players and root for them, but then I root for them and I don't seek to buy say Cloud9 merch, cause one day these players will get replaced, change teams or retire, then what is Cloud9 to me? Now it's a poor example as Cloud9 does have a vtuber in their LoL brand which can help have people root. That's why I feel having content creators you can vibe with actually have these teams work way better. You watch Moist's or Ludwig's content, you may not be that into eSport, but you may likely wanna support the teams anyhow and get merch cause you're invested. So them being the literal mascots the real sport teams have in a sense matters, but they're also more. They're the mascots and your hometown/city/country/state, which is an issue eSports tends to have in that the teams aren't mostly based on something you can personally feel for and are just faceless organizations with team rosters that, from my experience, changes way more often than in real sports.

Esports was one of the worst things to ever happen to gaming.

Esports is very much alive in Asia. Esports just sucks in North America.

Almost as if the downturn in propped up tech companies have a ripple effect. The Korean sc2 scene was treated to a dose of reality not a week ago when Blizzard decided to stop pumping money into it(80% reduction in prize money).

Esports that failed are those who forced their way to become one. The games that grew organically are the ones who succeeded.

Traditional US sports make nearly ALL their money on tv deals. With younger generations “cutting the cord”, traditional sports will run into the same issues esports has once these deals need to be re-upped (10 ish years for some sports) Also, US sports teams benefit from a salary capped talent pool. It’s better to compare esport orgs to soccer clubs that have international, non salary capped talent markets… they largely don’t make money 😬

Seeing GSL's (Starcraft 2) prize pool drop announcement a few days ago made me so damn sad. I'm a Broodwar guy so I like ASL more, but Starcraft 2 is still alright. To see Starcraft 2 just going away from the esports scene slowly is just sad.

That is not at all what vertical integration is. It's when you own your suppliers so you no longer pay a markup cost.

I don't know if it is, but no game should be balanced based on eSports players. It's frustrating when balance that affects all parts of a game is driven by the .001%

The biggest problem with eSports as a thing is that it's owned by someone, I can today make a football tournament and FIFA can't do shit, it's not the same for eSports and that will forever be a hurdle

I miss the high of SC2, damn Wings of Liberty had some banger content for esports

Im confused. NFL has changed the rules so much and has so many niche case rules. Same with a game like dota. The smaller rules may have changed but the point of the game is the same.

Gaming may be accessible to everyone, but definitely not esports. You have to be that rare combination of genuinely skilled at gaming and having the backing of a lot of money.

Esports dying just as fast as Asmon’s hair

Thanks for watching my video man. Your perspective was awesome to hear along with it. 🤘

Asmon hits the nail on the head with creator backed esport business model. Take a popular face, use the loss making sport for content. Think “Welcome to Wrexham” for soccer.

NA problems LMAO most Americans don't know that Esports is actually big outside of USA

Your game development initiative can't start off with Esports being the primary intention. Historically the 'real' games grew into communities which then transitioned into the soccer, football, baseball, basketball and tennis leagues that they are today. CSGO, DoTa and League are 3 games that grew into large communities (of course I left some other titles out) the same way the OG sports did, and only then transitioned into successful Esport platforms. You can't force that stuff. The Esport potential is something that has to be discovered through the enjoyment of the players itself over time.

Did anyone here ever watch G4's Arena show? Formed gamer teams to compete against each other and just swapped out games. From shooters, to fighters, to sports game.. You just had to hope you had players with the right mix of skillsets. Then I think they would sometimes end the match with some VR gameplay Back in the day a lot of my friends loved it. We would go to school the next day after an episode and talk about creating our own teams and play various games who would be the Fighting game player, the fps, player, the tps player or sports game player. It was a strange but fun experience to imagine and play along with the show. Whatever games they played we would play and have Lan parties pretending to have our own ARENA tournament.

“There was no patches for the NBA”. Actually… Throughout the 20 years I’ve been watching NBA. Defense in regular season getting nerfed to the ground, offensive attributes got seriously buffed. Range hero’s got buffed, melees got nerfed.Consumables like PED was added into the game buffing player longevity across the board…

I want to just put some thoughts on the topic here. I don't thing that esports as concept is failing, I think it has more to do with the popular esport game's state. You see, the esport games that change very little (like LoL or CS:GO) are still very popular with events that have a lot of viewers, while the others, most of the other esport games are failing. Why? Because they changed the original concept of their game so much that it's not that entertaining game from before anymore. Apex added a lot of bad maps and new legends, like valk, that are so strong they change an entire concept. Dota 2 changed the lanes, from classic MOBS 1-1-2 with a jungle or 1-1-3 to 2-2-1 every match, also adding blockposts and shrines, changing the game in general. R6siege has the same problem apex has, a lot of new operators which become hard to balance. CoD series went too casual, adding mechanics that punish better players (like sprint to fire delays and getting rid of most of the movement mechanics). Overwatch also shifted its meta too much so the game is not the same anymore. Also, ow2 switched from 6vs6 to 5vs5, another questionable decision. Those games just don't seem entertaining to play or watch anymore due to poor management decisions. People who fell in love with those esports are not interested in them anymore since they've changed too much and each new decision by their devs teams only seem to move it further into the rabbit hole. Meanwhile, the games that barely changed remain pretty consistent with their esports. So maybe it's about time for devs to listen to their players a bit instead of pushing "marketing friendly" decisions that kill their games?

90% of eSports is actually highly unprofessional and purely exploitative to the players. Makes sense

I did scouting for an e-sports team in Las Vegas. Mainly at the hyperX center. We had big wall street investors looking to sponsor players for various types of tournaments. What we found after spending almost 200k is that most of these players don’t have discipline. Don’t have the mental fortitude to compete at high levels. And the players were unmanageable. Combine that with a few cheating scandals and lack of cheat-proof games, the investors closed shop. E-sport is now devolved to influencing.

Traditional sports do have "patches". So many rule changes were made in the NFL to attempt to minimize concussions. So many rules changes that were made in the NBA changed the meta to a three-point shooting dominant league.

The esports to sports comparison doesn't work. That's why franchise leagues are a scam and not the way to go. Nobody owns basketball. There's no microtransactions in basketball. If you want to buy something sports related you get equipment(ball, shoes, clothes), which can easily be team stamped easily. Meanwhile if you want to get league merch you'll probably get a chimp, a chimp skin or some phys merch off of rito's site themed with your favorite chimp. AND only then will you consider going to whatever mediocre team riot is keeping on payroll and getting something from them. Rito is a smoll indie company, they have to nickel and dime their players however and whenever they can, so they have 0 incentive to support teams properly. Just look at how they inserted themselves in the ftx deal lmao. There have been multiple discussions with team owners, but how many random bs skin events are there and how many team cosmetic/team events are in game? Esports have gotten too big, too organized and that only means more mouths to feed and more middlemen to % into any of the money.

Why esport is dying? 1. lack of attachment of pleyrs to club colors (as it happens in football) 2. Botted vievers 3. Lack of cooperation between players and vievers, (1 and 3 creates feeling of lack of identity) 4. Bad advertising methods 5. exclusivity of certain televisions / providers to broadcast certain competitions / leagues 6. Esport players arent always the best players of game 7. Boredom attached to games esport players do play, why you would watch someone playing boring game

Esports is a short term bubble it's not like in real sports where basketball, footbal stays for generations only counter strike and dota has longevity for video games. If that video game loses popularity and so those teams.

i think valorant is one of the worst esports to pump money like this, its like pumping half a million to some badminton or bowling team and expecting to make it big

let's not normalize "ORG" over Organization, please. Just say "team" if organization is too many letters for you.

The NBA was started in 1946. They weren't actually successful until the 1980s. Magic Johnson and Larry Bird saved the league. Adoption for any league usually takes years and that's why most new leagues fail, because they don't have the startup capital to keep funding years of losses before their product catches on and becomes profitable.

9:21 I love how the screen is so dark and then bright red you can see it reflecting on Asmon's face in cam. His reaction is appropriate.

When they went public they overvalued it and killed it themselves, but a fair market doesnt exist anymore.

Blizzard just abandoned SC2 in Korea and cut NA/Europe as well

you can tell Asmon has never played sports or watches them because he thinks traditional sports dont get patches and the meta changes overtime. He specifically brought up basketball which has drastically changed overtime. The 3 point line used to never exist, shot clocks used to not exist, James Harden would abuse the rules to get a million free throws a game, they patched his exploit and now he is a role player instead of an allstar. Traditional sports change all the time and I think Asmon overlooked that because he doesn't know shit about them.

I sure fucking hope so. Esports are a blight on video games.

It was never meant to be more than a side hustle. It never had permanence.

funny how moist critical made exactly the opposite video

It also doesn't help that triple A games aren't delivering to their expected standard. Halo, Cod, battlefield, Mortal Kombat, Street Fighter, Marvel vs Capcom, Smash are shells of their former selves. And the companies like Nintendo, Sony, Microsoft aren't investing into the competitive scenes like before. Pair that alongside the spiraling economy, and it's only inevitable.

Yes. Western esports orgs aren’t profitable. Orgs overseas however such as in Korea or China are able to sustain themselves through other means similar to 100thieves strategy.

Wait so you’re telling me Toasts to do list was just an IRL Parlay but nobody wanna talk about that, odds/bets, assumptions, hopes, this shit ain’t making money unless you’re making content and merch idc. Franchising and contracts are all overvalued to hell and can’t convince me otherwise. I truly wonder what the pros will do in when they retire with the skills from esports…

Yes and being a streamer killed it. If you are a god tier gamer in any competitive game, that means you got a name for yourself, you are famous. Why would u wanna work under some company, for probably shit money, when u can just stream yourself and make 100x more?

The main problem is Esports are selling the wrong thing. Sport TEAMS make money from ticket sales, and broadcast deals. In esports, the tournament organizers sell that.

A thing a lot of people here don't really seems to consider is that we took decades to decide which sports were actually going to be the big ones they are today and there are always new ones popping up. The biggest thing about this is that this process took us this long on a platform where we were already at peak "hardware and software" capabilities. I mean we are humans playing a real life game on our real physics "engine", we KNOW for sure that there will be no better option available in a few years, humans will be humans and physics will be physics. This means we had lots of time to figure out what the best and most interesting sports/games (software) are on this "hardware" (humans/physics). This is absolutely not the case in Esports. Like asmon stated there is no Basketball3 or anything. This is not necessary since there is no improvement in the environment we've already reached peak basketball possible on our current operating system called the universe. But look at esports 15 years ago and now. The difference in the quality of the games we can play now. Unless we reach some kind of hard ceiling on hardware capability that makes sure we have to refine and find the "Best" game to play on that hardware and stick with that for a long time like we did with real sports you can't really replicate the stability and interest "real" sports have today. Since we are still in the figuring out whats best stage for how esports should be and are absolutely nowhere near real sports level. Right now i think the solo creator/streamer format is the best option we have. We adhere to the person moreso than the game which means we can go along with any changes in the situation more easily (change in games but the same streamer gives us some stability around the creator instead of the product). When we reach this theoretical limit on hardware and figure out the "best" game to play it would become more and more interesting to push the limits of the Game in a competitive format like what's happened to the real life games we now call sports. Since focus will be on the same game for prolonged periods of time it becomes more and more interesting to find the limits of said game.

I think the biggest key that e-sports is lacking is nostalgia. A vast majority of now popular professional sports have been built upon this. Nearly every sport has been played in a majority of schools for a long time. This nostalgia was ALLOWED to naturally grow into tradition. Most people who follow these sports remember many fond memories attached to these events. These games also were changed slowly over time. This allowed for older fans to adjust with it. The trap many e-sports fall for. This is ultimately the games change too damn much for casual audiences to keep up with after leaving the game. LoL is a prime example of this. If you have not played in a few years you may tune in and not be able to understand many aspects of the games. Many items are different. New Champs that you have zero idea how the function on a basic level. This type of e-sport will only truly reach the level of more minor sports like golf, tennis, etc. The e-sports most likely to succeed are shooters. The issue is most shooters will need a way to develop I to team based objective situations that have more complexity. This way the game can be watched and understood at a zoomed out level. The spectating is honestly too zoomed in most of the time. Death timers would also need to be lengthy to add real weight to a character death.

It feels really bad to cheer for esport in general, when the department of esport is mishandling it so bad. Look at Riot Games, they just waste millions of dollars because they are inept.

I honestly feel like every game company will essentially have to own or act as commissioner of esports leagues regarding their games. Selling their games to esports leagues like Starcraft in Korea to GomTV/Afreeca/etc just isn't viable due to the lack of integration and initial investment. Their esports broadcasts will need to be tied into the games with drops for skins or in game currency in the game during broadcasts...think like a tabard or in game gold for an MMO like WoW if they had a competitive scene still or a hero skin for league or new unit skins or announcer voicepack for RTS games. I think full top down integration will be required and that the developers themselves will have to drive their games leagues otherwise it will never work.

I personally have always had this point, but I think it was a major mistake to tie esports with traditional sports even in the name because you know just have the comparisons. I think from the beginning they should have made it something of its own completely separate and have a diff name not tied into the sports. This way they could actually make things around this gaming system and not try and replicate the sports model

Shoutout to the chatter who said " This guy sounds like Kermit the Frog" xD

The main reason professional sports make the money they do is because of generational viewing. Greats grand parents rooted for the teams there great grand kids root for today. That created a following and culture that's to deep for it to fail. Esports is brand new. And doesn't have the following to be as big as they think it could be yet.

Why does nobody talking about 100theives mention they hired 2 of the most expensive players in the lcs?

Esports is dying because that the nature of the crowd consuming it. Number one esports always has to reinvent themselves to stay revenant with current market. No one wants to play the same old game anymore and always wants something new, better, different. If it can’t hit all those marks, then it isn’t worth it in most gamers mind. Constantly trying to please a crowd never works out because your pleasing will offend others. Number two which also goes in hand with the first part. Most people grow out of playing games and want to experience real life. How this goes with the first part is because older players don’t want to game anymore so younger ones have to jump in but the younger ones want something different and new because what’s current is boring too them. This is where esports has to completely reinvent the wheel over and over again. No other sport has to this ever and people are happy to play that sport because it is what it is and won’t change

It would be the best outcome for pvp games if E sports died. Then we could maybe go back to seeing unusual multiplayer games with interesting ideas instead of "Cargo map variant 235" with the exact same game mechanics weve had for the last 32 game entries. The fact that Apex took off as well as it did while only changing a handful of aspects shows how hungry people are for ANYTHING actually new

I live in Kentucky and have been a HUGE gamer all my life. I recently just heard about esports and figured out what it was around 2020-2021. All because of an anime named kings avatar. And even still I don't know where I'd go to watch it, buy merchandise nothing. Not asking I'm just saying the marketing on all of this has been crap. This should be something so easy to find I don't even have to go look for it if they want it to be successful. Cable commercials advertising it, facebook.. it needs to be shown so much you get tired of hearing about it and start wondering what it is. But it hasn't been. These tournaments could easily net a few million views each if they marketed it right. A few million views every show is gonna bring in some huge sponsors. Get the views then start selling merchandise. Ain't nobody gonna care about the merch if they don't even know who you are.

Honestly, I've lost hope in games. As a previous lifetime gamer, I don't game anymore. Probably never will again.

Take a Look at Sports that are Not super popular. Most of the top Athlets need another Job to make a living. The Same is true for E-Sport. The Viewership is as high as these sports.

I hope so. ES brought unwanted attention to gaming while distracting the focus of the industry. On top of that you have now kids trying to pursue "careers that are a forlorn hope instead of trying to do shit that will put money in their pockets and meat in the table. It has become a liability. Now we are starting to see people that's between 25-30 and all they know do it's play a game that died 1 or 2 yrs ago I think the Ludwig example is pretty good. Ludwig is making a ton of money while investing all his time on his project, maybe he's making it happen for 2 - 3 of his friends but what about the rest of the people that work for this orgs and are putting all their time and efforts on that? When the bubble burst those dudes are gonna end up with nothing and skill on the toolkit that are not needed or wanted, because here's only so many slots for people that make a living out of playing games. And every wants to be one.

I'm honestly pretty amazed that E-sports was ever a thing to begin with. I personally never cared who won, why should I care if gamer 1 vs gamer 2 wins? There's no connection. Blizzard had the right idea on giving cities a "team" to root for, but blizzard never seemed to take it seriously enough.

The problem with esports is we are gamers and don’t waste time watching stuff. we’re playing games, who has time to watch esports like it’s the football while watching steams RU-vid and whatever else and also fit in gaming?

I just think that esports are boring…who wants to watch people play the same game over and over and over again.

Investing in eSports is pretty much Marketing for the games being featured. IE: It's not making money on its own, but will help drive continued interest and revenue in your game(s). That being said there's still a high chance that all the added "tangible" value created by eSports is a net negative.

I'm still watching Warcraft 3 tft on Back2Warcraft twitch. Scene is bigger then 10yrs ago.

It got as big as it did because investors thought esports would be the next nfl or nba for the next generation. Then after about a decade they realized they weren't making any real profit off it and are pulling their money out. It was an investment bubble driven by hype and now its over. This happens all the time in the investing world because quite a lot of investors have a mile high view of things and often make really dumb investments due to not actually inderstanding what the company does or what market its involved in. A lot of social media companies and web news sites are currently crashing for the exact same reason.

I hope its dying. games like Overwatch were fun before Blizzard decided to force the esports scene on a game that was lauded for drawing in people from all kinds of gaming backgrounds. The more serious they made the game, the more people left, and the people who remain, it feels like they're all miserable and nasty at very single little thing that goes wrong in-game.

The issue, imo is that there aren't many games that stand the test of time and stay relevant forever like traditional sports. How do you have a thriving competitive scene when viewers have moved on?

I feel the bubble was always going to burst. Now it's happening

If you think about how sports have naturally evolved over time - maybe starts as a small game in a localised community, expand to other surroundings communities, eventually nation wide and eventually internationally. A lot of games skip literally every single step and try to go straight for the “international” appeal (competitive and esports focused), that’s why they fail. No one is invested in the game, that’s why games like LoL and CSGO are popular.

Esports is a bit like sports, in the sense that I don't watch either. The only difference is that I can respect the level of athletic ability it takes to compete in sports.

eSports went through booms and busts... Best periods for me were Starcraft and Counterstrike.

Esport would probably thrive with VR. Imagine a death battle colosseum in VR

I’m sure it doesn’t help that most games feel like a soulless corporate investor cash grabs instead of fun games

i think part of the problem is modern game design, often things are too dumbed down and dont keep interest cause of it

Gaming industry should accept that is a NERD product and not a NBA culture product.

To be frank, I think they should make eSports all localized in one location. Because like everyone says, they're in bubbles. Multiple bubbles that a simple individual will have difficulty finding. For example. A Twitch like website devoted to eSports. Namely to not only hold the games but also Introduce new audiences to new games. And not a big streamer running it, like an official suit and tie show. Why? People who don't know said big streamer will think "So it's not gonna be a big thing than? Just a trend that will die in a year."

a bigger thing is internet cafe's here in NA have died as a culture long ago where in Asia these are still like , HUGE - that LAN atmosphere really pushes one to be their best and go that step further, as a kid in LAN internet cafe's playing 1.6 CS , ican vouch its def a lot moore fun and engaging to go even there at the cafe as a spectator than to watch streams.... but this culture died and people are afraid to leave their homes in NA let alone go try something thats out their comfort zone... theres LAN hosted events here for apex and people never attend, and yet wanna go pro ect- people here in NA dont want to put the work in as where i think other places people have less opportunity and can translate into a more grindset mindstate , where here people are quite entitled and EXPECT if ur good, ur entertaining and funny and everything above when in reality .... theres lots of GOOD/AMAZING players who are unknown on every game and never get any recogition. idk what my final point is here but its just I think culturally NA has higher expectations for doing a lot less -... I rarely hear about people showing up to tourny's/LAN events like 20 years ago here... if there luckily happens to be any in ur city/town for ur game.... so Esports generally became a streamer dick ride show more than it was about the ACTUAL COMPETITIVE players, which is normal- but its just not as sturdy as say NFL ....

Well there is the fact also that Esports players usualy dont focus so much in improving in the game. I mean, a professional Soccer player gets hundreds of thousands of dollars to play, while Esports players get 5k a month to train and focus and play, but then they open a stream and get 10k a week. This endup creating teams with visible "I dont give a fuck" atitude from the players and players quitting after only a few years in, there are so many factors that make people stop watching a same Esport game for years and years.

Something that wasn't covered was that Esports just isn't very entertaining for many people, not unlike regular sports but in it's own ways as well.

eSports has always been a joke and nothing ruins a game faster than trying to balance it around eSports when its a casual game just look at cod lol

As a league player I don't think the increasing focus on solo plays and speeding the game matches up from 50 minutes to 25 minutes has improved the game at all. They can now get more games in per day, so what, its a now shittier game, compressed into half the time it was designed for. Also making champions more fragile so that solo playing assassins and bruisers can get cool highlight reels, making tanks into damage dealers so that top lane isn't boring. But I don't like that kind of highlight reel, I would rather watch teamwork considering it is a team game. It was way better to watch 8 years ago.

If you invest recklessly like Blizzard and most NA orgs, then esports is simply not sustainable. Dota2 and CS esports scenes only grew to what they are now after consistent player interest over many years for formal competition - being reacted to in kind by organizers, Valve and then organizations. The competitive AOE 2 scene nowadays is a good example of investment that suits interest garnered. If it saw superteams and franchised leagues invested in millions all of a sudden, it would be just another scene waiting to fail. Reacting and growing according to consistent success and community growth is the way for both devs and orgs.

22:03 Asmon did him dirty with a push of a button 🤣

Technically Rockefeller was doing horizontal integration (taking over all examples of a particular step in the process, aka textbook monopoly) which is more frowned upon, more harmful for the economy and probably less successful (since the government took Rockefeller's company and broke it apart)

What you said at 22:40 hits the nail on the head! So much of the problems surrounding gaming today are the result of financier’s getting involved with our hobby and trying to turn it into their money printer.