Of course they want you to pay for an event so they can get free or cheaper PR. They are full of low lifes now that don’t care about you. They only care about $$$$$. They have long forgotten how to be a business offering a true quality product that the customer will enjoy and thus naturally pay into. Now they are using their good name and former glories to bleed what’s left dry through maximized monetization.
I don’t care about the esport stuff. I wouldn’t care if every single penny of it went directly into the hands of starving kids in Africa, personally delivered by Ion himself. I’m getting the toy because I think it’s neat. If it were not neat, I would not buy it. Where the money is going is incidental to me.
Sounds like a smart business decision.
23,000 viewers doesn’t suggest to me that a big crossover success is on the horizon, I’m sorry. That’s not even a significant fraction of people who currently play the game. I have nothing against MDI itself, I just think it should occupy its own sphere, and honestly, I’m sick to death of timers in an MMO. It’s niche and it always will be.
Where’s the 23k come from? They got over 100k @ blizzcon which wasn’t even a real event (in the sense that it was really just a showmatch).
An earlier post. Idk, I don’t watch it, but for one thing, Blizzcon has a built-in audience, and for another, even 100k doesn’t represent a significant portion of the player base, let alone people who don’t play the game.
Pretty much nothing is going to get a significant portion of the player base, and no other games get that either. 100k is a big enough audience to worth having events. I’m not sure there’s a built in audience at blizzcon, since it’s multitrack so mdi is competing with other blizzcon content.
m+ came before the mdi, the timers will be there even without the mdi.
I’m glad that I know beforehand that a % of the proceeds are going to fund something specific. It’s up to me to decide if it’s something that I want to fund or not.
In this particular case, I do not support e-sports. If I decide that the toys are something that I would want (they don’t look that interesting to me tbh, definitely not worth paying real money for), then I will wait until after the special funding for the prize pool expires.
But was that 100k an outlier or is it the norm? A quick perusal of YouTube suggests that between 20k and 100k is the ballpark, more for “finals” or whatever. Not saying there’s no market, just that it’s a niche market and will likely remain that way.
Modern companies demand constant growth or they lose interest. The market appears pretty static here.
Then don’t buy it, it’s so simple!
Finals always get more participation because that’s where the bulk of the prize pool is. Growth is defined on a year to year basis, not an event to event basis. You don’t expect qualifying rounds to have the same viewership as early rounds. First weekend of nfl has less viewership than the superbowl, for example, and nobody thinks this is a problem.
Like I’ve said, I have nothing against it in principle. But it’s telling that Blizzard is now reaching out to the players to fund the prize pool.
Except they’re not. They’re offering a way for fans of esports to add to the prize pool. The base prize pool is still there, and is the same as it was last year (for awc, mdi wasn’t as real a thing last year, so you can’t make year-year comparisons).
Most other games also offer a way for players to increase the prize pool if they’re motivated to do so.
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