Dana Callista Lexa 🏳️‍⚧️

I don't watch ESports at all, but I watched a competitive Rocket League player play a match once and went: Hoooo booyy, oh yeah, this is fucking sick. And all you need to understand how sick it is as a spectator is to understand car-to-ball gameplay.

I really think you're right about this. Reading the comments, it also strikes me that arena is important. Both fighting games and rocket league have the benefit of taking place in a single open arena where all players can at least theoretically be on camera at the same time. Compare that to team shooters which require cover and alleys to be successful for play, but that means you the viewer never have a good sense of the whole space or the concurrent movement of all the players.

The other thing that I was reminded of when you mentioned gdq is the races. The celeste race and the Mario maker races are incredibly exciting to watch, and the pokemon crystal randomiser races I've seen feel less high stakes but they're often compelling and funny anyway. I think platformers hit that sweet spot that it's very obvious how difficult what the players are doing is, but I also think there's the benefit I mentioned above, where because the players are tackling the same visual space, you can get a much better sense of how they're both doing.

Sports games (Madden/2k etc) are -7 spectacle and like... + 3 on observable skill, if the viewer is familiar with the sport. 0 to -2 if not.

hmmm, I think I would put RTS and Mobas above the line for 'observable skill' but for the average person who isn't into the games you're definitely spot on for where they go on the Spectacle scale

i think gdq has also recognized these as their important axes by putting the final few rounds of a fighting game tournament up on the main stage this year
fully not speedrunning, but it matches what they're going for (especially with a more niche title like Evil Zone)

tbh fighting games look basically the same to me whether it's Fighting Games People or just two dudes mashing buttons as hard as they can. but then i don't really understand the appeal of watching two strangers play a video game at each other in general

I feel like RTS games have good highlights, when two armies go at it or someone backdoors a base. But the bulk of gameplay is economy and subtle scouting and map control.

To make this spicier, you should add traditional sports to the same matrix. We've got the Olympics coming up; I need Discourse on how Pole Vault compares to Smash Bros as a spectator sport.

I think part of the issue with Pokemon is the same issue with, like, chess as a spectator sport: so much of the skill isn't observable because it's all about planning N moves in advance and then picking the best option based on what you're thinking the opponent will do.

Like you get exponential observable skill gains as you get even a little familiar with how the game plays, but to a casual audience it just looks like guessing, and there's no real way to surface that without commentary that does a deep dive into how those thought processes work - i'unno, I think it's possible but still difficult to highlight that skill space.

i feel like Hearthstone was the exception here on card games. in general when i watch card games im like yeah i have no idea what is going on and this is boring but hearthstone was like both simple enough and eyecandy enough that i used to watch a ton of it and never played the game once myself. Like I often felt like i could imagine some kinda move the person I was watching could do, and even when I didn't I could just watch the pretty pixels happen and be happy about it