E-Sport and Gaming Peripherals

Avichal Singh

Thesis

25th April 2012

A thesis by Avichal Singh Foundation 2 Dsksupinfogame

Special thanks Guillaume Benoit (Trainer @ Dsksupinfogame)

2|Page

Avichal Singh

Thesis

25th April 2012

Contents
Introduction .................................................................................................................................................. 4 Lets talk about some major tournaments happening now ......................................................................... 5 WCG .......................................................................................................................................................... 5 Dreamhack ................................................................................................................................................ 5 MLG ........................................................................................................................................................... 6 ESWC ......................................................................................................................................................... 6 Lets talk about some major companies producing gaming peripherals ...................................................... 7 Razer ......................................................................................................................................................... 7 Steel Series ................................................................................................................................................ 7 Cooler Master ........................................................................................................................................... 7 How big is it? ................................................................................................................................................. 8 Currently famous spectator sport games. .................................................................................................... 9 Starcraft 2.................................................................................................................................................. 9 Dota 2 ........................................................................................................................................................ 9 Counter Strike ......................................................................................................................................... 10 League of Legends................................................................................................................................... 10 How important is it for the games? ............................................................................................................ 11 The connection of Peripherals and Spectator Sport ................................................................................... 11 Personnel opinion ....................................................................................................................................... 14 Conclusion ................................................................................................................................................... 15 Bibliography ................................................................................................................................................ 16

3|Page

Avichal Singh

Thesis

25th April 2012

Introduction
E-Sports A term that entered the gaming industry around 12 years back. What is E-sport? Electronic sports comprises the competitive play of video game with professional gamers involved ;lets go back to 1980 when Atari hosted The Space Invaders Tournament. It attracted more than 10,000 participants. This was when competitive gaming was established. It was followed by Video Game Masters Tournament and later World Championships held by Nintendo in 1990 and then 1994. December 10 1993 saw the release of Doom introducing Multi-player death match games with introduction of newsgroups, chatrooms resulting in birth of online competitive gaming. Quake released in 1996 and the co-creator John Carmack promised his Ferrari 328 GTS convertible to the winner Dennis Fong aka Thresh. Dennis was known as Michael Jordan of video games

In the year 2000, the first World Cyber Games event was held in Seoul, Korea. There were competitions for Quake III Arena, StarCraft, FIFA 2000, and Age of Empires II: the Age of Kings. The competition initially had 174 competitors from 17 different countries with a total prize purse of $20,000. In 2006, the prize purse had risen to $462,000, and the event had grown to 9 different competitions and 700 qualified participants from 70 different countries. Today E-sport is among the fastest growing industries. The winners are role-models for the people playing the games.

4|Page

Avichal Singh

Thesis

25th April 2012

Lets talk about some major tournaments happening now

WCG
Wcg started off in 2000 and this is the description on their website.

The World Cyber Games is the worlds first Cyber Game Festival, designed to build a healthy cyber culture. The best gamers around the world gather into different cities to share the excitement and fun of the game tournaments. To lead the development of the digital entertainment culture by promotion harmony of humankind through e-sports and its embodiment in the Cyber Culture Festival. WCG is a comprehensive Digital Culture Festival, where language and cultural Festival barriers are stripped away, and international exchange and harmony are promoted through extensive events including tournaments, conferences, and exhibitions. The tournament has been a vast success and other organizers have looked down to WCG in the past following years. 78 countries participated in WCG 2008. The event lasted for only 4 days with 800 participants. Each and every year WCG is successfully hosted. The show is streamed online for 4 days straight on WCG tv. WCG is for now the most successful and famous E-Sport.

Dreamhack
Dreamhack boasts to be worlds largest computer festival. It holds the world record for the worlds largest LAN party and computer festival and also held the record for worlds fastest Internet Connection for a couple of years. There record was broken by worlds second largest LAN event The Gathering . Talking of achievements in 2007 Dreamhack received a Diploma of honor from the municipality of Jonkoping for being important to business, education and society of the local community. In winter 2011 they had a total number of 20,984 participants in the event of 72 hours. The tournament can be viewed on Swedish National TV. The total number of viewers was over 1.6 million which is another record. The total prize money was 1 million SEK Dreamhack started in 1994 with just 40 participants.

5|Page

Avichal Singh

Thesis

25th April 2012

MLG
Major League Gaming was founded in 2002 in NorthAmerica. It has been broadcasted on television, ESPN.COM. And other broadband sites. MLGs aim is to elevate computer and console game tournaments to viable competive and spectator events. They currently hold games for Xbox 360, PC and PS3.

ESWC
Starting in 2003 ESWC is a Lan event which has had a total prize of 1,721,000 from 2003 to 2010.
In 2003 ESWC had 150,000 players out of which 358 qualified for the finals. The total prize money was 156, 00.

In 2010 ESWC had a prize purse of 214,500.

ESWC has a medal tally being followed since 2003 in which currently France, United States and South Korea are the top three teams.

6|Page

Avichal Singh

Thesis

25th April 2012

Lets talk about some major companies producing gaming peripherals

Razer
Meanwhile the market of gaming found a new branch gaming peripherals in 1999, Razer a company marked for its gaming products released Razer Boomslang. This marked the entry of gaming peripherals with professional gaming in 2000. Professional gamers used these Gaming devices or say promoted them at the very beginning. Other gamers saw this and started using it. And to their satisfaction it turned out pretty good. Razers tagline goes For gamers, By Gamers. All the products are made out of surveys and observation on gamers and there comfort with the gaming devices. Razer has constantly taken feedback from the gamers. A recent poll at facebook asked the Left hand gamers if they wanted Left handed Razer Naga to be manufactured.

Steel Series
Following in Razers footsteps Steel Series was established in 2001 in Denmark. There products vary from keyboards, mice, gaming surfaces and softwares. The entrance of SteelSeries in the market marked a competition between Razer and SteelSeries. Today they are among the major manufacturers and distributors for gaming peripherals. I have noticed at a local gaming caf how fellow gamers boast about the smoothness of their new mice and them also theres a fight between people who choose SteelSeries over Razer. This competition will only grow further and with more companies jumping in.

Cooler Master
Cooler Master is a hardware manufacturer since 1992. Cooler Master saw the increase in the gaming market for gaming peripherals; this led to a new branch Cooler Master Storm which manufactures gaming devices for gamers since 2008. This was known as Arming the gaming revolution. CoolerMaster did enter the gaming peripherals scene late but they did score a good percentage of the market. There products were different from what Razer and Steel Series deliver. Just like Cooler Master more companies may follow up and start manufacturing more gaming peripherals when there is room for them.

7|Page

Avichal Singh

Thesis

25th April 2012

How big is it?

Talking of growth of competitive gaming I will take WCG into account.WCG which has grown 12 X from its origin in just 10 years. When WCG started it had just 17 countries, but now it has some 70 countries participating and the prize money is $462000 more than double from $20,000. I can show more of these numbers. WCG compromised of only 5 games in 2000, winning prizes of total $200,000 with 174 participants from 17 countries and only PC platform. Currently WCG has 10 games, winning prize of more than $ 350, 00 with more than 500 participants and about 60 countries. In 2009 the winning prize was $500, 00 and the participants reached 800 in WCG 2008 with 78 countries participating. Expanding to 78 countries in just few years has been a major achievement for WCG. The tournament definitely proved that there can be a large number of people who want to see how the best players in the game actually play. Live streaming through the internet was available throughout the tournament. A recent article at PCworld highlighted how big is the e-sport going to be in 2011 http://www.pcworld.com/article/214432/2011_the_year_of_esports.html The article features an interview with a e-sport commentator MarcusDjWheat Graham. The interview talks about how Marcus was involved in the E-Sport business. Another Interview is with Greg IdrA fields. A professional Starcraft II player for Team Evil Geniuses. He talks how the game Starcraft II is his full time job.

Wikipedia lists of total 22 International Professional leagues happening around the world for now. All these tournaments are a proof of the growing industry for E-sport.

Back in the time people used to joke about that no one can make money with throwing a ball around. Now we know how far Basketball has gone. E-sport is the future.

Major teams participation in E-sports Fnatic is a team participating in Counter Strike, COD4, Dota 2, Starcraft 2, League of Legends, Halo and Stracraft 2. They currently compromise of approximate 35 professional players. Fnatic has been sponsored by SteelSeries and the team uses all the products made by SteelSeries.

8|Page

Avichal Singh

Thesis

25th April 2012

Currently famous spectator sport games.

Starcraft 2
Coming back to gaming as a spectator sport I need to give an example to prove it. In Korea the government provides 300 licenses to Starcraft players termed under professional. A recent article on Cracked.com mentioned facts about Starcraft. Starcraft is a career in Korea. In Korea there are 12 professional Starcraft team with top players having a six figure salary. An average professional gamer makes more than an average Korean. In 2005 a total of 120,000 people gathered in a stadium. Even the Korean Air Force started their own team so that the young men wont be disappointed while playing joining the Air-Force. Another fact is half of Starcraft (4.5 million out of 9.5 million) were sold in South Korea. There are an estimated total 3.6 million active players of Starcraft 2. Starcraft II is one big chunk of E-sport for the current time.

Dota 2
Recently Valve launched Dota 2 beta directly off with a tournament compromising of prize money more than worth $1 million which is the biggest cash prize tourney for MOBAS ever (Until their competitors League of Legend followed in with a tournament with worth $5 million as prize money) .Launching the game with a tournament of this big scale Valve made a lot of news which resulted in free advertisement for the game The tournament was called The International which featured 16 of worlds best Dota teams competing against each other. The winning team NaVi from Ukraine took the grand prize of $1 million and the runner ups EHOME from china were rewarded with $250,000. These 16 teams were the best in the business. This resulted in fans of Dota being drawn into live stream where they could see each and every match live on there browser. Average 150, 000 players were watching the stream at any given point of time. Dota 2 was just in closed beta at this particular time. Yes Valve did release a trailer like all other games. But starting off with a tournament which compromises the best teams from around the globe and big money acted like catalyst for the hype that was being created for the game. A competitor League of Legends saw this as incoming threat and also as an ideal marketing strategy. League of Legends conducted a series of tournaments which had total prize money of $5 billion. The average estimated no. of players for the tournament was 147, 000 at any given time. Well Dota2 is sure going to make some new records in the near future and others will follow.

9|Page

Avichal Singh

Thesis

25th April 2012

As of a personnel view, I myself watched the stream for at least 40 minutes. Apart from watching the amazing display of the skills by these professional players I also wanted to play the game as soon as possible. The tournament turned out to be a great success, there was discussion regarding the look of the game, the prize money, the teams, characters in the game etc. All this created so much hype for the game that Valve didnt have to do any advertising for the game. Almost all MOBA gamers know what dota 2 now is.

Counter Strike
Coming to a different genre from Dota 2, Counter strike has been around for competitive gaming since 11 years. This FPS game was included in WCG in 2001. Counter Strike is a game where people who play it love watching it too. The games are short and that is what keeps the spectators tugged in. Talking of the spectator sport involved in an action shooter like Counter strike http://www.hltv.org is the biggest streaming website for the game and its sequels. Info like Number of Teams, top players,no. of people spectating the games is easily available on the website. The site has developed itself and you can also see the info like what maps the current teams have been winning or what are the favorite maps of the players and you can even download old replays of the games known as Demo. The site is the best example for spectator stats for Counter strike.

League of Legends
After Dota 2 announced their tournament The International where prize money of $1 million was put on for the winner. League of Legends a competitor to Dota 2 announced a season two prize of $5 million. League of Legends recently went past World of Warcraft in terms of record of most number of active players for any game in the world. The $5 million prize made the scene more competitive. League of Legends streamed the full tournament online. The competition between Dota 2 and League of Legends has boosted the E-Sport in all terms. The gamers from both the games now expect something bigger happening after one of the games have organized an event. This kind of competitions in E-sport where winning prize of millions is thrown in just to increase the competition of the game tells us how one gaming company can affect others.

10 | P a g e

Avichal Singh

Thesis

25th April 2012

How important is it for the games?

Starcraft II came after 12 year of release of Starcraft I. Over the years Starcraft established a humongous audience for Starcraft in E-sport and it boosted the numbers in terms of sales and professional gamers when Starcraft II was released. Infact Starcraft is now so big that it can standalone apart from all the other E-Sport and still be as famous it is. Counter Strike 1.6 is still played even after 12 years of release. This is only because the game has been involved in E-Sport throughout the years. The game was featured in WCG for all the 12 years and has been since dominating the E-Sport scene started. It could be possibly the game which would have the largest amount of players throughout the world. If we combine all those Local Cafs I bet CounterStrike is more often played than other E-Sport. As I stated above regarding League of Legends and Dota 2, they are in competition with each other and an event that happens for Dota 2 will affect the next event for League of Legends. This only leads to promoting E-sport and helping more and more money being involved into games.

The connection of Peripherals and Spectator Sport

Now that we mentioned games which attract a lot of spectator sport like Counter Strike, Dota 2 and Starcraft 2 now lets talk about the connection between them. As I said earlier in the year 1999 Razer started the market of gaming peripherals with the introduction of Razer mice named Boomslang.which started off the market for gaming devices in the Industry. Razer came up with various products like Viper and Diamondback in 2004, Copperhead in 2005, Death adder in 2006 etc. Companies like Steel Series and Cooler Master soon followed in. This resulted in products like Gaming Mice, Keyboards, and Headsets, earphones, Mouse mats and even gaming speakers made in the last 8 years by all these 3 major companies. Most of these were used for First Person Shooters All this was happening at the same time when Major tournaments like WCG were at their peak of their audience. And it is still increasing in numbers in terms of revenue, players, prize money, etc. Top players have used these mice, headsets in all the tournaments mentioned above which makes other players see and buy it. The market expands in a similar fashion. I have personnely used these accessories and I must say they are made in-order to maximize the experience of the player. I shall take Razer Naga as an example for how it differentiates from common mice. Released in 2009 Naga was a mouse built for playing MMOs and RPGs. The mouse has 17 buttons where a special action can be attached to

11 | P a g e

Avichal Singh

Thesis

25th April 2012

each of them. The mice has some 5600 DPI whereas a normal mice would have just 500 -600 DPI. The mice can also store info (which is profiles of the players) with 64 kb inbuilt memory. A hardcore gamer would any day prefer Razer Naga over a normal Mice. Somewhat same kind of information would be delivered if I compare a gaming headgear to a normal one. All this Information has led to widespread use of gaming devices throughout the word. And now I hardly see anyone who is playing professionally using a normal mice or headset. The industry has evolved accordingly by the feedback received by the gamers. Over the past years Razer and Steel Series have been releasing products based on the games that are being released. You can find Razer Naga in World of Warcraft edition. A Razer Deathadder Dragon age 2 edition and a Razer Imperator Battlefield 3 edition.

Some of the Razer Mats which signify different games. Most of these games are competitive games.

12 | P a g e

Avichal Singh

Thesis

25th April 2012

Some of SteeSeries products which signify different games and also professional teams.

13 | P a g e

Avichal Singh

Thesis

25th April 2012

The products that you see above not only promote a game/team but also make gamers buy the product just because they support/like that particular game. The usual sponsors for the gaming teams are the companies like Razer, Steelseries etc and also hardware companies like mSi and Eizo. The teams are growing day by day and so does the sponsors this will result in more companies being attached to the E-sport scene. Which eventually results in the market growing bigger and bigger. Today almost anyone who plays any of the above mentioned games knows how big the scene could be if they become good at that particular game. Due to E-sport professional gaming is a career now. It may not apply for each and every country but it is surely growing. A good Starcraft player earns a lot just because of Professional gaming. Most gamers today can turn gaming into a career once they get really good at it and by turning ti a career it does not mean that one should only play games, one can be a commentator or into the management staff for a event(which is a very hard task) or even a translator. E-Sport has opened new job opportunities for the masses.

Personnel opinion
I have been a player of Counter Strike: Source for over 4 years. I had myself joined a professional team and had participated in Local tournaments and as well International tournaments (only once). I had myself used gaming peripherals and I must say that once I was used to the game CS then I decided to buy myself a gaming mice and it greatly boosted my performance. I have not taken part in any major tournament as the scene in India for E-sport is yet to be developed. But anyway I had first-hand experience, at many places I have noticed failure of management which shows how important event management could be for E-sport. A recent failure In India was India gaming Carnival they promised winning prizes of worth Rs 1.5 cr but utterly failed to deliver as managers. Many games got cancelled and many international teams like Moscow 5 were pissed off at the management and the organizers. Such incidents only bring shame to a country and should be avoided at all cost. Management is the key to organize any tournament. In my college my friends play Il-2 a flight simulation. Most of the times we have good matches we record them and then we watch them later to see some epic dog fight between two of our comrades. If ever there would be game based on flight simulation with extreme skill required I am sure that I would be one of the people viewing it.

14 | P a g e

Avichal Singh

Thesis

25th April 2012

Conclusion
E-sport is growing. It is growing Big. There already half-a-dozen articles over the net which site that ESport is the future. Moreover the events have been successful over the years and in terms of revenue and each and every number. This will only grow further with more tournaments being organized and more gamers being added everyday and more companies joining in to produce Gaming Peripherals. All this research has invoked me to stick to the news of E-sports and revolution in design for Gaming peripherals. The companies are surpassing the boundaries of development and now they are coming up with better and better products. Events like Dreamhack and the gathering are in competition are to compete against each other.

15 | P a g e

Avichal Singh

Thesis

25th April 2012

Bibliography
www.cracked.com www.wiki.com www.google.com www.fnatic.com -info for Starcraft II -info -info -team info

www.steelseries.com -device info www.razer.com www.kotaku.com -device info -facts

16 | P a g e