Tetris Sport - summary of 3 first years

[massi4h]

Shooting is in the Olympics.

[Rosti_LFC]

Yeah, along with archery because they represent sports involving a physical technique. I guess darts and pool have a reasonable element of physical technique to them in that respect, but then they don't have the traditional stuff about being a skill that would assist survival as a human being etc etc.

The other barrier to any computer game being an Olympic sport is that you need an independent international governing body for the sport to even remotely get consideration. It could be overcome, but other than KeSPA in South Korea, nothing like this exists anywhere for eSports, and it doesn't look particularly likely that it will for quite a few years yet.

But really, all other things aside, given there are things that are unquestionably sports like squash, netball and karate that aren't in the Olympic games, it seems like we'd be a solid 20-40 years before an eSport would ever gain the traction and change in mindset to be included.

Though this is all a diversion from a throwaway phrase by Henk in an interview, where I'm fairly sure he wasn't completely serious and I wouldn't read too much into it.

[Paul676]

Tetris isn't and will never be in the Olympics. But that doesn't stop it from potentially being a very successful e-sport.

[Paradox]

i think whether it is will be an olympic sport is irrelevant. eSports in general may never become olympic sports but instead there will be appropriate organizations that are similar to the olympics. Or simply leagues/tournaments that are very successful would be fine. WCG is sort of an example of that.

So far tetris isn't even succeeding as an eSport though.

[Paul676]

says people like watching fast-harddrop Tetris.

[Hornswoggler]

Some of this is team sport vs individual sport.

For a team sport, there is a city or college, etc. for people to rally around. It's almost like a mob or a movement... and people like feeling the sense of belonging. It's like an extended clan to see others wearing the same sports apparel, or tens of thousands of crazy fans all cheering. Humans have a desire to be a part of something big, and team sports give them a common cause to rally behind.

Individual sports are a much tougher sell. The way to appeal an individial sport to the public is through story lines. Everybody has a story, and the more "human" those stars become, the easier for the fans to relate and get behind that individual. My favorite sports are individual sports, but without knowing the competitors are the story behind them (like, watching a less popular series, etc) I am not as drawn in.

Has anybody here seen The King of Kong: A Fistful of Quarters? http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0923752/  You don't have to play competitive Donkey Kong, or even the patience to watch a full game, but the STORY is what makes this great. Yeah, some frown on drama, but it draws a crowd.

[Rosti_LFC]

says people like watching fast-harddrop Tetris.

No mate, no it doesn't. Just because it has wow factor and most people haven't seen Tetris played that fast before doesn't mean people will actually like watching it in the long term. There's a huge difference between "wow this is cool lol" and "wow this is something I'd like to devote more time to watching". I'd estimate over the past year I've thrown a solid 40-50 hours or so into watching Liverpool matches, and probably around 80 hours into watching StarCraft II (although for most of that it didn't have 100% attention). There is no way that the wow-factor of people playing Tetris faster than they thought possible is going to hold that sort of staying power.

To go back to the 11x11x11 Rubik's cube example - it's a video I watched and thought was cool and would have thumbs up'd it if I was so inclined to do that sort of thing. Maybe I'll link it to a few friends too. That doesn't mean if I see another 11x11x11 video I'm likely to click it again - I probably won't because I've seen that sh** before.

Another example that's a little closer to home would be this video by KAN where he absolutely fu**ing beasts the invis roll. I've watched it a few times, because it's incredibly cool and impressive, but I'm not going to devote hours of my life to watching high-level invisible Tetris play because I'm not good enough to actually understand what's going on at a meaningful level. I just watch it and my eyes glaze and I think "holy F*** that's really impressive", which is totally not what watching a sport is about.

If all people take from competitive Tetris is "wow that is fast", then that's bad, because people aren't going to come back just to watch people "play fast Tetris". If they see something else in there and view the games as genuinely exciting, then we're onto something, but wow factor alone is completely fu**ing useless to sustain Tetris as an eSport.

I'm not saying for definite that fast Tetris can't work with casual players as an eSport, but personally I think it detracts heavily from the viewing experience when it comes to competitive play, and a video or examples of people being "oooh that's fast" does absolutely nothing to counter that.

[Wojtek]

says people like watching fast-harddrop Tetris.

some don't
http://koktajl.fakt.pl/Oto-najwiekszy-oszo...y,130119,1.html
see video [this is extremely funny]

[Rosti_LFC]

In fairness, even by noob standards I'd hardly call that fast

[Paul676]

that made me lol pretty damn hard wojtek

The feedback from my friends was that it wasn't the speed which kept them hanging, but it was the possibility of me being topped out at any point, and the nerve-wrackingness as they saw my ppm drop below 2 for a while, and me flailing about in the tension of the moment. It's that which made the crowd enjoy it - the speed was just a small bit of it. It's the same which would make multiplayer Tetris good to watch. That, and the buildup with music. I feel like with any good e-sport you need good buildup and that kind of thing before a big match.

[Rosti_LFC]

But they're your friends - there's a natural affinity for them to not want you to suck.

[Paul676]

And when people choose which side they're 'on' in a match, they get the same thing.

[Rosti_LFC]

And when people choose which side they're 'on' in a match, they get the same thing.

But then you're requiring your whole setup to work around people supporting people. Which works fine in some situations, but can be really poor for online games unless you have a good mix of personalities/nationalities in it. And it requires people to know those personalities and have someone to support before they watch it.

I pretty much define sports I like and sports I don't particularly like by how happy I am to sit and watch a game of it where I have basically no attachment to either team/player.


I think I'll drop this argument somewhat, because I might as well be trying to convince a disciple that God doesn't exist (and at the very least I'm finding I'm having to repeat myself). Go figure that the majority of people here absolutely fu**ing love Tetris, and think that everyone else in the world can/should love Tetris in the way they do too. Personally I really don't think so.

In the 6 years I've been in the competitive community, I feel it's stayed the same or even shifted backwards slightly in terms of size and accessibility. TTC have done hardly anything besides give minimal support to a few tournaments and very little in the sense of game design (certainly nothing that hasn't been seen before and done better elsewhere). Lots of people play Tetris, but I think the gap between the competitive community and the casual one is massive, both in terms of mindset and skill, and I really don't see many people transitioning across because frankly I doubt many are willing to put in the sort of time playing Tetris that they'd need to, to get to the level of skill of Blink and co.

I feel that if the style of the current incarnations of Tetris was ever a winning formula in this regard, we'd have seen at the very least some partial success already, either from Tetris DS or the days of TTO, and there's been very little that's stuck. I just don't think that the masses care about people playing high-level Tetris as anything more than a passing "ooh I know this game but I've never seen it played anywhere near this fast before".

It'd be cool if Tetris could get to the level of stuff like this someday, but without some sort of big shift that's somewhat out of our hands, I just can't see it ever really happening. The game isn't right, the community isn't right, perception outside the community isn't right, and the companies who can make it happen aren't right. And if some of you guys want to keep dreaming and working towards it then by all means go for it (Parkzer's stuff does show some promise), but personally I think you'd be far better off directing your time elsewhere.

[Paradox]

I don't think tetris is amazing in terms of being interesting to spectators over a long period of time. However, I still think that it could draw a large crowd and maintain the interest of a lot of people.  What i'm saying is that it won't be the #1 game but if we had the help of TTC and sponsors it could be quite popular.

Tetris is a game that people love to play. There is more to competitive success than the game itself being interesting. There are upsets, personalities (corrosive would be infamous) , communities, and teams/players that you root for. Those are the kind of things that could make any game popular for spectators. Tetris has the benefit of being a game that people love to play.

For us players that care a lot about the game even mild success would be awesome compared to what we have now. If we had a big yearly tournament that held some prestige and good prizes I'm sure we would be perfectly content.

[Wojtek]

if you want tetris to have mass audience then instead of making it sport make it reality show, there would be lot of drama...