E-Sports benefit from set time-limit?

[YT]

Hey,
So I've been wondering about how E-Sports might increase it's viewer ship and I came upon the idea of giving them time limits like other sports. I don't know about the rest of the world, but in Australia if you want to watch a game (basketball, football, etc.) you know you have to set aside about two hours. However, if I want to watch some SC2 I don't know how long that might take and this could be a problem especially if were trying to shop the game around to more mainstream channels who probably want to know how long something will run for.
Obviously, I'm still uncertain how a time limit could be implemented. FPS are easy enough, whoever can reach a the most frags in a given time but how you would work something objective-based like SC2 or DOTA is something that would have to be looked at.

What do you guys think? Good/terrible idea?

 

[More Fun To Compute]

Growing up in the UK as a sci-fi fan when there were still only four channels I can tell you that many many sports overrun their scheduled time and force the shows after off the air.

 

[YT]

That is a bummer But wouldn't that problem be even worse if, for instance, you had a SC2 game that actually went for 50 minutes instead of 20 - 30? It would be hard to schedule at all.

 

[skywolfblue]

Starcraft has done pretty well for itself without a time limit.

A timer is probably a good idea in the general sense, encourage people to play fast instead of turtle, so long as it doesn't do something silly like time out the game when one person has 99 units and the opponent has nothing and their main base only 1 HP left.

 

[YT]

Agreed, that would seem a little absurd. Obviously, the 99 unit player would win still, but that would be frustrating. While Starcraft has done well, no doubt, it would be difficult to time in that someone could conceivably win 10 minutes into the game and then you would have 20 minutes of just spare time. Alas, I see no way around that because it's not a game of who scores the most "points" but just who wins.

 

[HarryScull]

well no because in terms of RTS games you can be locked in struggle for hours, especially a base building game or destroyed in under 10 minutes and being able to control the speed of the game should be up to the players not some strange set of rules

 

[SuperNova221]

It depends on the game. As you mentioned, FPS? Easy. SC2? Just couldn't work. Games really need to be played out to their ending, it's what people enjoy seeing and it's the only justifiable win condition, that I can think of anyway.

 

[klasbo]

It wouldn't work in Starcraft 2, because a TvT Tank/Viking "battle" can be undecided for a good 30 minutes, but a PvP 4gate can be decided by the 5 minute mark if one player loses a key unit by mistake. The problem is the asymmetry of the matchups.

In BF2 we had time limits: 4 rounds of max 20 minutes. Most rounds finished faster than this (link to gametype description [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conquest_%28gametype%29]), so the time limit was mostly just a way to prevent excessively long games where there was a stalemate situation. On the other hand, a team could "save" tickets by running their players to hide if they were about to lose their last flag and there was a short period of time left.

The reason a time limit works in games like soccer is because there is no clearly defined end point: the game could go on forever. A game like tennis or chess has a defined end point where one player wins, so you don't need (and can't have) a timed end point.

tl;dr: For some games a timer might work (see soccer), others it wont (see tennis). It depends on the type of game.

 

[Qitz]

That depends on where a majority of the time used comes from. When it comes to RTS, like Starcraft 2, that time is spend scouting enemies, grabbing bases and causing harassment so there aren't that bad to watch because you can have some great skirmishes inbetween.

MOBA's on the other hand, at least standard 5v5 lane matches, are largely passive excusing a First Blood or kill every so often but that's because no one can deal out lethal damage till later game. Dominion (League of Legends) helps relieve some of these problems since it's about capturing points and getting to the point cap instead of pushing a Nexus.

So yeah, if the beginning can be entertaining enough it won't require any limit.

 

[Vuliev]

Honestly, the idea of a time limit would really only come into play if esports actually made it to something like ESPN or maybe even broadcast TV. Since pretty much every esport is streamed online, it makes no sense to give them time limits.

 

[Smooth Operator]

That is the least of their issues, the primary thing to get down is presentation.
Right now near 90% or all e-sports games are only ever understood by people who play them actively, and even then watching FPS matches is a complete mindfuck, you just get to watch a frantic player cam, no overview on how people are moving or how they are doing overall, it is the same as having an entire football match recorded by helmet cameras... how the fuck should anyone know what's going on, and by extent how can they care.

That's why Starcraft 2 got such a massive following even by people who don't play it, it just has that good presentation of opposing forces going at it in an intuitive manner.

 

[Username Redacted]

Honestly, the idea of a time limit would really only come into play if esports actually made it to something like ESPN or maybe even broadcast TV. Since pretty much every esport is streamed online, it makes no sense to give them time limits.

Shouldn't matter. ESPN (and other networks) still run (for some reason) baseball games, i.e. the least predictable sport with regards to timing out there. IMO if the game times itself OR has a definite measure that can be called upon at any stage of the game then a time limit is fine otherwise not so much. Basically timers most naturally work for FPS and fighting games. Less well for other genres.

 

[Altorin]

Starcraft sort of has a time limit. The highest level play, if it's not over immediately, then it's over once all the resources have been mined, which for high level play can't last longer then about 30 minutes on even the largest maps in 1v1.

Other E-Sports are the same way, game mechanics avoid stalemates without the need for arbitrary time limits.