wanderrful
02-16-2010, 11:31 PM
The following is an article dated February 2nd, 2009, written by a guy who goes by the username "The Storyteller". I found it on Teamliquid and it talks about one of the reasons why StarCraft is such a good spectator sport. I thought that showing you guys this article might be of benefit to the community, since our primary goal (in my mind at least) is to make it bigger.
link to original thread: http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/viewmessage.php?topic_id=87117
Decided to take a little break from work to mention something that I've been thinking about for a while. One of the things that makes SC so good as a spectator sport, and which sets it apart from lots of other spectator sports like football or basketball or F1 or maybe chess is the way it builds tension.
As a documentary producer, I need to make sure my stories build tension for the audience. One way to do this - and this is what most spectator sports do - is to give the audience less information than characters involved. The audience is always wondering what the character's next move is. If he makes the wrong one he could be doomed. Has he made the right one?
Think about Prison Break (see EDIT below). Count the number of times Michael Schofield KNOWS he's safely in bed and not still burrowing through the ground, but you don't. That's tension.
This is kind of like the F1. We know absolutely nothing about the teams' strategies. But the drivers all know their own strategies. The fun comes in trying to piece the drivers' strategies together by looking at the length of the pit stop, the type of tires and so forth. Problem is that that tension does not last very long. By the last pit stop, we know as much as the drivers. Then there follows twenty minutes of pointless going round the track. Or sometimes, it becomes clear in the first ten minutes that no matter what we don't know about a driver's strategy doesn't matter, because he's not going to win.
In such spectator sports, you need to try to build a second kind of tension - the audience knows only as much as the characters involved. So to continue with the F1 example, the ideal scenario is that everyone's finished their pit stops and two drivers are neck and neck. Nobody knows who's going to be first, not even the drivers. It comes down to a lot of skill and a little luck. Things like accidents give everyone a chance to catch up, so this tension is mantained.
Starcraft uses the first kind of tension in the opening minute of the game, when we wait to see the players' build orders. But after the first minute, that tension is gone. Here's the brilliant part of Starcraft: it makes use of a third kind of tension - the audience knows MORE than the characters involved.
Player A is doing a fast expand (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rdL43CLWpxk) and player B is doing a proxy rax (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5DOxJwT_DWk). WE know that, but they don't. It's the equivalent of watching the blonde girl turning her doorknob to enter her house while we KNOW the axe murderer is lying in wait in her bathroom... but she has no idea. And this tension is kept up throughout the game, because neither side has 100% scouting ability. Even if B spots the proxy rax, does A know that he fast expanded? Will A see that he's been spotted and change strategy? If A changes strategy will B react to the new strategy?
Or, later in the game, the hold lurker strategy (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OAkIn4phTkk), the goliaths hanging around the spot that the dropships are passing by, the DT chillin' out at the expo (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b1wO0Rl3FJo), waiting to strike...
This is a really, really rare thing in spectator sports and it really sets Starcraft apart. Almost every other sport is a sport of potentially perfect knowledge where you can see what your opponent is trying to do and you can immediately set about trying to deal with it. Alternatively, the audience knows less than the people involved. Formations in football (soccer) become apparent in the first couple of minutes and everyone can see everyone else. In boxing, you don't know what moves each has in store... but each of the boxers knows his own strategy so you know less than them. You can only marvel at a brilliant move... after it happens.
So where else do you see this tension where you know more than the people involved? Stud poker features it quite heavily. The audience can see everyone's hole cards so they more or less know what the best play would be in a given situation, but the players don't know what their opponents have so you know more than them. History books that deal with warfare or business competition feature it heavily as well - no surprise, since war is an RTS and business is war. Neither side knew what each other was doing, but you, the reader, with hindsight, see everything and wonder if the players will catch up.
Mark Burnett is one of the masters of this. Reality shows, which are really spectator sports, like Survivor, Amazing Race and Apprentice use it extensively. Think about all the perfect knowledge you have about the strategies used by EVERYONE. Now think about how far producers go to keep contestants from having this knowledge.
Just to give one example, contestants seldom meet in the Amazing Race. They're encouraged to do different challenges so they have no clue how far behind they are. One effect is that this forces the number one team to work like there's no tomorrow, while we know that they're wasting their effort. You'd never see this in a marathon with perfect knowledge - since the leader knows he's the leader, he's going to conserve energy.
Tension in SC stems from a few more factors, of course.
If there was no chance that a good player could turn a losing situation around, it wouldn't matter if we knew he was behind. We wouldn't care because we would already know the outcome.
Or if there is only one strategy that works on this map, the players have perfect knowledge as well - we know they'll both fast expand and they know they'll both fast expand because that's the only thing that makes sense, and having fast expanded they know exactly when each others' units are going to come out and they will counter that and... (http://www.gotfrag.com/cs/story/44483/?spage=1)
Or if strategies in SC didn't take a while to execute, there would be no such tension. Imagine if mutas morphed to guardians much faster than they do now. Not only is there no time to prepare a counter, you lose the long moment of tension when the player is setting up the strategy.
Or think about this - when do we start sweating over a fast DT strategy? When the first DT pops out? When we can see the DT building? When we can see the Templar Archives? No way. It starts from the moment we see the Citadel of Adun. That's a LOT of tension!
SC was quite lucky because it wasn't actually meant to be a spectator sport but managed to get the right ingredients to be one, a bit like how Casablanca turned out to be one of the greatest movies of all time. Hopefully the SC2 team will replicate that success, no just by making a good game, but by making a good spectator sport.
EDIT: Okay, if you haven't watched Prison Break, here's the typical means of building tension in season 1:
Michael Schofield is trying to break out of prison, so every week he has to do something that brings him closer to his goal. These usually involve him leaving his cell through a hole in the wall. Usually, he only has a short time to accomplish what he needs to, like the five minutes between lights out and a check by the guard, or whatever. So the camera shows Michael Schofield leaving his cell and accomplishing what he needs to do. He starts to return to his cell. The camera then cuts to the approaching guard. The camera does not cut back to Michael Schofield, it remains on the guard. The guard reaches his cell and looks in. Now we do not know whether Michael Schofield has made it back to his cell by this time. Michael does, but we don't. Therefore, we know less than the character. Therefore, tension is built.
link to original thread: http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/viewmessage.php?topic_id=87117
Decided to take a little break from work to mention something that I've been thinking about for a while. One of the things that makes SC so good as a spectator sport, and which sets it apart from lots of other spectator sports like football or basketball or F1 or maybe chess is the way it builds tension.
As a documentary producer, I need to make sure my stories build tension for the audience. One way to do this - and this is what most spectator sports do - is to give the audience less information than characters involved. The audience is always wondering what the character's next move is. If he makes the wrong one he could be doomed. Has he made the right one?
Think about Prison Break (see EDIT below). Count the number of times Michael Schofield KNOWS he's safely in bed and not still burrowing through the ground, but you don't. That's tension.
This is kind of like the F1. We know absolutely nothing about the teams' strategies. But the drivers all know their own strategies. The fun comes in trying to piece the drivers' strategies together by looking at the length of the pit stop, the type of tires and so forth. Problem is that that tension does not last very long. By the last pit stop, we know as much as the drivers. Then there follows twenty minutes of pointless going round the track. Or sometimes, it becomes clear in the first ten minutes that no matter what we don't know about a driver's strategy doesn't matter, because he's not going to win.
In such spectator sports, you need to try to build a second kind of tension - the audience knows only as much as the characters involved. So to continue with the F1 example, the ideal scenario is that everyone's finished their pit stops and two drivers are neck and neck. Nobody knows who's going to be first, not even the drivers. It comes down to a lot of skill and a little luck. Things like accidents give everyone a chance to catch up, so this tension is mantained.
Starcraft uses the first kind of tension in the opening minute of the game, when we wait to see the players' build orders. But after the first minute, that tension is gone. Here's the brilliant part of Starcraft: it makes use of a third kind of tension - the audience knows MORE than the characters involved.
Player A is doing a fast expand (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rdL43CLWpxk) and player B is doing a proxy rax (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5DOxJwT_DWk). WE know that, but they don't. It's the equivalent of watching the blonde girl turning her doorknob to enter her house while we KNOW the axe murderer is lying in wait in her bathroom... but she has no idea. And this tension is kept up throughout the game, because neither side has 100% scouting ability. Even if B spots the proxy rax, does A know that he fast expanded? Will A see that he's been spotted and change strategy? If A changes strategy will B react to the new strategy?
Or, later in the game, the hold lurker strategy (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OAkIn4phTkk), the goliaths hanging around the spot that the dropships are passing by, the DT chillin' out at the expo (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b1wO0Rl3FJo), waiting to strike...
This is a really, really rare thing in spectator sports and it really sets Starcraft apart. Almost every other sport is a sport of potentially perfect knowledge where you can see what your opponent is trying to do and you can immediately set about trying to deal with it. Alternatively, the audience knows less than the people involved. Formations in football (soccer) become apparent in the first couple of minutes and everyone can see everyone else. In boxing, you don't know what moves each has in store... but each of the boxers knows his own strategy so you know less than them. You can only marvel at a brilliant move... after it happens.
So where else do you see this tension where you know more than the people involved? Stud poker features it quite heavily. The audience can see everyone's hole cards so they more or less know what the best play would be in a given situation, but the players don't know what their opponents have so you know more than them. History books that deal with warfare or business competition feature it heavily as well - no surprise, since war is an RTS and business is war. Neither side knew what each other was doing, but you, the reader, with hindsight, see everything and wonder if the players will catch up.
Mark Burnett is one of the masters of this. Reality shows, which are really spectator sports, like Survivor, Amazing Race and Apprentice use it extensively. Think about all the perfect knowledge you have about the strategies used by EVERYONE. Now think about how far producers go to keep contestants from having this knowledge.
Just to give one example, contestants seldom meet in the Amazing Race. They're encouraged to do different challenges so they have no clue how far behind they are. One effect is that this forces the number one team to work like there's no tomorrow, while we know that they're wasting their effort. You'd never see this in a marathon with perfect knowledge - since the leader knows he's the leader, he's going to conserve energy.
Tension in SC stems from a few more factors, of course.
If there was no chance that a good player could turn a losing situation around, it wouldn't matter if we knew he was behind. We wouldn't care because we would already know the outcome.
Or if there is only one strategy that works on this map, the players have perfect knowledge as well - we know they'll both fast expand and they know they'll both fast expand because that's the only thing that makes sense, and having fast expanded they know exactly when each others' units are going to come out and they will counter that and... (http://www.gotfrag.com/cs/story/44483/?spage=1)
Or if strategies in SC didn't take a while to execute, there would be no such tension. Imagine if mutas morphed to guardians much faster than they do now. Not only is there no time to prepare a counter, you lose the long moment of tension when the player is setting up the strategy.
Or think about this - when do we start sweating over a fast DT strategy? When the first DT pops out? When we can see the DT building? When we can see the Templar Archives? No way. It starts from the moment we see the Citadel of Adun. That's a LOT of tension!
SC was quite lucky because it wasn't actually meant to be a spectator sport but managed to get the right ingredients to be one, a bit like how Casablanca turned out to be one of the greatest movies of all time. Hopefully the SC2 team will replicate that success, no just by making a good game, but by making a good spectator sport.
EDIT: Okay, if you haven't watched Prison Break, here's the typical means of building tension in season 1:
Michael Schofield is trying to break out of prison, so every week he has to do something that brings him closer to his goal. These usually involve him leaving his cell through a hole in the wall. Usually, he only has a short time to accomplish what he needs to, like the five minutes between lights out and a check by the guard, or whatever. So the camera shows Michael Schofield leaving his cell and accomplishing what he needs to do. He starts to return to his cell. The camera then cuts to the approaching guard. The camera does not cut back to Michael Schofield, it remains on the guard. The guard reaches his cell and looks in. Now we do not know whether Michael Schofield has made it back to his cell by this time. Michael does, but we don't. Therefore, we know less than the character. Therefore, tension is built.