This Is Me #14

This vs. That: League of Legends success compared to Starcraft 2

Fifteen years ago, Blizzard ruled the world. They came out with multiple titles, namely Diablo and Starcraft that were loved by the community. I'm not very familiar with their shortcomings because I was so young at the time. Being young, all I know is that I enjoyed playing the games. And generally, this is the consensus I get from the gaming community. You will never hear players criticizing these games. Maybe we know more now, maybe those games really were perfect. It doesn't really matter anymore because Blizzard has fallen from grace and the successors to those titles have fallen short.

Today, League of Legends, a free-to-play, multiplayer-online-battle-arena (MOBA) game, is king. And by a wide margin. In the majority of aspects, from popularity to profit margin to E-sports relevance, it's hard to disagree with the fact that the recent past and future belong to LoL. Why is this and why hasn't Starcraft 2 taken its rightful place on the throne?

1. Market Penetration: You can bet that everyone and their grandmother who played Starcraft was looking forward to the release of Starcraft 2. This is a game that engulfed an entire generation and already had an established fan base. It's easy to see that making a sequel would be very profitable for Blizzard. However, this is a new age, an age of creative digitization and diligent monetization that are designed to make everything convenient for the buyer. We don't buy games at Best Buy anymore. We order them on Amazon, we download them off Steam, or there are even FREE games that we don't need to pay money for. League of Legends is one of those free games. It didn't start with the same fan base as Starcraft, but it was able to creep its way into more computer hard drives. I didn't need to buy a $50 copy and put the CD in my disk drive. I just downloaded the game and was off on my way. My wallet wasn't any lighter (at the time) and that meant less commitment. This game didn't have to be good because I hadn't invested in it yet. So while Starcraft 2 started with a larger fan base, the next generation who had no familiarity with it had no reason to commit. And let's be honest, downloading a game with the click of a mouse is easier than asking Mom and Dad for some money to burn on video games.

2. Multiplayer Aspect: I can make a crude comparison of Starcraft to something like Civilization or Age of Empires. There are really only two types of game play, pvp and pve. This is simple and it's almost always been this way. However, games like Counter-Strike (which led to a whole genre of FPS games) and Defense of the Ancients (a LoL predecessor) allowed friends to play with each other. They could be on the same team and in fact, they were meant to be on the same team. The core of the games involved team work. This was simply not true of Starcraft or things like Civilization. Even now, I don't play Civ 5 against my friends because it's easier to just beat up on bots together. Everyone has fun that way. If I take out my friend with a Reaper rush super early, he/she is not going to be happy. However, in League of Legends, you're supposed to play with your friends on the same team. You have the same successes and struggles, and like a really hard Chem AP class, it brings friends together against a common enemy.

3. Mechanical Gameplay: Any game with a lot of strategy takes mastery of the game mechanics to develop a proficiency when playing. This means that games with a large amount of things to learn can be extremely rewarding when game mechanics are executed correctly (like being good at basketball vs being good at hop scotch). However, when a game is very hard to learn, some will not even take up the challenge to learn the game. Which is why I stick to hop scotch. Starcraft 2 and League of Legends are both mechanically intensive games, but Starcraft 2 blows LoL out of the water in this regard. Actions per minute (APM) is one of the most important stats in SC2, and coupled with a good knowledge and correctly executed strategies, can make you a beast whether you play Terran or Zerg. I tuned into an SC2 stream once and I just heard endless amount of keyboard clicking. It's really insane. When we take APM into LoL's world, this stat really doesn't matter much at all. Reactions and timing still do, but overall, you don't need to micro or macro as many things. Some may say that this reduces the skill cap of the game, that this means the game is inferior as it's easier to play, but I don't buy it. Let's take mountain climbers who climb Mt. Kilimanjaro vs. mountain climbers who climb Mt. Everest. If you can climb Kilimanjaro, it's not like you don't know how to climb a mountain. Sure, Everest is harder, but no one can say the amount of skill it took you to climb Kilimanjaro was nothing. There are only a handful of people who climb Everest, but far more who climb Kilimanjaro. When we apply this to League of Legends and Starcraft 2, it's easy to see why people would opt for an easier, yet still pretty rewarding game in LoL.

4. Team Strategy: How many of us have watched a chess match? I haven't and I hold nothing against people who do but I'll propose the same question for golf. I haven't watched a tournament and I hold nothing against those who do but I'll propose the same question for basketball. I have and I hold nothing against people who don't but I will say that statistically, team games like basketball and football are more popular when it comes to viewership of pro-games. Why is this? I believe it's because we believe there are so many different places in which things can go right or wrong and it's therefore more spectacular to watch when it all goes right or disastrously wrong. SC2 is a 1 v 1 game, matching pure individual skill. It's a lot like real time chess. League of Legends is a 5 v 5 game, matching teamwork and strategy. It's not about who can micro their character better (for the most part), it's about pressuring bottom to take a free dragon. This is much more appealing and easier to watch for spectators in E-sports because it's a much more macro game. Moreover, it's easier to focus on things. 10 players in the game mean that 10 things can impact the game. In SC2, you can have 15 hydras against 12 reapers against 3 colossi , etc etc. A layman can focus much more easily when you make game play based around less units and this also leads to greater market penetration and developing fan bases.