HOW TO MAKE WA AS E-SPORTS GAME!! AND GET PAID!!

[Free]

Many of us have surely fantasized about of being able to play WA for a living.

The game itself is known already but masses are not aware of the depth (thinking process and tactics) and the insane amount skills that this game requires if you want to compete at the highest level. Easy to learn, extreme hard to master. Fun to play and interesting to watch at highest level of competition.

The game is old and it might cause problems because we know how gamers nowadays are with their fancy graphics instead amazing gameplay. Not all is lost though. It's still possible to make people enjoy spectating this and for hardcore gamers taking this as serious e-sports game.

The biggest question is HOW we make this possible, and this is what the thread it is all about. It's not going to be an easy task but just FEEL how great it would be if we actually did it. Naturally we need Team17 behind this but as soon as they see VALUE coming out of it (money) they would support us, but we, as community need to make the work.

I got hugely inspired by Lacoste's newest video because it really sums up how hard and cool to watch this game really can be even just on default schemes level. Then there's the other side, roping, with some tweaks I'm sure it would appeal to the masses on great amounts.

Let's all take part of developing this idea further and lets make it possible. ATLEAST LET'S TRY! There's no harm in trying.

I think the biggest thing is to make a very interesting promotion video and put our best video makers on it, maybe add interviews of real players to make it more personal and players roping (so they actually see how much skill is involved simply by pressing 5 keys. Greatest default minds explaining their thinking process so people understand how much it relates to chess. The promotion video is the biggest leverage to get interest from companies (gaming and e-sports related ofc) that could make this possible.

If there's absolutely no interest from companies to help us out publicity or money-wise, then we need to start grinding it out ourselves. I have possibilities to invest thousands of euros (if needed) to get publicity. For example if we organize a WA tournament with prize pool of 5000e, media and gaming companies will make a fuss about it and therefore get media appeal and sure people will be interested what's this fuzz all about. All we need to do is to make people realize how amazing this game is (we all know it).

For example if Razer sees way to make money making keyboards designed just for roping and theres public interest and growing gamer base, they might jump to the opportunity.

If I've learned something in life, everything is possible if you just work hard for it, either we get help from some company or then we build it from the ground up ourselves.

There are multiple ways to advertise this game even without any money just by being creative, if you've heard the term Guerilla Marketing, you know what I'm talking about. Forums, etc etc etc. I'm ready to pull the sickest stunts needed to get the publicity.

In the end it's all up to the community and how bad we want it, so let's not try focus on the negatives but instead let's focus on how we could make this happen.

I know I would like to be part of a clan and play worms for a living and see how much we can actually master this game. The biggest question is: Would you?

GET EXCITED GUYS, it CAN be done, we just have to find the way.

[OrangE]

well i'm trying to do my part with the streaming stuff. i realized is pretty much fun and the streaming community is growing so much in the whole net that it would be stupid not to do it.

my objective is to keep streaming all the interesting matches i can spectate or even play, to reach a good number of followers and subscribers. if i succeed i will invest some money in premium streaming programs to get better quality (1080p fullscreen) and maybe having the opportunity to gain some money out of this.

streaming = publicity. let's go in this direction!

[lacoste]

E-sports world is brutal, literally. If your game doesnt already have millions of followers, its pages all over the popular gaming sites, and most important - full developer support (Team17 has proven many times to be... we know what) then forget it. Id be most happy if we could get more fame together with some serious wave of players, anything more than that is just a dream.

Take a look at DotA. It was originaly very popular, buggy mod for Warcraft 3. Noone ever thought about it being such a succesful online game. It had huge number of fans all over the globe. It was growing over the years thanks to the community and the guys behind the development, youtube was boiling from videos, then some minor tourneys started to show up together with interest from multi gaming teams like coL, MYM, SK. Then it grew and grew, more multigamings, more web related stuff, more serious tourneys. Then almost every gamer knew what DotA is. Then Valve took over like a hurricane and now its a monster. The whole process took like 8 years, starting with already huge playerbase. Not saying that WA should get any close to DotA, but if anything, we should have players and Team17 with us.

Other than that, lets face it, WA is a damn slow game to watch and (imo) Intermediate is the only scheme with full entertainment for spectators, and it already is damn slow at times.

[DarkOne]

They already tried this on ESL: http://wormtube.worms2d.info/53/esl_shoppa_league_teaser

[Prankster]

It's one thing to get it started with investing shitload of money, but how do you imagine getting it back? I believe we'd need much more money than thousands of euros just to gather a decent amount of people to play the game. And there still wouldn't be sponsors, we'd need to start organizing events by ourselves to get anyone's attention. And there'd still be a risk if any company would find it worthy to invest their money into a 13 years old, turn-based, 2D game, with little action and - let's be honest - childish graphic.
Not talking about the time this would take.

It's simply too much risk to start investing money into w:a.

Also, talking about playing worms for a living while not even the developers get paid?

[OrangE]

yeah i kinda agree. but not on the graphics. the market is going in all directions, and there's a huge part of it dedicated to simple-graphics based games. super high quality in graphics isnt the most important thing anymore imho.

[darKz]

As cool as it would be, I think I never saw a turn based strategy game get much attention in E-Sports. It's just not what the masses want to play or watch for a longer period of time, most of us are exceptions to this rule.

[Anubis]

The closest W:A ever got to eSports was the german ESL/GIGA movement. We had our chance there imo. I am not sure why ESL and GIGA stopped supporting it but I guess it just hadn't enough appeal to the viewers? Playerbase was okay as far as I remember.

And yeah, if I think about it the only TBS game that had price money was W:A lol. So we are/were already a big success there.

Oh and when we had Armageddon League I was in contact with various sponsors which were all open to a competitive Worms League and we did a massive presentation, mostly Dean did the art and I wrote down the ideas. But you know, silly people like Kiros thought it's better for W:A to kill AL and so did our plan to get W:A esports attention.

We got the positive feedback back then because we could prove that W:A was eSports ready, we linked them to GIGA and ESL and showed them that it already got positive feedback from the eSports scene, (Basically we told them that Worms was already popular in Germany but lacks good international coverage, that made them instantly interested xD) we would have started with little prices like Headsets and that stuff, I think TUS could easily get a sponsor for this league. It's bigger and better than AL was.

[Free]

I'll wait for more participants to reply before I start breaking down some general ideas me/orange got at the moment. I'm aware of the hardships that has been mentioned so far, and I would be more interested in constructive ideas. That ESL trailer is really cool editing wise, promotion video should look professional like that editing wise.

Couple of things I want to point out quickly though.

Everyone knows Worms series (before angry birds it was always on top #3 downloaded mobile games and everyone played it as a kid atleast) so we already have audience, but so far they only know banana bombs and funny explosions. Nearly every mate I've shown this game has been amazed at what's actually possible, and I've only shown the surface. The biggest catch is to get this to public and show what this game is REALLY about just besides fun.

E-sports world is brutal, so what? If you think about going into any business that you know already has competition, will you just crawl up and die? It's harder for sure, but it feels even more better when you succeed.

There might be need for a little scheme tweaking needed to make them more viewer friendly but I don't see the "slowness" being a problem, take a chess for example.

If we come up with the best product to present to the companies and they still don't want to take the risk, then we have to do it ourselves, those who don't want to be part of it, it's cool. I'm not thinking about losing my personal money (I make it by growing weed anyways so basically it's free money for me), no risk, no reward. Anyone who's ready to invest money into this project does it on his own risk.

Developers need to get paid, that's for certain, and with rubberworm, project x and who knows what else coming up, WA can be tweaked to a "totally new game" and make it even better than it currently is.

Lacoste you said "anything more than that, it's just a DREAM" and that's exactly why I want to pursue it, it's one of my dreams. And yes, it's going to be a long process, but life is not about the destination, it's about the journey.

Those who share the same vision and see the possibility and want to try it, PM me so I know who's serious about it.

Please fellow wormers, if you have ANY ideas that could add to this project, share them. Creativity is everything.

Skilled video editors, people with personal contacts with T17, deadcode, CyberShadow, StepS (PM if your interested) or friends/connections on the interwebs who has massive followerbase, please let me get their contacts or PM/reply to this thread.

"A journey of thousand miles begins with a single step", even if we fail we can be proud that atleast we tried to do something great out of thing that we all love.

<3

[Anubis]

You can try and contact Totalbiscuit if you explain to him your vision and maybe, just maybe, he is willing to help out. He has helped many low funded Kickstarter Projects and after his "showcase" the project got instantly funded. I have no idea if he has any passion for Worms Series. There are many more open youtubers like him that would at least consider a promotion for a game they think is worth the effort. Which imo W:A would be.

[StepS]

hopefully Steam version will continue being sold then, or while this is going to happen 

[lacoste]

Without Team17 actually caring so the proper WA 4.0 on say Steam can happen, this game is not ready for any boom. I know only 1 game that a modification made it much better on every level - Quake 3 with first OSP and then awesome CPMA. Quake 3 has a great engine and big luck this one guy/guys were modding it, not anyone else (just like we have CS/DC maintaining WA).

[franz]

Even just making a youtube channel to rep Worms Armageddon is something that doesn't exist yet as far as I know: great game replays, commentaries, How-To's for beginners entering wormnet/schemes/even TUS.

[HHC]

Hmm, I like the community as it is. Room for pro's and casual's alike 

WA is already great as it is Free. We have a really cool league here, you think it would be 10x better if we were paid in money? I kinda doubt it. It would attract more players, which is good, but also kill a lot of things that one might call 'community cohesion', 'friendship', 'fair-play', 'noob-friendliness', etc.

I personally wouldnt care much about money. It's nice just being on top for the honour and the personal achievement 500 extra $ doesn't change that.

At this point, WA is not ready to be a big e-sports game. If you want to go in that direction you need to take one step at a time. That way you won't feel disappointed either when things get stuck along the road.. you'll always have good stuff/accomplishments to look back on.
Why not start out by forming your own 'pro' clan like CF, or better, introduce one of their rivals to WA so we can have a nice little rivalry here  Or give MM/DT a turnover by creating an awesome professional website. Little things like that can make things more interesting / more professional.. if that's what you want 

[Tomtysti]

You can try and contact Totalbiscuit if you explain to him your vision and maybe, just maybe, he is willing to help out. He has helped many low funded Kickstarter Projects and after his "showcase" the project got instantly funded. I have no idea if he has any passion for Worms Series.

"I played a lot of Worms back in the day, I never played it seriously 'cause it did never seem like Worms was a serious game to me. I used to play Worms 2, Armageddon, World Party, and shopper was always our favourite mode when it came to fighting with friends." - TB in his "WTF is Worms Revolution" video