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The Sound Proof Booths of Silence

dota2.com

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Re: The Sound Proof Booths of Silence

#41

Post by nivaldoh »

donatj wrote: post #27

I don’t really get esports or regular sports for that matter, but this seems like overkill? How much of an advantage could they really get from someone yelling at them in the audience? With a decent audience they are rarely going to hear anything other than a din anyway. Doesn’t seem like much more of an advantage than people yelling things at baseball players? Seems like it could just be part of the calculation of t…

A yelling crowd can be a dead giveaway that the other team is about to make a risky play under the fog of war, and give the defending team enough time to prepare.

For instance, if certain characters from one team are not showing on the map for the opponents and they suddenly hear a crowd yelling, they could anticipate that the character is about to do a surprise gank, attempt to solo Roshan, etc, and shut down the attempt more easily.

It can be heavily bias the decisions that players might make under certain circumstances, so it makes sense that Valve would go to great lengths to prevent that.

Re: The Sound Proof Booths of Silence

#42

Post by thaumasiotes »

jack_pp wrote: post #21
NikolaNovak wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thing is, millions aren't what they used to be! with world population at just over 8 billion, the viewership of 2 million makes it pretty obscure. World cup final had 1.5 Bil viewers apparently (TIL).

Well, can't really compare a fairly complex computer game where you need to actively play in order to even understand the stream with a.. checks Wikipedia.. 2000 year old game with simple enough rules that you can watch without any knowledge. Football also has the advantage of a fixed rule set. I've played over 4000 hours of dota in my life but none in the last 12 months. I've tried watching it on twitch and the map…

> Football also has the advantage of a fixed rule set.

I'd tend to agree that video games are ensuring they can never stick around by constantly throwing the rules in the garbage.

But if you're going to claim that soccer is 2000 years old, you can't also claim that it has a fixed rule set. It changes at a slower pace. The slower pace of change is an improvement over video games. But it still changes. There is not even continuity between an attested 2000-year-old game and soccer.

Re: The Sound Proof Booths of Silence

#43

Post by Aachen »

xxs wrote: post #38
ufo wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

translation: gank = ambush, farming = collecting resources without engaging against the enemy team

I'd have considered 'gank' a fairly known/used term.

I've never heard it in my life and I play games (not Dota) and get around on the internet generally. My first association was clank from hermitcraft's decked out, but that didn't quite fit. Farming is what I figured from context, though

Re: The Sound Proof Booths of Silence

#44

Post by IggleSniggle »

dubcanada wrote: post #37
wincy wrote: post #4

It was definitely an interesting article but the first sentence of the article proper really grabbed me. The weird thing to me about the world is you can have an event that literally millions of people watch around the world, and if you had asked me “what’s the International” five minutes ago I wouldn’t have had any idea, and I’m a very online person! I play video games, even, and at one point played DOTA2! The inter…

That's strange, The International is a very well known esport event, the biggest in it's hayday, it's certainly dropped off, but at one point there wasn't a way to open Steam without seeing details about the International. While I agree with your premise, The International was heavily advertised on Steam products. Which is the biggest gaming store. Outside of that, there was minimal but anyone who watched esports saw…

That's an interesting take. I've been playing on Steam since HL2, very regularly, and although I remember DOTA2 being heavily advertised, I don't think I ever saw an ad or promotion for The International. Unlike the other poster, however, I never actually installed DOTA2.

Re: The Sound Proof Booths of Silence

#45

Post by ascar »

december456 wrote: post #22
kzrdude wrote: post #14

Unfortunately, they serve a machine translated version of the blog text. Well, I don't even know. The language is technically correct I guess, but completely without life and using expressions that one would use in english. That's not bad for an automatic translation.

You sure about the machine part? While a surprise, it was one of the better localizations i have experienced in the world wide web.

GPT translates incredibly well.

Re: The Sound Proof Booths of Silence

#46

Post by ufo »

donatj wrote: post #27

I don’t really get esports or regular sports for that matter, but this seems like overkill? How much of an advantage could they really get from someone yelling at them in the audience? With a decent audience they are rarely going to hear anything other than a din anyway. Doesn’t seem like much more of an advantage than people yelling things at baseball players? Seems like it could just be part of the calculation of t…

Dota is a game of imperfect information with "fog of war". There is a large playing field but each team can only see the area immediately surrounding their characters. Players will try to ambush the enemy, or group with their team to sneak in a side-objective while the enemy doesn't notice. Audience noise can disrupt this.

Re: The Sound Proof Booths of Silence

#47

Post by doikor »

Zathu wrote: post #3

I don’t understand the problem this solves - why not put the players in noise cancelling headsets?

They don't cancel well enough. You can still hear some noise. You probably can't identify what it is but it is enough of a signal to react to (spoiling your surprise play/ambush)

Re: The Sound Proof Booths of Silence

#48

Post by Cyph0n »

jack_pp wrote: post #21
NikolaNovak wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thing is, millions aren't what they used to be! with world population at just over 8 billion, the viewership of 2 million makes it pretty obscure. World cup final had 1.5 Bil viewers apparently (TIL).

Well, can't really compare a fairly complex computer game where you need to actively play in order to even understand the stream with a.. checks Wikipedia.. 2000 year old game with simple enough rules that you can watch without any knowledge. Football also has the advantage of a fixed rule set. I've played over 4000 hours of dota in my life but none in the last 12 months. I've tried watching it on twitch and the map…

That’s why I’m of the opinion that CS is the best spectator esport out there. The rounds are short and the overall barrier to entry for a viewer to enjoy the game is low, yet the skill ceiling is extremely high.

Edit: If you’re not familiar with CS, try tuning in to the ESL stream and see how much you understand: https://www.twitch.tv/eslcs

Re: The Sound Proof Booths of Silence

#50

Post by fragmede »

dubcanada wrote: post #37
wincy wrote: post #4

It was definitely an interesting article but the first sentence of the article proper really grabbed me. The weird thing to me about the world is you can have an event that literally millions of people watch around the world, and if you had asked me “what’s the International” five minutes ago I wouldn’t have had any idea, and I’m a very online person! I play video games, even, and at one point played DOTA2! The inter…

That's strange, The International is a very well known esport event, the biggest in it's hayday, it's certainly dropped off, but at one point there wasn't a way to open Steam without seeing details about the International. While I agree with your premise, The International was heavily advertised on Steam products. Which is the biggest gaming store. Outside of that, there was minimal but anyone who watched esports saw…

I played World of Warcraft I and II on an IPX network, but I stopped gaming around when Quake 2 died out in favor of CS. I have steam installed on my MacBook. I used Twitch a lot in 2020 and 2021; less so these days. I spend way too much time on HN; I'm not ill informed about other things.

Probably saw an ad for it sometime in the past but I can't say I remembered its name or anything. The attention economy is real. There are huge swaths of culture that I'll hear about from friends of friends and it's astounding how much is out there and the conventions they have for it.

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