I’ve been looking at the scoring systems for the CGS (as you’ll see later, in depth). The more I think about it, the need, and market, for extra statistics becomes clearer. I've been thinking specifically about DoA, so I'll roll with that for now.
Let me illustrate the need with an example. I’m from Illinois, the only state in the U.S. where physical education (gym) is a mandatory class. To avoid it affecting your GPA, you could take it as pass/fail, which is exactly what it sounds like. If you scored 61%, you passed. If you scored 59%, you failed. This was especially helpful if you were a 5’0”, 300 lb. brainiac with a peg leg that wanted to go to Harvard. You could just do your best and pass, basically.
The problem is that it doesn’t score things very well. The difference between barely passing and barely failing is wafer thin, but the difference between a "P" and "F" is a lot more than a little curve connecting two lines. A person that works their tail-fat off gets the same “P” on the report card as everybody else that passes. This isn’t a big deal when it’s gym class, but when we’re trying to figure out who the best players are, and the best way for ranking them, I think we need a little more.
Bringing it back to eSports, right now, a perfect round in DoA is scored the same as a close victory. You either pass (win the round) or you fail (lose the round). Vanessa could score five perfect rounds on Belle, and it’s the same as Mystik beating Rasberry Tea 5-0 with a sliver of health each round.
Now, don’t get me wrong, I don't think we need to change the scoring system itself. The best players are, presumably, still winning. But if you look at Belle and Vanessa, I’m not sure what we have now does their scores justice. Belle only has one round, but does anybody know how many perfect rounds she’s given up? Has Vanessa been giving up half-bars to her opponents, or quarter-bars? Let’s face it, the more information we have, the more precisely we can gauge performances.
I used DoA as a quick example here, but you could say the same thing for CS:S and Project Gotham Racing, too. How far ahead of his opponents is JasonX, on average? We’re used to stats for Source, and GotFrag has some of them, but their list is far from complete and it’s on a completely different website. Get some stats, CGS! People love stats! There’s so many cool things you could keep track of, and, to my knowledge, nobody’s doing it.
So, if you’re a 5’0”, 300 pound peg-legged braniac with a love for math, and you want to build a statistics empire that would make John Hollinger or Bill James envious, now is the time. You don’t need in-depth, crazy statistics, like those guys, because there’s a huge market and virtually no competition. You’d be the only drink of water in a scorching desert; even if you’re murky, muddy, and smell like sulfur, people will still love you because they’re tired of drinking sand.
All I ask is when you’re raking in millions of dollars as the eSports Stats Guru, you give me a shout-out … and a small finder’s fee.
