As eSports get more and more mainstream, with big TV networks such as ESPN signing up the right to broadcast eSports events, it only natural that the way the gameplay if presented to the audience has to evolve to show not only what a player sees, but explain the game to the viewer.
That’s what EVE is. A graphical overlay system, like the one you might see on Fox Sports or ESPN. EVE works by tying right into the code of a game, spitting out real-time stats, facts, scores, and trivia about a given game or player, which are overlaid on a live e-sports broadcast. So if a player is making a run for the flag in Team Fortress 2, EVE might spit out some stats on how likely the player is to capture it, given his career performance; or if a player gets a headshot in Counterstrike, EVE could immediately tell viewers at home what percentage of headshots that player has made in the last 30 days. The overlay gives you the significance of the play immediately.
In practice, the interface looks a lot like what you see in an NFL or NBA broadcast, just layered over a video game screen instead of live footage. It can obscure some of the details of a game, true, but there’s a tradeoff: In many cases, EVE can explain more about what’s going on in a game than the game itself—especially since, in gaming, user interfaces are usually limited to the perspective of a single player, not all the players of the game.
By automating stat-crunching and putting it on screen, Sepso hopes that e-sports announcers can really delve into the drama of the game. “That’s what announcers are good at,” he says. “Are the players pissed at each other? Is this player on fire, or is this other player performing badly because his girlfriend dumped him 30 minutes before they match? That’s the kind of thing we want to know as fans.”
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