A major tournament of “Heroes of the Storm” was broadcast on the sports channel ESPN2 in the USA. Not everyone agreed with that.
“If ESPN ever forces me to cover it, then I’m quitting right away. I sold bait in a fishing village instead,” said Colin Cowherd on the ESPN show Follow the Herd. The sports reporter then mockingly, and perhaps with a hint of enjoyment, pokes fun at the players, announcers, and the whole spectacle of Heroes of the Storm. It is being aired because the station ESPN has a deal with “Blizzard”.
When the announcers talk about which team gets the top chest and which team gets the bottom chest; that it is crucial who grabs the third tribute, Cowherd has only ridicule for that: “Someone should lock the basement door at mom’s house and not let them out.”
My MMO thinks: Admittedly, the jargon sounds pretty ridiculous to outsiders. But “Uh, the Broncos need a touchdown; the Colts’ defense has switched to a blitz and is putting tremendous pressure on the quarterback, hopefully he can avoid a sack and throw the Hail Mary” is not far off from “If you get the third tribute, your buildings will be cursed and can no longer fire.”
Moreover, ESPN has significantly contributed to making poker a major sport in the USA and the rest of the world. The broadcast of the World Series of Poker in 2003, with the win of then-amateur Chris Moneymaker, gave the “bar game” a huge boom and also established poker as a kind of sport. So the criticism could have started 12 years ago. It seems to lie in the social context with which poker and Heroes of the Storm are associated.
For some, poker is that tough men’s thing from the Wild West with cigars and whiskey; and Heroes of the Storm is for pimple-faced Dungeons and Dragons fans and math nerds. Some opinions will be washed away by time. 20 years ago, comics, Star Wars, mobile phones, and the internet were also just for supposed nerds.
