AGN: "E-Sports - Good or bad for Planetside 2?" - ReachCast Episode 52 CQ

[ChipMHazard]

For me it will entirely depend on what kind of effect it will have on the normal day-to-day Planetside gameplay. Naturally the devs will claim that it won't have any adverse effect, but what we saw in vanilla SC2 was that there was a much larger focus on esports than casual play (No custom games like in WC3). That ended up actually hurting the game quite a lot.

The good
If esports kicks off then the game will be getting a lot more attention. More attention, more money. Money we would then see invested into PS2.
If the cash rewards become large enough will be see many other competitive outfits form so it's not always just the same outfits battling it out in the end.
It could lead to better level design, balancing and performance changes based on a competitive environment.

The bad

It could divide the community.
It could take dev time away from the actual game.
It could lead to unfortunate balancing based on a competitive environment.