Good article, but it seems to be in the perspective of someone who directly links the esports scene to the heart and soul of video games.

The constant "but bigger pro scene!!1" thing from players of various games drives me crazy. SC1 has close to four million players now, while SC2 has anywhere between 34,000 and 300,000 ranked players (Three ranks across three servers, both the smallest and largest are very unlikely).

Contrary to the beliefs of many gamers across several platforms, 99.999% of us are not professional gamers out to make cash, and the pro scene will not dictate whether we play the games we like or not. SC2's scene is completely artificial and funded by Blizzard, while SC1's scene is a result of being on top for so long and actually growing over the years.

Look at Rocket League, osu, DDR, and other well known games. These games either have completely artificial pro scenes like SC2 that would disappear immediately without company support, or no pro scene at all. Despite the competitive nature many of these games foster just by how they play, they're not all hyped around esports.

Overall, I think the SC2 player base's insecurity (and SC1 to an extent) comes from the hard-locked focus on the status of the professional scene and trying to directly correlate it with in-game numbers we'll never actually know until Blizzard becomes more transparent than an obviously fake player counter in-game.