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Well, honestly, WHY do we want to reach the masses (as iNcontroL so often focuses on)? Is it not much more fun, enriching, and rewarding to be a closely knit, tight, comfortable community making its way relatively on its own, almost self-sustenance in a sense? No, I don't want e-sports to be contained from growth at all, I love seeing it improve, tournaments get bigger and better, but what I don't love is the thought of trying to change the community or its mentality to fit in such a way that the outside world might embrace it. I don't see what benefit we get from trying to alter our nature in order to make it appealing to those not naturally drawn to Starcraft, gaming, etc. I suppose, in an over-simplified way, I'm just not sure at what point such a hunger for expanding crosses the line of "selling out."
As a somewhat odd example, I've been a part of the pen spinning community for almost two years now, short yes, but enough to understand the way that it works. Whenever a company attempted to commercialize pen spinning for the sake of money alone (and, arguably, to "Make it accessible to the masses"), it was certainly not advocated in the sense that it would involve diluting the dense liveliness and "soul" of the manipulative art in order to bring more people to it, and expand not pen spinning, but rather its market. I feel that this concept translates very well, if not completely, to Starcraft II as a community, even e-sports as a whole.
What is gained by, at a certain point, what can become dilution of the true bond and sense of closeness which is existent in the Starcraft II and e-sports community? Yes, more money would be pumped into and found in the Starcraft and pro gaming scene. No, it wouldn't be the same (think Casting language argument stuff, only past censorship of vulgarities and possibly into simple idioms that the wider public wouldn't understand or identify with, assuming hypothetically that we truly managed to touch the masses and "mass expo" SCII as a community). It seems like it comes down to the question of whether or not the focus of Starcraft II related professions and professional gaming is the money, or the love of the e-sport and the bond which it can create between those of what is currently a fairly unique, arguably exclusive community. While one MUST expand, if one mass expo's, it doesn't often end well. Hopefully what I'm saying isn't misconstrued as destructive of the work and love put into e-sports and furthering Starcraft II, but I simply don't want to see the focus shift from improving the community and being open to the masses, to finding ways to appeal to as much of the general public as possible. I guess I'm advocating quality of the community, not quantity.
NOTE: I wasn't sure whether or not this would be something to go in the general forum or w/e, but assumed that since my opinion doesn't mean much, and since I'm not positive of where else this should go, It could fit as simply a blog post.
 
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SC has already reached the masses in my eyes. The BW was tiny compared to sc2 now.
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Haha actually I'm a big fan of the SC2 community growing. The more people it gets/distracts from BW the better, since the older+smaller community is always a better place to hang out. I know it'll get difficult to find streams and articles and such, but the community will prosper unless it shrinks to a point of no return - that won't come too soon though.
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On June 01 2011 16:20 Stratos wrote:
Haha actually I'm a big fan of the SC2 community growing. The more people it gets/distracts from BW the better, since the older+smaller community is always a better place to hang out. I know it'll get difficult to find streams and articles and such, but the community will prosper unless it shrinks to a point of no return - that won't come too soon though.
Wait what? You want SC2 to grow so being a fan of BW becomes more exclusive? I'm not entirely sure what you meant. o.O
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Yeah, but really Stratos, that's just a function of BW elitism (which I, though I wasn't a BW player myself as far as being decent or experienced goes, don't necessarily dislike). BW can stay exclusive with or without SC2 community mass growth. I just wonder what others think as to whether or not it should be DESIRABLE that the SCII community focuses primarily on appeasing the masses (iNcontroL is awesome, but it seems to me like this is something he and others as well actively seek out, that I personally don't see as positive, but rather damaging).
EDIT: Please, though, don't stray from the actual question/issue if possible, I'd at least like to hear a decent and informed opinion from each side at some point :D
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I think the problem here is that an ESPORT isn't sustainable if the community isn't very big. Only then will tournaments , streams, etc. have enough views to attract sponsors. Without sponsor no professional sport can happen because without them it isn't feasible to be a professional gamer.
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Well, SC2 is a sell-out in its entirety anyway. However, for example, the BW community is not tightly-knit and comfortable as one would imagine (where there is no mass promoting, and much better quality) and SC2 at least has money, players, activity and future that BW could only dream about. I guess that should give an example why people promoting SC2 want more people. More people --> more money, more future, less quality. That's what SC2 has always been about, imho.
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the Dagon Knight4011 Posts
On June 01 2011 16:51 fazek42 wrote:
More people --> more money, more future, less quality.
I think that this is a really flawed approach. The idea that there being more money, and more of a future (which might attract people dedicating more of their lives to it, growing into their roles as commentators, players, etc.) would lead to less quality seems like a weird one.
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At the moment I really think that you have the best of both worlds. The BW scene is still niche but loyal, and SC2 is relatively popular. If you are one of the players new to Starcraft with SC2 and didn't play BW then you really have no justification to complain there are too many new players.
I actually think that the growth of Starcraft is split into 2 distict areas. The active community and the pro gaming scene.
A lot of the attention is placed on the pro gaming scene, because naturally there are many people trying to eek out a living being a pro gamer or reporting on the pro gaming scene. These people are making a lot of noise and gathering a lot of attention for both themselves and for starcraft as a game. I totally understand that these people are focussed on making SC2 into a viable long term commercial enterprise. I personally however don't care at all whether there is a pro gaming scene or not. I don't feel as though it significantly appeals to people who aren't already into SC2, and I even worry a little bit about those teens who spend too much time trying to be a pro gamer instead of pursuing a more stable and rewarding career path. Even if SC2 was a totally amatuer pursuit, there would still be tournaments and streams and mostly all of what already exists. Overall I guess I think that the pro gaming scene really only benefits a small group of people.
The active community is what I would be a lot more concerned with. Not only is the active community the basis for the pro gaming scene, it is the community itself which mostly grows the starcraft scene. If you talk to your friends, and they become interested in the game, then this has a huge overall effect. It is important to me personally that SC2 is popular because if it isn't a commercial success then SC3 will never happen. No matter how much Blizzard wants to continue making Starcraft, if it doesn't sell well then it just isn't going to happen. If Starcraft had the same number of players as WoW, then there would be a new and bigger Starcraft product every single year ( or at least more than every 10 years).
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I want pros to be able to game full-time and not have to work other jobs, so for that reason I want a big community, but apart from that I don't really care.
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There's awful lot of money in the Korean BW scene, but that didn't hurt the scene's quality, so that kind of break your central argument.
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Russian Federation4405 Posts
BW needs to mass expand fsho 
but first we need to defend DOTA's mass ling all-in on ICCup -.-
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On June 01 2011 16:23 PH wrote:Show nested quote +On June 01 2011 16:20 Stratos wrote:
Haha actually I'm a big fan of the SC2 community growing. The more people it gets/distracts from BW the better, since the older+smaller community is always a better place to hang out. I know it'll get difficult to find streams and articles and such, but the community will prosper unless it shrinks to a point of no return - that won't come too soon though. Wait what? You want SC2 to grow so being a fan of BW becomes more exclusive? I'm not entirely sure what you meant. o.O
Nope, in fact I'm not a fan of all this bickering about which game is better, cooler or harder. Let everyone enjoy what they like. It's just that I prefer smaller gaming communities as such. Larger gaming communities often attract way too many kids and idiots for my taste and, over time, these began to overthrow the good core of the community - at least on the outside, but also on the inside, since you have to play with them/share the same forums.
On the other side, in a smaller community you get in contact with a larger portion of the community very quickly, so you know whether you might enjoy taking part in it or not. Also since the community is smaller, one cannot afford to act like a total ass, because in a while one's short of possibilities on any kind of relationship with other players. I suppose the BW community will be older in comparison to the SC2, or certainly will be. This also makes me feel more comfortable. I dislike kids. There are lots of other aspects to it, some are negative but for me the positive prevail.
As a matter of fact, I chose SC:BW over SC2 mainly because of the smaller portion of the community here was attracted to it + its history etc. I never played SC2 even though I had the chance and even though I seldom watch some streams or tournaments. But I feel like I wouldn't enjoy taking part in that community because of the increasing amount of monkeys that join every day and force you to form a closer group of friends to hang out with - since otherwise there's a considerable chance of having to interact with these monkeys outside.
Now this is something that I believe (although I have no experience) isn't such a deal in the community today, but in a year or two, if everything goes well, it would bother me more and more as it did with CS 1.6. That's why even when CS 1.6 was out for a long time and I enjoyed it, me and my friends stick to 1.5 for most of the time.
I'm not forcing this opinion on anyone, it's just how I feel and I know the majority of you people have absolutely different standards for the game.
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If the community expands, sponsorship will increase, bringing more events and more high level players.
Seems like something that fans should want.
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I agree that indeed sponsorships will increase, high level players will increase in numbers, and tournaments overall will become bigger, better, etc. However, this is expanding, not mass expanding. As my analogy to sc2, I believe expanding is good, especially when its our community expanding itself and focusing on a) improving itself and b) attracting new people through this growth. Expanding yields more money, yes, but also a richer scene. Yet, when those priorities are flipped and heavily favoring simply sucking in more and more people and trying to preach SCII to the world, I see it as mass expanding, which indeed gives more money, but less quality to the community PRIMARILY due to the "figureheads of scII gaming" forming as a result, and the subsequent dilution of true personality and such we feel. What i'm wondering, is why on earth would we WANT to mass expand, why not healthily plod along, expand the scene at a reasonable rate such that pros can make a living, more high level players, but not the added mess of, as a hypothetical situation, us converting 25% or even 30%+ of the idiots that simply play console COD games and think they're the best thing to ever happen in the world.'
Oh, and I agree with you deathlyrat, though I personally like the pro gaming scene.
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EPT
