EPTIf Koreans are so much better than foreigners that letting them in poses a threat to the foreigner scene, keeping them out will only make it worse.
How to Keep Koreans Out of Foreign Tournaments - Page 3
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deafhobbit
United States828 Posts
If Koreans are so much better than foreigners that letting them in poses a threat to the foreigner scene, keeping them out will only make it worse. | ||
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Unlikely
United States32 Posts
But just as the OP isn't doing himself any favours by choosing a silly title, I don't see the point in others calling people who hold a certain opinion "idiots" who "need to pull their heads out of their asses" or to say that people should be "ashamed" for simply expressing an opinion. But back to the topic at hand: I do believe that there needs to be a combination of local and international leagues in order for Starcraft 2 to have sustainable success on a global level. I've followed Brood War for a number of years now and as I'm sure other BW fans are well aware, there has been an explosion of non-Korean-league media content with the advent of Starcraft 2. A large portion of this content focuses on the narrative aspect of sport: the ups and downs of the various personalities within the game, the rivalries, and the interviews. With the explosion of English language Starcraft 2 coverage, I feel that it is much easier for foreign fans, especially more casual ones who wouldn't want to read Fomos' crude translations for example, to access this aspect of the ESPORT. If foreign leagues, such as the NASL, become dominated by Korean players, which looking at the numbers is certainly possible if the NASL goes from an invitational to a fully open system, casual foreign interest will likely drop off significantly. While I personally, being a relatively hardcore ESPORTS fan along with the rest of TL, would be perfectly happy to just watch the highest level play that I possible can, my experience (and I am not saying that this is universal) is that more casual fans tend to enjoy the various narratives within competitive SC2 as much as, if not more than, the gameplay itself. Take Homestory Cup for example. It's incredibly popular, and one of the biggest reasons is that the personalities of the players really come out in the more casual setting and I don't think that the level of intimacy could have been achieved if the players (for the most part) were not speaking English. During the Brood War days the only way for foreign fans to really get to know the players was through subtitled special programmes and such, which was just not as intimate. I do realize that there are many strong counterarguments, and the strongest one in my opinion is that local leagues will widen the skill gap between the Korean and foreigner scenes, eventually leading to the death of foreign SC2. While this is certainly possible, I believe that this is less likely than the chance of foreign sponsor interest, and therefore media coverage, dropping off due to diminishing numbers of foreigners in their own local leagues. | ||
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OopsOopsBaby
Singapore3425 Posts
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GuTTuRaLPanda
Sweden54 Posts
On June 26 2011 14:53 Caphe wrote: What is the point of keeping Koreans out of foreigners tournaments? So foreigners can just dream that they are as good as Koreans and get smashed whenenver they meet a Korean? No, let them in, foreingers can catch up and will catch up. I don't think Naniwa or Thorzain can improve as much as they are improving now if it is not for those Koreans. The problem is that most foreigners WONT catch up with the koreans because most foreign teams simply cannot just rent a fucking apartment with a cleaning lady and coach were they are training effectivly 9 hours a day. Better to let esports grow in the west as it is and occasionally play with the koreans as in WCG etc. | ||
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GuTTuRaLPanda
Sweden54 Posts
On June 26 2011 16:35 OopsOopsBaby wrote: I dont believe koreans ever tried to keep foreigners out of their competitions whether is it BW or SC2. i find it amusing that it may not be the same case the other way round. Yeah cus in BW the foreigners had such a chance. Edit: And in SC2 I guess you have a point but koreans are still dominating there, and it's actualy their choice to invite foreigners/let them have a small training apartment there etc. We cannot see this topic in black and white. | ||
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RaLakedaimon
United States1564 Posts
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Clbull
United Kingdom1439 Posts
I am not saying prevent Korean players from playing in our leagues at all because that would be in some ways discrimination and in other ways demonstrating that Western players are too chicken to face Koreans. I'm just saying that if the organisers want to keep any tournament a regional event, then they should be able to choose whether or not to. There are advantages and disadvantages to keeping events local/regional. The advantages:
The disadvantages:
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Clbull
United Kingdom1439 Posts
On June 26 2011 21:20 GuTTuRaLPanda wrote: The problem is that most foreigners WONT catch up with the koreans because most foreign teams simply cannot just rent a fucking apartment with a cleaning lady and coach were they are training effectivly 9 hours a day. Better to let esports grow in the west as it is and occasionally play with the koreans as in WCG etc. It must be said that competitive gaming in general is at its infancy in the west. Only in Korea are you actually seeing gamers rarely earn large five or even low six figure salaries for being part of a team i.e. Flash who is the current Brood War bonjwa. The issue with e-sports is that only those who constantly win tournaments are actually earning big amounts of money from it. Sure there has been a little bit of change in terms of money distribution through several ways such as online streams and video channels funded via advertising, the enlargening and fairer separation of tournament prize pools etc. However, tt is still rare that players are earning from it. Some individuals such as TotalBiscuit have planned to make nice moves towards more fairly paying individuals for competing.. Quote from the linked Reddit post below: Initial estimates from Justin.tv reveal that the tournament raised over $1000 in ad revenue for the next one! That's money that will go into the hands of pros, on the day that they win it. In addition to what I usually earn from the ladder stream, that means it's very likely that the next tournament will 1) Have a prizepool of around $2000-$2500 2) Will pay EVERY pro something for participating, direct via Paypal on the day for playing their matchs. | ||
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quRax
Korea (South)264 Posts
With Koreans in tournaments like MLG and Dreamhack, it dosen't just raise the skill level of the tournaments, but it let's the korean E-sports scene get more information about the foreign players and tournaments. And when you say IPL is taking one step in the right direction. How can you say that ? If the Koreans gets isolated from western tournaments, who knows if Koreans does the same and just keeps the foreign players out of torunaments like GSL ? Even though i know that the leage is called "Global Starcraft League", but it's all in Korea. They can easily keep foreign players out of Korean leagues too. Keeping eachother out of tournamets is just bad for the growth and popularity of E-sports. Why ? If you take other sports as examples, like soccer. Since the sport is so established and so popular let's them have local leagues for each country. And have some big tournaments for all of the top notch teams from each country, like the World Cyber Games (it's slightly different from tournaments like Uefa cups etc, but you get the point.) Still they don't block players from other country's out. That's just good having the best players playing better leagues. It's just good. To be the best you gotta compete with the best. E-sports is starting to get a alot of fans around the world, but it's still in the evolving phase. That's why we need each other to raise the skill level. Since the Brood War days, the korean training "program" have been better. Something that transitions into SC2. So if we isolates the foreign scene from the korean scene, they will just get better. Another advantage they have is beeing one country. The foreign scene is huge. Including America, Europe and the rest of the world. Untill teams starts to use the korean training format they will just get more ahead. Especially if we isolates our selves. | ||
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Aterons_toss
Romania1275 Posts
On the other hand i hardly see why ppl want to see them play, imo if they want to come to mlg and spend 1 day of playing trough the open tournament or get in with the points they have its fine. Giving them special treatment and placing them directly in the groups is not oky. Also i still don't understand why ppl consider Korean players to be sooooooo good. 75% of the matches i see from them are all in that even a kid could think of + prefect micro. If im not wrong Dreamhack final which was Moon vs Huk ( Huk has a very korean-ish style and has trained in Korea for almost an year now ) was a series of 5 matches in which we saw : 4 gate, roach ling all in 2 times, 6 pool , a stupidly laid out "hidden" roach rush and. On June 26 2011 16:35 OopsOopsBaby wrote: I dont believe koreans ever tried to keep foreigners out of their competitions whether is it BW or SC2. i find it amusing that it may not be the same case the other way round. They automatically exclude us by NOT speaking english and NOT having almost any tournament but gsl for pros that want to go there and play. And while MLG gave koreans all they wanted + extra ( translator, special pcs ...etc ) GSL doesn't offer the foreign they invite anything else then a hotel room an plane tickets no food... translator...etc | ||
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fearus
China2164 Posts
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white_horse
1019 Posts
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VGhost
United States3618 Posts
On June 26 2011 16:35 OopsOopsBaby wrote: I dont believe koreans ever tried to keep foreigners out of their competitions whether is it BW or SC2. i find it amusing that it may not be the same case the other way round. The Korean scene has been kind of schizophrenic about foreigners. Some teams tried to get them to play and of course the really early scene was briefly dominated by people like Grr.... On the other hand, the base skill level in the Korean proscene got so high that later players like Ret and iDra and (I think) Tyler who went over basically never got played - and some of that almost certainly was at least a little bit prejudice, since a lot of the b-teamers who get time are just bad. Obviously I can't say for certain. Now GOM is making efforts to get foreign players in their leagues, which is neat - but the GSL is a local league so anybody playing in it has to get there. I suppose when it comes down to it, I'm just getting frustrated with the fact that most tournaments are online tournaments, which aren't conducive (to my mind) to stabilizing the scene because the players commit essentially nothing. But I'm probably just impatient. Maybe I should rename the thread something more like "Play Where You Live" or something, because that's really more the point I was trying to make. | ||
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Unlikely
United States32 Posts
On June 27 2011 02:20 white_horse wrote: Westerners need to understand that esports in their countries are still in infancy. esports in korea has been going on for 10 years now. This is why westerners need to focus on putting the effort and the work to establish their industry like the koreans did in the early 2000s. Nobody said it was going to be easy. Westerners finally have a chance to play on a level field with the release of SC2 and now you guys want to throw that chance away by trying to make things easier by excluding the koreans? It doesn't make any sense at all. Like you said, ESPORTS is in it's infancy in the West, and the infrastructure and industry are not yet built up. For that reason, I think that at this point in time, when few Western teams have team houses where their players can practice for several hours on end, etc. it is necessary for there to be local leagues. Once Western teams have sponsors, and more and more follow in the footsteps of EG, Reign, etc. and form true team houses, then we can think about truly international competition. In the short term, leagues like the NASL will have to be the minor leagues to the GSL's major league. And as in other sports, the minor leagues, in order to maintain an environment where less developed players are able to compete, keep major league players out. It's not about creating a watered down environment where worse players can win, and it's not a racial thing (although I have seen racial elements in others' arguments which does disturb me). It's about creating an environment where less developed teams can find their footing and build their training programmes without being stomped on by teams who already practice in a fully developed training environment. The skill gap is something that we have to acknowledge in the short term. Exceptions such as Jinro, Huk, etc. are just that: exceptions and not the norm. It is simply unrealistic, as the West lacks the ESPORTS infrastructure, to except Western players to compete with Koreans at this point in time. Maybe I should rename the thread something more like "Play Where You Live" or something, because that's really more the point I was trying to make. Please do. | ||
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Moff
United Kingdom166 Posts
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