I recently watched an old episode of State Of The Game and they discussed an issue that I would like to address here. Whether you agree or disagree with me is not my concern, I merely wish to provide another perspective than those represented on SOTG. The specific issue they addressed was caster language. I believe, however, that this ties into a larger issue, that of professionalism in Starcraft. Now I think everyone can universally agree that when someone is casting a major tournament, they wish to be as professional as possible because they want to make sure and cater to their audience. I’m sure they also wish to make sure that they remain hireable as casters for other major events. Since that is something that no one really seemed to disagree with, I want to remove that from the spectrum of discussion. What I want to address is the idea of professionalism in streaming or however else someone chooses to put themselves out there as a professional gamer, caster, or both. I think that the perspectives represented on SOTG were good, however, I believe they missed a crucial viewpoint in their discussion, which is the business perspective.

Now I’m not going to sit here and pretend I understand or represent every aspect of that perspective, but I do have a degree in business, so I think I can speak to it with some degree of certainty. One of the viewpoints represented was that a gamer or caster wants to be themselves while streaming. I have no argument with that. However, the other perspective states that as someone becomes more popular, they are elevated to a position of representing the community, and therefore need to take that into consideration when choosing their language. This is my perspective.

People deeply involved in e-sports are trying to elevate it to a point where it becomes something that attracts a mainstream audience. In order to do that, I would argue that people need to start treating e-sports, in this case, Starcraft gaming, as a profession. Now I’m not saying that everyone should start putting on a suit to stream and all that crap, but what I am saying is that people need to treat the way they stream the same way as they would treat any other job. In order to make a living doing something, you need to treat it in a particular way. I understand that maybe someone has attracted a certain amount of people by streaming in a particular manner and that’s fine, however, someone like that will reach a saturation point of viewers. If you insist on saying whatever you want whenever you want, sure you’re being you, but you will only grow to a certain point and then you won’t get past that because there’s only a certain amount of people who will be okay with that. If you don’t care about getting past that point, no big deal, do whatever you want.

I also want to point out that I dislike coming at this from a point of ‘if you do this, you’re selling out’. Nonsense. It has nothing to do with selling out. It has everything to do with the desire to elevate e-sports to the point where it is recognized in the same sentence as any other professional sport. Right now, that doesn’t happen. And until the people involved with this effort start treating Starcraft 2 as a profession, in the same way that professional athletes treat their sport as a profession, I believe that it is going to be very difficult to get to that point.

Communication in business is a very major thing. Especially if you’re going into the type of business where you want to appeal to a large spectrum of the population. Now I understand that the gaming culture has a certain language and way of acting. I’m not saying we need to lose that. I just think people should take a long hard look at the behavior displayed on streams and YouTube channels, etc. and make sure that it isn’t holding e-sports back from appealing to that large spectrum. Again, I don’t care if you agree or disagree with me. I just want people to really think about what I’m saying from the perspective of an investor, or an advertiser, or just a regular businessperson. I believe e-sports can get to the point where it is considered a 'regular' sport. I want it to get to that point. That is why I want to point out these sorts of issues, so that if this is something holding us back, we can address it as a community and move forward.