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United States7481 Posts
The date was June 25th 1982. On a pitch in Gijon, Spain, 22 men purposelessly kicked a ball around for 80 minutes. It resembled football (soccer for us Americans), but couldn’t really be called as such.
Fans of one team burned their own flag in protest. Fans of a team not playing in the game attempted to storm the field to voice their protest.
In this disgraceful match between West Germany and Austria, the two sides only acted as humans might. If West Germany won by three or more goals, Austria would come in 3rd place in the group to Algeria. In the case of a tie or Austrian win, the powerhouse West German side would be sent home early. The two sides evidently engineered a détente of sorts, with neither team putting in any real effort after a West German goal in the first 10 minutes.
This historical example doesn’t bear directly on the recent NaNiwa controversy. It’s more similar to cases where players attempt to lose their last match in group play to engineer brackets more favorably for them, as has happened in both SC1 and SC2 before. In 2007 WCG Grand Finals,  Stork, White-Ra, and  Ex were in tiebreakers for 1st/2nd/3rd of their group, and both Stork (a Korean, who as a people numerous commentators recently said would never do such a thing) and White-Ra (who MC pointed to as a shining example of everything that is right in the world) were under suspicion of throwing matches so they could get 2nd place and avoid a potential 2nd round matchup with Korean terran Hwasin. This past year at Assembly, nobody could say BratOK or Stephano were playing their hardest, with the winner having to face Sen in brackets and the loser up against less-scary Sarens. In neither case was anything proven, nor did the competitors admit to throwing, but the suspicion was there.
In NaNiwa’s case, he had to play out a game he at the time considered pointless. According to his statements since, he’s realized the greater impact of that game outside simply the standings, but his original perspective can be understood. It’s not the first case where somebody doesn’t want to keep playing after they’re out of the tournament – people skip MLG tiebreakers all the time, stop showing up for NASL, and so forth.
It's not like people want to watch meaningless games, either. Attendance for losing teams is way lower than for winning teams, across all major sports and all markets. The national TV spots go to the crucial games for deciding the playoffs, not the bottomfeeders. I don't have the NASL numbers, but I'm willing to bet that all else held equal, numbers for meaningless regular season games are lower than those that still affect playoff prospects.
People can argue until they’re blue in the face about whether NaNiwa was justified in what he did, or whether GOM handed down the right punishment, or anything about what happened and the aftermath. The fact of the matter is that this never should have happened in the first place. After that farce of a soccer match, the World Cup changed its rules so both final matches in a group were played simultaneously, curbing bracket engineering.
Starcraft event organizers need to take similar steps. WCG still hasn’t changed its rules, 4 years after allegations of match throwing to affect brackets at the 2007 Grand Finals. There are solutions to the problem - the World Cup displays one, IPL3 shows another with its randomized brackets and prizes for pool placements. GOM has cancelled no-longer-relevant matches before in its up-down round robins. They may have thought it’d be different this time because it’s the end of year wrapup tournament, but the fact of the matter is that the onus is on tournament organizers to prevent this sort of situation. They can idealize all they want about the competitive spirit, but they need to understand that their competitors are human, and what the consequences are of that, and design their format around it.
GOM's big mistake wasn't in how they handled the incident, it was the fact that they allowed the situation in which it happened in the first place. But that's OK, every tournament organizer makes mistakes. The good ones learn from them and constantly improve. Moving into 2012, it's crucial that tournaments don't forget the lessons from this incident. No player can be counted on to play their absolute best under all circumstances, so identify if you're creating situations where they won't. Once you've done that, either figure out how to fix it, or if you can't do that easily, highlight other matches instead.
  
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This is a really good point. I do hope that GOM realizes it's own faults and fixes them for future tournament formats.
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Australia8532 Posts
Your last 2 paragraphs are perfect. Everyone is kind of tired of arguing back and forth whether or not Naniwa was punished to harshly or not. The main point is that GOM (and Naniwa) learn from this event and do everything in their power to ensure it never happens again.
It doesn't validate Nani's actions, but it must be a serious consideration for tournaments going forward.
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GOM's second big mistake was changing the format of the GSL-MLG exchange program without notifying MLG. These two mistakes have made me decide to email GOM telling them I won't be buying any tickets in 2012.
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I disagree entirely. The only person involved who believed that the match was meaningless was Naniwa. GOM's intent to broadcast all games when they have a history of skipping up/down games only further illustrates that they saw meaning in all of the scheduled matchups.
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On December 16 2011 05:57 ggofthejungle wrote:
GOM's second big mistake was changing the format of the GSL-MLG exchange program without notifying MLG. These two mistakes have made me decide to email GOM telling them I won't be buying any tickets in 2012.
I think that's a bit much because as Sundance said it was completely within GOM's right to do that. That said, do what you think is better.
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Great blog, I'm reposting part of a reply to the blog by EGAlex. He touched on the subject in the context of the naniwa-case, but put emphasis on the responsibility of the players rather than on tournament formats. A big mistake, I think.
On December 16 2011 05:13 m0ck wrote:
More importantly, I don't think your angle of attack on the problem leads to the best solution. You prefer to focus on the player, on 'professionalism'. But players, in a stressful and emotional situation, will keep acting rashly, without thought and keep on making mistakes. It's simply part of being human. It may not be Idra or naniwa the next time, but then it will be someone else. If you want to pragmatically change behavior, the far more efficient way is to design a better system in which the behavior takes place.
This is why the lesson from this episode should be for tournament organizers to put more effort and care into designing their tournament format. Having followed eports for many years, it is mind-boggling how often the format of competition seems to be an afterthought that was hashed out in the last minutes of the production. Bad formats produce perverse incentives for the players, and from that flows thrown matches and 'bad' behavior.
Really, it comes down to one single rule:
Avoid matches in which one or both players have no meaningful incentive to win.
This includes matches where one or more players are already out of the tournament or situations where a player can predict and influence his future opponent by the result of an upcoming match (if I lose this, I get the easier opponent).
If we could bring this rule forward, I think this whole situation may have been worth the trouble.
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Round robins have their pros and cons. Pro, everyone plays everyone so people can't get lucky and have an easier set of matches to advance. Con, sometimes the games are irrelevant or affect other players' results. What I don't buy at all is shifting blame for throwing the match from Naniwa, who made his decision and was responsible for 99% of the situation, to the format.
Gom's real mistake was taking away the Code-S seed in a shady manner, without even notifying MLG that they were changing their policy.
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Hearing these allegations against Whitera hurts. He is kind of like the Harvey Dent of SC2, if he was implicated in a scandal like that, it would crush the spirit of the community.
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I agree with you, furthermore I believe that GOMTV did acknowledge this issue, in their announcement regarding naniwa they wrote We promise that we will work hard to provide tournament formats that will lead players to do their best in every match and to create a GSL that will allow fans to enjoy and experience the competition as something that has more to it than just professionals trying to make a living.
So hopefully as you said they won't forget the lessons from this incident.
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On December 16 2011 06:16 NovaTheFeared wrote:
Round robins have their pros and cons. Pro, everyone plays everyone so people can't get lucky and have an easier set of matches to advance. Con, sometimes the games are irrelevant or affect other players' results. What I don't buy at all is shifting blame for throwing the match from Naniwa, who made his decision and was responsible for 99% of the situation, to the format.
Gom's real mistake was taking away the Code-S seed in a shady manner, without even notifying MLG that they were changing their policy.
From my point of view, this issue is not about Naniwa. It's about avoiding another Naniwa. The individual case is over and done, and it's no longer very interesting (though I very much agree that GOM, and maybe also MLG, is having an embarrassing and damaging moment of telling non-truths). Rather, the focus should be of how to avoid a situation similar to what we saw with naniwa, where a player, with no incentive to play, throws a match (whether its very obvious or hidden behind a minimum of effort), or a situation like the one described by Antoine, where players can predict and influence their future opponent, and thus have something to gain by throwing a match.
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Although playing 'meaningless matches' were somewhat of an issue in the past, it's only risen as a huge issue now because of the incident. I don't think tournament organizers had this kind of scenario in mind, not because they were careless, but because they took it for granted that all matches will be 'played' - just like in the past. Now that we have an example / a reference point to look back at, I'm sure appropriate measures will be made in future tournaments so that the same controversy does not rise again. We can look at it as a wake-up call, so to speak.
I feel bad for Naniwa that he lost a golden opportunity, something he may not earn again without significant effort and luck. Still, I can't imagine GOM would have done anything else - the GSL is their tournament, and due to the offences taken, they wouldn't just roll over and let him in anyway. If they upheld the seed for Naniwa, there would have been enough flak from the Korean community to take down the entire tournament. If the consequences didn't matter, I would say that a warning would have sufficed. However, the repercussions of allowing him to be seeded into Code S after such an incident are likely enough to destroy GSL, all from the pressures of the Korean community and the Korean sponsors.
In that sense, I would call this a lose-lose until we see two things happen:
- GOM restructuring their tournaments and rules - may not necessarily mean there won't be any more 'meaningless matches' - but it should allow competitors to play in an environment where expectations are clear
- Naniwa getting his act together
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Last two paragraphs are golden.
Don't competitors sign contracts that explain exactly what the prize is?
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On December 16 2011 06:21 Bagration wrote:
Hearing these allegations against Whitera hurts. He is kind of like the Harvey Dent of SC2, if he was implicated in a scandal like that, it would crush the spirit of the community.
White-ra only purposely lost his matches against Ex because stork was throwing his games against white-ra, and he wanted it to be a fair competition. So, White-ra is awesome. White-ra is always awesome.
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United States7481 Posts
On December 16 2011 05:58 Wren wrote:
I disagree entirely. The only person involved who believed that the match was meaningless was Naniwa. GOM's intent to broadcast all games when they have a history of skipping up/down games only further illustrates that they saw meaning in all of the scheduled matchups.
That match specifically sure, maybe because of the past history of nani vs nestea, but this is about the general case.
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I think your examples aren't surprising, considering the reality of situations across sports and competitions in general. Naniwa (and other players with similar mindsets) only cared about winning the tournament, not to please the audience or be loved by fans. That's just the way he plays the game, and if he loses, he wants to move on to another tournament. His personality is more lackluster compared to other players, and he only cares about doing well. He focuses on winning, not being the fan favorite.
On December 16 2011 05:58 Wren wrote:
I disagree entirely. The only person involved who believed that the match was meaningless was Naniwa. GOM's intent to broadcast all games when they have a history of skipping up/down games only further illustrates that they saw meaning in all of the scheduled matchups.
It depends on what you mean by meaningless. For entertainment purposes, it could have been fun. However, it's an absolute fact that it has zero meaning as far as the progression of the tournament went, and that's all Naniwa cared about. He came to win, and that chance was over after he lost three straight games. And that's that. You can't force someone to try when they've already lost focus on something because they've lost. Other players might want to play other showmatches just for fun, but that's not the way Naniwa works.
People derive meaning from things for different reasons. We could definitely be mad at Naniwa for throwing the match because it meant something to us, but it's irrelevant if it meant nothing to him for certain reasons, because he's the one playing the match. He might understand where we're coming from, but it's nice to understand where he's coming from too.
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On December 16 2011 05:35 Antoine wrote:
It's not like people want to watch meaningless games, either. Attendance for losing teams is way lower than for winning teams, across all major sports and all markets. The national TV spots go to the crucial games for deciding the playoffs, not the bottomfeeders. I don't have the NASL numbers, but I'm willing to bet that all else held equal, numbers for meaningless regular season games are lower than those that still affect playoff prospects.
I beg to differ. There are many fans who want to see their favorite player play, even if it has no meaning. Why do you think so many people watch streams of Huk or Idra? Does that imply we don't care about the players or the game and only the implications behind the game? I will use NFL as another example.
Colts will play Jags is a week or so. both are eliminated from playoffs, and if they lose, they can get a better draft pick (well, even if the colts win they will probably get first overall pick).
Now before we go into this, people have been saying "oh, they don't play their hardest so its the same as naniwa!" No it is not. Yes the teams don't play their hardest and may bench their better players and send out others. But this is still constructive in some ways, they can get their newer players experience, can try new plays, and the b-teamers try their hardest to prove themselves. And if they do play their players, the players play for the enjoyment of the thousands of fans watching. Naniwa could have treated it as a practice match or a showmatch for himself or the viewers. what he did is like kneeling on every single play.
But my overall point is that people do care about the game, even if you don't. There is not such thing as a meaningless game, especially in sports with fanbases such as this. Some people paid money and they want results.
But in general, I agree with the post that GOM and Naniwa shoud learn from this experience and both should make better decisions. I think what Jinro said, a fine for breaking the rule, would have been a more fair practice. However, Naniwa himself stated that he is not participating in the next GSL season although he could potentially make it into code s all the way from the qualifiers. I guess everyone is realizing the magnitude of their mistakes.
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While I understand your viewpoint and I do think that it would benefit everyone if the tournament structure was such that all games matter, I would not say GOM made a mistake. Meaningless games must be played all the time in numerous sports. Any city with a shitty sports team knows that... There are rules that clearly do not allow teams to forfeit matches and if teams decide to do so, they would be penalized through fines and/or suspensions.
GOM is allowed to structure its tournaments in any way it pleases and it is also allowed to penalize players if the organizations feels that a player has disrespected or dishonoured its tournament. If a player seriously has a problem with the structure of a tournament then instead of participating in it, he should make explicit his concern with the tournament structure and give up his spot in the tournament due to his dislike of the structure. If a player knows that his performance in the tournament could eventually lead him to play meaningingless games and he foresees himself throwing away such meaningless games then he should not participate in the tournament. Therefore, I would say that it is Naniwa's mistake for not recognizing that he may eventually play meaningless games in the tournament; and thus, if he SO STRONGLY disagrees with this structure then he should've given up his spot to a player who was more willing to live with the tournament structure.
To fault GOM for its tournament structure is unfair when numerous other organizations (across all sports) have structures that lead to the playing of meaningless matches. A player should take the time to analyze the structure of a tournament before participating in it... If the way the tournament is structured goes against the player's 'moral code' regarding tournament structure then he/she should not participate in such a tournament. The mistake is not GOM's, the mistake is the player's for participating in a tournament that he did not like the structure of. It's like living in a country that you don't like. If you're unhappy with the government and aren't happy with the lifestyle then leave... it's not the country's fault, nor is it the country's responsibility to make you happy. Same with a job you don't like... quit and find another one. And I think that the same logic applies to tournaments... if you don't like the way its structured, go participate in a tournament whose structure makes you happy.
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I would also urge many of you who are interested about the viewpoints on this issue to read EGAlex's opinion on TL. He provides a very business-focussed outlook on the issue, one that I think has been under-represented on many of the current TL threads:
+ Show Spoiler +A Different Perspective on The NaNiwa Controversy - by: EGAlexHere's a short excerpt from EGAlex's blog that is somewhat related to the topic of this current blog: "For those of you who, after reading this, agree that NaNi's actions were unacceptable, but still blame GOM for utilizing a format which allows for inconsequential matches, I would ask you to consider holding players to higher standards of professionalism; and to also consider the fact that it's not GOM's responsibility to cater their format solely to suit players. GOM's job (as is the case with any professional sports league) is to provide a quality product to its viewers, while providing its competitors with fair, reasonable playing conditions, and the Blizzard Cup's format balanced these factors acceptably. Additionally, I would also point out the fact that, as illustrated above, every major professional sports league utilizes a format in which there are meaningless games. By your logic, All-Star games shouldn't even exist."
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I totally agree with the poster above. If you have such a problem with it then why are you there in the first place
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i think a lot of people are overstating how much they just want to watch the game be played. its no secret that attendance and viewership for friendlies in any sport are lower than "real" games. not caring about meaningless games (or caring less in a huge spectrum) is not specific to starcraft or naniwa.
many of the points brought up on sotg really hit the nail on the head for me. naniwas choice was not optimal, but neither was goms decision to have a stupid format. the majority of the mud throwers (which now includes gom) are quick to say naniwas suboptimal decision deserves punishment, and yet there will be no punishment for gom from this.
it seems like gom really threw nani to the wolves, casting all blame on him in their public speech, bringing up their ideals of a pro gamer, which are both completely internal as well as obviously false (match fixing anyone?). the whole thing kinda makes me sad. as antione brought up briefly, plenty of people have flat out not shown up to games at mlg etc which no longer matter and nothing was brought up about it. gom should of had filler content available to replace pointless matches because nani isnt going to want to play nestea for no reason (even if he had played the game out it would of been uncurtious of gom to ask nani to play in the first place).
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EPT
