EPTI Paid $20, why am I the Minority? - Page 5
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Angel_
United States1617 Posts
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FoeHamr
United States489 Posts
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turdburgler
England6749 Posts
if esports wants to truely grow up and become sustainable we need to stop viewing it as a charity instead of a business. im sick of people trying to guilt trip others into buying the ppv pass, i dont see anyone trying to guilt trip you in to supporting mcdonalds. | ||
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Daozzt
United States1263 Posts
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ziggurat
Canada847 Posts
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RvB
Netherlands6188 Posts
On February 29 2012 03:11 ziggurat wrote: ^^ This is a perfect example of the attitude that makes it hard for anyone to make money in esports. Its not the responsibility of the consumer to make a product worth it's price it's the job of the producer. Mlg needing money after blowing 50 million venture capital shouldn't be something we have to pay for. | ||
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Blondinbengt
Sweden578 Posts
But there's not just one, it's not a monopoly, there are several organizers competing for your time and money, that's why the pay-to-support-esports argument is terrible, because if you actually apply that argument then the actual quality of the events the organizers put on becomes irrelevant, you should pay 20$ to MLG if you think that's what one Winter Arena event is worth, not because of some idea of supporting e-sports. If you want to monetarily help e-sports out of your own good will, then donate some money to a smaller event so they can use it in a prizepool, put some money in one of the tipjars of a Shoutcraft invitational, donate to an up-and-coming player in some other fashion. There are plenty of ways to help e-sports by donating your time/money, but do not trick yourself into thinking that it's a good idea to apply charitable logic to a PPV model. MLG is selling a product, e-sports tournaments/events, they are setting a price for that product that they think is reasonable and it's up to you as a consumer to determine if you agree with the price or not. To you it was worth 20$, to me it wasn't, that doesn't mean I'm somehow insulting MLG or that I don't want to support e-sports, it simply means that I do not think that an MLG event is worth 20$. If Dreamhack or IPL starting charging 20$ for their events I would pay it in a heartbeat, because their events are worth 20$ to me, MLG's are not. I donated 1000$ to the Shoutcraft Invitational because I loved the concepts behind it and it was something I thought would be great for e-sports, that was a charitable action, but just because I have money to spend doesn't mean I'm going to buy everything that's put in front of me. MLG is a business, it's not a charity, they are treating you as a consumer so why aren't you treating them as a company trying to make a profit? | ||
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GreatFall
United States1061 Posts
Sure, some people spend $20+ to take their girlfriend out to dinner or movie, but spend the same amount for online content and then sit around your house all weekend to justify the expense. Nah, count me out. eSPORTS needs to do a better job of bringing in advertiser dollars. That way the content is free for you and me and the scene is rich with cash flow. Millions of people watch NASCAR on TV for free, but how many of those people do you HONESTLY think would spend $20 / race or / weekend to watch? | ||
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deathly rat
United Kingdom911 Posts
I hate to tell you this, but your love affair with MLG/GOMtv/NASL is completely one sided. Hey, they love SC2 and they love putting on the show I'm sure, but they don't care about you at all (aside from as a potential customer), and that is absolutely the way it should be. So don't feel like you owe them your allegience or even your money. If you are interested in something that they are selling, then buy it, otherwise feel completely free to not buy it. If anyone deserve more unswerving, undying loyalty it is Activision/Blizzard, the big bad guys who actually make SC2. They brought back SC2 into an RTS scene that was dead on its feet, and continue to provide balance patches and updates for many months after it has become commercially sensible. Give THAT a little bit more consideration please. | ||
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HardlyNever
United States1258 Posts
I'm a poor grad student. I watch a lot of Starcraft right now, in part, because I don't have anything else to do while I eat dinner( or the hour or two I have when I'm not doing something else, either social/school related or playing SC2 myself). That's it. I don't pay for TV service, I basically have to pay for internet in this day and age (who doesn't), so I get most of my entertainment from the internet. When I graduate in May, I will probably have a lot more disposable income (hopefully) within the next few months. I still wouldn't pay to watch Starcraft2. I feel like I really like the SC2 scene, but maybe I don't because I won't put my money where my mouth is. Maybe I'm cheap, but that is how I feel. If paying to watch SC2 b3ecame the norm, I'd play more, and watch only the free stuff. I like it as entertainment, but I won't pay for it. If it dies because of that, I'm fine moving on to something else. Maybe that sounds selfish, but that's where I'm at. And the big problem is, I think most people are in a similar situation. | ||
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Djzapz
Canada10681 Posts
I find it unfortunate that people who dare try to fight for some kind of standard of equality in the community get laughed at and they get educated about the wonders of the mighty concept of opportunity costs. Perhaps I should give up other luxuries that I have in my life - easy to say over here, for students who think they have it rough but make the equivalent of another country's day's wage in 30 minutes. These tournaments are more than capable of living off of sponsors and HD stream sales and live attendance - not to mention the open bracket money. This is evidenced by the fact that - well, they fucking do... Some players make at least the high 5 figures in salary, perhaps 6 figures. Multiple players make 6 figures in tournament money. More importantly though, if you're middle class in a rich country, you're an aristocrat - don't pretend everyone has disposable income because you do. | ||
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Kiarip
United States1835 Posts
Yes, there are a lot of games being casted, but who is gonna stay and watch SC2 for 6-7 hours a day 3 days in a row? And watching it not live is no where near as exciting, so... no. I wouldn't pay 20 dollars for it... And honestly, I feel like unless it's a season-style ticket where you can pay once 20-80 dollars and then have unlimited access to all live events, and their recordings from that season it's just not worth the money objectively. I can buy an NBA league pass for 170 dollars, and an NBA regular season has 1230 games in a season (and then between 60 and 105 play-off games) with extremely high production value, and it's a main-stream event to which decent live tickets cost fortunes. They have it all backwards. They should charge way more for live events, and the coverage should only cost money for access to total recorded content. So in conclusion... 1) they charged too much for anyone that wasn't planning on being glued to their stream for 24 hours along the course of a weekend (which for the sake of e-sports viewers I hope isn't a large percentage of people.) 2) If I was to pay I would want lasting access to the recorded content (no idea if this was available though, so it may be a non-issue.) 3) If they actually made the price what the weekend was worth I would rather just still buy a premium subscription type thing that they have, because then I am not pidgeon-holed into getting value out of my money in 1 weekend, and I'd be willing to pay more for that. I think the business model of having things broad-casted live is that you can have a lot of simultaneous viewers, and you make money from advertisement. While the business model of having things on-demand is that you can either charge for access, or embed advertisement into the content or a bit of both. Charging money for broad-casting live events even with extremely high production value is a bit non-sensical because as good as it is, production value can always be better for less money in non-live on-demand content, which by being on-demand is more flexible in its use for the consumer. The appeal of LIVE events is that they're live, you use things such as great player pools, decent on-spot production value, live interviews, good casters, and etc etc. to attract viewers AWAY from other things (such as other live streams, other concurrent tournaments, or just totally different things in general.) By charging money for this service you're pushing the viewers away. It doesn't make sense to demand both a viewer's time AND money at a very particular point in time, unless it's a package/season ticket style deal where they can tune in more than once throughout the course of a long period of time, and even then the cost per event needs to be far less, because live events always compete for attention of the viewer, and charging money doesn't help. | ||
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Sprungjeezy
United States1313 Posts
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EtherealDeath
United States8366 Posts
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mintiefresh
Canada52 Posts
Overall I was satisfied. $20 is too much for a single weekend of SC2 (compared to other options), but I did it. Hopefully they can find a way to make it all work. | ||
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ziggurat
Canada847 Posts
On February 29 2012 03:34 RvB wrote: Its not the responsibility of the consumer to make a product worth it's price it's the job of the producer. Mlg needing money after blowing 50 million venture capital shouldn't be something we have to pay for. It seems like you're reading something into my post that's not there. What I'm saying is that if people aren't willing to pay money to see high-level sc2 tournaments then high-level sc2 tournaments will eventually disappear. It's nobody's "responsibility", but it's still true. | ||
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Itsmedudeman
United States19229 Posts
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ziggurat
Canada847 Posts
On February 29 2012 04:02 Djzapz wrote: It just makes me laugh to see middle class Americans barging in here "har har what's $20, a pizza", on an international board where some people can't even think about having a $20 meal because that amount of money can't be found without severely cutting elsewhere. I find it unfortunate that people who dare try to fight for some kind of standard of equality in the community get laughed at and they get educated about the wonders of the mighty concept of opportunity costs. Perhaps I should give up other luxuries that I have in my life - easy to say over here, for students who think they have it rough but make the equivalent of another country's day's wage in 30 minutes. These tournaments are more than capable of living off of sponsors and HD stream sales and live attendance - not to mention the open bracket money. This is evidenced by the fact that - well, they fucking do... Some players make at least the high 5 figures in salary, perhaps 6 figures. Multiple players make 6 figures in tournament money. More importantly though, if you're middle class in a rich country, you're an aristocrat - don't pretend everyone has disposable income because you do. I'm not sure what the point of this post is. It's pretty obvious that people who have the money to buy a computer and have internet access have enough disposable income to spend $20 on a weekend worth of entertainment. I guess there are some that don't. In third world countries people live on less than a dollar a day. So what? None of this has anything to do with the OP. Your point about tournaments make a living off sponsors and HD streams etc seems to assume that they are actually making money. What gives you that idea? I think the reality is that most major tournaments struggle to break even or actually lose money. | ||
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Snuggles
United States1865 Posts
I did indeed do a poor job of writing this blog and tacking that title on to it so I hope you'll forgive me for that. In the end I just want to be done with this thread with these closing thoughts. -People all have their own priorities, they want to put their money elsewhere. I have to respect them for that, and hopefully they'll respect me for paying $20 to watch MLG. -This is not a charity. You guys keep making me out to be the guy with the Santa hat ringing my bell for donations. Fuck you that's not what I'm trying to do- I can't put it any simpler. -My beef is with people who were strongly opposed to the PPV model in an unnecessarily rude manner. If you really don't want to pay for it, then keep your mouth shut OR be vocal in a more mannered and productive way. However, of course someone pointed out that you can belligerent all you want because you aren't violating any laws, of course. Jeez after all we can just go back to the "This is the internet" statement and grow thicker skin. I guess that means I can join the mob and pointlessly rant at things that aren't free. Might as well run over my neighbor's dog and blog about it. -I'm not on a high horse, I'm not being a savior, I don't have a superiority complex. I just wanted to voice my opinion at least once to see how the TL community would respond. Although as I said, some people have made great counter-arguments that I can respect and learn from, an awful lot of you are just making this into five threads of boiling tar for me to wade through. So now I'm asking myself should I ever do something like this again for the sake of just trying to understand what is truly right and wrong? I just don't know, I totally didn't expect people to be so harshly negative, I expected to be wrong but not be made out into the village idiot. Or maybe my skin isn't thick enough, how thick does it have to be on TL? I thought I would have known better by now. | ||
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Skilledblob
Germany3392 Posts
On February 28 2012 02:47 Snuggles wrote: So you're a High School kid, a person with massive credit card debt, medical bills to pay, a bankrupt drug addict- w/e you have no way of shedding off some time and scrounging up $20 to watch SC2, make your point there and we'll say its okay. But wait you're actually a frugal college kid. You can afford $20 to watch a live content, but you choose to say you can't- why? Please reflect on yourself before you make that excuse. Do you have an apple laptop? Do you eat out every week? Got a smartphone? Do your jeans look nice? Depending on what your answer to those questions may be, you might not even have the right to say you're a frugal college student and not be able to buy a $20 pass. I am a university kid. I dont have an apple laptop, I dont eat out even once a week on average, got a smartphone for my birthday, got normal jeans and I lived the past 4 months on a 200€ budget per month which I had to use for food. | ||
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