|
Professional gaming is a young profession and eSports a young industry that has only just started catching on to the value of good PR and the damage of bad PR. Gamer Institute educates gamers not only about gaming but also how to effectively manage a career in gaming. Below is a list of 5 public relations mistakes we regularly see from gamers and we try to warn newcomers about.
* Bigotry - There is no excuse for bigotry ever! But in some gaming communities it's generally accepted or at least tolerated. While racism isn't as noticeable as it once was, sexism is a real problem, homophobia is engrained, and youngsters are treated like dirt. All of these behaviours are like kryptonite to big brands and media, as Rush Limbaugh found out when he made some horribly distasteful remarks on air.
* Public disputes - Gamers are very passionate by nature and they are used to discussing their views in public forums and chat rooms. When you become a professional however, airing your dirty laundry in public can be horribly damaging to your brand. When Counter Logic Gaming suddenly and surprisingly benched one of their highest profile players, Elementz, there was a swift and scathing public response which split the community in half. Irreparable damage and drama followed, culminating in Elementz joining a different team.
* Belittling others - There's no other endeavour where those who are new or inexperienced are so universally despised that a new word is required to adequately belittle them. Using the word 'noob' or making remarks that someone is stupid is plain disrespectful and serves only to ostracise the target and sympathetic others. Given that competitive sports rely on a captive audience to generate revenue, this is also the equivalent of burning money.
* Foul language - Have you ever watched a pro gaming stream and not heard any swearing? Top gamers are role models to youngsters trying to get better and swearing in public only serves to teach kids the same behaviour. Want to know what major brands think of their brand ambassadors swearing? Coca cola dropped their major sponsorship of Wayne Rooney (English soccer star) for just that.
* Unresponsiveness - There are times when not saying anything is the best approach however it's common for gamers to not respond to clearly beneficial opportunities. If you are asked for an interview by media, asked to participate in a tournament, or sign a contract, it needs to be done as matter of priority. Opportunities like that don't come around often and not responding or being late only reduces the likelihood of future opportunities. If you aren't interested for whatever reason, a polite thank you and suggested alternative are golden.
If professional gamers want to be taken seriously by big brands and the general public, they must start acting seriously. Big companies want to be associated with squeaky clean individuals who promote tolerance and help their community. Are you squeaky clean?
 
|
These are not mistakes. They are simply your sensibilities being offended.
2/5
|
At the eSports level you mainly get sponsorships for being REALLY good, or having a personality. Sometimes that personality entails being BM and swearing a lot. Although this might be changing in the recent light, it's nice to have a bit of personality in players. I think it's nice that there's the spectrum of really good manner players, and some worse mannered played, and when more sponsorships start coming in the community and players can judge for themselves where they should be aligned.
|
if being professional means taking the life out of this community than no thanks I prefer it the way it is.
|
And here we go again... I was kinda glad the majority of TL steadily moved on from having an internal split on these issues. This has already been discussed to death, in TL, in SOTG, in Reddit, in Twitter, in EVERYWHERE.
I expect heated arguments to begin shortly...
And, by the way, your point of view is pretty simplistic. And calling viewers of gaming "youngsters" is pretty sweeping (SC, for example, is rated TEEN for a reason). Also, so many solutions have already been proposed to these issues, including my never-ending lobbying for us to call for a e-sports regulatory body (ala global version of KeSPA, or maybe an e-sports version of WTA or FIFA). Your solutions are... Simplistic, to say the least. Yes, they are IDEAL, but that's not how sports functions.
Established sports have managers, regulatory bodies, etc.; gaming has not much of those, but that's understandable because we're a pretty young sport.
And now I'll dig into each and every one of your arguments:
Argument A: Bigotry.
John McEnroe (tennis legend) = guilty (challenged the Williams sisters to a two on one game, bragging he'll beat them). Did he scare away sponsors? Nope. What he got were fines and suspensions, and what to we need to be able to enforce such consequences uniformly? A regulatory body.
Argument B: Public Disputes
John McEnroe (again) = guilty (consistently challenged the calls of officials, to the point of saying "You can't be serious!"). Sure, people got incensed at his attitude at times. But the community wasn't divided. What can divide communities? Oh, people unwilling to take the views of others and unable to see the gray areas, but instead believing that it's all black and white.
Argument C: Belittling Others.
Floyd Mayweather Jr. and Muhammad Ali = guilty. Floyd called Pacquiao a midget; Ali called Frazier "too ugly to be the champ." People were outraged with the former; with the latter, not so. Were captive audiences driven away? Nah. On the contrary, even more people became interested to see if the one talking the talk could walk the walk.
Argument D: Foul Language
Michael Llodra (tennis player) = guilty (called a Chinese fan "a fucking Chinese"). A double whammy, racism and foul language rolled into one. Were sponsors driven away? Again, no. Why? Because there was a regulatory body that promptly fined him.
Argument E: Unresponsiveness
Naniwa = guilty. We all know how short his responses are. We all know how brutally honest he is about playing for the money. And is his behavior driving away sponsors? Again, no. Proof? He's still on a damn team, and those teams are still being sponsored. A cure to this unresponsiveness? More experienced managers, which the community still lacks, to guide them. Simple.
As far as I know, your "solutions" are far too idealistic; and overly idealistic things tend to be impossible to implement in the real world (it's ideal for everyone to be nice to each other, as Day9 once noted about the Orb issue, but it's just impossible).
And as for dividing the community? Expect for a heated, DIVIDING debate to ensue thanks to your post. Talk about epic irony.
Edit: as for e-sports to be taken seriously? It's already being taken seriously. I don't think big brands like Red Bull and Sony Ericsson will invest in it if it isn't being taken seriously. I don't think big publications, like Forbes, Wired and The Economist, will cover it if it isn't being taken seriously. Lulz on the proposal that it isn't yet being taken seriously. Maybe the right terms is it's audience isn't yet that big; but then again, The Economist predicted in its Special Report on Video Games that e-sports will continue growing. And as far as I know, The Economist rarely makes wrong predictions, which is the main reason they are one of the leading publications being referred to in the world. *facepalm
|
I don't get why people are bashing you so hard for your post, perhaps you stumbled on a very an overly discussed topic. Either way, ESPORTS are not immune to personality disorders just like any big time sport.
And let's face it, pro gamers have a different means of reaching viewers then most professionals. Pros have to handle a lot of face time with viewers through streams, blogs and online videos as a priority to get KNOWN. This in turn means we will obviously have more variance in terms of player's personalities, the highs-and-lows.
Most player's are in fact, not in tune with what their image is, or how they perception impacts the image of ESports. This is true, but what also is true that because of the nature of videogaming and our culture at this time your argument doesn't really work. The evidence is in that ESports continues to GROW more and more, there is no evidence at this time to prove that the players personalities/lack there of is causing any decline.
|
I see where you come from but I fear that if we stop having these controverse personalities that we end up like Koreans.
Really nice people and very good, but in public never expressing their emotions and basicly saying the same lines over and over again if asked for a personal remark.
Note: I have nothing against Koreans. I just see from experience that Asians in general are much less open about their emotions which is sometimes really frustrating in interviews and such. Be a personality, not a mindless drone who hides their opinions. <3
|
Not neccesarily true. Like they say, "Any publicity is good publicity". Now of course, there's a limit. But some players (eg. IdrA) are more popular and therefore more enticing to sponsors because of their outspoken and "bm" ways.
|
Why is everyone so intent on being offended by everything? It's like Al Sharpton made his way to SC2. If you don't like it, don't watch it. No shame in that. Otherwise, I kinda like SC2. I'll keep watching it and put on my big boy pants when someone says a bad word.
|
On May 18 2012 21:36 PandaTank wrote:
Not neccesarily true. Like they say, "Any publicity is good publicity". Now of course, there's a limit. But some players (eg. IdrA) are more popular and therefore more enticing to sponsors because of their outspoken and "bm" ways.
I've never understood that. How could terrible publicity/reputation be good?
|
I think that you make good points, but I don't think that the controversy lies in how players act. I also think that people aren't looking at eSports as a new target market and are simply comparing it to others, if people analyzed how gamers react to controversy and such things I think you'd see that some of the most popular gamers often break these rules.
In the end, money may just need to find another way to enter eSports because forcing our culture to change just seems impossible and counter-intuitive.
|
I will live by your rules OP, you've shown me the light to a better gaming experience.
We wouldn't want to hurt anyone with some words wouldn't we?
|
On May 18 2012 23:18 Roe wrote:Show nested quote +On May 18 2012 21:36 PandaTank wrote:
Not neccesarily true. Like they say, "Any publicity is good publicity". Now of course, there's a limit. But some players (eg. IdrA) are more popular and therefore more enticing to sponsors because of their outspoken and "bm" ways. I've never understood that. How could terrible publicity/reputation be good?
That's why I said there's a limit. It's a common advertising/marketing phenomenon though. I think it boils down the fact that people love controversy. It brings some kind of excitement into their mundane lives? Who knows. The fact is, it works.
|
Sigh.. stop with the FOR ESPORTS crap already guys. Just enjoy the game, legitimacy will follow.
|
Foul language is a must! ESPORTS needs bad words to live. If you dispute this with me, you're breaking rule 2 and therefore, are hurting ESPORTS.
|
It's nice that you made an account to say this, but they're not going to listen.
Starcraft is only fun because you can call people "nigger," apparently. that's the "life of the community"
|
Yeah all of these are subjective. For example, part of the gaming experience is cussing when you get anger (not necessarily racist). This is normal and no one I know is really bothered by this. You should rename the topic "My top five public relations mistakes players can make."
|
If you don't like being called racial slurs on ladder then you should turn on the chat censor.
I don't see any issues atm, you're just stirring up shit for no apparent reason and to be honest we need the drama because drama attracts viewers, which in turn attracts sponsors. It may be completely retarded but its a necessary evil.
|
On May 18 2012 18:10 DN.rSquar3d wrote:
Argument E: Unresponsiveness
Naniwa = guilty. We all know how short his responses are. We all know how brutally honest he is about playing for the money. And is his behavior driving away sponsors? Again, no. Proof? He's still on a damn team, and those teams are still being sponsored. A cure to this unresponsiveness? More experienced managers, which the community still lacks, to guide them. Simple.
I would just like to say that any Athelete, esports or not, should be able to do whatever the hell he wants to, if he doesn't want to do an interview, he doesn't have to. The honest part about Naniwa is not technically "unresponsive" and I would like to believe that his short responses are due to apathy. Also, in Naniwa's most recent interview with Teamliquid (check it out, it's in the front page at the time of this posting and it's kind of lenghty I might add) he mentions that he does not play for the money, he plays to prove that he is the best. I hope this corrects your errors in trying to prove Naniwa "guilty".
|
Bigotry: I won't go into this except to say that you are probably confusing the foul language point with bigotry. For all you know on the whole avid PC gamers are less bigoted than the population in general and just like the fraternity of shittalking.
Public disputes: Your link led nowhere so I don't know what to say here.
Belittling others: Is your only point words like noob? Do you think MLG is going to go out of business because some guy called his opponent a scrub on Battle.net?
Foul Language: It's a shame that HBO went out of business. Wait.
MLG and GSL are squeaky clean. Certain streams and Battle.net aren't. There's a market for that, and it's fun for a lot of people. Nothing to see here.
Unresponsiveness: I don't know what this means. Making a living with a game isn't slavery, people are free to do whatever they like with the opportunities presented them, including snub organizations. Since you don't have any examples listed here I can only assume you couldn't find any, so it's probably not a real problem. You have to look at the aggregate. In general people will be discussing sponsorship opportunities amicably because it's in their interest to advance themselves. A couple people might not give a shit. That doesn't hurt us or the scene.
Esports is not a young industry. It doesn't need shepherds to turn it into videogame Disneyland. Posts like yours try to invent problems that don't exist.
|
|
|
|
|
|
EPT
