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First things first, there is nothing particularly unusual or counter-intuitive about that the WCS AM Champion is a Korean and the finals was between two Koreans in sports. The name 'WCS America' might be poorly chosen but once you add a single world and make it 'WCS America Open' it makes more sense, because that is what it effectively is. At Wimbledom they don't only allow English people to play. Even though the English Open of tennis has a distinctly cultivated British feel. It's an open tournament, players from across the world come and compete for the coveted title and in the end an Englishman winning it is unlikely. The situation is also similar is that only four countries have a grand slam, if you aren't from England, the US, France or Australia you wouldn't even be able to compete if these tournaments weren't open. The same situation applies to WCS at the moment. There are strong contenders in China and Australia, those regions do not have their own WCS Tournament.
Secondly, I don't really believe in region locking from a discrimination standpoint. If there are logistic reasons I can definitely see it and certainly the tournaments can require people to be on site. But if a Korean is willing to travel by plane to attend in Germany or America, to simply exclude them because of their nationality while all the while allowing someone from Australia with the argument 'You have your own tournament!' comes dangerously close to the argument of 'Those foreigners are stealing our jobs!', hate to break it to people who claim that, but if foreigners 'steal' your job, that means they are willing to do the same job better for less pay, that's how a capitalist economy works I'm afraid, they deserve your job because they work harder. And the situation of Koreans in StarCraft comes pretty close to that. We all know that Koreans do not have some kind of genetic advance, they work harder and train harder, that is why they are on average better at the game. Many people say the NA scene needs some love but I think the KR scene needs, many of these people sacrifice their school to train 10 hours per day and yes, they are legitimately better than many foreign progamers and would easily beat them, but no one heard of them. If a Korean had the same playing skill as say Minigun (no offence of course) then that Korean would be completely unknown. Minigun gets a rather stable deal many Koreans would dream of simply because he's not Korean. It doesn't strike me as entirely fair. I do believe in the idea that if foreigners come here to 'steal our jobs' and do so because they work harder. It is unfair to them, to the potential employer and to your own self respect to deny them. Go work harder yourself to get your own job back, that is how a capitalist economy works.
Thirdly, it makes the global finals seem particularly farcical and comical. Last WCS it was region locked, and this led to an interesting scenario of anticlimactic events: WCS KR had a higher level overall than WCS Asia, WCS Asia had a higher level overall than the Global BWC. Surely the idea of such a system in stages is to slowly build up towards better and better quality of play as you filter the cream from the crop? This player Mafia whom no-one has ever heard of got to the final 32 in the WCS, it just looked farcical how some of the players got absolutely stomped under the pretence of supposedly 'fair groups'. The groups were farcically skewed and it all came down to what region your group members came from almost. It makes the entire tournament end anticlimatically as the level of play goes down as you go up and the matches become less and less exciting and more and more one sided. That is supposed to happen at the start where the worse players are filtered out, not at the climactic finals. I'm fine with Scarlett qualifying because she managed to hold her own and beat some fairly good players at WCS AM, though it's still not WCS KR of course, but for Scarlett to get an automatic seed because she won WCS Canada? Who else is in Canada that is any threat to even code A Koreans? HuK arguably but that's it?
In an ideal situation, the level of all three regions would be some-what similar so the global finals don't look as farcical and skewed and not making then region locked definitely makes it come closer to that goal. Alternatively Blizzard could weigh the three regions to give more seeds to the global finals for WCS KR. But in the end, though you may argue that having mostly Koreans at the global championships looks silly, it doesn't look half as silly as seeing people there whom no one has ever heard of because they won WCS Brazil getting absolutely stomped while all the while RedEye having to pretend that these are the supposed 32 finest players in the world.
  
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People arguing for region locking aren't concerned so much about Koreans "stealing their jobs" as much as wanting to offer opportunities for their respective scenes to grow and attract new players. It's two sides of the same coin, regardless of what WCS was intended for. It's not so black and white (or racist) as you paint it to be.
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The problem is that most Korean players are just another "faceless Korean". We truthfully don't care about their results like we do for say Taeja, Jaedong or HerO. We have almost no emotional investment in faceless Koreans. That's why people are for region locking, so that viewers can watch players they are emotionally invested in post good results.
For example: People watch TV Drama's because they care what happens to the main character. I watch Castle a lot (new season starts September 23) and I care how Castle's relationship develops with Beckett and it makes me want to watch the next episode.
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Thank you for being one of the few people I've seen who feels for the Koreans. I think for me, it struck the most when I saw HammeR play. HammeR is a Woongjin Stars B-teamer who was sent out with other B-teamers in the last round of the regular Proleague season, after WJS had clinched the first-prize for weeks. He faced Flash in a TvT, and he went toe-to-toe with him and stayed even (on average, lots of up and downs) for about thirty minutes before he began falling behind in the Sky Terran transition. During the entire ground mech phase of the game, he took on one of the best Terrans in the world and matched him blow for blow.
There probably isn't a foreign Terran in the world who could do that. Happy couldn't do that. Lucifron couldn't do that. DeMuslim couldn't do that. Major had Kespa training and got destroyed in the exact same situation HammeR was in, facing Flash in a TvT in Proleague. If HammeR was from a Western nation, he'd be a god. And until that game, almost nobody had ever heard of him. And we might not see him next season, either. HammeR's play is stronger than any foreign Terran I've ever seen, but he'll never attend a foreign tournament. If he's very lucky and works very hard, he might get to play some more televised matches someday. And there are probably a dozen players just like him who weren't fortunate enough to be on the one team in Proleague that was in a position to throw out their B-teamers in an official match.
People argue that foreigners have it tough, but they don't look at the other side.
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On August 20 2013 15:13 rd wrote:
People arguing for region locking aren't concerned so much about Koreans "stealing their jobs" as much as wanting to offer opportunities for their respective scenes to grow and attract new players. It's two sides of the same coin, regardless of what WCS was intended for. It's not so black and white (or racist) as you paint it to be. Well, and I'm saying they need to work harder to achieve those opportunities, opportunity should come as a reward for hard work and talent.
I mean, look at the NA ladder, what do you see? Minigun, DeMuslim and what not all topping GM league playing under their actual name while streaming this to get the rank 1 ranking and tweet this. KR ladder is filled with barcodes laddering anonymously trying out new strategies and perfecting them, actually training with a purpose in mind not caring about ladder ranking. We saw Minigun use the same exact strat every single PvT game in WCS AM, yeah, he could beat Demuslim with it but Koreans analyzed it and punctured through it effortlessly and no doubt watched his stream beforehand.
You can't have it both, if you want stream revenue and stream all day but don't put in any serious practice then don't expect to come far in a tournament. I don't think it's living in NA at all. Look at Polt, how long has he been in NA? But he retains a Korean level of excellence, while studying at the university of Texas no less. he doesn't stream that often and when he does he does not reveal his secret book of tricks. He trains hard while being in NA, most likely playing on the KR ladder from NA to train which is very doable and maybe even better to train, playing with latency is like training football with weighted clothing, you feel like superman once the clothing goes off. The few NA players that did practice hard like HuK and Scarlett stand pretty highly amongst the rest and it's well known that HuK hasn't been his former self since he stopped practising as much as he did.
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On August 20 2013 15:17 iTzSnypah wrote:
The problem is that most Korean players are just another "faceless Korean". We truthfully don't care about their results like we do for say Taeja, Jaedong or HerO. We have almost no emotional investment in faceless Koreans. That's why people are for region locking, so that viewers can watch players they are emotionally invested in post good results.
For example: People watch TV Drama's because they care what happens to the main character. I watch Castle a lot (new season starts September 23) and I care how Castle's relationship develops with Beckett and it makes me want to watch the next episode.
How ignorant can you be? They are only faceless because you do not care to give them a face. Koreans are human beings, not robots... they have emotions just like you, they have amazing personalities just like you. Haven't you heard of Ryung's "Fuck MMA" scene? Have you seen GanZi's Gangnam dance? You talk about HerO as an example of a Korean with personality, but have you seen the other herO smile after winning a PL match? Have you taken the time to read all the interviews and watch the videos?
Clearly not, otherwise you wouldn't be making such a claim. Let me tell you the real reasons why most Koreans are "faceless" to you:
- they don't speak your language (hey, do you speak Korean? I bet not... surely that means you are faceless to the entire population of South Korea, right?)
- because they don't speak English, it becomes harder to get interviews/content from them
- they spend time catering to their greater fanbase... which is located in their home country! How much time do U.S. athletes spend trying to cater to audiences in Ukraine? Not much, right?
- they beat your favorite players
And the ironic part about your post is that you suggest that we region lock WCS, bottling up all Koreans in their home country. Well, in that case, how will they EVER become more than "faceless" to someone like you? I suppose that means all Koreans have to join foreign teams and spend time making documentaries instead of practicing...
Blizzard did not implement region locking because they wanted the best players to win. There is a fundamental difference between watching TV (scripted entertainment) and StarCraft II, which is an actual competition...
Yes, there are benefits to region locking. Is it worth it to region lock WCS? That is debatable, but this "faceless Korean" campaign has to go... it's downright racist and ugly as a fellow human being.
This is coming from Entirety, someone with huge emotional investment in Mvp, Korean player with an extremely recognizable face.
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On August 20 2013 15:41 SiskosGoatee wrote:Show nested quote +On August 20 2013 15:13 rd wrote:
People arguing for region locking aren't concerned so much about Koreans "stealing their jobs" as much as wanting to offer opportunities for their respective scenes to grow and attract new players. It's two sides of the same coin, regardless of what WCS was intended for. It's not so black and white (or racist) as you paint it to be. Well, and I'm saying they need to work harder to achieve those opportunities, opportunity should come as a reward for hard work and talent. I mean, look at the NA ladder, what do you see? Minigun, DeMuslim and what not all topping GM league playing under their actual name while streaming this to get the rank 1 ranking and tweet this. KR ladder is filled with barcodes laddering anonymously trying out new strategies and perfecting them, actually training with a purpose in mind not caring about ladder ranking. We saw Minigun use the same exact strat every single PvT game in WCS AM, yeah, he could beat Demuslim with it but Koreans analyzed it and punctured through it effortlessly and no doubt watched his stream beforehand. You can't have it both, if you want stream revenue and stream all day but don't put in any serious practice then don't expect to come far in a tournament. I don't think it's living in NA at all. Look at Polt, how long has he been in NA? But he retains a Korean level of excellence, while studying at the university of Texas no less. he doesn't stream that often and when he does he does not reveal his secret book of tricks. He trains hard while being in NA, most likely playing on the KR ladder from NA to train which is very doable and maybe even better to train, playing with latency is like training football with weighted clothing, you feel like superman once the clothing goes off. The few NA players that did practice hard like HuK and Scarlett stand pretty highly amongst the rest and it's well known that HuK hasn't been his former self since he stopped practising as much as he did.
It's not as easy as "working harder" though. Korea has a 10 year advantage over NA's esports infrastructure. It doesn't cost a plane ticket, hotel etc for players in Korea to travel to a tournament inside of Korea. The money has to be there for potential talent to justify the risk of pursuing SC2 full time at the expense of a much more stable form of income (aka a normal job). The only way you "work hard" in NA right now is to land a team/sponsor that will send you to Korea to train, which simply exacerbates the problem. Not to mention the difficulty of living in another country for extended periods of time where you don't speak the language, and have virtually no social contact like you did at home (it goes both ways).
edit: But thats not the point, the main point was that you're misrepresenting the other side by simply manipulating their argument to be racist.
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The part about the anticlimactic season finals is quite interesting.I certainly see your point.
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On August 20 2013 15:48 Entirety wrote:Show nested quote +On August 20 2013 15:17 iTzSnypah wrote:
The problem is that most Korean players are just another "faceless Korean". We truthfully don't care about their results like we do for say Taeja, Jaedong or HerO. We have almost no emotional investment in faceless Koreans. That's why people are for region locking, so that viewers can watch players they are emotionally invested in post good results.
For example: People watch TV Drama's because they care what happens to the main character. I watch Castle a lot (new season starts September 23) and I care how Castle's relationship develops with Beckett and it makes me want to watch the next episode. - they don't speak your language (hey, do you speak Korean? I bet not... surely that means you are faceless to the entire population of South Korea, right?) - because they don't speak English, it becomes harder to get interviews/content from them - they spend time catering to their greater fanbase... which is located in their home country! How much time do U.S. athletes spend trying to cater to audiences in Ukraine? Not much, right? - they beat your favorite players While I agree with the rest of your points (not your tone). Many people, including Koreans, seem to think the foreign StarCraft fanbase is born speaking English. Swedish or German people have learnt English as a second language. Can you remember Thorzain, Rotterdam and Mana cast in German? These guys are Swedish, Dutch and Polish respectively and atop English, they are also conversational in German. Many Koreans are monolingual, certainly a lot of Americans are as well which I also don't approve of but you can certainly fault a nation for being unwilling to learn at least one major world language such as English. The quality of English level education in Korea is really low.
And it has very little to do with how different Korean is from English, that is a myth, similarity of languages really does not matter a lot when learning a language. Consider how much closer German is to English yet Swedes have as a rule better English than Germans simply because the quality of English education in Sweden is superior. Also consider how all Finns in SC2 are completely capable of fully expressing themselves in English while Finnish as a rarity for a European language is not an Indo-European language such as English, Swedish or French and the grammar of Finnish is as different from English as both are from Korean.
I don't think Swedish people can be expected to learn Korean on top of English and German, certainly you could expect Americans to stop being so monolingual and learn another world language like Spanish or Arabic. And the quality of second language education in the united states is again pretty laughable, if you learn Spanish in high school at the US you typically are not conversational let alone close to fluent like many Swedish people are in English.
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On August 20 2013 16:49 SiskosGoatee wrote:Show nested quote +On August 20 2013 15:48 Entirety wrote:On August 20 2013 15:17 iTzSnypah wrote:
The problem is that most Korean players are just another "faceless Korean". We truthfully don't care about their results like we do for say Taeja, Jaedong or HerO. We have almost no emotional investment in faceless Koreans. That's why people are for region locking, so that viewers can watch players they are emotionally invested in post good results.
For example: People watch TV Drama's because they care what happens to the main character. I watch Castle a lot (new season starts September 23) and I care how Castle's relationship develops with Beckett and it makes me want to watch the next episode. - they don't speak your language (hey, do you speak Korean? I bet not... surely that means you are faceless to the entire population of South Korea, right?) - because they don't speak English, it becomes harder to get interviews/content from them - they spend time catering to their greater fanbase... which is located in their home country! How much time do U.S. athletes spend trying to cater to audiences in Ukraine? Not much, right? - they beat your favorite players While I agree with the rest of your points (not your tone). Many people, including Koreans, seem to think the foreign StarCraft fanbase is born speaking English. Swedish or German people have learnt English as a second language. Can you remember Thorzain, Rotterdam and Mana cast in German? These guys are Swedish, Dutch and Polish respectively and atop English, they are also conversational in German. Many Koreans are monolingual, certainly a lot of Americans are as well which I also don't approve of but you can certainly fault a nation for being unwilling to learn at least one major world language such as English. The quality of English level education in Korea is really low. And it has very little to do with how different Korean is from English, that is a myth, similarity of languages really does not matter a lot when learning a language. Consider how much closer German is to English yet Swedes have as a rule better English than Germans simply because the quality of English education in Sweden is superior. Also consider how all Finns in SC2 are completely capable of fully expressing themselves in English while Finnish as a rarity for a European language is not an Indo-European language such as English, Swedish or French and the grammar of Finnish is as different from English as both are from Korean. I don't think Swedish people can be expected to learn Korean on top of English and German, certainly you could expect Americans to stop being so monolingual and learn another world language like Spanish or Arabic. And the quality of second language education in the united states is again pretty laughable, if you learn Spanish in high school at the US you typically are not conversational let alone close to fluent like many Swedish people are in English.
Lol, please get off your high horse and make it like Swedish people are multi lingual because they are more open. The reason they learn English is out of need. How many British people know how to speak Swedish?
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On August 20 2013 21:06 vthree wrote:Show nested quote +On August 20 2013 16:49 SiskosGoatee wrote:On August 20 2013 15:48 Entirety wrote:On August 20 2013 15:17 iTzSnypah wrote:
The problem is that most Korean players are just another "faceless Korean". We truthfully don't care about their results like we do for say Taeja, Jaedong or HerO. We have almost no emotional investment in faceless Koreans. That's why people are for region locking, so that viewers can watch players they are emotionally invested in post good results.
For example: People watch TV Drama's because they care what happens to the main character. I watch Castle a lot (new season starts September 23) and I care how Castle's relationship develops with Beckett and it makes me want to watch the next episode. - they don't speak your language (hey, do you speak Korean? I bet not... surely that means you are faceless to the entire population of South Korea, right?) - because they don't speak English, it becomes harder to get interviews/content from them - they spend time catering to their greater fanbase... which is located in their home country! How much time do U.S. athletes spend trying to cater to audiences in Ukraine? Not much, right? - they beat your favorite players While I agree with the rest of your points (not your tone). Many people, including Koreans, seem to think the foreign StarCraft fanbase is born speaking English. Swedish or German people have learnt English as a second language. Can you remember Thorzain, Rotterdam and Mana cast in German? These guys are Swedish, Dutch and Polish respectively and atop English, they are also conversational in German. Many Koreans are monolingual, certainly a lot of Americans are as well which I also don't approve of but you can certainly fault a nation for being unwilling to learn at least one major world language such as English. The quality of English level education in Korea is really low. And it has very little to do with how different Korean is from English, that is a myth, similarity of languages really does not matter a lot when learning a language. Consider how much closer German is to English yet Swedes have as a rule better English than Germans simply because the quality of English education in Sweden is superior. Also consider how all Finns in SC2 are completely capable of fully expressing themselves in English while Finnish as a rarity for a European language is not an Indo-European language such as English, Swedish or French and the grammar of Finnish is as different from English as both are from Korean. I don't think Swedish people can be expected to learn Korean on top of English and German, certainly you could expect Americans to stop being so monolingual and learn another world language like Spanish or Arabic. And the quality of second language education in the united states is again pretty laughable, if you learn Spanish in high school at the US you typically are not conversational let alone close to fluent like many Swedish people are in English. Lol, please get off your high horse and make it like Swedish people are multi lingual because they are more open. The reason they learn English is out of need. How many British people know how to speak Swedish? They have no more need in Sweden to learn English then the French do. yet the quality of Swedish English education is simply far better than the French.
The reason the Dutch, the Swedish, Norwegian, Danish and Finnish have such excellent English isn't because they need it more than the French or the Spanish, it's because culturally those countries have very little nationalism in them and aren't phobic of the influence of English. At some level the French government is a bit paranoid about French people speaking English too well because it might supplant French.
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Have a Olympic tournament every 4 years between countries! Then snipe Koreans by granting them a visa and passport and let the drama unfold at they then retire and stay in the US!
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On August 20 2013 21:10 SiskosGoatee wrote:Show nested quote +On August 20 2013 21:06 vthree wrote:On August 20 2013 16:49 SiskosGoatee wrote:On August 20 2013 15:48 Entirety wrote:On August 20 2013 15:17 iTzSnypah wrote:
The problem is that most Korean players are just another "faceless Korean". We truthfully don't care about their results like we do for say Taeja, Jaedong or HerO. We have almost no emotional investment in faceless Koreans. That's why people are for region locking, so that viewers can watch players they are emotionally invested in post good results.
For example: People watch TV Drama's because they care what happens to the main character. I watch Castle a lot (new season starts September 23) and I care how Castle's relationship develops with Beckett and it makes me want to watch the next episode. - they don't speak your language (hey, do you speak Korean? I bet not... surely that means you are faceless to the entire population of South Korea, right?) - because they don't speak English, it becomes harder to get interviews/content from them - they spend time catering to their greater fanbase... which is located in their home country! How much time do U.S. athletes spend trying to cater to audiences in Ukraine? Not much, right? - they beat your favorite players While I agree with the rest of your points (not your tone). Many people, including Koreans, seem to think the foreign StarCraft fanbase is born speaking English. Swedish or German people have learnt English as a second language. Can you remember Thorzain, Rotterdam and Mana cast in German? These guys are Swedish, Dutch and Polish respectively and atop English, they are also conversational in German. Many Koreans are monolingual, certainly a lot of Americans are as well which I also don't approve of but you can certainly fault a nation for being unwilling to learn at least one major world language such as English. The quality of English level education in Korea is really low. And it has very little to do with how different Korean is from English, that is a myth, similarity of languages really does not matter a lot when learning a language. Consider how much closer German is to English yet Swedes have as a rule better English than Germans simply because the quality of English education in Sweden is superior. Also consider how all Finns in SC2 are completely capable of fully expressing themselves in English while Finnish as a rarity for a European language is not an Indo-European language such as English, Swedish or French and the grammar of Finnish is as different from English as both are from Korean. I don't think Swedish people can be expected to learn Korean on top of English and German, certainly you could expect Americans to stop being so monolingual and learn another world language like Spanish or Arabic. And the quality of second language education in the united states is again pretty laughable, if you learn Spanish in high school at the US you typically are not conversational let alone close to fluent like many Swedish people are in English. Lol, please get off your high horse and make it like Swedish people are multi lingual because they are more open. The reason they learn English is out of need. How many British people know how to speak Swedish? They have no more need in Sweden to learn English then the French do. yet the quality of Swedish English education is simply far better than the French. The reason the Dutch, the Swedish, Norwegian, Danish and Finnish have such excellent English isn't because they need it more than the French or the Spanish, it's because culturally those countries have very little nationalism in them and aren't phobic of the influence of English. At some level the French government is a bit paranoid about French people speaking English too well because it might supplant French.
Eh... Danish dude here. And yet we generelly speak english very well, but thats not because we "have very little nationalism". It's because we are to small to matter on a bigger scene and thus we learn English because that is a world language. Before english became all dominant in the world we were also required to learn either German of french (the other big countries in EU). Anyway the whole language thing has nothing to do with the discussion at hand with region locking WCS.
For me personally I like following people I can identify myself with. I almost always watch when BabyKnight or Bunny plays because they are danish. Next in line are the swedish and norwegian players and futher down the line other EU players and US/CAN players. I just don't care that much about the korean players on a personal level because I can't identify myself within them.
(And also top EU matches are more entertaining because they make more errors  )
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On August 20 2013 15:56 rd wrote:
The money has to be there for potential talent to justify the risk of pursuing SC2 full time at the expense of a much more stable form of income (aka a normal job).
No it doesn't.
Nobody ever became a real progamer thinking like that. If you want to make a rational choice in life, you will never puruse a programing career, period. If you're not willing to put absolutely everything on the line to make it, with no guarantees that you will ever make any money at all, you just don't even bother.
Just listen to Nony's story about eSTRO to learn about Korean infrastructure. All progamers start at the rock bottom, being practice slaves for the more established teammates, making zero money, not being allowed into tournaments until they prove themselves, and even if they lived in a team house - chances of them being kicked out at any point because they can't make the cut were pretty damn high. That's the kind of environment they have a "10 year advantage in".
It is difficult. It's meant to be difficult. Making it less difficult - such as by region locking - will only produce players that will be humiliated by the progamers that did make it in the difficult environment. And I don't mean eliminated in competitive, sometimes close games like what happens now. I mean absolutely humiliated to the point of being compared to an AI like what was happening in Brood War. Do you really think Starcraft can survive in the west for long past that point? People will just give up and watch something else.
So yes, ultimately it does come down to hard work only. The "esports" as we know it was built on the backs of players who didn't wait for money and sponsors to commit to their game. The North American scene in particular was already nurtured and supported more than could possibly be justified. If anything, that only made it weaker, as the players almost as a rule of thumb got progressively worse the better their contract and training conditions were.
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On August 21 2013 00:54 Talin wrote:Show nested quote +On August 20 2013 15:56 rd wrote:
The money has to be there for potential talent to justify the risk of pursuing SC2 full time at the expense of a much more stable form of income (aka a normal job). No it doesn't. Nobody ever became a real progamer thinking like that. If you want to make a rational choice in life, you will never puruse a programing career, period. If you're not willing to put absolutely everything on the line to make it, with no guarantees that you will ever make any money at all, you just don't even bother. Just listen to Nony's story about eSTRO to learn about Korean infrastructure. All progamers start at the rock bottom, being practice slaves for the more established teammates, making zero money, not being allowed into tournaments until they prove themselves, and even if they lived in a team house - chances of them being kicked out at any point because they can't make the cut were pretty damn high. That's the kind of environment they have a "10 year advantage in". It is difficult. It's meant to be difficult. Making it less difficult - such as by region locking - will only produce players that will be humiliated by the progamers that did make it in the difficult environment. And I don't mean eliminated in competitive, sometimes close games like what happens now. I mean absolutely humiliated to the point of being compared to an AI like what was happening in Brood War. Do you really think Starcraft can survive in the west for long past that point? People will just give up and watch something else. So yes, ultimately it does come down to hard work only. The "esports" as we know it was built on the backs of players who didn't wait for money and sponsors to commit to their game. The North American scene in particular was already nurtured and supported more than could possibly be justified. If anything, that only made it weaker, as the players almost as a rule of thumb got progressively worse the better their contract and training conditions were.
Nony's eSTRO story was in a time when making a living in esports in NA was virtually impossible. It is now posssible though still difficult, and way more players have entered the scene because of it. More tournaments, more exposure for sponsors to justify the expense, more money. Arbitrarily making it difficult just because of the sacrifices in the past to create the western scene is equally as irrational.
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On August 21 2013 01:13 rd wrote:Show nested quote +On August 21 2013 00:54 Talin wrote:On August 20 2013 15:56 rd wrote:
The money has to be there for potential talent to justify the risk of pursuing SC2 full time at the expense of a much more stable form of income (aka a normal job). No it doesn't. Nobody ever became a real progamer thinking like that. If you want to make a rational choice in life, you will never puruse a programing career, period. If you're not willing to put absolutely everything on the line to make it, with no guarantees that you will ever make any money at all, you just don't even bother. Just listen to Nony's story about eSTRO to learn about Korean infrastructure. All progamers start at the rock bottom, being practice slaves for the more established teammates, making zero money, not being allowed into tournaments until they prove themselves, and even if they lived in a team house - chances of them being kicked out at any point because they can't make the cut were pretty damn high. That's the kind of environment they have a "10 year advantage in". It is difficult. It's meant to be difficult. Making it less difficult - such as by region locking - will only produce players that will be humiliated by the progamers that did make it in the difficult environment. And I don't mean eliminated in competitive, sometimes close games like what happens now. I mean absolutely humiliated to the point of being compared to an AI like what was happening in Brood War. Do you really think Starcraft can survive in the west for long past that point? People will just give up and watch something else. So yes, ultimately it does come down to hard work only. The "esports" as we know it was built on the backs of players who didn't wait for money and sponsors to commit to their game. The North American scene in particular was already nurtured and supported more than could possibly be justified. If anything, that only made it weaker, as the players almost as a rule of thumb got progressively worse the better their contract and training conditions were. Nony's eSTRO story was in a time when making a living in esports in NA was virtually impossible. It is now posssible though still difficult, and way more players have entered the scene because of it. More tournaments, more exposure for sponsors to justify the expense, more money. Arbitrarily making it difficult just because of the sacrifices in the past to create the western scene is equally as irrational.
It's possible now, but it won't be possible when the level of play sinks even lower than it is. It's going to be incredibly hard to justify having tournaments with the same format and prize pool without professional-level competition as the interest of the western audience slowly declines back to the near-BW levels.
It's not arbitrarily being made difficult. It just IS that difficult.
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On August 21 2013 01:38 Talin wrote:Show nested quote +On August 21 2013 01:13 rd wrote:On August 21 2013 00:54 Talin wrote:On August 20 2013 15:56 rd wrote:
The money has to be there for potential talent to justify the risk of pursuing SC2 full time at the expense of a much more stable form of income (aka a normal job). No it doesn't. Nobody ever became a real progamer thinking like that. If you want to make a rational choice in life, you will never puruse a programing career, period. If you're not willing to put absolutely everything on the line to make it, with no guarantees that you will ever make any money at all, you just don't even bother. Just listen to Nony's story about eSTRO to learn about Korean infrastructure. All progamers start at the rock bottom, being practice slaves for the more established teammates, making zero money, not being allowed into tournaments until they prove themselves, and even if they lived in a team house - chances of them being kicked out at any point because they can't make the cut were pretty damn high. That's the kind of environment they have a "10 year advantage in". It is difficult. It's meant to be difficult. Making it less difficult - such as by region locking - will only produce players that will be humiliated by the progamers that did make it in the difficult environment. And I don't mean eliminated in competitive, sometimes close games like what happens now. I mean absolutely humiliated to the point of being compared to an AI like what was happening in Brood War. Do you really think Starcraft can survive in the west for long past that point? People will just give up and watch something else. So yes, ultimately it does come down to hard work only. The "esports" as we know it was built on the backs of players who didn't wait for money and sponsors to commit to their game. The North American scene in particular was already nurtured and supported more than could possibly be justified. If anything, that only made it weaker, as the players almost as a rule of thumb got progressively worse the better their contract and training conditions were. Nony's eSTRO story was in a time when making a living in esports in NA was virtually impossible. It is now posssible though still difficult, and way more players have entered the scene because of it. More tournaments, more exposure for sponsors to justify the expense, more money. Arbitrarily making it difficult just because of the sacrifices in the past to create the western scene is equally as irrational. It's possible now, but it won't be possible when the level of play sinks even lower than it is. It's going to be incredibly hard to justify having tournaments with the same format and prize pool without professional-level competition as the interest of the western audience slowly declines back to the near-BW levels. It's not arbitrarily being made difficult. It just IS that difficult.
I never said it would justify having tournaments without the same level of competition as in Korea. It's a vicious cycle.
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EPT
