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No good deed ever goes unpunished, an axiom that's true amongst most if not all scenes, not least of all SC2. Alongside the positivity of a new SHOUTcraft America tournament comes the usual negativity from those who do little but complain. Alongside the noise and bullshit though comes genuine misconception, like this post right here which I'd like to address.
"Doesn't anyone else find TB's hyper-nationalistic view on SC2 odd and out of place when every member of the America-based team he manages and owns are Koreans and the team house is located in Korea? Most importantly, while criticizing WCS for taking opportunities away from the regional players, his team has the largest number of Koreans playing in the WCS AM among the participating teams..."
This is in response to an interview I did with Ongamers about SHOUTcraft America and my strong belief in regional competition. Since I started talking about this, a few people have been quick to jump on the usual "GOTCHA!" train of trying to equate Axioms participation in WCS America with hypocrisy when it comes to my opinion on regional competition. That point of view is filled with flaws.
1) Axiom is not an "America-based team". Axiom is and always will be a Korean team. They live in a Korean house, they are all native Korean, they compete in Korean competition (GSTL), they train in the Korean style, they speak Korean, they eat Korean food, they're about as Korean as Korean gets. There is nothing "foreign" about Axiom. We are not EG, we don't have foreign players, we didn't start with foreign players and we have no intention of ever signing foreign players. EG and Teamliquid signed Korean players after their inception because they wanted to win tournaments. Axiom signed Korean players from day 1 because we wanted to help out the Korean scene and particular players within it who were not getting the opportunities they deserved. EG and Teamliquid are foreign teams, Axiom is a Korean team.
2) The term "hyper-nationalistic view" implies I'm the KKK of Starcraft. There is nothing hyper-nationalistic about wanting regional competition because this is entirely normal in every other sport, which should be obvious if you pay even the slightest bit of attention to other sports. American teams do not go and compete in other American football, basketball or baseball leagues in other countries because well, they would crush everybody. By staying the hell out of those leagues (not that the leagues would let them in to begin with), those countries have a chance to develop their own scenes and become competitive inside their region. For an English example, Italian football teams do not compete in the English Premier league. It's a bit of a funky comparison because English teams frequently hire foreign players to compete, but Barcelona or Juventus can't just go stomping into the Premier league or worse, the First Division and wipe everyone else off the map. Competitions where this stuff can happen exist, things like the Champions League, but the regional competition is left intact and strong as it should be. The view that this should be the case in Starcraft is not "hyper-nationalistic" and it is certainly not "racist" as a few of the less smart members of the community have suggested. It's common bloody sense and if we ignore the lessons of much more successful sports, than we are doomed to make some pretty stupid mistakes.
3) "his team has the largest number of Koreans playing in the WCS AM among the participating teams..."
EG has more members playing in WCS America than we have players in the team total. 4 of them are Korean. Impact is not competing in WCS America, he is competing in WCS Korea and we may very well have more members going back to compete in WCS Korea next year pending on Blizzards format announcements for 2014.
4) If it were not our players "taking away opportunities" it would be other Korean players. Our players knock other Korean players out of Premier league just as much as they do foreigners. The system is at fault. If not us, some other Korean players. There are plenty lining up to do it. There may be more next year. Heck I think the only thing keeping a lot of them away from WCS America is the fact that it's becoming the strongest tournament outside of Korea. If it were easy to descend on the easiest WCS region, that being Europe, I'm sure they would, but massive RO32 lag disadvantage alongside travel costs and a lack of facilities in Europe for Korean players keep them at bay, for now. Pulling all of Axioms players from WCS America would not create opportunities for American players while the system remains as broken as it is.
5) We cannot legally tell our players where to play. Each of our players is an independent contractor who makes their own decisions about which tournaments they participate in. We cannot tell a player to go to a specific event and even if we could, we wouldn't because that's not how we treat our players. If they want to play in WCS America, that is their decision, not mine.
6) Why is it that Axiom is the only team getting criticised for sending Koreans to WCS America? Such a strange thing to do when we're also providing opportunities for Americans with the SCA tournaments. I suppose the loudest person is the easiest target, but it all strikes me as rather odd. I'm not in favour of any team getting flack for that but it does seem curiously silent when referring to EG or Teamliquid.
7) Let's talk business. My first priority as a responsible manager is the well-being of the team and its players. My personal beliefs about region-locking are secondary to that. Any suggestion otherwise would make me bad at my job, something that's actually worth criticising me over. When WCS America first came around, we had one player directly seeded into the tournament and preferential invites to the qualifiers for the rest. Of our 5 players at the time, 1 was seeded to Premier and 3 others qualified. At the time, none of them were in Code S, Ryung had just dropped to Code A prior to that and the others had failed to qualify for Code A. As a result they all wished to participate in WCS America and this was especially true after they all got into Premier. It is guaranteed money, guaranteed exposure, guaranteed points, you would have to be out of your mind to not allow them to play.
Jesus I mean I can't imagine how much you lot would have crucified me if it had got out that I'd stopped people like Ryung and Crank from taking guaranteed spots in Premier league just because I had some belief about region lock. My role as a team manager comes first, always. The needs of my players comes first. Guess what, we don't live in a fairytale world. Sometimes we have to make decisions we don't like. I don't like the fact that our guys play in WCS America, I'd rather see them rocking the GSL but that's not what they wanted and the opportunity was there for them in America. Anyone who wanted a shot at the finals and was not already in Code S when WCS was sprung on us was absolutely screwed. This is why a bunch of popular Korean players jumped to WCS America in Season 1 immediately, because otherwise they'd have had to go through Code A and would already be behind in WCS points. That's the system we were in and the game we had to play. HerO? Not in Code S, so jumped to America because if he didn't he could kiss any shot at the WCS Finals goodbye. Jaedong, Oz, Revival, Polt, take your pick, none of them were in Code S, they didn't stand a chance. IIRC, the only example of a player that managed to pull it off was Taeja and that's well, because he's Taeja. Hate the game not the player, we did what we had to do.
If you couldn't tell, I'm a bit tired of this. Sometimes I look at this scene and want to scream "WHY WON'T YOU LET ME LOVE YOU?". I guess the only thing to do is keep moving forward. Maybe after enough events people might forgive me for whatever capital sin I committed. Until then I guess wallowing in self pity will have to do.
 
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dont read too much into internet's opinion. You should know that more than most people.
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I don't think there's anything wrong with Axiom's players playing in WCS America. I might feel the rules should be changed so they aren't allowed to, but until that occurs it's silly for anyone to criticize players for following the rules to give themselves the best opportunity possible.
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Those who aren't convinced aren't worth convincing.
Fuck em.
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While I agree with the general intent behind everything you said (and am too lazy to fact check it, but it looks fine), it will never cease to amaze me how much effort you put into answering small groups of trolls. 90% of the time I see a big defensive post or a line of defensive tweets, I never see the dumbass comments that spurred it.
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Completely agree with TB here, just another example of people on the internet not thinking things through and having the mob mentality.
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On November 15 2013 12:46 deth2munkies wrote:
While I agree with the general intent behind everything you said (and am too lazy to fact check it, but it looks fine), it will never cease to amaze me how much effort you put into answering small groups of trolls. 90% of the time I see a big defensive post or a line of defensive tweets, I never see the dumbass comments that spurred it.
The misconception is that I'm answering trolls when what I'm actually trying to do is educate a wider audience on the realities of the industry right now. Someone's posting bullshit? Take it as an opportunity to spread more information among people who may not otherwise have access to it. Turn that negativity into something useful.
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Yeah this informs me.
So I guess my question is would you believe in region locking even if it hurt your players.
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Yeh, that was educational.
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If the majority of the scene (read: 60-40 [that's my guess at the lowest it could go, I'd assume many more are happy about shoutcraft and all of the opportunities presented with it]) let you love them, would you still feel the need to want to love the 40%?
How can you love people who are unwilling to love themselves first? 
Edited: Perhaps you should make a series of blogs entitled "No @#*$ing bullshit" and put stuff like this in there?
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United States744 Posts
I appreciate what you do for the community, even if other people don't. You shouldn't expect everyone on the internet to be intelligent and kind anyways. Keep doing what you are doing, so far nobody has come up with a legitimate argument that you are a bad manager.
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On November 15 2013 12:54 Pandain wrote:
Yeah this informs me.
So I guess my question is would you believe in region locking even if it hurt your players.
Yes I do. Here's the thing about WCS, it's not actually that much fun. The costs associated with WCS are massive, the travel budget is being completely blown on WCS flights for a tournament that the players don't really enjoy that much anyway. Our players much prefer things like Dreamhack or various regional IEMs and we can send them to more of those events next year if we spend less money flying them to WCS America. It's not like MLG, ESL and NASL aren't trying to make the best with what they have but the WCS format doesn't lend itself well to a really fun competition whereas those weekend tournaments do. I think our guys have proven they can fight with the best in GSTL, and it's not like they escaped fighting tough players by going to WCS America, they ran into some of the top-tier Koreans in their journey through the tournament this year.
However, if region-locking were to come into effect, I feel Korean competition must be stimulated further. The talent pool in Korea is massive and there aren't enough tournaments for them to play in. You might say "oh, well just send em to the other regions", well good luck doing that. The teams doing that are the ones that have the budget for it, everyone else is just kinda stuck languishing in Code A or B. Korea has such a massive talent pool that it needs more tournaments to accommodate it. I'm constantly flabbergasted by the lack of Korean tournaments outside of WCS and Proleague. I'd like to see Blizzard can the grand-slams and use that budget to put on another regular event in Korea to give those pros something to fight for. Maybe we wouldn't have so many great Korean players retiring if they actually had place to play.
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I think TB's main problem is simple: He cares.
A very rare attribute these days; a lot people pretend but actually they are only hiding behind etiquette labeled falsely as manners.
SC2 is in a little bit of a crisis IMHO right now. The community didn't grow (in numbers and quality), the organizational side is lacking badly (be it tournaments or simple game support for esport). I partially blame Blizzard that SC2 is not DotA ... they leeched money (licensing) out of the scene instead of investing (see Riad, Valve). Hopefully things turn around 180° next year cause I feel like a lot of this frustration is just targeted into the wrong direction right now.
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Slight correction for the last paragraph, TaeJa was actually seeded into WCS KR Season 1 and placed top 16 to earn some WCS points before he jumped to America. Ironically, JD actually didn't qualify for WCS until season 2 and still ended up as the #3 seed in Blizzcon.
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Impact did not compete in WCS AM S3 because by the time he joined Axiom, WCS AM S3 was already in progress. If your entire team composed of Koreans are competing in WCS AM and taking opportunities away from regional players that you, yourself, are criticizing about. Have the decency to not criticize the format that your team and players are exploiting. Shoutcraft is a very good idea and I'm all for it. But, your two-faced attitude about region lock and developing regions DO NOT help to promote Shoutcraft or your intention of promoting global SC2 as a whole.
Also, you may now defend your team as not America-based. You have previously said that your team is America based when your team first competed in WCS AM. SC2 community also consider your team as American team, as well.
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On November 15 2013 13:08 Junho.C wrote:
Impact did not compete in WCS AM S3 because by the time he joined Axiom, WCS AM S3 was already in progress. If your entire team composed of Koreans are competing in WCS AM and taking opportunities away from regional players that you, yourself, are criticizing about. Have the decency to not criticize the format that your team and players are exploiting. Shoutcraft is a very good idea and I'm all for it. But, your two-faced attitude about region lock and developing regions DO NOT help to promote Shoutcraft or your intention of promoting global SC2 as a whole.
I like how you didn't bother to respond to any of the things I said at all. Also since you were the person who posted the misconception this blog posts exists to respond to, to begin with I'd have thought you'd put in a bit more effort to refute some of the stuff I just said. That said, I guess it's easy to criticise when you know you're in a place where I won't call you on it. Surprise!
Impact is competing in WCS America because he's playing in WCS Korea and qualified for Challenger. Also we very specifically talked about that with him before we even signed him and he wants to play in Korea.
There's nothing two-faced about my attitude and the only people saying that are those looking for "gotcha" crap and with too simplistic an understanding of the situation to have good grounds on which to form an opinion.
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On November 15 2013 13:06 smashlloyd20 wrote:
Slight correction for the last paragraph, TaeJa was actually seeded into WCS KR Season 1 and placed top 16 to earn some WCS points before he jumped to America. Ironically, JD actually didn't qualify for WCS until season 2 and still ended up as the #3 seed in Blizzcon.
Ahh yes you're right.
EG also spent unholy amounts of money sending Jaedong to every possible WCS-accredited tournament they could in order to compensate for his lack of appearance in Season 1, something a lot of teams can't even afford to do.
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On November 15 2013 13:12 TotalBiscuit wrote:Show nested quote +On November 15 2013 13:08 Junho.C wrote:
Impact did not compete in WCS AM S3 because by the time he joined Axiom, WCS AM S3 was already in progress. If your entire team composed of Koreans are competing in WCS AM and taking opportunities away from regional players that you, yourself, are criticizing about. Have the decency to not criticize the format that your team and players are exploiting. Shoutcraft is a very good idea and I'm all for it. But, your two-faced attitude about region lock and developing regions DO NOT help to promote Shoutcraft or your intention of promoting global SC2 as a whole. I like how you didn't bother to respond to any of the things I said at all. Also since you were the person who posted the misconception this blog posts exists to respond to, to begin with I'd have thought you'd put in a bit more effort to refute some of the stuff I just said. Impact is competing in WCS America because he's playing in WCS Korea and qualified for Challenger. Also we very specifically talked about that with him before we even signed him and he wants to play in Korea. There's nothing two-faced about my attitude and the only people saying that are those looking for "gotcha" crap and with too simplistic an understanding of the situation to have good grounds on which to form an opinion.
I added this, so consider this as well:
Also, you may now defend your team as not America-based. You have previously said that your team is America based when your team first competed in WCS AM. SC2 community also consider your team as American team, as well.
Also, there was no misconception about the clear fact that you have criticized WCS system for a long time, yet your team and players have taken advantage of the format and competed in WCS AM for more exposure. This is the obvious thing to do from a business stand point, but you should not criticize the system that your team and players are exploiting.
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On November 15 2013 13:17 Junho.C wrote:Show nested quote +On November 15 2013 13:12 TotalBiscuit wrote:On November 15 2013 13:08 Junho.C wrote:
Impact did not compete in WCS AM S3 because by the time he joined Axiom, WCS AM S3 was already in progress. If your entire team composed of Koreans are competing in WCS AM and taking opportunities away from regional players that you, yourself, are criticizing about. Have the decency to not criticize the format that your team and players are exploiting. Shoutcraft is a very good idea and I'm all for it. But, your two-faced attitude about region lock and developing regions DO NOT help to promote Shoutcraft or your intention of promoting global SC2 as a whole. I like how you didn't bother to respond to any of the things I said at all. Also since you were the person who posted the misconception this blog posts exists to respond to, to begin with I'd have thought you'd put in a bit more effort to refute some of the stuff I just said. Impact is competing in WCS America because he's playing in WCS Korea and qualified for Challenger. Also we very specifically talked about that with him before we even signed him and he wants to play in Korea. There's nothing two-faced about my attitude and the only people saying that are those looking for "gotcha" crap and with too simplistic an understanding of the situation to have good grounds on which to form an opinion. I added this, so consider this as well: Also, you may now defend your team as not America-based. You have previously said that your team is America based when your team first competed in WCS AM. SC2 community also consider your team as American team, as well. Also, there was no misconception about the clear fact that you have criticized WCS system for a long time, yet your team and players have taken advantage of the format and competed in WCS AM for more exposure. This is the obvious thing to do in a business stand point, but you should not criticize the system that your team and players are exploiting.
Why should I not criticize the system that our team and players are exploiting?
Give me one good reason. Your arguments seem nothing more than purely faux-academic, in the vein of those that think you win arguments by earning fallacy points. That's not how the real world works. There's a bunch of laws I don't like either but I have to abide by em. Welcome to real life.
Also feel free to find a quote where I said my team was American. I certainly don't remember that, but then I have dyspraxia induced memory problems so hey!
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EPT
