EPTMaking ANY money to have fun, even if it's a serious time investment, is worth it.
Random thought: prize money - Page 2
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LordWeird
United States3411 Posts
Making ANY money to have fun, even if it's a serious time investment, is worth it. | ||
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[trapcard]
16 Posts
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ondik
Czech Republic2908 Posts
On March 19 2009 01:27 CaucasianAsian wrote: I know this guy who is graduating at a commerce school in may, who literally thinks about everything he's doing and the opportunity cost. He day trades, and goes to school. He will stop hanging out with his friends because he could instead be making a couple hundred of dollars messing with his portfolio. There are people who try to extract the maximum monetary value at any given time. I doubt many people are like him though. That's wrong. It's not about how much money he makes instead of hanging out with friends it's about payoffs of these two things. If payoff from messing with portfolio and making a couple hundred dollars is higher than payoff from getting drunk with friends then there is nothing wrong with his choice, he's acting rationally. You could consider his bad money-based personality, but that's another story. | ||
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Fontong
United States6454 Posts
AM I RATIONAL??!?!?! | ||
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Boblion
France8043 Posts
On March 19 2009 01:21 Xeris wrote: this isn't a knock on anything, because any prize for any event is awesome, but isn't it funny how pretty much every bw player will jump through hoops for a little money. think about it.. 1st place for SC2GG Star League is $250, let's say that qualifying for the ladder takes ~100 games, average game length 15 mins, so that's around 25 hours strictly of playing, not even counting finding games, etc. if that's all it took to get $250 then I'd say it's a pretty good return on investment (depending on your age I guess) - $10/hour , but then there's the final tournament and all this other crap so really you end up spending like 100 hours of your life to maybe not even get 250, or anything. The prize for the top player will equate to getting paid $2.50 an hour. Might as well go work at McDonalds? But a tournament like SCL or whatever brings out the very best players (most of em) for even such a small amount. Why do they do it if it's such a small return on the time invested? are bw players not rational? or is it the love of the game? Wow Xeris you are so smart. I can't believe you understand now that you can't make more money playing broodwar than with a real job. Genius ~ Seriously it is common sense. People play this game for fun purpose, and they play ladder / tournament with prices because it is always fun to win like 100 bucks and also because good players always play in this kind of tournaments. So few money + competitive aspect ---> success. | ||
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Snet
United States3573 Posts
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AttackZerg
United States7571 Posts
Sure winning the free money games can be entertaining (with booze) but it doesn't cater to the competitive urge and drive that all of the good broodwar players have. I joined the ladder and will be mass gaming, because I know I'm competing directly with better players. Can I win? ... of course not but the entire concept makes playing interesting. | ||
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Xeris
Iran17695 Posts
On March 19 2009 03:06 Fontong wrote: I browse TL all day and make banners for LR threads and make LR threads when I could be teaching flute lessons for 30$ an hour. AM I RATIONAL??!?!?! def not. | ||
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Tensai176
Canada2061 Posts
As I understood it, it's weird how 250 is that much of an incentive to play in the tourney considering it is a pretty small grand prize albeit an extra $250 would be nice. Thus, the thing here is about money. It appears that since the prize pool had risen to $250 instead of 0 and how so many known foreigners are now participating, it becomes a situation where money is an important factor and the Mcdonalds analogy comes in. As for me, I think its more about prestige than anything, since the prize money adds a new incentive and ups the prestige of the tournament, it attracts people. Thats how I saw the OP. | ||
NonY
8751 Posts
On March 19 2009 01:21 Xeris wrote: this isn't a knock on anything, because any prize for any event is awesome, but isn't it funny how pretty much every bw player will jump through hoops for a little money. think about it.. 1st place for SC2GG Star League is $250, let's say that qualifying for the ladder takes ~100 games, average game length 15 mins, so that's around 25 hours strictly of playing, not even counting finding games, etc. if that's all it took to get $250 then I'd say it's a pretty good return on investment (depending on your age I guess) - $10/hour , but then there's the final tournament and all this other crap so really you end up spending like 100 hours of your life to maybe not even get 250, or anything. The prize for the top player will equate to getting paid $2.50 an hour. Might as well go work at McDonalds? But a tournament like SCL or whatever brings out the very best players (most of em) for even such a small amount. Why do they do it if it's such a small return on the time invested? are bw players not rational? or is it the love of the game? Most of these people play BW whether there is money to be won or not. They don't play extra for tournaments -- tournaments just replace their practice time. But they don't like signing up for every little tournament that comes along. There are a lot of good players that'll play competitions without prize money, but they've gotta have some importance attached to them in some way. Playing vs Korean pros, nation wars, clan wars, streamed events with a big audience, etc, can get people to compete with no money prize. But an SC2GG tournament simply doesn't (yet). Even if playing BW did pay as well as a minimum wage job, it still wouldn't be the same thing. Most people just get a kick out of winning money from playing BW. And as far as you saying "might as well go work at McDonalds?" wtffffff. Not everyone is living their lives to make as much money as possible as quickly as possible. That's a huge (and disgusting) assumption that you just threw out there. Some people like the compromise of doing what they love and getting paid less. I think it just comes down to the fact that people like seeing money thrown around. Since the amounts are small, it isn't actually significant, but I think it's just a worldwide cultural thing that we like to see it. Return on investment? Calculating hourly wage from participating in BW tournaments? It sounds like you've just got your mind on income in general and you gotta realize that hardly anyone else does. | ||
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Xeris
Iran17695 Posts
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Ancestral
United States3230 Posts
Since winning isn't assured, I suppose it's more accurate to say that the probability that the player personally assigns to his winning the prize money multiplied by the amount of prize money (ex. .12 * $250) divided by the amount of time he spends playing (in hours), PLUS the utility he derives per hour by playing the game is greater than the opportunity cost of his time (per hour), otherwise he wouldn't play, he would do something else and derive more utility or income from it. | ||
Hot_Bid
Braavos36400 Posts
On March 19 2009 04:08 Tensai176 wrote: You guys are missing the point, he's not arguing that prize money is a bad thing if you're going to do what you love and play sc. He's just saying, as soon as the prize money goes up, 0->250$ Lots of semi-pros/top foreigners are jumping at the chance. As I understood it, it's weird how 250 is that much of an incentive to play in the tourney considering it is a pretty small grand prize albeit an extra $250 would be nice. Thus, the thing here is about money. It appears that since the prize pool had risen to $250 instead of 0 and how so many known foreigners are now participating, it becomes a situation where money is an important factor and the Mcdonalds analogy comes in. As for me, I think its more about prestige than anything, since the prize money adds a new incentive and ups the prestige of the tournament, it attracts people. Thats how I saw the OP. well its still pretty obvious that top players like playing and practicing and competing in brood war, and they probably were pretty close to joining the league but the lack of any concrete reason to join prevented them. once they got over that hump, plus seeing all the other good players join, made them want to compete and play w/e even more. surely they aren't idiots, only one of them is going to win the money, most of them are going to come out with no cash. | ||
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Excello.ChOseN
United States82 Posts
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jigga
Canada1141 Posts
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Ancestral
United States3230 Posts
On March 19 2009 05:07 jigga wrote: Xeris shouldn't need to defend himself like this, his line of thinking is perfectly rational. In fact just recently I had a friend (in commerce) who refused to go to a dota tournament simply because the first prize was $100 split between five, and he calculated it as everyone making less than $2 an hour. On top of that we actually had to win the thing. Personally (as everone else has said) I think its not about the prize money but the pride in winning and the fun in playing. Right - people derive utility from playing the game / community fun etc., just as people derive utility from money (because they can trade it for things). So I think that's the primary reason. The one thing that's interesting is that according to Xeris (and I'm sure he's right, he knows better than I), even small prize money makes a lot of high-level players come. I would propose it more has to do with the prestige of the tournament, and prestigious tournaments are simply more likely to have prizes, but it's all conjecture. Obviously, with TSL, $5000 first place IS a lot of money, and definitely worth the time if you win. | ||
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Chef
10810 Posts
The prize for the top player will equate to getting paid $2.50 an hour. Might as well go work at McDonalds? Sometimes it's worth it to take a cut in pay so you don't have to wear a stupid hat. Then again... + Show Spoiler + ![[image loading]](http://img408.imageshack.us/img408/688/midasftw.jpg) + Show Spoiler + I'm sure you realised 5 minutes after you made your post that your question was dumb ^^ Oh well | ||
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SkepTicAL
Canada872 Posts
On March 19 2009 04:54 Excello.ChOseN wrote: P.S. How cool is it to tell your friends, hey I'm so good at video games I just won 250$, what now newbs!! Get a g/f and tell her that lol. (cept like inc's g/f), mine just lol'ed at me  ! | ||
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