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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?
 
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I should go work at McDonalds instead of browsing Teamliquid in my spare time
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Calgary25996 Posts
On March 19 2009 01:21 Xeris wrote:
are bw players not rational? or is it the love of the game? Is this a serious or rhetorical question?
So basically your question is why do people not extract the maximum monetary value from every moment of their existence?
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Korea (South)11595 Posts
i used to jump on any chance to play in a tournament for money. now I don't really care about the money since I started playing poker.
I think it brings out the better players, which lets players of lesser skill get a chance to play with top foreigners which can be quite an experience.
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Korea (South)11595 Posts
On March 19 2009 01:24 Chill wrote:Show nested quote +On March 19 2009 01:21 Xeris wrote:
are bw players not rational? or is it the love of the game? Is this a serious or rhetorical question? So basically your question is why do people not extract the maximum monetary value from every moment of their existence?
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.
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Braavos36390 Posts
it's pretty obvious, bw players love playing bw and they are looking for excuses to mass play it.
if you're going to apply this sort of logic to recreational activities, why do we do anything then? i watch tv but get $0 thats a $0 per hour return, are people rational!??!
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A pretty stupid question, I mean... people play it for fun for even 0$ a day. It's not like even the pros are divas who only play 2 games a week with the most special players. They play it for fun. If they get some money for their troubles, they'll earn some money and develop their skills in playing competitively. It's also thrilling to play for something that actually matters.
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You seemed to have nailed it spot on from an ECONOMICAL perspective. But that's the only perspective you chosen to view the prize money through.
Keep in mind the 250$ could also equate to something much more depending on where the winner comes from (due to exchange rates). $250 USD might not seem like a lot to an American or Canadian player, but to a player from another country, 250$ USD could easily translate into a much more lump sum. But that's just the economical perspective as mentioned.
Some players enjoy BW for what it is - a recreational pasttime. Others enjoy it for the competition and not everyone is motivated by money to play BW. Some players may be, but there is nothing wrong with that at all - if they win some prize for doing something they enjoy, great. If they don't, that's okay too.
Again, the prize money may only add a little extrinsic benefit to what some players arguably want more from winning SC2GG StarLeague and other ladders like it - recognition. For an unknown player seeking some recognition (which they may or may not value more than the prize money itself) this is a great opportunity to showcase their talents and let their skills be known to others.
But like you said, if your thought process in regards to playing this ladder competitively is to reach the money - then maybe there are other plausible alternatives like working at McD's. But to the casual gamer and the like who are not interested in the prize money rather the recognition or the love of competition, then nothing else comes close 
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You got $0 from writing this blog, and judging by the length it probably took you over five minutes.
Are you rational?
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THE REAL QUESTION IS.... IS YOUR MOTHER RATIONAL DURAN?! IS SHE?!?!?!
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The opportunity for money just spices up something they wanted to do anyways.
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I think its because, we play practice games for no money at all. We will jump through hoops to get the fame that comes with the 250$. We want the "omg ur so cool you won that tournament worth 250!!" Because we all know that a tour worth any money is better then a tour worth no money.
So being able to say "hey I won that" is awesome. It gives you a greater high then just normally playing practice games. So to sum up my mini-rant, its cuz we like the fame that comes from winning a tournament worth money, not so much the money itself, altho the money is a nice bonus.
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how do you come up with 100 hours?
25 hours for the ladder games.
then in the final tourney its 4 series (top16,top8,top4,final)
which consists of 3+3+3+5(?) games so 14 games.
14games*15 minutes = 210 minutes = 3,5 hours.
so overall it would be 25+3,5 hours = 28,5 hours
YOu can say you waste time finding games and waiting for opponent @ final tour and stuff but i dont think thats more than 4 hours total.
So in the end you have about 32 hours and not 100 hours.
How you get 100?
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If anything prizes undermine instrinsic motivation to play bw through the process of overjustification, which also explains why players like Savior and Nada can reach huge slumps after big achievements.
People are not doing it for the money, these prizes are only appealing to the players who are younger than 15.
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I agree with what Chosen said.
Not that it is even a remote possibility, but winning an event like the sc2gg starleague, or even making the top 16 for that matter, would be the highlight of my sc career easily. Getting recognition from the community that many of us have been active members of for many years is worth quite a bit.
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On March 19 2009 01:24 Chill wrote:Show nested quote +On March 19 2009 01:21 Xeris wrote:
are bw players not rational? or is it the love of the game? Is this a serious or rhetorical question? So basically your question is why do people not extract the maximum monetary value from every moment of their existence?
Really, I don't think this is even blog worthy lol
It's pretty obvious it's a love of the game, and that's just a little bonus. I don't think most people are playing with intention of getting any kind of income from a game.
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If I got paid to do whatever I love to do as my job, I would be a happy man
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it was kind of rhetorical , just some random thought I had before i went out to get breakfast. chill.
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Because Starcraft isn't to make money it's to have fun and the money is simply icing on the cake.
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On March 19 2009 01:56 Typho0n wrote:
If I got paid to do whatever I love to do as my job, I would be a happy man
You would not be so happy if they would pay you very little money ( barely able to survive amount).
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Playing BW = fun
Making ANY money to have fun, even if it's a serious time investment, is worth it.
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the gods are beyond mortals - they do not play for mere $0.
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On March 19 2009 01:27 CaucasianAsian wrote:
I know this guy who is graduating at a commerce school in may, who literally thinks about everything he's doing and the opportunity cost. He day trades, and goes to school. He will stop hanging out with his friends because he could instead be making a couple hundred of dollars messing with his portfolio. There are people who try to extract the maximum monetary value at any given time.
I doubt many people are like him though.
That's wrong.
It's not about how much money he makes instead of hanging out with friends it's about payoffs of these two things. If payoff from messing with portfolio and making a couple hundred dollars is higher than payoff from getting drunk with friends then there is nothing wrong with his choice, he's acting rationally.
You could consider his bad money-based personality, but that's another story.
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I browse TL all day and make banners for LR threads and make LR threads when I could be teaching flute lessons for 30$ an hour.
AM I RATIONAL??!?!?!
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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 $2.50 an hour. Might as well go work at McDonalds?
But a tournament like SCL or whatever brings out the very best players (most of em) for even such a small amount. Why do they do it if it's such a small return on the time invested?
are bw players not rational? or is it the love of the game?
Wow Xeris you are so smart. I can't believe you understand now that you can't make more money playing broodwar than with a real job.
Genius ~
Seriously it is common sense. People play this game for fun purpose, and they play ladder / tournament with prices because it is always fun to win like 100 bucks and also because good players always play in this kind of tournaments.
So few money + competitive aspect ---> success.
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Snet
United States3573 Posts
Tournaments are fun. Competition is fun. Prize money is fun. Making happy meals is not fun.
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I think its the difference between playing a 5 dollar tournament freezeout with you friends versus free money.
Sure winning the free money games can be entertaining (with booze) but it doesn't cater to the competitive urge and drive that all of the good broodwar players have.
I joined the ladder and will be mass gaming, because I know I'm competing directly with better players. Can I win? ... of course not but the entire concept makes playing interesting.
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On March 19 2009 03:06 Fontong wrote:
I browse TL all day and make banners for LR threads and make LR threads when I could be teaching flute lessons for 30$ an hour.
AM I RATIONAL??!?!?!
def not.
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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.
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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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like I said ... it was a random thought, lol.
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I would propose that BW players have a certain opportunity cost associated with their time, and that $2.50 they make an hour (assuming they win something) plus the utility they derive from playing the game (along with all the things associated with playing the game - fame etc.) is greater than the opportunity cost of their time.
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 * $250) divided by the amount of time he spends playing (in hours), PLUS the utility he derives per hour by playing the game is greater than the opportunity cost of his time (per hour), otherwise he wouldn't play, he would do something else and derive more utility or income from it.
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Braavos36390 Posts
On March 19 2009 04:08 Tensai176 wrote:
You guys are missing the point, he's not arguing that prize money is a bad thing if you're going to do what you love and play sc. He's just saying, as soon as the prize money goes up, 0->250$ 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 $250 instead of 0 and how so many known foreigners are now participating, it becomes a situation where money is an important factor and the Mcdonalds analogy comes in.
As for me, I think its more about prestige than anything, since the prize money adds a new incentive and ups the prestige of the tournament, it attracts people. Thats how I saw the OP.
well its still pretty obvious that top players like playing and practicing and competing in brood war, and they probably were pretty close to joining the league but the lack of any concrete reason to join prevented them. once they got over that hump, plus seeing all the other good players join, made them want to compete and play w/e even more.
surely they aren't idiots, only one of them is going to win the money, most of them are going to come out with no cash.
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P.S. How cool is it to tell your friends, hey I'm so good at video games I just won 250$, what now newbs!!
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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.
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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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The prize for the top player will equate to getting paid $2.50 an hour. Might as well go work at McDonalds?
Sometimes it's worth it to take a cut in pay so you don't have to wear a stupid hat. Then again...
+ Show Spoiler +
+ Show Spoiler +I'm sure you realised 5 minutes after you made your post that your question was dumb ^^ Oh well
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On March 19 2009 04:54 Excello.ChOseN wrote:
P.S. How cool is it to tell your friends, hey I'm so good at video games I just won 250$, 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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