EPTSummary of the Present
There are two types of leagues esports has brought to us:
1) Team leagues. The Korean league is of course the best known; probably the second most stable team league is the NA Collegiate Starleague. Format varies from a series of games by different players to all-kill formats to anything in between (and the inspired hybrid of Dream League which everybody needs to adopt, seriously). But the basic principle is always the same: two teams go head-to-head in a BoX series.
2) Individual leagues. These are also called starleagues, a term originally just a hype naming by MBC and OGN but now inherited by us all... MSL, OSL, TSL, NASL, GSL. These start with qualifier brackets and/or groups and end with a bracket. Most modern leagues are single-elimination in the bracket (MLG is the standout exception) but this hasn't always been the case.
Additionally, there are basically three schedule/venue systems that are practiced.
1) The most basic format is the LAN. This can be very local (DC lans), or a big deal (MLG, Dreamhack). Players come in to a location and play an entire tournament straight through over 1-3 days (though I suppose it could go longer). In RTS this is (almost?) exclusively used by individual leagues.
2) On the other end is the tournament played almost entirely online, such as the TSL, NASL, IPL, CSL, the team IPL. These usually take place over several weeks if not months.
3) Finally, and most similarly to other sports, are tournaments played on location over a longer period. To my knowledge these are non-existent outside Korea, but: MSL, OSL, SPL.
Finally, there are different levels of organization driving things. This is much harder to classify: in Korean BW the teams and KeSPA (at least seem to) reign supreme even though the TV stations and sponsors provide the money. As far as I can tell, Korean SC2 has inherited this team focus, but without KeSPA GOM itself takes on that role. In MLG the final say clearly rests with the league; while players wear team tags in game because of course they do MLG doesn't require anything and in fact holds a huge open bracket. I am not sure but I believe this same situation holds true in most of the Western scene, when tournaments aren't held strictly on invite. Perhaps some players can illumine what teams require from them?
Similarly, in Korea the team provides necessities (food, shelter, practice space and partners), while in the West we usually have some combination of the event and the individual players (with how much help from teams I am not sure) providing their own.
The Korean Advantage
South Korea is a fairly small country: a trip from one end to the other takes perhaps six or seven hours. Furthermore, the country is dominated by Seoul, the capital: Busan is really the only competition at all for an urban center (and this is almost like comparing DC and Baltimore). Adding to the situation, Korea has no immediate neighbors as affluent (Japan and China require air travel) to challenge Seoul's dominance. All of this allowed the Korean eSports scene to localize in Seoul in a way not, for the most part, practical in other countries. The two main broadcast studios are maybe 25 minutes apart by subway and I gather most of the teams' facilities are similarly close. (In an extreme example, STX SouL has a small office/ practice room on the same corridor as the MBCGame studio). Together with Korean culture and work ethic, this created a very close atmosphere which, probably by 2001, produced the best progamers in the world - and Korea has never looked back.
Seoul was esports mecca, and no one can deny it. Although the old hands accuse the SC2 nubs of slacking off (and some of them admit it), in large part Korea has retained this advantage in the new era.
I think it is a universally accepted thesis that, while Western esports may have temporarily have caught up in SC2 since the game is new, in order to maintain that equality the West must adopt Korean methods (if not Korean extremism) or find even better ones.
The Global Challenge
However, SC2 has brought a truly global flair to esports (despite the handicaps of single region play): the top ten ELO from TLPD are from Ukraine, Korea, Sweden, France, Poland, Russia, USA, Canada; another ten adds Taiwan, Germany, and Serbia.
Continuing to localize in Seoul is impossible. If in three years Seoul is still our hub, SC2 will have faded from the West as quickly as the first game. There may be a higher percentage of "foreign" players on Korean teams than we see in BroodWar, but the essentials will not have changed.
One Sign of Hope
One often-forgotten nugget of history is that the professional (American) football scene largely grew out of the college and amateur game. This is of course a drastic oversimplification, but the college game was significant for some 20 years at least before any professional league formed. A little math will show that this is about the right time for players to grow up and start having kids... and raise them on the game. It's not at all unusual for Korean crowds at this point (10 years in!) to include young kids - and we see similar things in the West (hi miniWheat). In short, the demand for professional esports is likely to grow, not shrink - our favorite game may not end up being The One, but the day is coming when some good game will.
Power of Association
What is lacking, though, outside of Korea where things are dominated by KeSPA/GOM depending on the game, is an actual organization of teams. fnatic and EG and TL and mouz and half a hundred other "teams" all exist, but no league or association has been formed... or seems likely to be. Partly this is due to Blizzard's insistence on control (although they have made no move to organize, either), but mainly the problem is that there is no localization.
In order for SC2 to continue - or esports in general - it is necessary to maintain the highest quality of play, and therefore training, possible. Even though this is a computer game we are talking about, the example of other sports and the Korean scene shows us that it is absolutely necessary to localize in order to create this kind of training environment.
We are seeing the creation of supposedly Western leagues at an unprecedented rate, from MLG to NASL to IPL, but none of them are in fact local. The fans want to see MC or idra at Dreamhack (say), so they're invited. MLG has, apparently, no barriers to entry whatsoever - maybe you need an NA account.
GOM is doing its best to satisfy this new inclusive spirit, but is still being criticized for demanding too much and not understanding the difficulties their localized format poses to Western gamers. Very few people are looking at this as mainly a problem with the Western scene, but it's impossible to avoid the conclusion that by Korean standards, Western players are amateurs, with little team discipline: they may be equally good at the moment but institutionally speaking every foreigner allowed to compete in the GSL without joining a Korean (or Korea-based) team is receiving a huge exception. This isn't even as close a comparison as MLS to Europe's A leagues; this is like ManU allowing somebody from one of the Detroit amateur teams to try out. Take the worst Korean team, and send them up against the best foreign team (dignitas? EG? mouz?) in a Bo7 or Bo9, and I would wager the Korean team wins 65% of the time, maybe more often than that.
Implementing Localization
The long and the short of this is that Western esports needs a league.
I have talked at length about "localization", or bringing things together: teams practicing in the same place, and operation in the same league - like any other sport. I believe this is the future of esports, Western as well as Korean, and I look forward to 2025 and seeing the Houston SlayerS play the Boston Flash for the US title.
But in the meantime we probably have to start by creating stable leagues and associations of teams that operate primarily online. This is unfortunately handicapped by SC2's server failings, both lack of cross-server play and lag when play cross-continents on a server.
And no, the IPL and TSL are not sufficient for this purpose. They're fantastic presentations, and I hope they continue and grow - but as I mentioned before in this article, for stability and drawing viewers you need teams. Not some 3 week showmatch league like we've had so far, but an actual league with a reasonably long season and a bunch of teams: in short, proleague on a Western scale: or at least CSL on a professional one. What Western esports desperately needs is stability, and team leagues provide that: the chance for everybody to play; a reason for the Jaehoons of the world to keep practicing.
I want to answer one possible objection immediately. It's unquestionably true that, as a rule, Starleague play provides the pinnacle of play in BroodWar and probably will continue to do so in SC2. Why insist on leagues and associations and team play then if it likely won't be as good?
The first reason is historical. esports as we know it has thrived on team play, and it creates unrivaled spectacle - especially in WL or Dream League formats - of its own kind.
The second is stability - which many are coming to realize is the most needed thing for esports to come into its own. I hope we don't import the grueling Korean always-playing-twice-a-week-plus-starleagues when we get our leagues off the ground. But when you know that "this is BW season" and that the Northern European Esports Association is going to be broadcasting somebody playing every Thursday, Friday, and Saturday - that's when you get people tuning in even when they forget who's playing and their own team lost last night.
