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Well, almost one year ago I wrote this article talking about 'the death of Starcraft'. Was I wrong? Hell yes I was. In fact it turns out that 2009, despite what appearances may seem (WCG is smaller than it has ever been, etc) is probably the best year for Starcraft we've had in a LONG time! I've done a little research and plugged a few numbers and I was absolutely shocked at the outcomes; did you know that not counting local LAN events and WCG's there have been over $21,000 given out as prizes for events this year alone? And with two months left in 2009, there's still room for more, actually at least $6,000 more worth in prizes coming up! Some players have already made out like bandits. Wanna find out who? Want to read some of the other interesting plot lines and stuff that has happened in the foreign scene this year?
Part 1 will cover major tournaments, Part 2 will cover "other events", which is basically anything else amazing that has happened for Starcraft this year, Part 3 will cover upcoming events (tournaments, WCG, etc). Part 1 will be included in this post and the others parts will come in the next few weeks!
A: Covering Tournaments*
+ Show Spoiler +Below are a list of major tournaments and events played so far in 2009, as well as the prize pools and winners for those tournaments. There have been a ton of them! Ansadi Starleague Season 1 $700: + Show Spoiler +
1st: PJ [$400]
2nd: CaStrO [$200]
3rd: IdrA [$100]
+ Qpad gear + Show Spoiler +
1st: Ret [$200]
2nd: CaStrO [$100]
3rd: BRAT_OK [$50]
1st: IdrA [$700]
2nd: Fenix [$200]
3rd: BRAT_OK [$100]
1st: IdrA [$450]
2nd: Ret [$200]
3rd: Dreiven [$100]
1st: White-Ra [$1,100]
2nd: DinOt
3rd: IefNaij / IdrA
1st: IdrA [$5,000]
2nd: White-Ra [$3,000]
3rd: Kor Dude?
1st: Ret [$2,800]
2nd: DIMAGA [$1,400]
3rd: A2 [$570]
1st: Never [$300]
2nd: IefNaij [$150]
3rd: CaStrO [$50]
1st: Mondragon [$450]
2nd: White-Ra [$200]
3rd: Dreiven [$100]
1st: IdrA [$250]
2nd: Yayba [$100]
3rd: XiaOzi [$50]
*more to come* + Show Spoiler +
1st: CaStrO ($450)
2nd: IdrA + Yoon ($300 each)
3rd: White-Ra ($200)
4th: DIMAGA ($150)
... 9 others with $100
* there are other LAN events such as ASUS which I don't have prize information for ** denotes LAN events
B: Fools Makin' Out Like Bandits
+ Show Spoiler +By my account for major events so far there has been a total of $21,700 available in prizes. Note, I am not counting national WCG tournaments or local LAN events... if these events were included the amount would be much higher, the problem with including them is that information on prizes for all these events is not readily available. And The Winners Are: Ranked foreigners in terms of most winnings in 2009: + Show Spoiler +
1st: IdrA - $6,800 total
2nd: White-Ra - $4,500
3rd: Ret - $3,300 total
4th: DIMAGA - $1,550
5th: CaStrO - $800
Clearly the top finishers except for CaStrO made huge money on their LAN performances, the top two (IdrA and White-Ra) were ESWC winners and the next two (Ret and DIMAGA) were Dreamhack winners.
In terms of numbers of tournaments won it is clear IdrA and Ret are up top, with CaStrO and White-Ra trailing them.
Well that's my little recap of 2009 tournaments. I hope you all enjoyed it and stay tuned for the next two parts of this little series. Starcraft is alive and kickin' folks!
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yeah but not TSL in 2009 
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ya, fucking dumbass TL.net !
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Interesting stuff, thanks for putting time into this.
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Australia25596 Posts
Whoa, awesome thread. Super interesting to see the results of all of that stuff. Thanks Xeris.
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+ Show Spoiler +lol $6,800? That's what I made doing some crappy research for 2 months in my uni (excluding free food, transport and housing)
I thought he had made like 15k+ or something
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What I really want to do is compare this to some of the other major games like CoD4, CS, WC3 and see how they compare O_O! I'd venture a guess that SC actually isn't too far behind at least one of these games.
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Wow, cool. That's a lot of money involved.
Idra, foreign Bonjwa FTW!
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8338 Posts
It's really good or really bad depending what perspective you look at it. It's good that there is so much to keep competitive players occupied which prevents the trend of competitive players only practicing for WCG. But it's bad in the sense that for most players, BW is still a horrible way to make money.
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On October 03 2009 07:28 EsX_Raptor wrote:+ Show Spoiler +lol $6,800? That's what I made doing some crappy research for 2 months in my uni (excluding free food, transport and housing)
I thought he had made like 15k+ or something
are you really expecting SC players to be making more money than people doing real jobs? lol...
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On October 03 2009 07:31 Xeris wrote:Show nested quote +On October 03 2009 07:28 EsX_Raptor wrote:+ Show Spoiler +lol $6,800? That's what I made doing some crappy research for 2 months in my uni (excluding free food, transport and housing)
I thought he had made like 15k+ or something are you really expecting SC players to be making more money than people doing real jobs? lol...
Koreans do it....
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8338 Posts
On October 03 2009 07:29 Xeris wrote:
What I really want to do is compare this to some of the other major games like CoD4, CS, WC3 and see how they compare O_O! I'd venture a guess that SC actually isn't too far behind at least one of these games.
But I think they have more money from team sponsors which is a better indicator of incentive.
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On October 03 2009 07:33 randombum wrote:Show nested quote +On October 03 2009 07:31 Xeris wrote:On October 03 2009 07:28 EsX_Raptor wrote:+ Show Spoiler +lol $6,800? That's what I made doing some crappy research for 2 months in my uni (excluding free food, transport and housing)
I thought he had made like 15k+ or something are you really expecting SC players to be making more money than people doing real jobs? lol... Koreans do it....
word
i heard somewhere jaedong making around 200k/contract
o.o!
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On October 03 2009 07:34 Liquid`NonY wrote:Show nested quote +On October 03 2009 07:29 Xeris wrote:
What I really want to do is compare this to some of the other major games like CoD4, CS, WC3 and see how they compare O_O! I'd venture a guess that SC actually isn't too far behind at least one of these games. But I think they have more money from team sponsors which is a better indicator of incentive.
ya I think the major difference with other games is that probably the highest paid foreigners are making <=$400 / month, whereas in other games that's more of a minimum salary, while higher paid players are making upwards of 1k / month.
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On October 03 2009 07:33 randombum wrote:Show nested quote +On October 03 2009 07:31 Xeris wrote:On October 03 2009 07:28 EsX_Raptor wrote:+ Show Spoiler +lol $6,800? That's what I made doing some crappy research for 2 months in my uni (excluding free food, transport and housing)
I thought he had made like 15k+ or something are you really expecting SC players to be making more money than people doing real jobs? lol... Koreans do it....
notice how this is about foreign bw players?
and there are less than 10 koreans that make more money than people who work real jobs anyways.
i can be a janitor and make more than 90% of progamers.
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thanks Xeris!
was a great read. from the community point of view, it has been a great year...as for the financial part, not much change...but 21,5k ain't bad for a 10 year old game.
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Nice to see some people getting paid for all their work.
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On October 03 2009 07:43 s.a.y wrote:
thanks Xeris!
was a great read. from the community point of view, it has been a great year...as for the financial part, not much change...but 21,5k ain't bad for a 10 year old game.
I'm pretty sure from a financial standpoint this year has been the best year since before 2004... 2008 had TSL which was 10k but not much else major, and previous years had nothing. Prior to 2004 my memory is very hazy though
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Its always a sort of niche market and it gets effected severely by the economy. All those companies that wanted to give it a short go poof quickly, while as something like baseball well people still go because its a great past time.
I really wish people would not use the few highly paid starcraft players as a basis for things. I mean don't get me wrong, if you can willingly accept most don't make much at all, but that it is really awesome they get to make a living playing games then that's excellent. Really though that's why its always gonna be younger kids i.e highschool kids roughly in korea because its not really enough to make much of a living on especially if you're a "professional".
The biggest downside to this all is that you're seeing how much money people outside of Korea are making(well Idra is inside) but, if you calculated the hourly rate......yikes.
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+ Show Spoiler +Actually, compared to other sports, even top progamers are payed peanuts. Moon, one of the best WC3 players of all time, is currently the most well-payed progamer (NaDa used to have that title, but he received a major pay cut in his most recent contract). This year, he signed a three year contract worth 700 million South Korean won or 470,000 US Dollars. In comparison, Ronaldinho (currently one of the best football/soccer players) signed a three year contract worth 28 million US Dollars. This is not even mentioning the fact that WeMade essentially got Moon for free (his old team, MyM, went bankrupt), while AC Milan had to buy Ronaldinho off Barcelona for 40 million dollars.
On topic, one can take the fact that there has been so many SC tournaments this year both ways. While it is a good thing that there were many foreigner events this year, one has to wonder whether this is essentially the swan song of the foreign Brood War scene before it dies and is replaced by the SC2 scene. Infact, I would honestly not be suprised if many of these events were motivated by the fact that BW is slowly running it`s course and that the development of the sequel caused a "mini revival" of BW activities in general.
Is StarCraft dead? No, not yet. However, it`s death is not that far off.
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WCS
