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On December 18 2009 03:25 Zoler wrote:Show nested quote +On December 18 2009 03:23 Foucault wrote:On December 17 2009 13:25 Zoler wrote:On December 15 2009 05:58 Kenpachi wrote: Progamers to US. i think thatll help esports grow US? USA has the worst e-sport scene I've ever seen really. Dead or alive and Halo? You kidding me oh my god... err hardly the worst. Quite alot of games are played competitively, maybe not the best games but still. You could make a case for Congo or Zaire, but USA cmon Having african countries in this discussion is just retarded cause they have no e-sport scene AT ALL. You get my point?
I'm tooling with you.
Fact remains though, gaming (consol mostly) in USA isn't bad at all. Competetive PC gaming might be though.
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On December 18 2009 03:26 Foucault wrote:Show nested quote +On December 18 2009 03:23 Zoler wrote:On December 18 2009 02:53 Foucault wrote:On December 17 2009 13:16 Horiz0n wrote: Id guess that anyone that thinks SC 2 will take over the scene immediately will be sadly mistaken, Starcraft has about 10 year of balancing and we still have threads about imbalance in the game. Remember the Orc dominance in wc3? That is what we will have in SC2 until balancing eventually will find itself, but it will take time Yeah, SC isn't balanced. Maps and quite odd strategies makes the game "balanced". I mean how often do you think about the fact that most terrans wall-in against protoss? If terran didn't wall in they would suck against protoss early game, and therefore a quite special strategy is needed to balance out this aspect of the game. So SC in itself is nowhere near balanced, but that's pretty much common sense. So for you a balanced game is when you can do any strategy at any time? Wierd More like that than how SC is now where the strategies are so limited and the only real differences are mostly in how fast you take your gas or if you make 1 or 2 facs/gateways early on. If you can't see how redudant many units are in every matchup, I dunno what to tell you. Strategies clearly have allowed the different races to be on somewhat even foot, at the expense of other strategies that can't be used unless you want to loose horribly.
It's the same in all strategy games. And there is A LOT you can do in SC that not meets the eye of a beginner sadly.
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I'm not sure a large skill gap between the best progamers and the average player is such a great idea. When progamers can study replays, practice mechanics 10 hours a day etc. it maybe creates a stale meta-game with not a lot of diversity even if there's a very high level of play. Perhaps compare it with chess nowadays, with pro's aided by computers that allows them to calculate things far in advance during preperation and gives them an almost definite good/bad value of any move, and 30/40ago years when (imo) there was more mystique around the best players because their playstyle was more understandable for regular people (of course I wasn't alive then, so perhaps it's different) instead of the cold mechanical nature of computer-aided chess.
Many progamers have perfected their play so much nowadays that it's a big innovation when someone just slightly tweaks buildorders, and if it's an improvement you can expect the rest to quickly adjust maybe just a while after. I really think it's more exciting to watch a game that goes as if I myself could have thought of all those moves. Whenever you see something clever to go "oh yeah, of course", and people using more inituitive strategy and risky ways to harrass instead of the overly complex timing windows that require you to first practice not just the game, but also the meta-game for a long time.
Of course, all of this has nothing to do with why starcraft isn't popular or so. For the regular person even WC3:TFT is too hard to understand let alone Starcraft that doesn't even have a userfriendly UI and heroes to distract you with. It's too much like a strategy game to really capture a big audience, but hopefully SC2 will have many modes for people that just want to try out the game without having to think (and worse, try thinking, but failing, and then losing), and honestly, even the practice leagues aren't enough for that. It still has the vaguely hard to understand resource mechanics(including expanding and such), you're still forced to make choices between many units you have no real idea of what to do with exactly. But maybe someone will create an enjoyable 'sub'-version of sc2, with all the difficult parts gone, and just enough of micro and strategic decisions to make that you do feel like you're playing starcraft.
Not to advocate dumbing down regular Starcraft 2, but it's dangerous to overestimate the gaming ability of many peoplem and you do need them interested in actual strategy, and not just drift off to mindless UMS-variants such as tower defenses and whatnot.
A comment about the e-sports structure in Europe.. what it really lacks is something like a chess club, except for gamers. That is to say, internet access is generally good, but that just means people stay at home and don't get involved with other gamers except for their friends, unless they go out to look for internet communities or so. I can think of one gaming café within maybe a 40km radius of where I live and it was just awful and usually abandoned except for a few people playing Guitar Hero or so all the 4-5 times I went there. Perhaps if there would be more gaming at even some semi-regular cafés (and you only need ~10 computers to start with really) and competitions with real prize money surrounding it, and some incentive by corporations or the government, it could work out. (I do think the total lack of support now from the government is holding it back a lot.. even a bit of funding could go a long way -- which is ridiculous considering the million dollar investments for sports that give olympic medals in the Netherlands -- so perhaps if the WCG was an important enough event to even come on the 8 o'clock news?)
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Amazing interview He have right :/
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what about that chinese player in skt, anyone knows?
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Boxer should stop crying because he's washed up. Don't blame the game, "Emperor". The idea that Bisu, Jaedong, and Flash are just robots without any creativity is insulting to their ability, to the competitive scene of SC, and to everyone's intelligence.
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On December 15 2009 06:00 infinity2k9 wrote: I don't understand the complaints of replays. Is he talking about replays just shared among progamers? It's not like you need replays to copy strategies these days and the game would have been just optimized and build order orientated anyway, its just inevitable. Also i have to agree that Starcraft outside of Korea is slowly gaining popularity rather than the opposite, probably thanks to technology in some part where vods of games are more easily obtainable.
Its not like innovative builds are suddenly extinct anyway, we've seen more nukes and queens recently and new interesting play on maps like Outsider all the time. No, you can't just make up random crazy build orders as you go along anymore but it doesn't mean theres no room for clever play at all. Winning a game in a pure better of raw skill is still fun to watch, insane games like Flash Vs Jaedong on Rush Hour 3 of just multitask ability is just as great, if not better, than some player getting surprised by something weird and losing to it.
Jaedong vs Flash on Rush Hour 3 was probably the best game ever. IMO.
Edit: To actually add something to the discussion. I think we should try harder at improving our home grown Starcraft Leagues.
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i swear to god. boxer is getting sexier everyday
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On December 18 2009 04:28 Attritive wrote: Boxer should stop crying because he's washed up. Don't blame the game, "Emperor". The idea that Bisu, Jaedong, and Flash are just robots without any creativity is insulting to their ability, to the competitive scene of SC, and to everyone's intelligence.
Man you didn't read the article at all
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On December 18 2009 04:28 Attritive wrote: Boxer should stop crying because he's washed up. Don't blame the game, "Emperor". The idea that Bisu, Jaedong, and Flash are just robots without any creativity is insulting to their ability, to the competitive scene of SC, and to everyone's intelligence.
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Ban. NO ONE ATTACKS THE EMPEROR BRAAAAAAAGH MY LIFE IS YOURS IM YO HWAN
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51270 Posts
Interesting to hear Boxer's opinions.
Someone said somewhere that it would be pretty cool if the OSL for one of their weeks (with a star lineup) went to China to promote e-Sports. Back in the day, OGN went to places around Korea like Busan, Taebaek etc but as of recently they've kind of stopped.
EDIT: To that guy who posted suggestions; Yes, 2v2 had been tried, but it was removed after teams complained it detracted from the skill of the players. That and it wasn't that great anymore to watch. There wasn't any race restrictions at first. But KeSPA implemented it as fans got bored of non-stop mirrors, I guess. It also kind of made teams develop players of every race (Pure is a great example who shone from the implementation of this rule).
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I read it thoroughly. He's crying throughout the article.
WCG sucked. eSports are dying. All the old fellas are leaving. Replays ruined all the creativity (what about Bisu...?), eStadiums suck (they look pretty nice to me, but oh well). Give us money, G-man! The keyboards weren't made of gold...well not that last part.
I mean, you all read this part, right? "Replay is a big problem too. The retirement of old progamers was influenced by replay. Even when Nal_rA and others pulled off an interesting strategy, copying it a day or two after is possible because of replay. As the old progamers went down, fans left. More effort was needed to hold them, but such effort is insufficient nowadays."
Seriously? I've tried to think of polite ways to comment on this ridiculous trash, but this was all I came up with:
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On December 18 2009 03:28 Foucault wrote:Show nested quote +On December 18 2009 03:25 Zoler wrote:On December 18 2009 03:23 Foucault wrote:On December 17 2009 13:25 Zoler wrote:On December 15 2009 05:58 Kenpachi wrote: Progamers to US. i think thatll help esports grow US? USA has the worst e-sport scene I've ever seen really. Dead or alive and Halo? You kidding me oh my god... err hardly the worst. Quite alot of games are played competitively, maybe not the best games but still. You could make a case for Congo or Zaire, but USA cmon Having african countries in this discussion is just retarded cause they have no e-sport scene AT ALL. You get my point? I'm tooling with you. Fact remains though, gaming (consol mostly) in USA isn't bad at all. Competetive PC gaming might be though. Thats true but I imagine Kenpachi meant he wanted the US e-sports scene to become like Korea. If that happened, it would probably become a global phenomena.
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If it were for me, I'd make Boxer retire and put him in charge of kespa so he can apply his ideas. Having a bunch of morons who's greatest ideas are free agency and disqualifying players if you type ww or ㅈㅈ is condemning the game, and the industry.
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if you look very very closely you can see that boxer is growing a mustache!
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On December 19 2009 12:55 Attritive wrote:I read it thoroughly. He's crying throughout the article. WCG sucked. eSports are dying. All the old fellas are leaving. Replays ruined all the creativity (what about Bisu...?), eStadiums suck (they look pretty nice to me, but oh well). Give us money, G-man! The keyboards weren't made of gold...well not that last part. I mean, you all read this part, right? "Replay is a big problem too. The retirement of old progamers was influenced by replay. Even when Nal_rA and others pulled off an interesting strategy, copying it a day or two after is possible because of replay. As the old progamers went down, fans left. More effort was needed to hold them, but such effort is insufficient nowadays." Seriously? I've tried to think of polite ways to comment on this ridiculous trash, but this was all I came up with:
You know how I know you are a troll?
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On December 18 2009 02:26 Zoler wrote:
USA DOES have the worst e-sport scene, and always has. One of the reasons is that the computer gaming scene is so small in USA compared to the console scene, and there is like no "real" e-sport games for console, and even so 103846583 crappy console games are played just because the sponsors pay.
makes me sick
There are about 2 "real" e-sport games for the PC and one of them is basically shit for viewers.
Also, mindlessly dismissing consoles out of some nerd rage (apparently it "makes you sick") is retarded. Virtua Fighter, Guilty Gear, SSBM etc. are all fun, competitive "e-sport" possibilities.
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Boxer claiming that the fans are leaving kind of doesn't go well with the recent winners of MSL Ro 16 commenting on how the crowd that day had been the biggest they'd ever seen. O.o
Another fun thing that I think they could do is allow progamers to surprise!change their race on the day of the match. Right now, players who want to play a race other than their standard one need to register this with Kespa 2 weeks in advance, but I think it would add serious entertainment value if they could just change their race randomly and throw their opponent completely off. Of course, this isn't feasible for most progamers as the majority of them aren't nearly as good with their B-race as they are with their major one, but I guess that would be the prize for seriously throwing off the opponent and effectively ruining the strategy they had been planning on using for the match-up. :-)
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Hi, guys. I've been reading TL.net for years now, but this is my first post and it's a very long one. This is just my own personal view of things and of course I could be completely off base, but feel free to disagree or completely ignore if you want, just please don't flame me as we're all entitled to our own views and interpretations... ___________________________________
I would like to start off by stating that I don't believe that pro-gaming will ever get to a point (at least not in the foreseeable future) where it could be considered a real "career" or a worthy life goal by the standards of most of the world. Of course this doesn't mean that we can't improve it significantly or that we could make it more respectable and viable than it is today.
When we talk about pro-gaming, it is most often compared to sports such as basketball or baseball where you have athletes that sell entertainment. While it's true that in essence, there's little difference between being a professional Starcraft player and being a player in the MLB, there's a big difference when you look at the game itself.
While the popular video game of the day will change from month to month or year to year, baseball remains more or less the same from decade to decade with minimal changes here and there to the rules. The same applies to just about every sport out there from basketball to football. We have young children who dream of being a professional baseball player and they will train from their youth with the hopes of one day making it to the MLB. And despite the fact that most parents will STILL discourage a child from trying to become a professional athlete, there is at least SOME solace in knowing that baseball will still be there 10 years from now should your child choose to go down that route. Keep in mind that pro-gaming requires a tremendous investment in time and effort. If you become a pro-gamer young, you're probably giving up your college education as well as a lot of time that could be spent training for a more stable profession. This is all fine and well if you make it, I guess, but then how long will you be good and more importantly, how long will the game be around competitively? Let's say that the game is popular enough to support reasonable player salaries for 4 years, is there some guarantee that you'll be good enough to be a professional for the next popular game? It would be like having to switch from football to baseball to hockey. While some people can do it, most cannot and being good at baseball is of little help if you have to go play soccer 4 years down the road.
Unfortunately in the current gaming scene, there is no game out there that we KNOW will still be around competitively and on a large scale 10 years from today or even 5 years from today. Any pro-gamer will admit this if you ask them. It is this instability that is at the heart of most of pro-gaming's troubles. Because of this uncertainty, the mentality of much of the industry becomes "Try to make as much money as you can WHILE you can and then get out." whereas the mentality of a baseball team would revolve around building a solid foundation and looking at the franchise as a long-term investment.
Unfortunately a lot of the complaints I read regarding the fan experience is a direct result of this "short-term plan". If you look at franchises like the New York Yankees or Manchester United, the fan experience is not something that sprung up overnight. It was created and carefully developed over years, if not decades. In sports franchises, there is a legacy and it is that legacy that incites emotion. Without the emotion and excitement, viewing a sport becomes a very dull experience for most people. I doubt most people who watch a Starcraft match care tremendously one way or the other as to who wins. I've personally not seen many fights break out over the result of a OSL match or because someone might believe Boxer is a loser. Granted, it's great that we can be civil, but it also probably means that there's an emotional disconnect between the industry and the fans be it between the fans and the teams or the fans and the players and most of the sponsoring corporations probably don't believe that creating such a connection is a worthwhile investment in relation to the longevity of the game. This is why you see cheap plastic seats instead of more expensive, permanent seating and this is why you see a small studio instead of a larger arena or stadium.
In the case of Starcraft, I often see people criticizing the entities involved for being "short-sighted" and failing to take the measures to promote Starcraft across the globe, but it's not a matter of short-sightedness. The fact is that Starcraft is a 10-year-old game that has a relatively small community of people that play it, much less care about it when compared with many newer games. It's well past its prime and with Starcraft 2 in development, it's probably a game that's slowly on its way out whether we like it or not. If you add onto this the ridiculous domination of the Korean pro-gamers in Starcraft, it tends to have a way of turning people off and making it all the more difficult to promote on the international stage. To be honest, Starcraft was an anomaly and at the most critical point in its development as an eSport, I don't think anyone at the time could have even fathomed the success the game would have even on the domestic stage, much less thinking toward the international stage. It's certainly a shame that the opportunity was squandered, but I don't think we can really fault anyone for it simply because no one had the vision to see its potential.
I take Boxer's interview as an attempt to look ahead BEYOND Starcraft and try to see how we can take the lessons we've learned from the Starcraft pro-gaming experience in order to create a truly viable professional eSports experience. I love Starcraft as much as the next person, but it's important to see the reality that it's currently a dying game rather than harboring any delusions. What's important is what we do now as a gaming community and what we as that community demand from both the game developers and also those who are controlling the direction of the pro-gaming industry. Unless we can accept certain realities about how gaming is perceived and why exactly it hasn't grown more despite the fact that competitive gaming on the amateur level is much larger than it was 10 years ago, we will not be able to address the issues that are preventing pro-gaming from being recognized as a serious long-term investment and a worthwhile pursuit.
I don't want to anyone to get me wrong. I do not believe Starcraft is a dead game nor do I harbor some belief that newer games are always superior to older games. I still play Starcraft today largely because I believe it to be a better game than all the newer RTS games I've played. Unfortunately, money (and hence, progress) isn't always invested and allocated based on merits just like people don't always see that better graphics don't make for a better game. This is a reality that is important for us to accept and work to our advantage in the long run. Starcraft 2 will probably be the greatest opportunity yet to create a professional international RTS gaming community on a truly large scale (provided that the game doesn't absolutely suck, of course). We've seen the developmental path Starcraft has taken in South Korea. We are all aware of the good and bad points. Instead of worrying so much about the short term investment that Starcraft has now become, let's take what we've learned and push Starcraft 2 to even greater heights. And I've every faith that Starcraft 2 can and will be even greater so long as we want it to.
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