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+ Show Spoiler +On April 26 2010 09:49 Thrill wrote:
K, here's the deal right. If you want ESPORTS to be a small quirky section of the community aspect of a game - you do what Blizz does.
A pretty good example is WoW. Several million players who are involved in competitive arena play. The interest-group is clearly there. The money is clearly there. So - with Blizzard at the wheel, what do they do? They charge a HUGE fee for hosting tournaments which has caused MLG to buckle and ESL to severely cut down their WoW coverage. The WoW stream of the MLG events was by far the most watched and most popular but Blizz was all like "we'll do this our way".
If this localized ladder bullshit sounds familiar - it's because it is. Sure there were no divisions on the WoW tournament realms, but it was the exact same format - online ladder, localized lan qualifiers, finals at Blizzcon. In Blizzards mind - that's EXACTLY where they want ESPORTS to be at. I think the proceeds from the ladder fees alone covered the cash prizes by far and Blizzcon basically pays for itself since demand for tickets outweighs supply.
Let's face it - in an ideal world, Blizzard would pour money into competitive play rather than into maintaining servers for casuals to play their few weekly games. In this world - the real one, Blizzard is not what ESPORTs need at the wheel. As a game developer, Blizz does fine - but in order to inspire growth of the ESPORT scene - we need some greedy men in suits with old-money connections and a proper business degree.
Blizzard wants to keep ESPORTs around as a self-promotion tool, a toothless pet dog that wags its tail every now and then and shows the world that their games are actually connecting people in RL. The most we can hope for is a GOM TV season like 'The Named' featuring StarCraft II instead of WoW which a few thousand foreigners will loyally watch. Korea won't care - for them it will be like coming from a World Cup final to bushleague.
Blizzard may be a game developer, but they sure aren't a community developer. Battle.net 2.0? More like DivideTheWorldIntoManagableSlices 2.0. In this case i'll have to side with Gordon Gekko - "Greed is Good.". However when greed turns into a controlling monopoly - everything just goes straight into the drain.
i love you
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i hope that they will find a good partner
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Blizzard is completely within their rights in creating the conditions under which their product is used, but that in no way means KeSPA should accept terms that aren't viable to their operations. If Blizzard is asking for a return on matches produced on their IP, you can't deny them the right, even if it's not in the interest of the viewer, as secondary parties will be deterred having to go through Blizzard and their currently unknown but potentially deterring conditions.
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Russian Federation405 Posts
On April 26 2010 10:47 Waxangel wrote:Show nested quote +On April 26 2010 07:54 nonduc wrote:On April 26 2010 07:35 Waxangel wrote:On April 26 2010 07:33 nonduc wrote:On April 26 2010 07:26 Waxangel wrote:On April 26 2010 07:21 nonduc wrote:On April 26 2010 07:12 Waxangel wrote:On April 26 2010 06:33 nonduc wrote:On April 26 2010 06:06 Waxangel wrote:I think people should keep something very important things in mind when they assess what KeSPA has done for e-sports. OnGameNet and MBCGame were running Starcraft tourneys perfectly fine for four years before KeSPA came into place. All of the early pioneering and laying of the foundations was done by the TV companies, the very early Pro-game teams (no big corporate sponsors for most of them, many of them were really quite poor), and the progamers who stuck through it when there was barely any money. After it became apparent that E-sports had a chance of having a viable mid-term future, KeSPA came into play. KeSPA is a strange organization by the way, it's more accurate to call it the "E-sports Team OWNER's association," as it's controlled by the interests of the pro-game teams (the NFL, MLB, NBA are ostensible different, tho one could say they cater to the owners to a fault). KeSPA's primary creation is the pro-league, not exactly the most original idea, but part of their vision to make Starcraft a team centric sport. The only league they actually operate is the proleague, the OSL and MSL are just tournaments they officially recognize. Five day proleague weeks is part of their strategy to make proleague the important league (and in many ways it is). KeSPA's gutsiest and most reckless move was when they tried to sell the broadcasting rights of their Starcraft leagues. Essentially, they were making OGN and MBCGame pay to broadcast the content they had created without KeSPA's help years ago, and without any design to pay Blizzard any royalties for the direct profit they would be making off their game. Anyway, some kind of organization was always going to be needed, but KeSPA is a very incompetent and selfish incarnation  You are wrong. KeSPA started back in 2000 — in August 2001 was the first KPGA Tour and the first KPGA ranking was published in November 2001. (KeSPA was named KPGA up to 2002.) KPGA can barely be called the previous incarnation of KeSPA, enough so that in practice it's irrelevant. In 2002 Korea Pro Game Association (KPGA) was just renamed in Korea e-Sports Association (KeSPA).  I did say in practice :o Is KeSPA rankins started in November 2001 (when KeSPA was named as KPGA)? Yes, it is. Your “in practice” is irrelevant to practice. In practice KPGA and KeSPA was the same thing with two names. Er, if I reword it, then it would be that they're the same in theory, but very different in effect. In your last post your wording is bad too. The Association has a long history with many achievements and also failures — there is no “the Association in theory” and no “the Association in effect”. No, in theory they would KPGA and KeSPA are the same organization since the founding. In effect, early KPGA was a small organization that lent its name to gembc/mbcgame who was looking for a name to lend itself legitimacy, although it did perform the function of handing out progaming licenses from that early date. KeSPA after the chair passed to SKTelecom is the organization that started pro-league and represented the team owner's interests almost exclusively, while trying to sell OGN and MBCGame the rights to broadcast their own product. Whatever, the semantics don't interest me as long as you seem to get my point.
I get your point — you cannot treat a long KPGA/KeSPA history properly and that’s why you use wrong data, terms, words, etc.
E.g. you wrote “KeSPA after the chair passed to SKTelecom… the rights to broadcast their own product” — that passing was in 2008, the broadcasting rights incindent was in early 2007, the united under KeSPA Proleague started in 2005 (SKY Proleague 2005 Round 1). The history of KeSPA is more complicated than your description of it.
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On April 26 2010 10:29 Pekkz wrote:
Its extreamly delicate issue. Without korean bw scene, starcraft would died out long time ago and there wouldnt have been as much hype for sc2 as it is.
Outside of korea, how much hype do you think can actually be attributed to the pro scene? most of the hype has come from gaming magazines/websites based on the quality and popularity of the wow, diablo and starcraft series. I really think the pro scene only represents a small fraction of blizzard's overall hype. Pro scene schmo scene, I know when I heard sc2 announced I was excited because of how awesome blizzard's other games have been, and I think this would have been true for most people.
Even without the pro scene blizzard games have all been popular in korea, I think there still would be a lot of hype for sc2 in korea. Arguably, without this 18+ bullshit and KeSPA scandals and whatever else goes down sc2 might have been better off in korea without the pro scene.
On April 26 2010 09:11 vek wrote:
Yeah I just don't understand the point of divisions and the fact the ladder is not global... is it to make people feel good about being 3rd in random platinum division #27 rather than 3074th in the world? So many decisions just make no sense to me...
I'll join you in hoping for iCCup 2.0 =D
If you look at day9's blizzard HQ visit they said that the people at the top of platinum will be able to see their global ranking.
I kind of agree with their approach to other divisions though. Is it really useful for a guy in gold division to see that hes #55,032, or that he is approximately half way up the ladder of his gold division? Are the divisions comparable? is half way up gold ladder in gold#3 similar to half way up the ladder in gold #7? I think that's important to think about too.
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KeSpa is only being that way to monopolize the entertainment industry. Giving blizzard incentives would decrease their revenue and greatly affect the economy in that a % of their money pool is going out of the country.
Though I agree that KeSpA needs to acknowledge Blizzard in order to globalize e-Sports.
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On April 26 2010 06:33 nonduc wrote:Show nested quote +On April 26 2010 06:06 Waxangel wrote:I think people should keep something very important things in mind when they assess what KeSPA has done for e-sports. OnGameNet and MBCGame were running Starcraft tourneys perfectly fine for four years before KeSPA came into place. All of the early pioneering and laying of the foundations was done by the TV companies, the very early Pro-game teams (no big corporate sponsors for most of them, many of them were really quite poor), and the progamers who stuck through it when there was barely any money. After it became apparent that E-sports had a chance of having a viable mid-term future, KeSPA came into play. KeSPA is a strange organization by the way, it's more accurate to call it the "E-sports Team OWNER's association," as it's controlled by the interests of the pro-game teams (the NFL, MLB, NBA are ostensible different, tho one could say they cater to the owners to a fault). KeSPA's primary creation is the pro-league, not exactly the most original idea, but part of their vision to make Starcraft a team centric sport. The only league they actually operate is the proleague, the OSL and MSL are just tournaments they officially recognize. Five day proleague weeks is part of their strategy to make proleague the important league (and in many ways it is). KeSPA's gutsiest and most reckless move was when they tried to sell the broadcasting rights of their Starcraft leagues. Essentially, they were making OGN and MBCGame pay to broadcast the content they had created without KeSPA's help years ago, and without any design to pay Blizzard any royalties for the direct profit they would be making off their game. Anyway, some kind of organization was always going to be needed, but KeSPA is a very incompetent and selfish incarnation You are wrong. KeSPA started back in 2000 — in August 2001 was the first KPGA Tour and the first KPGA ranking was published in November 2001. (KeSPA was named KPGA up to 2002.)
@nonduc: Waxangel is one of the most knowledgeable of the Korean progaming scene here, so no offence to you but please carefully read his post again, or perhaps print it out and stick it on your wall - cos I don't think you get his points (which are FACTS that everyone needs to know before having an opinion on this KeSPA v Blizzard issue).
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On April 26 2010 06:58 dNo_O wrote:Show nested quote +On April 26 2010 06:19 Xenocide_Knight wrote:On April 25 2010 12:54 SoLaR[i.C] wrote:
This is PERFECT for a fairly casual player such as myself who doesn't give two shits about the pro scene in Korea. Kespa acted unreasonably and Blizzard responded in the way they should have - by pulling out completely.
We'll end up with more English language tournaments and commentating. Sounds great to me. What are you, stupid? I keep checking your post count and expect it to be 1 or something.. What on earth have you been posting about all this time? the pro scene in Korea IS the starcraft scene. They are the pillar that all foreign scenes lean on. The moment you pull out the Korean scene, everything will collapse. Korea is the ONLY place where starcraft and e-sports was/is a legit enterprise. If they, as the precedent, fail, then i guarantee e-sports will fail. what about europe where many players in other games make 50k+ a year in salary? ever heard of sk or fnatic or mym or mouz? hell eg 1.6 players make a decent salary in the US.
well first off i'm talking about starcraft
and second, I have heard of them but it's not even comparable. True, there is a very small niche where you can make money from e-sports outside of korea but it's not a marketable business.
Where are the huge company sponsored teams? Where are the mym toothpaste commercials? Where is the official fnatic credit card? Why isn't the new up and coming pop group performing at the 200,000+ LIVE audience at the finals?
The progaming scene outside of korea is chump change. It's not large enough to command any influence or respect from big corporations.
Also, you have to realize, Korea is THE largest progamming scene in the world. If they go down, every single sponsor for any e-sports in the future will always think "oh hey, remember in korea? this e-sports thing was getting pretty big man, but in the end, it still failed. Maybe we should reconsider sponsoring progamming"
Seriously, if you "don't give two shits about the pro scene in korea", then go visit some other site. TL is NOT the place for you
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I don't care who wins this fist-fight, i just know e-Sports in general will suffer because of it.
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On April 26 2010 06:58 dNo_O wrote:Show nested quote +On April 26 2010 06:19 Xenocide_Knight wrote:On April 25 2010 12:54 SoLaR[i.C] wrote:
This is PERFECT for a fairly casual player such as myself who doesn't give two shits about the pro scene in Korea. Kespa acted unreasonably and Blizzard responded in the way they should have - by pulling out completely.
We'll end up with more English language tournaments and commentating. Sounds great to me. What are you, stupid? I keep checking your post count and expect it to be 1 or something.. What on earth have you been posting about all this time? the pro scene in Korea IS the starcraft scene. They are the pillar that all foreign scenes lean on. The moment you pull out the Korean scene, everything will collapse. Korea is the ONLY place where starcraft and e-sports was/is a legit enterprise. If they, as the precedent, fail, then i guarantee e-sports will fail. what about europe where many players in other games make 50k+ a year in salary? ever heard of sk or fnatic or mym or mouz? hell eg 1.6 players make a decent salary in the US.
You really don't want to bring Counter-Strike into this. CS has huge problems with money, with players being cheated out of winnings by organisations and tournaments. If anything the CS scene shows what happens when you don't have a body like KeSPA to regulate.
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On April 26 2010 12:42 J1.au wrote:Show nested quote +On April 26 2010 06:58 dNo_O wrote:On April 26 2010 06:19 Xenocide_Knight wrote:On April 25 2010 12:54 SoLaR[i.C] wrote:
This is PERFECT for a fairly casual player such as myself who doesn't give two shits about the pro scene in Korea. Kespa acted unreasonably and Blizzard responded in the way they should have - by pulling out completely.
We'll end up with more English language tournaments and commentating. Sounds great to me. What are you, stupid? I keep checking your post count and expect it to be 1 or something.. What on earth have you been posting about all this time? the pro scene in Korea IS the starcraft scene. They are the pillar that all foreign scenes lean on. The moment you pull out the Korean scene, everything will collapse. Korea is the ONLY place where starcraft and e-sports was/is a legit enterprise. If they, as the precedent, fail, then i guarantee e-sports will fail. what about europe where many players in other games make 50k+ a year in salary? ever heard of sk or fnatic or mym or mouz? hell eg 1.6 players make a decent salary in the US. You really don't want to bring Counter-Strike into this. CS has huge problems with money, with players being cheated out of winnings by organisations and tournaments. If anything the CS scene shows what happens when you don't have a body like KeSPA to regulate.
more importantly when you pan the camera over the crowd, americans won't hide their faces while at the same time trying to display a message.
if we don't have that then what's the point of even watching esports?
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KeSPA is just fucking themselves over. They could be making themselves a powerful ally to Blizzard, but instead they refuse to cooperate with the makers of the game they've been banking off of for years. If Blizzard and KeSPA worked together, E-sports in general could flourish and grow a lot better. But KeSPA cares more about $little green pieces of paper$ more than they care about E-Sports.
Blizzard doesn't need KeSPA to make SC2 big. It would definitely help things develop better in the Korean scene, but KeSPA doesn't seem to accept the fact that they aren't critical to SC2 being successful. Whether KeSPA likes it or not, Koreans WILL play StarCraft 2, there WILL be tournaments, and people WILL make money off these tournaments.
It's too bad, KeSPA really could have used a deal with Blizz to make their reputation better.
On second thought. Blizzard also doesn't really care about E-Sports. It's just all about money in general. Blizzard's definitely going to make money off SC2, but not as much as if this deal had gone through.
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I agree that KeSPA has help organize BW and made it into the competitive scene in Korea that it is today, their greed helped in the organization.
Blizzard wants to run things their own way. KeSPA doesn't want to be fucked over and forced into a situation where, if SCII doesn't catch on, KeSPA gets screwed royally while Blizzard just whistles contently and hosts their own tournaments.
By a business perspective KeSPA is doing the right thing, but if both companies are going to demand being in charge, it just wont work. I hope blizzard is able to find another partner, but I also hope they don't destroy the BW scene as I love it dearly, and hope it continues even while SCII is hot.
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On April 26 2010 09:49 Thrill wrote:
K, here's the deal right. If you want ESPORTS to be a small quirky section of the community aspect of a game - you do what Blizz does.
A pretty good example is WoW. Several million players who are involved in competitive arena play. The interest-group is clearly there. The money is clearly there. So - with Blizzard at the wheel, what do they do? They charge a HUGE fee for hosting tournaments which has caused MLG to buckle and ESL to severely cut down their WoW coverage. The WoW stream of the MLG events was by far the most watched and most popular but Blizz was all like "we'll do this our way".
If this localized ladder bullshit sounds familiar - it's because it is. Sure there were no divisions on the WoW tournament realms, but it was the exact same format - online ladder, localized lan qualifiers, finals at Blizzcon. In Blizzards mind - that's EXACTLY where they want ESPORTS to be at. I think the proceeds from the ladder fees alone covered the cash prizes by far and Blizzcon basically pays for itself since demand for tickets outweighs supply.
Let's face it - in an ideal world, Blizzard would pour money into competitive play rather than into maintaining servers for casuals to play their few weekly games. In this world - the real one, Blizzard is not what ESPORTs need at the wheel. As a game developer, Blizz does fine - but in order to inspire growth of the ESPORT scene - we need some greedy men in suits with old-money connections and a proper business degree.
Blizzard wants to keep ESPORTs around as a self-promotion tool, a toothless pet dog that wags its tail every now and then and shows the world that their games are actually connecting people in RL. The most we can hope for is a GOM TV season like 'The Named' featuring StarCraft II instead of WoW which a few thousand foreigners will loyally watch. Korea won't care - for them it will be like coming from a World Cup final to bushleague.
Blizzard may be a game developer, but they sure aren't a community developer. Battle.net 2.0? More like DivideTheWorldIntoManagableSlices 2.0. In this case i'll have to side with Gordon Gekko - "Greed is Good.". However when greed turns into a controlling monopoly - everything just goes straight into the drain.
![[image loading]](http://img697.imageshack.us/img697/2313/monstersinc.png)
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Kespa needs to develop their own RTS game.
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blizzard should just say "screw you korea" and start funding some local american esports. we can import all of the korean players for the win.
/sarcasm
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I'm trying to sift through the pages...
are there any links to the negotiations? I have no idea why Kespa is being so stubborn when they clearly have no rights to the IP
what are they saying to Blizzard?
EDIT: does anyone find it strange how similar Kespa and Kefka are?
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So what exactly are Blizzard's IP rights? They sell game disks, to which they own the copyright, and they have Battle.net, to which it is a privilege to use. But how does buying legitimate copies of SCBW, playing on a LAN, and televising the results violate any of Blizzard's rights?
Maybe it doesn't and that is the reason SCII will not support lan. They'd either have to use bnet (and pay Blizzard to do so) or hack the game which is illegal.
I'd recommend legally purchasing the disk, but hacking it so that you don't have to agree to the TOS to install it. That way you honor their copyright but perhaps get around all the BS about how you can use what you just purchased.
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On April 26 2010 13:55 tomatriedes wrote:
Kespa needs to develop their own RTS game.
I think this is what would happen in a worst-case scenario. Didn't they clone another game before for Korean ESPORTS?
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Zurich15325 Posts
On April 26 2010 14:19 fight_or_flight wrote:
So what exactly are Blizzard's IP rights? They sell game disks, to which they own the copyright, and they have Battle.net, to which it is a privilege to use. But how does buying legitimate copies of SCBW, playing on a LAN, and televising the results violate any of Blizzard's rights?
Nobody really knows, that's part of the problem. Actually going to court would be a huge risk for either side which is why we are seeing all these petty maneuvers like giving out free betas vs making SC2 18+ rated.
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EPT
