The world's first military progaming team Air Force Ace is disbanding. The reason is said to be because Star League is coming to an end after 13 years.
On the 23rd according to the Air Force, Ace is no longer accepting new players and once the current team members are discharged from the military the team will naturally be disbanded.
Air Force Ace was founded on April 2007. At the time, 4.5 million copies of Starcraft had been sold in Korea alone accounting for around half of it's worldwide sales. This popular reception allowed the Air Force to prepare to form Air Force Ace at the end of 2006 timed with SlayerSBoxer's enlistment and by April 2007 the team was officially established with 5 players.
21 progamers including players such as Yellow, Reach, and Anytime have spent time in Air Force Ace. Progamers in Ace were drafted as Air Force computer specialists and served as war game testers at their central computer center. The activities of the progamers also made it into the Guinness World Records in 2009. They were introduced as the world's first military progaming team in the Guinness World Records Gamer's Edition.
However the rise of smartphones and social network services has caused progaming to decline. This caused the Air Force to come to the decision of disbanding their progaming team. There are currently 11 players left in the team and once the last officer who was drafted on March 5th is discharged in March 2014, the team will disband.
Air Force representatives stated "Ace had a role in improving the image of the military to youths however due to shifts in the gaming industry we had no choice but to disband the team".
They are not disbanding immediately, but when their last player finishes their military service
Edit: Smartphones killing esports. A possible look into the minds of the Air Force.
On July 23 2012 11:11 JunkkaGom wrote: Let me explain the matter with smartphones and SNS. There has been numerous articles about this recently in Korea.
Back in 90's and 2000's the trend was to enjoy gaming together. Together I mean as going to PC bang and play with friends side by side. My generation is the generation that went to arcade and played console together with friends.
The trend now is much more individual. Now every person has their own PC and smartphones. Because of internet and various appliances, one can be connected with others without actually physically being together.
The trend is also clear in PCbangs, which originally started out as a place to play game 'together' with others. In my days we went to Pcbang after school and played team game of BW or Counter Strike, etc. Now the game is more diverse. You see more and more people who come alone and play game of their own taste. Because of better technology more people play game at their home. It is no longer a neccesity to play and enjoy same game as others as you can still be part of the 'gang' and feel you belong somewhere through SNS and smartphone. Gaming is no longer considered group activity but rather an individual hobby.
Will people still go to PC bang and play games with friends? Sure, but they can also stay home and meet them on internet. Will people still go to gaming event to watch pro gamers play? Sure, but they can also stay home and watch on internet, while chatting with friends. Enjoying game as being part of physical group is no longer the big thing.
This is the reason why people(or so these articles claim) that while eSports will definitely grow it will be difficult to see a single game dominating entire population and creating the phenomenon BW did. The scene needs to evolve to meet the demand of viewers that are becoming more and more diverse. One can no longer make huge investment in single game and expect great success as easily as before.
Everything that is bw related is crumbling down ... I wonder what's next ?. Than again I have already seen the worst to come nothing is surprising any more.
.......... Then why did they invest in sc2 hardware if they were going to disband o.0? I thought they would either not play starting this season or continue to transition.
Oh WOW! this is unbelievable, I'm really upset that they aren't going to atleast go into SC2, this is really sad day!! ...I hope they change they're mind and come into SC2, even though I am sad to see them go from BW. Air force fighting~
The only military progaming team in the world... such a tragedy that such an establishment is disappearing. There'll never be anything quite like Airforce ACE again :[
I must admit this surprises me. After all, there are a bunch of SC2 pros who could do military service in the next few years, and once through this transition period I would assume Ace could recruit them. Imagine Airforce ACE Nada.
Sigh. When news came that KeSPA was transitioning, I kinda saw hope that Ganzi, Oz and a couple of others planning to enlist soon could continue their progaming while in the military. Really sad that they've decided to stop supporting it.
Devastating T_T. I hoped this wouldn't happen since they didn't say anything in the offseason I feel so bad for the Kespa pros that wanted to go to continue their careers :/.
Are they going to keep playing in proleague though? or are they out after this season? how depressing and saddening must it be for the ACE guys to have your roster dwindle one by one, till one player is left? I think Im gonna cry T_T.
On July 23 2012 10:58 cLicK wrote: Devastating T_T. I hoped this wouldn't happen since they didn't say anything in the offseason I feel so bad for the Kespa pros that wanted to go to continue their careers :/.
Are they going to keep playing in proleague though? or are they out after this season? how depressing and saddening must it be for the ACE guys to have your roster dwindle one by one, till one player is left? I think Im gonna cry T_T.
Judging by the way it looks, Team 8 might be the next on list as no sponsors are willing to come forward. And the only that did, wanted the league to contain BW games.
Nooooooo, ACE was by far the most beautiful thing that ever happened in e-sports history, and was a true sign of recognition of progaming in the society.
On July 23 2012 11:00 Xiphos wrote: Judging by the way it looks, Team 8 might be the next on list as no sponsors are willing to come forward. And the only that did, wanted the league to contain BW games.
On July 23 2012 10:43 Demonhunter04 wrote: Oh my....they're just not transitioning?
And because of smartphones and social networking? o_o
I don't understand why smartphones and social networking would be the decline of any true gameing on PC or console. Does not make sense to me.
Because PC bangs are a big social thing in korea afaik. Or maybe they're just trying to be polite instead of saying they dont want to play sc2.
No I think its because people are becoming lazier and with phone technology increasing, more advanced games are able to be played on the phone, hence less need to go to pc bangs to play on the computers etc....
Wow, this is huge. I've always thought of Ace as one of the huge things that showed Korea as a nation's love for esports. Quite sad to see them disbanding, but time are changing, afterall.
Let me explain the matter with smartphones and SNS. There has been numerous articles about this recently in Korea.
Back in 90's and 2000's the trend was to enjoy gaming together. Together I mean as going to PC bang and play with friends side by side. My generation is the generation that went to arcade and played console together with friends.
The trend now is much more individual. Now every person has their own PC and smartphones. Because of internet and various appliances, one can be connected with others without actually physically being together.
The trend is also clear in PCbangs, which originally started out as a place to play game 'together' with others. In my days we went to Pcbang after school and played team game of BW or Counter Strike, etc. Now the game is more diverse. You see more and more people who come alone and play game of their own taste. Because of better technology more people play game at their home. It is no longer a neccesity to play and enjoy same game as others as you can still be part of the 'gang' and feel you belong somewhere through SNS and smartphone. Gaming is no longer considered group activity but rather an individual hobby.
Will people still go to PC bang and play games with friends? Sure, but they can also stay home and meet them on internet. Will people still go to gaming event to watch pro gamers play? Sure, but they can also stay home and watch on internet, while chatting with friends. Enjoying game as being part of physical group is no longer the big thing.
This is the reason why people(or so these articles claim) that while eSports will definitely grow it will be difficult to see a single game dominating entire population and creating the phenomenon BW did. The scene needs to evolve to meet the demand of viewers that are becoming more and more diverse. One can no longer make huge investment in single game and expect great success as easily as before.
Partially because of all the past greats on the team at any given time and partially just because they were always such an underdog, it was always a joy to watch ACE win a match (or sometimes just not get all-killed...). Sad news.
Let me explain the matter with smartphones and SNS. There has been numerous articles about this recently in Korea.
Back in 90's and 2000's the trend was to enjoy gaming together. Together I mean as going to PC bang and play with friends side by side. My generation is the generation that went to arcade and played console together with friends.
The trend now is much more individual. Now every person has their own PC and smartphones. Because of internet and various appliances, one can be connected with others without actually physically being together.
The trend is also clear in PCbangs, which originally started out as a place to play game 'together' with others. In my days we went to Pcbang after school and played team game of BW or Counter Strike, etc. Now the game is more diverse. You see more and more people who come alone and play game of their own taste. Because of better technology more people play game at their home. It is no longer a neccesity to play and enjoy same game as others as you can still be part of the 'gang' and feel you belong somewhere through SNS and smartphone. Gaming is no longer considered group activity but rather an individual hobby.
Will people still go to PC bang and play games with friends? Sure, but they can also stay home and meet them on internet. Will people still go to gaming event to watch pro gamers play? Sure, but they can also stay home and watch on internet, while chatting with friends. Enjoying game as being part of physical group is no longer the big thing.
This is the reason why people(or so these articles claim) that while eSports will definitely grow it will be difficult to see a single game dominating entire population and creating the phenomenon BW did. The scene needs to evolve to meet the demand of viewers that are becoming more and more diverse. One can no longer make huge investment in single game and expect great success as easily as before.
Awesome insight, I kinda figured with better technology less ppl will go to PC bangs but other stuff is really cool.
On July 23 2012 10:51 GTR wrote: Can anyone elaborate on 'smartphones and SNS services causing the decline of progaming'?
I think it has a lot to do with gaming on smartphones and tablets taking away much of the market of casual gamers on PC and console. Even in my own personal experience, I know a lot of guys and even girls who aren't huge into video games that have played quite a bit of Mario 64 or Goldeneye and things like that, but now have not touched an XBox or a gaming PC in favor of games made for phones/tablets. So instead of hearing about, trying out, and possibly getting into SC2 like many casuals did with BW, the general non-gaming masses have Angry Birds and the like to get their nerd fix with their friends and have no desire to pick up a more complicated gaming platform nor do they pay any attention to the big console and PC releases.
On July 23 2012 10:51 GTR wrote: Can anyone elaborate on 'smartphones and SNS services causing the decline of progaming'?
I think it has a lot to do with gaming on smartphones and tablets taking away much of the market of casual gamers on PC and console. Even in my own personal experience, I know a lot of guys and even girls who aren't huge into video games that have played quite a bit of Mario 64 or Goldeneye and things like that, but now have not touched an XBox or a gaming PC in favor of games made for phones/tablets. So instead of hearing about, trying out, and possibly getting into SC2 like many casuals did with BW, the general non-gaming masses have Angry Birds and the like to get their nerd fix with their friends and have no desire to pick up a more complicated gaming platform nor do they pay any attention to the big console and PC releases.
Spot on in any case it's only one variable. When you tie all the strings together, GG.
No matter how hard I was braced for it, it still hurts. I'm not terribly surprised, but 2 of the 3 years I've spent here on TL was with the ACE logo. <3
Let me explain the matter with smartphones and SNS. There has been numerous articles about this recently in Korea.
Back in 90's and 2000's the trend was to enjoy gaming together. Together I mean as going to PC bang and play with friends side by side. My generation is the generation that went to arcade and played console together with friends.
The trend now is much more individual. Now every person has their own PC and smartphones. Because of internet and various appliances, one can be connected with others without actually physically being together.
The trend is also clear in PCbangs, which originally started out as a place to play game 'together' with others. In my days we went to Pcbang after school and played team game of BW or Counter Strike, etc. Now the game is more diverse. You see more and more people who come alone and play game of their own taste. Because of better technology more people play game at their home. It is no longer a neccesity to play and enjoy same game as others as you can still be part of the 'gang' and feel you belong somewhere through SNS and smartphone. Gaming is no longer considered group activity but rather an individual hobby.
Will people still go to PC bang and play games with friends? Sure, but they can also stay home and meet them on internet. Will people still go to gaming event to watch pro gamers play? Sure, but they can also stay home and watch on internet, while chatting with friends. Enjoying game as being part of physical group is no longer the big thing.
This is the reason why people(or so these articles claim) that while eSports will definitely grow it will be difficult to see a single game dominating entire population and creating the phenomenon BW did. The scene needs to evolve to meet the demand of viewers that are becoming more and more diverse. One can no longer make huge investment in single game and expect great success as easily as before.
Awesome insight, I kinda figured with better technology less ppl will go to PC bangs but other stuff is really cool.
I think it's understated how much of an effect the GSL teams are having on this. As KESPA transitions to SC2 the competition for each of the KESPA teams (with regards to exposure/sponsors) effectively doubles. It would be odd for some of the teams not to fold. The scene can't support all of these teams on only one game. (In my noob opinion)
Let me explain the matter with smartphones and SNS. There has been numerous articles about this recently in Korea.
Back in 90's and 2000's the trend was to enjoy gaming together. Together I mean as going to PC bang and play with friends side by side. My generation is the generation that went to arcade and played console together with friends.
The trend now is much more individual. Now every person has their own PC and smartphones. Because of internet and various appliances, one can be connected with others without actually physically being together.
The trend is also clear in PCbangs, which originally started out as a place to play game 'together' with others. In my days we went to Pcbang after school and played team game of BW or Counter Strike, etc. Now the game is more diverse. You see more and more people who come alone and play game of their own taste. Because of better technology more people play game at their home. It is no longer a neccesity to play and enjoy same game as others as you can still be part of the 'gang' and feel you belong somewhere through SNS and smartphone. Gaming is no longer considered group activity but rather an individual hobby.
Will people still go to PC bang and play games with friends? Sure, but they can also stay home and meet them on internet. Will people still go to gaming event to watch pro gamers play? Sure, but they can also stay home and watch on internet, while chatting with friends. Enjoying game as being part of physical group is no longer the big thing.
This is the reason why people(or so these articles claim) that while eSports will definitely grow it will be difficult to see a single game dominating entire population and creating the phenomenon BW did. The scene needs to evolve to meet the demand of viewers that are becoming more and more diverse. One can no longer make huge investment in single game and expect great success as easily as before.
That's all fair enough, but I don't see it as a terribly sound reason to disband the team. You could argue it may make a team slightly less close to each other... but... that doesn't seem to be much of an issue. Look at LoL; that's a team-only game, and that's on an incredible rise in Korea.
I think this is the moment where I realize I might retire from the esports community. Just an addiction at this point. I'm so sad right now I'll make a blog later when I have the right words.
was just about to go to sleep after a happy ladder run...
hop on TL and read this...
*cries himself to sleep*
nooooo ACE. i was hoping july would join when he goes to military... ugh dammit. the post by the guy from GOM makes sense though... gaming is becoming so individual, what happened to the fun of large, mass gaming with your friends in person? Nothing beats that man... nothing.
On July 23 2012 11:11 JunkkaGom wrote: Let me explain the matter with smartphones and SNS. There has been numerous articles about this recently in Korea.
Back in 90's and 2000's the trend was to enjoy gaming together. Together I mean as going to PC bang and play with friends side by side. My generation is the generation that went to arcade and played console together with friends.
The trend now is much more individual. Now every person has their own PC and smartphones. Because of internet and various appliances, one can be connected with others without actually physically being together.
The trend is also clear in PCbangs, which originally started out as a place to play game 'together' with others. In my days we went to Pcbang after school and played team game of BW or Counter Strike, etc. Now the game is more diverse. You see more and more people who come alone and play game of their own taste. Because of better technology more people play game at their home. It is no longer a neccesity to play and enjoy same game as others as you can still be part of the 'gang' and feel you belong somewhere through SNS and smartphone. Gaming is no longer considered group activity but rather an individual hobby.
Will people still go to PC bang and play games with friends? Sure, but they can also stay home and meet them on internet. Will people still go to gaming event to watch pro gamers play? Sure, but they can also stay home and watch on internet, while chatting with friends. Enjoying game as being part of physical group is no longer the big thing.
This is the reason why people(or so these articles claim) that while eSports will definitely grow it will be difficult to see a single game dominating entire population and creating the phenomenon BW did. The scene needs to evolve to meet the demand of viewers that are becoming more and more diverse. One can no longer make huge investment in single game and expect great success as easily as before.
This is fair, but I don't think the whole picture. People might like to play tennis because it's an easy way to stay in shape, but also prefer to watch basketball because it's a fast-paced team game or something. Similarly, people playing random games on their phones should still be able to watch games they don't play at all (for example, Starcraft). Although one such game might not be enough.
I think Proleague would trump Starleague here anyway. Hasn't ACE withheld their players from qualifiers before so they could focus on the team league?
On July 23 2012 11:11 JunkkaGom wrote: Let me explain the matter with smartphones and SNS. There has been numerous articles about this recently in Korea.
Back in 90's and 2000's the trend was to enjoy gaming together. Together I mean as going to PC bang and play with friends side by side. My generation is the generation that went to arcade and played console together with friends.
The trend now is much more individual. Now every person has their own PC and smartphones. Because of internet and various appliances, one can be connected with others without actually physically being together.
The trend is also clear in PCbangs, which originally started out as a place to play game 'together' with others. In my days we went to Pcbang after school and played team game of BW or Counter Strike, etc. Now the game is more diverse. You see more and more people who come alone and play game of their own taste. Because of better technology more people play game at their home. It is no longer a neccesity to play and enjoy same game as others as you can still be part of the 'gang' and feel you belong somewhere through SNS and smartphone. Gaming is no longer considered group activity but rather an individual hobby.
Will people still go to PC bang and play games with friends? Sure, but they can also stay home and meet them on internet. Will people still go to gaming event to watch pro gamers play? Sure, but they can also stay home and watch on internet, while chatting with friends. Enjoying game as being part of physical group is no longer the big thing.
This is the reason why people(or so these articles claim) that while eSports will definitely grow it will be difficult to see a single game dominating entire population and creating the phenomenon BW did. The scene needs to evolve to meet the demand of viewers that are becoming more and more diverse. One can no longer make huge investment in single game and expect great success as easily as before.
This is fair, but I don't think the whole picture. People might like to play tennis because it's an easy way to stay in shape, but also prefer to watch basketball because it's a fast-paced team game or something. Similarly, people playing random games on their phones should still be able to watch games they don't play at all (for example, Starcraft). Although one such game might not be enough.
I think Proleague would trump Starleague here anyway. Hasn't ACE withheld their players from qualifiers before so they could focus on the team league?
Yes, all of this sounds like a pretty bad excuse, since when did ACE prioritizing the OSL?Also, there's only so much fun one can have with shitty games such as angry birds too, smartphone games taking over is just a massive bullshit, people like to compete and scoreboards can't do it.
On July 23 2012 11:11 JunkkaGom wrote: Let me explain the matter with smartphones and SNS. There has been numerous articles about this recently in Korea.
Back in 90's and 2000's the trend was to enjoy gaming together. Together I mean as going to PC bang and play with friends side by side. My generation is the generation that went to arcade and played console together with friends.
The trend now is much more individual. Now every person has their own PC and smartphones. Because of internet and various appliances, one can be connected with others without actually physically being together.
The trend is also clear in PCbangs, which originally started out as a place to play game 'together' with others. In my days we went to Pcbang after school and played team game of BW or Counter Strike, etc. Now the game is more diverse. You see more and more people who come alone and play game of their own taste. Because of better technology more people play game at their home. It is no longer a neccesity to play and enjoy same game as others as you can still be part of the 'gang' and feel you belong somewhere through SNS and smartphone. Gaming is no longer considered group activity but rather an individual hobby.
Will people still go to PC bang and play games with friends? Sure, but they can also stay home and meet them on internet. Will people still go to gaming event to watch pro gamers play? Sure, but they can also stay home and watch on internet, while chatting with friends. Enjoying game as being part of physical group is no longer the big thing.
This is the reason why people(or so these articles claim) that while eSports will definitely grow it will be difficult to see a single game dominating entire population and creating the phenomenon BW did. The scene needs to evolve to meet the demand of viewers that are becoming more and more diverse. One can no longer make huge investment in single game and expect great success as easily as before.
This is fair, but I don't think the whole picture. People might like to play tennis because it's an easy way to stay in shape, but also prefer to watch basketball because it's a fast-paced team game or something. Similarly, people playing random games on their phones should still be able to watch games they don't play at all (for example, Starcraft). Although one such game might not be enough.
I think Proleague would trump Starleague here anyway. Hasn't ACE withheld their players from qualifiers before so they could focus on the team league?
I dont think it matches exactly the same. When a person takes basketball as a hobby to watch and plays tennis to keep in shape, they are able to watch basketball since they probably have mingled with basketball in their life so they know what is going on. So this same person, if they have never played soccer before, he/she would not be able to enjoy watching soccer. He/she might know when a goal happened and basic stuff, but they wouldn't understand the game as a whole. In the same way, you can't enjoy watching a game when you don't know how it works and why things going on is hype or not.
On July 23 2012 11:11 JunkkaGom wrote: Let me explain the matter with smartphones and SNS. There has been numerous articles about this recently in Korea.
Back in 90's and 2000's the trend was to enjoy gaming together. Together I mean as going to PC bang and play with friends side by side. My generation is the generation that went to arcade and played console together with friends.
The trend now is much more individual. Now every person has their own PC and smartphones. Because of internet and various appliances, one can be connected with others without actually physically being together.
The trend is also clear in PCbangs, which originally started out as a place to play game 'together' with others. In my days we went to Pcbang after school and played team game of BW or Counter Strike, etc. Now the game is more diverse. You see more and more people who come alone and play game of their own taste. Because of better technology more people play game at their home. It is no longer a neccesity to play and enjoy same game as others as you can still be part of the 'gang' and feel you belong somewhere through SNS and smartphone. Gaming is no longer considered group activity but rather an individual hobby.
Will people still go to PC bang and play games with friends? Sure, but they can also stay home and meet them on internet. Will people still go to gaming event to watch pro gamers play? Sure, but they can also stay home and watch on internet, while chatting with friends. Enjoying game as being part of physical group is no longer the big thing.
This is the reason why people(or so these articles claim) that while eSports will definitely grow it will be difficult to see a single game dominating entire population and creating the phenomenon BW did. The scene needs to evolve to meet the demand of viewers that are becoming more and more diverse. One can no longer make huge investment in single game and expect great success as easily as before.
This is fair, but I don't think the whole picture. People might like to play tennis because it's an easy way to stay in shape, but also prefer to watch basketball because it's a fast-paced team game or something. Similarly, people playing random games on their phones should still be able to watch games they don't play at all (for example, Starcraft). Although one such game might not be enough.
I think Proleague would trump Starleague here anyway. Hasn't ACE withheld their players from qualifiers before so they could focus on the team league?
I dont think it matches exactly the same. When a person takes basketball as a hobby to watch and plays tennis to keep in shape, they are able to watch basketball since they probably have mingled with basketball in their life so they know what is going on. So this same person, if they have never played soccer before, he/she would not be able to enjoy watching soccer. He/she might know when a goal happened and basic stuff, but they wouldn't understand the game as a whole. In the same way, you can't enjoy watching a game when you don't know how it works and why things going on is hype or not.
This is true, and especially true with strategy games.
On July 23 2012 11:44 GenesisX wrote: T__T ... unfortunetly, this might be one of many teams to come I think
Who else? SKT1, KT, CJ, Woongjin and KHAN have all been transitioning well. STX was kinda in a total meltdown a year ago when they wanted to trade everyone, but with the SC2, they are now one of the strongest KESPA teams and have the best Terran line currently.
It's not surprising to see ACE disband. Kinda sad they never made the playoffs, but they were always a fun team to root for and made the Proleague special.
The only team I can see disbanding would be T8, but with Jaedong, actual SC2 coaches and them being good at the game, it's not out of realm of possibility for them to get a sponsor sooner or later.
What? NO! Even though they were always bottom of the pit, it was always still nice that Korea supported Starcraft industry enough to have a military program.
This is actually sadder than if one of the competitive teams disbanded. ACE was like the kid that sucks and gets owned every time yet he always shows up because he loves the game. Salute to ACE.
it's a shame, but as a korean citizen this is the right choice. we're still at war and we can use the extra money to upgrade our aging fighter jet fleet
On July 23 2012 11:55 stew_ wrote: it's a shame, but as a korean citizen this is the right choice. we're still at war and we can use the extra money to upgrade our aging fighter jet fleet
I cant imagine those two options cost anywhere near the same order of magnitude.
On July 23 2012 11:11 JunkkaGom wrote: Let me explain the matter with smartphones and SNS. There has been numerous articles about this recently in Korea.
Back in 90's and 2000's the trend was to enjoy gaming together. Together I mean as going to PC bang and play with friends side by side. My generation is the generation that went to arcade and played console together with friends.
The trend now is much more individual. Now every person has their own PC and smartphones. Because of internet and various appliances, one can be connected with others without actually physically being together.
The trend is also clear in PCbangs, which originally started out as a place to play game 'together' with others. In my days we went to Pcbang after school and played team game of BW or Counter Strike, etc. Now the game is more diverse. You see more and more people who come alone and play game of their own taste. Because of better technology more people play game at their home. It is no longer a neccesity to play and enjoy same game as others as you can still be part of the 'gang' and feel you belong somewhere through SNS and smartphone. Gaming is no longer considered group activity but rather an individual hobby.
Will people still go to PC bang and play games with friends? Sure, but they can also stay home and meet them on internet. Will people still go to gaming event to watch pro gamers play? Sure, but they can also stay home and watch on internet, while chatting with friends. Enjoying game as being part of physical group is no longer the big thing.
This is the reason why people(or so these articles claim) that while eSports will definitely grow it will be difficult to see a single game dominating entire population and creating the phenomenon BW did. The scene needs to evolve to meet the demand of viewers that are becoming more and more diverse. One can no longer make huge investment in single game and expect great success as easily as before.
This is fair, but I don't think the whole picture. People might like to play tennis because it's an easy way to stay in shape, but also prefer to watch basketball because it's a fast-paced team game or something. Similarly, people playing random games on their phones should still be able to watch games they don't play at all (for example, Starcraft). Although one such game might not be enough.
I think Proleague would trump Starleague here anyway. Hasn't ACE withheld their players from qualifiers before so they could focus on the team league?
Yes, all of this sounds like a pretty bad excuse, since when did ACE prioritizing the OSL?Also, there's only so much fun one can have with shitty games such as angry birds too, smartphone games taking over is just a massive bullshit, people like to compete and scoreboards can't do it.
In fact, I remember ACE pulling out of the OSL to focus on Proleague.
I don't know much about Korean military and all of that stuff but you guys think that 1 of the factors would be money? Considering in like 07 when the team was founded you can get PC for ~$100 to run BW and to run star2 you need like a ~$600 pc, and I'm not sure what the rules are but I would imagine they wouldn't want the players going to PC bangs every day to practice.
On July 23 2012 11:44 GenesisX wrote: T__T ... unfortunetly, this might be one of many teams to come I think
Who else? SKT1, KT, CJ, Woongjin and KHAN have all been transitioning well. STX was kinda in a total meltdown a year ago when they wanted to trade everyone, but with the SC2, they are now one of the strongest KESPA teams and have the best Terran line currently.
It's not surprising to see ACE disband. Kinda sad they never made the playoffs, but they were always a fun team to root for and made the Proleague special.
The only team I can see disbanding would be T8, but with Jaedong, actual SC2 coaches and them being good at the game, it's not out of realm of possibility for them to get a sponsor sooner or later.
At least one of those two, if a team is going to disband at all.
On July 23 2012 11:44 GenesisX wrote: T__T ... unfortunetly, this might be one of many teams to come I think
Who else? SKT1, KT, CJ, Woongjin and KHAN have all been transitioning well. STX was kinda in a total meltdown a year ago when they wanted to trade everyone, but with the SC2, they are now one of the strongest KESPA teams and have the best Terran line currently.
It's not surprising to see ACE disband. Kinda sad they never made the playoffs, but they were always a fun team to root for and made the Proleague special.
The only team I can see disbanding would be T8, but with Jaedong, actual SC2 coaches and them being good at the game, it's not out of realm of possibility for them to get a sponsor sooner or later.
From what I know, this is how I feel too. If anyone is going to disband it was going to be ACE. The other teams are looking pretty good in transition and are making significant investments into coaches etc.
On July 23 2012 11:55 Mothra wrote: This is actually sadder than if one of the competitive teams disbanded. ACE was like the kid that sucks and gets owned every time yet he always shows up because he loves the game. Salute to ACE.
Exactly what this guy said ! ACE had more value because it was some kind of symbol more than just another team that competes.
On July 23 2012 10:51 GTR wrote: Can anyone elaborate on 'smartphones and SNS services causing the decline of progaming'?
On July 23 2012 10:43 Demonhunter04 wrote: Oh my....they're just not transitioning?
And because of smartphones and social networking? o_o
It is a reasonable hypothesis that they do. A lot of the progaming fandom culture was the social aspect combined with relatability to players as spectators play themselves. Now with facebook & mobile gaming you can play and share emotions on these platforms with much less cost. LoL being a notable exception due to its ingenious social-friendly design.
However the rise of smartphones and social network services has caused progaming to decline. This caused the Air Force to come to the decision of disbanding their progaming team. There are currently 11 players left in the team and once the last officer who was drafted on March 5th is discharged in March 2014, the team will disband.
I don't get this.
Smartphones and social networking don't...do much towards progaming ............
On July 23 2012 11:55 Mothra wrote: This is actually sadder than if one of the competitive teams disbanded. ACE was like the kid that sucks and gets owned every time yet he always shows up because he loves the game. Salute to ACE.
Exactly what this guy said ! ACE had more value because it was some kind of symbol more than just another team that competes.
it's an image of youth and passion. something any company would want to project to their demographic. which is an invaluable investment for many companies.
for the military to recognize progaming in this fashion, it gave a lot of legitimacy to the scene. and a way for the older players to continue their careers after enlistment.
the fact that the military, and other major domestic companies who have sponsored pro gaming teams have decided that it's not worth the investment, says a lot about how pro gaming and SC2 is now perceived in Korea.
On July 23 2012 11:44 GenesisX wrote: T__T ... unfortunetly, this might be one of many teams to come I think
Who else? SKT1, KT, CJ, Woongjin and KHAN have all been transitioning well. STX was kinda in a total meltdown a year ago when they wanted to trade everyone, but with the SC2, they are now one of the strongest KESPA teams and have the best Terran line currently.
It's not surprising to see ACE disband. Kinda sad they never made the playoffs, but they were always a fun team to root for and made the Proleague special.
The only team I can see disbanding would be T8, but with Jaedong, actual SC2 coaches and them being good at the game, it's not out of realm of possibility for them to get a sponsor sooner or later.
The problem is if domestic interest in the league doesnt pick up for the domestic market oriented sponsor corporations like BW ones are, then they may find financing an SC2 team dubious(compared to LoL), given the low amount of publiscity SC2 generates in korea.
Sad to see them go. I was hoping to see them transition to SC2. It is a loss for the pro-gaming community for sure. Yeah, they were never that great, but they had a certain charm due to their uniqueness that we will all miss out on.
I wake up from a long nap, refresh my TL tab and I see this omfg so sad, need to cry myself to sleep after this Need to watch all the good Ace games and victories They were becoming a strong force in proleague the past few seasons, such a shame
Blaming SNS/casual gaming is such an easy excuse. It's a totally logical hypothesis that these things would steal from the BW's player base, but it assumes you have to play BW to be introduced to BW as an e-sport. With how many copies of BW were sold in Korea (and how many copies weren't "sold"), audience of players was a big force in making the scene possible. More than ten years later, it's hard to swallow the reasoning that the industry has been kept alive primarily by people actively playing BW. It's a mindshare thing. You still have to compete with SNS/casual gaming for mindshare, but fighting for mindshare and competing from players are two different things that needed two different approaches.
On July 23 2012 12:39 JSy wrote: Sad to see such a landmark team go...
Blaming SNS/casual gaming is such an easy excuse. It's a totally logical hypothesis that these things would steal from the BW's player base, but it assumes you have to play BW to be introduced to BW as an e-sport. With how many copies of BW were sold in Korea (and how many copies weren't "sold"), audience of players was a big force in making the scene possible. More than ten years later, it's hard to swallow the reasoning that the industry has been kept alive primarily by people actively playing BW. It's a mindshare thing. You still have to compete with SNS/casual gaming for mindshare, but fighting for mindshare and competing from players are two different things that needed two different approaches.
The thing is that there will be no longer BW to be played in the future after this season. So its kind of useless to continue.
My heart plummeted when I saw this headline. This year has truly been the end of an era for progaming in general; we've seen so many Brood War institutions fade away.
Another one goes down Why does it have to end like this?
Would be interesting to hear Boxer's thoughts on Ace disbanding, and well, on the BW situation as a whole. Maybe he doesn't care but he's the symbol of BW for me and many others I believe.
On July 23 2012 12:49 ]343[ wrote: everyone's posting as if they're disappearing right this moment... they'll still be around for another year or so, at least :/
On July 23 2012 12:49 ]343[ wrote: everyone's posting as if they're disappearing right this moment... they'll still be around for another year or so, at least :/
...
But it hurts now.
Exactly. I never thought I'd reach a point where I could say I was done. Seeing ACE leave is just so saddening. And the state of Bisu right now, I'm just going to retire knowing him as the best bw Protoss of all time.
On July 23 2012 10:50 Gamegene wrote: don't blame the military, it's not their fault that star2 isn't popular.
That was unnecessary, seriously.
On the topic of smartphones killing E-Sports, yeah they are. Games that are easy to play, semi-hardish only cuz touch screens suck at pinpoint accuracy, (i.e. angry birds) draw a huge consumer base that otherwise would play computer games and thus draw the money to it.
On July 23 2012 10:50 Gamegene wrote: don't blame the military, it's not their fault that star2 isn't popular.
That was unnecessary, seriously.
On the topic of smartphones killing E-Sports, yeah they are. Games that are easy to play, semi-hardish only cuz touch screens suck at pinpoint accuracy, (i.e. angry birds) draw a huge consumer base that otherwise would play computer games and thus draw the money to it.
I don't think the people who play smartphone games are the same ones who would play Brood War.
I respect their decision to dissolve the team rather than transition into Starcraft 2. For whatever reason, Blizzard has not managed to keep the competitive level of Brood War and in my opinion, SC2 is just a game whereas Brood War was truly an esport.
This is not surprising at all after BW is getting killed because there is simply no reason for their existence anymore. Still, it's sad to see them actually disbanding.
Even if a new team is formed to accommodate SC2 players in the military (which would be ideal), the SC world will have lost tons of history when they play their last game.
On July 23 2012 13:07 Spica wrote: It started out as a dream made into reality... and that reality is now crushed. I guess I should just brace myself for more tragedies incoming for BW.
ACE will be missed. But their legacy will go on forever in BW fans' hearts.
Not crushed. Moving on. Everything that is will one day end. Don't say it's a tragedy.. ..
Feared this would happen with the switch to SC2. A sad day not just for fans of BW but for fans of all e-sports. I doubt we will ever again see a government military branch brace a title like the Airforce did.
On July 23 2012 13:38 coverpunch wrote: Hm, do they find other computer jobs for the players or do the nerds just go back to peeling potatoes?
Maybe this is their way of trying to get the BW players to recruit DRG, MKP, or MVP to do their service faster.
What ? For your information this players all have a home to return because they are all ex khan,cj,woongjin,stx and the list goes on . They don't need to peel potatoes please re-evaluate your ignorant statement because it just shows that you know nothing about the bw scene and it's player especially in the Air force ace area.
On July 23 2012 13:38 coverpunch wrote: Hm, do they find other computer jobs for the players or do the nerds just go back to peeling potatoes?
Maybe this is their way of trying to get the BW players to recruit DRG, MKP, or MVP to do their service faster.
What ? For your information this players all have a home to return because they are all ex khan,cj,woongjin,stx and the list goes on . They don't need to peel potatoes please re-evaluate your ignorant statement because it just shows that you know nothing about the bw scene and it's player especially in the Air force ace area.
I think he is asking about while they are still in the military since the team won't disband until the last player leaves. At some point, they won't be able to compete in Proleague anymore because they won't have enough players.
On July 23 2012 13:38 coverpunch wrote: Hm, do they find other computer jobs for the players or do the nerds just go back to peeling potatoes?
Maybe this is their way of trying to get the BW players to recruit DRG, MKP, or MVP to do their service faster.
What ? For your information this players all have a home to return because they are all ex khan,cj,woongjin,stx and the list goes on . They don't need to peel potatoes please re-evaluate your ignorant statement because it just shows that you know nothing about the bw scene and it's player especially in the Air force ace area.
So what exactly did you guys think was going to happen when Kespa abandoned Brood War?
I remember that during the match-fixing scandal there was a talk show where the commentators talked about what the scandal would mean for the future of e-sports. At one point Kim Carrier said something like "To me, the moment when I felt that e-sports had finally gotten some true recognition, was when the Army decided to create the Airforce team."
This should tell you what sort of recognition you can expect SC2 to get in Korea. Kespa and OGN gave away a game that held a unique position, for one that will just be one among many.
I love what they do after each win with salute but they kinda suck and never win anyway. I would have loved if some of the current generation of SC2 pros could play under the Ace banner but it wasn't an entire surprise.
On July 23 2012 14:01 GeLaar wrote:This should tell you what sort of recognition you can expect SC2 to get in Korea. Kespa and OGN gave away a game that held a unique position, for one that will just be one among many.
It wasn't like KeSPA thought SC2 was awesome. They stuck with BW as long as they possibly could have.
On July 23 2012 14:01 GeLaar wrote:This should tell you what sort of recognition you can expect SC2 to get in Korea. Kespa and OGN gave away a game that held a unique position, for one that will just be one among many.
It wasn't like KeSPA thought SC2 was awesome. They stuck with BW as long as they possibly could have.
Sad to see airforce ace go..more sad to really even hear about people talking about how sc2 wont get the same recognition in korea, implying sc2 is bad while bw was unique and one of a kind. Mourn the team, and what it represented. But certainly let's not get up in the politics of the matter.
Surprising news, i expected them to transition to SC2 along with the other PL pro-teams. That's really sad news, whenever i was talking about esports to somebody that doesn't know it, i would always reference Air Force Ace to explain how popular SC is (was ? T.T) in Korea.
Even if SC2 had been unquestionably better than BW, I don't think it would have mattered. In the face of casual games, MMOs, DotA clones, and in general flashy graphics, I'm sure BW would have plateaued and eventually declined anyway. (Maybe a decade or so from now, when graphics can't get much better and genres have all stabilized, we'll see another long-living esports game.)
So it makes sense why a sponsor would want to pull out. ACE is not a charity - it is first and foremost marketing. The question to me is why this marketing is so important to the South Korean military. Military service is already mandatory, isn't it? So couldn't the real reason be that they couldn't justify sponsoring an esports team and were just looking for an excuse to cut it off?
On July 23 2012 14:01 GeLaar wrote:This should tell you what sort of recognition you can expect SC2 to get in Korea. Kespa and OGN gave away a game that held a unique position, for one that will just be one among many.
It wasn't like KeSPA thought SC2 was awesome. They stuck with BW as long as they possibly could have.
The real question is, just how much of this all goes back to the matchfixing. If that played as significant of a role for BW in things like the sponshopship struggles, MBC, image, etc. that I have heard implied then it may very well have been the event that killed professional BW.
If they aren't planning on fully disbanding until 2014... hm. I guess they either stop Proleague at the end of this season, or do they participate until their roster is too small to continue... then have a minor presence in individual leagues (presumably OS2L only?) until the last player is discharged?
Or do they just stop playing entirely, but still maintain some sort of "team" structure until 2014?
Still, not surprising. Unfortunate, but... not surprising.
Sad day. I remember when ACE formed and when BoxeR went to the military...I thought it would be the end of progaming when the emperor left. Oh well, life goes on, it's only natural. With the death of broodwar comes the death of the golden age in esports. RIP, may the fond memories remain forever.
the matchfixing scandal was the beginning of the end for BW. I'm incredibly sad to see ACE go. I think everyone knows but just doesn't want to say it, that SC2 is never going to be as big as BW in korea.
On July 23 2012 14:58 Black[CAT] wrote: I already had a feeling that they would disband but it would be because of their results.
When's the last time you heard of a team saying they're disbanding because of lack of results (other than the occasional western example)? Even if that is the real reason, they need another excuse(s).
Wow this is extremely depressing news. Air force ace is one of the most unique thing about korean pro gaming culture. Nowhere else in the world is there a professional gaming team in the military... Seems like just yesterday when boxer had to leave for the military
Can't believe anyone did not see this coming. I had to facepalm pretty hard when some people supported the news of SC2 implementation on grounds that it will allow better results.
On July 23 2012 14:58 Black[CAT] wrote: I already had a feeling that they would disband but it would be because of their results.
Eh, Ace has never had good results to be honest... they're just disbanding due to shifts in game popularity. I guess they should transition to LoL if they want to keep the team but that's not an easy task.
Such a sad announcement. Show me another game that had a military progaming team.
On July 23 2012 11:11 JunkkaGom wrote: Let me explain the matter with smartphones and SNS. There has been numerous articles about this recently in Korea.
Back in 90's and 2000's the trend was to enjoy gaming together. Together I mean as going to PC bang and play with friends side by side. My generation is the generation that went to arcade and played console together with friends.
The trend now is much more individual. Now every person has their own PC and smartphones. Because of internet and various appliances, one can be connected with others without actually physically being together.
The trend is also clear in PCbangs, which originally started out as a place to play game 'together' with others. In my days we went to Pcbang after school and played team game of BW or Counter Strike, etc. Now the game is more diverse. You see more and more people who come alone and play game of their own taste. Because of better technology more people play game at their home. It is no longer a neccesity to play and enjoy same game as others as you can still be part of the 'gang' and feel you belong somewhere through SNS and smartphone. Gaming is no longer considered group activity but rather an individual hobby.
Will people still go to PC bang and play games with friends? Sure, but they can also stay home and meet them on internet. Will people still go to gaming event to watch pro gamers play? Sure, but they can also stay home and watch on internet, while chatting with friends. Enjoying game as being part of physical group is no longer the big thing.
This is the reason why people(or so these articles claim) that while eSports will definitely grow it will be difficult to see a single game dominating entire population and creating the phenomenon BW did. The scene needs to evolve to meet the demand of viewers that are becoming more and more diverse. One can no longer make huge investment in single game and expect great success as easily as before.
Awesome post John, thanks for the insight!
SC2 may never be as huge in Korea as BW was, but not necessarily because of the game itself, but because of cultural changes/differences from that time.
My only question is if an organization like Kespa can survive when the GomTV model has proven so successful. I guess time will tell as we continue through this unpredictable phase in eSports history.
Albeit they didn't have great success in the PL and OSL, they had really likeable players that left an impression on most people, mostly Boxer, FBH, Kal, and M18M(Flash killa).
TBH it's not much of a surprise, really. ACE wasn't there to get good results, it was there to keep the fans and players of the most popular esport happy. BW is coming to end and it's no secret that SC2 didn't manage to capture the #1 esport title, it's quite small in comparison to BW popularity. It's sad but you can't possibly keep military pro gaming team for such game as SC2.
This will effect current sc2 korean progamers too who still have to do their service and could've potentially gone to ACE. Maybe SC2 will grow between now and 2014 and they'll change their minds.
At first, I was wondering what does it mean by "However the rise of smartphones and social network services has caused progaming to decline". Then I saw ""Ace had a role in improving the image of the military to youths however due to shifts in the gaming industry we had no choice but to disband the team".
Well, they surely dont believe that SCtoo has the same impact as BW had, therefore disbanding. Its very tragic really, but it wouldnt be the same right now. ACE was a team of legends from a previous era, and there really aren´t any of those in SCII yet. Maybe when Dong-ragu or someone ( i really have no idea who´s good at SCII) is old enough he can lead the charge and start up ACE again.
For those that are confused, I'm pretty sure that line means that smartphones and social networks have caused a decline in demand for pro gaming in the Korean military. Before, there was basically nothing to do but train. But I have some friends in the military right now, and you see pictures of everyone just on their smartphones during their breaks. Now, it's train for SC or talk to your family, girlfriend, etc. Not surprised a lot of these guys are choosing the latter.
I thought they were doing relatively well with the sc2 transition. Pretty sure it accounts for the majority of their games won in PL... Can't say I'm a particular Ace fan, but still sad to see them go
On July 23 2012 17:10 Koshi wrote: So this means that SCII players can't play when they are in the army? I am hoping they are making a new team for the new talent.
May 16th - oGs disbands July 13th - Zenex ceases to exist as an independent team, will merge with Startale July 23rd - Air Force Ace announces plan to disband
The Korean scene is collapsing.
I wouldn't be surprised to see 2-3 more teams disband in the next few months,.
Slow deaths are the worst. It's a shock when something dies, but to watch it die is something else entirely. It's less painful for the onlooker if it takes longer to die, but the pain is spread over a longer period of time. If something dies nearly instantly, it's extremely painful. It can even be traumatic. I'm just glad KeSPA didn't say "Okay so, BW is done in a week, at the end of SK Planet proleague Season 1. Thanks for the memories."
Well, the Korean scene was so big in the BW era, so with the ending of the BW scene, the whole Starcraft scene will shrink. As the article pointed out, the gaming industry is diversifying quickly since 2000, so BW is not the only game to play these days.
The only reason people are seeing Western scene rising is because that the Western scene was like zero before LOL and SC2. There are some WC3 and CS events here and there, but that's pretty much it.
Still I doubt the Korean scene will decline to the point where Western scene can surpass it. I see the Western scene more as a bubble rather than something that will sustain. Even though the Korean scene is getting smaller, it's sustainable to a smaller scale.
An era comes to an en and big changes will follow. Retirements of famous pro gamers that doesn't want to/can't switch to other games as well as sponsorships ending and teams disbanding.
Unfortunately I am waiting for bad news in the couple of months where we get to hear the retirement of many famous and popular BW stars
I'd love for the Kespa player to do well in whatever e-sport they choose so I can keep cheering for them.
On July 23 2012 17:48 babybell wrote: This is what happens when there's a massive influx of teams and players into an already saturated market. It simply can't work.
Ace players are in the military. The can't play for any other team and civilians can't join Ace. The influx of players and teams doesn't affect them.
I am not surprised at all, but its still a sad day. Air Force Ace really was something unique in Esports. I wonder, if we there will ever be a game again, that is so accepted and huge in one country, that the military allows players to form a team. How i will miss Broodwar... T_T
After having read the posts, I feel like most tlers have been living under a rock or something. As if nobody saw it coming. The BW is formally dead already. It was dead from the very moment they announced the hybrid league
The end of BW is the most disgusting testament of money making, mass consumerism and human greed in one uniform incarnation in this gone mad world.
On July 23 2012 17:10 Koshi wrote: So this means that SCII players can't play when they are in the army? I am hoping they are making a new team for the new talent.
May 16th - oGs disbands July 13th - Zenex ceases to exist as an independent team, will merge with Startale July 23rd - Air Force Ace announces plan to disband
The Korean scene is collapsing.
I wouldn't be surprised to see 2-3 more teams disband in the next few months,.
Since korean scene is oversaturated with teams right now its natural that some of them disband especially when the Kespa teams started to play SC2.
On July 23 2012 18:37 letian wrote: After having read the posts, I feel like most tlers have been living under a rock or something. As if nobody saw it coming. The BW is formally dead already. It was dead from the very moment they announced the hybrid league
The end of BW is the most disgusting testament of money making, mass consumerism and human greed in one uniform incarnation in this gone mad world.
On July 23 2012 18:37 letian wrote: After having read the posts, I feel like most tlers have been living under a rock or something. As if nobody saw it coming. The BW is formally dead already. It was dead from the very moment they announced the hybrid league
It's been dead for years. Once MBCGame turned K-Pop, everything else was only a matter of time.
On July 23 2012 17:10 Koshi wrote: So this means that SCII players can't play when they are in the army? I am hoping they are making a new team for the new talent.
May 16th - oGs disbands July 13th - Zenex ceases to exist as an independent team, will merge with Startale July 23rd - Air Force Ace announces plan to disband
The Korean scene is collapsing.
I wouldn't be surprised to see 2-3 more teams disband in the next few months,.
Since korean scene is oversaturated with teams right now its natural that some of them disband especially when the Kespa teams started to play SC2.
It's war between GSL and KeSPA. Only one can survive. But since the BW fans are turning away from Proleague in droves, and KeSPA has made zero effort to reach the foreign scene....I guess they've been around too long for me to just write them off, but man. I'd be surprised if more than 4 of the current teams in Proleague were around next year.
On July 23 2012 18:37 letian wrote: The end of BW is the most disgusting testament of money making, mass consumerism and human greed in one uniform incarnation in this gone mad world.
It's a testament to pride and incompetence. If KeSPA were doing their jobs properly, SC2 would never have been the slightest threat. If they were really good, they could've smothered SC2 in its infancy and won a bunch more foreign fans by converting them, turning SC2 into an advertisement for BW. There was a LOT KeSPA did wrong over the years. I've been re-reading The Death of WCW (highly recommend it!), and I really wish someone would write a tell-all book about KeSPA. It'd be the first time KeSPA told anyone anything about their plans.
It's too late, now. BW is dead, and all KeSPA switching games is going to do is kill SC2 as well.
On July 23 2012 18:57 Khai wrote: Sad day for e-sports. Looks like the younger generation prefers mindless games.
let's start with "the younger generation did not see the real games", keeping in mind that the majority of ppl is not a very discerning entity. That is why K-Pop and other "stuff" which I can't mention again and again without my eye twitching.
ACE were more than just a team, they were BW legacy, and when its gone, there shall be nothing.
That's pretty sad. Starcraft will not be directly related with the government / country of Korea, the way it was. Older progamers will just disappear in the army, instead of joining an active team. Nada will be treated like any other private, instead of the commander and chief he truly is. Sad. Anyway, salute, ACE!
On July 23 2012 18:37 letian wrote: The end of BW is the most disgusting testament of money making, mass consumerism and human greed in one uniform incarnation in this gone mad world.
It's still just first world problems. But it's horrible, yeah.
On July 23 2012 18:57 Khai wrote: Sad day for e-sports. Looks like the younger generation prefers mindless games.
The younger generation also prefers PAYING for their mindless games, which is actually the real issue here. SC2's fanbase is a lot smaller than BWs, but they have much more open wallets. If more BW fans were willing to pay what SC2 fans pay, BW wouldn't be in even the tiniest bit of trouble because it wouldn't be 100% dependent on sponsors who drop everything as soon as the brand loses value.
KeSPA seems to completely miss this point, which is why Proleague's probably doomed, even with the switch. No one's paying $20/mo to see Proleague in HD and get VOD access.
On July 23 2012 18:57 Khai wrote: Sad day for e-sports. Looks like the younger generation prefers mindless games.
The younger generation also prefers PAYING for their mindless games, which is actually the real issue here. SC2's fanbase is a lot smaller than BWs, but they have much more open wallets. If more BW fans were willing to pay what SC2 fans pay, BW wouldn't be in even the tiniest bit of trouble because it wouldn't be 100% dependent on sponsors who drop everything as soon as the brand loses value.
KeSPA seems to completely miss this point, which is why Proleague's probably doomed, even with the switch. No one's paying $20/mo to see Proleague in HD and get VOD access.
But kespa's model worked for over 10 years and is used by most legitimate sports. Are you really suggesting that PPV is the way to go here?
On July 23 2012 18:57 Khai wrote: Sad day for e-sports. Looks like the younger generation prefers mindless games.
The younger generation also prefers PAYING for their mindless games, which is actually the real issue here. SC2's fanbase is a lot smaller than BWs, but they have much more open wallets. If more BW fans were willing to pay what SC2 fans pay, BW wouldn't be in even the tiniest bit of trouble because it wouldn't be 100% dependent on sponsors who drop everything as soon as the brand loses value.
KeSPA seems to completely miss this point, which is why Proleague's probably doomed, even with the switch. No one's paying $20/mo to see Proleague in HD and get VOD access.
On July 23 2012 18:57 Khai wrote: Sad day for e-sports. Looks like the younger generation prefers mindless games.
The younger generation also prefers PAYING for their mindless games, which is actually the real issue here. SC2's fanbase is a lot smaller than BWs, but they have much more open wallets. If more BW fans were willing to pay what SC2 fans pay, BW wouldn't be in even the tiniest bit of trouble because it wouldn't be 100% dependent on sponsors who drop everything as soon as the brand loses value.
KeSPA seems to completely miss this point, which is why Proleague's probably doomed, even with the switch. No one's paying $20/mo to see Proleague in HD and get VOD access.
only really applicable to westerners, but then again I have no idea how much koreans are willing to pay for entertainment shows (which is what BW esport is, not games).
Game wise though, its free or prepare to bust (unless you have big name behind your brand)
Its kind of a shame that there might not be a military team for SC2. Im not sure about the whole smartphone thing but I'm sure their reasons are sound.
It was expected, but it is still unfortunate. It would be interesting to see if any other country takes on this model in terms of making their military more attractive. Join the military, you might end up playing video games!!!!
On July 23 2012 18:57 Khai wrote: Sad day for e-sports. Looks like the younger generation prefers mindless games.
The younger generation also prefers PAYING for their mindless games, which is actually the real issue here. SC2's fanbase is a lot smaller than BWs, but they have much more open wallets. If more BW fans were willing to pay what SC2 fans pay, BW wouldn't be in even the tiniest bit of trouble because it wouldn't be 100% dependent on sponsors who drop everything as soon as the brand loses value.
KeSPA seems to completely miss this point, which is why Proleague's probably doomed, even with the switch. No one's paying $20/mo to see Proleague in HD and get VOD access.
On July 23 2012 18:57 Khai wrote: Sad day for e-sports. Looks like the younger generation prefers mindless games.
The younger generation also prefers PAYING for their mindless games, which is actually the real issue here. SC2's fanbase is a lot smaller than BWs, but they have much more open wallets. If more BW fans were willing to pay what SC2 fans pay, BW wouldn't be in even the tiniest bit of trouble because it wouldn't be 100% dependent on sponsors who drop everything as soon as the brand loses value.
KeSPA seems to completely miss this point, which is why Proleague's probably doomed, even with the switch. No one's paying $20/mo to see Proleague in HD and get VOD access.
But kespa's model worked for over 10 years and is used by most legitimate sports. Are you really suggesting that PPV is the way to go here?
KeSPA's model is actually kind of odd. Sports like football, baseball, even pro wrestling are free to watch on TV, and make some money on ads, but REALLY make money when people come to stadiums to see games and pay hundreds or thousands of dollars to do so.
We all know that picture of 120,000 fans at a Proleague Finals. Imagine if tickets were $10-$20, based on where you were sitting. That's literally millions of dollars that didn't get made.
The KeSPA model was good up until the exact second sponsors started pulling out. But then all the fans in the world won't help them.
I'm not saying KeSPA should've gone fully PPV. Even MLG turned away from that model. But some way of monetizing your audience lets you live if you have sponsor difficulties (indeed, the whole reason MLG went PPV in the first place was just to prove it was feasible to have an sponsorless tournament). It didn't even have to be OSL/MLG/PL. Go to Kim Carrier's apartment and do a Homestory Cup-like thing, that would've been cool (and helped a little with the cardboard player issue). There was a lot they could've done. But they didn't, because the sponsorship model was working so well and when it wasn't it was too late.
When the government or military says it's over, it's really over. Can't imagine any games would come even close with similar longevity as BW seeing how the gaming industry is heading. No more Ace, sad day.
On July 23 2012 18:57 Khai wrote: Sad day for e-sports. Looks like the younger generation prefers mindless games.
The younger generation also prefers PAYING for their mindless games, which is actually the real issue here. SC2's fanbase is a lot smaller than BWs, but they have much more open wallets. If more BW fans were willing to pay what SC2 fans pay, BW wouldn't be in even the tiniest bit of trouble because it wouldn't be 100% dependent on sponsors who drop everything as soon as the brand loses value.
KeSPA seems to completely miss this point, which is why Proleague's probably doomed, even with the switch. No one's paying $20/mo to see Proleague in HD and get VOD access.
But kespa's model worked for over 10 years and is used by most legitimate sports. Are you really suggesting that PPV is the way to go here?
KeSPA's model is actually kind of odd. Sports like football, baseball, even pro wrestling are free to watch on TV, and make some money on ads, but REALLY make money when people come to stadiums to see games and pay hundreds or thousands of dollars to do so.
We all know that picture of 120,000 fans at a Proleague Finals. Imagine if tickets were $10-$20, based on where you were sitting. That's literally millions of dollars that didn't get made.
The KeSPA model was good up until the exact second sponsors started pulling out. But then all the fans in the world won't help them.
I'm not saying KeSPA should've gone fully PPV. Even MLG turned away from that model. But some way of monetizing your audience lets you live if you have sponsor difficulties (indeed, the whole reason MLG went PPV in the first place was just to prove it was feasible to have an sponsorless tournament). It didn't even have to be OSL/MLG/PL. Go to Kim Carrier's apartment and do a Homestory Cup-like thing, that would've been cool (and helped a little with the cardboard player issue). There was a lot they could've done. But they didn't, because the sponsorship model was working so well and when it wasn't it was too late.
That only accounts for tournament sponsors. How many tshirts do you think you would have to sell to pay flash's salary?
That is so fucking sad. Having Ace around meant there was always some of your old favorites to root for, an underdog playing from experience and flair trying to bring the fans more enjoyment. The last couple proleague seasons Ace did really well, which was awesome to watch.
Hope that someday, someone will take up the initiative to do something similar to this.
As others in this thread have said, Ace was more than a competitive gaming team, it was a big thing for the 'legitimacy' of BW, and how it was valued in SK. They were my third favorite team, and everyone's sentimental favorite, I would think. It was always great to see FBH and the others doing the rare ceremony like tumbling out of the booth. I wonder if we'll ever see a team like this again.
Never watched BW, but i certainly know of the team - i'm sure it's a bummer for them, probably a nice getaway from military duties. Hope they can find a new way to cope! Maybe they'll eventually come back once sc2 gets huge like bw =P
Also happy times I guess in this photo Air Force Ace and senior officers are spotted. Remembers me of a scene from top gun or some other movies like ID4.
Let me explain the matter with smartphones and SNS. There has been numerous articles about this recently in Korea.
Back in 90's and 2000's the trend was to enjoy gaming together. Together I mean as going to PC bang and play with friends side by side. My generation is the generation that went to arcade and played console together with friends.
The trend now is much more individual. Now every person has their own PC and smartphones. Because of internet and various appliances, one can be connected with others without actually physically being together.
The trend is also clear in PCbangs, which originally started out as a place to play game 'together' with others. In my days we went to Pcbang after school and played team game of BW or Counter Strike, etc. Now the game is more diverse. You see more and more people who come alone and play game of their own taste. Because of better technology more people play game at their home. It is no longer a neccesity to play and enjoy same game as others as you can still be part of the 'gang' and feel you belong somewhere through SNS and smartphone. Gaming is no longer considered group activity but rather an individual hobby.
Will people still go to PC bang and play games with friends? Sure, but they can also stay home and meet them on internet. Will people still go to gaming event to watch pro gamers play? Sure, but they can also stay home and watch on internet, while chatting with friends. Enjoying game as being part of physical group is no longer the big thing.
This is the reason why people(or so these articles claim) that while eSports will definitely grow it will be difficult to see a single game dominating entire population and creating the phenomenon BW did. The scene needs to evolve to meet the demand of viewers that are becoming more and more diverse. One can no longer make huge investment in single game and expect great success as easily as before.
That's all fair enough, but I don't see it as a terribly sound reason to disband the team. You could argue it may make a team slightly less close to each other... but... that doesn't seem to be much of an issue. Look at LoL; that's a team-only game, and that's on an incredible rise in Korea.
LoL is more social, they play in in PC bangs together and that's pretty much all that needs to happen for a game to become popular in a super social country.
On July 23 2012 20:52 BluemoonSC wrote: because of smart phones and social networks? sounds kinda like a cop-out, but what do i know.. gl to them in their remaining time!
Can the OP please link Junkka's explanation with the article.
On July 23 2012 13:09 Turbovolver wrote: Guys, LoL is a part of the casual gaming revolution, don't bring it up as a counterexample.
LOL gonna die slowly.. when Dota 2 and blizzard "dota" will come out.
Its a shame , ACE is really unique pro gaming team. Its funny how people write its not suprise.. why?? , they buy new cpus for sc2 .. they got nicce results in sc2.. for me its suprise..
So another part of Boxer's legacy is to disappear into limbo... Having a military field a team for a game was truly a world-unique phenomenon. There will not be another.
T___T
I always rooted for them (unless facing SKT).
Brave honour-warriors of the Korean military, bombing your opponents into submission no matter the odds, I salute you!
Edit: Assorted collection of SPL LR thread banners for ACE games: + Show Spoiler +
I can't find my favourite one, the one where ACE literally bombed someone (I think KT) into submission. Or was it posted in 'Results' section? I looked at all SPL threads from past two years and some custom banners have expired T_T. If you have it, post it please! Anyways, here's the rest!
On July 23 2012 13:09 Turbovolver wrote: Guys, LoL is a part of the casual gaming revolution, don't bring it up as a counterexample.
LOL gonna die slowly.. when Dota 2 and blizzard "dota" will come out.
Its a shame , ACE is really unique pro gaming team. Its funny how people write its not suprise.. why?? , they buy new cpus for sc2 .. they got nicce results in sc2.. for me its suprise..
haha what are you smoking man, people said same when hon came out, when d3 came out, when bloodline champions came out,and other 1294312931 games "OH MAN LOL WILL DIE THIS TIME NOW FOR SURE" look at it now, going strong and geting bigger than sc2 in korea.
On July 23 2012 13:09 Turbovolver wrote: Guys, LoL is a part of the casual gaming revolution, don't bring it up as a counterexample.
LOL gonna die slowly.. when Dota 2 and blizzard "dota" will come out.
Its a shame , ACE is really unique pro gaming team. Its funny how people write its not suprise.. why?? , they buy new cpus for sc2 .. they got nicce results in sc2.. for me its suprise..
haha what are you smoking man, people said same when hon came out, when d3 came out, when bloodline champions came out,and other 1294312931 games "OH MAN LOL WILL DIE THIS TIME NOW FOR SURE" look at it now, going strong and geting bigger than sc2 in korea.
Err what are you blabbing on about?
When you say "people said the same for hon/d3/blc" you mean, 5 people? HoN is a very niche, dota-clone..nobody would say LoL would die because of that. D3 is a hack and slash, again why would LoL lose players to D3? BLC is another totally different "moba" game compared to LoL.
Dota2 won't hurt LoL either, nobody is saying LoL is going down. Except in china.
However the rise of smartphones and social network services has caused progaming to decline.
.
What the fuck? Smartphones caused progaming to decline?
Well WCG (which is ran by Samsung) also planned to switch out PC gaming for Mobile gaming at their events, I think many esports companies in Korea fear the same thing.
We'll forever remember you ace. Every single player. You were the amazing underdogs. The old guard.
Also,
However the rise of smartphones and social network services has caused progaming to decline.
.
What the fuck? Smartphones caused progaming to decline?
Well WCG (which is ran by Samsung) also planned to switch out PC gaming for Mobile gaming at their events, I think many esports companies in Korea fear the same thing.
I expect SC2 to get more popular as more and more computers will be able to run it well. It can take time in Korea for a game to get popular. We never know.
People could stay connected ever since sell phones became cheap and vastly available. Smartphones changed nothing in that respect. Surely they got all those nice functions but none of it is a substitute to PC or console gaming, its just to pass time while your PC is not around.
We'll forever remember you ace. Every single player. You were the amazing underdogs. The old guard.
Also,
However the rise of smartphones and social network services has caused progaming to decline.
.
What the fuck? Smartphones caused progaming to decline?
Well WCG (which is ran by Samsung) also planned to switch out PC gaming for Mobile gaming at their events, I think many esports companies in Korea fear the same thing.
WTF WTF WTF
Mobile gaming........
More people played with Angry Birds than those who just heard of Starcraft, be it BW or Sc2, and causals are the market. For example, if WoW would be played only by the very high end hard core players, it would have died year after its release, its the 10 million causal player that make it viable.
And it seems so that mobile as a gaming platform ganing more and more focus, not that it is good but its is fact :\
On July 23 2012 13:09 Turbovolver wrote: Guys, LoL is a part of the casual gaming revolution, don't bring it up as a counterexample.
LOL gonna die slowly.. when Dota 2 and blizzard "dota" will come out.
Its a shame , ACE is really unique pro gaming team. Its funny how people write its not suprise.. why?? , they buy new cpus for sc2 .. they got nicce results in sc2.. for me its suprise..
haha what are you smoking man, people said same when hon came out, when d3 came out, when bloodline champions came out,and other 1294312931 games "OH MAN LOL WILL DIE THIS TIME NOW FOR SURE" look at it now, going strong and geting bigger than sc2 in korea.
Err what are you blabbing on about?
When you say "people said the same for hon/d3/blc" you mean, 5 people? HoN is a very niche, dota-clone..nobody would say LoL would die because of that. D3 is a hack and slash, again why would LoL lose players to D3? BLC is another totally different "moba" game compared to LoL.
Dota2 won't hurt LoL either, nobody is saying LoL is going down. Except in china.
Since LoL is owned by a Chinese company while dota2 is not, that will easily give LoL equal footing.
If chosen to (and they will), tencent can pull alot of political underhand to delay or even prevent dota2 from making a big scene in China.
On July 23 2012 22:35 BadAim wrote: Truly sad news. Every day I pray for sc2 to catch on like bw did...
It has to some extent and will continue to do so. More people watch SC2 than they ever did Brood War. Merely a transition, yet just as new people come in during a time of growth so too do others leave.
On July 23 2012 22:35 BadAim wrote: Truly sad news. Every day I pray for sc2 to catch on like bw did...
It has to some extent and will continue to do so. More people watch SC2 than they ever did Brood War. Merely a transition, yet just as new people come in during a time of growth so too do others leave.
This is only true if you don't consider Koreans people. I realize Flash might very well be a robot, but the rest of them are humans.
On July 23 2012 22:35 BadAim wrote: Truly sad news. Every day I pray for sc2 to catch on like bw did...
It has to some extent and will continue to do so. More people watch SC2 than they ever did Brood War. Merely a transition, yet just as new people come in during a time of growth so too do others leave.
You are so wrong, more people watched bw than sc2 has ever had. Tt was on tv afterall, sc2 in still only online. I dont know the exact numbers, but I'm pretty sure that more people wactched bw than sc2. I mean just look at the stadiums where they played sometimes up to 30k ppl attenden - How many people do you see attend a sc2? Not nearly half as much as that, I can assure you that.
So yeah this might only happen in 2014 but the Pro League can't really work with less than 8 teams, no? We need at least a new team and we also really need new sponsors .. :S
I think Ace is just ignorant. Mobile games are a thorn in eSports, but they won't kill it. Only thing that can kill eSports are the people of eSports. If we make enough wrong decisions, like Ace disbanding for no reason for example. (maybe they had a legit reason, but the ones stated are not even close to sufficient)
On July 24 2012 02:38 Shinta) wrote: I think Ace is just ignorant. Mobile games are a thorn in eSports, but they won't kill it. Only thing that can kill eSports are the people of eSports. If we make enough wrong decisions, like Ace disbanding for no reason for example. (maybe they had a legit reason, but the ones stated are not even close to sufficient)
100% theres a reason behind it, they just say the polite comment, afterall, they are military.
On July 24 2012 02:36 ilikeredheads wrote: so safe to assume Air Force doesn't support sc2?
It's not a matter of "support" or not. ACE is not the same as the rest of the corporate-sponsored teams. It was formed and funded by the Korean government to promote the image of the military to youths. It has come to the point where the government thinks it's no longer worthwhile to fund a team when they are not achieving their goal anymore.
On July 23 2012 22:35 BadAim wrote: Truly sad news. Every day I pray for sc2 to catch on like bw did...
It has to some extent and will continue to do so. More people watch SC2 than they ever did Brood War. Merely a transition, yet just as new people come in during a time of growth so too do others leave.
You are so wrong, more people watched bw than sc2 has ever had. Tt was on tv afterall, sc2 in still only online. I dont know the exact numbers, but I'm pretty sure that more people wactched bw than sc2. I mean just look at the stadiums where they played sometimes up to 30k ppl attenden - How many people do you see attend a sc2? Not nearly half as much as that, I can assure you that.
In ONE country, it was very popular.
SC2 is very, very popular WORLDWIDE.
People packing a convention center isn't really a valid argument. It only shows local support. SC2 has people packing convention halls in every country where there even IS an event.
On July 23 2012 22:35 BadAim wrote: Truly sad news. Every day I pray for sc2 to catch on like bw did...
It has to some extent and will continue to do so. More people watch SC2 than they ever did Brood War. Merely a transition, yet just as new people come in during a time of growth so too do others leave.
You are so wrong, more people watched bw than sc2 has ever had. Tt was on tv afterall, sc2 in still only online. I dont know the exact numbers, but I'm pretty sure that more people wactched bw than sc2. I mean just look at the stadiums where they played sometimes up to 30k ppl attenden - How many people do you see attend a sc2? Not nearly half as much as that, I can assure you that.
In ONE country, it was very popular.
SC2 is very, very popular WORLDWIDE.
People packing a convention center isn't really a valid argument. It only shows local support. SC2 has people packing convention halls in every country where there even IS an event.
Also, how many Broodwar Barcrafts were there?
This whole argument is invalid when you look at the timelines. -_-
Did they think that sc2 will not be good for their image compared to bw which is much more challenging and deep RTS or sc2 is just not popular in Korea so they are affraid they cant have the same influence on the young people? In both cases its really sad to see phenomena such as Ace just go away
On July 23 2012 22:35 BadAim wrote: Truly sad news. Every day I pray for sc2 to catch on like bw did...
It has to some extent and will continue to do so. More people watch SC2 than they ever did Brood War. Merely a transition, yet just as new people come in during a time of growth so too do others leave.
You are so wrong, more people watched bw than sc2 has ever had. Tt was on tv afterall, sc2 in still only online. I dont know the exact numbers, but I'm pretty sure that more people wactched bw than sc2. I mean just look at the stadiums where they played sometimes up to 30k ppl attenden - How many people do you see attend a sc2? Not nearly half as much as that, I can assure you that.
In ONE country, it was very popular.
SC2 is very, very popular WORLDWIDE.
People packing a convention center isn't really a valid argument. It only shows local support. SC2 has people packing convention halls in every country where there even IS an event.
Also, how many Broodwar Barcrafts were there?
Sadly, it doesn't matter to ACE. Overseas viewership has no relevance to ACE and perhaps to a couple other companies that own Kespa teams.
On July 24 2012 03:57 _Animus_ wrote: Did they think that sc2 will not be good for their image compared to bw which is much more challenging and deep RTS or sc2 is just not popular in Korea so they are affraid they cant have the same influence on the young people? In both cases its really sad to see phenomena such as Ace just go away
It's not that playing SC2 isn't good for their image but gaming in general doesn't have as positive an image as it once had in Korea. But more importantly, it's also not as popular as before (although it's true that SC2 in particular has not caught on in Korea).
I was a bigger fan of other teams that have disbanded recently, especially Hwaseung, but I am sadder to see ACE go. Having a military team was a big symbol for esports' legitimacy as a serious endeavor/career. It is always good to see ACE win. Most people's favorite players have played on ACE for part of their career.
Guys, why does every single one of these threads turn into a BW vs. SC2 war?
Brood War is an incredible game that did A LOT to cement the idea of pro-gaming as being something that was a valid track. I got taken by War3, but I remember explaining that in S. Korea, Brood War was essentially a national sport to people who didn't understand why I spent the amount of time I did on these kinds of games. In fact, I would take this slightly further to say that without the support BW got in Korea, the scene for Starcraft 2 would not have been possible.
That being said, Starcraft 2 has created a scene that would not have been possible with Brood War--the technicalities that made Brood War a beautiful, difficult, and exceptionally wonderful game for us to watch made it almost impossible for the mainstream gamer to get into. Yes, the game became easier, but now it is a worldwide phenomenon.
On Topic: This is really sad, I thought it was awesome that ACE provided a place for pro gamers to keep playing through their military service.
On July 24 2012 03:57 _Animus_ wrote: Did they think that sc2 will not be good for their image compared to bw which is much more challenging and deep RTS or sc2 is just not popular in Korea so they are affraid they cant have the same influence on the young people? In both cases its really sad to see phenomena such as Ace just go away
It's not that playing SC2 isn't good for their image but gaming in general doesn't have as positive an image as it once had in Korea. But more importantly, it's also not as popular as before (although it's true that SC2 in particular has not caught on in Korea).
That home gaming division is an real issue, i remember going to pc clubs when BW was popular in my country it was so great experience that i cant compare to playing alone in my room, im sure every person experienced that can understand me. Also sometimes i feel this community so friendly that i want to hug everybody lol and only dream what can be if we was able to gather together to watch events and have BW fun :D Unfortunatelly im not living in Korea nor USA. So playing/watching home kills the thrill in many cases plus everybody can behave like ass on the internet no problem.
We'll forever remember you ace. Every single player. You were the amazing underdogs. The old guard.
Also,
However the rise of smartphones and social network services has caused progaming to decline.
.
What the fuck? Smartphones caused progaming to decline?
According to game "journalists" the Apple dystopia will kill consoles, handhelds and PC gaming.
Fixed.
I really hope that this is not the beginning of a trend for other BW teams to pull out of the running. I don't see why other sponsors would pull funding because SC2 is simply another great avenue for advertising for them.
On July 24 2012 05:02 _Animus_ wrote: That home gaming division is an real issue, i remember going to pc clubs when BW was popular in my country it was so great experience that i cant compare to playing alone in my room, im sure every person experienced that can understand me. Also sometimes i feel this community so friendly that i want to hug everybody lol and only dream what can be if we was able to gather together to watch events and have BW fun :D Unfortunatelly im not living in Korea nor USA. So playing/watching home kills the thrill in many cases plus everybody can behave like ass on the internet no problem.
well, it was fund memories except that I went to a pcbang recently after returning to Taiwan (It was extremely popular during my childhood). Smokes everywhere, gang members around the corner with tattoos, everything smells like cig or instant noodles, and ridiculously (relatively) hourly cost. It is no wonder pcbang have been in such heavy decline in Taiwan now that personal computers and internet access is extremely affordable. Would never visit another one again
I personally think pcbang in Korea would probably have been in a much steeper decline if not for all their businesses being partially funded by the government
I don't quite understand the PCBang decline as a factor into ACE in general.
Isn't it still true that SC2 gamers are going to have to join the air force? Won't the Air Force still get whatever propmotional benefits they had been getting by having an SC2 team? Well sucks for Kespa.
A great loss to the scene, such a shame, but who knows, maybe the scene grows to a sufficient degree for them to form another military progamer team. Theres always hope.
On July 24 2012 05:31 Deletrious wrote: I don't quite understand the PCBang decline as a factor into ACE in general.
Isn't it still true that SC2 gamers are going to have to join the air force? Won't the Air Force still get whatever propmotional benefits they had been getting by having an SC2 team? Well sucks for Kespa.
From what I understood, Ace objective was to make the army "get in touch" with the youngsters. BW was a huge boom and every kid was playing it, so the military thought that creating a military team would improve the youngsters view on the military service.
However, with the decline of BW and its eventual replacement with the very unpopular SC2, Ace has not the foundations to continue with the team.
But my personal guess is that Ace is too honorable to switch to a game that was forced down into the scene. Respect!
On July 23 2012 22:35 BadAim wrote: Truly sad news. Every day I pray for sc2 to catch on like bw did...
It has to some extent and will continue to do so. More people watch SC2 than they ever did Brood War. Merely a transition, yet just as new people come in during a time of growth so too do others leave.
You are so wrong, more people watched bw than sc2 has ever had. Tt was on tv afterall, sc2 in still only online. I dont know the exact numbers, but I'm pretty sure that more people wactched bw than sc2. I mean just look at the stadiums where they played sometimes up to 30k ppl attenden - How many people do you see attend a sc2? Not nearly half as much as that, I can assure you that.
In ONE country, it was very popular.
SC2 is very, very popular WORLDWIDE.
People packing a convention center isn't really a valid argument. It only shows local support. SC2 has people packing convention halls in every country where there even IS an event.
On July 24 2012 04:44 CreeDo wrote: That being said, Starcraft 2 has created a scene that would not have been possible with Brood War--the technicalities that made Brood War a beautiful, difficult, and exceptionally wonderful game for us to watch made it almost impossible for the mainstream gamer to get into. Yes, the game became easier, but now it is a worldwide phenomenon.
it is not SC2 that created something, but the money that being pumped into it since its arrival. Numerous championships, good price pools, young naive fanboys brought up on CoD sequels. All sums up...
On July 23 2012 22:35 BadAim wrote: Truly sad news. Every day I pray for sc2 to catch on like bw did...
It has to some extent and will continue to do so. More people watch SC2 than they ever did Brood War. Merely a transition, yet just as new people come in during a time of growth so too do others leave.
You are so wrong, more people watched bw than sc2 has ever had. Tt was on tv afterall, sc2 in still only online. I dont know the exact numbers, but I'm pretty sure that more people wactched bw than sc2. I mean just look at the stadiums where they played sometimes up to 30k ppl attenden - How many people do you see attend a sc2? Not nearly half as much as that, I can assure you that.
In ONE country, it was very popular.
SC2 is very, very popular WORLDWIDE.
People packing a convention center isn't really a valid argument. It only shows local support. SC2 has people packing convention halls in every country where there even IS an event.
On July 24 2012 04:44 CreeDo wrote: That being said, Starcraft 2 has created a scene that would not have been possible with Brood War--the technicalities that made Brood War a beautiful, difficult, and exceptionally wonderful game for us to watch made it almost impossible for the mainstream gamer to get into. Yes, the game became easier, but now it is a worldwide phenomenon.
it is not SC2 that created something, but the money that being pumped into it since its arrival. Numerous championships, good price pools, young naive fanboys brought up on CoD sequels. All sums up...
all the money pumping into wc3 didn't do shit, what you describe is essentially the underlying assumption of the "bubble" argument. Those never cease to amuse me, and sc2 will most likely only further grow with HOTS releases
On July 23 2012 22:35 BadAim wrote: Truly sad news. Every day I pray for sc2 to catch on like bw did...
It has to some extent and will continue to do so. More people watch SC2 than they ever did Brood War. Merely a transition, yet just as new people come in during a time of growth so too do others leave.
You are so wrong, more people watched bw than sc2 has ever had. Tt was on tv afterall, sc2 in still only online. I dont know the exact numbers, but I'm pretty sure that more people wactched bw than sc2. I mean just look at the stadiums where they played sometimes up to 30k ppl attenden - How many people do you see attend a sc2? Not nearly half as much as that, I can assure you that.
In ONE country, it was very popular.
SC2 is very, very popular WORLDWIDE.
People packing a convention center isn't really a valid argument. It only shows local support. SC2 has people packing convention halls in every country where there even IS an event.
Also, how many Broodwar Barcrafts were there?
You're being a dick. You know nothing.
Irony. The writing is on the wall, whether you want to take notice or not.
On July 23 2012 22:35 BadAim wrote: Truly sad news. Every day I pray for sc2 to catch on like bw did...
It has to some extent and will continue to do so. More people watch SC2 than they ever did Brood War. Merely a transition, yet just as new people come in during a time of growth so too do others leave.
You are so wrong, more people watched bw than sc2 has ever had. Tt was on tv afterall, sc2 in still only online. I dont know the exact numbers, but I'm pretty sure that more people wactched bw than sc2. I mean just look at the stadiums where they played sometimes up to 30k ppl attenden - How many people do you see attend a sc2? Not nearly half as much as that, I can assure you that.
In ONE country, it was very popular.
SC2 is very, very popular WORLDWIDE.
People packing a convention center isn't really a valid argument. It only shows local support. SC2 has people packing convention halls in every country where there even IS an event.
Also, how many Broodwar Barcrafts were there?
So ignorant lol. BW in good times had more viewers and live spectators than SC2 has now globally. Only one OSL or PL final could have like 10 times more tv viewers and spectators that any MLG today.
this was bound to happen sooner or later... I doubt the Korean Air Force has the resources necessary to spend on upgrading equipment plus new coaching for SC2 like the other privately-owned teams in order to compete in a not very popular game in Korea.
This means there will only be 7 teams for the next proleague (if there is one, at this point will there even be a sponsor for 2013?), so perhaps it's time to find a way to meld with the GSTL teams?
Oh their so stupid. Some general in some cushy office some where who can't type and has no idea what the heck a video game is and he's never met his kids made this decision. This is a perfect example as to why the military is always 5 steps behind the curve.
On July 24 2012 04:44 CreeDo wrote: That being said, Starcraft 2 has created a scene that would not have been possible with Brood War--the technicalities that made Brood War a beautiful, difficult, and exceptionally wonderful game for us to watch made it almost impossible for the mainstream gamer to get into. Yes, the game became easier, but now it is a worldwide phenomenon.
it is not SC2 that created something, but the money that being pumped into it since its arrival. Numerous championships, good price pools, young naive fanboys brought up on CoD sequels. All sums up...
all the money pumping into wc3 didn't do shit, what you describe is essentially the underlying assumption of the "bubble" argument. Those never cease to amuse me, and sc2 will most likely only further grow with HOTS releases
On July 23 2012 22:35 BadAim wrote: Truly sad news. Every day I pray for sc2 to catch on like bw did...
It has to some extent and will continue to do so. More people watch SC2 than they ever did Brood War. Merely a transition, yet just as new people come in during a time of growth so too do others leave.
You are so wrong, more people watched bw than sc2 has ever had. Tt was on tv afterall, sc2 in still only online. I dont know the exact numbers, but I'm pretty sure that more people wactched bw than sc2. I mean just look at the stadiums where they played sometimes up to 30k ppl attenden - How many people do you see attend a sc2? Not nearly half as much as that, I can assure you that.
In ONE country, it was very popular.
SC2 is very, very popular WORLDWIDE.
People packing a convention center isn't really a valid argument. It only shows local support. SC2 has people packing convention halls in every country where there even IS an event.
Also, how many Broodwar Barcrafts were there?
One in five male teenagers watched the Flash vs Best ace match in the 10-11 Proleague Grand Final. When was the last time a SC2 tournament had a million viewers at once?
On July 24 2012 06:07 amazingoopah wrote: this was bound to happen sooner or later... I doubt the Korean Air Force has the resources necessary to spend on upgrading equipment plus new coaching for SC2 like the other privately-owned teams in order to compete in a not very popular game in Korea.
This means there will only be 7 teams for the next proleague (if there is one, at this point will there even be a sponsor for 2013?), so perhaps it's time to find a way to meld with the GSTL teams?
I think KeSPA already is planning on merging with the GSTL teams next Proleague season, which I think is scheduled to start in October after this season of Proleague is over.
On July 24 2012 04:44 CreeDo wrote: That being said, Starcraft 2 has created a scene that would not have been possible with Brood War--the technicalities that made Brood War a beautiful, difficult, and exceptionally wonderful game for us to watch made it almost impossible for the mainstream gamer to get into. Yes, the game became easier, but now it is a worldwide phenomenon.
it is not SC2 that created something, but the money that being pumped into it since its arrival. Numerous championships, good price pools, young naive fanboys brought up on CoD sequels. All sums up...
all the money pumping into wc3 didn't do shit, what you describe is essentially the underlying assumption of the "bubble" argument. Those never cease to amuse me, and sc2 will most likely only further grow with HOTS releases
keep being amused
you should help me out with that. type more interesting and funny things
On July 24 2012 04:44 CreeDo wrote: That being said, Starcraft 2 has created a scene that would not have been possible with Brood War--the technicalities that made Brood War a beautiful, difficult, and exceptionally wonderful game for us to watch made it almost impossible for the mainstream gamer to get into. Yes, the game became easier, but now it is a worldwide phenomenon.
it is not SC2 that created something, but the money that being pumped into it since its arrival. Numerous championships, good price pools, young naive fanboys brought up on CoD sequels. All sums up...
all the money pumping into wc3 didn't do shit, what you describe is essentially the underlying assumption of the "bubble" argument. Those never cease to amuse me, and sc2 will most likely only further grow with HOTS releases
keep being amused
you should help me out with that. type more interesting and funny things
I don't know what are you spewing about WC3. It did take off in MANY countries, especially in the east to the like of China and S.Korea. But it died off in S.Korea due to map being fixed to favor one race over another intentionally and being phased off by BW there.
And then China took over that scene. Beside WarCraft 3 scene was MUCH more conceived in the European Countries in addition to BW as RTS game (probably more so).
That being said, if Blizz pumped a lot of money into War3 for the growth of the game, it did have marvelous effect.
Beside if we are going to be all technical and whatnot, DotA is part of the WC3 franchise.
And I don't really know what to tell you about SC2, all that I know is that even in the countries outside of S.Korea, LoL is pretty much taking it over too. And despite for being very casual friendly, I do believe that LoL is here to stay with the professional gaming scene for a long time.
On July 24 2012 07:25 Apollo_Shards wrote: BW elitists preying on anyone trying to look at this in a positive light
One thing I know is that people are elite for a reason.
When BW is done will you guys just continue to whine about everything until you get banned? Shitting on other people isnt going to bring your game back and it would make everyone a lot happier if people could maybe scroll through one page without seeing people telling how much they hate SC2 and how superior BW is. No one is happy or excited to see BW go but you guys are just making things worse.
On July 24 2012 07:25 Apollo_Shards wrote: BW elitists preying on anyone trying to look at this in a positive light
One thing I know is that people are elite for a reason.
When BW is done will you guys just continue to whine about everything until you get banned? Shitting on other people isnt going to bring your game back and it would make everyone a lot happier if people could maybe scroll through one page without seeing people telling how much they hate SC2 and how superior BW is. No one is happy or excited to see BW go but you guys are just making things worse.
...What the fuck are you talking about? I said that there's nothing positive about this. It's a team disbanding; it's obviously a bad thing. The only person making things worse here is you by coming in here and randomly talking shit about people for no apparent reason.
I would like to see KESPA's official response to that.Though it is surely sad for players (those who now or in a nearest future will join the army), I must say, I support such a decision. "E-sports" never existed. There were only some people playing best-selling games in the front of their loyal fans and get paid for that by sponsors. And as the fans evolve you have to decide whether to evolve with them or to quit. If progaming was a sport, there would be no issue of "tranisitioning to other game". I mean why? Imagine any (even the worst) NBA team willing to switch to ice-hockey or volleyball. Or imagine Lakers or Knicks forced to switch to volleyball, since a certain well-recognized sport equipment producer has a lot of balls and nets to sell. And of course if fans deny to watch basketball players playing volleyball (or they just simply don't buy these nets), perhaps NBA authorities decide to move to soccer... The officials of so-called "e-sports" have nothing in common with any sport association's functions (except for restricting an access to progaming by licensing system), and actually make marketing-wise wrong decisions. In such a volatile environment, "quit" is the reasonable decision.
On July 24 2012 07:25 Apollo_Shards wrote: BW elitists preying on anyone trying to look at this in a positive light
One thing I know is that people are elite for a reason.
When BW is done will you guys just continue to whine about everything until you get banned? Shitting on other people isnt going to bring your game back and it would make everyone a lot happier if people could maybe scroll through one page without seeing people telling how much they hate SC2 and how superior BW is. No one is happy or excited to see BW go but you guys are just making things worse.
Again people perform a certain specific action for one reason or another. Why don't you find out that reason by yourselves and try to observe things from another one's perspective. Beside we aren't making things worse because what's done have already been done.
When JangBi wins the last OSL, I'm going to spend those 3 hours of TL.net surfing on something more productive. Probably going to get my band back together. I'm planning to pick up working out again and will spend more time in reading to augment my knowledge. That will be enough to fill in the void left by BW. As far as I can see it, SC2 will never replace Brood War and by the pattern that Blizzard is marching, I don't see RTS gaming to have a revival.
On July 24 2012 07:25 Apollo_Shards wrote: BW elitists preying on anyone trying to look at this in a positive light
One thing I know is that people are elite for a reason.
When BW is done will you guys just continue to whine about everything until you get banned? Shitting on other people isnt going to bring your game back and it would make everyone a lot happier if people could maybe scroll through one page without seeing people telling how much they hate SC2 and how superior BW is. No one is happy or excited to see BW go but you guys are just making things worse.
Lol, are you that surprised about people thinking that BW is the best game ever, and everything else is inferior to it in a BW forum? If you don't want to read posts like that, then stay away from the BW forum.
On July 24 2012 07:25 Apollo_Shards wrote: BW elitists preying on anyone trying to look at this in a positive light
Nobody's doing that because there's nothing positive about this.
On July 24 2012 07:31 Xiphos wrote:
On July 24 2012 07:25 Apollo_Shards wrote: BW elitists preying on anyone trying to look at this in a positive light
One thing I know is that people are elite for a reason.
When BW is done will you guys just continue to whine about everything until you get banned? Shitting on other people isnt going to bring your game back and it would make everyone a lot happier if people could maybe scroll through one page without seeing people telling how much they hate SC2 and how superior BW is. No one is happy or excited to see BW go but you guys are just making things worse.
Again people perform a certain specific action for one reason or another. Why don't you find out that reason by yourselves and try to observe things from another one's perspective. Beside we aren't making things worse because what's done have already been done.
When JangBi wins the last OSL, I'm going to spend those 3 hours of TL.net surfing on something more productive. Probably going to get my band back together. I'm planning to pick up working out again and will spend more time in reading to augment my knowledge. That will be enough to fill in the void left by BW. As far as I can see it, SC2 will never replace Brood War and by the pattern that Blizzard is marching, I don't see RTS gaming to have a revival.
Im really sorry BW is ending and it seems like you had a really great time with it. Hopefully you can figure out what to do after, working out and reading seem like really good ideas. Good luck to you!
On July 24 2012 07:25 Apollo_Shards wrote: BW elitists preying on anyone trying to look at this in a positive light
Nobody's doing that because there's nothing positive about this.
On July 24 2012 07:31 Xiphos wrote:
On July 24 2012 07:25 Apollo_Shards wrote: BW elitists preying on anyone trying to look at this in a positive light
One thing I know is that people are elite for a reason.
When BW is done will you guys just continue to whine about everything until you get banned? Shitting on other people isnt going to bring your game back and it would make everyone a lot happier if people could maybe scroll through one page without seeing people telling how much they hate SC2 and how superior BW is. No one is happy or excited to see BW go but you guys are just making things worse.
Again people perform a certain specific action for one reason or another. Why don't you find out that reason by yourselves and try to observe things from another one's perspective. Beside we aren't making things worse because what's done have already been done.
When JangBi wins the last OSL, I'm going to spend those 3 hours of TL.net surfing on something more productive. Probably going to get my band back together. I'm planning to pick up working out again and will spend more time in reading to augment my knowledge. That will be enough to fill in the void left by BW. As far as I can see it, SC2 will never replace Brood War and by the pattern that Blizzard is marching, I don't see RTS gaming to have a revival.
Guys, just stop. Calling elitism just provokes BW vs SC2, and what you will do instead of surfing TL isn't relevant to anything at all.
This isn't that unexpected to be honest, it's quite sad seeing them lose almost every match
On July 24 2012 07:25 Apollo_Shards wrote: BW elitists preying on anyone trying to look at this in a positive light
Haha, there's nothing positive about this, nor does it have to do with BW. Since its creation when Boxer went to the Korean Air Force, the simple existence of a progaming team sponsored by the military verified that esports was popular and legitimate. It was better for everyone, including for instance the Special Force players, that this team existed. There is nothing positive about a Starcraft team disbanding.
On July 24 2012 08:10 Apollo_Shards wrote: Im really sorry BW is ending and it seems like you had a really great time with it. Hopefully you can figure out what to do after, working out and reading seem like really good ideas. Good luck to you!
Eh, last I checked there were still players on like 10 servers. Professional Korean BW is "ending" (switching to SC2). So basically you want people to look on the bright side of the dissolution of one of the most important teams.
Well about sc2 wont be able to be better than BW, if you have sc2, play the Heart of the swarm custom mode, i have played and its SO FUN, i dont want to play WoL anymore, so if you haven't, try it.
Srry for the offtopic
On topic.
Its such a shame, it was a great team, sincerely i hope sc2 grows a lot in korea, so ACE reconsiders and comes back, but if they disband uintil 2014, i think maybe they will change their mind and never quit.
"Tis a sad day indeed. I think almost everyone was an ACE fan of sorts, considering how poorly they did; who doesn't like the underdog winning, after all?
I hope that professional BW survives (in Korea, that is), but I fear this is just one more drop of water evaporating from the bucket that is Korean BW
On July 24 2012 09:11 sephirotharg wrote: I hope that professional BW survives (in Korea, that is)
You wouldn't be interested in professional BW somewhere else? I know the Chinese scene is really small, and the western scene is pitable, but there's still a chance to grow them into something respectable within a few years, I think.
This kind of news doesn't even affect me anymore... every week, it's like "An iconic proleague figure or organization is completely gone" AND I'M STILL PLAYING BROODWAR, WHAT'S UP!
On July 24 2012 06:08 dashpar wrote: Oh their so stupid. Some general in some cushy office some where who can't type and has no idea what the heck a video game is and he's never met his kids made this decision. This is a perfect example as to why the military is always 5 steps behind the curve.
To the contrary, they know exactly what a video game is. They are disbanding with the end of BW because SC2 will only ever be a video game.
Some people are confused why but it's a obvious. I posted a while back that this was expected. I'll elaborate on why.
To transition to SC2 not only means to transition to a new game. You transition from a national stage to the Internationale stage. Air Force ACE is ironically the only team that can't fly it's players out of Korea due to military restrictions.
On July 24 2012 03:36 GuitarBizarre wrote: Also, how many Broodwar Barcrafts were there?
That sounds like a Justin Bieber Fan bragging with Twitter Followers and argueing that the kid is the best musician of all time.
But that's exactly what these SC2 newbies are. They're essentially arguing that if Justin Bieber is better than The Beatles.
Come on, I know SC2 isn't perfect, but comparing it to Justin Bieber? Now that's too far. I challenge you to an e-duel! :p
Nowadays, whenever the issue of BW vs SC2 comes up, threads usually turn to shit, because trolls know that BW fans are hurting, so they pour salt into the wound, knowing that it will prompt an angry reaction.
This isn't a BW vs SC2 thing, this is an eSport issue, and regardless of whether you prefer Sc2 of BW, this news is reason for sadness.
On July 24 2012 07:40 Bareleon wrote: One of my fav sc2 teams disbanded, Old Generations. Its sad but oh well!
Would love to see ACE play sc2.
But arent they playing sc2 in the hybrid season?
LOL WHO? why do these fucking retards keep posting and then whining that every thread becomes BW vs sctoo.
User was temp banned for this post.
honestly thats hardly any bait at all, it seems more the bitterness of some BW fans that ignites it more than anything nowadays (case and point would be this post)
OT: sadface hopefully the progamers that are on the team can find stuff after they get out <3 FBH
On July 23 2012 22:35 BadAim wrote: Truly sad news. Every day I pray for sc2 to catch on like bw did...
It has to some extent and will continue to do so. More people watch SC2 than they ever did Brood War. Merely a transition, yet just as new people come in during a time of growth so too do others leave.
You are so wrong, more people watched bw than sc2 has ever had. Tt was on tv afterall, sc2 in still only online. I dont know the exact numbers, but I'm pretty sure that more people wactched bw than sc2. I mean just look at the stadiums where they played sometimes up to 30k ppl attenden - How many people do you see attend a sc2? Not nearly half as much as that, I can assure you that.
In ONE country, it was very popular.
SC2 is very, very popular WORLDWIDE.
People packing a convention center isn't really a valid argument. It only shows local support. SC2 has people packing convention halls in every country where there even IS an event.
Also, how many Broodwar Barcrafts were there?
So ignorant lol. BW in good times had more viewers and live spectators than SC2 has now globally. Only one OSL or PL final could have like 10 times more tv viewers and spectators that any MLG today.
It's pretty pointless for me to try and change the minds of diehards on their forums so I won't. That world 'globally' is important though... Sc2 is global. We will see where it stands given ten or so years as bw had (bw numbers in the first two years of its existence are the same numbers you brought up or are those the numbers given time to grow...and it was one of the only games in town.)
Please enjoy the rest of brood war and I'll see you on the other side. Or maybe I won't. Growth and change.
Profound sadness. I always loved telling non-fans that the bloody AIR FORCE has a Broodwar team in Korea! Oh well. Who didn't like when they beat a top dog? They will be missed when they finally capitulate.
If anything, this looks bad for the korean SC2 scene. We already knew BW was going to die anyways, this is bad for SC2 because such an important icon of korean e-sports just doesn't see a point in making a transtition, seeing empty studios in the ODT doesn't help a lot either.
On July 24 2012 13:41 Kergy wrote: If anything, this looks bad for the korean SC2 scene. We already knew BW was going to die anyways, this is bad for SC2 because such an important icon of korean e-sports just doesn't see a point in making a transtition, seeing empty studios in the ODT doesn't help a lot either.
KeSPA decided that, if BW had to die, they'd take SC2 down with it. There's absolutely no way the Korean SC2 scene can support CJ Entus, KT Rolster, Samsung Khan, South Korea Telecom T1, STX Soul, Woongjin Stars and KeSPA Team 8 when it was already having trouble with Prime, The SCV Life, StarTale, LG Incredible Miracle, SlayerS, New Star HoSeo, MVP, FX Open E-sports Korea, Team Liquid, and Fnatic Raidcall.
17 teams is way too many teams (And that's AFTER the collapse of oGs and Zenex). Even the ten GSL teams was too many teams, to the point where Zenex was literally posting threads on Team Liquid looking for sponsors and Prime makes most of their money by moonlighting as male models. There's no future there for a KeSPA team with 6-figure contracts to pay.
Either a bunch of teams are going to disband pretty soon, or the SC2 scene will collapse under the weight in a little bit. Unless you're a BW fan into schadenfreude, there's no light at the end of this tunnel.
the number of teams isn't a problem since starcraft 2 WoL is such an old game; we know it has to die. The scene will become full ESPORTS when HotS comes out ^.^. Am wondering which teams are going to switch to HotS~~~~~~~~
On July 23 2012 22:35 BadAim wrote: Truly sad news. Every day I pray for sc2 to catch on like bw did...
It has to some extent and will continue to do so. More people watch SC2 than they ever did Brood War. Merely a transition, yet just as new people come in during a time of growth so too do others leave.
You are so wrong, more people watched bw than sc2 has ever had. Tt was on tv afterall, sc2 in still only online. I dont know the exact numbers, but I'm pretty sure that more people wactched bw than sc2. I mean just look at the stadiums where they played sometimes up to 30k ppl attenden - How many people do you see attend a sc2? Not nearly half as much as that, I can assure you that.
In ONE country, it was very popular.
SC2 is very, very popular WORLDWIDE.
People packing a convention center isn't really a valid argument. It only shows local support. SC2 has people packing convention halls in every country where there even IS an event.
Also, how many Broodwar Barcrafts were there?
So ignorant lol. BW in good times had more viewers and live spectators than SC2 has now globally. Only one OSL or PL final could have like 10 times more tv viewers and spectators that any MLG today.
It's pretty pointless for me to try and change the minds of diehards on their forums so I won't. That world 'globally' is important though... Sc2 is global. We will see where it stands given ten or so years as bw had (bw numbers in the first two years of its existence are the same numbers you brought up or are those the numbers given time to grow...and it was one of the only games in town.)
Please enjoy the rest of brood war and I'll see you on the other side. Or maybe I won't. Growth and change.
Yeah, sure. In ten years we shall have fanboys whining about epic sc3 vs shiny sc4.
On July 24 2012 13:41 Kergy wrote: If anything, this looks bad for the korean SC2 scene. We already knew BW was going to die anyways, this is bad for SC2 because such an important icon of korean e-sports just doesn't see a point in making a transtition, seeing empty studios in the ODT doesn't help a lot either.
KeSPA decided that, if BW had to die, they'd take SC2 down with it. There's absolutely no way the Korean SC2 scene can support CJ Entus, KT Rolster, Samsung Khan, South Korea Telecom T1, STX Soul, Woongjin Stars and KeSPA Team 8 when it was already having trouble with Prime, The SCV Life, StarTale, LG Incredible Miracle, SlayerS, New Star HoSeo, MVP, FX Open E-sports Korea, Team Liquid, and Fnatic Raidcall.
17 teams is way too many teams (And that's AFTER the collapse of oGs and Zenex). Even the ten GSL teams was too many teams, to the point where Zenex was literally posting threads on Team Liquid looking for sponsors and Prime makes most of their money by moonlighting as male models. There's no future there for a KeSPA team with 6-figure contracts to pay.
Either a bunch of teams are going to disband pretty soon, or the SC2 scene will collapse under the weight in a little bit. Unless you're a BW fan into schadenfreude, there's no light at the end of this tunnel.
I know you keep talking about sc2 being a bubble but keep in mind - the teams generate earnings on the foreign scene mostly, through tourneys. The earning model is somewhat reversed from what is the usual case with sponsored teams: in this case the sponsorteam gets money from the earning the team generates through tourneys, rather than sponsor mother corporation giving money for the team. So while the viewership remains high, tourneys will generate earnings from themselves which will trickle down to the teams.
On July 24 2012 09:11 sephirotharg wrote: I hope that professional BW survives (in Korea, that is)
You wouldn't be interested in professional BW somewhere else? I know the Chinese scene is really small, and the western scene is pitable, but there's still a chance to grow them into something respectable within a few years, I think.
I dont think so, Sc2's release gave BW attention to those who never heard of it before, yet nothings really changed. As time goes on, it will be just even harder to catch new players. Just think about, running BW on W7 already has problems and need to find fixes to make it work. Now W8 is coming, another generation growing up on console games and on MMOs. Personally i would love a rise viewer numbers and just overall, player numbers, but i dont think so it will ever happen
It is already pain in the ass to find a game on iccup with my time zone, specially since i cannot host from dorm.
As for those wondering about Ace, it is said, they disband in 2014, not tomorrow. They will keep playing till they have members, just they wont accept new ones. And those saying, they cannot afford computer upgrades, on what do they practice? Thin air? They already playing the game.
On July 23 2012 22:35 BadAim wrote: Truly sad news. Every day I pray for sc2 to catch on like bw did...
It has to some extent and will continue to do so. More people watch SC2 than they ever did Brood War. Merely a transition, yet just as new people come in during a time of growth so too do others leave.
You are so wrong, more people watched bw than sc2 has ever had. Tt was on tv afterall, sc2 in still only online. I dont know the exact numbers, but I'm pretty sure that more people wactched bw than sc2. I mean just look at the stadiums where they played sometimes up to 30k ppl attenden - How many people do you see attend a sc2? Not nearly half as much as that, I can assure you that.
In ONE country, it was very popular.
SC2 is very, very popular WORLDWIDE.
People packing a convention center isn't really a valid argument. It only shows local support. SC2 has people packing convention halls in every country where there even IS an event.
Also, how many Broodwar Barcrafts were there?
So ignorant lol. BW in good times had more viewers and live spectators than SC2 has now globally. Only one OSL or PL final could have like 10 times more tv viewers and spectators that any MLG today.
It's pretty pointless for me to try and change the minds of diehards on their forums so I won't. That world 'globally' is important though... Sc2 is global. We will see where it stands given ten or so years as bw had (bw numbers in the first two years of its existence are the same numbers you brought up or are those the numbers given time to grow...and it was one of the only games in town.)
Please enjoy the rest of brood war and I'll see you on the other side. Or maybe I won't. Growth and change.
You are too fast tagging people as diehard because someone correct you. I watch and play both games and I have seen every MLG and GSL since 2010.
But you cant claim "More people watch SC2 than they ever did Brood War" like you said at first. 50.000 viewers in a stream in nothing compared with national TV channel with millions of viewers.
On July 24 2012 09:11 sephirotharg wrote: I hope that professional BW survives (in Korea, that is)
You wouldn't be interested in professional BW somewhere else? I know the Chinese scene is really small, and the western scene is pitable, but there's still a chance to grow them into something respectable within a few years, I think.
I dont think so, Sc2's release gave BW attention to those who never heard of it before, yet nothings really changed.
That's largely the BW's community's fault, though. Absolutely no effort was made to try to convert any of the "Oh hey SC2 is cool" people to BW fans, besides people on forums calling them names. Where was KeSPA's big outreach? The only major BW scene to ever even try to reach westerners was GOM back when Tasteless and I think SuperDanielMan were casting the GOMTV Classic in English. And KeSPA shut that one down pretty fast. Which, actually, was a pretty terrible decision in the long run. If GOM hadn't gotten into SC2, there'd be no SC2 now.
I seriously do believe that if GOMTV was in the BW business and not the SC2 business, we'd be in a new Golden Age of Brood War right now. SC2 isn't big because of Blizzard, much as people like to blame them. It's big because GOM sold it to a foreign audience.
Even right now, when the whole idea of the switch to SC2 is the international fans, there's still no official English stream for Proleague. That's insane. Even when their in SC2, KeSPA ignores the SC2 scene. They have completely and 100% fucked BW up. They're fucking up in SC2 now as well. Whatever they did for Brood War in the past, the last few years have been nothing but abject incompetence on their part.
As time goes on, it will be just even harder to catch new players. Just think about, running BW on W7 already has problems and need to find fixes to make it work.
This admittedly is a pretty huge problem. I'd say port forwarding is a bigger deal than killing explorer in task manager. A lot of people (myself included) literally can't do that.
Now W8 is coming, another generation growing up on console games and on MMOs. Personally i would love a rise viewer numbers and just overall, player numbers, but i dont think so it will ever happen
Certainly not if you keep referring to the only potential source of new BW fans in such a demeaning get off my lawnish way.
On July 24 2012 17:07 Haustka wrote: hopefully they will come bak in sc2
...What? We're already "in SC2" with proleague and ODT. And the final disband date will be well into SC2 only PL. They're disbanding because SC2 isn't the phenomenon that BW was...
On July 23 2012 22:35 BadAim wrote: Truly sad news. Every day I pray for sc2 to catch on like bw did...
It has to some extent and will continue to do so. More people watch SC2 than they ever did Brood War. Merely a transition, yet just as new people come in during a time of growth so too do others leave.
You are so wrong, more people watched bw than sc2 has ever had. Tt was on tv afterall, sc2 in still only online. I dont know the exact numbers, but I'm pretty sure that more people wactched bw than sc2. I mean just look at the stadiums where they played sometimes up to 30k ppl attenden - How many people do you see attend a sc2? Not nearly half as much as that, I can assure you that.
In ONE country, it was very popular.
SC2 is very, very popular WORLDWIDE.
People packing a convention center isn't really a valid argument. It only shows local support. SC2 has people packing convention halls in every country where there even IS an event.
Also, how many Broodwar Barcrafts were there?
So ignorant lol. BW in good times had more viewers and live spectators than SC2 has now globally. Only one OSL or PL final could have like 10 times more tv viewers and spectators that any MLG today.
It's pretty pointless for me to try and change the minds of diehards on their forums so I won't. That world 'globally' is important though... Sc2 is global. We will see where it stands given ten or so years as bw had (bw numbers in the first two years of its existence are the same numbers you brought up or are those the numbers given time to grow...and it was one of the only games in town.)
Please enjoy the rest of brood war and I'll see you on the other side. Or maybe I won't. Growth and change.
You are too fast tagging people as diehard because someone correct you. I watch and play both games and I have seen every MLG and GSL since 2010.
But you cant claim "More people watch SC2 than they ever did Brood War" like you said at first. 50.000 viewers in a stream in nothing compared with national TV channel with millions of viewers.
First I just wanna say I'm sorry that Ace are going to disband but I think there's gonna be more news like this. I also play both games and enjoy watching them. As for viewer numbers I think globally they have increased. We have for example the phenomenon of Barcraft and Swedish Television showing Dreamhack's Starcraft tournament. As for Korea I can't really claim anything but it's probably true that Sc2 is never going to be as popular as BW is/was.
And the picture with Bisu, Flash, Fantasy, Jaedong, Effort, Leta, Stork in the same team will never happen. T_T
Same as well, my goodness, think of Calm, Sea, Stork and Kal as the vet leading Ace; then Bisu and Jaedong going on board, then Ace Jaedong vs KT Flash, Ace BeSt vs SKT Fantasy, Ace Stork vs Khan Jangbi, the new blood from all these teams fighting against the TBLS to show they now own the team and don't have to live in the shadow of their legacy.
Just imagine this line-up on Ace (all these guys are 22-23):
T: Leta, Sea, Light (Poor Magikarp )
P: Bisu, Stork, Jangbi (23!!!), Kal (Captain)
Z: Jaedong, Calm, ZerO (WHY NOT HOEJJA/HYUK???)
And the next generation after them: (21s)
T: Fantasy (damn it is he the only good 21 year old T???)
P: Movie, Stats
Z: Soulkey, RorO
This is what we're going to miss out on. Notice that Flash isn't even in either of these brackets!
On July 24 2012 17:07 Haustka wrote: hopefully they will come bak in sc2
This is a SC2 team disbanding because of the lack of popularity of SC2 (in korea) and esport in general (pretty obvious translation of the statement). This thread could almost have been in SC2 general, but it was better to post it here because of the team history. Did not really matter though, the temptation to start a passionating debate was stronger.
Progamers in Ace were drafted as Air Force computer specialists and served as war game testers at their central computer center.
Fascinating
I like how they do not do the standard bow, rather the crisp clean salute. Really sets them apart from the other teams, aside from always being the last in PL.
Bw figures have been dropping for a while during seasonal play...however the finals of events (PL, OSL) still draw HUGE audiences. Talking to my Girl, who was around high school age when BW was coming out, it was a HUGE deal and they were getting multiple millions of viewers for the first 5 or 6 years. After saViOr scandal, they dropped.....but they were already dropping a little.
SC2 just isn't going to be as big in Korea, which is why it is obvious as to why they're closing down ace. Esports is not as new as it used to be, and due to that Ace will close as there is no need to have it there anymore. This has nothing to do with SC2 being a worse game, it has everything to do with Esports getting old for Koreans. To us in the west, it was always seen as a marvel to behold, that people like us could get paid to do what we love, but it was so far away which is how it kept it's shine. However, When your in the place, and its everywhere, eventually it will get old and you will move on....
If the west Esports scene lasts 12 years like the Koreans has, we've had a good run at it :D and by then, maybe Korea will be back on the Esports bandwagon.
On July 24 2012 09:11 sephirotharg wrote: I hope that professional BW survives (in Korea, that is)
You wouldn't be interested in professional BW somewhere else? I know the Chinese scene is really small, and the western scene is pitable, but there's still a chance to grow them into something respectable within a few years, I think.
I dont think so, Sc2's release gave BW attention to those who never heard of it before, yet nothings really changed.
That's largely the BW's community's fault, though. Absolutely no effort was made to try to convert any of the "Oh hey SC2 is cool" people to BW fans, besides people on forums calling them names. Where was KeSPA's big outreach? The only major BW scene to ever even try to reach westerners was GOM back when Tasteless and I think SuperDanielMan were casting the GOMTV Classic in English. And KeSPA shut that one down pretty fast. Which, actually, was a pretty terrible decision in the long run. If GOM hadn't gotten into SC2, there'd be no SC2 now.
I seriously do believe that if GOMTV was in the BW business and not the SC2 business, we'd be in a new Golden Age of Brood War right now. SC2 isn't big because of Blizzard, much as people like to blame them. It's big because GOM sold it to a foreign audience.
Even right now, when the whole idea of the switch to SC2 is the international fans, there's still no official English stream for Proleague. That's insane. Even when their in SC2, KeSPA ignores the SC2 scene. They have completely and 100% fucked BW up. They're fucking up in SC2 now as well. Whatever they did for Brood War in the past, the last few years have been nothing but abject incompetence on their part.
As time goes on, it will be just even harder to catch new players. Just think about, running BW on W7 already has problems and need to find fixes to make it work.
This admittedly is a pretty huge problem. I'd say port forwarding is a bigger deal than killing explorer in task manager. A lot of people (myself included) literally can't do that.
Now W8 is coming, another generation growing up on console games and on MMOs. Personally i would love a rise viewer numbers and just overall, player numbers, but i dont think so it will ever happen
Certainly not if you keep referring to the only potential source of new BW fans in such a demeaning get off my lawnish way.
On July 23 2012 17:10 Koshi wrote: So this means that SCII players can't play when they are in the army? I am hoping they are making a new team for the new talent.
May 16th - oGs disbands July 13th - Zenex ceases to exist as an independent team, will merge with Startale July 23rd - Air Force Ace announces plan to disband
The Korean scene is collapsing.
I wouldn't be surprised to see 2-3 more teams disband in the next few months,.
you forgot last year's mbc game, hwaseung oz and wemade collapses (edit: or was it in 2010? i forgot :S)
On July 23 2012 17:10 Koshi wrote: So this means that SCII players can't play when they are in the army? I am hoping they are making a new team for the new talent.
May 16th - oGs disbands July 13th - Zenex ceases to exist as an independent team, will merge with Startale July 23rd - Air Force Ace announces plan to disband
The Korean scene is collapsing.
I wouldn't be surprised to see 2-3 more teams disband in the next few months,.
you forgot last year's mbc game, hwaseung oz and wemade collapses (edit: or was it in 2010? i forgot :S)
On July 23 2012 17:35 larse wrote: The only reason people are seeing Western scene rising is because that the Western scene was like zero before LOL and SC2. There are some WC3 and CS events here and there, but that's pretty much it.
you obviously have no idea what you're talking about. quake3 was the premiere esports from 99-05 with a shitload of coverage and big cash tournaments, most famous ones being the CPL ones (basically, western OSL with better prize pool).
I always like the concept of ACE, and was really hoping they would have transitioned to SC2. Its sad to see mobile games taking over the 'classic' games like SC2.
On July 24 2012 21:10 hifriend wrote: Always been kind of a pointless team to be honest.
Except for the opportunity to allow players to continue playing through their military service instead of it being a death knell for a player's career.
A lot of great players with huge fanbases went through the Airforce team, many of them would have just disappeared and along with them their fans if it weren't for that team
I started following the Korean Starcraft progaming scene right around the time ACE was founded. I'm really sad to hear this, but I guess the times have changed. It was always nice to see ACE players winning random games every now and then.
On July 24 2012 09:11 sephirotharg wrote: I hope that professional BW survives (in Korea, that is)
You wouldn't be interested in professional BW somewhere else? I know the Chinese scene is really small, and the western scene is pitable, but there's still a chance to grow them into something respectable within a few years, I think.
I dont think so, Sc2's release gave BW attention to those who never heard of it before, yet nothings really changed.
That's largely the BW's community's fault, though. Absolutely no effort was made to try to convert any of the "Oh hey SC2 is cool" people to BW fans, besides people on forums calling them names. Where was KeSPA's big outreach? The only major BW scene to ever even try to reach westerners was GOM back when Tasteless and I think SuperDanielMan were casting the GOMTV Classic in English. And KeSPA shut that one down pretty fast. Which, actually, was a pretty terrible decision in the long run. If GOM hadn't gotten into SC2, there'd be no SC2 now.
I seriously do believe that if GOMTV was in the BW business and not the SC2 business, we'd be in a new Golden Age of Brood War right now. SC2 isn't big because of Blizzard, much as people like to blame them. It's big because GOM sold it to a foreign audience.
Even right now, when the whole idea of the switch to SC2 is the international fans, there's still no official English stream for Proleague. That's insane. Even when their in SC2, KeSPA ignores the SC2 scene. They have completely and 100% fucked BW up. They're fucking up in SC2 now as well. Whatever they did for Brood War in the past, the last few years have been nothing but abject incompetence on their part.
As time goes on, it will be just even harder to catch new players. Just think about, running BW on W7 already has problems and need to find fixes to make it work.
This admittedly is a pretty huge problem. I'd say port forwarding is a bigger deal than killing explorer in task manager. A lot of people (myself included) literally can't do that.
Now W8 is coming, another generation growing up on console games and on MMOs. Personally i would love a rise viewer numbers and just overall, player numbers, but i dont think so it will ever happen
Certainly not if you keep referring to the only potential source of new BW fans in such a demeaning get off my lawnish way.
Cant agree with this. Youre trying to put the cart before the horse. What comes first is a popular game by the designers, and blizzard did good here, SC2 is popular. As a result, a lot of potential viewers could supply a pro scene with earnings, so a big proscene is possible. BW is very unpopular outside korea/china, so there are few viewers and a pro scene isnt possible.
On July 24 2012 21:10 hifriend wrote: Always been kind of a pointless team to be honest.
Except for the opportunity to allow players to continue playing through their military service instead of it being a death knell for a player's career.
A lot of great players with huge fanbases went through the Airforce team, many of them would have just disappeared and along with them their fans if it weren't for that team
TheSTC wasn't in the ACE team but returned stronger than before xD
I still don't buy the smartphone killing esports idea. My guess would be budget cuts and lack of consistently good results prompted the AIr Force to disband. It's embarrassing especially when you are the military being the bottom feeder all the time.
On July 23 2012 17:10 Koshi wrote: So this means that SCII players can't play when they are in the army? I am hoping they are making a new team for the new talent.
May 16th - oGs disbands July 13th - Zenex ceases to exist as an independent team, will merge with Startale July 23rd - Air Force Ace announces plan to disband
The Korean scene is collapsing.
I wouldn't be surprised to see 2-3 more teams disband in the next few months,.
you forgot last year's mbc game, hwaseung oz and wemade collapses (edit: or was it in 2010? i forgot :S)
I considered adding them, but that was before the hybrid league was announced. MBCGame, Oz, and WeMade were the collapse of the BW scene (Wemade was technically an SC2 team as well, but had literally 3 players). Switching to SC2 was supposed to fix everything somehow, but oGs, Zenex, and Ace are primarily SC2 teams that are collapsing. The switch did nothing to save Proleague, and will quite possibly kill the GSL as well by flooding the market, and being a really hyped SC2 league full of generally bad SC2 games.
I'd say TSL (constantly on the verge of collapse, though they seem to be in better shape now), SlayerS (all kinds of shit going down in that team), and SKT1 (sponsor doesn't care about international audience) are the ones that should be on the watchlist. Woongjin and STX are also sponsors likely to pull out, but I honestly don't know why a chemical company and a shipbuilding company (!) were sponsoring BW in the first place. I doubt many BW fans are in the market for a ship. So maybe those two are just run by people who really like BW, meaning they should possibly be on the watchlist as well?
On July 24 2012 09:11 sephirotharg wrote: I hope that professional BW survives (in Korea, that is)
You wouldn't be interested in professional BW somewhere else? I know the Chinese scene is really small, and the western scene is pitable, but there's still a chance to grow them into something respectable within a few years, I think.
I dont think so, Sc2's release gave BW attention to those who never heard of it before, yet nothings really changed.
That's largely the BW's community's fault, though. Absolutely no effort was made to try to convert any of the "Oh hey SC2 is cool" people to BW fans, besides people on forums calling them names. Where was KeSPA's big outreach? The only major BW scene to ever even try to reach westerners was GOM back when Tasteless and I think SuperDanielMan were casting the GOMTV Classic in English. And KeSPA shut that one down pretty fast. Which, actually, was a pretty terrible decision in the long run. If GOM hadn't gotten into SC2, there'd be no SC2 now.
I seriously do believe that if GOMTV was in the BW business and not the SC2 business, we'd be in a new Golden Age of Brood War right now. SC2 isn't big because of Blizzard, much as people like to blame them. It's big because GOM sold it to a foreign audience.
Even right now, when the whole idea of the switch to SC2 is the international fans, there's still no official English stream for Proleague. That's insane. Even when their in SC2, KeSPA ignores the SC2 scene. They have completely and 100% fucked BW up. They're fucking up in SC2 now as well. Whatever they did for Brood War in the past, the last few years have been nothing but abject incompetence on their part.
As time goes on, it will be just even harder to catch new players. Just think about, running BW on W7 already has problems and need to find fixes to make it work.
This admittedly is a pretty huge problem. I'd say port forwarding is a bigger deal than killing explorer in task manager. A lot of people (myself included) literally can't do that.
Now W8 is coming, another generation growing up on console games and on MMOs. Personally i would love a rise viewer numbers and just overall, player numbers, but i dont think so it will ever happen
Certainly not if you keep referring to the only potential source of new BW fans in such a demeaning get off my lawnish way.
Cant agree with this. Youre trying to put the cart before the horse. What comes first is a popular game by the designers, and blizzard did good here, SC2 is popular. As a result, a lot of potential viewers could supply a pro scene with earnings, so a big proscene is possible. BW is very unpopular outside korea/china, so there are few viewers and a pro scene isnt possible.
Also, whatever you think of SC2 as a game now, absolutely no one in the west would have watched GSL Open Season 3 (dubbed by Artosis as "the worst SC2 tournament of all time" because Terrans did a 2-rax all in pulling marines literally every single TvZ) if GOM didn't have Tastosis. And that tournament could've killed SC2.
On July 23 2012 17:10 Koshi wrote: So this means that SCII players can't play when they are in the army? I am hoping they are making a new team for the new talent.
May 16th - oGs disbands July 13th - Zenex ceases to exist as an independent team, will merge with Startale July 23rd - Air Force Ace announces plan to disband
The Korean scene is collapsing.
I wouldn't be surprised to see 2-3 more teams disband in the next few months,.
you forgot last year's mbc game, hwaseung oz and wemade collapses (edit: or was it in 2010? i forgot :S)
I considered adding them, but that was before the hybrid league was announced. MBCGame, Oz, and WeMade were the collapse of the BW scene (Wemade was technically an SC2 team as well, but had literally 3 players). Switching to SC2 was supposed to fix everything somehow, but oGs, Zenex, and Ace are primarily SC2 teams that are collapsing. The switch did nothing to save Proleague, and will quite possibly kill the GSL as well by flooding the market, and being a really hyped SC2 league full of generally bad SC2 games.
I'd say TSL (constantly on the verge of collapse, though they seem to be in better shape now), SlayerS (all kinds of shit going down in that team), and SKT1 (sponsor doesn't care about international audience) are the ones that should be on the watchlist. Woongjin and STX are also sponsors likely to pull out, but I honestly don't know why a chemical company and a shipbuilding company (!) were sponsoring BW in the first place. I doubt many BW fans are in the market for a ship. So maybe those two are just run by people who really like BW, meaning they should possibly be on the watchlist as well?
On July 24 2012 09:11 sephirotharg wrote: I hope that professional BW survives (in Korea, that is)
You wouldn't be interested in professional BW somewhere else? I know the Chinese scene is really small, and the western scene is pitable, but there's still a chance to grow them into something respectable within a few years, I think.
I dont think so, Sc2's release gave BW attention to those who never heard of it before, yet nothings really changed.
That's largely the BW's community's fault, though. Absolutely no effort was made to try to convert any of the "Oh hey SC2 is cool" people to BW fans, besides people on forums calling them names. Where was KeSPA's big outreach? The only major BW scene to ever even try to reach westerners was GOM back when Tasteless and I think SuperDanielMan were casting the GOMTV Classic in English. And KeSPA shut that one down pretty fast. Which, actually, was a pretty terrible decision in the long run. If GOM hadn't gotten into SC2, there'd be no SC2 now.
I seriously do believe that if GOMTV was in the BW business and not the SC2 business, we'd be in a new Golden Age of Brood War right now. SC2 isn't big because of Blizzard, much as people like to blame them. It's big because GOM sold it to a foreign audience.
Even right now, when the whole idea of the switch to SC2 is the international fans, there's still no official English stream for Proleague. That's insane. Even when their in SC2, KeSPA ignores the SC2 scene. They have completely and 100% fucked BW up. They're fucking up in SC2 now as well. Whatever they did for Brood War in the past, the last few years have been nothing but abject incompetence on their part.
As time goes on, it will be just even harder to catch new players. Just think about, running BW on W7 already has problems and need to find fixes to make it work.
This admittedly is a pretty huge problem. I'd say port forwarding is a bigger deal than killing explorer in task manager. A lot of people (myself included) literally can't do that.
Now W8 is coming, another generation growing up on console games and on MMOs. Personally i would love a rise viewer numbers and just overall, player numbers, but i dont think so it will ever happen
Certainly not if you keep referring to the only potential source of new BW fans in such a demeaning get off my lawnish way.
Cant agree with this. Youre trying to put the cart before the horse. What comes first is a popular game by the designers, and blizzard did good here, SC2 is popular. As a result, a lot of potential viewers could supply a pro scene with earnings, so a big proscene is possible. BW is very unpopular outside korea/china, so there are few viewers and a pro scene isnt possible.
woongjin wasn't a chemical company? last time I checked their website it said it started as educational/publication company, and now says its transitioning to a holdings company.
On July 25 2012 04:05 N.geNuity wrote: woongjin wasn't a chemical company? last time I checked their website it said it started as educational/publication company, and now says its transitioning to a holdings company.
We need a respectable RTS product, equal or similar to BW .. anyone know of such a product currently available? No .. Oh Blizzard .. where art thou .. are you listening?
On July 24 2012 22:12 StreetWise wrote: I always like the concept of ACE, and was really hoping they would have transitioned to SC2. Its sad to see mobile games taking over the 'classic' games like SC2.
LMAO "classic" and "SC2" in the same sentence. That tickles me.
On July 25 2012 05:19 Spinoza wrote: We need a respectable RTS product, equal or similar to BW .. anyone know of such a product currently available? No .. Oh Blizzard .. where art thou .. are you listening?
In the age of Kickstarter, it's only a matter of passion stopping people from doing this themselves. Why wait for someone else?
On July 24 2012 21:10 hifriend wrote: Always been kind of a pointless team to be honest.
Except for the opportunity to allow players to continue playing through their military service instead of it being a death knell for a player's career.
A lot of great players with huge fanbases went through the Airforce team, many of them would have just disappeared and along with them their fans if it weren't for that team
I dunno.. Seeing legends show subpar play and lose to b-teamers after going to ace has been pretty brutal at times.
On July 24 2012 21:10 hifriend wrote: Always been kind of a pointless team to be honest.
Except for the opportunity to allow players to continue playing through their military service instead of it being a death knell for a player's career.
A lot of great players with huge fanbases went through the Airforce team, many of them would have just disappeared and along with them their fans if it weren't for that team
I dunno.. Seeing legends show subpar play and lose to b-teamers after going to ace has been pretty brutal at times.
Skill aside, you have to understand that for a country to make exceptions to a policy like Korea's military service for gaming/entertainment purposes... that's pretty huge. Don't think K-pop stars get that kind of treatment (correct me if I'm wrong?)
It's a pretty significant thing in the history of gaming, to see it end like that is a huge tragedy indeed.
Don't forget, despite their generally lower level of performance, they've managed to produce memorable games like Bisu vs Yellow and Yellow vs Jaedong among others. Not to mention being an inspiration to professional gamers everywhere for showing that they are still persevering with their gaming careers despite having to serve in the military.
On July 24 2012 21:10 hifriend wrote: Always been kind of a pointless team to be honest.
Except for the opportunity to allow players to continue playing through their military service instead of it being a death knell for a player's career.
A lot of great players with huge fanbases went through the Airforce team, many of them would have just disappeared and along with them their fans if it weren't for that team
I dunno.. Seeing legends show subpar play and lose to b-teamers after going to ace has been pretty brutal at times.
Skill aside, you have to understand that for a country to make exceptions to a policy like Korea's military service for gaming/entertainment purposes... that's pretty huge. Don't think K-pop stars get that kind of treatment (correct me if I'm wrong?)
It's a pretty significant thing in the history of gaming, to see it end like that is a huge tragedy indeed.
Don't forget, despite their generally lower level of performance, they've managed to produce memorable games like Bisu vs Yellow and Yellow vs Jaedong among others. Not to mention being an inspiration to professional gamers everywhere for showing that they are still persevering with their gaming careers despite having to serve in the military.
Well what are they supposed to do with K-pop Idols? make some Airforce band?^^. But yeah i get your point
On July 23 2012 17:10 Koshi wrote: So this means that SCII players can't play when they are in the army? I am hoping they are making a new team for the new talent.
May 16th - oGs disbands July 13th - Zenex ceases to exist as an independent team, will merge with Startale July 23rd - Air Force Ace announces plan to disband
The Korean scene is collapsing.
I wouldn't be surprised to see 2-3 more teams disband in the next few months,.
you forgot last year's mbc game, hwaseung oz and wemade collapses (edit: or was it in 2010? i forgot :S)
I considered adding them, but that was before the hybrid league was announced. MBCGame, Oz, and WeMade were the collapse of the BW scene (Wemade was technically an SC2 team as well, but had literally 3 players). Switching to SC2 was supposed to fix everything somehow, but oGs, Zenex, and Ace are primarily SC2 teams that are collapsing. The switch did nothing to save Proleague, and will quite possibly kill the GSL as well by flooding the market, and being a really hyped SC2 league full of generally bad SC2 games.
I'd say TSL (constantly on the verge of collapse, though they seem to be in better shape now), SlayerS (all kinds of shit going down in that team), and SKT1 (sponsor doesn't care about international audience) are the ones that should be on the watchlist. Woongjin and STX are also sponsors likely to pull out, but I honestly don't know why a chemical company and a shipbuilding company (!) were sponsoring BW in the first place. I doubt many BW fans are in the market for a ship. So maybe those two are just run by people who really like BW, meaning they should possibly be on the watchlist as well?
On July 24 2012 09:11 sephirotharg wrote: I hope that professional BW survives (in Korea, that is)
You wouldn't be interested in professional BW somewhere else? I know the Chinese scene is really small, and the western scene is pitable, but there's still a chance to grow them into something respectable within a few years, I think.
I dont think so, Sc2's release gave BW attention to those who never heard of it before, yet nothings really changed.
That's largely the BW's community's fault, though. Absolutely no effort was made to try to convert any of the "Oh hey SC2 is cool" people to BW fans, besides people on forums calling them names. Where was KeSPA's big outreach? The only major BW scene to ever even try to reach westerners was GOM back when Tasteless and I think SuperDanielMan were casting the GOMTV Classic in English. And KeSPA shut that one down pretty fast. Which, actually, was a pretty terrible decision in the long run. If GOM hadn't gotten into SC2, there'd be no SC2 now.
I seriously do believe that if GOMTV was in the BW business and not the SC2 business, we'd be in a new Golden Age of Brood War right now. SC2 isn't big because of Blizzard, much as people like to blame them. It's big because GOM sold it to a foreign audience.
Even right now, when the whole idea of the switch to SC2 is the international fans, there's still no official English stream for Proleague. That's insane. Even when their in SC2, KeSPA ignores the SC2 scene. They have completely and 100% fucked BW up. They're fucking up in SC2 now as well. Whatever they did for Brood War in the past, the last few years have been nothing but abject incompetence on their part.
As time goes on, it will be just even harder to catch new players. Just think about, running BW on W7 already has problems and need to find fixes to make it work.
This admittedly is a pretty huge problem. I'd say port forwarding is a bigger deal than killing explorer in task manager. A lot of people (myself included) literally can't do that.
Now W8 is coming, another generation growing up on console games and on MMOs. Personally i would love a rise viewer numbers and just overall, player numbers, but i dont think so it will ever happen
Certainly not if you keep referring to the only potential source of new BW fans in such a demeaning get off my lawnish way.
Cant agree with this. Youre trying to put the cart before the horse. What comes first is a popular game by the designers, and blizzard did good here, SC2 is popular. As a result, a lot of potential viewers could supply a pro scene with earnings, so a big proscene is possible. BW is very unpopular outside korea/china, so there are few viewers and a pro scene isnt possible.
Also, whatever you think of SC2 as a game now, absolutely no one in the west would have watched GSL Open Season 3 (dubbed by Artosis as "the worst SC2 tournament of all time" because Terrans did a 2-rax all in pulling marines literally every single TvZ) if GOM didn't have Tastosis. And that tournament could've killed SC2.
even in korea BW popularity has steadily been declining since the mid 2000s with the mmos&shooters, lol and d3 now. and proleague & MBCgame didnt return a profit so the fundamentals for a golden age of bw, i cant see how those wouldve been possible when the game itself wasnt that popular any more. WHen we have a situation of businesses running at a loss, the answer is to downscale and meet the declined demand in a cost efficient manner. Adding more businesses (gomtv in your hypothesis) to this kinda runs against that concept.
On July 23 2012 17:10 Koshi wrote: So this means that SCII players can't play when they are in the army? I am hoping they are making a new team for the new talent.
May 16th - oGs disbands July 13th - Zenex ceases to exist as an independent team, will merge with Startale July 23rd - Air Force Ace announces plan to disband
The Korean scene is collapsing.
I wouldn't be surprised to see 2-3 more teams disband in the next few months,.
you forgot last year's mbc game, hwaseung oz and wemade collapses (edit: or was it in 2010? i forgot :S)
I considered adding them, but that was before the hybrid league was announced. MBCGame, Oz, and WeMade were the collapse of the BW scene (Wemade was technically an SC2 team as well, but had literally 3 players). Switching to SC2 was supposed to fix everything somehow, but oGs, Zenex, and Ace are primarily SC2 teams that are collapsing. The switch did nothing to save Proleague, and will quite possibly kill the GSL as well by flooding the market, and being a really hyped SC2 league full of generally bad SC2 games.
I'd say TSL (constantly on the verge of collapse, though they seem to be in better shape now), SlayerS (all kinds of shit going down in that team), and SKT1 (sponsor doesn't care about international audience) are the ones that should be on the watchlist. Woongjin and STX are also sponsors likely to pull out, but I honestly don't know why a chemical company and a shipbuilding company (!) were sponsoring BW in the first place. I doubt many BW fans are in the market for a ship. So maybe those two are just run by people who really like BW, meaning they should possibly be on the watchlist as well?
On July 25 2012 02:35 brolaf wrote:
On July 24 2012 16:01 Ribbon wrote:
On July 24 2012 15:45 Darksoldierr wrote:
On July 24 2012 09:59 Ribbon wrote:
On July 24 2012 09:11 sephirotharg wrote: I hope that professional BW survives (in Korea, that is)
You wouldn't be interested in professional BW somewhere else? I know the Chinese scene is really small, and the western scene is pitable, but there's still a chance to grow them into something respectable within a few years, I think.
I dont think so, Sc2's release gave BW attention to those who never heard of it before, yet nothings really changed.
That's largely the BW's community's fault, though. Absolutely no effort was made to try to convert any of the "Oh hey SC2 is cool" people to BW fans, besides people on forums calling them names. Where was KeSPA's big outreach? The only major BW scene to ever even try to reach westerners was GOM back when Tasteless and I think SuperDanielMan were casting the GOMTV Classic in English. And KeSPA shut that one down pretty fast. Which, actually, was a pretty terrible decision in the long run. If GOM hadn't gotten into SC2, there'd be no SC2 now.
I seriously do believe that if GOMTV was in the BW business and not the SC2 business, we'd be in a new Golden Age of Brood War right now. SC2 isn't big because of Blizzard, much as people like to blame them. It's big because GOM sold it to a foreign audience.
Even right now, when the whole idea of the switch to SC2 is the international fans, there's still no official English stream for Proleague. That's insane. Even when their in SC2, KeSPA ignores the SC2 scene. They have completely and 100% fucked BW up. They're fucking up in SC2 now as well. Whatever they did for Brood War in the past, the last few years have been nothing but abject incompetence on their part.
As time goes on, it will be just even harder to catch new players. Just think about, running BW on W7 already has problems and need to find fixes to make it work.
This admittedly is a pretty huge problem. I'd say port forwarding is a bigger deal than killing explorer in task manager. A lot of people (myself included) literally can't do that.
Now W8 is coming, another generation growing up on console games and on MMOs. Personally i would love a rise viewer numbers and just overall, player numbers, but i dont think so it will ever happen
Certainly not if you keep referring to the only potential source of new BW fans in such a demeaning get off my lawnish way.
Cant agree with this. Youre trying to put the cart before the horse. What comes first is a popular game by the designers, and blizzard did good here, SC2 is popular. As a result, a lot of potential viewers could supply a pro scene with earnings, so a big proscene is possible. BW is very unpopular outside korea/china, so there are few viewers and a pro scene isnt possible.
Also, whatever you think of SC2 as a game now, absolutely no one in the west would have watched GSL Open Season 3 (dubbed by Artosis as "the worst SC2 tournament of all time" because Terrans did a 2-rax all in pulling marines literally every single TvZ) if GOM didn't have Tastosis. And that tournament could've killed SC2.
even in korea BW popularity has steadily been declining since the mid 2000s with the mmos&shooters, lol and d3 now. and proleague & MBCgame didnt return a profit so the fundamentals for a golden age of bw, i cant see how those wouldve been possible when the game itself wasnt that popular any more. WHen we have a situation of businesses running at a loss, the answer is to downscale and meet the declined demand in a cost efficient manner. Adding more businesses (gomtv in your hypothesis) to this kinda runs against that concept.
GOM created an entire market for SC2. It wouldn't have taken off without them (Blizzard never really cared about "e-sports" for the first year or so of SC2's release beyond lip service). They could've been creating a foreign scene for BW instead of a foreign scene for SC2. Yeah, they probably wouldn't have been able to get it as big as the one they made for SC2, but they would've brought in enough new foreign fans to keep at least themselves in business, I think.
Also, someone who knows more about this than me: In retrospect, was it a good idea for KeSPA to fight the Blizzard lawsuits, or would the "we care about and respect the IP rights" vibe have been worth going along to get along?
On July 23 2012 17:10 Koshi wrote: So this means that SCII players can't play when they are in the army? I am hoping they are making a new team for the new talent.
May 16th - oGs disbands July 13th - Zenex ceases to exist as an independent team, will merge with Startale July 23rd - Air Force Ace announces plan to disband
The Korean scene is collapsing.
I wouldn't be surprised to see 2-3 more teams disband in the next few months,.
you forgot last year's mbc game, hwaseung oz and wemade collapses (edit: or was it in 2010? i forgot :S)
I considered adding them, but that was before the hybrid league was announced. MBCGame, Oz, and WeMade were the collapse of the BW scene (Wemade was technically an SC2 team as well, but had literally 3 players). Switching to SC2 was supposed to fix everything somehow, but oGs, Zenex, and Ace are primarily SC2 teams that are collapsing. The switch did nothing to save Proleague, and will quite possibly kill the GSL as well by flooding the market, and being a really hyped SC2 league full of generally bad SC2 games.
I'd say TSL (constantly on the verge of collapse, though they seem to be in better shape now), SlayerS (all kinds of shit going down in that team), and SKT1 (sponsor doesn't care about international audience) are the ones that should be on the watchlist. Woongjin and STX are also sponsors likely to pull out, but I honestly don't know why a chemical company and a shipbuilding company (!) were sponsoring BW in the first place. I doubt many BW fans are in the market for a ship. So maybe those two are just run by people who really like BW, meaning they should possibly be on the watchlist as well?
On July 25 2012 02:35 brolaf wrote:
On July 24 2012 16:01 Ribbon wrote:
On July 24 2012 15:45 Darksoldierr wrote:
On July 24 2012 09:59 Ribbon wrote:
On July 24 2012 09:11 sephirotharg wrote: I hope that professional BW survives (in Korea, that is)
You wouldn't be interested in professional BW somewhere else? I know the Chinese scene is really small, and the western scene is pitable, but there's still a chance to grow them into something respectable within a few years, I think.
I dont think so, Sc2's release gave BW attention to those who never heard of it before, yet nothings really changed.
That's largely the BW's community's fault, though. Absolutely no effort was made to try to convert any of the "Oh hey SC2 is cool" people to BW fans, besides people on forums calling them names. Where was KeSPA's big outreach? The only major BW scene to ever even try to reach westerners was GOM back when Tasteless and I think SuperDanielMan were casting the GOMTV Classic in English. And KeSPA shut that one down pretty fast. Which, actually, was a pretty terrible decision in the long run. If GOM hadn't gotten into SC2, there'd be no SC2 now.
I seriously do believe that if GOMTV was in the BW business and not the SC2 business, we'd be in a new Golden Age of Brood War right now. SC2 isn't big because of Blizzard, much as people like to blame them. It's big because GOM sold it to a foreign audience.
Even right now, when the whole idea of the switch to SC2 is the international fans, there's still no official English stream for Proleague. That's insane. Even when their in SC2, KeSPA ignores the SC2 scene. They have completely and 100% fucked BW up. They're fucking up in SC2 now as well. Whatever they did for Brood War in the past, the last few years have been nothing but abject incompetence on their part.
As time goes on, it will be just even harder to catch new players. Just think about, running BW on W7 already has problems and need to find fixes to make it work.
This admittedly is a pretty huge problem. I'd say port forwarding is a bigger deal than killing explorer in task manager. A lot of people (myself included) literally can't do that.
Now W8 is coming, another generation growing up on console games and on MMOs. Personally i would love a rise viewer numbers and just overall, player numbers, but i dont think so it will ever happen
Certainly not if you keep referring to the only potential source of new BW fans in such a demeaning get off my lawnish way.
Cant agree with this. Youre trying to put the cart before the horse. What comes first is a popular game by the designers, and blizzard did good here, SC2 is popular. As a result, a lot of potential viewers could supply a pro scene with earnings, so a big proscene is possible. BW is very unpopular outside korea/china, so there are few viewers and a pro scene isnt possible.
Also, whatever you think of SC2 as a game now, absolutely no one in the west would have watched GSL Open Season 3 (dubbed by Artosis as "the worst SC2 tournament of all time" because Terrans did a 2-rax all in pulling marines literally every single TvZ) if GOM didn't have Tastosis. And that tournament could've killed SC2.
even in korea BW popularity has steadily been declining since the mid 2000s with the mmos&shooters, lol and d3 now. and proleague & MBCgame didnt return a profit so the fundamentals for a golden age of bw, i cant see how those wouldve been possible when the game itself wasnt that popular any more. WHen we have a situation of businesses running at a loss, the answer is to downscale and meet the declined demand in a cost efficient manner. Adding more businesses (gomtv in your hypothesis) to this kinda runs against that concept.
GOM created an entire market for SC2. It wouldn't have taken off without them (Blizzard never really cared about "e-sports" for the first year or so of SC2's release beyond lip service). They could've been creating a foreign scene for BW instead of a foreign scene for SC2. Yeah, they probably wouldn't have been able to get it as big as the one they made for SC2, but they would've brought in enough new foreign fans to keep at least themselves in business, I think.
Also, someone who knows more about this than me: In retrospect, was it a good idea for KeSPA to fight the Blizzard lawsuits, or would the "we care about and respect the IP rights" vibe have been worth going along to get along?
IMO the best scenerio would be for the lawsuit to be continued so that NO other companies can treat an 'sport' industry like a marketable product. It would be entirely depended on the passion of the game. I really wonder if Korean law would allow the defendant to have a continuum on cases.
On July 23 2012 17:10 Koshi wrote: So this means that SCII players can't play when they are in the army? I am hoping they are making a new team for the new talent.
May 16th - oGs disbands July 13th - Zenex ceases to exist as an independent team, will merge with Startale July 23rd - Air Force Ace announces plan to disband
The Korean scene is collapsing.
I wouldn't be surprised to see 2-3 more teams disband in the next few months,.
you forgot last year's mbc game, hwaseung oz and wemade collapses (edit: or was it in 2010? i forgot :S)
I considered adding them, but that was before the hybrid league was announced. MBCGame, Oz, and WeMade were the collapse of the BW scene (Wemade was technically an SC2 team as well, but had literally 3 players). Switching to SC2 was supposed to fix everything somehow, but oGs, Zenex, and Ace are primarily SC2 teams that are collapsing. The switch did nothing to save Proleague, and will quite possibly kill the GSL as well by flooding the market, and being a really hyped SC2 league full of generally bad SC2 games.
I'd say TSL (constantly on the verge of collapse, though they seem to be in better shape now), SlayerS (all kinds of shit going down in that team), and SKT1 (sponsor doesn't care about international audience) are the ones that should be on the watchlist. Woongjin and STX are also sponsors likely to pull out, but I honestly don't know why a chemical company and a shipbuilding company (!) were sponsoring BW in the first place. I doubt many BW fans are in the market for a ship. So maybe those two are just run by people who really like BW, meaning they should possibly be on the watchlist as well?
On July 25 2012 02:35 brolaf wrote:
On July 24 2012 16:01 Ribbon wrote:
On July 24 2012 15:45 Darksoldierr wrote:
On July 24 2012 09:59 Ribbon wrote:
On July 24 2012 09:11 sephirotharg wrote: I hope that professional BW survives (in Korea, that is)
You wouldn't be interested in professional BW somewhere else? I know the Chinese scene is really small, and the western scene is pitable, but there's still a chance to grow them into something respectable within a few years, I think.
I dont think so, Sc2's release gave BW attention to those who never heard of it before, yet nothings really changed.
That's largely the BW's community's fault, though. Absolutely no effort was made to try to convert any of the "Oh hey SC2 is cool" people to BW fans, besides people on forums calling them names. Where was KeSPA's big outreach? The only major BW scene to ever even try to reach westerners was GOM back when Tasteless and I think SuperDanielMan were casting the GOMTV Classic in English. And KeSPA shut that one down pretty fast. Which, actually, was a pretty terrible decision in the long run. If GOM hadn't gotten into SC2, there'd be no SC2 now.
I seriously do believe that if GOMTV was in the BW business and not the SC2 business, we'd be in a new Golden Age of Brood War right now. SC2 isn't big because of Blizzard, much as people like to blame them. It's big because GOM sold it to a foreign audience.
Even right now, when the whole idea of the switch to SC2 is the international fans, there's still no official English stream for Proleague. That's insane. Even when their in SC2, KeSPA ignores the SC2 scene. They have completely and 100% fucked BW up. They're fucking up in SC2 now as well. Whatever they did for Brood War in the past, the last few years have been nothing but abject incompetence on their part.
As time goes on, it will be just even harder to catch new players. Just think about, running BW on W7 already has problems and need to find fixes to make it work.
This admittedly is a pretty huge problem. I'd say port forwarding is a bigger deal than killing explorer in task manager. A lot of people (myself included) literally can't do that.
Now W8 is coming, another generation growing up on console games and on MMOs. Personally i would love a rise viewer numbers and just overall, player numbers, but i dont think so it will ever happen
Certainly not if you keep referring to the only potential source of new BW fans in such a demeaning get off my lawnish way.
Cant agree with this. Youre trying to put the cart before the horse. What comes first is a popular game by the designers, and blizzard did good here, SC2 is popular. As a result, a lot of potential viewers could supply a pro scene with earnings, so a big proscene is possible. BW is very unpopular outside korea/china, so there are few viewers and a pro scene isnt possible.
Also, whatever you think of SC2 as a game now, absolutely no one in the west would have watched GSL Open Season 3 (dubbed by Artosis as "the worst SC2 tournament of all time" because Terrans did a 2-rax all in pulling marines literally every single TvZ) if GOM didn't have Tastosis. And that tournament could've killed SC2.
even in korea BW popularity has steadily been declining since the mid 2000s with the mmos&shooters, lol and d3 now. and proleague & MBCgame didnt return a profit so the fundamentals for a golden age of bw, i cant see how those wouldve been possible when the game itself wasnt that popular any more. WHen we have a situation of businesses running at a loss, the answer is to downscale and meet the declined demand in a cost efficient manner. Adding more businesses (gomtv in your hypothesis) to this kinda runs against that concept.
GOM created an entire market for SC2. It wouldn't have taken off without them (Blizzard never really cared about "e-sports" for the first year or so of SC2's release beyond lip service). They could've been creating a foreign scene for BW instead of a foreign scene for SC2. Yeah, they probably wouldn't have been able to get it as big as the one they made for SC2, but they would've brought in enough new foreign fans to keep at least themselves in business, I think.
Also, someone who knows more about this than me: In retrospect, was it a good idea for KeSPA to fight the Blizzard lawsuits, or would the "we care about and respect the IP rights" vibe have been worth going along to get along?
IMO the best scenerio would be for the lawsuit to be continued so that NO other companies can treat an 'sport' industry like a marketable product. It would be entirely depended on the passion of the game.
Then there would be no sports industries at all?
I realize that the marketing aspect is maybe distateful, but players need to eat.
On July 23 2012 17:10 Koshi wrote: So this means that SCII players can't play when they are in the army? I am hoping they are making a new team for the new talent.
May 16th - oGs disbands July 13th - Zenex ceases to exist as an independent team, will merge with Startale July 23rd - Air Force Ace announces plan to disband
The Korean scene is collapsing.
I wouldn't be surprised to see 2-3 more teams disband in the next few months,.
you forgot last year's mbc game, hwaseung oz and wemade collapses (edit: or was it in 2010? i forgot :S)
I considered adding them, but that was before the hybrid league was announced. MBCGame, Oz, and WeMade were the collapse of the BW scene (Wemade was technically an SC2 team as well, but had literally 3 players). Switching to SC2 was supposed to fix everything somehow, but oGs, Zenex, and Ace are primarily SC2 teams that are collapsing. The switch did nothing to save Proleague, and will quite possibly kill the GSL as well by flooding the market, and being a really hyped SC2 league full of generally bad SC2 games.
I'd say TSL (constantly on the verge of collapse, though they seem to be in better shape now), SlayerS (all kinds of shit going down in that team), and SKT1 (sponsor doesn't care about international audience) are the ones that should be on the watchlist. Woongjin and STX are also sponsors likely to pull out, but I honestly don't know why a chemical company and a shipbuilding company (!) were sponsoring BW in the first place. I doubt many BW fans are in the market for a ship. So maybe those two are just run by people who really like BW, meaning they should possibly be on the watchlist as well?
On July 25 2012 02:35 brolaf wrote:
On July 24 2012 16:01 Ribbon wrote:
On July 24 2012 15:45 Darksoldierr wrote:
On July 24 2012 09:59 Ribbon wrote:
On July 24 2012 09:11 sephirotharg wrote: I hope that professional BW survives (in Korea, that is)
You wouldn't be interested in professional BW somewhere else? I know the Chinese scene is really small, and the western scene is pitable, but there's still a chance to grow them into something respectable within a few years, I think.
I dont think so, Sc2's release gave BW attention to those who never heard of it before, yet nothings really changed.
That's largely the BW's community's fault, though. Absolutely no effort was made to try to convert any of the "Oh hey SC2 is cool" people to BW fans, besides people on forums calling them names. Where was KeSPA's big outreach? The only major BW scene to ever even try to reach westerners was GOM back when Tasteless and I think SuperDanielMan were casting the GOMTV Classic in English. And KeSPA shut that one down pretty fast. Which, actually, was a pretty terrible decision in the long run. If GOM hadn't gotten into SC2, there'd be no SC2 now.
I seriously do believe that if GOMTV was in the BW business and not the SC2 business, we'd be in a new Golden Age of Brood War right now. SC2 isn't big because of Blizzard, much as people like to blame them. It's big because GOM sold it to a foreign audience.
Even right now, when the whole idea of the switch to SC2 is the international fans, there's still no official English stream for Proleague. That's insane. Even when their in SC2, KeSPA ignores the SC2 scene. They have completely and 100% fucked BW up. They're fucking up in SC2 now as well. Whatever they did for Brood War in the past, the last few years have been nothing but abject incompetence on their part.
As time goes on, it will be just even harder to catch new players. Just think about, running BW on W7 already has problems and need to find fixes to make it work.
This admittedly is a pretty huge problem. I'd say port forwarding is a bigger deal than killing explorer in task manager. A lot of people (myself included) literally can't do that.
Now W8 is coming, another generation growing up on console games and on MMOs. Personally i would love a rise viewer numbers and just overall, player numbers, but i dont think so it will ever happen
Certainly not if you keep referring to the only potential source of new BW fans in such a demeaning get off my lawnish way.
Cant agree with this. Youre trying to put the cart before the horse. What comes first is a popular game by the designers, and blizzard did good here, SC2 is popular. As a result, a lot of potential viewers could supply a pro scene with earnings, so a big proscene is possible. BW is very unpopular outside korea/china, so there are few viewers and a pro scene isnt possible.
Also, whatever you think of SC2 as a game now, absolutely no one in the west would have watched GSL Open Season 3 (dubbed by Artosis as "the worst SC2 tournament of all time" because Terrans did a 2-rax all in pulling marines literally every single TvZ) if GOM didn't have Tastosis. And that tournament could've killed SC2.
even in korea BW popularity has steadily been declining since the mid 2000s with the mmos&shooters, lol and d3 now. and proleague & MBCgame didnt return a profit so the fundamentals for a golden age of bw, i cant see how those wouldve been possible when the game itself wasnt that popular any more. WHen we have a situation of businesses running at a loss, the answer is to downscale and meet the declined demand in a cost efficient manner. Adding more businesses (gomtv in your hypothesis) to this kinda runs against that concept.
GOM created an entire market for SC2. It wouldn't have taken off without them (Blizzard never really cared about "e-sports" for the first year or so of SC2's release beyond lip service). They could've been creating a foreign scene for BW instead of a foreign scene for SC2. Yeah, they probably wouldn't have been able to get it as big as the one they made for SC2, but they would've brought in enough new foreign fans to keep at least themselves in business, I think.
Also, someone who knows more about this than me: In retrospect, was it a good idea for KeSPA to fight the Blizzard lawsuits, or would the "we care about and respect the IP rights" vibe have been worth going along to get along?
IMO the best scenerio would be for the lawsuit to be continued so that NO other companies can treat an 'sport' industry like a marketable product. It would be entirely depended on the passion of the game.
Then there would be no sports industries at all?
I realize that the marketing aspect is maybe distateful, but players need to eat.
On July 23 2012 17:10 Koshi wrote: So this means that SCII players can't play when they are in the army? I am hoping they are making a new team for the new talent.
May 16th - oGs disbands July 13th - Zenex ceases to exist as an independent team, will merge with Startale July 23rd - Air Force Ace announces plan to disband
The Korean scene is collapsing.
I wouldn't be surprised to see 2-3 more teams disband in the next few months,.
you forgot last year's mbc game, hwaseung oz and wemade collapses (edit: or was it in 2010? i forgot :S)
I considered adding them, but that was before the hybrid league was announced. MBCGame, Oz, and WeMade were the collapse of the BW scene (Wemade was technically an SC2 team as well, but had literally 3 players). Switching to SC2 was supposed to fix everything somehow, but oGs, Zenex, and Ace are primarily SC2 teams that are collapsing. The switch did nothing to save Proleague, and will quite possibly kill the GSL as well by flooding the market, and being a really hyped SC2 league full of generally bad SC2 games.
I'd say TSL (constantly on the verge of collapse, though they seem to be in better shape now), SlayerS (all kinds of shit going down in that team), and SKT1 (sponsor doesn't care about international audience) are the ones that should be on the watchlist. Woongjin and STX are also sponsors likely to pull out, but I honestly don't know why a chemical company and a shipbuilding company (!) were sponsoring BW in the first place. I doubt many BW fans are in the market for a ship. So maybe those two are just run by people who really like BW, meaning they should possibly be on the watchlist as well?
On July 25 2012 02:35 brolaf wrote:
On July 24 2012 16:01 Ribbon wrote:
On July 24 2012 15:45 Darksoldierr wrote:
On July 24 2012 09:59 Ribbon wrote: [quote]
You wouldn't be interested in professional BW somewhere else? I know the Chinese scene is really small, and the western scene is pitable, but there's still a chance to grow them into something respectable within a few years, I think.
I dont think so, Sc2's release gave BW attention to those who never heard of it before, yet nothings really changed.
That's largely the BW's community's fault, though. Absolutely no effort was made to try to convert any of the "Oh hey SC2 is cool" people to BW fans, besides people on forums calling them names. Where was KeSPA's big outreach? The only major BW scene to ever even try to reach westerners was GOM back when Tasteless and I think SuperDanielMan were casting the GOMTV Classic in English. And KeSPA shut that one down pretty fast. Which, actually, was a pretty terrible decision in the long run. If GOM hadn't gotten into SC2, there'd be no SC2 now.
I seriously do believe that if GOMTV was in the BW business and not the SC2 business, we'd be in a new Golden Age of Brood War right now. SC2 isn't big because of Blizzard, much as people like to blame them. It's big because GOM sold it to a foreign audience.
Even right now, when the whole idea of the switch to SC2 is the international fans, there's still no official English stream for Proleague. That's insane. Even when their in SC2, KeSPA ignores the SC2 scene. They have completely and 100% fucked BW up. They're fucking up in SC2 now as well. Whatever they did for Brood War in the past, the last few years have been nothing but abject incompetence on their part.
As time goes on, it will be just even harder to catch new players. Just think about, running BW on W7 already has problems and need to find fixes to make it work.
This admittedly is a pretty huge problem. I'd say port forwarding is a bigger deal than killing explorer in task manager. A lot of people (myself included) literally can't do that.
Now W8 is coming, another generation growing up on console games and on MMOs. Personally i would love a rise viewer numbers and just overall, player numbers, but i dont think so it will ever happen
Certainly not if you keep referring to the only potential source of new BW fans in such a demeaning get off my lawnish way.
Cant agree with this. Youre trying to put the cart before the horse. What comes first is a popular game by the designers, and blizzard did good here, SC2 is popular. As a result, a lot of potential viewers could supply a pro scene with earnings, so a big proscene is possible. BW is very unpopular outside korea/china, so there are few viewers and a pro scene isnt possible.
Also, whatever you think of SC2 as a game now, absolutely no one in the west would have watched GSL Open Season 3 (dubbed by Artosis as "the worst SC2 tournament of all time" because Terrans did a 2-rax all in pulling marines literally every single TvZ) if GOM didn't have Tastosis. And that tournament could've killed SC2.
even in korea BW popularity has steadily been declining since the mid 2000s with the mmos&shooters, lol and d3 now. and proleague & MBCgame didnt return a profit so the fundamentals for a golden age of bw, i cant see how those wouldve been possible when the game itself wasnt that popular any more. WHen we have a situation of businesses running at a loss, the answer is to downscale and meet the declined demand in a cost efficient manner. Adding more businesses (gomtv in your hypothesis) to this kinda runs against that concept.
GOM created an entire market for SC2. It wouldn't have taken off without them (Blizzard never really cared about "e-sports" for the first year or so of SC2's release beyond lip service). They could've been creating a foreign scene for BW instead of a foreign scene for SC2. Yeah, they probably wouldn't have been able to get it as big as the one they made for SC2, but they would've brought in enough new foreign fans to keep at least themselves in business, I think.
Also, someone who knows more about this than me: In retrospect, was it a good idea for KeSPA to fight the Blizzard lawsuits, or would the "we care about and respect the IP rights" vibe have been worth going along to get along?
IMO the best scenerio would be for the lawsuit to be continued so that NO other companies can treat an 'sport' industry like a marketable product. It would be entirely depended on the passion of the game.
Then there would be no sports industries at all?
I realize that the marketing aspect is maybe distateful, but players need to eat.
Do enlighten me.
Because....if they didn't treat the sport as marketable, no one would make money off it? Meaning that you couldn't do it full time?
Give me an example of a sport industry that wasn't treated as a marketable profit. Even BW was basically an ad campaign for the sponsor companies (and there's nothing wrong with that).
You know, reading the explanation makes me feel really special about BW since it seems like BW will never happen again. Perhaps the last 15 years of Broodwar is a unique event in human history and we should be happy we were apart of it.
Wow thanks for the quote by JunkkaGom.. I really do see and agree with how esports is dying simply due to the rise in technology and accessibility when at first, back when it was young, it was the best thing for it. It was an amazing team which brought out amazing games such as Boxer vs Hiya
It will be missed but I hope they play some SC2 and make the most out of their time their!!
You know, many years ago, I wished upon Blizz to "update" SC/BW & bnet with modern networking capabilities, modern gaming concepts and updated graphics that did not alter the way the game was played (ie, unit & building positioning & effects on environment), as in, change nothing that made the game what it was, why it was so good. Don't do away with old Bnet, don't do away with chat channels, don't do away with all that - like it or not, that style of interaction was part of what made the experience successful. Update it. Figure out some way to allow both methods or types of bnet.
It's my belief that these actions would have created a sustainable market for gamers to see the game as something more than a game for a generation or two, and something they can achieve and look up to. To say, as a young boy, "I like the Boston Red Sox, the Bruins, the Patriots and KHAN. I can't play hockey, football or baseball, but I can play StarCraft, and I want to be just like Stork." It takes 15 years of solid support to get those words to come out of a kids mouth, it takes a generation. I wish that could have happened. I wish someone out there were smart enough, dedicated enough to rebuild the game in a way we can play it right, outside of Blizzard's cursed touch.
That ship has sailed now. The marketing effort that would be involved to get anyone on it would fairly immense. And all it does is make me depressed. GG, ACE. Well played, thank you for providing us with good and memories. No lawsuits, no corporate margins, no language barriers and no foolish decisions can take those away.
Everything moves so fast now. We don't have a generation anymore. I bet all this has been said many times.
On July 23 2012 17:10 Koshi wrote: So this means that SCII players can't play when they are in the army? I am hoping they are making a new team for the new talent.
May 16th - oGs disbands July 13th - Zenex ceases to exist as an independent team, will merge with Startale July 23rd - Air Force Ace announces plan to disband
The Korean scene is collapsing.
I wouldn't be surprised to see 2-3 more teams disband in the next few months,.
you forgot last year's mbc game, hwaseung oz and wemade collapses (edit: or was it in 2010? i forgot :S)
I considered adding them, but that was before the hybrid league was announced. MBCGame, Oz, and WeMade were the collapse of the BW scene (Wemade was technically an SC2 team as well, but had literally 3 players). Switching to SC2 was supposed to fix everything somehow, but oGs, Zenex, and Ace are primarily SC2 teams that are collapsing. The switch did nothing to save Proleague, and will quite possibly kill the GSL as well by flooding the market, and being a really hyped SC2 league full of generally bad SC2 games.
I'd say TSL (constantly on the verge of collapse, though they seem to be in better shape now), SlayerS (all kinds of shit going down in that team), and SKT1 (sponsor doesn't care about international audience) are the ones that should be on the watchlist. Woongjin and STX are also sponsors likely to pull out, but I honestly don't know why a chemical company and a shipbuilding company (!) were sponsoring BW in the first place. I doubt many BW fans are in the market for a ship. So maybe those two are just run by people who really like BW, meaning they should possibly be on the watchlist as well?
On July 25 2012 02:35 brolaf wrote:
On July 24 2012 16:01 Ribbon wrote:
On July 24 2012 15:45 Darksoldierr wrote:
On July 24 2012 09:59 Ribbon wrote:
On July 24 2012 09:11 sephirotharg wrote: I hope that professional BW survives (in Korea, that is)
You wouldn't be interested in professional BW somewhere else? I know the Chinese scene is really small, and the western scene is pitable, but there's still a chance to grow them into something respectable within a few years, I think.
I dont think so, Sc2's release gave BW attention to those who never heard of it before, yet nothings really changed.
That's largely the BW's community's fault, though. Absolutely no effort was made to try to convert any of the "Oh hey SC2 is cool" people to BW fans, besides people on forums calling them names. Where was KeSPA's big outreach? The only major BW scene to ever even try to reach westerners was GOM back when Tasteless and I think SuperDanielMan were casting the GOMTV Classic in English. And KeSPA shut that one down pretty fast. Which, actually, was a pretty terrible decision in the long run. If GOM hadn't gotten into SC2, there'd be no SC2 now.
I seriously do believe that if GOMTV was in the BW business and not the SC2 business, we'd be in a new Golden Age of Brood War right now. SC2 isn't big because of Blizzard, much as people like to blame them. It's big because GOM sold it to a foreign audience.
Even right now, when the whole idea of the switch to SC2 is the international fans, there's still no official English stream for Proleague. That's insane. Even when their in SC2, KeSPA ignores the SC2 scene. They have completely and 100% fucked BW up. They're fucking up in SC2 now as well. Whatever they did for Brood War in the past, the last few years have been nothing but abject incompetence on their part.
As time goes on, it will be just even harder to catch new players. Just think about, running BW on W7 already has problems and need to find fixes to make it work.
This admittedly is a pretty huge problem. I'd say port forwarding is a bigger deal than killing explorer in task manager. A lot of people (myself included) literally can't do that.
Now W8 is coming, another generation growing up on console games and on MMOs. Personally i would love a rise viewer numbers and just overall, player numbers, but i dont think so it will ever happen
Certainly not if you keep referring to the only potential source of new BW fans in such a demeaning get off my lawnish way.
Cant agree with this. Youre trying to put the cart before the horse. What comes first is a popular game by the designers, and blizzard did good here, SC2 is popular. As a result, a lot of potential viewers could supply a pro scene with earnings, so a big proscene is possible. BW is very unpopular outside korea/china, so there are few viewers and a pro scene isnt possible.
Also, whatever you think of SC2 as a game now, absolutely no one in the west would have watched GSL Open Season 3 (dubbed by Artosis as "the worst SC2 tournament of all time" because Terrans did a 2-rax all in pulling marines literally every single TvZ) if GOM didn't have Tastosis. And that tournament could've killed SC2.
even in korea BW popularity has steadily been declining since the mid 2000s with the mmos&shooters, lol and d3 now. and proleague & MBCgame didnt return a profit so the fundamentals for a golden age of bw, i cant see how those wouldve been possible when the game itself wasnt that popular any more. WHen we have a situation of businesses running at a loss, the answer is to downscale and meet the declined demand in a cost efficient manner. Adding more businesses (gomtv in your hypothesis) to this kinda runs against that concept.
GOM created an entire market for SC2. It wouldn't have taken off without them (Blizzard never really cared about "e-sports" for the first year or so of SC2's release beyond lip service). They could've been creating a foreign scene for BW instead of a foreign scene for SC2. Yeah, they probably wouldn't have been able to get it as big as the one they made for SC2, but they would've brought in enough new foreign fans to keep at least themselves in business, I think. Also, someone who knows more about this than me: In retrospect, was it a good idea for KeSPA to fight the Blizzard lawsuits, or would the "we care about and respect the IP rights" vibe have been worth going along to get along?
The market already existed, it was the millions of SC2 players that purchased their game and were fans of it. BW had nowhere near the amount of people playing so there is no market to supply in the frist place. The sizes of the potential revenue are nowhere near to be compared as reasonable market alternatives.
Smart phones are definitely having an impact with the younger generation here. Pretty much 100% of teenagers have them and they're on them every spare second. Kids still game a tonne but the platforms are shifting. Where before, kids were skipping class for PC bangs or rushing to them afterwards, they often just play/chat on their phones (cheaper and more convenient). The cost, convenience and time factors are all really big for students who spends 12+ hours a day in schooling. That said I really think it's Korea specific and gaming internationally is unlikely to take a significant hit.
On July 23 2012 17:10 Koshi wrote: So this means that SCII players can't play when they are in the army? I am hoping they are making a new team for the new talent.
May 16th - oGs disbands July 13th - Zenex ceases to exist as an independent team, will merge with Startale July 23rd - Air Force Ace announces plan to disband
The Korean scene is collapsing.
I wouldn't be surprised to see 2-3 more teams disband in the next few months,.
you forgot last year's mbc game, hwaseung oz and wemade collapses (edit: or was it in 2010? i forgot :S)
I considered adding them, but that was before the hybrid league was announced. MBCGame, Oz, and WeMade were the collapse of the BW scene (Wemade was technically an SC2 team as well, but had literally 3 players). Switching to SC2 was supposed to fix everything somehow, but oGs, Zenex, and Ace are primarily SC2 teams that are collapsing. The switch did nothing to save Proleague, and will quite possibly kill the GSL as well by flooding the market, and being a really hyped SC2 league full of generally bad SC2 games.
I'd say TSL (constantly on the verge of collapse, though they seem to be in better shape now), SlayerS (all kinds of shit going down in that team), and SKT1 (sponsor doesn't care about international audience) are the ones that should be on the watchlist. Woongjin and STX are also sponsors likely to pull out, but I honestly don't know why a chemical company and a shipbuilding company (!) were sponsoring BW in the first place. I doubt many BW fans are in the market for a ship. So maybe those two are just run by people who really like BW, meaning they should possibly be on the watchlist as well?
On July 25 2012 02:35 brolaf wrote:
On July 24 2012 16:01 Ribbon wrote:
On July 24 2012 15:45 Darksoldierr wrote:
On July 24 2012 09:59 Ribbon wrote:
On July 24 2012 09:11 sephirotharg wrote: I hope that professional BW survives (in Korea, that is)
You wouldn't be interested in professional BW somewhere else? I know the Chinese scene is really small, and the western scene is pitable, but there's still a chance to grow them into something respectable within a few years, I think.
I dont think so, Sc2's release gave BW attention to those who never heard of it before, yet nothings really changed.
That's largely the BW's community's fault, though. Absolutely no effort was made to try to convert any of the "Oh hey SC2 is cool" people to BW fans, besides people on forums calling them names. Where was KeSPA's big outreach? The only major BW scene to ever even try to reach westerners was GOM back when Tasteless and I think SuperDanielMan were casting the GOMTV Classic in English. And KeSPA shut that one down pretty fast. Which, actually, was a pretty terrible decision in the long run. If GOM hadn't gotten into SC2, there'd be no SC2 now.
I seriously do believe that if GOMTV was in the BW business and not the SC2 business, we'd be in a new Golden Age of Brood War right now. SC2 isn't big because of Blizzard, much as people like to blame them. It's big because GOM sold it to a foreign audience.
Even right now, when the whole idea of the switch to SC2 is the international fans, there's still no official English stream for Proleague. That's insane. Even when their in SC2, KeSPA ignores the SC2 scene. They have completely and 100% fucked BW up. They're fucking up in SC2 now as well. Whatever they did for Brood War in the past, the last few years have been nothing but abject incompetence on their part.
As time goes on, it will be just even harder to catch new players. Just think about, running BW on W7 already has problems and need to find fixes to make it work.
This admittedly is a pretty huge problem. I'd say port forwarding is a bigger deal than killing explorer in task manager. A lot of people (myself included) literally can't do that.
Now W8 is coming, another generation growing up on console games and on MMOs. Personally i would love a rise viewer numbers and just overall, player numbers, but i dont think so it will ever happen
Certainly not if you keep referring to the only potential source of new BW fans in such a demeaning get off my lawnish way.
Cant agree with this. Youre trying to put the cart before the horse. What comes first is a popular game by the designers, and blizzard did good here, SC2 is popular. As a result, a lot of potential viewers could supply a pro scene with earnings, so a big proscene is possible. BW is very unpopular outside korea/china, so there are few viewers and a pro scene isnt possible.
Also, whatever you think of SC2 as a game now, absolutely no one in the west would have watched GSL Open Season 3 (dubbed by Artosis as "the worst SC2 tournament of all time" because Terrans did a 2-rax all in pulling marines literally every single TvZ) if GOM didn't have Tastosis. And that tournament could've killed SC2.
even in korea BW popularity has steadily been declining since the mid 2000s with the mmos&shooters, lol and d3 now. and proleague & MBCgame didnt return a profit so the fundamentals for a golden age of bw, i cant see how those wouldve been possible when the game itself wasnt that popular any more. WHen we have a situation of businesses running at a loss, the answer is to downscale and meet the declined demand in a cost efficient manner. Adding more businesses (gomtv in your hypothesis) to this kinda runs against that concept.
GOM created an entire market for SC2. It wouldn't have taken off without them (Blizzard never really cared about "e-sports" for the first year or so of SC2's release beyond lip service). They could've been creating a foreign scene for BW instead of a foreign scene for SC2. Yeah, they probably wouldn't have been able to get it as big as the one they made for SC2, but they would've brought in enough new foreign fans to keep at least themselves in business, I think. Also, someone who knows more about this than me: In retrospect, was it a good idea for KeSPA to fight the Blizzard lawsuits, or would the "we care about and respect the IP rights" vibe have been worth going along to get along?
The market already existed, it was the millions of SC2 players that purchased their game and were fans of it. BW had nowhere near the amount of people playing so there is no market to supply in the frist place. The sizes of the potential revenue are nowhere near to be compared as reasonable market alternatives.
I dont think its right for people to say that broodwar was never popular outside of korea so esports never had a chance with it compared to the much more popular sc2. Wasnt broodwar a really popular game?
Broodwar did sell millions outside of koreal. It was at 11 million worldwide with only 4.5 million reported in korea in 2007 when it was still at 9 million sold. Im sure lots of people pirated it on top of that and those people are just as likely to watch an esports scene as a normal customer. Its very possible that more people have played broodwar then sc2 outside of korea at this time.
I think it was probably more the lack of anyway for video from korea tv to spread on the internet near the games release, if fast internet, twitch, youtube, and the gom classic existed back then I think it would have gotten some good numbers compared to what it eventually got when a few people were trying to build an audence to watch broodwar years after the game came out.
Here you can look at some english view numbers that broodwar did get and while they are less then sc2 I dont think they count as bad considering how far after the release of the game they had to start building a viewing audience and the quality of the amature youtube casters and they had the potential to grow more if tastosis was casting broodwar games consistantly for years to build a fanbase for gom or kespa.
Even well after sc2 came out it is possible for broodwar to get a 250k view video when a current sc2 casting superstar does some nastalga videos comparing well to his sc2 videos from the same months. How did that happen if nobody likes broodwar outside of korea and it never had any potential for an audence?
We'll forever remember you ace. Every single player. You were the amazing underdogs. The old guard.
Also,
However the rise of smartphones and social network services has caused progaming to decline.
.
What the fuck? Smartphones caused progaming to decline?
Well WCG (which is ran by Samsung) also planned to switch out PC gaming for Mobile gaming at their events, I think many esports companies in Korea fear the same thing.
WTF WTF WTF
Mobile gaming........
More people played with Angry Birds than those who just heard of Starcraft, be it BW or Sc2, and causals are the market. For example, if WoW would be played only by the very high end hard core players, it would have died year after its release, its the 10 million causal player that make it viable.
And it seems so that mobile as a gaming platform ganing more and more focus, not that it is good but its is fact :\
I know the reasons behind this perfectly man don't worry.
Here we have Angry Bird shoes, Angry Bird shirts, Angry Bird pants, Angry Bird soft toys, Angry Bird keychains, anything you can put a Hello Kitty to, not to mention the latest and most ridiculous one I've seen: An Angry fucking Bird ice cream shop.
On July 23 2012 17:10 Koshi wrote: So this means that SCII players can't play when they are in the army? I am hoping they are making a new team for the new talent.
May 16th - oGs disbands July 13th - Zenex ceases to exist as an independent team, will merge with Startale July 23rd - Air Force Ace announces plan to disband
The Korean scene is collapsing.
I wouldn't be surprised to see 2-3 more teams disband in the next few months,.
you forgot last year's mbc game, hwaseung oz and wemade collapses (edit: or was it in 2010? i forgot :S)
I considered adding them, but that was before the hybrid league was announced. MBCGame, Oz, and WeMade were the collapse of the BW scene (Wemade was technically an SC2 team as well, but had literally 3 players). Switching to SC2 was supposed to fix everything somehow, but oGs, Zenex, and Ace are primarily SC2 teams that are collapsing. The switch did nothing to save Proleague, and will quite possibly kill the GSL as well by flooding the market, and being a really hyped SC2 league full of generally bad SC2 games.
I'd say TSL (constantly on the verge of collapse, though they seem to be in better shape now), SlayerS (all kinds of shit going down in that team), and SKT1 (sponsor doesn't care about international audience) are the ones that should be on the watchlist. Woongjin and STX are also sponsors likely to pull out, but I honestly don't know why a chemical company and a shipbuilding company (!) were sponsoring BW in the first place. I doubt many BW fans are in the market for a ship. So maybe those two are just run by people who really like BW, meaning they should possibly be on the watchlist as well?
On July 25 2012 02:35 brolaf wrote:
On July 24 2012 16:01 Ribbon wrote:
On July 24 2012 15:45 Darksoldierr wrote:
On July 24 2012 09:59 Ribbon wrote:
On July 24 2012 09:11 sephirotharg wrote: I hope that professional BW survives (in Korea, that is)
You wouldn't be interested in professional BW somewhere else? I know the Chinese scene is really small, and the western scene is pitable, but there's still a chance to grow them into something respectable within a few years, I think.
I dont think so, Sc2's release gave BW attention to those who never heard of it before, yet nothings really changed.
That's largely the BW's community's fault, though. Absolutely no effort was made to try to convert any of the "Oh hey SC2 is cool" people to BW fans, besides people on forums calling them names. Where was KeSPA's big outreach? The only major BW scene to ever even try to reach westerners was GOM back when Tasteless and I think SuperDanielMan were casting the GOMTV Classic in English. And KeSPA shut that one down pretty fast. Which, actually, was a pretty terrible decision in the long run. If GOM hadn't gotten into SC2, there'd be no SC2 now.
I seriously do believe that if GOMTV was in the BW business and not the SC2 business, we'd be in a new Golden Age of Brood War right now. SC2 isn't big because of Blizzard, much as people like to blame them. It's big because GOM sold it to a foreign audience.
Even right now, when the whole idea of the switch to SC2 is the international fans, there's still no official English stream for Proleague. That's insane. Even when their in SC2, KeSPA ignores the SC2 scene. They have completely and 100% fucked BW up. They're fucking up in SC2 now as well. Whatever they did for Brood War in the past, the last few years have been nothing but abject incompetence on their part.
As time goes on, it will be just even harder to catch new players. Just think about, running BW on W7 already has problems and need to find fixes to make it work.
This admittedly is a pretty huge problem. I'd say port forwarding is a bigger deal than killing explorer in task manager. A lot of people (myself included) literally can't do that.
Now W8 is coming, another generation growing up on console games and on MMOs. Personally i would love a rise viewer numbers and just overall, player numbers, but i dont think so it will ever happen
Certainly not if you keep referring to the only potential source of new BW fans in such a demeaning get off my lawnish way.
Cant agree with this. Youre trying to put the cart before the horse. What comes first is a popular game by the designers, and blizzard did good here, SC2 is popular. As a result, a lot of potential viewers could supply a pro scene with earnings, so a big proscene is possible. BW is very unpopular outside korea/china, so there are few viewers and a pro scene isnt possible.
Also, whatever you think of SC2 as a game now, absolutely no one in the west would have watched GSL Open Season 3 (dubbed by Artosis as "the worst SC2 tournament of all time" because Terrans did a 2-rax all in pulling marines literally every single TvZ) if GOM didn't have Tastosis. And that tournament could've killed SC2.
even in korea BW popularity has steadily been declining since the mid 2000s with the mmos&shooters, lol and d3 now. and proleague & MBCgame didnt return a profit so the fundamentals for a golden age of bw, i cant see how those wouldve been possible when the game itself wasnt that popular any more. WHen we have a situation of businesses running at a loss, the answer is to downscale and meet the declined demand in a cost efficient manner. Adding more businesses (gomtv in your hypothesis) to this kinda runs against that concept.
GOM created an entire market for SC2. It wouldn't have taken off without them (Blizzard never really cared about "e-sports" for the first year or so of SC2's release beyond lip service). They could've been creating a foreign scene for BW instead of a foreign scene for SC2. Yeah, they probably wouldn't have been able to get it as big as the one they made for SC2, but they would've brought in enough new foreign fans to keep at least themselves in business, I think. Also, someone who knows more about this than me: In retrospect, was it a good idea for KeSPA to fight the Blizzard lawsuits, or would the "we care about and respect the IP rights" vibe have been worth going along to get along?
The market already existed, it was the millions of SC2 players that purchased their game and were fans of it. BW had nowhere near the amount of people playing so there is no market to supply in the frist place. The sizes of the potential revenue are nowhere near to be compared as reasonable market alternatives.
Right when SC2 came out, the only people who were interested in the idea of watching SC2 were BW fans. Once it started taking off it became a community, with memes and shit, and started attracting new people.
Obviously, SC2 was a new highly anticipated game, and it's a lot easier to get into than BW. This helped it a lot. But SC2 as a spectator sport didn't have a lot of traction right at the start. Had a less competent orginization been but in charge of Korean SC2, it would've flopped entirely and ProLeague would be switching to League of Legends now.
On July 25 2012 16:25 Radivel-X17 wrote: This is sad news.
You know, many years ago, I wished upon Blizz to "update" SC/BW & bnet with modern networking capabilities, modern gaming concepts and updated graphics that did not alter the way the game was played (ie, unit & building positioning & effects on environment), as in, change nothing that made the game what it was, why it was so good. Don't do away with old Bnet, don't do away with chat channels, don't do away with all that - like it or not, that style of interaction was part of what made the experience successful. Update it. Figure out some way to allow both methods or types of bnet.
SC2:BW is actually pretty good, though obviously it's not a perfect port, and some of the fanmade models of units with no SC2 version look really weird. I've actually played it over the real BW just because I'm the only person on earth who actually prefers Bnet 2 to the original, for the sole reason I can join a game and not be frozen for 30 seconds because the other guy didn't have his ports open and is sitting there wondering why no one's joining his game because Bnet 1 doesn't tell you if your ports or closed or even give you any indication anywhere that your should have them open. Though not being dumped into a chat room full of mexican spambots like the D room on ICCUP every time I log in is also nice
</rant>
(I also have much worse lag on ICCUP than Bnet 2, but that's probably because I'm on the East coast and the rest of the BW scene seems to be in Slovakia sometimes)
Even well after sc2 came out it is possible for broodwar to get a 250k view video when a current sc2 casting superstar does some nastalga videos comparing well to his sc2 videos from the same months. How did that happen if nobody likes broodwar outside of korea and it never had any potential for an audence?
Just not enough reach, honestly. Since every interaction between the SC2 and BW scenes ends in a flamewar, no progress ever gets made on advancing BW to people mildly interested in it so that they get really interested in it.
(Also, there are some people in the SC2 scene who fake-like BW out of some weird committment to "e-sports" as a philosophy, or to fit in with everyone else. It's kind of weird)
On July 24 2012 07:48 shaggles wrote: I would like to see KESPA's official response to that.Though it is surely sad for players (those who now or in a nearest future will join the army), I must say, I support such a decision. "E-sports" never existed. There were only some people playing best-selling games in the front of their loyal fans and get paid for that by sponsors. And as the fans evolve you have to decide whether to evolve with them or to quit. If progaming was a sport, there would be no issue of "tranisitioning to other game". I mean why? Imagine any (even the worst) NBA team willing to switch to ice-hockey or volleyball. Or imagine Lakers or Knicks forced to switch to volleyball, since a certain well-recognized sport equipment producer has a lot of balls and nets to sell. And of course if fans deny to watch basketball players playing volleyball (or they just simply don't buy these nets), perhaps NBA authorities decide to move to soccer... The officials of so-called "e-sports" have nothing in common with any sport association's functions (except for restricting an access to progaming by licensing system), and actually make marketing-wise wrong decisions. In such a volatile environment, "quit" is the reasonable decision.
I have to completely agree with you, if Starcraft was true sport then Blizzard should work on BW only and never release a sequel(or at least dont make such drastic changes), on the other side this is a game and successfull games always have sequels, because companies wants to sell more. It would have been better if they created RTS with another name. I have been thinking of two separate scenes but unfortunatelly blizzard dont want that and they do everything to kill bw faster.
On July 24 2012 07:48 shaggles wrote: I would like to see KESPA's official response to that.Though it is surely sad for players (those who now or in a nearest future will join the army), I must say, I support such a decision. "E-sports" never existed. There were only some people playing best-selling games in the front of their loyal fans and get paid for that by sponsors. And as the fans evolve you have to decide whether to evolve with them or to quit. If progaming was a sport, there would be no issue of "tranisitioning to other game". I mean why? Imagine any (even the worst) NBA team willing to switch to ice-hockey or volleyball. Or imagine Lakers or Knicks forced to switch to volleyball, since a certain well-recognized sport equipment producer has a lot of balls and nets to sell. And of course if fans deny to watch basketball players playing volleyball (or they just simply don't buy these nets), perhaps NBA authorities decide to move to soccer... The officials of so-called "e-sports" have nothing in common with any sport association's functions (except for restricting an access to progaming by licensing system), and actually make marketing-wise wrong decisions. In such a volatile environment, "quit" is the reasonable decision.
I have to completely agree with you, if Starcraft was true sport then Blizzard should work on BW only and never release a sequel(or at least dont make such drastic changes), on the other side this is a game and successfull games always have sequels, because companies wants to sell more.
They weren't making any money off BW, though, and it's a little unreasonable to expect them not to do something that would make millions of dollars so some KeSPA guy could get paid instead.
It would have been better if they created RTS with another name. I have been thinking of two separate scenes but unfortunatelly blizzard dont want that and they do everything to kill bw faster.
It's not like KeSPA wasn't trying to kill SC2, either (shutting down showmatches, getting the game rated 18+ in Korea, etc). It was a fairly bitter and slightly pointless war over a rapidly diminishing Korean scene.
On July 24 2012 07:48 shaggles wrote: I would like to see KESPA's official response to that.Though it is surely sad for players (those who now or in a nearest future will join the army), I must say, I support such a decision. "E-sports" never existed. There were only some people playing best-selling games in the front of their loyal fans and get paid for that by sponsors. And as the fans evolve you have to decide whether to evolve with them or to quit. If progaming was a sport, there would be no issue of "tranisitioning to other game". I mean why? Imagine any (even the worst) NBA team willing to switch to ice-hockey or volleyball. Or imagine Lakers or Knicks forced to switch to volleyball, since a certain well-recognized sport equipment producer has a lot of balls and nets to sell. And of course if fans deny to watch basketball players playing volleyball (or they just simply don't buy these nets), perhaps NBA authorities decide to move to soccer... The officials of so-called "e-sports" have nothing in common with any sport association's functions (except for restricting an access to progaming by licensing system), and actually make marketing-wise wrong decisions. In such a volatile environment, "quit" is the reasonable decision.
I have to completely agree with you, if Starcraft was true sport then Blizzard should work on BW only and never release a sequel(or at least dont make such drastic changes), on the other side this is a game and successfull games always have sequels, because companies wants to sell more.
They weren't making any money off BW, though, and it's a little unreasonable to expect them not to do something that would make millions of dollars so some KeSPA guy could get paid instead.
It would have been better if they created RTS with another name. I have been thinking of two separate scenes but unfortunatelly blizzard dont want that and they do everything to kill bw faster.
It's not like KeSPA wasn't trying to kill SC2, either (shutting down showmatches, getting the game rated 18+ in Korea, etc). It was a fairly bitter and slightly pointless war over a rapidly diminishing Korean scene.
On July 24 2012 07:48 shaggles wrote: I would like to see KESPA's official response to that.Though it is surely sad for players (those who now or in a nearest future will join the army), I must say, I support such a decision. "E-sports" never existed. There were only some people playing best-selling games in the front of their loyal fans and get paid for that by sponsors. And as the fans evolve you have to decide whether to evolve with them or to quit. If progaming was a sport, there would be no issue of "tranisitioning to other game". I mean why? Imagine any (even the worst) NBA team willing to switch to ice-hockey or volleyball. Or imagine Lakers or Knicks forced to switch to volleyball, since a certain well-recognized sport equipment producer has a lot of balls and nets to sell. And of course if fans deny to watch basketball players playing volleyball (or they just simply don't buy these nets), perhaps NBA authorities decide to move to soccer... The officials of so-called "e-sports" have nothing in common with any sport association's functions (except for restricting an access to progaming by licensing system), and actually make marketing-wise wrong decisions. In such a volatile environment, "quit" is the reasonable decision.
I have to completely agree with you, if Starcraft was true sport then Blizzard should work on BW only and never release a sequel(or at least dont make such drastic changes), on the other side this is a game and successfull games always have sequels, because companies wants to sell more.
They weren't making any money off BW, though, and it's a little unreasonable to expect them not to do something that would make millions of dollars so some KeSPA guy could get paid instead.
It would have been better if they created RTS with another name. I have been thinking of two separate scenes but unfortunatelly blizzard dont want that and they do everything to kill bw faster.
It's not like KeSPA wasn't trying to kill SC2, either (shutting down showmatches, getting the game rated 18+ in Korea, etc). It was a fairly bitter and slightly pointless war over a rapidly diminishing Korean scene.
yeah shutting down showmatches cause they are so evil not because nada was still a pro BW player and ofc a Team wouldn't allow him 2 promote a different game.
promot a game for the company that is trying to fuck you over.
I think there's still a chance that they could change their minds if SC2 becomes popular enough. They're not doing it right away, so I think that leaves time for them to change their minds.
EPT![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/jvS0Z.jpg)
![[image loading]](http://www.airforce.mil.kr/ace/esboard/upload/imageboard/0655394.jpg)
![[image loading]](http://www.teamliquid.net/staff/flamewheel/SPL_LR/SPL_Air_Force_ACE_vs_STX_Sou.png)
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