An insider from SKT1 confirmed that "the steep decline in the number of fans had a negative effect on the motivation of players, including Bisu." He added that "regrettably, at the current state, it will become even harder for the players who still remember the glorious past to continue their progaming careers."
oh man...
On September 10 2013 16:59 LegalLord wrote: The death of BW killed esports. It proved that a game couldn't be played professionally for an extended period of time after the profit motive for playing the game wanes.
Who will stick by SC2 or even LoL when times get tough? No one, given that BW didn't last.
An insider from SKT1 confirmed that "the steep decline in the number of fans had a negative effect on the motivation of players, including Bisu." He added that "regrettably, at the current state, it will become even harder for the players who still remember the glorious past to continue their progaming careers."
On September 10 2013 16:59 LegalLord wrote: The death of BW killed esports. It proved that a game couldn't be played professionally for an extended period of time after the profit motive for playing the game wanes.
Who will stick by SC2 or even LoL when times get tough? No one, given that BW didn't last.
This is a good point.
I see it more as esports being kinda an Icarus story, where it was too ambitious, and flew too close to the sun.
The big, infrastructured esports started with BW, but even then it was in somewhat of a decline. They then cannibalised that infrastructure to try and have it catch on outside Korea. But the level of interest simply doesn't exist outside of Korea yet, it might not even have existed in Korea at the level that they wanted it.
Instead of letting a game/scene develop it's fanbase/infrastructure organically, to an extent that is sustainable, they tried to fast-track it by using the fresh corpse of the professional BW scene as a launching pad, and forcing it to their ideal of what it should be, unsurprisingly it wasn't sustainable. Now we are just witnessing the melting of those waxy wings.
On September 10 2013 16:50 GTR wrote: sc2 killed itself. esports lives on through league of legends.
I'd have wanted it to be DotA 2, but I'll settle for what we have. I just hope that Riot doesn't completely abandon it or even worse try to deliberately kill it when they have to move to LoL 2.0, if people like it more.
On September 10 2013 16:50 GTR wrote: sc2 killed itself. esports lives on through league of legends.
I'd have wanted it to be DotA 2, but I'll settle for what we have. I just hope that Riot doesn't completely abandon it or even worse try to deliberately kill it when they have to move to LoL 2.0, if people like it more.
We can only hope that they learned from Blizzard's mistakes in that regard... so far it's looking pretty decent though, since OGN seems rather free to do their own thing if you compare it to WCS or something. OGN runs a completely different format from the tournament that Riot organizes in the West (LCS), while WCS is pretty streamlined by Blizzard, with them wanting to "unify" everything. So, maybe this is an indicator for Riot being a bit more open about the Korean scene, who knows.
On September 10 2013 16:59 LegalLord wrote: The death of BW killed esports. It proved that a game couldn't be played professionally for an extended period of time after the profit motive for playing the game wanes.
Who will stick by SC2 or even LoL when times get tough? No one, given that BW didn't last.
lol wat, u must be new. BW didn't die of natural causes, it was taken down by Blizzard with the forced transition to SC2.
so if i read opticalshot's translation right, blizzard took down the king (BW) and then it's baby (SC2) got owned by LoL.
On September 10 2013 16:59 LegalLord wrote: The death of BW killed esports. It proved that a game couldn't be played professionally for an extended period of time after the profit motive for playing the game wanes.
Who will stick by SC2 or even LoL when times get tough? No one, given that BW didn't last.
lol wat, u must be new. BW didn't die of natural causes, it was taken down by Blizzard with the forced transition to SC2.
so if i read opticalshot's translation right, blizzard took down the king (BW) and then it's baby (SC2) got owned by LoL.
the match fixing scandal brought it down further too
lol wat, u must be new. BW didn't die of natural causes, it was taken down by Blizzard with the forced transition to SC2.
Citation needed.
There was no forced transtion. Blizzard tried to negotiate SC2 rights with KeSPA before the game was launched, KeSPA told them where to shove it and banned their players from the game. They would have been happy playing Brood War forever if it had remained feasible.
The only thing that forced a transition was Brood War's continuing decline in popularity. Don't forget, KeSPA lost three different teams _and_ the MSL in the year before the switch.
A legend, and an amazing player. I remember his games versus Flash fondly. I'm glad these BW players are retiring, it's not fitting for these legends to hang around on benches. Better to move on with their lives, or at least return to the game they were passionate about.
On September 10 2013 16:50 GTR wrote: sc2 killed itself. esports lives on through league of legends.
Thank god you're GTR, an old and very respectable member of TL, or else you'd probably be tarred and feathered for this statement.
I think the original writer's intent was to: 1) say that SC2 doesn't even compare with LoL in terms of popularity (LoL is sooooooooo far ahead of everything else) 2) say that SC2's popularity in PL (remember they started SC2 with this mixed abomination league thing?) has declined significantly (hey now that I look at it, significantly is a better choice of word than severely)
In the mixed PL (transition period), I think there were still decent number of fans showing up - especially in the beginning of that season. I may have even translated an article about how there are good number of fans coming to the Yongsan stadium that time...
Oh, okay I guess I really didn't know that, then. I somehow assumed SC2 was always as popular/unpopular as it is now, since you often heard these stories about how everyone left when the BW games were over and SC2 started in the hybrid proleague and all that stuff.
lol wat, u must be new. BW didn't die of natural causes, it was taken down by Blizzard with the forced transition to SC2.
Citation needed.
There was no forced transtion. Blizzard tried to negotiate SC2 rights with KeSPA before the game was launched, KeSPA told them where to shove it and banned their players from the game. They would have been happy playing Brood War forever if it had remained feasible.
The only thing that forced a transition was Brood War's continuing decline in popularity. Don't forget, KeSPA lost three different teams _and_ the MSL in the year before the switch.
hwaseung and mbc weren't really related to brood war; hwaseung at least wanted to "move on" to higher levels of sponsorship i.e. football, mbc was converted to a music channel due to music being more popular than any individual video game (and things like the MBC goodbye show said MBC wasn't closing due to financial reasons, etc etc. But that's more speculation)
also papa blizzard 100% stepped in to proleague. This proleague supposedly had the highest payout of any proleague season, etc. That doesn't just magically happen when no new sponsors are announced
rather than accept a smaller decline (eg could change OSL prize from 35,000 USD to say 25,000 USD, etc etc) kespa negotiated stuff to try to "go for broke" and failed. They hoped starcraft II would grow and it didn't
lol wat, u must be new. BW didn't die of natural causes, it was taken down by Blizzard with the forced transition to SC2.
Citation needed.
There was no forced transtion. Blizzard tried to negotiate SC2 rights with KeSPA before the game was launched, KeSPA told them where to shove it and banned their players from the game. They would have been happy playing Brood War forever if it had remained feasible.
The only thing that forced a transition was Brood War's continuing decline in popularity. Don't forget, KeSPA lost three different teams _and_ the MSL in the year before the switch.
It wasn't a decline in popularity that forced the switch - it was the match fixing scandal. Let's look at the casualty list for match fixing: Sparkyz MBCGame + HERO (probably the biggest loss) eSTRO in part (more because of Blizz) Stability in sponsorship (OSL simply could never find itself a sponsor)
But the fact remains: BW was the best chance any game ever had at being a shining example of esports. It failed, so why would anyone think that SC2 or LoL would fare better?
On September 09 2013 20:48 _Animus_ wrote: This is another indicator that dustin browder and co are completelly incompetent if you ask me. I wonder if they have an idea what was Starcraft before they started to make sc2, cuz saying "Starcraft is all about controlling big armies" is just ignorant and seeing his job done so far, maybe he really think this is all about starcraft.
Ive been saying since the "new begining" that this is the begining of the end for korean Starcraft. Scene which paved the way to esports, so pure and sacred that its a shame Blizzard fell so low to destroy it. There were always people who said to me, "this is not the truth, youre just hater" or "fanboy" but where is the truth when legandary players feel uncomfortable with the game, and they keep on retiring? Not to mention its low popullarity in korea. Its really sad, for all the fans, but its much more for the progamers. I hope bisu and others, dont take it too hard and reamain strong enough to move on. Good luck and have fun, BW is waiting for you Bisu!
Couldn't agree more. SC isn't so much about controlling large armies all at once, but rather controlling many squads. So rather than 100 zergling rallying in because LOL queen larvae and ez rally, two groups of 10-12 lings change the tide of the battle. It baffles me that the designers of SC2 thought not only that the 12-max group design of SC was some technical limitation and not part of the game design, but even more so that they concluded that the best decision was to have absolutely no limit on control group size, so the Dragons of the world can hotkey 40 barracks or whatever.
It's like they were designing game mechanics for stoned monobattles rather than protracted wars.
lol wat, u must be new. BW didn't die of natural causes, it was taken down by Blizzard with the forced transition to SC2.
Citation needed.
There was no forced transtion. Blizzard tried to negotiate SC2 rights with KeSPA before the game was launched, KeSPA told them where to shove it and banned their players from the game. They would have been happy playing Brood War forever if it had remained feasible.
The only thing that forced a transition was Brood War's continuing decline in popularity. Don't forget, KeSPA lost three different teams _and_ the MSL in the year before the switch.
It wasn't a decline in popularity that forced the switch - it was the match fixing scandal. Let's look at the casualty list for match fixing: Sparkyz MBCGame + HERO (probably the biggest loss) eSTRO in part (more because of Blizz) Stability in sponsorship (OSL simply could never find itself a sponsor)
But the fact remains: BW was the best chance any game ever had at being a shining example of esports. It failed, so why would anyone think that SC2 or LoL would fare better?
BW was actually KILLED.. It didn't die the natural death..
but yeah I agree that if BW could'nt do it.. no other game will.
On September 10 2013 07:33 AmorVincitOmnia wrote: Thank you for that translation, Optical. Kind of cements what a lot of people have been saying about sc2 in Korea, and possibly a rebound for BW.
I would so be down for a return to brood war don't think it's gonna happen though. Maybe LotV will be more like bw.
Too many different game mechanics. You'd basically have to write a new game. Though 12 (24 to be conservative?)-unit group max and single building selection gets you closer, it's not like SC2:BW is really like BW, it's just a novelty.
EPT
