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.
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.
These are good points.
Everything starts with the game itself. If you want to start at square 1, it's the game. The game has to be good. It has to be fun for the players while at the same time enjoyable to watch from a spectator perspective. The game has to be challenging enough to draw out the best players from the average. SC2 has absolutely none of these characteristics. It's blizzard's and all the western players' - butt-hurt from getting smacked by Koreans in BW - fault for, as mentioned above, pushing a poor game to create an artificial climate for "professional" competition because they wanted what the Koreans had without working for it.
edit: the fault also lies partly in kespa's terrible management policies for BW and the kespa-blizzard legal spat.
On September 10 2013 18:33 doubleupgradeobbies! wrote:
On September 10 2013 17:47 Elroi wrote:
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.
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.
These are good points.
Everything starts with the game itself. If you want to start at square 1, it's the game. The game has to be good. It has to be fun for the players while at the same time enjoyable to watch from a spectator perspective. The game has to be challenging enough to draw out the best players from the average. SC2 has absolutely none of these characteristics. It's blizzard's and all the western players' - butt-hurt from getting smacked by Koreans in BW - fault for, as mentioned above, pushing a poor game to create an artificial climate for "professional" competition because they wanted what the Koreans had without working for it.
edit: the fault also lies partly in kespa's terrible management policies for BW and the kespa-blizzard legal spat.
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.
The what, now? As I recall it
1. It gets out that Savior and like half the BW scene are all fixing matches for the Korean mafia. 2. Blizzard attempts to sue KeSPA to make KeSPA pay them a licensing fee. They fail, but KeSPA gets bad PR when they really don't need it. 3. KeSPA continues playing BW for a while, but interest is clearly down from the 2007 highs. The foreign BW scene becomes totally insufferably whiny. 4. KeSPA switches to SC2 in a last-ditch effort to save themselves, as SC2 is seeing explosive foreign growth. 5. SC2 enters the infamous "Brood Lord/Infestor" period, and the growth stops. Somewhere around this period, LoL becomes the dominant e-Sport. 6. SSL becomes a bigger and bigger deal. BW fans know hope. 7. HotS is released. While widely considered to be an improvement over WoL, it's possibly too little too late. 8. SC2 fans turn into 2010 BW fans. BW fans become really smug 9. Lots of KeSPA pros start retiring back to BW. SC2 tournaments have trouble breaking the 120k viewer mark. LoL is the future. 10. A fleet of SC2 ships are destroyed by Riot at Wolf 359 11. SC2's is assimilated by LoL, begins offering unit skins. 12. Flash switches to LoL. Jaedong is given temporary command of the BW scene. 13. Oz reforms, splits into two teams. One is a diversion for the other to rescue Flash from RIOT HQ 14. Using information from Flash, Jaedong destroys LoL. BW reigns supreme. Flash, after vacationing in France, returns to Bonjwa status.
On September 10 2013 18:33 doubleupgradeobbies! wrote:
On September 10 2013 17:47 Elroi wrote:
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.
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.
These are good points.
Everything starts with the game itself. If you want to start at square 1, it's the game. The game has to be good. It has to be fun for the players while at the same time enjoyable to watch from a spectator perspective. The game has to be challenging enough to draw out the best players from the average. SC2 has absolutely none of these characteristics. It's blizzard's and all the western players' - butt-hurt from getting smacked by Koreans in BW - fault for, as mentioned above, pushing a poor game to create an artificial climate for "professional" competition because they wanted what the Koreans had without working for it.
I think that's a little unfair, especially to the pro players. Scarlett and Naniwa are the only non-Koreans of note, and both of them moved to Korea and Scarlett lives in a Korean teamhouse.
If you skip to 60 minutes in, you'll see a game that I thought was enjoyable. You might think it's crap! Tastes be subjective, yo. But there's a big excited crowd, and you can't act like they're all faking as part of some weird conspiracy.
Ribbon, since you weren't around when it happened (at least you weren't a registered user) and you don't seem to have been that thorough in your research, maybe you shouldn't be the one talking about it. With the matchfixing and the Blizzard lawsuits against KeSPA, I followed every update pretty carefully and read all there was to read about it, and I have a pretty different impression than you do.
// Edit: I guess you signed up literally when the match fixing started ;p Still what you're saying all sounds wrong to me.
The really key point that was controversial when the lawsuits were going around were that Blizzard was raising its broadcasting fees to something MBC and OGN could not afford (they were already paying Blizzard before). The lawsuits were damaging to KeSPA not (just) because of bad press, but because they prevented there from being any BW at all for like half a year. Eventually KeSPA gave into negotiations with Blizzard so that they could start broadcasting again. It's speculation on my part, but I think that negotiation certainly included talk of switching to SC2. The way it looks, Blizzard made the broadcasting fee affordable again in exchange for that. Before that MBC and OGN were saying that they could not run the league at the price Blizzard wanted. The money just didn't exist. If that doesn't sound like they were being strong armed, I don't know what would. If court had continued, Blizzard probably would have won the case, but they would have lost the game channels they wanted to take advantage of to grow SC2.
Your idea of the matchfixing is also wrong. It hit Sparkyz really hard because there were a lot of players on that team involved, but it was not that rooted in any other team. CJ's champion being implicated sucked for them, but then Effort won vs Flash in the OSL final, so they recovered okay.
The teams disbanding was not a result of the unpopularity of what they were running, but that for a long time NOTHING was running. All of that happened after the lawsuits with kespa, so it's harder to say that was entirely the fault of the matchfixing.
On September 11 2013 02:05 Chef wrote: Ribbon, since you weren't around when it happened (at least you weren't a registered user) and you don't seem to have been that thorough in your research, maybe you shouldn't be the one talking about it. With the matchfixing and the Blizzard lawsuits against KeSPA, I followed every update pretty carefully and read all there was to read about it, and I have a pretty different impression than you do.
The really key point that was controversial when the lawsuits were going around were that Blizzard was raising its broadcasting fees to something MBC and OGN could not afford (they were already paying Blizzard before). The lawsuits were damaging to KeSPA not (just) because of bad press, but because they prevented there from being any BW at all for like half a year. Eventually KeSPA gave into negotiations with Blizzard so that they could start broadcasting again. It's speculation on my part, but I think that negotiation certainly included talk of switching to SC2. The way it looks, Blizzard made the broadcasting fee affordable again in exchange for that. Before that MBC and OGN were saying that they could not run the league at the price Blizzard wanted. The money just didn't exist. If that doesn't sound like they were being strong armed, I don't know what would. If court had continued, Blizzard probably would have won the case, but they would have lost the game channels they wanted to take advantage of to grow SC2.
You idea of the matchfixing is also wrong. It hit Sparkyz really hard because there were a lot of players on that team involved, but it was not that rooted in any other team. CJ's champion being implicated sucked for them, but then Effort won vs Flash in the OSL final, so they recovered okay.
The teams disbanding was not a result of the unpopularity of what they were running, but that for a long time NOTHING was running. All of that happened after the lawsuits with kespa, so it's harder to say that was entirely the fault of the matchfixing.
I agree, it actually felt like we had pretty much got over the match fixing thing, yeah there was still alot of argument over what to do with savior (eg whether him streaming on afreeca was a good thing), but for the most part, we pretty much got over it, at least outside of Korea. It was an unpleasant, depressing thing for alot of people to find out about some of their favourite players, but it really felt like we already had new heroes, new metagame and everything was chugging along fine, MSL had been having some trouble finding sponsors, and really that was the only sign of trouble at the time except for the law suit, and honestly we thought good ol Korean corruption was also going to make the court case no more than a distraction.
I think one of the most damning things was that during that period GOM was sueing kespa on blizzard's behalf, there was a rumoured clause on a leaked list of demands that included a planned and scheduled switch from BW to SC2. Now that was only a rumour and it was never confirmed (I believe there was supposed to be a gag order on the conditions anyway).
Then suprise, suprise, right after they come to a settlement, a hybrid season starts, it starts to look very suspicious.
edit: ahh found the thread talking about that rumour, the details might be a bit foggy, but the general jist is in there http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/viewmessage.php?topic_id=188322 So apparently MBC and OGN were to be licensed to broadcast BW under GOM, but GOM was contracted to transition to SC2, which may or may not have also meant MBC and OGN being licensed under them also had to.
Only teams got affected by Matchfixing are just Hite Sparkys + eStro.
CJ was fine with the Movie, Skyhigh, and Effort trio with up and coming guys such as Snow + Hydra
WeMade Fox disbanded ALL of their guys I'm sure. This includes their CS guys, and WC3 division.
Hwaseung Oz, I'm not so sure but I think the retirement of coach Cho was detrimental to the team's atmosphere. And I would to think that it affected Jaedong the most as it was at that point of his career's decline with him getting multiple silvers.
MBCGame disbanded probably because of the lawsuit. Blizzard specifically targeted the channel for infringement. And Blizzard hired excellent lawyers to go against them. At that time, KPop was rampantly growing in Korea. So it was the perfect compound that decided the fate of the game channel.
On September 11 2013 02:05 Chef wrote: Ribbon, since you weren't around when it happened (at least you weren't a registered user) and you don't seem to have been that thorough in your research, maybe you shouldn't be the one talking about it.
I joined TL in April 2010, as a BW player. I had a blog on ICCUP, under the name Chiponyasu, which this TL account used to be called.
Discussions between KeSPA and Blizz had turned sour literally the week earlier, and these lawsuits went on until 2011, IIRC.
The really key point that was controversial when the lawsuits were going around were that Blizzard was raising its broadcasting fees to something MBC and OGN could not afford (they were already paying Blizzard before). The lawsuits were damaging to KeSPA not (just) because of bad press, but because they prevented there from being any BW at all for like half a year. Eventually KeSPA gave into negotiations with Blizzard so that they could start broadcasting again. It's speculation on my part, but I think that negotiation certainly included talk of switching to SC2.
All the public info about the lawsuits came out of KeSPA, who were trying to make Blizz look as bad as possible, and going "Oh we are but a poor and lowly nonprofit and can not possibly afford to pay fees" (A lot of people seemed to buy into the nonprofit = poor argument KeSPA was making, even though the NFL is a nonprofit). Blizzard also wanted to have a look at KeSPA's books, which they refused. No one really "knows" what was going on because Blizz never told their side of the story.
The way it looks, Blizzard made the broadcasting fee affordable again in exchange for that. Before that MBC and OGN were saying that they could not run the league at the price Blizzard wanted. The money just didn't exist. If that doesn't sound like they were being strong armed, I don't know what would. If court had continued, Blizzard probably would have won the case, but they would have lost the game channels they wanted to take advantage of to grow SC2.
KeSPA was acting like they didn't have any money, and we never did find out what these exorbitant fees really were. All we know if that KeSPA didn't want to pay them.
You idea of the matchfixing is also wrong. It hit Sparkyz really hard because there were a lot of players on that team involved, but it was not that rooted in any other team. CJ's champion being implicated sucked for them, but then Effort won vs Flash in the OSL final, so they recovered okay.
From a PR perspective, it was a buttload of famous players, enough to make the whole league look shady.
The teams disbanding was not a result of the unpopularity of what they were running, but that for a long time NOTHING was running. All of that happened after the lawsuits with kespa, so it's harder to say that was entirely the fault of the matchfixing.
Granted, there was a long time between the Bacchus OSL and the Jin Air OSL, but Proleague was going on, so it's not because they weren't allowed to broadcast BW. There was no prolonged period of no Pro BW during the period between the suits starting and a settlement being reached.
On September 10 2013 07:25 OpticalShot wrote: Drop the speculation, here comes a translation! (shit that rhymes) *edit: ALSO THIS WAS MY 6K POST NOOOOO BISU YOU BETTER MAKE UP FOR IT
Source: Fomos Article by Reporter Myung-Hoon Kang Pictures not included because go click that link above and give the poor site some traffic.
The Reasons Behind the Retirement of Bisu, the 'Revolutionist'
Immediately following the retirement of Taek-Yong 'Revolutionist' Kim (Bisu) on the 9th, many have been speculating his reasons for doing so.
While on a break after the conclusion of SK Planet StarCraft 2 Proleague 12-13 Season, Bisu confirmed that he will not continue his career as a progamer. It is truly unfortunate, but this has been somewhat expected for a while now.
When Bisu did not attend the recent progamer ethics education seminars or general events, fans have been worrying about a possible retirement. They all knew that Bisu's career was on a downhill ever since the transition from StarCraft BroodWar to StarCraft 2. Again, Bisu was nowhere to be found in the most recent SKT1 volunteer activity. No longer a rumour, Bisu has indeed retired.
To the point, what are his reasons for retirement? The first thing to come to mind is the salary negotiation. As a top star/ace who enjoyed 6-figure (in dollars) salaries before, he would have a tough time dealing with his massively deflated value. It is only natural for any player to consider retirement if he cannot handle such a downfall. However, it was confirmed with SKT1 management that all player salary/contract negotiations and renewals are typically completed by the end of September, and that they have not started the negotiations with any of their players. In other words, Bisu announced his retirement prior to any salary/contract negotiations.
If money is not the problem, then we can turn to other common themes around the retirement of old boys' of the scene: declining motivations and military service. In fact, Bisu's teammate Best announced his retirement in July, saying that "it's hard to play like before" and also acknowledging the military service obligation. Bisu's situation is not too far from Best's, which brings some understanding to his retirement reasons. Ever since the switch to SC2, Bisu has mentioned in several interviews that "motivations are hard to come by."
In the midst of the hardship, we also must acknowledge that the trademark game of Korean eSports is now League of Legends. Even without drawing comparisons, it's not hard to see that the popularity of SC2 has declined severely. After the complete transition, the stats from SK Planet SC2PL 12-13 season show a grim picture. The number of live attendees is embarrassingly low, especially for weekday matches scheduled in the Shin-do-rim center. There are supposedly a decent number of viewers online, but it doesn't even come close for the star players who enjoyed immense success and recognition from SC1. To be blunt, there is no way that another PL finals can be held in Gwang-ahn-ri with SC2.
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."
Glad to see you are still around opti thanks for the translation .
And for the hybrid season, why make players to compete at BOH SC2 and BW? Why not just specific players doing one and the other for superior games? Well it is easily because they are forcing players to play the new game.
I agree with the statements made above in the Icarus comparison...the game should've been allowed to grow on its own and garner popularity by merit not by being somewhat forced... Personally I think what would've been best is trying to run a SC2 league and an independent BW league, this way fans, sponsors, and players could pick what they wanted to support...I know it might not be possible tho cuz of splitting popularity and sponsors might not be ideal...hmm...
I wrote half a year and that was definitely inaccurate. But a month to not be running your business at all is still a long time imo (and it definitely felt like it for fans). I guess I thought it was longer because they had been talking about it even before the current season had ended, and then the next one couldn't start up because they were still dealing with it. I'm sorry for my misinformation.
I believe KeSPA in this case and Blizzard didn't deny it. They ran their leagues for a decade without complain from Blizzard, and then suddenly Blizzard starts caring when they're about to release SC2? "KeSPA didn't want to pay" doesn't really ring so true to me. KeSPA itself is non-profit, but its made up of businesses which are for profit. If the advertising those businesses are paying for doesn't cover the scene anymore, and they don't want to pay more for the same advertising, it all means the same thing. For those businesses it's not exactly a matter of greed. It's a matter of 'well the advertising isn't worth the new price.' If it were still reasonably well priced advertising, I believe it wouldn't have been as a big a mess.
On September 11 2013 03:07 Xiphos wrote: And for the hybrid season, why make players to compete at BOH SC2 and BW? Why not just specific players doing one and the other for superior games? Well it is easily because they are forcing players to play the new game.
Frankenstein season was supposed to introduce the korean bw fans to sc2 which probably playing the illusion to the viewers that the players that they are supporting are also playing sc2 so by that logic they would like sc2 too in a way. Other than that mostly kespa gambled hoping they could get half or more of the viewers who are accustomed to broodwar to follow the scene when they converted Proleague in to 100 % sc2 scene. Which we all know didn't work out the way they wanted to....
Don't forget that DarkElf (Airforce ACE at the time) was part of the matchfixing scandal. As small as he may be in the big picture, this raised concerns about the integrity of ACE and certainly played a factor into their disbandment soon after.
We can't say CJ was fine, they took the biggest blow in terms of public image. The actual skill level of players didn't take a hit because Savior (whether throwing or not) wasn't their main ace player. Savior still had a large fanbase ("I will destroy everyone in 200x"), which also evaporated away from the scene.
How can we forget Hwasin / STX? Their core was something like Calm-Hwasin-Kal at the time, Hwasin also had a lot of fans because of his cute looks, again we lose fans here.
The actual blow in terms of skill wasn't so bad because yes each team had amazing up-and-coming guys to replace the tainted players. Where it hurt the most was the eSports image, and the number of fans. This was an unprecedented event in eSports, which heavily depended on the fan support and interest in order to maintain sponsorship and continue its existence. Disappointed and disgusted, many fans left the scene altogether - a lot of them immediately following the scandal, and a lot more in the following months. If you call, there were regular shows of "After Talk" with OGN casters and sometimes player guests - for the episode immediately following the scandal, these casters practically begged on the show for the fans to remain loyal and come out to the OSL (I believe it was Korean Air OSL S1). Not only in OSL, but in PL and MSL the casters again apologized on behalf of the scene and begged the fans to stay.
It's tough for the foreigners (sorry if that's an uncomfortable term) to feel the full magnitude of the matchfixing scandal because of 1) narrow scope of interest and 2) lack of available media / information. By narrow scope I mean the foreigner fans care for great games and individual players more than the growth/stability of the scene altogether. A great example of this is the post-matchfixing Savior discussion - more western fans remember him for his dominant plays rather than the damage he did to the scene, whereas Korean fans pretty much consider him human trash outside of the tiny tiny hardcore fans who still watch his stream (also occasional forum trolls). By lack of media I mean that shows like "After Talk" I mentioned, countless formal and informal interviews, and other media that connects the fans to the players and the scene is largely missing outside of Korea. As a result, western fans connect with players almost solely through their gameplay, which ties in with the first point about narrow scope.
We can always talk about the bottom line of things, which is that BW had to "die" sometime anyway, so we can't put the sole blame on Blizzard for making a sequel and trying to market it to their best ability. We can also say that matchfixing happened at the time of declining interest in BW, so we can't put the sole blame on Savior / matchfixing either. We can throw in more gray topics like reasons for the end of MBCGame (both team and channel), financial woes for WeMade, etc.
The bottom line is, we look at the scene right now, and it's hard to find anybody that's happy with how things are. Full of negative shit. "Ded gaem is ded" yeah ok that's real nice, does that help your side really? I think Tyler (Nony) mentioned it in both SOTG and in his forum posts too, that this whole place is full of negative energy and people just want their last laughs against each other - and these people actually don't give about the "eSports scene". Almost every aspect of it could have gone better, it didn't.
Accept the shit that's happened - it's not fiction, it's history. Matchfixing happened, it hurt the BW scene, Blizzard came in with lawsuit, it hurt the BW scene, shit all happened and the end result is this crap where one of the iconic figures of the scene (Bisu) retired a defeated figure. His reasons, or combinations of reasons, is still speculative and even when Bisu releases a personal statement I bet that people here won't stop their arguments. We can rather look at the community reaction to his retirement: endless (and not constructive) debate, denial, blame game, sadistic shit picking each other apart, INSTEAD OF CELEBRATING HIS AMAZING CAREER (props to BisuDagger for his huge post in the other thread somewhere). Look at the posts in this thread and especially in the other thread, the ratio of personal attacks and arguments to actual retirement memories/farewell posts are rather staggering.
So when we move on forward, we have to accept what's been done and exercise our power as fans by voting with our wallets and actively showing positive support. Don't go advocating a boycott to other people that actually like the game, just don't open your own wallet when the time comes. Conversely, when good shit comes out, buy the fucking game, watch streams, buy in-game view tickets, whatever. Just because you and other people you know like Nutella you don't have to force feed the stuff to others who are fine with the old-fashioned peanut butter, neither should you actively blame Nutella for peanut butter losing market share.
With that, I'm done my rant, and I believe I should share a small Bisu memory.
I actually cheered for Flash in the beginning of that game 7. He had this wrist injury story and plus SKT1 is the more evil of the two empires so yeah go Flash. Flash sets up an assault and it looks grim for Bisu, then he runs his zealots... and then I remembered that I am a Protoss fan at heart, and that those zealots charged forward with only two certainties: death and victory. May your future be as fearless and successful, Bisu!
ACE was my fantasy proleague team in the last proleague before hybrid league. The wiki says they even participated in the hybrid league and were only replaced by EG-Liquid later. We heard a lot about youth sports honest image being corrupted, but I don't think this was ACE's disbandment reason for SC2. I think SC2 fans just didn't care about the old legends in the same way BW fans did, so running a losing team was more difficult. Either way you're right that this thread is really a shameful place to be having this discussion and I'm sorry I contributed to it.
Never forget Game 5 bisu vs stork arbiter dark archon PvP.
On September 11 2013 02:23 Xiphos wrote: MBCGame disbanded probably because of the lawsuit. Blizzard specifically targeted the channel for infringement. And Blizzard hired excellent lawyers to go against them. At that time, KPop was rampantly growing in Korea. So it was the perfect compound that decided the fate of the game channel.
MBC the company said that match fixing was a big reason they decided to abandon gaming.
On September 11 2013 03:08 traceurling wrote: Personally I think what would've been best is trying to run a SC2 league and an independent BW league, this way fans, sponsors, and players could pick what they wanted to support...I know it might not be possible tho cuz of splitting popularity and sponsors might not be ideal...hmm...
It's basically what we have now, SSL vs GSL.
On September 11 2013 03:11 Chef wrote: I wrote half a year and that was definitely inaccurate. But a month to not be running your business at all is still a long time imo (and it definitely felt like it for fans).
It was shorter than the gap between 2009 and 2010's proleagues
Even though I wrote "finally" in the first page of this thread I feel I have to write something a bit longer atleast.
I was never a big Bisu fan myself, but he's really one of the only Starcraft players that I can watch play one matchup in total awe. His brilliance in PvZ has been beaten to death in words already but once again he really was astounding at it.
I too hope he'll play in SOSPA events but mostly I just want him to have a good future too with whatever he decides to do, it must be a hard transisition for anyone when you've been playing a game for a really long time without an education to fall back on.
On September 10 2013 18:33 doubleupgradeobbies! wrote:
On September 10 2013 17:47 Elroi wrote:
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.
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.
These are good points.
Everything starts with the game itself. If you want to start at square 1, it's the game. The game has to be good. It has to be fun for the players while at the same time enjoyable to watch from a spectator perspective. The game has to be challenging enough to draw out the best players from the average. SC2 has absolutely none of these characteristics. It's blizzard's and all the western players' - butt-hurt from getting smacked by Koreans in BW - fault for, as mentioned above, pushing a poor game to create an artificial climate for "professional" competition because they wanted what the Koreans had without working for it.
edit: the fault also lies partly in kespa's terrible management policies for BW and the kespa-blizzard legal spat.
Probably the best explenation i have read so far after the shitty game people call SC2 came out. Well said!
I was just curious, do you guys think Bisu would have had a good chance of winning Starleagues in 2010-2013 if it were not for Blizzard and the Matchfixing scandal reducing the number of starleagues from basically 3 to 1 (ignoring how MBCGame would hold up if everything went smoothly).?
EPT
