LoveTV Starleague: Brood War 3.0 - Page 17

On October 16 2014 04:12 Masheyoon wrote:


Well, I'm going to chime in with my opinion (as I've done since the BW pro scene sank): I can safely say that it's currently not possible to tell whether or not a full revival will happen (in South Korea). Pro BW did not die because of a lack of general interest and/or declining viewership.

(Proleague Revival - Huge Crowd Turnouts, Rising Viewership:
http://www.fomos.kr/board/board.php?mode=read&keyno=121552&db=issue&cate=&page=1&field=&kwrd=
SK Planet Proleague: Yongsan Stadium at Full Capacity:
http://www.fomos.kr/board/board.php?mode=read&keyno=121998&db=Global
10-11 Proleague Finals Match Ranks 1st in Viewership:
http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/viewmessage.php?topic_id=257268)

(EDIT: Stupid firefox flags those links as "badware" when they are harmless.)

Pro BW died for two reasons: 1) the match-fixing scandal had sponsors worried about associating themselves with a tainted product, and 2) SC2's release along with Blizzard doing their best to kill BW. Sponsors ignored the fact that people were as interested as ever in watching professional BW, but left the BW scene anyway in favor of a new, shiny product simply because they thought it would be a safer investment.

With all of that said, what makes these things happen is money. The sponsors bring in money for the product and people bring in money for the sponsors. Without people, sponsors would have nothing to gain, and people have shown that they are still interested in watching BW. The crowd turnout for the previous SSL was great, ex BW pros are making a good enough living by simply streaming BW, and this prize pool is enormous especially for a "dead game". That's enough to get a lot of people's hopes up. If sponsors would only wise up, they would see that there is still money to be made.

On October 16 2014 07:33 Chef wrote:

I think you're cherry picking data a little here. First of all you're picking only BW's premier events which happen but a few times a year. That's the time when everyone comes out including old fans. But what's important to sponsors is consistent viewership throughout the season, how many people are actually following the league? That's important because unless you're KT or SKT your players and your team aren't making it that far all that often. The teams we saw disbanding that really set off the gloom in the community were the less glamorous teams, naturally. Unlike other big sports where even crappy teams have the support of their home towns and manage to fill at least half a stadium every other week, normal proleague games were trying to fill a small room with maybe 40 people and if the teams weren't popular it wouldn't be full. Top onto that that it is in one place and the schedule for matches was incredibly frequent, and you might actually get a different perspective. Of course for foreigners who just watch for the top players, it seems insanely popular, but it was only those top players who could draw audiences.

Not to defend Pharaphobia. Just saying that while a BW proscene was probably still maintainable, I'm not so sure it was pulling the numbers year round and sponsors had a lot of reasons to duck out including the difficulties with negotiations between KeSPA and Blizzard, the match fixing scandal (I think actually kind of negligible, but it certainly wasn't good; just another motivator in the other direction). For those who didn't duck out, they probably didn't fight all that hard against Blizzard's esports plan, LoL and other big games, which it's hard to say didn't work. We can laugh all we want that SC2 is not adored by every Korean, but they still pull foreign $$$ which is just in general good for South Korea's economy. The Koreans are poor, that's why you don't even have to pay to see a finals Better to take money from people who have too much, like American teenagers and college students.

As for BW being on Korean TV regularly again (my arbitrary standard for what a revival would probably look like), I'm not holding my breath but I don't think it's totally impossible. More in the case of Sonic getting studio space, getting TV casters, and the like. It's really hard to look at that and say it has no potential. It's also kinda hard to look at all the names that are around right now and not think that there aren't a lot of new ones, and there are a whole lot that were the proscene still going on, probably would have vanished into the ether. Like what's the next generation of pro players actually supposed to be? All the names that seem unfamiliar are only unfamiliar because they were B teamers.

I wrote a lot of garbage here. In the end I think it's actually kinda hard to get a good synthesis of information. Sonic keeps investing more and more and you think he must have a reason, but being totally honest it looks kinda bad long term. These guys aren't gonna stream BW from their parents' houses forever lol. They're just spending time with their family before military, it seems in a lot of cases.

On October 16 2014 23:13 Chef wrote:

If I did, I didn't mean to, because I also think that was the primary factor. But I think far from antagonizing Blizzard, sponsors were interested in the global market Blizzard was trying to create for esports, and of course that market was not going to include Brood War. So it's like your options are fighting a company who basically holds all the cards and can just say 'you're not allowed to use our games anymore,' or you can cooperate and probably get a lot of money too and give at least some of your workers somewhere to go. It's pretty hard to stand by Brood War in that case And of course it doesn't feel fair to people who really liked Brood War, and it seems like the callous destruction of something that had true value, but to Blizzard it was a product and to everyone else it was just a video game.

As for why the foreign scene is not lively in light of Sonic's efforts... I dunno. I've gotta say the Brood War matches today feel like watching people play a game, and maybe it's hard to understand what I mean but that's not what watching an OSL or MSL match felt like. Among other factors like it being really annoying to set up Brood War, installing it on modern operating systems is not always easy, lots of monitors refuse to display at 4:3 resolution, iCCup has been stigmatized for really not that good reasons, Fish is not easy to get working, there's random sketchy launchers people keep pushing even tho the threads are full of complaints they don't always work, for some people Brood War will just crash every other game... Holy shit, the list of things that make BW a pain to play in 2014 are endless lol. Not to mention we all got older, got jobs, have things to actually do, and having not played much in years, feel really stiff trying to wield the magnificent beast that is BW When it's that much work to get into a scene you know isn't very lively, there's pretty much no motivation you know? The sensible people have all let go.