Fade to Black: The Death of Starcraft - Page 3

On November 18 2008 09:56 Liquid`Drone wrote:
i think you're mostly right, although I think the "sc is dying" movement started in like, 2000-2001

On November 18 2008 13:05 Skew wrote:
Lastly, Media is the #1 US team hands down. We could have played D O fucking W for the past 3 years, never playing a game of SC, still come back and destroy any other US team without a mouse. Our team accomplishments are based on the people who make up the team, not some random league finish with no prize. Don't fucking disrespect a nation's leading players and team just to make yourself seem cool. You just lost a lot of credibility with a lot of top players. Hope it was worth it.

On November 18 2008 13:19 MYM.Testie wrote:
Coincidentally, Media is the only US team.

On November 18 2008 14:36 red.venom wrote:
The pro korean circuit has made all amateur/international efforts seem stupid. And the Korean arena itself is a little overcrowded with new players and new leagues. Too many games. It is watered down. I used to stay up until like 7am to watch a Starleague final live. Now I might watch it on jon727s youtube channel a week later if at all.

I cant even keep up with proleague slightly. I check the rankings every once in a while and watch a game or two.

And WCG has always been kinda weird. You overestimate how competitive those random ass countries were back in the early 2000s. It was always a mismatch vs the koreans and even the top international countries would own them.

On November 18 2008 15:10 littlechava wrote:
I agree with the first half of Skew's post. Foreign bw has been pretty stagnant for the last... 8 years? I don't see much difference between when I started and now.

On November 18 2008 15:18 TheFoReveRwaR wrote:
Although I like your article and appreciate the effort, I have to disagree with your blame game. The real antagonist of the foreign progaming scene is the amazing level of talent, the huge amount of time invested by the korean pros, and the relatively huge amount of money invested by the korean companies.
While the foreign players are very good there is simply not a great incentive to watch them when
one can watch players far beyond anyone like Jaedong, Flash, Bisu, Best, Stork, Luxury and the
other absolutely top koreans. This is even more true now that we have high quality english
commentary being done on games with top koreans by people like Daniel Lee and Artosis. And I
think if you look at those numbers youll find that interest in such vods has increased.
Foriegn progaming is dying/dead or what have you (and honestly has been dead for most of the year for a long long time, IE: all the time not during wcg or TSL) because it is competing with a superior product in a vastly inferior market.

On November 18 2008 15:20 Xeris wrote:


I used to think that way until recently but if you actually look at the entire foreign competitive scene you can see it.

On November 18 2008 17:16 Xeris wrote:


1) GSL (big german tournament, recently) - finished, and honestly I don't think that this got the attention it really deserved and I don't think was handled as well as it could have been, the beginning was well-broadcasted, but towards the end seems like about half the players dropped out, fanfare dinished up until the finals and it came back into the news coverage.

2) ESL - Nice tournament with a good qualification, but again I really wonder if they will host more of these.

3) Hauppage Cups (or however you spell it) - these were great for awhile, and had lots of players, but again the coverage on news sites and stuff wasn't that great, and I believe they stated that there would be no more of these because of a lack of interest by sponsors to continue it?

4) PGL - the Chinese tournaments are obviously really great, and I think their decision to open it up to public qualification is a really good thing, although I don't think it has been answered how the winners of this will get to China, do they pay their own way, or is it an expenses-paid trip? Depending on the answer to that question, this could be very great for the foreign scene, or almost a moot point unless MYM players win it.

5) TSL - as I said before, I think that this is essentially the "only hope" of the foreign community. If TSL can run regularly (I.E once per quarter) that would be great, if it is inconsistent, sporadic, or doesn't happen again, obviously this is a bad thing. Because if it is not run regularly, then you'll have players who pretty much ONLY play for TSL (if it's not consistent then, it is a bad thing), because when TSL is running, people will play, then disappear into obscurity. Having TSL run regularly would help create a stable foreign community.

6) WCG - Even though WCG is held annually, a lot of players at this point ONLY play for WCG, this really isn't great for the foreign community. Especially because most national organizations and even the world finals organization completely blows ass, and they lose sponsorship every year, sending less and less players, the future of WCG Starcraft doesn't seem bright.

So ultimately we have a foreign scene that looks like this:

1) Vastly fewer amounts of teams, most of the players in top teams are really inactive at this stage and just rely on the fact that there isn't a big pool of up-coming players to take their spot, so they can win CW's and tournaments while being inactive, and they have few incentives to try really hard because there are no tournaments coming up (except PGL), and not much prize-incentive for clan leagues.
a) Top teams are roughly in the same boat they've been in for awhile, MYM, ToT, MgZ, LRM, RoX are the dominant teams, and will likely be dominant for the remainder of the game.
b) Lower level teams have taken the biggest hit, because there aren't enough people really to fill up rosters. This can be seen in the vastly smaller lower divisions of just about every clan league. The fact that there is a smaller pool of players out there means there are fewer players who will be around to become the "new gosus"

2) Overall it seems like a lot of people lack the drive and motivation to continue playing the game competitively and seriously. Obviously bad for the future of the scene because there are not likely to be many people who will become really top level foreign players, and the skill of the top foreigners will slowly decline as they stop practicing and switch over to poker, DoTA, or real life.

3) I actually think losing two of the best foreign players to Korea (Idra and Nony) is a bad thing for the foreign competitive scene, depending on how much they will be allowed to be involved in foreign tournaments (if there are even more worthy of them playing in). For example, if they aren't allowed to play in foreign events, then we've pretty much just lost two great players (except for their brief returns for WCG or TSL or whatever, but for I guess 3/4 of the year, they'll be MIA in the foreign scene). Obviously, this is good as a sort of integration of the two communities, and to get foreigners even more into/involved in Korea, but it's not good for the foreign community.

Again I'm just saying in the next year I predict there will be less interest, fewer teams, fewer players, and lazy/inactive existing players. The player base is smaller, less new "top players" in the next generation, feeding an eventual decline to what will be the death of the foreign scene.

Agree or disagree, its my thought.