EPTIn this first post I’m going to talk about my concerns regarding the esports bubble, and I’ll start off with talking about wc3 so in advance I’d like to apologize to wc3 fans who are reading this because my knowledge isn’t 100% on the wc3 scene so I might remember some things slightly different that they actually were.
So basically in the beginning the state of the wc3 scene was similar to then sc2 scene today, it wasn’t the exact same scale, but it was pretty global. The big western world were supporting the game on their circuits and the game had a global following (consisting mainly of Europe, China and Korea). It took some year for the scene to stabilize so the real top-tier players got the attention and recognition they reserved. As wc3 was the first RTS game to become so big on a global scale the big organizations where fast at recruiting the strongest players out there, recruiting the established top tier players, apart from a few Europeans the big organizations rosters where mainly consisting of Asian players (Korean/Chinese). Top tier teams had monthly budgets for their wc3 teams in the range of 19.000-45.000 $, so they could house the strongest talent, pay salaries, and now with the global scene be able to pay for transatlantic flights.
At this point the scene was highly competitive, the tournament and leagues where unpredictable and the tournaments where having crowds that were bigger than anything an esport game (besides BW) had seen before. Although all this success with successful events with huge crowds, competitive leagues, teams starting their own fanclubs (subscribtion model, for example SK Insider, MYM Club) and esport looking a lot more global than it had in a long while, most these organizations went on decline in the latter half of 2008.
In the end of 2008/beginning of 2009 the following organizations had dropped their entire wc3 lineups, some of these were due to organizations not paying their obligations (salaries, travels, additional costs), others where due to standing on the verge of bankruptcy, and some had to shut down entirely. The following teams dropped their wc3 teams in this period Wicked (did it twice), Mousesports, Meet Your Makers, Hoorai, Giants.wc3.
Now many people say that reason for this huge collapse that happened in the wc3 scene was because of mYm (Meet Your Makers), this team basically went with the “I’ll make an offer you cant refuse”-mentality, they put the salaries so high that the other teams would’ve to struggle to be able to compete with them (having superstar rosters), in 2008 carmac wrote an article on SK-Gaming that discussed salaries among other things. I’ll just quote the exact part for you to have an understanding of how high salaries players were getting payed:
“The monthly wages that players want to receive are between $500 for players that never win anything and above $5,000 for the good ones. If you want to have the absolute superstar team, then you need to be prepared to pay over $15,000 each month. Or closer to $30,000 if you are willing to believe the crazier rumours that go around. “
However the sole reason I’m writing this is because of me worrying about starcraft 2. There’s been almost 1 ½ year since the esport scene kicked off in starcraft 2, and the currect trend “gotta buy’ em all” and the top foreigner teams collecting these “koreanmons” like maniacs. Besically every top team has one or more Koreans on their roster (except mousesports).
The reason this is so worrying is because this is killing are own native scenes, most team aren't willing to invest in the talent that is available in the western scene, teams will rather kick three foreign up&comers for a korean (Axslav getting the foot from EG, Jimpo & co getting the kicked off in favour of MC & NaDa etc.).
Now I believe everyone is aware that there’s always some sort of nationalism/bias in every sport, and right now the esport organizations are shooting the foreign scene in the foot. A tournament is a thousand times more interesting if there is a native hero that can compete with the best, but if the foreign organisations aren’t willing to invest in foreign talent then we should be expecting to have an all top 16 korean placement in all eternity, which will eventually lead to a less interesting scene and eventually the death of sc2. Look at the wc3 scene post-2007/2008, it was still HUGE in China, but not at all in the rest of the world because nobody ever thought of full heartedly invest in foreign talent, everybody was thinking in unsustainable ways. They wanted players who could win championships today no matter the cost, not a player who is financially sustainable and will take 1-2 years to fully develop and then occasionally start taking championships.
The other thing that worries me is the up going trend with recruiting Koreans is going to turn out just as it did in wc3 and in a couple of years esports will be back at square one and DjWheat will be sounding like crazy doomsayer on lo3.
Last thing I want to say, and this bugs me a lot, It feels like a lot of the smaller organizations are simply not thinking it through correctly. My problem here is again financial sustainability; many smaller organizations have lately been recruiting code-b Koreans to their teams. Now let’s look at this, flying a Korean to an MLG probably costs 15 times as much as flying an NA player to an MLG. So why in the hell are players like Axslav and Moonglade struggeling to find a team? He’s financially cheaper, and he’s very well on par with (some of) the code b Koreans that so many NA teams are recruiting (Clarfication:I'm not saying Axslav is on par with every code b korean that has joined a foreign team, I'm rather saying that I'm a bit critical to some of the investments that have been made in some code b koreans). I’ll tell you why, It’s called peer pressure. When teams like coL and EG’s half rosters are Korean located players, the smaller teams are dumb enough to think it’s the right way to go. In wc3 the mid-tier team Hoorai (Well it was basically a team of young up&coming foreigners) followed in the footstep of the big teams and started to pay out insane amounts of cash to their players (for Hoorais standard) they went bankrupt, since they had a monthly budget of 30.000 $ for their wc3 players (Which was way to much at that time.) And also, as i mentioned earlier about peer pressure, exactly as other teams adjusted after mYm by increasing their salaries, the Korean teams are now forces to send their players to foreign events (although it might not be sustainable for all of them), but they are forced to if they want to keep their players.
Just as our scene right now, the wc3 scene was looking all fine back then. There were lots of events; it was global, lots of team leagues, and a huge fan base. Hopefully the sc2 organizations will start thinking a lot more before they get complete hubris and start buying off the whole Korean scene. Exactly as the European scene was strangled by the inflation back in wc3, the korean scene will strangled by not having the infrastructure (teams) being able to produce talent). So my concerns aren't just for the western scene, but also the korean scene.
Edit: Hanari posted a VERY interesting post in the thread, I reccomend all of you to read it:
+ Show Spoiler +
On March 04 2012 03:00 HaNaRi wrote:
I worked in eSports area for wc3 for a long time I'm currently still the manager of the Korean wc3 called aRirang which has been around since 2008. I can tell you that in my personal opinion GIANT.wc3 was NOT one of the biggest organization, however one of the biggest scandal that happened in WC3. I was involved in the translation when this team was forming. GIANT offered players such as Soccer and viOlet a ridiculous amount that I can't recall. After a month GIANT organization decided that they could not pay up the amount that they promised to these players which lead them to leave the organization (I believe this happened exactly 2 days after viOLet joined them). The entire organization lasted about a month, however it did make a huge impact on the scene and since then on WC3 has went through many scams. Many Korean players were robbed by organizations such as MYM for thousands of dollars unpaid. Mouz actually did hold many Korean players once before this is where Moon started to shine. Other players such as Mouz.GoStop (Korean player), Way, and Rainbow (Not the SC2 Rainbow) was in Mouz as well making Mouz one of the strongest Warcraft III team ever.
Anyways there was so many scams that happened to Warcraft III to the point where Warcraft III became literally worthless marketing wise. Warcraft 3's early signs of decline was the MBC league where the maps were adjusted to make the orcs favored compared to any other races which made one of the best player of the time quit (Dayfly). This is like a domino; MBC collapsed after that scandal and the entire Korean eSports that revolved around WC3 collapsed in matter of months. As time progressed on Koreans would win almost every offline events which made the European organizations focus on collecting Korean players then it discouraged foreign players to keep playing the game because they knew their odds of winning and making a living from the game was slim to none. When MYM collapsed (by this time most of the top tier teams were almost Korean teams with maybe one or two foreigners: MYM, SK and Fnatic) there was so many stories that had nothing but scammed by MYM blogs and news all over the internet. One of the most noticable one was Soccer being robbed over thousands and thousands of dollars (KODE5, WCG, ESWC prize money). MYM completely ignored him and went on with their own business later lead to their collapse. After SK disbanded Soju claimed he also did not receive his earnings as well and with his due for the army was coming close he vowed he would not go to the army until he gets those money. SK released a news afterwards explained Soju's situation and promised to Soju and to the public in this news that he will be paid. Just by looking at the news already has a negative vibe regardless SK paying Soju or not. Then ESL called for a budget cut for WC3L (The top tier league in WC3) and NGL (Another top tier) no more offline finals! By this time you know WC3 was on a decline for sure. After all of this scams after scams just happened, teams being promised by private sponsors (e.g. Giant) and getting screwed over and also later some random Russian formed a powerful wc3 team with many talents and the progamer FoCuS. this Russian manager was rigging every match in a site called XLBet (A eSports betting site) and money off of it and paid FoCuS with it (Which he had no idea). This was uncovered when one of the Chinese player released one of the private conversation where his manager wanted him to lose his next game. Overall many shit happened in WC3 that made WC3 worthless and without leagues. Our team aRirang was picked up by an organization named H2k and we were promised a salary after showing results, however we never got anything from them after countless league wins and tournament winnings ^^. This is my two cents in to this topic hopefully this clarifies or makes this thread more enjoyable.
Edit:
I would like to shed some salaries in WC3 in the current situation: If you are the average amatuer pro to the semi-pro you would get paid around $50~$200. ($200 is rare) when aRirang was looking for a home we were offered around $200~$400 for our entire roster. (We have around 8 players and this is back in 2009~2010 we gave up hopes Q3 2010) We are a very solid team participated in the final season of NGL, and few WCIP (We 5-0'ed MYM before disbanding) 2nd in WTL Season 1 and won WTL Season 2 (the current biggest Korean league) You can draw conclusion where we stand and make conclusions about how much other teams would've typically have gotten paid.
I worked in eSports area for wc3 for a long time I'm currently still the manager of the Korean wc3 called aRirang which has been around since 2008. I can tell you that in my personal opinion GIANT.wc3 was NOT one of the biggest organization, however one of the biggest scandal that happened in WC3. I was involved in the translation when this team was forming. GIANT offered players such as Soccer and viOlet a ridiculous amount that I can't recall. After a month GIANT organization decided that they could not pay up the amount that they promised to these players which lead them to leave the organization (I believe this happened exactly 2 days after viOLet joined them). The entire organization lasted about a month, however it did make a huge impact on the scene and since then on WC3 has went through many scams. Many Korean players were robbed by organizations such as MYM for thousands of dollars unpaid. Mouz actually did hold many Korean players once before this is where Moon started to shine. Other players such as Mouz.GoStop (Korean player), Way, and Rainbow (Not the SC2 Rainbow) was in Mouz as well making Mouz one of the strongest Warcraft III team ever.
Anyways there was so many scams that happened to Warcraft III to the point where Warcraft III became literally worthless marketing wise. Warcraft 3's early signs of decline was the MBC league where the maps were adjusted to make the orcs favored compared to any other races which made one of the best player of the time quit (Dayfly). This is like a domino; MBC collapsed after that scandal and the entire Korean eSports that revolved around WC3 collapsed in matter of months. As time progressed on Koreans would win almost every offline events which made the European organizations focus on collecting Korean players then it discouraged foreign players to keep playing the game because they knew their odds of winning and making a living from the game was slim to none. When MYM collapsed (by this time most of the top tier teams were almost Korean teams with maybe one or two foreigners: MYM, SK and Fnatic) there was so many stories that had nothing but scammed by MYM blogs and news all over the internet. One of the most noticable one was Soccer being robbed over thousands and thousands of dollars (KODE5, WCG, ESWC prize money). MYM completely ignored him and went on with their own business later lead to their collapse. After SK disbanded Soju claimed he also did not receive his earnings as well and with his due for the army was coming close he vowed he would not go to the army until he gets those money. SK released a news afterwards explained Soju's situation and promised to Soju and to the public in this news that he will be paid. Just by looking at the news already has a negative vibe regardless SK paying Soju or not. Then ESL called for a budget cut for WC3L (The top tier league in WC3) and NGL (Another top tier) no more offline finals! By this time you know WC3 was on a decline for sure. After all of this scams after scams just happened, teams being promised by private sponsors (e.g. Giant) and getting screwed over and also later some random Russian formed a powerful wc3 team with many talents and the progamer FoCuS. this Russian manager was rigging every match in a site called XLBet (A eSports betting site) and money off of it and paid FoCuS with it (Which he had no idea). This was uncovered when one of the Chinese player released one of the private conversation where his manager wanted him to lose his next game. Overall many shit happened in WC3 that made WC3 worthless and without leagues. Our team aRirang was picked up by an organization named H2k and we were promised a salary after showing results, however we never got anything from them after countless league wins and tournament winnings ^^. This is my two cents in to this topic hopefully this clarifies or makes this thread more enjoyable.
Edit:
I would like to shed some salaries in WC3 in the current situation: If you are the average amatuer pro to the semi-pro you would get paid around $50~$200. ($200 is rare) when aRirang was looking for a home we were offered around $200~$400 for our entire roster. (We have around 8 players and this is back in 2009~2010 we gave up hopes Q3 2010) We are a very solid team participated in the final season of NGL, and few WCIP (We 5-0'ed MYM before disbanding) 2nd in WTL Season 1 and won WTL Season 2 (the current biggest Korean league) You can draw conclusion where we stand and make conclusions about how much other teams would've typically have gotten paid.
Sources:
http://www.mymym.com/en/article/771.html
http://www.sk-gaming.com/content/21853-MYM_drop_entire_Warcraft_3_and_Starcraft_rosters
http://www.mymym.com/en/news/15418.html
http://www.sk-gaming.com/content/24464-GiantsWC3_disbands_Satiini_retires
http://www.mymym.com/en/news/13683.html
http://www.mymym.com/en/news/13692.html
http://www.fnatic.com/scene/6059/Wicked-without-HoT-or-Sting.html
http://www.readmore.de/index.php?cont=news&id=4686
http://www.mymym.com/en/article/771.html
http://www.sk-gaming.com/content/18066-More_of_Your_Money_kills_Warcraft_3
http://www.sk-gaming.com/content/15671-Moon_offered_over_20000_a_month
Edit: looks like I cant make blog posts, do you have to be a member for a whole year first? :O
Edit 2: Looks like i forgot some sources, I'll see if i can find them -.-+ Show Spoiler +
