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So basically I’m going to start posting a series of blog posts about esports, they will mostly focus on sc2, but will also include a bit history from other esport titles. I will probably be very critical and negative in most of my posts (which you might have figured out by reading the title).
In 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.
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 +
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SC2 doesn't need many snakes, it needs several dragons
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Great post, and I agree that I would like to see more investment in foreign talent. Problem is, there are a lot less good foreigners than good Koreans, and the Koreans are usually cheaper than a foreigner of comparable skill.
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very good post i agree with what you say there not enough investment in foreign talent and i think people will kinda lose interest if they dont have their national heroes fighting with the koreans
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I agree somewhat, but I haven't been around long enough to have a valid input.
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i agree with some points, i definitely disagree though that axslav is on the same level as "code b" (which players do you put in that category anyway?) koreans. the main problem is that it would probably require a joint effort from multiple teams to do something in that regard, and thats not something i see happening.
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On March 03 2012 23:39 Cybren wrote:
SC2 doesn't need many snakes, it needs several dragons
No, it needs pepole who many can identify with.
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Great blog, I agree with most of it.
edit: yeah not the part about Axslav but I get your point.
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On March 03 2012 23:52 DarKFoRcE wrote:
i agree with some points, i definitely disagree though that axslav is on the same level as "code b" (which players do you put in that category anyway?) koreans. the main problem is that it would probably require a joint effort from multiple teams to do something in that regard, and thats not something i see happening.
I'm thinking of player in the same level as HwangSin, Artist, Real etc.
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Axslav struggles to find a team because of his results.
I wouldn't call it square one. It's called reality. The better players will get picked up and Koreans are easy pickings based on the fact they struggle to get any support in Korea. -_-
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I know NOTHING about WC3 and its scene but I feel like your post has a lot of good points. Though I dont see any alternatives to the "bubble" cycle it currently experiences. Any capitalist system IMO rewards and encourages bubbles forming, because thats when you make the most money. I think the best we can hope for is the cycle just slows down a bit, or the lows become a little less extreme.
Sponsors dont want to support up and comers. that want people that can make a ROI straight away. So why wouldn't a team buy a player for Korea that could come to an MLG and take the whole thing.
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Strange that you can't post blogs somehow, despite your like 1.4k posts and having been around here for like 6 months... (Maybe the threshold was changed or something?)
IMHO an esport lives and dies with its players. BW is popular in Korea because a lot of people play it, it's much less successful abroad. WC3 is popular all over the world but its popularity has certainly waned as fewer people played it, but still have a decent following in China as it is, well, essentially free. Plus stuff like CS, Quake, so on.
Also look at examples like CoD and Halo. Only the recent editions have received any competitive attention to the extent it can be considered a career, because of their huge successes on the market.
SC2 needs more players to make advertisers/organisers/teams/players' efforts worthwhile if the scene is to grow. But I guess that somehow SC2 just isn't that great of a game?
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I can see your concerns however I daresay alot of the SC2 community wants great games more than anything and currently the koreans provide these great games through their top play. It's not so much us as a community 'killing esports' but more the foreign pro players for their lack of skill. There will always be the Idras or Naniwas who can compete with the best (although Idra is looking dubious) but they are too few to make up entire teams
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8748 Posts
no one is willing to invest in the talent that is available in the western scene
This is a slap in the face to Liquid. Why you would post this at teamliquid.net I cannot fathom. Really dumb or just really mean?
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On March 03 2012 23:57 StarStruck wrote:
Axslav struggles to find a team because of his results.
I wouldn't call it square one. It's called reality. The better players will get picked up and Koreans are easy pickings based on the fact they struggle to get any support in Korea. -_-
But how does the Korean teams react to this? the feel forces to send their players to foreign events. It's almost the same scenario as in wc3.
mYm has insane salaries = the other teams were forces to give insane salaries to their players so they wouldnt leave
And in sc2:
Foreign teams can send players to events = Koreans teams are now forced to send their players overseas so they wont lose them. For example, look at TSL at this moment they dont really have any sponsors beside handsomenerd.com, but coach lee is paying out of his own pocket (he owns pc bangs in korea) to send polt to Assembly, Lonestar clash and MLG Columbus (Where he's also sending Inori and Symbol).
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I agree to some extent but I think the problem lies more with the strenght of foreign players. Even the highly paid ones can hardly beat a midtier Korean pro. And it wouldn't help the scene either if foreign teams just kept on signing foreigners and then they don't win anything. Money is not the difference. It's not like Koreans come from rich backgrounds, they have pretty much nothing before they join a pro team and then most of them only have a training house and food until they start to become so good that they win tournaments.
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I believe you can start a new blog by go to your profile.
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Great writeup, well thought out but I have to disagree with what you say about koreans joining foreign teams and those organizations investing into those players. I think koreans joining foreign teams is a good thing as it allows diversification and variety within organizations. The best foreigners will always find a place on a team, so I dont understand how koreans on foreign teams could be considered "shooting the foreign scene in the foot" as you say.
That said, as with any business; organizations need to watch their finances and not invest more than is prudent.
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On March 04 2012 00:03 Liquid`NonY wrote:Show nested quote + no one is willing to invest in the talent that is available in the western scene This is a slap in the face to Liquid. Why you would post this at teamliquid.net I cannot fathom. Really dumb or just really mean?
I should edit that, but what I mean is that it is the current trend and majority are not doing it. Now TL is in first hand a community, not a team. If it were to be meant towards I would've made it clear. I haven't really written anything in the post that even hints towards TL, so I dont know why are feeling so hostile about it?
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On March 04 2012 00:05 Primadog wrote:
I believe you can start a new blog by go to your profile.
Oh, I should've looked this up first. -.-
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On March 03 2012 23:57 StarStruck wrote:
Axslav struggles to find a team because of his results.
I wouldn't call it square one. It's called reality. The better players will get picked up and Koreans are easy pickings based on the fact they struggle to get any support in Korea. -_-
Most "code-b" level players that are on foreign teams haven't really got any results either.
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Great writeup, awesome job bro! These kinds of stuff are really interesting to read!
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On March 04 2012 00:03 Liquid`NonY wrote:Show nested quote + no one is willing to invest in the talent that is available in the western scene This is a slap in the face to Liquid. Why you would post this at teamliquid.net I cannot fathom. Really dumb or just really mean?
The last 2 players TL have picked up are both Korean. I believe all of the latest foreign team player signings have all been Korean.
Korean players are far better and far cheaper.
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Should teams really go out of their way to put more money into lesser skilled players just because he/she happens to be born in the same country the team is situated in? I mean, sure. I see your point that a global scene can only benefit from (and maybe is only sustainable with) local heros, but is throwing money at the local playerbase really the right way to obtain such a figure? I think what they need is primarily more opportunities and not more money, if that makes sense.
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He’s financially cheaper, and he’s very well on par with the code b Koreans that so many NA teams are recruiting.
This is far fetched. Axslav isn't on the same level as Code B Koreans by a longshot. That is essientially the same as saying he is on the same skill level as Sase, Naniwa, Huk, Idra, Morrow, and Select. Remember, no foreigner has ever qualified out of code b. Also, Axslav is 26. Sleep, Violet, PuMa, Crazymovin, Rain and Golden; all code B koreans, are under 20. Youth will never come back for Axslav. These players have lots of potential and probably more experience than Axslav. But most importantly, will play for lower salaries. These young Koreans are not asking for much after coming off a whooping salary of $0 with korean teams.
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I think this is an interesting idea, specifically the finances behind e-sports, especially coming off the back of the PPV MLG event.
I think there is a bit of a dichotomy in that tournaments seem to be running at a loss, while running tournaments which realistically could cost almost nothing to run. For example, SC2 can be played online, removing travel and accommodation costs, games are automatically recorded, so no costs there.
Besides the costs to actually film, produce and stream the tournaments, the main costs seem to be players and casters, and perhaps the scene simply isn't large enough yet to support what people are getting paid.
This isn't a criticism of anyone involved, you have to make hay while the sun shines, but time will tell how sustainable the scene will be.
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I can see teams picking up koreans to improve practice for their roster overall and that's not a problem I feel, but picking up koreans solely for results might be in the long run. Personally I prefer games with europeans/americans and not KorVSKor only games.
I don't know, but do the european/american TL players really profit from Hero and Zenio being on TL? Do you really train together on a daily / weekly basis, or does that not happen that often, because of the distance?
How about EG? They've set up a nice training house in the US and what happens? All the "championship-winning" players leave for korea and then Puma and Huk only drop by if a tournament is close, to get used to the different timezones. How much do these players profit from having koreans on their teams? How does Machine for instance profit in terms of practice when Puma, Huk etc. are in Korea not being in the house and playing with the players there?
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On March 04 2012 00:10 Eee wrote:Show nested quote +On March 03 2012 23:57 StarStruck wrote:
Axslav struggles to find a team because of his results.
I wouldn't call it square one. It's called reality. The better players will get picked up and Koreans are easy pickings based on the fact they struggle to get any support in Korea. -_- Most "code-b" level players that are on foreign teams haven't really got any results either.
While I think most of your post is sound Code B level Koreans are a lot better than most foreign top players. I agree that we need to invest in foreign talent though or the casual interest will decrease. For me personally I just want to watch the best and I'd watch Genius vs DRG over HuK vs IdrA any day.
The whole problem is that most foreigners are bad and lazy (compared to koreans) and therefor not worth investing in.
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On March 04 2012 00:18 hyptonic wrote:Show nested quote +He’s financially cheaper, and he’s very well on par with the code b Koreans that so many NA teams are recruiting. This is far fetched. Axslav isn't on the same level as Code B Koreans by a longshot. That is essientially the same as saying he is on the same skill level as Sase, Naniwa, Huk, Idra, Morrow, and Select. Remember, no foreigner has ever qualified out of code b. Also, Axslav is 26. Sleep, Violet, PuMa, Crazymovin, Rain and Golden; all code B koreans, are under 20. Youth will never come back for Axslav. These players have lots of potential and probably more experience than Axslav. But most importantly, will play for lower salaries. These young Koreans are not asking for much after coming off a whooping salary of $0 with korean teams.
Hmm yes you are right, I meant players like Yong, REAL, Artist, HwangSin etc. who are playing on foreign teams. Maybe I should rephrase myself.
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With this axslav example you delivered your own counter-argument. Axlslav will never be a god of sc2. End of story. He had a lot of time to improve, he surely did a lot, but its simply not enough.
The problem is that there are imply no foreigners out there, that have what it takes to become a new sc2 star. This axlav example is just great for it. Hes good, when hes at his best, and lucky he might beat some code B or even A korean. But only sometimes. And he had a lot of time to deliver.
And where are the other foreigners to pick from? I dont see any. All good foreigners are already i well known teams, they have the chance to develop. The problem is that most of them dont take it seriously. They do it mainly for fun, after 1-2 years they know they will not be playing anymore, so why train 10 hours a day?
Its not the fault of the organisations, its simply the lack of talent. In Korea you simply have much more talent to chose from.
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On March 03 2012 23:39 Cybren wrote:
SC2 doesn't need many snakes, it needs several dragons
So wrong without snakes there will be no dragons.
In order for the sc2 scene to develop all the midtier players needs a living.
Just becuase Stephano,mma,drg,mvp,polt,Idra,nestea makes alot of money doesnt mean we actually got a healthy environment.
99% of the players can barely support themself a player like Bling had to get a personal sponsorships from TB so he can focus 100% on sc2. And he is pretty wellknown..
So the community better start doing something or els we wont have much of a sport in a few years
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United Kingdom3482 Posts
I think the problem isn't that foreign teams are investing loads of money into Korean players, it's that the Korean teams aren't. There seems to be a huge lack of investment and sponsorship in the Korean SC2 scene, maybe it's because BW is still so popular there, but having most of the players living off tournament winnings only means that most Korean players who get offered a salary from a foreign team are going to take it.
As for foreign teams investing in upcoming foreign players it definitely happens, look at dBling for example an ex-Halo player that Dignitas have supported and now is really starting to be successful. I actually think having a couple of Korean players on a foreign team helps them, with practice and having a greater appeal to sponsors so that the money can be invested into newer players as well who wouldn't attract the sponsorship money on their own.
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Millenium sounds like a good example. Stephano was a pure Millenium product, and now Feast is up & coming. No, I don't think every team is that way, mouz and Millenium being prime examples.
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Really enjoyed reading it and i am looking forward to part two.
On the idea that foreign teams are picking up Korean players; teams need results to keep their sponsors, and the people who keep getting results are the Koreans.
On March 04 2012 00:21 Valikyr wrote:Show nested quote +On March 04 2012 00:10 Eee wrote:On March 03 2012 23:57 StarStruck wrote:
Axslav struggles to find a team because of his results.
I wouldn't call it square one. It's called reality. The better players will get picked up and Koreans are easy pickings based on the fact they struggle to get any support in Korea. -_- Most "code-b" level players that are on foreign teams haven't really got any results either. While I think most of your post is sound Code B level Koreans are a lot better than most foreign top players. I agree that we need to invest in foreign talent though or the casual interest will decrease. For me personally I just want to watch the best and I watch Genius vs DRG over HuK vs IdrA any day. The whole problem is that most foreigners are bad and lazy (compared to koreans) and therefor not worth investing in.
Most foreigners don't take the game as seriously as Koreans do (then again it is comparing the entire world to a single country). You just can't tell everyone who plays SC2 to take the game seriously, just like how everyone can't watch SC2 for just "high level of play".
I'm really interest in why people actually watch Starcraft. Is it because of high level of play? Or maybe a player they like is in a tournament?
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On March 04 2012 00:22 krisss wrote:
With this axslav example you delivered your own counter-argument. Axlslav will never be a god of sc2. End of story. He had a lot of time to improve, he surely did a lot, but its simply not enough.
The problem is that there are imply no foreigners out there, that have what it takes to become a new sc2 star. This axlav example is just great for it. Hes good, when hes at his best, and lucky he might beat some code B or even A korean. But only sometimes. And he had a lot of time to deliver.
And where are the other foreigners to pick from? I dont see any. All good foreigners are already i well known teams, they have the chance to develop. The problem is that most of them dont take it seriously. They do it mainly for fun, after 1-2 years they know they will not be playing anymore, so why train 10 hours a day?
Its not the fault of the organisations, its simply the lack of talent. In Korea you simply have much more talent to chose from.
That's the problem with organisations, they're to lazy to find the talent. Naniwa, Elfi and ThorZaIN where all young strong players in wc3, but nobody ever wanted to take the risk to support them. Now look at them at sc2? Dignitas dared to take the risk to sign Naniwa and actually send him arround the world, and today he's one of the best foreign players in the world! Dignitas also did take the risk to dare to sign a halo player who won an british tournament, and look at Bling now?
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On March 04 2012 00:26 ArcticRaven wrote:
Millenium sounds like a good example. Stephano was a pure Millenium product, and now Feast is up & coming. No, I don't think every team is that way, mouz and Millenium being prime examples.
how is stephano a pure millenium product? Didn't they say that he was the best EU players before he joined Mill???
And how exactly does Mouz support their players better than other Teams?
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On March 04 2012 00:28 Eee wrote:Show nested quote +On March 04 2012 00:22 krisss wrote:
With this axslav example you delivered your own counter-argument. Axlslav will never be a god of sc2. End of story. He had a lot of time to improve, he surely did a lot, but its simply not enough.
The problem is that there are imply no foreigners out there, that have what it takes to become a new sc2 star. This axlav example is just great for it. Hes good, when hes at his best, and lucky he might beat some code B or even A korean. But only sometimes. And he had a lot of time to deliver.
And where are the other foreigners to pick from? I dont see any. All good foreigners are already i well known teams, they have the chance to develop. The problem is that most of them dont take it seriously. They do it mainly for fun, after 1-2 years they know they will not be playing anymore, so why train 10 hours a day?
Its not the fault of the organisations, its simply the lack of talent. In Korea you simply have much more talent to chose from. That's the problem with organisations, they're to lazy to find the talent. Naniwa, Elfi and ThorZaIN where all young strong players in wc3, but nobody ever wanted to take the risk to support them. Now look at them at sc2? Dignitas dared to take the risk to sign Naniwa and actually send him arround the world, and today he's one of the best foreign players in the world! Dignitas also did take the risk to dare to sign a halo player who won an british tournament, and look at Bling now?
Laziness isn't the problem. You have excellent Korean players coming to you, there is no need to look for players.
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Western teams might be more financially suitable to sponsor as I think the fans are more likely to buy more. Also the players are a bigger face in the community, not just skill level wise. I do think eventually teams and leagues will start disappearing as I dont think all these leagues can support itself in the long run. I think as long as people keep being figure heads in the community and the community keeps doing things to show sponsors that we care, we should be fine
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Would you rather sponsor a korean kid who sees sc2 as his job and lives in a team house or a kinda good foreign player who goes to uni and plays some sc2 when he has time. ?
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On March 04 2012 00:03 Eee wrote:Show nested quote +On March 03 2012 23:57 StarStruck wrote:
Axslav struggles to find a team because of his results.
I wouldn't call it square one. It's called reality. The better players will get picked up and Koreans are easy pickings based on the fact they struggle to get any support in Korea. -_- But how does the Korean teams react to this? the feel forces to send their players to foreign events. It's almost the same scenario as in wc3. mYm has insane salaries = the other teams were forces to give insane salaries to their players so they wouldnt leave And in sc2: Foreign teams can send players to events = Koreans teams are now forced to send their players overseas so they wont lose them. For example, look at TSL at this moment they dont really have any sponsors beside handsomenerd.com, but coach lee is paying out of his own pocket (he owns pc bangs in korea) to send polt to Assembly, Lonestar clash and MLG Columbus (Where he's also sending Inori and Symbol).
Well aware of MYM problems. They did have a BW team after all (it was my friend's team btw).
Just look at what's happened with partnerships. It is incredibly difficult for Korean teams to compete with the Western organizations when they struggle to find sponsors right out of the gate. The West teams had a leg up from the beginning because they were already established teams who have plenty of sponsors. They've been in the industry for a long, long time no matter the game.
They've already reacted. Look at what happened with fOu. They're now a division of FXOpen. That's how the cookie crumbles. The Korean teams have become assets. There are only a few Korean teams remaining who aren't tied to some Western organization.
Considering they aren't supported by KeSPA is a big a deal. They had to look elsewhere.
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MYM were investing heavily in order to earn money ''in the future". If your business model only works if the market keeps on growing every year you're doing something wrong.
I don't think EG (or any other big team) is as stupid.
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On March 04 2012 00:03 Liquid`NonY wrote:Show nested quote + no one is willing to invest in the talent that is available in the western scene This is a slap in the face to Liquid. Why you would post this at teamliquid.net I cannot fathom. Really dumb or just really mean?
Zenio and Hero are very good western players right?
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On March 04 2012 00:10 Eee wrote:Show nested quote +On March 03 2012 23:57 StarStruck wrote:
Axslav struggles to find a team because of his results.
I wouldn't call it square one. It's called reality. The better players will get picked up and Koreans are easy pickings based on the fact they struggle to get any support in Korea. -_- Most "code-b" level players that are on foreign teams haven't really got any results either.
That's a mute point because they aren't really given a shot to. Still my point remains, it comes down to a lot of things and more often than not the Korean player has more going for it. The Korean results in the West speak volumes. You cannot deny it. They come over here; they win.
There is way more opportunity for the Koreans over here. They cannot wait for KeSPA.
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On March 04 2012 00:31 Hardigan wrote:Show nested quote +On March 04 2012 00:26 ArcticRaven wrote:
Millenium sounds like a good example. Stephano was a pure Millenium product, and now Feast is up & coming. No, I don't think every team is that way, mouz and Millenium being prime examples. how is stephano a pure millenium product? Didn't they say that he was the best EU players before he joined Mill??? And how exactly does Mouz support their players better than other Teams?
Stephano joined Millinium back in his wc3 days he is a pure millenium product. Millinium really good at making players. Huk,Stephano and now Feast and Diestar..
I dont know what they do but others need to copy this
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On March 04 2012 00:03 Liquid`NonY wrote:Show nested quote + no one is willing to invest in the talent that is available in the western scene This is a slap in the face to Liquid. Why you would post this at teamliquid.net I cannot fathom. Really dumb or just really mean?
I don't think he meant it in an especially rude way, although I understand completely how you see that as offensive. Just that many teams are searching for Koreans and it appears to him that there is a stigma against foreigners, simply because they are foreigners. coL just picked up 3 koreans. (and good ones at that)
It seems kind of ironic that a team like ZeNEX or TSL is struggling to find support and sponsorship while foreign teams pick up koreans willy nilly.
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On March 04 2012 00:31 Hardigan wrote:Show nested quote +On March 04 2012 00:26 ArcticRaven wrote:
Millenium sounds like a good example. Stephano was a pure Millenium product, and now Feast is up & coming. No, I don't think every team is that way, mouz and Millenium being prime examples. how is stephano a pure millenium product? Didn't they say that he was the best EU players before he joined Mill??? And how exactly does Mouz support their players better than other Teams?
Stephano is definately a millenium product, well not really since Millenium didn't want to send him overseas before coL tried to recruit him. But Millenium did sign him a month after the game was released.
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kinda agree i think more players will get kicked out famous teams soonish and the only reason they are still on a team is because they have a high marketing value but probably won't ever win anything again in sc2.
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8748 Posts
On March 04 2012 00:06 Eee wrote:Show nested quote +On March 04 2012 00:03 Liquid`NonY wrote: no one is willing to invest in the talent that is available in the western scene This is a slap in the face to Liquid. Why you would post this at teamliquid.net I cannot fathom. Really dumb or just really mean? I should edit that, but what I mean is that it is the current trend and majority are not doing it. Now TL is in first hand a community, not a team. If it were to be meant towards I would've made it clear. I haven't really written anything in the post that even hints towards TL, so I dont know why are feeling so hostile about it?
Why would you say something so fucked up if you didn't even mean it? You're making even less sense now.
TL.net is a community but Liquid obviously has close ties to it. You'll definitely find more Liquid fans at TL.net than anywhere else and more Liquid players posting at TL.net than anywhere else (and more than any other major team at TL.net). In other words, you could well expect that any significant post in the SC2 General section at TL.net is going to be read by Liquid.
Now it can hardly be argued that Liquid hasn't invested heavily into non-Korean players. It's just a fact that Liquid went out of its way to get players fully supported and training in Korea ASAP and flying them all around the world to compete in every major tournament. Liquid was the team to pick up and put full support behind TLO after his beta stardom and Huk after his early MLG championship. Liquid supported Jinro Ret and Haypro and myself almost purely off our BW results. All of these players except myself have had amazing results and made significant positive impacts on the scene, except perhaps myself (and when I do, it'll be solely because of Liquid's support).
So, we aren't a group of western talent? Were any of us a sure shot? Or could you say that Liquid and The Little App Factory stuck their necks WAY out to support western talent, to develop western talent, and to give western talent a chance to make a huge impact on the scene? And that it was successful?
Somehow supporting two great people and players, Hero and Zenio, is supposed to make all that easily ignored? Somehow these acquisitions have reversed our trend despite the fact that we're still giving incredible support to western talent like we have been from day one?
You are so absolutely wrong about this that I'm not sure how you could put a single bit of care into your thoughts before you shat them out all over this forum.
edit: And just to be complete, Sheth is another great example of investing in western talent. He's had wonderful results since joining Liquid and has been very happy here and getting excellent support. He may even be a better example because at this time that we got him, we very well could have set our sights only on Korean players. But as is abundantly clear to everyone in the world but the OP, Liquid supports western talent.
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8748 Posts
On March 04 2012 00:35 Klipsys wrote:Show nested quote +On March 04 2012 00:03 Liquid`NonY wrote: no one is willing to invest in the talent that is available in the western scene This is a slap in the face to Liquid. Why you would post this at teamliquid.net I cannot fathom. Really dumb or just really mean? Zenio and Hero are very good western players right?
Read a fucking logic book. This is embarrassing for you.
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On March 04 2012 00:37 BreakfastBurrito wrote:Show nested quote +On March 04 2012 00:03 Liquid`NonY wrote: no one is willing to invest in the talent that is available in the western scene This is a slap in the face to Liquid. Why you would post this at teamliquid.net I cannot fathom. Really dumb or just really mean? I don't think he meant it in an especially rude way, although I understand completely how you see that as offensive. Just that many teams are searching for Koreans and it appears to him that there is a stigma against foreigners, simply because they are foreigners. coL just picked up 3 koreans. (and good ones at that) It seems kind of ironic that a team like ZeNEX or TSL is struggling to find support and sponsorship while foreign teams pick up koreans willy nilly.
TSL has tons of sponsors, aren't they one of the richest Korean teams? They even just moved into a new team house.
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On March 04 2012 00:35 StarStruck wrote:Show nested quote +On March 04 2012 00:10 Eee wrote:On March 03 2012 23:57 StarStruck wrote:
Axslav struggles to find a team because of his results.
I wouldn't call it square one. It's called reality. The better players will get picked up and Koreans are easy pickings based on the fact they struggle to get any support in Korea. -_- Most "code-b" level players that are on foreign teams haven't really got any results either. That's a mute point because they aren't really given a shot to. Still my point remains, it comes down to a lot of things and more often than not the Korean player has more going for it. The Korean results in the West speak volumes. You cannot deny it. They come over here; they win. There is way more opportunity for the Koreans over here. They cannot wait for KeSPA.
Well that¨'s one of my concernes. I mean, in the same way that inflation in wc3 strangled the european scene might happen in sc2. We might just strangle the korean scene, because they cant keep up (sending players overseas) so their scene will crumble. And the infrastructure that develops the korean talent will be gone. It's a loss situation and not sustainable.
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On March 04 2012 00:31 Hardigan wrote:Show nested quote +On March 04 2012 00:26 ArcticRaven wrote:
Millenium sounds like a good example. Stephano was a pure Millenium product, and now Feast is up & coming. No, I don't think every team is that way, mouz and Millenium being prime examples. how is stephano a pure millenium product? Didn't they say that he was the best EU players before he joined Mill??? And how exactly does Mouz support their players better than other Teams?
No, he wasn't, he was on Millenium way before he became so good.
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The last 2 players TL have picked up are both Korean. I believe all of the latest foreign team player signings have all been Korean.
...TL is still predominantly foreigner and has stuck by its foreigner players. Your argument = bad.
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On March 04 2012 00:43 iYiYi wrote:Show nested quote +On March 04 2012 00:37 BreakfastBurrito wrote:On March 04 2012 00:03 Liquid`NonY wrote: no one is willing to invest in the talent that is available in the western scene This is a slap in the face to Liquid. Why you would post this at teamliquid.net I cannot fathom. Really dumb or just really mean? I don't think he meant it in an especially rude way, although I understand completely how you see that as offensive. Just that many teams are searching for Koreans and it appears to him that there is a stigma against foreigners, simply because they are foreigners. coL just picked up 3 koreans. (and good ones at that) It seems kind of ironic that a team like ZeNEX or TSL is struggling to find support and sponsorship while foreign teams pick up koreans willy nilly. TSL has tons of sponsors, aren't they one of the richest Korean teams? They even just moved into a new team house.
TSL had lots of sponsors last season. EmTek, Western Digital, SkyDigital patches are missing from their new jerseys. The team is basically beeing sustained by Coach Lees pc bang business right now.
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On March 04 2012 00:42 Liquid`NonY wrote:Show nested quote +On March 04 2012 00:35 Klipsys wrote:On March 04 2012 00:03 Liquid`NonY wrote: no one is willing to invest in the talent that is available in the western scene This is a slap in the face to Liquid. Why you would post this at teamliquid.net I cannot fathom. Really dumb or just really mean? Zenio and Hero are very good western players right? Read a fucking logic book. This is embarrassing for you.
Lol okay. Just pointing out that the best players on your team come from Korea....
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This sounds a lot like free-market enterprise and a global economy to me. It's how the rest of the world does business. If the e-sports community would like to do business with the rest of the world, this is the environment they're going to need to do business in.
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On March 04 2012 00:41 Liquid`NonY wrote:Show nested quote +On March 04 2012 00:06 Eee wrote:On March 04 2012 00:03 Liquid`NonY wrote: no one is willing to invest in the talent that is available in the western scene This is a slap in the face to Liquid. Why you would post this at teamliquid.net I cannot fathom. Really dumb or just really mean? I should edit that, but what I mean is that it is the current trend and majority are not doing it. Now TL is in first hand a community, not a team. If it were to be meant towards I would've made it clear. I haven't really written anything in the post that even hints towards TL, so I dont know why are feeling so hostile about it? Why would you say something so fucked up if you didn't even mean it? You're making even less sense now. TL.net is a community but Liquid obviously has close ties to it. You'll definitely find more Liquid fans at TL.net than anywhere else and more Liquid players posting at TL.net than anywhere else (and more than any other major team at TL.net). In other words, you could well expect that any significant post in the SC2 General section at TL.net is going to be read by Liquid. Now it can hardly be argued that Liquid hasn't invested heavily into non-Korean players. It's just a fact that Liquid went out of its way to get players fully supported and training in Korea ASAP and flying them all around the world to compete in every major tournament. Liquid was the team to pick up and put full support behind TLO after his beta stardom and Huk after his early MLG championship. Liquid supported Jinro Ret and Haypro and myself almost purely off our BW results. All of these players except myself have had amazing results and made significant positive impacts on the scene, except perhaps myself (and when I do, it'll be solely because of Liquid's support). So, we aren't a group of western talent? Were any of us a sure shot? Or could you say that Liquid and The Little App Factory stuck their necks WAY out to support western talent, to develop western talent, and to give western talent a chance to make a huge impact on the scene? And that it was successful? Somehow supporting two great people and players, Hero and Zenio, is supposed to make all that easily ignored? Somehow these acquisitions have reversed our trend despite the fact that we're still giving incredible support to western talent like we have been from day one? You are so absolutely wrong about this that I'm not sure how you could put a single bit of care into your thoughts before you shat them out all over this forum. edit: And just to be complete, Sheth is another great example of investing in western talent. He's had wonderful results since joining Liquid and has been very happy here and getting excellent support. He may even be a better example because at this time that we got him, we very well could have set our sights only on Korean players. But as is abundantly clear to everyone in the world but the OP, Liquid supports western talent.
LOL, seriously. I just said this wasn't even meant to be against TL why are you even arguing? NOTHING in this post implies anything about TL, so I dont even understand why you are trying to prove anything. I 90% agree with you, I'm not pointing fingers at TL.
And by western talent I mean people like Bly (who just got picked up by Acer) and BiGs (who got picked up by mouz some months ago) who are online warriors but haven't ever been given the chance to play at offline events and fulltime. TL mosly consists of people who had some previous history from bw (like Haypro, Ret and you).
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This whole thread is a giant WHO CARES. Let's all just contiune to play starcraft please
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We're not, but people who use that phrase should be. In the face.
Just throwing money at foreign players isn't going to make them better either. Good practice partners, obtained either through acquiring them, working together with other teams or whatever is a needed investment as well. Also, I can't name a single foreign team that's dominated by Koreans and I can name a lot of recent foreign transfers. Whether the teams in question can support all those I don't know, it's definitely something they should be mindful of, but the problem there is not "not investing in foreign talent".
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I understand your point and I said it before myself if foreigner teams keep recruiting code B Koreans and have no foreigners on team SC2 will go down simply because no one wants to watch mass KR vs KR (or at least not majority of people). I'll try to explain team PoV on this matter tho.
At the start of SC2 many teams were recruiting talents because there were not many known players and there were no Koreans signing for foreigner teams which is why there are so many "developed talents" now. In Team Empire Kas, Happy and me were all signed when we were unknowns and before we started winning online tournaments because at the time you didnt have that many known players to pick from, they gave us the chance and it was worth it. Now we have 3 players that constantly ladder and we can see if there are some promising players and if there are we recruit them, give them a 1-3month trial and see if they are able to fit in team or not.
Team Empire gave trial chance to couple of people and they didnt show good results and now we are playing 4-5 team leagues that are important for us and most of team leagues require 4x1v1 players, we cant wait the 4th player forever to come from "talent player pool" we needed a 4th player to complete our ""all-star"" lineup so we are able to win team leagues which is why we recruited Violet. We are always looking for new players that are yet "undiscovered", but at same time you have to understand that those players are very hard to find and even if you do find them they are 6+ month investment.
I dont agree on some teams buying 3-4 Koreans just to carry them in team leagues and replace all the foreigners and eventually kick foreigners from team which we already saw before couple of times happen. But again its their choice and even tho its bad for foreigner community in general, if foreigners want that place they have to practise harder.
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I think a large reason for the dearth of western talent is the secrecy behind the logistics and potential. Look at major western sports like Baseball, Football, Hockey, etc. Contracts, money, expectations, etc. are all out in the open. Growing up, you know that aiming for a professional career in one of these sports, you will make a livable income and there is sufficient interest to sustain the business model. Why in the E-sports scene is everything so hush and obfuscated? How can you expect players to train and play for the time it takes when they have no idea if it will pay off?
I also think the 'house' environment is pretty dumb logistically and monetarily to be honest. It is antiquated and borne from a country in which is smaller than most US states, and nearly homogenous. With technology now-a-days, and since SC2 is online-only, you can do everything from your own home that you can do getting everyone to move someplace together. Lots of businesses have tele-commutes and work from home for their employees. It makes so much sense for an online business to use this sort of cost-saving model.
In all honesty if folks want the foreign scene to produce great players to rival the Koreans and keep interest in the sport, I think a lot of folks in the business and players need to look to emulate and evolve successful organizations like MLB. It would also help to have more open tournaments and events to make a name for yourself. I'm not really a fan of invitationals to be honest. Even in Korea they have 'minor-leagues' for BW.
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Some Koreans want to go to foreign teams. The ones that are in foreign teams now ended there not because they were scouted, but on their own volition. I have been to Korea several times and I have seen face to face the young gamers. They are absolutely addicted, they eat breakfast lunch and dinner right on the spot while paying an hourly amount to the pc cafes. Foreign teams know this the most when recruiting and pick the youngest and the ones with the most potential. Axslav is skilled there is no doubt, but he is older, he doesn't put up results as much, and he has already had his chance with a big name team. For players getting kicked off, that is not an issue. A team has a contract with a player and if it ends, the player has full responsibility in knowing what will come of him or her whether it be renewed or replace. Esports may seem exciting and positive in the eyes of a viewer, but business is business. So no players don't get "kicked" off they get released after their full payment.
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Hate to be the bearer of bad news, but the best foreigners could probably barely compete in Code A these days. Yeah, in the very first GSLs you had people like Jinro/Idra winning games and doing decently, but the Korean scene is so far ahead right now that it's practically unfathomable to imagine a foreigner winning a GSL or even maintaining his Code S slot. Huk is pretty much the only person in recent memory to be in GSL as a foreigner, and though I like him, it's pretty clear that he relied on the rather broken demotion system to stay afloat.
Liquid supports western talent. Not going to argue that. This whole thread is stupid, though, because teams should support the best players, and I can't think of more than 10 who are realistic contenders of getting into Code A/S.
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Aren't the teams in Korea providing their players housing, food, a computer and family atmosphere? They don't really need that much money because they already have their life set in that team with all that is provided for them. Money is not needed when your a pro-gamer because everything is given to you.
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Although I never played nor paid attention to WC3, this is great point.
And I think to to prevent these kind of situations, foreigners have to do really great job on winning every tournaments.
Like GSL, MLG, etc., because company look for good players rather than potential players. Some of them, yes, but most of them no. I hope SC2 scene doesnt end up like WC3. Thanks for pointing out.
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On March 04 2012 00:41 Liquid`NonY wrote:Show nested quote +On March 04 2012 00:06 Eee wrote:On March 04 2012 00:03 Liquid`NonY wrote: no one is willing to invest in the talent that is available in the western scene This is a slap in the face to Liquid. Why you would post this at teamliquid.net I cannot fathom. Really dumb or just really mean? I should edit that, but what I mean is that it is the current trend and majority are not doing it. Now TL is in first hand a community, not a team. If it were to be meant towards I would've made it clear. I haven't really written anything in the post that even hints towards TL, so I dont know why are feeling so hostile about it? Why would you say something so fucked up if you didn't even mean it? You're making even less sense now. TL.net is a community but Liquid obviously has close ties to it. You'll definitely find more Liquid fans at TL.net than anywhere else and more Liquid players posting at TL.net than anywhere else (and more than any other major team at TL.net). In other words, you could well expect that any significant post in the SC2 General section at TL.net is going to be read by Liquid. Now it can hardly be argued that Liquid hasn't invested heavily into non-Korean players. It's just a fact that Liquid went out of its way to get players fully supported and training in Korea ASAP and flying them all around the world to compete in every major tournament. Liquid was the team to pick up and put full support behind TLO after his beta stardom and Huk after his early MLG championship. Liquid supported Jinro Ret and Haypro and myself almost purely off our BW results. All of these players except myself have had amazing results and made significant positive impacts on the scene, except perhaps myself (and when I do, it'll be solely because of Liquid's support). So, we aren't a group of western talent? Were any of us a sure shot? Or could you say that Liquid and The Little App Factory stuck their necks WAY out to support western talent, to develop western talent, and to give western talent a chance to make a huge impact on the scene? And that it was successful? Somehow supporting two great people and players, Hero and Zenio, is supposed to make all that easily ignored? Somehow these acquisitions have reversed our trend despite the fact that we're still giving incredible support to western talent like we have been from day one? You are so absolutely wrong about this that I'm not sure how you could put a single bit of care into your thoughts before you shat them out all over this forum.
I dont think anyone would contest the amazing front-runner role of Liquid at the beginning of sc2 era, setting up the partnership with OGS and recruiting the hottest players quickly.
However, as a Liquid fan, i definitely agree that the international teams and organizations shifted towards the Korean players, and Liquid is definitely no exception. The 2 latest additions are both Korean pros, one could argue Hero was an exception since he wasnt well known and TL said they wanted to be the first international team to recruit a Korean (they werent but doesnt matter), but Zenio was just another very good Korean who left a Korean team and joined an international one. Neither of them speaks English on the stage (aside from like 2 or 3 sentences per event)
And the thing is, they do get flown around a lot, more so than the others i dare say, i cant remember an event from the last few months without one of them (and at IEM Kiev they both were there and no other liquid player), and they also play in almost every team v team event.
Don't get me wrong, im not mad at them, i'm glad they are doing good and TL gave them this opportunity, and they repaying the organization with mostly good consistent performance. However, I am saddened that TL is not what it used to be, namely a Western team, representing the foreigner scene. I totally understand the reasons behind it, no team wants to fall behind.
The largest foreigner teams dont pick up good foreigners anymore, unless some special circumstances, that's a fact
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On March 03 2012 23:39 Cybren wrote:
SC2 doesn't need many snakes, it needs several dragons
SC2 doesn't need many dragons, it needs several frost trolls.*
Fixed.
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This is pretty offensive, lol.
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On March 04 2012 00:41 Liquid`NonY wrote:Show nested quote +On March 04 2012 00:06 Eee wrote:On March 04 2012 00:03 Liquid`NonY wrote: no one is willing to invest in the talent that is available in the western scene This is a slap in the face to Liquid. Why you would post this at teamliquid.net I cannot fathom. Really dumb or just really mean? I should edit that, but what I mean is that it is the current trend and majority are not doing it. Now TL is in first hand a community, not a team. If it were to be meant towards I would've made it clear. I haven't really written anything in the post that even hints towards TL, so I dont know why are feeling so hostile about it? Why would you say something so fucked up if you didn't even mean it? You're making even less sense now. TL.net is a community but Liquid obviously has close ties to it. You'll definitely find more Liquid fans at TL.net than anywhere else and more Liquid players posting at TL.net than anywhere else (and more than any other major team at TL.net). In other words, you could well expect that any significant post in the SC2 General section at TL.net is going to be read by Liquid. Now it can hardly be argued that Liquid hasn't invested heavily into non-Korean players. It's just a fact that Liquid went out of its way to get players fully supported and training in Korea ASAP and flying them all around the world to compete in every major tournament. Liquid was the team to pick up and put full support behind TLO after his beta stardom and Huk after his early MLG championship. Liquid supported Jinro Ret and Haypro and myself almost purely off our BW results. All of these players except myself have had amazing results and made significant positive impacts on the scene, except perhaps myself (and when I do, it'll be solely because of Liquid's support). So, we aren't a group of western talent? Were any of us a sure shot? Or could you say that Liquid and The Little App Factory stuck their necks WAY out to support western talent, to develop western talent, and to give western talent a chance to make a huge impact on the scene? And that it was successful? Somehow supporting two great people and players, Hero and Zenio, is supposed to make all that easily ignored? Somehow these acquisitions have reversed our trend despite the fact that we're still giving incredible support to western talent like we have been from day one? You are so absolutely wrong about this that I'm not sure how you could put a single bit of care into your thoughts before you shat them out all over this forum. edit: And just to be complete, Sheth is another great example of investing in western talent. He's had wonderful results since joining Liquid and has been very happy here and getting excellent support. He may even be a better example because at this time that we got him, we very well could have set our sights only on Korean players. But as is abundantly clear to everyone in the world but the OP, Liquid supports western talent.
The question is any foreign team, willing to support unproven up and coming western talent, not continue to support sub-par players from 2 years ago.
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What's up with that everytime I see a response from Tyler its REALLY aggressive? -_ -
And it's not like Liquid is the only team that has invested in ''western'' players, Mousesports if any team should have a saying here..
Good read OP, I agree with most parts
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On March 04 2012 00:57 Shiori wrote:
Liquid supports western talent. Not going to argue that. This whole thread is stupid, though, because teams should support the best players, and I can't think of more than 10 who are realistic contenders of getting into Code A/S.
That's not the counter-argument to OP's problem. It's the consequence. Why isn't there more foreign good players ? Because most foreign teams are beginning to invest less and less into foreign players.
Edit : orthography.
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On March 04 2012 01:10 ArcticRaven wrote:Show nested quote +On March 04 2012 00:57 Shiori wrote:
Liquid supports western talent. Not going to argue that. This whole thread is stupid, though, because teams should support the best players, and I can't think of more than 10 who are realistic contenders of getting into Code A/S. That's not the counter-argument to OP's problem. It's the consequence. Why isn't there mroe foreign good players ? Because most foreign teams are beginning to invest less and less into foreign players.
If I offer you a low risk investment with a guaranteed 50% interest rate starting today or a high risk investment with a 50% interest rate possibly beginning 10 years from now, what are you going to pick?
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I like how we are killing esports on a weekly basis  . Nah but seriously you bring up some interesting points. But I really think esports is growing as a whole nicely with the growth of streaming technolgy. I don't think it will die like wc 3 did. But part of wc 3 problem was that the player base died, people lost interest in that game. I don't see starcraft dying for at least 10 years because of the rate they are releasing expansions and if you think about it, MLG is bigger than ever in the states, and that alone helps keep games alive.
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On March 04 2012 01:08 Coal wrote:
What's up with that everytime I see a response from Tyler its REALLY aggressive? -_ -
And it's not like Liquid is the only team that has invested in ''western'' players, Mousesports if any team should have a saying here..
Good read OP, I agree with most parts
I have to disagree, most of Tyler's posts are really calm and fairly objective, or subtle and sarcastic. The one above is one of the first I did not like that much
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On March 04 2012 01:10 ArcticRaven wrote:Show nested quote +On March 04 2012 00:57 Shiori wrote:
Liquid supports western talent. Not going to argue that. This whole thread is stupid, though, because teams should support the best players, and I can't think of more than 10 who are realistic contenders of getting into Code A/S. That's not the counter-argument to OP's problem. It's the consequence. Why isn't there more foreign good players ? Because most foreign teams are beginning to invest less and less into foreign players. Edit : orthography.
Does any player even know how much the investment / contracts are (besides the obvious contractee...)? People become professionals in other sports because they know it pays well, and you can have a livable income, and as they grew up and probably still they enjoy / have fun while playing (but that doesn't trump income livability). So..., a lot of people in the foreign scene are probably a bit reticent in pursuit of being a professional. Obvious is obvious. People know how much Flash and Jaedong make, and other BW pros. This means that new players have incentive to become new Flashes and Jaedongs and know that they will be able to live and play the game. Why are contracts and monies never ever made open in the foreign scene and SC2 in general?
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Yeah if anyone should be offended(lol) it's Mousesports. TL is, and has been, supporting their players well but last 6 months they've shifted focus from the western scene to Korea, just like Fnatic, EG, coL plus several others. I'm sure it's a good business decision and I can't blame them for doing it but it sucks for the western scene in the long run when ALL the big teams are doing it. TL is definitely no exception to this.
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On March 04 2012 01:11 Shiori wrote:Show nested quote +On March 04 2012 01:10 ArcticRaven wrote:On March 04 2012 00:57 Shiori wrote:
Liquid supports western talent. Not going to argue that. This whole thread is stupid, though, because teams should support the best players, and I can't think of more than 10 who are realistic contenders of getting into Code A/S. That's not the counter-argument to OP's problem. It's the consequence. Why isn't there mroe foreign good players ? Because most foreign teams are beginning to invest less and less into foreign players. If I offer you a low risk investment with a guaranteed 50% interest rate starting today or a high risk investment with a 50% interest rate possibly beginning 10 years from now, what are you going to pick?
Depends if I'm just interested in making the most money possible and run away or make the scene durable. If you have only korean players things will die out quite quickly, and your investment will be dead anyway.
Yeah if anyone should be offended(lol) it's Mousesports. TL is, and has been, supporting their players well but last 6 months they've shifted focus from the western scene to Korea, just like Fnatic, EG, coL plus several others. I'm sure it's a good business decision and I can't blame them for doing it but it sucks for the western scene in the long run when ALL the big teams are doing it. TL is definitely no exception to this.
Millenium isn't a big team ?
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On March 04 2012 00:41 Liquid`NonY wrote:Show nested quote +On March 04 2012 00:06 Eee wrote:On March 04 2012 00:03 Liquid`NonY wrote: no one is willing to invest in the talent that is available in the western scene This is a slap in the face to Liquid. Why you would post this at teamliquid.net I cannot fathom. Really dumb or just really mean? I should edit that, but what I mean is that it is the current trend and majority are not doing it. Now TL is in first hand a community, not a team. If it were to be meant towards I would've made it clear. I haven't really written anything in the post that even hints towards TL, so I dont know why are feeling so hostile about it? Why would you say something so fucked up if you didn't even mean it? You're making even less sense now. TL.net is a community but Liquid obviously has close ties to it. You'll definitely find more Liquid fans at TL.net than anywhere else and more Liquid players posting at TL.net than anywhere else (and more than any other major team at TL.net). In other words, you could well expect that any significant post in the SC2 General section at TL.net is going to be read by Liquid. Now it can hardly be argued that Liquid hasn't invested heavily into non-Korean players. It's just a fact that Liquid went out of its way to get players fully supported and training in Korea ASAP and flying them all around the world to compete in every major tournament. Liquid was the team to pick up and put full support behind TLO after his beta stardom and Huk after his early MLG championship. Liquid supported Jinro Ret and Haypro and myself almost purely off our BW results. All of these players except myself have had amazing results and made significant positive impacts on the scene, except perhaps myself (and when I do, it'll be solely because of Liquid's support). So, we aren't a group of western talent? Were any of us a sure shot? Or could you say that Liquid and The Little App Factory stuck their necks WAY out to support western talent, to develop western talent, and to give western talent a chance to make a huge impact on the scene? And that it was successful? Somehow supporting two great people and players, Hero and Zenio, is supposed to make all that easily ignored? Somehow these acquisitions have reversed our trend despite the fact that we're still giving incredible support to western talent like we have been from day one? You are so absolutely wrong about this that I'm not sure how you could put a single bit of care into your thoughts before you shat them out all over this forum. edit: And just to be complete, Sheth is another great example of investing in western talent. He's had wonderful results since joining Liquid and has been very happy here and getting excellent support. He may even be a better example because at this time that we got him, we very well could have set our sights only on Korean players. But as is abundantly clear to everyone in the world but the OP, Liquid supports western talent.
You should spend less time on the forums and more time practicing, "When I do make a significant impact on the scene" first you should stop worrying about what other people say when they're just generalizing, second you have to actually accomplish something and ever since sc2 came out, you surely haven't done any justice. I would love for you to prove me wrong, but I doubt that you will do anything special this year based off previous tournaments and practice dedication.
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On March 04 2012 00:41 Liquid`NonY wrote:Show nested quote +On March 04 2012 00:06 Eee wrote:On March 04 2012 00:03 Liquid`NonY wrote: no one is willing to invest in the talent that is available in the western scene This is a slap in the face to Liquid. Why you would post this at teamliquid.net I cannot fathom. Really dumb or just really mean? I should edit that, but what I mean is that it is the current trend and majority are not doing it. Now TL is in first hand a community, not a team. If it were to be meant towards I would've made it clear. I haven't really written anything in the post that even hints towards TL, so I dont know why are feeling so hostile about it? Why would you say something so fucked up if you didn't even mean it? You're making even less sense now. TL.net is a community but Liquid obviously has close ties to it. You'll definitely find more Liquid fans at TL.net than anywhere else and more Liquid players posting at TL.net than anywhere else (and more than any other major team at TL.net). In other words, you could well expect that any significant post in the SC2 General section at TL.net is going to be read by Liquid. Now it can hardly be argued that Liquid hasn't invested heavily into non-Korean players. It's just a fact that Liquid went out of its way to get players fully supported and training in Korea ASAP and flying them all around the world to compete in every major tournament. Liquid was the team to pick up and put full support behind TLO after his beta stardom and Huk after his early MLG championship. Liquid supported Jinro Ret and Haypro and myself almost purely off our BW results. All of these players except myself have had amazing results and made significant positive impacts on the scene, except perhaps myself (and when I do, it'll be solely because of Liquid's support). So, we aren't a group of western talent? Were any of us a sure shot? Or could you say that Liquid and The Little App Factory stuck their necks WAY out to support western talent, to develop western talent, and to give western talent a chance to make a huge impact on the scene? And that it was successful? Somehow supporting two great people and players, Hero and Zenio, is supposed to make all that easily ignored? Somehow these acquisitions have reversed our trend despite the fact that we're still giving incredible support to western talent like we have been from day one? You are so absolutely wrong about this that I'm not sure how you could put a single bit of care into your thoughts before you shat them out all over this forum. edit: And just to be complete, Sheth is another great example of investing in western talent. He's had wonderful results since joining Liquid and has been very happy here and getting excellent support. He may even be a better example because at this time that we got him, we very well could have set our sights only on Korean players. But as is abundantly clear to everyone in the world but the OP, Liquid supports western talent.
I think you are massively overreacting. What forum if not TL should he have posted it on?
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On March 04 2012 01:19 lowreezy08 wrote:Show nested quote +On March 04 2012 00:41 Liquid`NonY wrote:On March 04 2012 00:06 Eee wrote:On March 04 2012 00:03 Liquid`NonY wrote: no one is willing to invest in the talent that is available in the western scene This is a slap in the face to Liquid. Why you would post this at teamliquid.net I cannot fathom. Really dumb or just really mean? I should edit that, but what I mean is that it is the current trend and majority are not doing it. Now TL is in first hand a community, not a team. If it were to be meant towards I would've made it clear. I haven't really written anything in the post that even hints towards TL, so I dont know why are feeling so hostile about it? Why would you say something so fucked up if you didn't even mean it? You're making even less sense now. TL.net is a community but Liquid obviously has close ties to it. You'll definitely find more Liquid fans at TL.net than anywhere else and more Liquid players posting at TL.net than anywhere else (and more than any other major team at TL.net). In other words, you could well expect that any significant post in the SC2 General section at TL.net is going to be read by Liquid. Now it can hardly be argued that Liquid hasn't invested heavily into non-Korean players. It's just a fact that Liquid went out of its way to get players fully supported and training in Korea ASAP and flying them all around the world to compete in every major tournament. Liquid was the team to pick up and put full support behind TLO after his beta stardom and Huk after his early MLG championship. Liquid supported Jinro Ret and Haypro and myself almost purely off our BW results. All of these players except myself have had amazing results and made significant positive impacts on the scene, except perhaps myself (and when I do, it'll be solely because of Liquid's support). So, we aren't a group of western talent? Were any of us a sure shot? Or could you say that Liquid and The Little App Factory stuck their necks WAY out to support western talent, to develop western talent, and to give western talent a chance to make a huge impact on the scene? And that it was successful? Somehow supporting two great people and players, Hero and Zenio, is supposed to make all that easily ignored? Somehow these acquisitions have reversed our trend despite the fact that we're still giving incredible support to western talent like we have been from day one? You are so absolutely wrong about this that I'm not sure how you could put a single bit of care into your thoughts before you shat them out all over this forum. edit: And just to be complete, Sheth is another great example of investing in western talent. He's had wonderful results since joining Liquid and has been very happy here and getting excellent support. He may even be a better example because at this time that we got him, we very well could have set our sights only on Korean players. But as is abundantly clear to everyone in the world but the OP, Liquid supports western talent. You should spend less time on the forums and more time practicing, "When I do make a significant impact on the scene" first you should stop worrying about what other people say when they're just generalizing, second you have to actually accomplish something and ever since sc2 came out, you surely haven't done any justice. I would love for you to prove me wrong, but I doubt that you will do anything special this year based off previous tournaments and practice dedication.
I don't consider Tyler a Liquid player anymore, more of a community figure we see whenever SOTG is on. Although we don't know what he does behind the scenes for Liquid.
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Foreign teams don't prefer Koreans because of peer pressure. They prefer them because they are much better, on average. I'm sure most teams would prefer players who speak good English and interact with the fans regularly. If a Korean and a foreigner show the same level of talent, dedication and work ethic the foreigner will get the contract almost every single time.
It's just that even second or third tier Koreans show more dedication and consistent hard work than even some of the best foreigners. How many times have we heard top foreigners admit that they kind of slacked off in the last few month. Idra said that one of the great things about returning to Korea was that he could focus on practice again.
In the end the best players will get invited (or qualify for) the biggest events. Big events bring exposure and prestige for the team and ultimately sponsorship money. The teams literally don't have a choice. Going for second tier foreigners who don't show clear promise is suicide.
I don't want to be critical with foreign players. Obviously being in the top 0.005% in North America is a huge achievement. But it just happens that on average the same amount of money seems to buy much more talent in Korea than anywhere else in the world.
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On March 03 2012 23:26 Eee wrote:
So basically I’m going to start posting a series of blog posts about esports [...]
So why not post it in blogs?
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On March 04 2012 01:25 JOJOsc2news wrote:Show nested quote +On March 03 2012 23:26 Eee wrote:
So basically I’m going to start posting a series of blog posts about esports [...] So why not post it in blogs?
he didn't know how, he already addressed that. give him a break
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On March 04 2012 01:25 JOJOsc2news wrote:Show nested quote +On March 03 2012 23:26 Eee wrote:
So basically I’m going to start posting a series of blog posts about esports [...] So why not post it in blogs?
Check the line at the end of the OP:
Edit: looks like I cant make blog posts, do you have to be a member for a whole year first? :O
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On March 04 2012 01:23 magnaflow wrote:Show nested quote +On March 04 2012 01:19 lowreezy08 wrote:On March 04 2012 00:41 Liquid`NonY wrote:On March 04 2012 00:06 Eee wrote:On March 04 2012 00:03 Liquid`NonY wrote: no one is willing to invest in the talent that is available in the western scene This is a slap in the face to Liquid. Why you would post this at teamliquid.net I cannot fathom. Really dumb or just really mean? I should edit that, but what I mean is that it is the current trend and majority are not doing it. Now TL is in first hand a community, not a team. If it were to be meant towards I would've made it clear. I haven't really written anything in the post that even hints towards TL, so I dont know why are feeling so hostile about it? Why would you say something so fucked up if you didn't even mean it? You're making even less sense now. TL.net is a community but Liquid obviously has close ties to it. You'll definitely find more Liquid fans at TL.net than anywhere else and more Liquid players posting at TL.net than anywhere else (and more than any other major team at TL.net). In other words, you could well expect that any significant post in the SC2 General section at TL.net is going to be read by Liquid. Now it can hardly be argued that Liquid hasn't invested heavily into non-Korean players. It's just a fact that Liquid went out of its way to get players fully supported and training in Korea ASAP and flying them all around the world to compete in every major tournament. Liquid was the team to pick up and put full support behind TLO after his beta stardom and Huk after his early MLG championship. Liquid supported Jinro Ret and Haypro and myself almost purely off our BW results. All of these players except myself have had amazing results and made significant positive impacts on the scene, except perhaps myself (and when I do, it'll be solely because of Liquid's support). So, we aren't a group of western talent? Were any of us a sure shot? Or could you say that Liquid and The Little App Factory stuck their necks WAY out to support western talent, to develop western talent, and to give western talent a chance to make a huge impact on the scene? And that it was successful? Somehow supporting two great people and players, Hero and Zenio, is supposed to make all that easily ignored? Somehow these acquisitions have reversed our trend despite the fact that we're still giving incredible support to western talent like we have been from day one? You are so absolutely wrong about this that I'm not sure how you could put a single bit of care into your thoughts before you shat them out all over this forum. edit: And just to be complete, Sheth is another great example of investing in western talent. He's had wonderful results since joining Liquid and has been very happy here and getting excellent support. He may even be a better example because at this time that we got him, we very well could have set our sights only on Korean players. But as is abundantly clear to everyone in the world but the OP, Liquid supports western talent. You should spend less time on the forums and more time practicing, "When I do make a significant impact on the scene" first you should stop worrying about what other people say when they're just generalizing, second you have to actually accomplish something and ever since sc2 came out, you surely haven't done any justice. I would love for you to prove me wrong, but I doubt that you will do anything special this year based off previous tournaments and practice dedication. I don't consider Tyler a Liquid player anymore, more of a community figure we see whenever SOTG is on. Although we don't know what he does behind the scenes for Liquid.
You're fucking ridiculous, if you disagree with what he say then make an argument. His abilities as a player got nothing to do with this thread. Btw, you're ugly.
User was warned for this post
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On March 04 2012 01:19 lowreezy08 wrote:Show nested quote +On March 04 2012 00:41 Liquid`NonY wrote:On March 04 2012 00:06 Eee wrote:On March 04 2012 00:03 Liquid`NonY wrote: no one is willing to invest in the talent that is available in the western scene This is a slap in the face to Liquid. Why you would post this at teamliquid.net I cannot fathom. Really dumb or just really mean? I should edit that, but what I mean is that it is the current trend and majority are not doing it. Now TL is in first hand a community, not a team. If it were to be meant towards I would've made it clear. I haven't really written anything in the post that even hints towards TL, so I dont know why are feeling so hostile about it? Why would you say something so fucked up if you didn't even mean it? You're making even less sense now. TL.net is a community but Liquid obviously has close ties to it. You'll definitely find more Liquid fans at TL.net than anywhere else and more Liquid players posting at TL.net than anywhere else (and more than any other major team at TL.net). In other words, you could well expect that any significant post in the SC2 General section at TL.net is going to be read by Liquid. Now it can hardly be argued that Liquid hasn't invested heavily into non-Korean players. It's just a fact that Liquid went out of its way to get players fully supported and training in Korea ASAP and flying them all around the world to compete in every major tournament. Liquid was the team to pick up and put full support behind TLO after his beta stardom and Huk after his early MLG championship. Liquid supported Jinro Ret and Haypro and myself almost purely off our BW results. All of these players except myself have had amazing results and made significant positive impacts on the scene, except perhaps myself (and when I do, it'll be solely because of Liquid's support). So, we aren't a group of western talent? Were any of us a sure shot? Or could you say that Liquid and The Little App Factory stuck their necks WAY out to support western talent, to develop western talent, and to give western talent a chance to make a huge impact on the scene? And that it was successful? Somehow supporting two great people and players, Hero and Zenio, is supposed to make all that easily ignored? Somehow these acquisitions have reversed our trend despite the fact that we're still giving incredible support to western talent like we have been from day one? You are so absolutely wrong about this that I'm not sure how you could put a single bit of care into your thoughts before you shat them out all over this forum. edit: And just to be complete, Sheth is another great example of investing in western talent. He's had wonderful results since joining Liquid and has been very happy here and getting excellent support. He may even be a better example because at this time that we got him, we very well could have set our sights only on Korean players. But as is abundantly clear to everyone in the world but the OP, Liquid supports western talent. You should spend less time on the forums and more time practicing, "When I do make a significant impact on the scene" first you should stop worrying about what other people say when they're just generalizing, second you have to actually accomplish something and ever since sc2 came out, you surely haven't done any justice. I would love for you to prove me wrong, but I doubt that you will do anything special this year based off previous tournaments and practice dedication.
Lol, since when did this become about how good Tyler is ? Keep your pointless ad hominem attacks to yourself please.
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We need to understand that in order to compete with the koreans , we must give 8 year old kids a pc with SC2 so they can kick Flash "ass" in a few years .. =P
i think that foreigners are much better now than in Open seasons GSL , we now see a lot of foreigners capable of winning against koreans !
There is always catching up to do , but we are much better now than we were 2 years ago!
Stephano , sheeth , huk , Ret , naniwa , kas and so many more ... all these guys are can play against koreans and win , you people want Bonjwas .
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What the hell at all the Tyler hate in here ? Tyler is way above Axslav.
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It doesnt matter how good Tyler is, but the way he jumped on this guy is ridiculous and not how a liquid member should behave imo.
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On March 04 2012 00:50 Eee wrote:Show nested quote +On March 04 2012 00:41 Liquid`NonY wrote:On March 04 2012 00:06 Eee wrote:On March 04 2012 00:03 Liquid`NonY wrote: no one is willing to invest in the talent that is available in the western scene This is a slap in the face to Liquid. Why you would post this at teamliquid.net I cannot fathom. Really dumb or just really mean? I should edit that, but what I mean is that it is the current trend and majority are not doing it. Now TL is in first hand a community, not a team. If it were to be meant towards I would've made it clear. I haven't really written anything in the post that even hints towards TL, so I dont know why are feeling so hostile about it? Why would you say something so fucked up if you didn't even mean it? You're making even less sense now. TL.net is a community but Liquid obviously has close ties to it. You'll definitely find more Liquid fans at TL.net than anywhere else and more Liquid players posting at TL.net than anywhere else (and more than any other major team at TL.net). In other words, you could well expect that any significant post in the SC2 General section at TL.net is going to be read by Liquid. Now it can hardly be argued that Liquid hasn't invested heavily into non-Korean players. It's just a fact that Liquid went out of its way to get players fully supported and training in Korea ASAP and flying them all around the world to compete in every major tournament. Liquid was the team to pick up and put full support behind TLO after his beta stardom and Huk after his early MLG championship. Liquid supported Jinro Ret and Haypro and myself almost purely off our BW results. All of these players except myself have had amazing results and made significant positive impacts on the scene, except perhaps myself (and when I do, it'll be solely because of Liquid's support). So, we aren't a group of western talent? Were any of us a sure shot? Or could you say that Liquid and The Little App Factory stuck their necks WAY out to support western talent, to develop western talent, and to give western talent a chance to make a huge impact on the scene? And that it was successful? Somehow supporting two great people and players, Hero and Zenio, is supposed to make all that easily ignored? Somehow these acquisitions have reversed our trend despite the fact that we're still giving incredible support to western talent like we have been from day one? You are so absolutely wrong about this that I'm not sure how you could put a single bit of care into your thoughts before you shat them out all over this forum. edit: And just to be complete, Sheth is another great example of investing in western talent. He's had wonderful results since joining Liquid and has been very happy here and getting excellent support. He may even be a better example because at this time that we got him, we very well could have set our sights only on Korean players. But as is abundantly clear to everyone in the world but the OP, Liquid supports western talent. LOL, seriously. I just said this wasn't even meant to be against TL why are you even arguing? NOTHING in this post implies anything about TL, so I dont even understand why you are trying to prove anything. I 90% agree with you, I'm not pointing fingers at TL. And by western talent I mean people like Bly (who just got picked up by Acer) and BiGs (who got picked up by mouz some months ago) who are online warriors but haven't ever been given the chance to play at offline events and fulltime. TL mosly consists of people who had some previous history from bw (like Haypro, Ret and you).
Since players like Bly and BiGs do get picked up like you say, where's the problem?
Beastyqt's post was pretty interesting btw.
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On March 04 2012 01:33 mdb wrote:
It doesnt matter how good Tyler is, but the way he jumped on this guy is ridiculous and not how a liquid member should behave imo.
he shouldn't defend his team when he believes someone slanders it?
ffs, pros are going to stop posting on the forums because of people like you. is there a standard for how they should post? can they not have opinions? this isn't sundance completely shitting on ipl. it's a player defending his team.
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On March 04 2012 01:33 mdb wrote:
It doesnt matter how good Tyler is, but the way he jumped on this guy is ridiculous and not how a liquid member should behave imo.
Although I agree that Tyler overreacted, I am pretty sure TL players are not on a PR leash and can say whatever the hell they want. ( Actually I KNOW that from following Jinro's posts ) Just because they are pro players does not mean they don't get an opinion and the right to discuss it in public.
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The problem with esports is that people want to mimic sports events, but esports have a fraction of the viewers. That's just not going to work long term.
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we (north americans) are irrelevant to eSports ... Blizzard's focus for eSports growth is China and South Korea... if those two countries happen to drag North America along then its just a bonus.
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I think a main reason for teams wanting to sign korean players is because people want to watch the best games. I for one, don't care if I'm watching European, American, or Korean players. I want to watch the best and at this point, objectively that's the Korean players. I'm not going to single out any players, but if the best of the best for foreigners can't make it in the GSL (players that have won many foreign tourneys) then why are we even mentioning foreigners who haven't won tourneys in the same breath as Korean Code B players (a lot of whom have qualified for GSL at some point and not just given a seed) No foreigner has ever made it through the Code A Prelims. Obviously Koreans are not inherently better by race, so the only conclusion to draw is that either a.) Foreigners don't practice as hard as Koreans (probably true on average) or b.) For the foreigners that are practicing as much or as hard, that their practice methods are inferior to Koreans or rather, that if the Koreans all practice hard and a lot, then they will be better and hence have better practice partners.
Edit: Without finding why Korean players are better, then foreigners will always be complaining that they aren't getting the support they need, when simply put they aren't as good as Koreans. Maybe foreigners should spend more time trying to find out why the Koreans are so good and what they can do to perform at the same level.
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On March 04 2012 01:10 ArcticRaven wrote:Show nested quote +On March 04 2012 00:57 Shiori wrote:
Liquid supports western talent. Not going to argue that. This whole thread is stupid, though, because teams should support the best players, and I can't think of more than 10 who are realistic contenders of getting into Code A/S. That's not the counter-argument to OP's problem. It's the consequence. Why isn't there more foreign good players ? Because most foreign teams are beginning to invest less and less into foreign players. Edit : orthography.
That excuse it too easy in my regard, because you can say that regardless how many good foreign players are on the scene.
Overall, I think the problem lies in the meager competitive playerbase outside of Korea, so the few outstanding players that it yields are inferior to the players that stand out in the Korean playerbase, who are picked up by the Korean teams for even further training.
Is throwing more money at the playerbase a solution to this? Of course it is, but what problem in our world cannot be solved by throwing more money at it? I think there should be some other good solution for the foreign dilemma, but currently I have no clue what.
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On March 04 2012 00:03 Liquid`NonY wrote:Show nested quote + no one is willing to invest in the talent that is available in the western scene This is a slap in the face to Liquid. Why you would post this at teamliquid.net I cannot fathom. Really dumb or just really mean?
I don't think he was targeting this at Liquid in particular, and it is definitely not an insult. He does make a valid point, that major foreign teams are not really signing that many foreigners anymore.
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"...killing esports?" is killing esports.
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On March 04 2012 01:43 Bagration wrote:Show nested quote +On March 04 2012 00:03 Liquid`NonY wrote: no one is willing to invest in the talent that is available in the western scene This is a slap in the face to Liquid. Why you would post this at teamliquid.net I cannot fathom. Really dumb or just really mean? I don't think he was targeting this at Liquid in particular, and it is definitely not an insult. But when is the last time TL signed a foreign player? 2010? He does make a valid point, that major foreign teams are not really signing that many foreigners anymore.
http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/viewmessage.php?topic_id=248886
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On March 04 2012 01:43 Bagration wrote:Show nested quote +On March 04 2012 00:03 Liquid`NonY wrote: no one is willing to invest in the talent that is available in the western scene This is a slap in the face to Liquid. Why you would post this at teamliquid.net I cannot fathom. Really dumb or just really mean? I don't think he was targeting this at Liquid in particular, and it is definitely not an insult. But when is the last time TL signed a foreign player? 2010? He does make a valid point, that major foreign teams are not really signing that many foreigners anymore.
July 2011 as a matter of fact.
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On March 04 2012 01:43 hyptonic wrote:Show nested quote +On March 04 2012 01:43 Bagration wrote:On March 04 2012 00:03 Liquid`NonY wrote: no one is willing to invest in the talent that is available in the western scene This is a slap in the face to Liquid. Why you would post this at teamliquid.net I cannot fathom. Really dumb or just really mean? I don't think he was targeting this at Liquid in particular, and it is definitely not an insult. But when is the last time TL signed a foreign player? 2010? He does make a valid point, that major foreign teams are not really signing that many foreigners anymore. http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/viewmessage.php?topic_id=248886
Oh god can't believe I forgot. Edited my post, and sorry for the misinformation. That being said, I think we shouldn't look only at Liquid and at the scene as aggregate. This is an issue that is important, as it helps sustain the foreign scene.
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On March 04 2012 01:33 WhiteDog wrote:
What the hell at all the Tyler hate in here ? Tyler is way above Axslav.
http://wiki.teamliquid.net/starcraft2/2012_MLG_Pro_Circuit/Winter/North_America
This article made some pretty massive statements, and it's all well and good to go and correct / clarify them later but it devalues your entire post. As is listing a bunch of sources without a few clicks to find out how to make a blog post.
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Vatican City State334 Posts
The issue with teams picking up Koreans is not a simply a Starcraft issue. There is a seemingly endless amount of talent in Asia and they're willing to throw themselves fully into whatever they want to do - whether it be playing SC2, education, or work. You have to start the argument there as to why there aren't enough foreigners worth it for teams to pick up, it's an economical and cultural issue with the West. For now, the best chance you have to make it is be a personality first and foremost and leave the playing prospects to Koreans.
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On March 04 2012 01:35 7mk wrote:Show nested quote +On March 04 2012 00:50 Eee wrote:On March 04 2012 00:41 Liquid`NonY wrote:On March 04 2012 00:06 Eee wrote:On March 04 2012 00:03 Liquid`NonY wrote: no one is willing to invest in the talent that is available in the western scene This is a slap in the face to Liquid. Why you would post this at teamliquid.net I cannot fathom. Really dumb or just really mean? I should edit that, but what I mean is that it is the current trend and majority are not doing it. Now TL is in first hand a community, not a team. If it were to be meant towards I would've made it clear. I haven't really written anything in the post that even hints towards TL, so I dont know why are feeling so hostile about it? Why would you say something so fucked up if you didn't even mean it? You're making even less sense now. TL.net is a community but Liquid obviously has close ties to it. You'll definitely find more Liquid fans at TL.net than anywhere else and more Liquid players posting at TL.net than anywhere else (and more than any other major team at TL.net). In other words, you could well expect that any significant post in the SC2 General section at TL.net is going to be read by Liquid. Now it can hardly be argued that Liquid hasn't invested heavily into non-Korean players. It's just a fact that Liquid went out of its way to get players fully supported and training in Korea ASAP and flying them all around the world to compete in every major tournament. Liquid was the team to pick up and put full support behind TLO after his beta stardom and Huk after his early MLG championship. Liquid supported Jinro Ret and Haypro and myself almost purely off our BW results. All of these players except myself have had amazing results and made significant positive impacts on the scene, except perhaps myself (and when I do, it'll be solely because of Liquid's support). So, we aren't a group of western talent? Were any of us a sure shot? Or could you say that Liquid and The Little App Factory stuck their necks WAY out to support western talent, to develop western talent, and to give western talent a chance to make a huge impact on the scene? And that it was successful? Somehow supporting two great people and players, Hero and Zenio, is supposed to make all that easily ignored? Somehow these acquisitions have reversed our trend despite the fact that we're still giving incredible support to western talent like we have been from day one? You are so absolutely wrong about this that I'm not sure how you could put a single bit of care into your thoughts before you shat them out all over this forum. edit: And just to be complete, Sheth is another great example of investing in western talent. He's had wonderful results since joining Liquid and has been very happy here and getting excellent support. He may even be a better example because at this time that we got him, we very well could have set our sights only on Korean players. But as is abundantly clear to everyone in the world but the OP, Liquid supports western talent. LOL, seriously. I just said this wasn't even meant to be against TL why are you even arguing? NOTHING in this post implies anything about TL, so I dont even understand why you are trying to prove anything. I 90% agree with you, I'm not pointing fingers at TL. And by western talent I mean people like Bly (who just got picked up by Acer) and BiGs (who got picked up by mouz some months ago) who are online warriors but haven't ever been given the chance to play at offline events and fulltime. TL mosly consists of people who had some previous history from bw (like Haypro, Ret and you). Since players like Bly and BiGs do get picked up like you say, where's the problem? Beastyqt's post was pretty interesting btw.
Those are the examples of teams doing it right, but majority are following the korean hype especially the big organisations. SK tried to develop young talent but ended up kicking the whole team some months later, NaVi did it for a bit longer but they also got rid of the whole team. The big organisations are pretty much "role models" for the lesser organisations, and looking at the big organisations right now, none of them have really tried to grow there own talent, Complexity is a exception though. Although they have 3 koreans on their team, and they also sponsor a korean team, they are in fact running their Col.Academy thing and have given the chance to players like Gosuser and Trimaster. But there's really no team besides a few european and coL who are doing this. And even coL seems to be abondoning this idea.
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And you think EG doesn't support western players? They had a BW team you know? Before SC2 was out they allready had machine, idra, incontrol etc. and they setup a western practice house so yeah they do invest in western esports.
Korea is to stacraft what USA is with basketball and Brasil with football, the powerhouse country that export talent.
There is almost no european basketball team without a usa player and there are almost no team in european football with zero brasilians, many have 3 or more.. so yeah it's unfortunate.
The thing is they(Koreans) want to come, because "we" have more money to support their biggers numbers and better quality.
It happens in all sports and will carry on like that if people don't change anything. Will it kill esports? I don't know but atleast for me i don't have to see all tournaments with 50% Koreans or 80% Koreans, because for that I have GSL.
Even if a noname codeB is better then tyler or Axslav, the storys&rivalries will make more sense and bring better emotion in wins/losses.
In my opinion if people want to improve the western scene versus the Koreans, event organizers must do a GSL type of thing where you have a season and only people in that region (Korean for GSL) can participate. Korean players like Real or Violet that commit to that change should be welcomed of course.
It's not fair that you have to sacrifice so much to attend GSL and the Koreans just need to come (deal with jetlag of course), win or lose and go back home, wasting a couple of days. Nowadays it seems like the korean teams won't even have to pay for the cost of coming to us, while we have to pay for our players to stay there for months and wait for chances to qualify or have a seed for code A or S.
Many many things are wrong with this "eSport" time will tell if the people in charge made the right choices..
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Excellent OP. I've been thinking the same for a while (especially as a big Ax fan since TFT) but haven't mustered the courage to write about it. Kudos to you.
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One of the best OP's I've read in a long time, I never thought about the esports future like this before, but you really have a point.
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On March 04 2012 00:32 zezamer wrote:
Would you rather sponsor a korean kid who sees sc2 as his job and lives in a team house or a kinda good foreign player who goes to uni and plays some sc2 when he has time. ?
Pretty much this. Esports and professional gaming is far more accepted in Korea than it is in the foreign scene. Even if there were up and coming SC2 foreigners with that kind of mindset (Practice for 12 hours a day, etc), it would be hard to justify that kind of exsistence for a chance at scraps? You can see that from Stephano, a player who only practices 3-4 hours a day and fully acknowledges that SC2 is not his future. He says this because playing SC2 and investing 12 hours a day to have a 'CHANCE' at becoming good is a fools errand. You could invest 12 hours a day in practically any other profession and be much more secure in your future. Let's not forget that the Esports scene is incredibly volatile. At any minute the scene could die and the game you invested so much time in is now being replaced by new games. Games that are going to require even more hours invested (12+ hour days).
I really admire SC2 professional players who are whilling to sacrifice so much for practically nothing. Only a very small percentage actually make it 'worth' their while to follow this path. A path that really is quite foolish to follow in the end, IMO.
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To comment on your point about axslav and probably your view on alot of foreigners at his skill level:
They are nowhere near code B material, end.
OT: Money rules.
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I'm tired of all these "killing e-sports" threads, if people enjoy it enough and there is a big enough fan base it will grow and you will not be able to "kill" it. People need to understand that if you want to enjoy the content then pay for it, if you don't buy it because you don't want to watch it doesn't mean you are killing e-sports. If the product is good enough and the demand is there it will not die or be able to be "killed".
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On March 04 2012 02:03 shell wrote:
And you think EG doesn't support western players? They had a BW team you know? Before SC2 was out they allready had machine, idra, incontrol etc. and they setup a western practice house so yeah they do invest in western esports.
They did. They don't anymore as to what we see (Axslav, Puma, JYP)
In my opinion if people want to improve the western scene versus the Koreans, event organizers must do a GSL type of thing where you have a season and only people in that region (Korean for GSL) can participate. Korean players like Real or Violet that commit to that change should be welcomed of course.
Oh but foreigners can qualify for Code S. They just don't want or succeed at it.
I'm tired of all these "killing e-sports" threads, if people enjoy it enough and there is a big enough fan base it will grow and you will not be able to "kill" it. People need to understand that if you want to enjoy the content then pay for it, if you don't buy it because you don't want to watch it doesn't mean you are killing e-sports. If the product is good enough and the demand is there it will not die or be able to be "killed".
The problem OP raises precisely concerns the fan base. How many fans will be left when there'll be only Koreans in the scene ?
Well, Millenium and Mouz fans, you could say
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After the recent MLG I think the skill gap is closing. I am not worried at all.
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On March 04 2012 02:18 Aunvilgod wrote:
After the recent MLG I think the skill gap is closing. I am not worried at all.
What makes you say that? People have been saying this for the last year. All I see is the gap widening.
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NonY please relax. TL is awesome and nobody wants to slap your team in the face. It seems you just want to prove your stance, no matter what.
Beastyqt posted something very valid, stating that korean mercs on a foreigner team will give them short (maybe even longer) term succes, when it comes to leaguewins. But it is highly doubtful that a majority ofthe foreigner fanbase will be as emotional involved as if a foreigner manages to beat some big names. And the more emotional involved the fans are the better for the Team, merchandise sales and their sponsors.
I think the right balance is important. 4Kings back in WC3 was my absolute favorite team. Grubby, ToD and Creo were not better then SK, WE or MYM (they all had lot`s of asians in their roster), but they were on the same level and always able to beat every other team. If that happened the scene went fucking nuts and this moved way more fans then a victory of an Asian mercteam.
personal edit: Besides all I said, I also was a Fan of Lyn, Fly100%, TH000, Remind, Moon, Lucifer, TeD and others ^______________^
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I really agree with the blog.
Foreign teams are picking up some code B korean players because those players are already pretty solid and also seeking ways to get well-known.
I can't remember any koreans that joined a foreign team and isn't a core member for their respective team and doing poorly.
Even if players like JYP is underperforming a bit (for a Code A/S) but he is still a really good player and took out a few good players.
The western scene lacks up and rising players like them, (the only one I can think of is stephano and maybe goswer), the rest are mostly solid, established players such as Dimaga and White-ra.
The only ones that would get picked up are either those who have a special relationship with the team, or someone who brings lots of values into the community, or just a really good player that can produce results.
Investing however, is super risky.
Just think of the ratio of how many talents were recruited and how many produced good results.
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On March 04 2012 01:33 WhiteDog wrote:
What the hell at all the Tyler hate in here ? Tyler is way above Axslav.
I think you need to start watching some more recent tournaments, and stop rewatching tournaments from 2010.
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I'm surprised at how some people are perceiving this as an attack. It's not even written in an inflammatory manner ...
eSports is more than SC2, anyways. We might be killing global eSports, but if Korea doesn't get eaten by the LoL fad, I'm sure they'll be able to sustain a respectable SC2 scene (especially if BW players switch over with their fanbases), just like it's sustaining their BW scene and China is sustaining their War3 scene.
To clarify, I don't think the eSports scene as a whole will ever truly stabilize in the true sense of the word, in that games will always die and newer titles will come up to take their place. Some fans will drop out, some fans will stay for their old game, some will switch, and there will be a new bubble, but I doubt it will ever reach a happy equilibrium.
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On March 04 2012 02:18 Aunvilgod wrote:
After the recent MLG I think the skill gap is closing. I am not worried at all.
But it is the same foreigners at the top, while there are more and more rising Koreans. We need more Thorzain at TSL3 moments.
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On March 04 2012 00:03 Liquid`NonY wrote:Show nested quote + no one is willing to invest in the talent that is available in the western scene This is a slap in the face to Liquid. Why you would post this at teamliquid.net I cannot fathom. Really dumb or just really mean?
Uh... where do you think HerO and Zenio came from? Yea, OGS-TL are partnered but no one would argue that the 2 Koreans are spearheading TL now.
I completely agree with the OP, it's a little disappointing to see the bigger foreign teams looking purely to Korean talent instead of developing foreign players.
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The whole problem lies in discovering TALENTS!
How do u notice talents in sc2 anyways? I got no clue. Well, ofc, when sb is winning like stephano did, he sure got talent. But how do u discover talent, that needs to be forged into a star?
I football, and other sports, there are coaches, teammates, etc etc, a lot of people following the "way" of a career, and they can judge, based on what they saw during the time, that somebody got talent. IMHO this is way more complicated in Starcraft. You can judge how a player performs when you see him, but there is no "noticable evolution" if you dont follow every step of a player. I think for organizations (which wants at least some future results) its SO HARD to discover talent.
Tyler even said TL.net took players like him Haypro and ret based on their BW performances. Then they took HuK and TLO, 2 of the best early SC2 players. Considering this, TL never aquired an "unknown", which shows how hard its for a team to look for "talent".
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On March 04 2012 02:42 SupLilSon wrote:Show nested quote +On March 04 2012 00:03 Liquid`NonY wrote: no one is willing to invest in the talent that is available in the western scene This is a slap in the face to Liquid. Why you would post this at teamliquid.net I cannot fathom. Really dumb or just really mean? Uh... where do you think HerO and Zenio came from? Yea, OGS-TL are partnered but no one would argue that the 2 Koreans are spearheading TL now. I completely agree with the OP, it's a little disappointing to see the bigger foreign teams looking purely to Korean talent instead of developing foreign players.
Yeah, except that's NOT how the reality is. This thread is one big pile of generic speculation and will be forgotton in a few weeks. Personally I find this to be ridiculous, "are we killing e-sports", I should make a thread something along these lines "are we out of our fucking mind?"
No, we're not killing e-sports. E-sports is not about western or eastern teams. It's about you and me. So whoever is constantly making these threads are either racist or paranoid. You're killing e-sports when you draw strict lines between players. I don't see Puma or Hero as "koreans", of course they are. But to me they're EG and Liquid, not korean.
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On March 04 2012 02:52 Pantythief wrote:Show nested quote +On March 04 2012 02:42 SupLilSon wrote:On March 04 2012 00:03 Liquid`NonY wrote: no one is willing to invest in the talent that is available in the western scene This is a slap in the face to Liquid. Why you would post this at teamliquid.net I cannot fathom. Really dumb or just really mean? Uh... where do you think HerO and Zenio came from? Yea, OGS-TL are partnered but no one would argue that the 2 Koreans are spearheading TL now. I completely agree with the OP, it's a little disappointing to see the bigger foreign teams looking purely to Korean talent instead of developing foreign players. Yeah, except that's NOT how the reality is. This thread is one big pile of generic speculation and will be forgotton in a few weeks. Personally I find this to be ridiculous, "are we killing e-sports", I should make a thread something along these lines "are we out of our fucking mind?" No, we're not killing e-sports. E-sports is not about western or eastern teams. It's about you and me. So whoever is constantly making these threads are either racist or paranoid. You're killing e-sports when you draw strict lines between players. I don't see Puma or Hero as "koreans", of course they are. But to me they're EG and Liquid, not korean.
Well then you missed the entire point of the OP's post.
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On March 04 2012 02:55 SupLilSon wrote:Show nested quote +On March 04 2012 02:52 Pantythief wrote:On March 04 2012 02:42 SupLilSon wrote:On March 04 2012 00:03 Liquid`NonY wrote: no one is willing to invest in the talent that is available in the western scene This is a slap in the face to Liquid. Why you would post this at teamliquid.net I cannot fathom. Really dumb or just really mean? Uh... where do you think HerO and Zenio came from? Yea, OGS-TL are partnered but no one would argue that the 2 Koreans are spearheading TL now. I completely agree with the OP, it's a little disappointing to see the bigger foreign teams looking purely to Korean talent instead of developing foreign players. Yeah, except that's NOT how the reality is. This thread is one big pile of generic speculation and will be forgotton in a few weeks. Personally I find this to be ridiculous, "are we killing e-sports", I should make a thread something along these lines "are we out of our fucking mind?" No, we're not killing e-sports. E-sports is not about western or eastern teams. It's about you and me. So whoever is constantly making these threads are either racist or paranoid. You're killing e-sports when you draw strict lines between players. I don't see Puma or Hero as "koreans", of course they are. But to me they're EG and Liquid, not korean. Well then you missed the entire point of the OP's post.
I quoted that other guy for a reason.
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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.
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I don't think I'd put any blame on foreign teams because they are competing with other teams and will generally do anything they can to form and build the strongest team they can. It's a slightly more grey area where tournament organisers are concerned like MLG and IPL though in my opinion.
The more Koreans, who live and work for Korean teams, they invite and allow to attempt to qualify in open brackets the quicker SC2 will die out in the foreign scene, or at least stop growing and decline to a much smaller pool of dedicated players. Keep major foreign tournaments more regional. Allow Koreans to qualify in open tournaments but I think the number's must be limited in some way or just attempt to discourage so many from travelling over by having more barriers to entry. If more than half the final bracket is Korean I start to lose interest quite rapidly.
Obviously I love watching the GSL because I expect to see the very best players playing at the highest level, as a viewer I have different expectations for foreigner tournaments, wanting to see the best foreigners playing each other is higher up my list of what I want to see.
What I dread is seeing large numbers of Koreans dominating the final brackets of every major tournament all over the world, because then everything is the same, protect the foreign competitive scene.
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hanari just dropped knowledge bombs. very cool to hear an insider perspective on things dude, thank you
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Thanks for sharing hanari, that was interesting.
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On March 04 2012 00:06 Eee wrote:Show nested quote +On March 04 2012 00:03 Liquid`NonY wrote: no one is willing to invest in the talent that is available in the western scene This is a slap in the face to Liquid. Why you would post this at teamliquid.net I cannot fathom. Really dumb or just really mean? I should edit that, but what I mean is that it is the current trend and majority are not doing it. Now TL is in first hand a community, not a team. If it were to be meant towards I would've made it clear. I haven't really written anything in the post that even hints towards TL, so I dont know why are feeling so hostile about it?
how is EG starting a team house in US not investing in the western side of things?
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I'd say for e-sports to thrive and become huge, sc2 would need a "Tiger Woods" so to speak. Each sport has had one person that caused a public interest to spike. Tiger for golf, MJ for basketball, Gretzsky for hockey and so on. One amazing American that people can relate to will cause a huge upswing in e-sports popularity. An amazing player that is a villian would be an even better draw.
I believe that if sc2 had an overly cocky and completely dominating player that spoke english, popularity in the game and e-sports in general would spike. Also for some reason, when a sport in America becomes huge, popularity in other countries rises as well. IMO, get Americans hyped about e-sports and things will soar.
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As someone who quit playing a while ago, I only watch tournaments to see the best of the best compete. I don't care whether they are Korean, African, American, European or whatever. It's only normal for teams to sign only the best players, and those appear to be mostly Koreans. I am not a fan of any particular player, since most of them peak and slump way too rapidly because the metagame is still pretty unstable. I just watch tournaments to see high-level play.
I don't believe we are killing esports by focussing the best players instead of the mediocre ones. It hasn't exactly killed other sports yet, on the contrary. I really don't get why people are so chauvinistic about starcraft 2, to be honest.
Throughout the lifespan of SC2 I have been pretty underwhelmed by foreign players, save for a few exceptions like Huk, Stephano, Naniwa and Thorzain.
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On March 04 2012 03:14 DieselDart wrote:
I'd say for e-sports to thrive and become huge, sc2 would need a "Tiger Woods" so to speak. Each sport has had one person that caused a public interest to spike. Tiger for golf, MJ for basketball, Gretzsky for hockey and so on. One amazing American that people can relate to will cause a huge upswing in e-sports popularity. An amazing player that is a villian would be an even better draw.
I believe that if sc2 had an overly cocky and completely dominating player that spoke english, popularity in the game and e-sports in general would spike. Also for some reason, when a sport in America becomes huge, popularity in other countries rises as well. IMO, get Americans hyped about e-sports and things will soar.
that is easier said that done you know, esports doesn't have a flagship sport and even if it did, the mentality amongst mainstream people in the west is that video games = a waste of time, also things like sc2 are hard to understand and boring/frustrating to watch if you don't understand wtf is going on, with any field sport it is easy to pick up the gist of it quickly and "get involved", there is little to no social aspect for RTs games because they require the participants to 1v1 alone in a room for hours on end, hardly endearing to all the worried parents in the west that want their kids to grow up with loads of friends etc etc, there are so many things stacked against esports that it will have to take something huge to swing it with the mainstream and a huge cultural shift would have to take place
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On March 04 2012 03:22 mememolly wrote:Show nested quote +On March 04 2012 03:14 DieselDart wrote:
I'd say for e-sports to thrive and become huge, sc2 would need a "Tiger Woods" so to speak. Each sport has had one person that caused a public interest to spike. Tiger for golf, MJ for basketball, Gretzsky for hockey and so on. One amazing American that people can relate to will cause a huge upswing in e-sports popularity. An amazing player that is a villian would be an even better draw.
I believe that if sc2 had an overly cocky and completely dominating player that spoke english, popularity in the game and e-sports in general would spike. Also for some reason, when a sport in America becomes huge, popularity in other countries rises as well. IMO, get Americans hyped about e-sports and things will soar. that is easier said that done you know, esports doesn't have a flagship sport and even if it did, the mentality amongst mainstream people in the west is that video games = a waste of time, also things like sc2 are hard to understand and boring/frustrating to watch if you don't understand wtf is going on, with any field sport it is easy to pick up the gist of it quickly and "get involved", there is little to no social aspect for RTs games because they require the participants to 1v1 alone in a room for hours on end, hardly endearing to all the worried parents in the west that want their kids to grow up with loads of friends etc etc, there are so many things stacked against esports that it will have to take something huge to swing it with the mainstream and a huge cultural shift would have to take place
Exactly. I think 1 player that absolutely crushes the sport can be that huge thing.
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I don't think the OP articulated a connection between the decline of the WC3 scene and the current SC2 "bubble." He attributes the decline of the WC3 scene to western WC3 teams paying their (western) players too much. Then he points to foreign SC2 teams recruiting Koreans and not foreigners. Well doesn't that mean SC2 teams are doing the opposite of what WC3 teams did? SC2 teams aren't investing enough in foreigners while WC3 teams invested too much in foreigners. Also, obviously the inflated WC3 salaries were not a result of those teams hiring Koreans/Chinese. And in SC2, we don't have any evidence that salaries are inflated at all...only teams like Complexity and EG are likely paying the kinds of salaries that WC3 teams did.
In sum, the OP doesn't really have a point here. If he wants to connect the lack of investment in foreigners to the "bubble" effect he needs to actually connect that lack of investment to inflated salaries/prize pools. Is there less viewership as a result of foreign tournaments being won by Koreans rather than foreigners? No, in fact the viewership would probably be lower with more foreigners because it would be a lower level of play.
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On March 04 2012 01:33 WhiteDog wrote:
What the hell at all the Tyler hate in here ? Tyler is way above Axslav.
What does him being above Axslav have anything to do with anything haha? Besides, he sure isn't above him rofl.
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Teams who don't realize most foreigners want to see foreigners win will lose in visibility. The best case would be FXO: they didn't merge with fOu, they simply replaced their line-up with a Korean one. Now look where they are? Does anyone care about them anymore?
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On March 04 2012 02:49 krisss wrote:
Tyler even said TL.net took players like him Haypro and ret based on their BW performances. Then they took HuK and TLO, 2 of the best early SC2 players. Considering this, TL never aquired an "unknown", which shows how hard its for a team to look for "talent".
Huk and TLO might not have been unknown, but they were completely unproven players with no real professional or even high level RTS background. The skill level and level of competition in general around the end of beta and early release was so low that it was impossible to tell by results alone whether a player can stay in the top for the next 2 or 3 years. There was no "best" back then, there were only players who were less bad. There was no way to estimate someone's potential skill or talent from that level of play.
It was a massive gamble to go for HuK over players like Nony, TT1 or G5 at the time.
Also, while Jinro had some potential and was in a Korean clan, he had no big results to speak of. For several months before GSL Open S3, people were (loudly) wondering who this guy was and why is he wasting time in Korea, much like they do with Haypro today (in fact he was even considered worse than Haypro, a triple DH winner).
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This thread is so fucking weird.
Everyone is like "it's westerners vs koreans" and thinking that westerners don't want to watch koreans play.
Maybe that's true of Johnny Bronzeleaguer who thinks that koreans just play mindlessly or cheesy but most people just want to watch good starcraft. I don't give a crap what country the player i'm watching comes from as long as he shows good games.
Why are so many people obsessed with making esports big in the western world? If it happens at all it's going to be a very gradual process. Would you enjoy starcraft more if more people in your country watched it? If so, that seems oddly racsist. Just enjoy the game, please.
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I have worked with one of the ex-leaders of Hoorai and I've also worked for MYM in 2009, which obviously resulted in a non-existing paycheck.
I took away from those experiences that it's mostly some few people in the scene who are total dickheads and a lot of people who believe they're doing something good who proceed to get scammed. If a big organisation like MYM tells you "Oh, yeah, we're gonna deal with that money asap" you trust them. Why wouldn't you? They have a seemingly good reputation, no one would think they have troubles paying their employees and it sounds cool to say "Hey, I'm working for MYM!"
What I would suggest is to anyone who aims to work in that sector is to ABSOLUTELY make sure that contracts are valid (ask a lawyer), signed in time and make sure to insist on getting paid in time, even when it affects personal relationships.
What happened to the guys I worked with and me in 2009 (MYM tried to follow the poker-boom and tried to start their own coaching/referral program, I was in charge for the content) was that MYM delayed contract signing by about 1-2 months. Basicly there's one guy who is all cool and talks to you about your project and a "different departement" which handles the contracts. Bam, good cop bad cop. After the contracts got delayed some "issues came up" which delayed payment for another month. Suddenly you're in a spot where you invested time and energy without getting paid for about 2-3 months total.
Another month or two down the road they find a "legal issue" which "everyone involved should have told them about" and suddenly someone ask "Oh, you didn't have a contract for month xy? Well, then we can't pay you!" ... Next thing you know your "nice guy who talked to you about your project" disappears and you find out he quit a month ago - because he didn't get paid for almost half a year. Now if you write about the missing money you get blown off with standard letters and can decide to drop it because it's not worth it or get a lawyer and make the whole thing explode.
For the people involved in the above project the monetary damages weren't that high individually, but I'm guessing the total amount people got scammed for is around 6-10k €.
tl;dr: Don't be an immature and idealistic fuck when it comes to money. It most likely will put you into a spot where you can't keep up your idealistic ideals and find out the hard cold truth that you're working for a company that's about money in the end. Not more, not less.
I'd like to believe that stuff like this isn't what happens all the time, but it's a few people who don't give a fuck about people and only care about their profit who make it seem like it's a common issue. It's up to people who work for them to put it to an end.
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Some good points made.
A great example of foreigner talent being found and developed is Dignitas's UK gamer search, which Bling (a mostly unknown to anyone not in the know about the small UK scene) won. Now thanks to their support he's flourished into an arguably top tier foreigner, achieving some good results already. More of this would be great for the scene.
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One thing i can say from my point of view. I will never follow any competition that has an absurdly high number of korean players and just 1-2 foreigners.... I care about entertainment as a "semi-sport". At football...i will always get more hyped when i see Country vs Country (ex for Region vs Region) compared to Club A vs Club B from the same region (Kr). That's what i want to see...that's the ultimate sport-fan-favorite.. that's what sells the most specially from sponsors.
U think MLG would have as many (over a long period of time) supporters if just Kr are there? LolNo. Each time i see competitions were KR1 vs KR2 takes place i always go "whatever....a kr wins...yea cheeks skill what...ever...". But when a foreigner vs kr comes up u are all eyes and years....because it's a not only a matter of skill..but now also a matter of pride vs an "unbeatable force". Will never invest emotionally or care as much for a Kr vs Kr as i would for a Foreigner vs Kr
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well one of the factors that ruined wc3 scene back then is that it's full of empty promises and broken dreams. People thinks doing esport is easy, organizations after organizations come and go. Even giant ones failed. Hope thats not the case for sc2.
And the info that hanari dude posted above doesnt fully reflect on the salary when wc3 was doing good aka 06-08. Iirc topnotch stars like Moon, Lyn, Lucifer got 5K-$10K per month, real good Koreans like some of the SK players got like 2k-4K. In total there were like 20+ Koreans that were kinda wellpaid, not to mention a special Chinese project called BET which was believed to pay way more.
Whats more ? Imbalance race, 8 years old mappool, sc2 surfacing etc. aka not something that is likely to happen to sc2.
So, I think the analogy drawn by OP is kinda bad. As long as the Korean scene lives, more orgs like TL, EG (not Reign lol), the sc2 scene will thrive
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On March 04 2012 00:41 Liquid`NonY wrote:Show nested quote +On March 04 2012 00:06 Eee wrote:On March 04 2012 00:03 Liquid`NonY wrote: no one is willing to invest in the talent that is available in the western scene This is a slap in the face to Liquid. Why you would post this at teamliquid.net I cannot fathom. Really dumb or just really mean? I should edit that, but what I mean is that it is the current trend and majority are not doing it. Now TL is in first hand a community, not a team. If it were to be meant towards I would've made it clear. I haven't really written anything in the post that even hints towards TL, so I dont know why are feeling so hostile about it? Why would you say something so fucked up if you didn't even mean it? You're making even less sense now. TL.net is a community but Liquid obviously has close ties to it. You'll definitely find more Liquid fans at TL.net than anywhere else and more Liquid players posting at TL.net than anywhere else (and more than any other major team at TL.net). In other words, you could well expect that any significant post in the SC2 General section at TL.net is going to be read by Liquid. Now it can hardly be argued that Liquid hasn't invested heavily into non-Korean players. It's just a fact that Liquid went out of its way to get players fully supported and training in Korea ASAP and flying them all around the world to compete in every major tournament. Liquid was the team to pick up and put full support behind TLO after his beta stardom and Huk after his early MLG championship. Liquid supported Jinro Ret and Haypro and myself almost purely off our BW results. All of these players except myself have had amazing results and made significant positive impacts on the scene, except perhaps myself (and when I do, it'll be solely because of Liquid's support). So, we aren't a group of western talent? Were any of us a sure shot? Or could you say that Liquid and The Little App Factory stuck their necks WAY out to support western talent, to develop western talent, and to give western talent a chance to make a huge impact on the scene? And that it was successful? Somehow supporting two great people and players, Hero and Zenio, is supposed to make all that easily ignored? Somehow these acquisitions have reversed our trend despite the fact that we're still giving incredible support to western talent like we have been from day one? You are so absolutely wrong about this that I'm not sure how you could put a single bit of care into your thoughts before you shat them out all over this forum. edit: And just to be complete, Sheth is another great example of investing in western talent. He's had wonderful results since joining Liquid and has been very happy here and getting excellent support. He may even be a better example because at this time that we got him, we very well could have set our sights only on Korean players. But as is abundantly clear to everyone in the world but the OP, Liquid supports western talent.
Where should he post this if not Teamliquid? There really isn't anywhere else to post it... I don't see him hinting at TL in his post so why get so upset about it?
Liquids core was built around players who were known from BW already, do you want a badge for recruiting players who were already known from SC:BW? Nobody recruited Koreans in the start of SC2 because it wasn't really a sure shot back then neither, Koreans got interest in joining foreign teams quite recently when they noticed the salary differences and the easier tournament wins aswell as the energetic crowd. And now, when koreans DO have interest in joining foreign teams, Liquid coincidentially picks up Hero and Zenio?
Yeah, you picked up Sheth, he was known BEFORE you picked him up though, it's not like he was some random dude that you met on the street and decided to recruit for your team. Sheth had promising skills, a very kind personality which fit your team PERFECTLY, not only was it good for your teams PR but also good for your roster as he was already a good player. I'll use one of your arguments here; just because Sheth joined your team, does that erase all his earlier achievements?
You guys do support Western talent now aswell, clearly you're still on the team despite your lack of achievements in SC2. However, I have to ask myself, is it because you're a promising player or because Team Liquid is more of a family rather than a team that aims to become the top foreign team? I personally feel that all of you who got recruited because of your SC:BW achievements in the beginning of SC2 now get to stay in the team whether you show results or not, simply because you all have such tight bonds right now. I'm not saying that's wrong though.
The OP isn't arguing that TL has never been supportive of western talent, he's arguing that people are now losing interest in supporting western talent and when they do recruit new people now it's Koreans. Almost nobody picks up up-and-coming players these days, Millenium is a good example of the opposite; they had Stephano from the beginning and Feast is now up-and-coming.
It is abundantly clear to everyone but you that OPs post isn't directed towards TL.
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Well I agree to parts of it. Some parts I dont agree is....unlike wc3(no current expo packs)....sc2 has expansion packs like HoTS and LoTV which will keep the game fresh and live for another 4-5 yrs to come..which would mean more competition..also remember than in another 4-5 yrs some of the players who are well known might dip in performance, due to young talent rising.
Parts I agree with is the dumping of local talent for sub par koreans. And trust me, the thing i love about mouzsports is that, they dont have a korean (I dont think they have a NA player..bur i might b wrong) in their lineup. They have a solid EU roster, and they seem to outdo everyone in team leagues. The thing I love about liquid is that even though liquid has koreans, they never let go of their homegrown talent cause they believe in Jinro, Haypro, NoNy and everyone else..
Very well written blog... Loved it..cannot wait for your other blogs
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To those disputing the trend towards releasing Westerners for Koreans, here's some data from the past 6 months:
EG: +1 Net Koreans, -1 Net Westerners
TL: +2 Net Koreans, -1 Net Westerners
Complexity: +5 Net Koreans, +0 Net Westerners
Fnatic: +5 Net Koreans, -4 Net Westerners
Dignitas: +1 Net Koreans, -2 Net Westerners
FXO: -2 Net Koreans, -3 Net Westerners
imba.FXO: +0 Net Koreans, -6 Net Westerners
Mouz: +0 Net Koreans, +1 Net Westerners
Reign collapsing: -2 Net Koreans, -5 Net Westerners
Average Team: +1.1 Koreans, -2.3 Westerners
Is this good or bad for esports? I leave that up to you to decide.
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On March 04 2012 03:46 Ashes wrote:
Well I agree to parts of it. Some parts I dont agree is....unlike wc3(no current expo packs)....sc2 has expansion packs like HoTS and LoTV which will keep the game fresh and live for another 4-5 yrs to come..which would mean more competition..also remember than in another 4-5 yrs some of the players who are well known might dip in performance, due to young talent rising.
Parts I agree with is the dumping of local talent for sub par koreans. And trust me, the thing i love about mouzsports is that, they dont have a korean (I dont think they have a NA player..bur i might b wrong) in their lineup. They have a solid EU roster, and they seem to outdo everyone in team leagues. The thing I love about liquid is that even though liquid has koreans, they never let go of their homegrown talent cause they believe in Jinro, Haypro, NoNy and everyone else..
Very well written blog... Loved it..cannot wait for your other blogs
Sry, but could you please elaborate on the (by me) bolded part?
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On March 04 2012 03:51 RoboBob wrote:
To those disputing the trend towards releasing Westerners for Koreans, here's some data from the past 6 months:
EG: +1 Net Koreans, -1 Net Westerners
TL: +2 Net Koreans, -1 Net Westerners
Complexity: +5 Net Koreans, +0 Net Westerners
Fnatic: +5 Net Koreans, -4 Net Westerners
Dignitas: +1 Net Koreans, -2 Net Westerners
FXO: -2 Net Koreans, -3 Net Westerners
imba.FXO: +0 Net Koreans, -6 Net Westerners
Mouz: +0 Net Koreans, +1 Net Westerners
Reign collapsing: -2 Net Koreans, -5 Net Westerners
Average Team: +1.1 Koreans, -2.3 Westerners
Is this good or bad for esports? I leave that up to you to decide.
good- better players on average for teams, crap lazy foreigners thrown out
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People who disagree here are not really taking their time to think this trough. Excuse me, how many views had the SPL last time I saw it ? And yes, bw players are perhaps even better than sc2 ( they obviously have better mechanics and better training system ) so you would think ...
Host an MLG with top20 koreans ( constantly, after 3-4 editions ) and see how many viewers you get, most of the viewers will watch it because Husky is casting or because Day9 is casting or because Tastossis will be there, but in no way because they want to see the koreans play. I really enjoy bw ( haven't spent that much time looking at it, perhaps 3-4 games/week ) and I was a subscriber to GOMTV "back in the day". So the guys who will be watching MLG with top 20 koreans will mereley be hardcore fans. Can you hold a HomestoryCUP if only koreans atend ? No.
What teams need to do is get prohouses in SEA/NA/EU with 8-15 players and really start practicing. Milenium kinda did that with Stephano/Bling/Adelscot/Tarson and it seems to me that Stephano and Bling actually improved in this time ( and that with only 4 players, imagine with 8+ ). The problem is ( don't really know the financial issues ) that you'd probably need more money to invest in all the stuff...+ prohouse in korea exist also because all events are in korea so they wouldn't need to worry about travling for 1k$+ for each player and so and so...anyways...
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On March 04 2012 03:51 RoboBob wrote:
To those disputing the trend towards releasing Westerners for Koreans, here's some data from the past 6 months:
EG: +1 Net Koreans, -1 Net Westerners
TL: +2 Net Koreans, -1 Net Westerners
Complexity: +5 Net Koreans, +0 Net Westerners
Fnatic: +5 Net Koreans, -4 Net Westerners
Dignitas: +1 Net Koreans, -2 Net Westerners
FXO: -2 Net Koreans, -3 Net Westerners
imba.FXO: +0 Net Koreans, -6 Net Westerners
Mouz: +0 Net Koreans, +1 Net Westerners
Reign collapsing: -2 Net Koreans, -5 Net Westerners
Average Team: +1.1 Koreans, -2.3 Westerners
Is this good or bad for esports? I leave that up to you to decide.
Wow this is very useful information, thanks :O!
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I agree with big parts of the artice.
I really do think that most teams and tournaments underestimate how big of a problem the 'Korean invasion' is.
The best example is the Home Story Cup 4. A guy called Sound who noone has ever heard of before comes to the tournament, gets up to the finals beating a lot of foreign stars like Stephano and then?...then what?! No one has ever seen anything again from Sound since then.
If you want to keep people interested into the competition you need stars who they can identify with. Most people wont keep watching just because they see good starcraft.
So if their favourite non Korean star just gets owned by a random Korean they have never heard of before they lose interest.
Koreans who prove themselves in the GSL and who are supported by their own teams can fly to international tournaments, but western tournaments and teams shouldnt pay for 'random' Koreans to come over because you drastically reduce the entertainment value.
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On March 04 2012 03:51 RoboBob wrote:
To those disputing the trend towards releasing Westerners for Koreans, here's some data from the past 6 months:
EG: +1 Net Koreans, -1 Net Westerners
TL: +2 Net Koreans, -1 Net Westerners
Complexity: +5 Net Koreans, +0 Net Westerners
Fnatic: +5 Net Koreans, -4 Net Westerners
Dignitas: +1 Net Koreans, -2 Net Westerners
FXO: -2 Net Koreans, -3 Net Westerners
imba.FXO: +0 Net Koreans, -6 Net Westerners
Mouz: +0 Net Koreans, +1 Net Westerners
Reign collapsing: -2 Net Koreans, -5 Net Westerners
Average Team: +1.1 Koreans, -2.3 Westerners
Is this good or bad for esports? I leave that up to you to decide.
its good. why? because the better players are getting the support.
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On March 04 2012 03:59 jmbthirteen wrote:Show nested quote +On March 04 2012 03:51 RoboBob wrote:
To those disputing the trend towards releasing Westerners for Koreans, here's some data from the past 6 months:
EG: +1 Net Koreans, -1 Net Westerners
TL: +2 Net Koreans, -1 Net Westerners
Complexity: +5 Net Koreans, +0 Net Westerners
Fnatic: +5 Net Koreans, -4 Net Westerners
Dignitas: +1 Net Koreans, -2 Net Westerners
FXO: -2 Net Koreans, -3 Net Westerners
imba.FXO: +0 Net Koreans, -6 Net Westerners
Mouz: +0 Net Koreans, +1 Net Westerners
Reign collapsing: -2 Net Koreans, -5 Net Westerners
Average Team: +1.1 Koreans, -2.3 Westerners
Is this good or bad for esports? I leave that up to you to decide. its good. why? because the better players are getting the support.
The more koreans that join the less people will be watching in the west. Atleast that's what I think in the long run.
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On March 04 2012 03:57 marcesr wrote:
I agree with big parts of the artice.
I really do think that most teams and tournaments underestimate how big of a problem the 'Korean invasion' is.
The best example is the Home Story Cup 4. A guy called Sound who noone has ever heard of before comes to the tournament, gets up to the finals beating a lot of foreign stars like Stephano and then?...then what?! No one has ever seen anything again from Sound since then.
If you want to keep people interested into the competition you need stars who they can identify with. Most people wont keep watching just because they see good starcraft.
So if their favourite non Korean star just gets owned by a random Korean they have never heard of before they lose interest.
Koreans who prove themselves in the GSL and who are supported by their own teams can fly to international tournaments, but western tournaments and teams shouldnt pay for 'random' Koreans to come over because you drastically reduce the entertainment value.
how does raising the quality of play reduce the entertainment value? How about instead of laying blame at bringing in Koreans, blame foreigners for not being as good.
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Still fail to see how recruiting koreans on a foreign team kills e-sports. If there's one thing I hate about posts on TL, it's making huge assumptions and provoking titles that aren't backed by sufficient evidence.
You're making erroneous assumptions that:
1. All the foreign teams will drop their foreign players for korean players
2. E-sports will die if there isn't a good ratio of foreigner to korean (How was BW doing pre-sc2 release? pretty damn good)
3. If sc2 dies, e-sports dies
4. Off of point 3, that e-sports is dependent/defined by sc2. That they're the same thing. THEY'RE NOT.
5. That there is an MYM equivalent in sc2
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On March 04 2012 04:00 sereniity wrote:Show nested quote +On March 04 2012 03:59 jmbthirteen wrote:On March 04 2012 03:51 RoboBob wrote:
To those disputing the trend towards releasing Westerners for Koreans, here's some data from the past 6 months:
EG: +1 Net Koreans, -1 Net Westerners
TL: +2 Net Koreans, -1 Net Westerners
Complexity: +5 Net Koreans, +0 Net Westerners
Fnatic: +5 Net Koreans, -4 Net Westerners
Dignitas: +1 Net Koreans, -2 Net Westerners
FXO: -2 Net Koreans, -3 Net Westerners
imba.FXO: +0 Net Koreans, -6 Net Westerners
Mouz: +0 Net Koreans, +1 Net Westerners
Reign collapsing: -2 Net Koreans, -5 Net Westerners
Average Team: +1.1 Koreans, -2.3 Westerners
Is this good or bad for esports? I leave that up to you to decide. its good. why? because the better players are getting the support. The more koreans that join the less people will be watching in the west. Atleast that's what I think in the long run.
i think you are wrong. GSL has massive popularity among foreigners. MLG had incredible viewership because they brought over the best Koreans.
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On March 04 2012 04:01 jmbthirteen wrote:Show nested quote +On March 04 2012 03:57 marcesr wrote:
I agree with big parts of the artice.
I really do think that most teams and tournaments underestimate how big of a problem the 'Korean invasion' is.
The best example is the Home Story Cup 4. A guy called Sound who noone has ever heard of before comes to the tournament, gets up to the finals beating a lot of foreign stars like Stephano and then?...then what?! No one has ever seen anything again from Sound since then.
If you want to keep people interested into the competition you need stars who they can identify with. Most people wont keep watching just because they see good starcraft.
So if their favourite non Korean star just gets owned by a random Korean they have never heard of before they lose interest.
Koreans who prove themselves in the GSL and who are supported by their own teams can fly to international tournaments, but western tournaments and teams shouldnt pay for 'random' Koreans to come over because you drastically reduce the entertainment value. how does raising the quality of play reduce the entertainment value? How about instead of laying blame at bringing in Koreans, blame foreigners for not being as good.
He literally wrote that in his damn post, if you would care to read it through.
If you want to keep people interested into the competition you need stars who they can identify with. Most people wont keep watching just because they see good starcraft.
See?
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On March 04 2012 03:59 jmbthirteen wrote:Show nested quote +On March 04 2012 03:51 RoboBob wrote:
To those disputing the trend towards releasing Westerners for Koreans, here's some data from the past 6 months:
EG: +1 Net Koreans, -1 Net Westerners
TL: +2 Net Koreans, -1 Net Westerners
Complexity: +5 Net Koreans, +0 Net Westerners
Fnatic: +5 Net Koreans, -4 Net Westerners
Dignitas: +1 Net Koreans, -2 Net Westerners
FXO: -2 Net Koreans, -3 Net Westerners
imba.FXO: +0 Net Koreans, -6 Net Westerners
Mouz: +0 Net Koreans, +1 Net Westerners
Reign collapsing: -2 Net Koreans, -5 Net Westerners
Average Team: +1.1 Koreans, -2.3 Westerners
Is this good or bad for esports? I leave that up to you to decide. its good. why? because the better players are getting the support.
You seem to be missing the whole point, it's not about who's the best, it's about trying to preserve each region's scene and pool of players. I'm pretty sure everyone accepts that a team of 100 top Koreans would beat a team of 100 top foreigners.
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On March 04 2012 04:02 jmbthirteen wrote:Show nested quote +On March 04 2012 04:00 sereniity wrote:On March 04 2012 03:59 jmbthirteen wrote:On March 04 2012 03:51 RoboBob wrote:
To those disputing the trend towards releasing Westerners for Koreans, here's some data from the past 6 months:
EG: +1 Net Koreans, -1 Net Westerners
TL: +2 Net Koreans, -1 Net Westerners
Complexity: +5 Net Koreans, +0 Net Westerners
Fnatic: +5 Net Koreans, -4 Net Westerners
Dignitas: +1 Net Koreans, -2 Net Westerners
FXO: -2 Net Koreans, -3 Net Westerners
imba.FXO: +0 Net Koreans, -6 Net Westerners
Mouz: +0 Net Koreans, +1 Net Westerners
Reign collapsing: -2 Net Koreans, -5 Net Westerners
Average Team: +1.1 Koreans, -2.3 Westerners
Is this good or bad for esports? I leave that up to you to decide. its good. why? because the better players are getting the support. The more koreans that join the less people will be watching in the west. Atleast that's what I think in the long run. i think you are wrong. GSL has massive popularity among foreigners. MLG had incredible viewership because they brought over the best Koreans.
MLG has also been able to ride on the fact that everybody wants to see a foreigner WIN over those Koreans. Alot of people sit at their homes and just wait for that one foreigner to break through the mighty koreans and claim the first spot.
The majority of the people are like what I described above, the people who are only interested in "good starcraft" are the minority.
Note, I pulled the above out of my ass, however I have an extremely hard time believing the opposite.
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OP has no grasp of the scene or how it operates rofl. As Tyler [NonY] said, a slap to Liquid's face. Wow.
0/5 if this was a blog.
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On March 04 2012 04:02 sereniity wrote:Show nested quote +On March 04 2012 04:01 jmbthirteen wrote:On March 04 2012 03:57 marcesr wrote:
I agree with big parts of the artice.
I really do think that most teams and tournaments underestimate how big of a problem the 'Korean invasion' is.
The best example is the Home Story Cup 4. A guy called Sound who noone has ever heard of before comes to the tournament, gets up to the finals beating a lot of foreign stars like Stephano and then?...then what?! No one has ever seen anything again from Sound since then.
If you want to keep people interested into the competition you need stars who they can identify with. Most people wont keep watching just because they see good starcraft.
So if their favourite non Korean star just gets owned by a random Korean they have never heard of before they lose interest.
Koreans who prove themselves in the GSL and who are supported by their own teams can fly to international tournaments, but western tournaments and teams shouldnt pay for 'random' Koreans to come over because you drastically reduce the entertainment value. how does raising the quality of play reduce the entertainment value? How about instead of laying blame at bringing in Koreans, blame foreigners for not being as good. He literally wrote that in his damn post, if you would care to read it through. Show nested quote +If you want to keep people interested into the competition you need stars who they can identify with. Most people wont keep watching just because they see good starcraft. See?
i completely disagree with that sentiment. Why would so many people not only watch, but pay to watch GSL if that were the case?
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On March 04 2012 04:04 sereniity wrote:Show nested quote +On March 04 2012 04:02 jmbthirteen wrote:On March 04 2012 04:00 sereniity wrote:On March 04 2012 03:59 jmbthirteen wrote:On March 04 2012 03:51 RoboBob wrote:
To those disputing the trend towards releasing Westerners for Koreans, here's some data from the past 6 months:
EG: +1 Net Koreans, -1 Net Westerners
TL: +2 Net Koreans, -1 Net Westerners
Complexity: +5 Net Koreans, +0 Net Westerners
Fnatic: +5 Net Koreans, -4 Net Westerners
Dignitas: +1 Net Koreans, -2 Net Westerners
FXO: -2 Net Koreans, -3 Net Westerners
imba.FXO: +0 Net Koreans, -6 Net Westerners
Mouz: +0 Net Koreans, +1 Net Westerners
Reign collapsing: -2 Net Koreans, -5 Net Westerners
Average Team: +1.1 Koreans, -2.3 Westerners
Is this good or bad for esports? I leave that up to you to decide. its good. why? because the better players are getting the support. The more koreans that join the less people will be watching in the west. Atleast that's what I think in the long run. i think you are wrong. GSL has massive popularity among foreigners. MLG had incredible viewership because they brought over the best Koreans. MLG has also been able to ride on the fact that everybody wants to see a foreigner WIN over those Koreans. Alot of people sit at their homes and just wait for that one foreigner to break through the mighty koreans and claim the first spot. The majority of the people are like what I described above, the people who are only interested in "good starcraft" are the minority. Note, I pulled the above out of my ass, however I have an extremely hard time believing the opposite.
its more than just seeing foreigners beat koreans. its seeing the best play. More Americans watch Euro league soccer than MLS. Why? Because the play is better. More Asians watch the nba and love the nba over the CBA because the NBA is where the best play.
People want to see the best. Simple as that.
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On March 04 2012 04:04 sereniity wrote:Show nested quote +On March 04 2012 04:02 jmbthirteen wrote:On March 04 2012 04:00 sereniity wrote:On March 04 2012 03:59 jmbthirteen wrote:On March 04 2012 03:51 RoboBob wrote:
To those disputing the trend towards releasing Westerners for Koreans, here's some data from the past 6 months:
EG: +1 Net Koreans, -1 Net Westerners
TL: +2 Net Koreans, -1 Net Westerners
Complexity: +5 Net Koreans, +0 Net Westerners
Fnatic: +5 Net Koreans, -4 Net Westerners
Dignitas: +1 Net Koreans, -2 Net Westerners
FXO: -2 Net Koreans, -3 Net Westerners
imba.FXO: +0 Net Koreans, -6 Net Westerners
Mouz: +0 Net Koreans, +1 Net Westerners
Reign collapsing: -2 Net Koreans, -5 Net Westerners
Average Team: +1.1 Koreans, -2.3 Westerners
Is this good or bad for esports? I leave that up to you to decide. its good. why? because the better players are getting the support. The more koreans that join the less people will be watching in the west. Atleast that's what I think in the long run. i think you are wrong. GSL has massive popularity among foreigners. MLG had incredible viewership because they brought over the best Koreans. MLG has also been able to ride on the fact that everybody wants to see a foreigner WIN over those Koreans. Alot of people sit at their homes and just wait for that one foreigner to break through the mighty koreans and claim the first spot. The majority of the people are like what I described above, the people who are only interested in "good starcraft" are the minority. Note, I pulled the above out of my ass, however I have an extremely hard time believing the opposite.
To be fair the people interested in "good starcraft" with any brains at all just watch proleague.
User was warned for this post
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I agree with the OP.
I prefer watching europeans player over koreans and americans. Why ? Because I identify in them. I feel a lot closer to me players that are from Germany, France, Italy, Sweden, Poland than some dude from Asia or America.
That's also why i don't watch GSL or tournaments where the player pool is completly flooded by koreans. They are just boring IMO
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For every good foreigner, you have at least 4 to 5 koreans that are on the same level or even higher.
So It's just normal to get better players on your team.
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I would love if some ''old'' talent *cough TL* would retire and some new western blood could be pumped into the scene, we don't want it to stagnate, do we? ^_ ^
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On March 04 2012 03:51 RoboBob wrote:
To those disputing the trend towards releasing Westerners for Koreans, here's some data from the past 6 months:
EG: +1 Net Koreans, -1 Net Westerners
TL: +2 Net Koreans, -1 Net Westerners
Complexity: +5 Net Koreans, +0 Net Westerners
Fnatic: +5 Net Koreans, -4 Net Westerners
Dignitas: +1 Net Koreans, -2 Net Westerners
FXO: -2 Net Koreans, -3 Net Westerners
imba.FXO: +0 Net Koreans, -6 Net Westerners
Mouz: +0 Net Koreans, +1 Net Westerners
Reign collapsing: -2 Net Koreans, -5 Net Westerners
Average Team: +1.1 Koreans, -2.3 Westerners
Is this good or bad for esports? I leave that up to you to decide.
Well, I'm not willing to check on all the information you've provided, mostly because should be about right.
However, in the case TL you are wrong. In the past 6 months they have only added Zenio. If you want to extend your timeframe to an year than you should also count Sheth: Hero joined two weeks after Sheth and a week before Huk left. Not to mention that Huk left because he wanted to. It's not like TL dropped him...
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I swear you people who make threads about how you care so much about the growth of "e-sports" are so immature.
What are you people suggesting? Segregation? Ban koreans from foreign tournaments and limit them to joining foreign teams?
If anything that'll kill esports. NObody would take tournaments seriously.
You guys remind me of America back decades ago when Black people just started to play in the NFL/NBA etc and how the majority was against it and wanted segregation.
If Koreans are the best at sc2, which they are, then they reap the benefits. simple as that.
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On March 04 2012 04:09 jmbthirteen wrote:+ Show Spoiler +On March 04 2012 04:04 sereniity wrote:Show nested quote +On March 04 2012 04:02 jmbthirteen wrote:On March 04 2012 04:00 sereniity wrote:On March 04 2012 03:59 jmbthirteen wrote:On March 04 2012 03:51 RoboBob wrote:
To those disputing the trend towards releasing Westerners for Koreans, here's some data from the past 6 months:
EG: +1 Net Koreans, -1 Net Westerners
TL: +2 Net Koreans, -1 Net Westerners
Complexity: +5 Net Koreans, +0 Net Westerners
Fnatic: +5 Net Koreans, -4 Net Westerners
Dignitas: +1 Net Koreans, -2 Net Westerners
FXO: -2 Net Koreans, -3 Net Westerners
imba.FXO: +0 Net Koreans, -6 Net Westerners
Mouz: +0 Net Koreans, +1 Net Westerners
Reign collapsing: -2 Net Koreans, -5 Net Westerners
Average Team: +1.1 Koreans, -2.3 Westerners
Is this good or bad for esports? I leave that up to you to decide. its good. why? because the better players are getting the support. The more koreans that join the less people will be watching in the west. Atleast that's what I think in the long run. i think you are wrong. GSL has massive popularity among foreigners. MLG had incredible viewership because they brought over the best Koreans. MLG has also been able to ride on the fact that everybody wants to see a foreigner WIN over those Koreans. Alot of people sit at their homes and just wait for that one foreigner to break through the mighty koreans and claim the first spot. The majority of the people are like what I described above, the people who are only interested in "good starcraft" are the minority. Note, I pulled the above out of my ass, however I have an extremely hard time believing the opposite. its more than just seeing foreigners beat koreans. its seeing the best play. More Americans watch Euro league soccer than MLS. Why? Because the play is better. More Asians watch the nba and love the nba over the CBA because the NBA is where the best play. People want to see the best. Simple as that.
Great argument, now it's all so clear, you say "simple as that" not sure why anyone would have a different opinion. Completely disregarding why anyone would watch any football below Premier League, or the hundreds of other lower tiers below the top leagues of any sport.
On March 04 2012 04:16 jj33 wrote:
I swear you people who make threads about how you care so much about the growth of "e-sports" are so immature.
What are you people suggesting? Segregation? Ban koreans from foreign tournaments and limit them to joining foreign teams?
If anything that'll kill esports. NObody would take tournaments seriously.
You guys remind me of America back decades ago when Black people just started to play in the NFL/NBA etc and how the majority was against it and wanted segregation.
If Koreans are the best at sc2, which they are, then they reap the benefits. simple as that.
It's more about wanting to see some major regional tournaments survive and thrive in the competitive scene. These encourage and motivate players from those regions to continue to train and remain interested in eSports. Elitism does not promote growth, it's a barrier to entry for players.
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If there is a problem it's not the teams it's the tournaments. Look at GSL and the infrastructure around it with teams gathered in one city. There are no EU/NA league where players from EU can earn as much money, regularly as in the GSL. As I see it there are too few tournaments in EU/NA and it means that Koreans or foreigners situated in Korea can fly out from Seoul and collect money from the tournaments scattered in the world.
If there were a big tournament in EU/NA it would mean that team houses is more likely and it will spur interest in the player base.
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On March 04 2012 04:17 Full.tilt wrote:Show nested quote +On March 04 2012 04:09 jmbthirteen wrote:+ Show Spoiler +On March 04 2012 04:04 sereniity wrote:Show nested quote +On March 04 2012 04:02 jmbthirteen wrote:On March 04 2012 04:00 sereniity wrote:On March 04 2012 03:59 jmbthirteen wrote:On March 04 2012 03:51 RoboBob wrote:
To those disputing the trend towards releasing Westerners for Koreans, here's some data from the past 6 months:
EG: +1 Net Koreans, -1 Net Westerners
TL: +2 Net Koreans, -1 Net Westerners
Complexity: +5 Net Koreans, +0 Net Westerners
Fnatic: +5 Net Koreans, -4 Net Westerners
Dignitas: +1 Net Koreans, -2 Net Westerners
FXO: -2 Net Koreans, -3 Net Westerners
imba.FXO: +0 Net Koreans, -6 Net Westerners
Mouz: +0 Net Koreans, +1 Net Westerners
Reign collapsing: -2 Net Koreans, -5 Net Westerners
Average Team: +1.1 Koreans, -2.3 Westerners
Is this good or bad for esports? I leave that up to you to decide. its good. why? because the better players are getting the support. The more koreans that join the less people will be watching in the west. Atleast that's what I think in the long run. i think you are wrong. GSL has massive popularity among foreigners. MLG had incredible viewership because they brought over the best Koreans. MLG has also been able to ride on the fact that everybody wants to see a foreigner WIN over those Koreans. Alot of people sit at their homes and just wait for that one foreigner to break through the mighty koreans and claim the first spot. The majority of the people are like what I described above, the people who are only interested in "good starcraft" are the minority. Note, I pulled the above out of my ass, however I have an extremely hard time believing the opposite. its more than just seeing foreigners beat koreans. its seeing the best play. More Americans watch Euro league soccer than MLS. Why? Because the play is better. More Asians watch the nba and love the nba over the CBA because the NBA is where the best play. People want to see the best. Simple as that. Great argument, now it's all so clear, you say "simple as that" not sure why anyone would have a different opinion. Completely disregarding why anyone would watch any football below Premier League, or the hundreds of other lower tiers below the top leagues of any sport.
his argument is a great argument. If you want this to grow you need the best of the best. nobody wants to see a bunch of paper champs. that's exactly what it would be if no Koreans came to foreign tournaments
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As long as teams are not replacing their entire line up with Koreans, what's the problem here? It's a win-win for both sides. Western teams get a few top tiered players mixed into the team. Korean players get more hype and attention than they would have gotten being Code B in Korean teams.
It's actually good that western teams are getting rid of low hangers that provide no benefits to the team. If western players are good enough, they will find a team. If they can't, they should quit starcraft and do something else. Some may argue that TL kept players that have not been posting exceptional results. However, they fail to realize all players on TL are contributing something to the team or to the community. All the players can draw viewers and fans. Their personalities are recognized in the community.
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it's amazing of how people think here when we have the bw example. Oh yeah, bw had many many many NA/EU with high viewers/subscribers to it in the past. sarcasm much ?
It's simple human tribal nature that makes us cheer for our guys. If 20k people pay to watch GSL maybe it's a sustainable business, but the same people won't pay again for another event.
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On March 04 2012 04:16 jj33 wrote:
I swear you people who make threads about how you care so much about the growth of "e-sports" are so immature.
What are you people suggesting? Segregation? Ban koreans from foreign tournaments and limit them to joining foreign teams?
If anything that'll kill esports. NObody would take tournaments seriously.
You guys remind me of America back decades ago when Black people just started to play in the NFL/NBA etc and how the majority was against it and wanted segregation.
If Koreans are the best at sc2, which they are, then they reap the benefits. simple as that.
I don't think anyone is even considering any type of segregation or banning Koreans. All that we ask is for organizations to invest a bit more in foreigner talent. Very different. Let the Koreans come, but give foreign pros the resources so that they can compete.
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On March 04 2012 03:33 Doodsmack wrote:
I don't think the OP articulated a connection between the decline of the WC3 scene and the current SC2 "bubble." He attributes the decline of the WC3 scene to western WC3 teams paying their (western) players too much. Then he points to foreign SC2 teams recruiting Koreans and not foreigners. Well doesn't that mean SC2 teams are doing the opposite of what WC3 teams did? SC2 teams aren't investing enough in foreigners while WC3 teams invested too much in foreigners. Also, obviously the inflated WC3 salaries were not a result of those teams hiring Koreans/Chinese. And in SC2, we don't have any evidence that salaries are inflated at all...only teams like Complexity and EG are likely paying the kinds of salaries that WC3 teams did.
In sum, the OP doesn't really have a point here. If he wants to connect the lack of investment in foreigners to the "bubble" effect he needs to actually connect that lack of investment to inflated salaries/prize pools. Is there less viewership as a result of foreign tournaments being won by Koreans rather than foreigners? No, in fact the viewership would probably be lower with more foreigners because it would be a lower level of play.
Maybe I wasnt clear enought, the wc3 teams invested in chinese/korean players and a few europeans (maybe even less foreigners than the sc2 scene has now). This resulted in:
a) Teams had high salaries so they wouldn't lose their koreans/chinese/the few foreigners who could compete with the chinese/korean to other teams.
b) Logistical costs, since all these organisations where western based they obviously wanted the players to play in the european tournaments. So it was expensive to get these players to the tournaments.
these two resulted in that the foreign teams could'nt stick within their budgets and had to drop their teams/lie to them/file for bankrupcy.
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You know what this ties into? MLG
Hopefully everyone agreeing that the western scene needs more support, jumps on the MLG bandwagon and buys all their PPV. This is exactly what sundance is trying to push, a league where if you're teamless and talented, being a western will give you the chance to be 'all payed' for expense to MLG tournments.
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On March 04 2012 04:17 Full.tilt wrote:Show nested quote +On March 04 2012 04:09 jmbthirteen wrote:+ Show Spoiler +On March 04 2012 04:04 sereniity wrote:Show nested quote +On March 04 2012 04:02 jmbthirteen wrote:On March 04 2012 04:00 sereniity wrote:On March 04 2012 03:59 jmbthirteen wrote:On March 04 2012 03:51 RoboBob wrote:
To those disputing the trend towards releasing Westerners for Koreans, here's some data from the past 6 months:
EG: +1 Net Koreans, -1 Net Westerners
TL: +2 Net Koreans, -1 Net Westerners
Complexity: +5 Net Koreans, +0 Net Westerners
Fnatic: +5 Net Koreans, -4 Net Westerners
Dignitas: +1 Net Koreans, -2 Net Westerners
FXO: -2 Net Koreans, -3 Net Westerners
imba.FXO: +0 Net Koreans, -6 Net Westerners
Mouz: +0 Net Koreans, +1 Net Westerners
Reign collapsing: -2 Net Koreans, -5 Net Westerners
Average Team: +1.1 Koreans, -2.3 Westerners
Is this good or bad for esports? I leave that up to you to decide. its good. why? because the better players are getting the support. The more koreans that join the less people will be watching in the west. Atleast that's what I think in the long run. i think you are wrong. GSL has massive popularity among foreigners. MLG had incredible viewership because they brought over the best Koreans. MLG has also been able to ride on the fact that everybody wants to see a foreigner WIN over those Koreans. Alot of people sit at their homes and just wait for that one foreigner to break through the mighty koreans and claim the first spot. The majority of the people are like what I described above, the people who are only interested in "good starcraft" are the minority. Note, I pulled the above out of my ass, however I have an extremely hard time believing the opposite. its more than just seeing foreigners beat koreans. its seeing the best play. More Americans watch Euro league soccer than MLS. Why? Because the play is better. More Asians watch the nba and love the nba over the CBA because the NBA is where the best play. People want to see the best. Simple as that. Great argument, now it's all so clear, you say "simple as that" not sure why anyone would have a different opinion. Completely disregarding why anyone would watch any football below Premier League, or the hundreds of other lower tiers below the top leagues of any sport. Show nested quote +On March 04 2012 04:16 jj33 wrote:
I swear you people who make threads about how you care so much about the growth of "e-sports" are so immature.
What are you people suggesting? Segregation? Ban koreans from foreign tournaments and limit them to joining foreign teams?
If anything that'll kill esports. NObody would take tournaments seriously.
You guys remind me of America back decades ago when Black people just started to play in the NFL/NBA etc and how the majority was against it and wanted segregation.
If Koreans are the best at sc2, which they are, then they reap the benefits. simple as that. It's more about wanting to see some major regional tournaments survive and thrive in the competitive scene. These encourage and motivate players from those regions to continue to train and remain interested in eSports. Elitism does not promote growth, it's a barrier to entry for players.
Those people that watch those lower leagues, the vast majority of them also watch the big leagues. I don't know anyone that watches just minor league baseball, yet I know hundreds of people that watch major league baseball. Why? The play is of a higher caliber.
And its not even elitism, its competition. Foreign players are getting supported and supported very well right now. Hell teams signing Koreans makes them better. Being able to practice with the best players in the world is only good.
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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.
Very interesting post, may i quote you in OP? 
On March 04 2012 04:28 Shelke14 wrote:
You know what this ties into? MLG
Hopefully everyone agreeing that the western scene needs more support, jumps on the MLG bandwagon and buys all their PPV. This is exactly what sundance is trying to push, a league where if you're teamless and talented, being a western will give you the chance to be 'all payed' for expense to MLG tournments.
You are absolutely right, this can only strengthen the scene. Hopefully the world is ready for this kind of system so it can be maintained.
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On March 04 2012 04:10 BlitzerSC wrote:
I agree with the OP.
I prefer watching europeans player over koreans and americans. Why ? Because I identify in them. I feel a lot closer to me players that are from Germany, France, Italy, Sweden, Poland than some dude from Asia or America.
That's also why i don't watch GSL or tournaments where the player pool is completly flooded by koreans. They are just boring IMO
yea I didn't realize you were watching sc2 because it's like a reality show. I swear you were watching them actually playing the game.
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A very interesting read! I am very much looking forward to part 2, maybe you can bring up a few exceptions or how you want teams to support up and coming talent?
Anyways, thanks for a great read
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I haven't read all the posts, but what Wegandi said resonated with me. It makes next to no sense to put in the required time to become good enough to be on a top team, to then find out whether the job provides suitable pay or not. Plus, if pro teams are going to be logical, in that they want to maximize winning, it would seem to come down to the "survival of the fittest." Well, if you want to draw on history, for whatever reason, if given enough time, it seems that Koreans would be better than almost all non Koreans, if not all. Thus, there's just too many question marks for many non Koreans to pursue this as a job.
Until people can really explain why Koreans are better than non Koreans at a new game, when it hasn't even really caught on in Korea, I'm not sure how we can magically make up the skill gap. Plus, one must worry that there is something to South Korea being the most intelligent country; if that is a large part of why they own most players, what happens if more and more players from Korea start to play? Until players start to talk segregation (not that I don't think that's a bitches way) or people seriously try to dissect why Koreans are better than us and what we can do to match their level -- without playing 14 hours a day and basically living to play -- this OP seems to be very relevant. If anything, it's way past due.
Anytime the best players end up on teams, "killing e-sports" might be a misnomer, as I'm sure in Starcraft most players would rather watch the best players in the world (koreans), rather than non Korean matches. But, the viability of being a pro player for a non Korean seems to be diminishing or could be in jeopardy. How big would pro sports be if they never found their way onto television? Whether SC is formatted/made for it or not, it seems like it might be necessary.
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Are Starcraft 2 contracts similar to major league sports contracts? For example, you get a guaranteed sum of money and, if you perform well, you get incentives (i.e. bonuses)? Or do tournament winnings take the place of those incentives?
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I think it's becoming more about money than e-sports itself. The romanticized dream of being a progamer is caring nothing but gaming 24/7, improving, winnning the big tournaments, and making a name for yourself (an icon) to inspire fellow gamers. In reality, it's a tough struggle to even make a living, with little to no satisfaction in it unless you can get first place (which is why I believe more and more progamers are streaming, for some sort of recognition/side money). Furthermore, with the Korean scene being incredibly hard to make a name for yourself without being the top, the code b players are coming over to the foreign teams, who usually have bigger salaries, easier to compete in, and have less hardcore schedules(debatable). When money is introduced, everything just becomes corrupt.
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OP doesn't mention or acknowledge Liquids efforts. Agree with Tyler wholeheartedly. A post in the General section questioning Liquid's investment in foreign talent (which is unwarranted and false) is probably not a great idea.
Should've been a blog post. Beyond Liquid's efforts however, I agree with most of the OP
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On March 04 2012 03:39 Zrana wrote:
This thread is so fucking weird.
Everyone is like "it's westerners vs koreans" and thinking that westerners don't want to watch koreans play.
Maybe that's true of Johnny Bronzeleaguer who thinks that koreans just play mindlessly or cheesy but most people just want to watch good starcraft. I don't give a crap what country the player i'm watching comes from as long as he shows good games.
Why are so many people obsessed with making esports big in the western world? If it happens at all it's going to be a very gradual process. Would you enjoy starcraft more if more people in your country watched it? If so, that seems oddly racsist. Just enjoy the game, please.
Wanting to enjoy a sport without being shunned by the mainstream of your society is racist? Wanting the thing you enjoy to also be enjoyed by at least some of the people who are culturally, geographically, and linguistically close to you is racist? Is going to a barcraft racist?
So sick of the attitude that equates wanting the foreign scene to grow with hating koreans.
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On March 04 2012 04:44 Blennd wrote:Show nested quote +On March 04 2012 03:39 Zrana wrote:
This thread is so fucking weird.
Everyone is like "it's westerners vs koreans" and thinking that westerners don't want to watch koreans play.
Maybe that's true of Johnny Bronzeleaguer who thinks that koreans just play mindlessly or cheesy but most people just want to watch good starcraft. I don't give a crap what country the player i'm watching comes from as long as he shows good games.
Why are so many people obsessed with making esports big in the western world? If it happens at all it's going to be a very gradual process. Would you enjoy starcraft more if more people in your country watched it? If so, that seems oddly racsist. Just enjoy the game, please. Wanting to enjoy a sport without being shunned by the mainstream of your society is racist? Wanting the thing you enjoy to also be enjoyed by at least some of the people who are culturally, geographically, and linguistically close to you is racist? Is going to a barcraft racist? So sick of the attitude that equates wanting the foreign scene to grow with hating koreans.
Oh please.
flip the situation, if Koreans were struggling and people made threads saying "let's help koreans" I bet you'd be in there laughing at them.
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Why is this in the General section? This is more of an opinion post and should put in the blog section.
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thread title is misleading.
title should read "Are we killing foreign(er) esports? [Part 1]"
edit: and this is more of a blog
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On March 04 2012 04:34 Gnarfle wrote:A very interesting read! I am very much looking forward to part 2, maybe you can bring up a few exceptions or how you want teams to support up and coming talent? Anyways, thanks for a great read
There's tons of online warriors out there. Today Nerchio and Stephano are the best zergs in EU probably, but a year ago they were just online warriors.
Blings story is a good example to, he was a former halo player and won the dignitas gamer search tournament, look at him today? He has a personal sponsorship from TB and is one of the most promising players in EU.
The Swedish National Championship (Known as e-sports SM in Sweden), if you look at the players 80% of them are teamless. And the only real progamer that has been able to qualify is Sjow, even though sponsored players like Merz, Bischu, HayprO, ThorZaIN and Lalush have participated, non of them qualified. So why hasn't even a lesser team signed these players?
France has just like Sweden their own local scene, these tournaments that are arranged by Llewellys, I bet it's the same situation there. Probably lots of young talented players that are teamless.
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On March 04 2012 04:48 metbull wrote:
thread title is misleading.
title should read "Are we killing foreign(er) esports? [Part 1]"
edit: and this is more of a blog
Did you read the op? because it does (although fairly little) discuss the korena scene.
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I think saying any team with korean on it isn't supporting foreign talent is kinda bs.(Refering to the argument that the best players or all the lastest pick ups have been korean on foreign teams). Sure TL coL EG have all just picked up koreans. That doesn't mean that they still don't have foreigners that they support. It's just now they have players who will get their team more exposure(aka more sponsorship money) so they can continue to support the foreign players they have. Because it's really hard to get a corporation to give you money based on potential.
Not to mention complexity has a tournament where up and comers compete in who dont have a contract with a team and if they win, col with pay their way to mlg events. Sure it would be nice if everyone could have great salaries that you can live off but the scene has never been their in esports(foreign) to do that. Its always been the op couple teams with money to support their players and the rest can barely afford travel expenses for their players. At least now we have teams attempting to support up coming talent
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Well it's true that korean are playing cheesy. Sorry but most of the best SC2 game yet came mostly from foreigners. Koreans game tend to go 2 or 3 base and then it's over.
I'm not racist saying that, let's say it's because of korea's meta...
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TL certainly have invested in foreign players, and have stuck by the same players for a long time. But it is remarkable, that when TL went looking for talent for the team, they decided to sign to relatively unknown Koreans (and Sheth, who was returning from Korea after a bad experience). TL could have chosen to have signed promising and talented foreigners and helped them settle in Korea, but instead choose to go with (certainly at the time) mid-level Korean players that they knew from their collaboration with oGs. More than any other foreign team, TL was in a position to bring foreigners to Korea to train, and to bring in talent to the team to bring to Korea, but choose not to do so. Instead, they signed Sheth, who had no interest in living in Korea, and two Koreans, while only Jinro (and HuK) remained in Korea.
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The short answer is, the vast majority of foreigners aren't worth it, even in the long term. Most foreign up-and-comers are young kids with unrealistic expectations about being a pro gamer. Not only do you have to support them while they win nothing, you have to invest MORE money in the training and infrastructure required to get your team even training, much less competing, on the Korean level. Why do that when you can just recruit a Korean player, and fly them over ever month or 2?
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On March 04 2012 04:28 Shelke14 wrote:
You know what this ties into? MLG
Hopefully everyone agreeing that the western scene needs more support, jumps on the MLG bandwagon and buys all their PPV. This is exactly what sundance is trying to push, a league where if you're teamless and talented, being a western will give you the chance to be 'all payed' for expense to MLG tournments.
Yea, because a lot of teamless and talented players were allowed to play in INVITE qualifiers for MLG arena.
Fact that a league is promoting an invite qualifier is just enough for me to not support it.
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On March 04 2012 04:41 Durp wrote:
OP doesn't mention or acknowledge Liquids efforts. Agree with Tyler wholeheartedly. A post in the General section questioning Liquid's investment in foreign talent (which is unwarranted and false) is probably not a great idea.
Should've been a blog post. Beyond Liquid's efforts however, I agree with most of the OP
Are you serious? He posted here because TL is by far the largest and by far the most important Starcraft forum.
So what you are saying is that you shouldnt post here if it could potentially hurt Liquids feelings?
Luckily an independent and unbiased discussion is still possible here.
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On March 04 2012 04:53 hrvoje07 wrote:Show nested quote +On March 04 2012 04:28 Shelke14 wrote:
You know what this ties into? MLG
Hopefully everyone agreeing that the western scene needs more support, jumps on the MLG bandwagon and buys all their PPV. This is exactly what sundance is trying to push, a league where if you're teamless and talented, being a western will give you the chance to be 'all payed' for expense to MLG tournments. Yea, because a lot of teamless and talented players were allowed to play in INVITE qualifiers for MLG arena. Fact that a league is promoting an invite qualifier is just enough for me to not support it.
i'm pretty sure Axslav is happy MLG paid his way since Reign collapsed. Also MLG has stated multiple times the qualifiers will be open for future Arenas. They just wanted to control the first Arena as much as possible since it was a test.
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On March 04 2012 04:52 WhiteDog wrote:
Well it's true that korean are playing cheesy. Sorry but most of the best SC2 game yet came mostly from foreigners. Koreans game tend to go 2 or 3 base and then it's over.
I'm not racist saying that, let's say it's because of korea's meta...
LOL you have no idea what you're talking about.
it's called strategy and mind games. back in bw there is no term as all in like it is used today.
the best games come from Koreans hahaha.
You probably think any game with early aggression is cheesey, you probaby just want 20 minutes of macro and 2 guys colliding 200 food armies.
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Seriously guys, who the fuck cares what players the teams support. Either way it should be the best players. I want to see amazing matches not someone from my country that might play poorly. It just doesn't matter where you are from. If a player wants to be in an amazing team, he has got to play amazing games. Simple as that.
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On March 04 2012 04:48 metbull wrote:
thread title is misleading.
title should read "Are we killing foreign(er) esports? [Part 1]"
edit: and this is more of a blog
On March 04 2012 04:48 Danzo wrote:
Why is this in the General section? This is more of an opinion post and should put in the blog section.
On March 04 2012 04:41 Durp wrote:
OP doesn't mention or acknowledge Liquids efforts. Agree with Tyler wholeheartedly. A post in the General section questioning Liquid's investment in foreign talent (which is unwarranted and false) is probably not a great idea.
Should've been a blog post. Beyond Liquid's efforts however, I agree with most of the OP
Please read all responses in the thread before posting it's like the 5th time this blog stuff has been brought up.
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in regards to the OP, wc3 did not die because of MYM. wc3 declined almost immediately after the dayfly scandal killed the league and sucked all the interest out of korea, which had the only established LAN league in the world. the sc2 media we are exposed to is exponentially bigger than what we had with wc3, and the death of the GSL would hamper, but not straight up kill the scene like it did with wc3.
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I know I am killing esports by watching esports
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On March 04 2012 04:49 Eee wrote:
The Swedish National Championship (Known as e-sports SM in Sweden), if you look at the players 80% of them are teamless. And the only real progamer that has been able to qualify is Sjow, even though sponsored players like Merz, Bischu, HayprO, ThorZaIN and Lalush have participated, non of them qualified. So why hasn't even a lesser team signed these players?
France has just like Sweden their own local scene, these tournaments that are arranged by Llewellys, I bet it's the same situation there. Probably lots of young talented players that are teamless.
If that's the case then yeah, foreign teams have failed in their talent searching, and that this is perhaps one reason why foreign eSports can never seem to compete. Korean teams are constantly on the look-out for up and rising talent, and it is through this search that players like Leenock and DRG were given the opportunities they needed to become pro-gamers. If foreign teams aren't doing the same for their own scenes it's no wonder they're perennially stuck having to recruit Koreans.
That said, when ogsVines tops the NA ladder, that does throw a wrench into searching for homegrown talent. But maybe it's different on the EU.
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On March 04 2012 04:32 jmbthirteen wrote:Show nested quote +On March 04 2012 04:17 Full.tilt wrote:On March 04 2012 04:09 jmbthirteen wrote:+ Show Spoiler +On March 04 2012 04:04 sereniity wrote:Show nested quote +On March 04 2012 04:02 jmbthirteen wrote:On March 04 2012 04:00 sereniity wrote:On March 04 2012 03:59 jmbthirteen wrote:On March 04 2012 03:51 RoboBob wrote:
To those disputing the trend towards releasing Westerners for Koreans, here's some data from the past 6 months:
EG: +1 Net Koreans, -1 Net Westerners
TL: +2 Net Koreans, -1 Net Westerners
Complexity: +5 Net Koreans, +0 Net Westerners
Fnatic: +5 Net Koreans, -4 Net Westerners
Dignitas: +1 Net Koreans, -2 Net Westerners
FXO: -2 Net Koreans, -3 Net Westerners
imba.FXO: +0 Net Koreans, -6 Net Westerners
Mouz: +0 Net Koreans, +1 Net Westerners
Reign collapsing: -2 Net Koreans, -5 Net Westerners
Average Team: +1.1 Koreans, -2.3 Westerners
Is this good or bad for esports? I leave that up to you to decide. its good. why? because the better players are getting the support. The more koreans that join the less people will be watching in the west. Atleast that's what I think in the long run. i think you are wrong. GSL has massive popularity among foreigners. MLG had incredible viewership because they brought over the best Koreans. MLG has also been able to ride on the fact that everybody wants to see a foreigner WIN over those Koreans. Alot of people sit at their homes and just wait for that one foreigner to break through the mighty koreans and claim the first spot. The majority of the people are like what I described above, the people who are only interested in "good starcraft" are the minority. Note, I pulled the above out of my ass, however I have an extremely hard time believing the opposite. its more than just seeing foreigners beat koreans. its seeing the best play. More Americans watch Euro league soccer than MLS. Why? Because the play is better. More Asians watch the nba and love the nba over the CBA because the NBA is where the best play. People want to see the best. Simple as that. Great argument, now it's all so clear, you say "simple as that" not sure why anyone would have a different opinion. Completely disregarding why anyone would watch any football below Premier League, or the hundreds of other lower tiers below the top leagues of any sport. On March 04 2012 04:16 jj33 wrote:
I swear you people who make threads about how you care so much about the growth of "e-sports" are so immature.
What are you people suggesting? Segregation? Ban koreans from foreign tournaments and limit them to joining foreign teams?
If anything that'll kill esports. NObody would take tournaments seriously.
You guys remind me of America back decades ago when Black people just started to play in the NFL/NBA etc and how the majority was against it and wanted segregation.
If Koreans are the best at sc2, which they are, then they reap the benefits. simple as that. It's more about wanting to see some major regional tournaments survive and thrive in the competitive scene. These encourage and motivate players from those regions to continue to train and remain interested in eSports. Elitism does not promote growth, it's a barrier to entry for players. Those people that watch those lower leagues, the vast majority of them also watch the big leagues. I don't know anyone that watches just minor league baseball, yet I know hundreds of people that watch major league baseball. Why? The play is of a higher caliber. And its not even elitism, its competition. Foreign players are getting supported and supported very well right now. Hell teams signing Koreans makes them better. Being able to practice with the best players in the world is only good.
I agree right now it is great for foreigners, there's is still quite a large number who can remain competitive with the top Koreans, they may lose more than they win but a lot of the time the games are pretty close. My thoughts are mainly based on if the trend continues and SC2 becomes like BW. Which a lot of people still enjoy of course and is great. I started watching BW and Korean only competition like a lot of other people and couldn't see the point of foreign tournaments because the play was so far off what I had already seen in the Korean tournaments.
I just don't think that situation is best for the growth or even maintaining the current foreigner interest in SC2, with regards to new players coming to the scene or getting new viewers. Of course there could be a lot of new viewers who only want to see the best of the best, I just think relatively there could be more who take a more general view and whose priorities maybe different.
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On March 04 2012 04:53 hrvoje07 wrote:Show nested quote +On March 04 2012 04:28 Shelke14 wrote:
You know what this ties into? MLG
Hopefully everyone agreeing that the western scene needs more support, jumps on the MLG bandwagon and buys all their PPV. This is exactly what sundance is trying to push, a league where if you're teamless and talented, being a western will give you the chance to be 'all payed' for expense to MLG tournments. Yea, because a lot of teamless and talented players were allowed to play in INVITE qualifiers for MLG arena. Fact that a league is promoting an invite qualifier is just enough for me to not support it.
The MLG Arenas are a step in the right direction, since they divide qualifiers by regions. Now they need to open the qualifiers to more people and rising stars. They also cover the costs for the players as well, which is great.
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On March 04 2012 04:28 Shelke14 wrote:
You know what this ties into? MLG
Hopefully everyone agreeing that the western scene needs more support, jumps on the MLG bandwagon and buys all their PPV. This is exactly what sundance is trying to push, a league where if you're teamless and talented, being a western will give you the chance to be 'all payed' for expense to MLG tournments.
Yeah but how many 'teamless and talented' players are going to be able to beat players like Sjow, Thorzain, Ret, Sheth or SaSe?
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On March 04 2012 05:07 NexUmbra wrote:Show nested quote +On March 04 2012 04:28 Shelke14 wrote:
You know what this ties into? MLG
Hopefully everyone agreeing that the western scene needs more support, jumps on the MLG bandwagon and buys all their PPV. This is exactly what sundance is trying to push, a league where if you're teamless and talented, being a western will give you the chance to be 'all payed' for expense to MLG tournments. Yeah but how many 'teamless and talented' players are going to be able to beat players like Sjow, Thorzain, Ret, Sheth or SaSe?
Well ThorZaIN couldnt even qualify to the qualifier of the swedish nationals (Yes the qualifier of the quailifer). So I think there's plenty of them, especially if the chance were to be given to them.
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Good post. Don't agree. For multiple reasons.
One reason is this whole "forced national hero" through acquisition doesn't work. A player isn't going to get good just because he/she managed to get picked up by a team. White-Ra, Naniwa, Stephano didn't require this.
Another is that we don't need national heroes. I live in Canada. My favorite players are Koreans and White-Ra. I used to like Huk but not so much anymore (probably because of the switch to EG which seemed to have changed his priorities). It wasn't because he was Canadian, it was because he had originality, discipline, passion and skill. Some of those seem to have declined now. I'm sure that a number of people will only root for their national hero but that seems rather strange due to the relatively small size of the scene compared to sports like soccer where there are numerous players per nation (and they don't necessarily hail from that nation either). Maybe national heroes would be a good idea to promote at a later stage? I dunno.
Regardless, I would rather have my teams stick to picking up players with skill/attitude/passion rather than focusing on "player from non-Korean place".
Are some teams doing stupid things (unrealistic salaries)? Yes. This will always happen. Those teams will fail in the future where popularity isn't a deciding factor anymore.
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On March 04 2012 04:55 jmbthirteen wrote:Show nested quote +On March 04 2012 04:53 hrvoje07 wrote:On March 04 2012 04:28 Shelke14 wrote:
You know what this ties into? MLG
Hopefully everyone agreeing that the western scene needs more support, jumps on the MLG bandwagon and buys all their PPV. This is exactly what sundance is trying to push, a league where if you're teamless and talented, being a western will give you the chance to be 'all payed' for expense to MLG tournments. Yea, because a lot of teamless and talented players were allowed to play in INVITE qualifiers for MLG arena. Fact that a league is promoting an invite qualifier is just enough for me to not support it. i'm pretty sure Axslav is happy MLG paid his way since Reign collapsed. Also MLG has stated multiple times the qualifiers will be open for future Arenas. They just wanted to control the first Arena as much as possible since it was a test.
I don't get what Axslav has anything to do with my post. He was a known player thats why he was invited to qualifiers.
I don't want to comment on what they will do in the future, i will when i see it. Mlg has stated a lot of things in the past that they haven't delivered on.
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On March 04 2012 05:15 hrvoje07 wrote:Show nested quote +On March 04 2012 04:55 jmbthirteen wrote:On March 04 2012 04:53 hrvoje07 wrote:On March 04 2012 04:28 Shelke14 wrote:
You know what this ties into? MLG
Hopefully everyone agreeing that the western scene needs more support, jumps on the MLG bandwagon and buys all their PPV. This is exactly what sundance is trying to push, a league where if you're teamless and talented, being a western will give you the chance to be 'all payed' for expense to MLG tournments. Yea, because a lot of teamless and talented players were allowed to play in INVITE qualifiers for MLG arena. Fact that a league is promoting an invite qualifier is just enough for me to not support it. i'm pretty sure Axslav is happy MLG paid his way since Reign collapsed. Also MLG has stated multiple times the qualifiers will be open for future Arenas. They just wanted to control the first Arena as much as possible since it was a test. I don't get what Axslav has anything to do with my post. He was a known player thats why he was invited to qualifiers. I don't want to comment on what they will do in the future, i will when i see it. Mlg has stated a lot of things in the past that they haven't delivered on.
He's a teamless and talented played that benefited from MLG. And what hasn't MLG delivered on.
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On March 04 2012 03:57 marcesr wrote:
I agree with big parts of the artice.
I really do think that most teams and tournaments underestimate how big of a problem the 'Korean invasion' is.
The best example is the Home Story Cup 4. A guy called Sound who noone has ever heard of before comes to the tournament, gets up to the finals beating a lot of foreign stars like Stephano and then?...then what?! No one has ever seen anything again from Sound since then.
If you want to keep people interested into the competition you need stars who they can identify with. Most people wont keep watching just because they see good starcraft.
So if their favourite non Korean star just gets owned by a random Korean they have never heard of before they lose interest.
Koreans who prove themselves in the GSL and who are supported by their own teams can fly to international tournaments, but western tournaments and teams shouldnt pay for 'random' Koreans to come over because you drastically reduce the entertainment value.
You mean like MLG flying people over and such? While I kind of agree, it's not the teams flying them over and when they are, they're not random koreans. They're members of the team or their affiliate in Korea. If Sundance or Carmac want to fly a random Korean out to the Americas or EU, it's well within their right to. As for HSC4, the problem isn't inviting Koreans, the problem is the fact that the best foreigners only compete consistently at B/A levels of play.
On March 04 2012 04:16 jj33 wrote:
I swear you people who make threads about how you care so much about the growth of "e-sports" are so immature.
What are you people suggesting? Segregation? Ban koreans from foreign tournaments and limit them to joining foreign teams?
If anything that'll kill esports. NObody would take tournaments seriously.
You guys remind me of America back decades ago when Black people just started to play in the NFL/NBA etc and how the majority was against it and wanted segregation.
If Koreans are the best at sc2, which they are, then they reap the benefits. simple as that.
I don't think anyone wants to start segregating out of spite (They're taking our money and killing esports!! FUFUFFUFUU BAN THEM!!), but honestly I agree. The problem isn't the lack of tournaments or the invites. The problem is the player base being GENERALLY less into what they do. Which is all fine and good from a long term perspective (at least they have something to fall back on) but you can't say hey, I'm going to put in half the effort of my Korean counterparts so I can get my education and have something of a life and then at the same time gripe about how much better they are and how you're getting shafted by your own teams.
UOTE]On March 04 2012 04:21 Bagration wrote:
On March 04 2012 04:16 jj33 wrote:
I swear you people who make threads about how you care so much about the growth of "e-sports" are so immature.
What are you people suggesting? Segregation? Ban koreans from foreign tournaments and limit them to joining foreign teams?
If anything that'll kill esports. NObody would take tournaments seriously.
You guys remind me of America back decades ago when Black people just started to play in the NFL/NBA etc and how the majority was against it and wanted segregation.
If Koreans are the best at sc2, which they are, then they reap the benefits. simple as that.
I don't think anyone is even considering any type of segregation or banning Koreans. All that we ask is for organizations to invest a bit more in foreigner talent. Very different. Let the Koreans come, but give foreign pros the resources so that they can compete.[/QUOTE]
...That's what's already happening though? Unless you don't want them to sign Koreans to foreign teams..? You can focus all you want on the resource aspect of it but the underlying issue is that the Koreans are BETTER. They take the game more seriously. They want to win more. They're willing to bet their futures on it. If you're the coach or manager of a team, do you take a code A/B Korean that could very well win MLG or do you take an up and coming foreigner who would get stomped by said Korean and asking for equal or more money? Think about it for a second. When you buy household goods, do you buy "Made in USA (or w-e country you're from)" only in order to support the local economy? When you buy fruits and vegetables do you buy things that are only locally produced? When you start talking of hosting NA or EU only tournies and such...that's basically segregation. And yea you might produce some home grown heroes but guess what? They're eventually going to have to play against some Koreans and they're gonna get beat too.
On March 04 2012 04:34 playa wrote:
I haven't read all the posts, but what Wegandi said resonated with me. It makes next to no sense to put in the required time to become good enough to be on a top team, to then find out whether the job provides suitable pay or not. Plus, if pro teams are going to be logical, in that they want to maximize winning, it would seem to come down to the "survival of the fittest." Well, if you want to draw on history, for whatever reason, if given enough time, it seems that Koreans would be better than almost all non Koreans, if not all. Thus, there's just too many question marks for many non Koreans to pursue this as a job.
Until people can really explain why Koreans are better than non Koreans at a new game, when it hasn't even really caught on in Korea, I'm not sure how we can magically make up the skill gap. Plus, one must worry that there is something to South Korea being the most intelligent country; if that is a large part of why they own most players, what happens if more and more players from Korea start to play? Until players start to talk segregation (not that I don't think that's a bitches way) or people seriously try to dissect why Koreans are better than us and what we can do to match their level -- without playing 14 hours a day and basically living to play -- this OP seems to be very relevant. If anything, it's way past due.
Anytime the best players end up on teams, "killing e-sports" might be a misnomer, as I'm sure in Starcraft most players would rather watch the best players in the world (koreans), rather than non Korean matches. But, the viability of being a pro player for a non Korean seems to be diminishing or could be in jeopardy. How big would pro sports be if they never found their way onto television? Whether SC is formatted/made for it or not, it seems like it might be necessary.
You hit the nail on the head though. The difference in average national IQ between Korea, China, and Japan is within margin of error. You don't see China and Japan producing GSL winners. Even between the Eastern Asian countries and the first world Western nations, the national average IQ is within 5-10 points. The very fact that you want to ignore the amount of work and practice put in by the average Koreans is kind of ridiculous. "They're better than us but it can't be because they practice twice as much, it has to be because of some unknown factor that we cannot quantify." Really? You really think setting up team houses, having dedicated coaches, and grueling practice does not contribute more than a 5 point difference in IQ? If I'm a professional pianist and only practice 4 hours a day, while my peers are practicing almost twice that and studying theory on top of it, do I have any right to complain that they're better? I'm not calling foreigners lazy. I'm not calling them dumb (far from it, I think they have a much healthier approach to gaming than the Koreans). I am calling bullshit on the fact that there is some intrinsic, unknown, and uquantifiable factor in Korean success when you yourself already state that you don't want to practice as hard as they do.
On March 04 2012 04:44 Blennd wrote:Show nested quote +On March 04 2012 03:39 Zrana wrote:
This thread is so fucking weird.
Everyone is like "it's westerners vs koreans" and thinking that westerners don't want to watch koreans play.
Maybe that's true of Johnny Bronzeleaguer who thinks that koreans just play mindlessly or cheesy but most people just want to watch good starcraft. I don't give a crap what country the player i'm watching comes from as long as he shows good games.
Why are so many people obsessed with making esports big in the western world? If it happens at all it's going to be a very gradual process. Would you enjoy starcraft more if more people in your country watched it? If so, that seems oddly racsist. Just enjoy the game, please. Wanting to enjoy a sport without being shunned by the mainstream of your society is racist? Wanting the thing you enjoy to also be enjoyed by at least some of the people who are culturally, geographically, and linguistically close to you is racist? Is going to a barcraft racist? So sick of the attitude that equates wanting the foreign scene to grow with hating koreans.
Off topic but that made me chuckle. Koreans love to drink and hang out too you know...
*edit spelling*
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teams want koreans because koreans are the best. When a team's player wins, that's excellent news for the teams sponsors because it gives more exposure. Which player is going to give the sponsor more exposure? the one who loses in the ro32 or the one who makes it all the way to the finals? I think it's obvious.
It's only inevitable that soon the only teams that exist will have korean super stars because those players win and earn the money needed for their team. Owning a team is a business, like baseball or soccer, you want the best player on your team to promote your team.
Is it killing esports? probably? but it's an inevitable reality and we'll just have to see where it takes us. Yeah I love seeing americans in GSL but why do I watch GSL? It's for the high level play.
I'd like to compare college level football (American Football) as the foreigner scene and NFL as the korean scene. I actually only follow the NFL because I haven't been to a college that has a good football program. If I did, then I might watch college football just for that team. But since I don't, I only really watch NFL because that's where the best players compete. In SC2, I follow IdrA and HuK (my hypothetical college team) at all of their tournaments but a player like Darkforce or Merz (my hypothetical college team I didn't go to) who I don't really care about? I just skip them and watch the koreans instead.
So with that in mind, the tip top teams (NFL league) will always have their eye on the tip top players (NFL players) and that's just the nature of the game. It might be up to the community to keep the foreign interest alive so that players like Idra/HuK don't eventually get completely replaced by koreans (not saying that will happen).
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On March 04 2012 04:34 Eee wrote:Show nested quote +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. Very interesting post, may i quote you in OP? Show nested quote +On March 04 2012 04:28 Shelke14 wrote:
You know what this ties into? MLG
Hopefully everyone agreeing that the western scene needs more support, jumps on the MLG bandwagon and buys all their PPV. This is exactly what sundance is trying to push, a league where if you're teamless and talented, being a western will give you the chance to be 'all payed' for expense to MLG tournments. You are absolutely right, this can only strengthen the scene. Hopefully the world is ready for this kind of system so it can be maintained.
sure go ahead
On March 04 2012 03:43 Arceus wrote:
well one of the factors that ruined wc3 scene back then is that it's full of empty promises and broken dreams. People thinks doing esport is easy, organizations after organizations come and go. Even giant ones failed. Hope thats not the case for sc2.
And the info that hanari dude posted above doesnt fully reflect on the salary when wc3 was doing good aka 06-08. Iirc topnotch stars like Moon, Lyn, Lucifer got 5K-$10K per month, real good Koreans like some of the SK players got like 2k-4K. In total there were like 20+ Koreans that were kinda wellpaid, not to mention a special Chinese project called BET which was believed to pay way more.
Whats more ? Imbalance race, 8 years old mappool, sc2 surfacing etc. aka not something that is likely to happen to sc2.
So, I think the analogy drawn by OP is kinda bad. As long as the Korean scene lives, more orgs like TL, EG (not Reign lol), the sc2 scene will thrive
Arceus we're talking about the decline of eSports. 06-08 was doing good, but not good as it could've been if leagues such as MBC was still involved.
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On March 04 2012 04:46 jj33 wrote:Show nested quote +On March 04 2012 04:44 Blennd wrote:On March 04 2012 03:39 Zrana wrote:
This thread is so fucking weird.
Everyone is like "it's westerners vs koreans" and thinking that westerners don't want to watch koreans play.
Maybe that's true of Johnny Bronzeleaguer who thinks that koreans just play mindlessly or cheesy but most people just want to watch good starcraft. I don't give a crap what country the player i'm watching comes from as long as he shows good games.
Why are so many people obsessed with making esports big in the western world? If it happens at all it's going to be a very gradual process. Would you enjoy starcraft more if more people in your country watched it? If so, that seems oddly racsist. Just enjoy the game, please. Wanting to enjoy a sport without being shunned by the mainstream of your society is racist? Wanting the thing you enjoy to also be enjoyed by at least some of the people who are culturally, geographically, and linguistically close to you is racist? Is going to a barcraft racist? So sick of the attitude that equates wanting the foreign scene to grow with hating koreans. Oh please. flip the situation, if Koreans were struggling and people made threads saying "let's help koreans" I bet you'd be in there laughing at them.
Oh please. If people started rounding up Jews in your hometown and gassing them to death, I'd bet you'd be right there applauding them.
See what I did there? Generally in an argument if you are going to assume completely asinine things based on absolutely nothing, it's better to have them be something nice about a person instead of something mean.
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On March 04 2012 03:57 bOneSeven wrote:
People who disagree here are not really taking their time to think this trough. Excuse me, how many views had the SPL last time I saw it ? And yes, bw players are perhaps even better than sc2 ( they obviously have better mechanics and better training system ) so you would think ...
Host an MLG with top20 koreans ( constantly, after 3-4 editions ) and see how many viewers you get, most of the viewers will watch it because Husky is casting or because Day9 is casting or because Tastossis will be there, but in no way because they want to see the koreans play. I really enjoy bw ( haven't spent that much time looking at it, perhaps 3-4 games/week ) and I was a subscriber to GOMTV "back in the day". So the guys who will be watching MLG with top 20 koreans will mereley be hardcore fans. Can you hold a HomestoryCUP if only koreans atend ? No.
What teams need to do is get prohouses in SEA/NA/EU with 8-15 players and really start practicing. Milenium kinda did that with Stephano/Bling/Adelscot/Tarson and it seems to me that Stephano and Bling actually improved in this time ( and that with only 4 players, imagine with 8+ ). The problem is ( don't really know the financial issues ) that you'd probably need more money to invest in all the stuff...+ prohouse in korea exist also because all events are in korea so they wouldn't need to worry about travling for 1k$+ for each player and so and so...anyways...
Edit: Wow, i've told myself i'll never reply to a post without reading it thoroughly, my bad, you are absolutley right.
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If people stop watching because they're too nationally biased to care about people from other countries, they should probably go back to 1914. People are people and skill is skill. I'd watch a fucking rabbit play this game all day if he was good at it, who cares that he's from a different species?
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I've added HaNaRi's post in the OP, I'd reccomend everybody to read it.
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This have been said by many (me included) a lot of time ago, i remember Catz being one of them.
Is pretty pretty obvious for any cold logical minded person that not banning the koreans in all the foreign scene is bad for the future of e-sports outside korea.
Korean e-sport teams (players + organization) take their time to evolve, from 2000 to present. +10 years.
2011: Now with a big scene (sc2) outside korea, we are just paying the evolved, stronger beings to take the tourneys, the money, and the foreign chance/hope to balance the gap.
Foreigns-only teams eventualy will fall aganist this most developed rivals, so their only chance is to hire those koreans players or disband.
But this is just strengthen the circle: more koreans crushing the chance of foreigns to evolve. (evolve, aka develop the methods and organizations/teams that after a decade allow the koreans to dominate the game)
Eventualy the scene will indeed be "depleted".
I blame the tourney organizators that started this "circle", like mlg, who in seek of more income, start to invite koreans.
However, can we blame them? Is people that in forums and in polls cried out for more koreans.
So at the end, imho, yes, we all are killing esports.
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illsick
United States1770 Posts
It's rare to see someone not getting picked up that are worthy enough to. You mention Axslav but he just recently got into some bad luck. A lot of pros practice mainly ladder, so the resources of practice shouldn't be that huge of a difference for a person on a team and one that is not. They have equal opportunity to make a splash into the scene practice-wise and opportunities in online cups and tournaments to get good results. Jimpo for MC/Nada? Jimpo still has the same opportunities as if he were on SK and he still hasn't done much. He's only missing maybe a salary (probably barely anything).
There are definitely a lot of foreigner players on a good team and some of them not any better than code "B" Koreans. So there are investments and support for foreigners. Complexity, EG, Mouz, Liquid, etc all have players that are potentials or just not top tiered even for a foreigner. The rosters of SC2 teams are pretty big and they are still sinking money in developing their lower tiered players. In sports, teams pick up players that play the respective sport to the best of their abilities; race shouldn't be a factor.
As for the downfall of WC3, who is to say that WC3 wouldn't have ended the same way regardless of what the OP stated.
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On March 04 2012 04:44 Blennd wrote:Show nested quote +On March 04 2012 03:39 Zrana wrote:
This thread is so fucking weird.
Everyone is like "it's westerners vs koreans" and thinking that westerners don't want to watch koreans play.
Maybe that's true of Johnny Bronzeleaguer who thinks that koreans just play mindlessly or cheesy but most people just want to watch good starcraft. I don't give a crap what country the player i'm watching comes from as long as he shows good games.
Why are so many people obsessed with making esports big in the western world? If it happens at all it's going to be a very gradual process. Would you enjoy starcraft more if more people in your country watched it? If so, that seems oddly racsist. Just enjoy the game, please. Wanting to enjoy a sport without being shunned by the mainstream of your society is racist? Wanting the thing you enjoy to also be enjoyed by at least some of the people who are culturally, geographically, and linguistically close to you is racist? Is going to a barcraft racist? So sick of the attitude that equates wanting the foreign scene to grow with hating koreans.
Hmmm. I don't think mainstream society actually "shuns" people who enjoy SC2 or eSports because they enjoy SC2/eSports. They may think you're a little strange and roll their eyes at you, but that's a far cry from shunning, imo.
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imo problem are not the teams, but the scouting. There is no longer the network of small LANs we had 6/7 years ago when players bloomed, trained, thrived etc... Most of the tournaments now are invite only, with maybe 1/2 spots up for qualifier grabs. Only exception would be MLG and IPL open bracket, but it's just not enough.
We used to have 2/3 LANs each weekend in France at that time, the best players were not ALL present at each and every one and it put on the (small) spotlight other players and allowed them to grow.
Now, there is... ladder and online tourneys. it's not *bad* but... just not enough. (playhem, <3 <3 <3)
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On March 04 2012 05:30 Alacast wrote:
If people stop watching because they're too nationally biased to care about people from other countries, they should probably go back to 1914. People are people and skill is skill. I'd watch a fucking rabbit play this game all day if he was good at it, who cares that he's from a different species?
Fuck no, that'd be epic. BunnyCraft: Prepare to get humped!
But eh yeah. Wow. Always boggles me how many people can't just appreciate the game.
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On March 04 2012 05:32 Belha wrote:
This have been said by many (me included) a lot of time ago, i remember Catz being one of them.
Is pretty pretty obvious for any cold logical minded person that not banning the koreans in all the foreign scene is bad for the future of e-sports outside korea.
Korean e-sport teams (players + organization) take their time to evolve, from 2000 to present. +10 years.
2011: Now with a big scene (sc2) outside korea, we are just paying the evolved, stronger beings to take the tourneys, the money, and the foreign chance/hope to balance the gap.
Foreigns-only teams eventualy will fall aganist this most developed rivals, so their only chance is to hire those koreans players or disband.
But this is just strengthen the circle: more koreans crushing the chance of foreigns to evolve. (evolve, aka develop the methods and organizations/teams that after a decade allow the koreans to dominate the game)
Eventualy the scene will indeed be "depleted".
I blame the tourney organizators that started this "circle", like mlg, who in seek of more income, start to invite koreans.
However, can we blame them? Is people that in forums and in polls cried out for more koreans.
So at the end, imho, yes, we all are killing esports.
So you're solution is to segregate and set up paper champs in foreigner only leagues until the Korean scene dies? How exactly do you see the skill gap closing if we start shutting doors to interaction so our players can no longer practice with and learn from the best?
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On March 04 2012 05:36 Nouar wrote:
imo problem are not the teams, but the scouting. There is no longer the network of small LANs we had 6/7 years ago when players bloomed, trained, thrived etc... Most of the tournaments now are invite only, with maybe 1/2 spots up for qualifier grabs. Only exception would be MLG and IPL open bracket, but it's just not enough.
We used to have 2/3 LANs each weekend in France at that time, the best players were not ALL present at each and every one and it put on the (small) spotlight other players and allowed them to grow.
Now, there is... ladder and online tourneys. it's not *bad* but... just not enough. (playhem, <3 <3 <3)
I've seen a lot of nonsense in this thread already, but oh my. Yes, there are a lot of invitationals for marketing purposes amongst other things, but don't think for one second that managers don't pay attention to the rest of the field.
I used to do it myself and I still see a lot of unknowns making a name for themselves. It might not be visible to you, but it's just as important.
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On March 04 2012 05:39 schimmetje wrote:Show nested quote +On March 04 2012 05:30 Alacast wrote:
If people stop watching because they're too nationally biased to care about people from other countries, they should probably go back to 1914. People are people and skill is skill. I'd watch a fucking rabbit play this game all day if he was good at it, who cares that he's from a different species? Fuck no, that'd be epic. BunnyCraft: Prepare to get humped! But eh yeah. Wow. Always boggles me how many people can't just appreciate the game.
This. Those people are just as responsible for "Killing Esports" as the organizers and teams that pander to Koreans, pros that don't produce, viewers that just care for the game, society that frowns on gaming, jocks, bullies, misogynistic jerks online, and lack of LAN support in SC2. *rolls eyes*
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On March 04 2012 05:26 Blennd wrote:Show nested quote +On March 04 2012 04:46 jj33 wrote:On March 04 2012 04:44 Blennd wrote:On March 04 2012 03:39 Zrana wrote:
This thread is so fucking weird.
Everyone is like "it's westerners vs koreans" and thinking that westerners don't want to watch koreans play.
Maybe that's true of Johnny Bronzeleaguer who thinks that koreans just play mindlessly or cheesy but most people just want to watch good starcraft. I don't give a crap what country the player i'm watching comes from as long as he shows good games.
Why are so many people obsessed with making esports big in the western world? If it happens at all it's going to be a very gradual process. Would you enjoy starcraft more if more people in your country watched it? If so, that seems oddly racsist. Just enjoy the game, please. Wanting to enjoy a sport without being shunned by the mainstream of your society is racist? Wanting the thing you enjoy to also be enjoyed by at least some of the people who are culturally, geographically, and linguistically close to you is racist? Is going to a barcraft racist? So sick of the attitude that equates wanting the foreign scene to grow with hating koreans. Oh please. flip the situation, if Koreans were struggling and people made threads saying "let's help koreans" I bet you'd be in there laughing at them. Oh please. If people started rounding up Jews in your hometown and gassing them to death, I'd bet you'd be right there applauding them. See what I did there? Generally in an argument if you are going to assume completely asinine things based on absolutely nothing, it's better to have them be something nice about a person instead of something mean.
Let's keep this discussion civil, and making arguments based off of genocide simply doesn't belong here.
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illsick
United States1770 Posts
On March 04 2012 05:32 Belha wrote:
This have been said by many (me included) a lot of time ago, i remember Catz being one of them.
Is pretty pretty obvious for any cold logical minded person that not banning the koreans in all the foreign scene is bad for the future of e-sports outside korea.
Korean e-sport teams (players + organization) take their time to evolve, from 2000 to present. +10 years.
2011: Now with a big scene (sc2) outside korea, we are just paying the evolved, stronger beings to take the tourneys, the money, and the foreign chance/hope to balance the gap.
Foreigns-only teams eventualy will fall aganist this most developed rivals, so their only chance is to hire those koreans players or disband.
But this is just strengthen the circle: more koreans crushing the chance of foreigns to evolve. (evolve, aka develop the methods and organizations/teams that after a decade allow the koreans to dominate the game)
Eventualy the scene will indeed be "depleted".
I blame the tourney organizators that started this "circle", like mlg, who in seek of more income, start to invite koreans.
However, can we blame them? Is people that in forums and in polls cried out for more koreans.
So at the end, imho, yes, we all are killing esports.
you make it sound like Koreans are genetically better than any other country to play starcraft (evolved, stronger beings lol)
should we get mad that Europeans are destroying the competition in tennis? or that Americans are dominating in basketball?
ofc catz would want some sort of segregated tournament but it's ironic cuz he's from South America. Where do you draw the line? No Koreans allowed, separating one country from tournaments? Whites versus Asians? Why would anyone want that. If you look at the larger scale of things, perhaps teams wouldn't be able to pick up and support these foreigners if it weren't for the Korean scene due to the fact that they are generating a lot of exposure and fan interest to the game. If MLG was only NA, there would be less interest and the prize pot would be extremely low and less money put into the scene.
Also, with Korean involvement, foreigners are having to step up there game which means better quality of players in our scene and better quality games to be played.
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To tripper688, don't get me wrong, the person that has more practice should always have an advantage. I know there are non Koreans training in Korea now, and in the past players such as Nony, Idra and Ret have lived and trained with pro teams. If these players are aware of how much practice time is needed to become better than the next guy, you would think they would imbue their teams with this practice regimen. I just feel that I see some players that don't have a skill ceiling that is perceived to be very high, yet they are on pro teams, playing as much if not more than others, and they are getting worse results than others. At the end of the day, I'm sure you can't allow yourself to get out-practiced by the Koreans, but I still don't think we have the most talented players playing. Given how unstable and unestablished the scene is, I have no idea why it would attract anyone that is 18 or older.
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The amount of hand wringing going on in this thread is amazing. I could well imagine this delivered by politicians to a governmental structure somewhere.
"Well, frankly I'm worried. I'm worried about the plight of these underprivileged gamers. I'm worried about the inequality of the trade gap of teams with players. We need regulations here and stimulus money there or ... or ... the whole thing ... could COLLAPSE!"
On March 04 2012 04:16 jj33 wrote:
I swear you people who make threads about how you care so much about the growth of "e-sports" are so immature.
What are you people suggesting? Segregation? Ban koreans from foreign tournaments and limit them to joining foreign teams?
If anything that'll kill esports. NObody would take tournaments seriously.
You guys remind me of America back decades ago when Black people just started to play in the NFL/NBA etc and how the majority was against it and wanted segregation.
If Koreans are the best at sc2, which they are, then they reap the benefits. simple as that.
I don't think anyone is even considering any type of segregation or banning Koreans. All that we ask is for organizations to invest a bit more in foreigner talent. Very different. Let the Koreans come, but give foreign pros the resources so that they can compete.
This is exactly what we are talking about. Hand wringing. Asking organizations to, out of the goodness of their hearts, invest money where money is not warranted. jj33 made that excellent point ... the obvious sorta "policy decision" to remedy this lamentable, lamentable situation is to restrict the entry of Korean-born gamers into tournaments--a preposterous idea. The reverse is the correct one, either foreigners train hard, train in team houses, work on tourney results and rival the Koreans in this, or they continue to be in the minority of recruits from the major teams.
This Korean thing is a challenge to foreigners to step up and train like the best to compete with the best. InControl previously brought up on a SOTG the difficulties of going to university + training to be a progamer or working a job to support yourself + training to be a progamer. In America, you're expected to turn 18 and get more education or get a job. The dedicate oneself to progaming is not a largely accepted life choice. I'll identify that as the primary hurdle to a Western talent pool on par with South Korea. Sputter on about injustice and the slow death of the scene. SC2 General Chat / Blogs built for that =)
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On March 04 2012 05:12 willoc wrote:
Good post. Don't agree. For multiple reasons.
One reason is this whole "forced national hero" through acquisition doesn't work. A player isn't going to get good just because he/she managed to get picked up by a team. White-Ra, Naniwa, Stephano didn't require this.
Another is that we don't need national heroes. I live in Canada. My favorite players are Koreans and White-Ra. I used to like Huk but not so much anymore (probably because of the switch to EG which seemed to have changed his priorities). It wasn't because he was Canadian, it was because he had originality, discipline, passion and skill. Some of those seem to have declined now. I'm sure that a number of people will only root for their national hero but that seems rather strange due to the relatively small size of the scene compared to sports like soccer where there are numerous players per nation (and they don't necessarily hail from that nation either). Maybe national heroes would be a good idea to promote at a later stage? I dunno.
Regardless, I would rather have my teams stick to picking up players with skill/attitude/passion rather than focusing on "player from non-Korean place".
Are some teams doing stupid things (unrealistic salaries)? Yes. This will always happen. Those teams will fail in the future where popularity isn't a deciding factor anymore.
Popularity is always the deciding factor in any entertainment business.
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On March 04 2012 05:59 RageBot wrote:Show nested quote +On March 04 2012 05:12 willoc wrote:
Good post. Don't agree. For multiple reasons.
One reason is this whole "forced national hero" through acquisition doesn't work. A player isn't going to get good just because he/she managed to get picked up by a team. White-Ra, Naniwa, Stephano didn't require this.
Another is that we don't need national heroes. I live in Canada. My favorite players are Koreans and White-Ra. I used to like Huk but not so much anymore (probably because of the switch to EG which seemed to have changed his priorities). It wasn't because he was Canadian, it was because he had originality, discipline, passion and skill. Some of those seem to have declined now. I'm sure that a number of people will only root for their national hero but that seems rather strange due to the relatively small size of the scene compared to sports like soccer where there are numerous players per nation (and they don't necessarily hail from that nation either). Maybe national heroes would be a good idea to promote at a later stage? I dunno.
Regardless, I would rather have my teams stick to picking up players with skill/attitude/passion rather than focusing on "player from non-Korean place".
Are some teams doing stupid things (unrealistic salaries)? Yes. This will always happen. Those teams will fail in the future where popularity isn't a deciding factor anymore. Popularity is always the deciding factor in any entertainment business.
Not for winning tournaments =).
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and DjWheat will be sounding like crazy doomsayer on lo3 No worries, he always sounds like that. And we love him.
Anyway, I still don't see the harm of most teams having one or two Koreans to bring around the working ethics for the others; but if it goes further than that and most teams become predominantly Korean, then there will be no international scene yeah. On the other hand, BW is only at a pro level in Korea, but still it's the best esports scene even now, so esports is safe either way.
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On March 04 2012 05:39 schimmetje wrote:Show nested quote +On March 04 2012 05:30 Alacast wrote:
If people stop watching because they're too nationally biased to care about people from other countries, they should probably go back to 1914. People are people and skill is skill. I'd watch a fucking rabbit play this game all day if he was good at it, who cares that he's from a different species? Fuck no, that'd be epic. BunnyCraft: Prepare to get humped! But eh yeah. Wow. Always boggles me how many people can't just appreciate the game.
Becuase in sports people will allways root for there home team thats just how it is. You think people form Liverpool would root for Barcelona becuase they got the best players?
Ofcourse not..
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On March 04 2012 03:00 Full.tilt wrote:
I don't think I'd put any blame on foreign teams because they are competing with other teams and will generally do anything they can to form and build the strongest team they can. It's a slightly more grey area where tournament organisers are concerned like MLG and IPL though in my opinion.
The more Koreans, who live and work for Korean teams, they invite and allow to attempt to qualify in open brackets the quicker SC2 will die out in the foreign scene, or at least stop growing and decline to a much smaller pool of dedicated players. Keep major foreign tournaments more regional. Allow Koreans to qualify in open tournaments but I think the number's must be limited in some way or just attempt to discourage so many from travelling over by having more barriers to entry. If more than half the final bracket is Korean I start to lose interest quite rapidly.
Obviously I love watching the GSL because I expect to see the very best players playing at the highest level, as a viewer I have different expectations for foreigner tournaments, wanting to see the best foreigners playing each other is higher up my list of what I want to see.
What I dread is seeing large numbers of Koreans dominating the final brackets of every major tournament all over the world, because then everything is the same, protect the foreign competitive scene.
How would a tournament that doesn't let Koreans play gain any kind of prestige?
If anything, they'd only be able to invite players from a single country because excluding koreans only would be seen as incredibly racist, causing only more damage to the scene.
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On March 04 2012 03:57 bOneSeven wrote:
People who disagree here are not really taking their time to think this trough. Excuse me, how many views had the SPL last time I saw it ? And yes, bw players are perhaps even better than sc2 ( they obviously have better mechanics and better training system ) so you would think ...
Host an MLG with top20 koreans ( constantly, after 3-4 editions ) and see how many viewers you get, most of the viewers will watch it because Husky is casting or because Day9 is casting or because Tastossis will be there, but in no way because they want to see the koreans play. I really enjoy bw ( haven't spent that much time looking at it, perhaps 3-4 games/week ) and I was a subscriber to GOMTV "back in the day". So the guys who will be watching MLG with top 20 koreans will mereley be hardcore fans. Can you hold a HomestoryCUP if only koreans atend ? No.
What teams need to do is get prohouses in SEA/NA/EU with 8-15 players and really start practicing. Milenium kinda did that with Stephano/Bling/Adelscot/Tarson and it seems to me that Stephano and Bling actually improved in this time ( and that with only 4 players, imagine with 8+ ). The problem is ( don't really know the financial issues ) that you'd probably need more money to invest in all the stuff...+ prohouse in korea exist also because all events are in korea so they wouldn't need to worry about travling for 1k$+ for each player and so and so...anyways...
Lol just tell me koreans casting games at HSC wasn't a highlight of the event and an awesome part of it.
I, for one, love to see koreans playing. Seeing good games is what's important. Koreans bring good games, and a good dose of awkwardness/entertainment when you know how to deal with them. Foreigners bring great stories, etc, but excuse me, apart from a few of them, from my point of view, their games are just not *that* interesting. The exception to that rule for me is obviously foreigner vs korean :p but foreigner vs foreigner? Meeh..
The fact that tournaments who don't bring koreans in are not held in a very high regard by the community and have less views clearly contradict your point.
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This thread is a real bummer.
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EPT
