Over the past couple of days, major American video game site IGN (owned by Rupert Murdoch’s News Corporation, one of the largest in the world) has made known their intention to become heavily involved in competitive StarCraft 2.
Information has recently come to light to suggest that this will be a new professional StarCraft 2 league in North America, sponsored by IGN and boasting a prize pool between $150,000 and $200,000. This information comes from the mouth of an IGN employee and a credible source who wishes to remain anonymous at this time.
When approached, IGN declined to comment on this information.
Long story short: I've been speaking with someone who I know is a credible source. From that person, I have this information. While I wouldn't go to Vegas and bet your savings on it (things can change), I am personally quite sure that this source has a very good sense of what is going on.
UPDATE: When it rains it pours: bet the savings.
Anyway, I'm psyched. IGN is HUGE, gets tens of millions of hits per month. A league by them is not to be taken lightly.
Bringing this to the light and community review will help it more than keeping it in the shadows will. NASL has already improved thanks to community feedback. To be frank, hearing what we have to say will make the IPL better if IGN is willing to listen and knows how to take critiques. I'm sure they do. This is for the best. -
To those who think it is a NASL sponsorship: Evoli, who was at the meeting, confirmed that this is " very much so a venture of their [IGN's] own".
Read the article on SK-Gaming, this and other information being discussed is ALREADY there!
--
Evoli was not the source, this is not Evoli's info. I love evoli but he is working closely with the league (and will probably be providing top notch coverage once its out). He is not the reason that I know it is a team league. I know it is a team league because my source says teams were contacted as opposed to individuals.
Additionally: my source is saying there is no association between NASL and IGN, neither is sponsoring the other, evoli even mentioned the same thing in his thread, that the two are separate entities.
This is pretty much happening as I stated it in the original article on SK Gaming.
--- A post on IGN.com entitled "Announcing the IGN Proleague" has surfaced, apparently posted on March 20th, 2011 (it is easy to fake a blog post's date).
IGN has invited 16 of the most talented Starcraft 2 players from North America, and will be launching a series of tournaments in search for the best players in America.
As the top gaming site on the internet, IGN is passionate about nurturing the gaming scene. We believe that the main reason why America is not yet competitive in the eSports scene is the lack of events and sponsorships to support America's talent. IGN will be investing in accelerating the growth of the eSport scene in America.
----
On March 23 2011 12:15 Gudeldar wrote: It looks like a bunch of progamers have IGN profiles that are all IPL.[name]
Although has the NASL announced who their sponsors are? Perhaps its IGN who is sponsoring the NASL. And this note makes it sound like IGN is sponsoring a league not necessarily coming out with their own league. I could just be misinformed, but thats what it looks like to me.
Isn't this gonna be the sponsor for the NASL then? Didn't many well known players, casters and people visit the IGN office. And the NASL hasn't said who their sponsor is? I don't know, I'm just guessing because I'd find it hard to believe two similar leagues get started around the same time instead of it being a collaboration.
They are sponsoring a league. Which means this probably means they are sponsoring NASL. I think some of the NASL guys have been visiting IGN studios if I'm not mistaken (although I could be).
On March 23 2011 08:28 legatus legionis wrote: Isn't this gonna be the sponsor for the NASL then? Didn't many well known players, casters and people visit the IGN office. And the NASL hasn't said who their sponsor is? I don't know, I'm just guessing because I'd find it hard to believe two similar leagues get started around the same time instead of it being a collaboration.
No, I believe evoli made an article stating that what IGN had in plan was separate form NASL
Makes sense that they'd be getting involved given the photos that came out of the meeting IGN recently had. I don't think they would've flew players out to SF for a meeting if it was just to give information about the HD tournament they & justin.tv are sponsoring.
Though I'm not really a fan of IGN, it'll be interesting to see how it's handled in contrast to the way some of the other NA leagues have been handled.
Im thinking that these guys are sponsoring NASL. The timing seems a little to convienent and since nasl havn't announced their sponsors yet thats my bet.
On March 23 2011 08:28 mprs wrote: They are sponsoring a league. Which means this probably means they are sponsoring NASL. I think some of the NASL guys have been visiting IGN studios if I'm not mistaken (although I could be).
Still cool though!
No, evoli at sixjaxgaming said it had nothing to do with NASL.
wowowow, so much stuff going on in the SC2 world, this is GREAT. IGN is easily the most mainstream gaming website and this makes it one step closer for SC2 to be mainstream as well.
Too many leagues now. These companies should get together and sponsor a larger league or multiple seasons of one, but having 3+ major leagues is a bit silly.
I can't really think of one legitimate sport that has leagues upon leagues.
On March 23 2011 08:31 Fasterfood wrote: Guys they are clearly sponsoring NASL. The teaser pictures on IGN have inControl in them.
hen why do they have a countdown to 13 days from now? Possibly, but I would imagine if they were doing NASL they would be involved in player unveiling.
Ya, the proleague thing makes me think team league. And a big team league makes way more sense than another individual league. Also, most of the players at the event come from different teams:
The only major teams missing are European only teams and Liquid who may not have been able to send a representative. Of course there are a lot of other teams in NA (not trying to discredit all the other good teams in NA like coL, vVv, NrG, etc.), but these have the biggest names
This would be SOOOO good. IGN is freakin huge. If they advertise on their site (which they obviously will) thousands upon thousands of mainstream gamers will see real SC2 everyday. This is just one step closer to SC being a socially acceptable, mainstream 'sport,' . . . an eSport, if you will
On March 23 2011 08:32 hmunkey wrote: Too many leagues now. These companies should get together and sponsor a larger league or multiple seasons of one, but having 3+ major leagues is a bit silly.
I can't really think of one legitimate sport that has leagues upon leagues.
lol BW? Proleague, MSL, OSL, and there used to be GOM.
More money is nice and all, but I'm looking more forward to see what kind of publicity the IGN league can get for the SC2 pro scene, especially considering that IGN is a top gaming site and has the potential to spread the gospel of ESPORTS to many more people.
If IGN were to hold a few big banners on their front page about the SC2 tournament, think of how many more views we could get. Perhaps some more journalism about the competitive scene even. With this huge amount of money, I expect a huge amount of more exposure to the masses.
Aside from my objections of us making an evil scumbag like Rupert Murdoch richer (although we do support Bobby Kotick), that's pretty huge news. I can only hope they don't CGS-ize it too much.
On March 23 2011 08:31 Fasterfood wrote: Guys they are clearly sponsoring NASL. The teaser pictures on IGN have inControl in them.
hen why do they have a countdown to 13 days from now? Possibly, but I would imagine if they were doing NASL they would be involved in player unveiling.
On March 23 2011 08:37 Jibba wrote: Aside from my objections of us making an evil scumbag like Rupert Murdoch richer (although we do support Bobby Kotick), that's pretty huge news. I can only hope they don't CGS-ize it too much.
Hah, yeah. SC2 isn't like soccer where everybody is content to follow some international leagues as well as their national one. At a certain point you could get high profile SCII tourneys going on every hour of the day, and by then profits will be made, since people just can't logistically watch all of it unless they devote themselves to it.
On March 23 2011 08:38 Kennigit wrote: Someone needs to clarify if this is a team league or a individual league. Either way, awesome!
Team league would be awesome. Also with such a good prize pool players would have a lot more incentive to give it their all and teams to use their strongest rosters
Thats a bit much for leagues...which they'd consolidate to a effing huge league instead. I'm sure if $200k-$300k was on the line each tourney, American pros would develop a culture of getting nasty at the game since it can actually support your life.
This is going to be huge, and with it being IGN you know it'll be a really professional endeavour. I would dance around in joy if it was a team league, but I don't see how you can get the top teams together for any real stretch of time given global distribution.
Only hiccup I can see is the rules/regulations/administration side of things.
On March 23 2011 08:37 Jibba wrote: Aside from my objections of us making an evil scumbag like Rupert Murdoch richer (although we do support Bobby Kotick), that's pretty huge news. I can only hope they don't CGS-ize it too much.
What do you mean CGS-ize it?
Run the major tournament with absurd rules and 99% incompetent employees (besides Wheat!). I guess a more apt description would be I hope they don't Sessler-ize it.
Too many leagues now. If this is going to charge what NASL, MLG and GSL charge for VODs (livestream is at 2-3am for me) I can't afford all three.
The live events for the four plus ESL, TSL, GSTL, Blizzcon and others are going to majorly clash.
They're especially not going to have any good commentators. Day[9], Artosis, Tasteless, djWheat, JP and the other competent casters are already stretched.
I'm happy to see members of the popular gaming media putting their resources behind SC2 full force. Seriously how many FIVE DIGIT tours are we up to now?
On March 23 2011 08:43 TrainFX wrote: Will be interesting to see if the sc2 scene gets over saturated. I hope not and if it does I doubt it'll happen anytime soon.
It won't get over saturated as long as they all do it a different way.
If they all have the same players, in the same online format as NASL for example, then they are directly competing with each other and there is going to be a lot of overlap.
Personally I would like to see more offline, or at the very least region specific leagues and tournaments. Like the GSTL is determining the best team in Korea, a big league for Teams in NA would be awesome. The GCPL was awesome for example, a bigger version with more prize money and thus a more competitive environment would be very welcome.
NA scene is definitely bigger in terms of available prize money than the Korean scene now...
GSL has a total prize pool of 1.3-1.5 million for the year. How is NA still bigger?
I think if you tallied up all of the money from tournaments happening in NA it would rival or overcome GSL. That said it is very spread out between the countless cups, and handfuls of larger events like NASL, IPL, MLG, etc. Really its not that much of an outrageous statement.
With all these leagues it makes me think of the poker tour or nascar, where each event has different sponsors. Maybe some day there could be a North American Star league tour where events from MLG, NASL, and IGN are all involved.
Evoli was not the source, this is not Evoli's info. I love evoli but he is working with the league and is not the reason that I know it is a team league. I know it is a team league because my source says teams were contacted as opposed to individuals.
Additionally: my source is saying there is no association between NASL and IGN, neither is sponsoring the other, evoli even mentioned the same thing in his thread, that the two are separate entities.
This is pretty much happening as I stated it in the original article on SK Gaming.
NA scene is definitely bigger in terms of available prize money than the Korean scene now...
GSL has a total prize pool of 1.3-1.5 million for the year. How is NA still bigger?
MLG+NASL+this+many many smaller tournaments.
Korea has very few non-GSL SC2 tournaments.
MLG has a total prize pool of 190k for the year. While, NASL has 400k for the year. 590k is less than 1.4 million, even if you add the smaller tournaments. Let's add in IGN's proleague of 150k. You still only have 740k.
NA scene is definitely bigger in terms of available prize money than the Korean scene now...
GSL has a total prize pool of 1.3-1.5 million for the year. How is NA still bigger?
I think if you tallied up all of the money from tournaments happening in NA it would rival or overcome GSL. That said it is very spread out between the countless cups, and handfuls of larger events like NASL, IPL, MLG, etc. Really its not that much of an outrageous statement.
If you added the European tournaments, you might be right, but he was talking about just NA.
I hope they spread out the money instead of blowing it in three chunks like NASL. I'd rather have 5 tiers of season play and a playoffs at the end like Korean starleagues. I will support it!
On March 23 2011 08:43 TrainFX wrote: Will be interesting to see if the sc2 scene gets over saturated. I hope not and if it does I doubt it'll happen anytime soon.
It won't get over saturated as long as they all do it a different way.
If they all have the same players, in the same online format as NASL for example, then they are directly competing with each other and there is going to be a lot of overlap.
Personally I would like to see more offline, or at the very least region specific leagues and tournaments. Like the GSTL is determining the best team in Korea, a big league for Teams in NA would be awesome. The GCPL was awesome for example, a bigger version with more prize money and thus a more competitive environment would be very welcome.
Not oversaturated but certainly overinflated (pay out/salary wise). I'll hold out until i see what they produce and their business model, but really big organizations have tried this before and have not been able to make returns (CPL, CGS, GGL etc). Making IPL profitable is much much more important than 150k prize purse but im sure they have lots of smart business savy people behind it. Let's see what happens!
Very surprised that it's not a sponsorship of the NASL. Wow. This is awesome that IGN is jumping in on sc2 like this. I knew sc2 was big but this is massive
At the same time I almost wonder of slight over saturation. It's hard keeping up with all of the tournaments Considering they had incontrol over there there must be some coordination between the leagues, but yeah I do wonder about over saturation.
efinitely too early to make any substantive judgements about any of the leagues.
What i would love to see is top 8 teams moving to the city where this venue will be hold, buy practice houses there and play live from booths like Proleague in BW!
This team league is incredible! Korea hasn't even established a team league yet (GSTL is more like a team tournament, not seasonal league), and I think foreigners can finally set a precedent! Tbh, I think proleague is a bit more exciting, or at least refreshing, than individual tournaments like MSL or OSL, and I was sad there hadn't been a proleague for SC2 yet. I liked the GCPL a lot, but it just didn't feel that serious and there wasn't as much hype around it.
Also, IGN is huge! Can't think of a better organization to have done this.
IGN backing this is huge especially when you realize it's owned by Murdoch. There are essentially 2 big questions I have though.
1) Can they sustain this ... past a one-off kind of tournament/league? 2) Do they have enough community ties/connections to make it successful? HD seems to be the only one connected from what I've heard ... and if he's the only tie to the SC2 community, well that seems to be a bit weak.
Over the past couple of days, major American video game site IGN (owned by Rupert Murdoch’s News Corporation, one of the largest in the world) has made known their intention to become heavily involved in competitive StarCraft 2.
the funiest/best part about this is that from what i've come to understand is the teamliquid/video-gaming scene in general is very liberal, yet, one of the few media outlets (that are conservative) are funding it. moreover, how i'm reading this is that they are going to drop 100-150k/season, which would make it the biggest in the USA (assuming its greater than 100k) and more than most of the GSL (2011) season tournys.
anywho, great news the bigger e-sports gets, the better. Hopefully news corp shares this throughout all of it's branches and gets coverage on e-sports.
On March 23 2011 08:53 drcatellino wrote: Seems like HD will be one of the official casters for this, based on the pictures from the other thread and IGN sponsoring HD's own tournament.
Yea I think so too, that's great, I like him and his voice.
Not oversaturated but certainly overinflated (pay out/salary wise). I'll hold out until i see what they produce and their business model, but really big organizations have tried this before and have not been able to make returns (CPL, CGS, GGL etc). Making IPL profitable is much much more important than 150k prize purse but im sure they have lots of smart business savy people behind it. Let's see what happens!
I think we can both agree the advertising climate is a little different now than it was then. There are players pulling in $3,500 or more in ad revenue splits with JTV through their streams. And ultimately, there is more money in VoDs than streaming (see Usky, H.) and I expect NASL, IGN, and MLG will embrace VoDs a lot more in 2011.
Just because of the embrace of video advertising by both major companies and smaller ones, the revenue streams are bigger. This is even before sponsors - one of the reasons TSL3 can compete with these other tourneys in prize pool is the title sponsor, PokerStrategy.com.
On March 23 2011 08:57 lac29 wrote: IGN backing this is huge especially when you realize it's owned by Murdoch. There are essentially 2 big questions I have though.
1) Can they sustain this ... past a one-off kind of tournament/league? 2) Do they have enough community ties/connections to make it successful? HD seems to be the only one connected from what I've heard ... and if he's the only tie to the SC2 community, well that seems to be a bit weak.
HD is not the only connection. Did you see the pictures? There are tons of community figures involved. And even more were there that were not pictured.
I feel that big payouts will alleviate any concerns about over saturation. I could see it being an issue if these were all 10K tournaments but the reality is, the plays will go where the money is and there will be more chances out there for them to win it. The key is that all tournaments push eSports together, that means that coordination on event times needs to be done so the top players can compete in as many as possible.
The dramatic shift could be that the money will be made in NA, not KR at this rate. Do we ever expect Korean's to move to the states in order to compete. I feel they would be able to make a lot more than just the GSL alone.
Woaw, is this iNcontroL with Jessica Chobot on this picture ?:
Really cool that they take time to speak with some pros because they are probably not familiar with the SC2's scene. It's definitely huge though! They absolutely have the resources to make a show of high quality, now I can't wait for Europe to catch up with North America in terms of e-sport .
On March 23 2011 08:57 lac29 wrote: IGN backing this is huge especially when you realize it's owned by Murdoch. There are essentially 2 big questions I have though.
1) Can they sustain this ... past a one-off kind of tournament/league? 2) Do they have enough community ties/connections to make it successful? HD seems to be the only one connected from what I've heard ... and if he's the only tie to the SC2 community, well that seems to be a bit weak.
2) False. An IGN employee posted a thread with pictures showing many community members at the IGN offices recently.
Way more excited about this than NASL. Hopefully they don't have silly rules (and end up changing them anyway but look unprofessional and unsure in the process) and get someone other than HD to do commentary. HD is like some east noob spamming APM with his mouth. Even though it's a high volume it's 95% hotkeys, you know what I'm saying mate?
On March 23 2011 08:53 drcatellino wrote: Seems like HD will be one of the official casters for this, based on the pictures from the other thread and IGN sponsoring HD's own tournament.
I don't see how that is a connection whatsoever lol, Just because HD is there doesn't mean he's casting, he lives in the SF bay area so he could have just been going to hang out along with Painuser
On March 23 2011 08:56 Omigawa wrote: Are they the main sponsor of NASL? Or a competing StarLeague?
This was already answered by the OP, there is no relation with the NASL and this, even evoli mentioned it in his thread. It's a different entity.
On March 23 2011 08:57 lac29 wrote: IGN backing this is huge especially when you realize it's owned by Murdoch. There are essentially 2 big questions I have though.
1) Can they sustain this ... past a one-off kind of tournament/league? 2) Do they have enough community ties/connections to make it successful? HD seems to be the only one connected from what I've heard ... and if he's the only tie to the SC2 community, well that seems to be a bit weak.
Talk about some wild assumptions lol, HD is the only one connected with the SC2 community? I'd say he's the least connected, he's connected to the YOUTUBE community, iNcontroL is there, ~10 other pro players are there, how is HD the only connection to SC2?
On March 23 2011 08:53 drcatellino wrote: Seems like HD will be one of the official casters for this, based on the pictures from the other thread and IGN sponsoring HD's own tournament.
Yea I think so too, that's great, I like him and his voice.
I don't think this is confirmed whatsoever though, I mean it could happen but no point creating hearsay yet
This is huge! im assuming the prize pool is per season? would make sense considering the financial backing tha IGN has, looks like some other competition is moving in on NASL territory (different format, but they will possibly be competing for players?) I have alot of faith in IGN they are very experienced and have huge financial backing im sure whatever they bring out will be top notch. I think thats why many people are skeptical of the NASL because besides some names (russ duncan) we have no idea who their sponsors are and whos behind it. Supposedly there are 8-10 people working on the NASL on a daily basis( according to russ). I can imagine IGN having a huge staff, also so many people go to their site that making this league mainstream shouldnt be too difficult, im extremely excited and have nothing but good things to say about this :D
On March 23 2011 09:04 cheesemaster wrote: This is huge! im assuming the prize pool is per season? would make sense considering the financial backing tha IGN has, looks like some other competition is moving in on NASL territory (different format, but they will possibly be competing for players?) I have alot of faith in IGN they are very experienced and have huge financial backing im sure whatever they bring out will be top notch. I think thats why many people are skeptical of the NASL because besides some names (russ duncan) we have no idea who their sponsors are and whos behind it. Supposedly there are 8-10 people working on the NASL on a daily basis( according to russ). I can imagine IGN having a huge staff, also so many people go to their site that making this league mainstream shouldnt be too difficult, im extremely excited and have nothing but good things to say about this :D
I'd take it all on the surface for now, 150k+ is how much the prize money is, it could be for one season, maybe 2 like NASL, maybe more, but it seems to me like the OP is saying everything that has been speculated from his source is written in his article, no more no less.
I hope it's going to be an Team League... To be honest with you I have enough of normal tournaments... And besides, GSTL is way more fun than 2 months of normal GSL.
Man this sounds amazing! Team leagues seem to have that something special about them and with the large prize pool and prestige that will (hopefully) come with this tournament we will see a lot of great teams. The one thing that I love about team leagues is the strategy involved in picking who plays and the practice the teams do to snipe certain players.
My only worry is the casters. If you don't get a caster who is extremely knowledgeable in the scene and knows all the players and their styles I feel it won't be as interesting
Problem with having many leagues is that you get into the situation of having champions playing for different companies, and people don't know which champion is better. Boxing has had a hard time with that problem, with unified boxing champions being very rare due to the difficulty of setting these unified tournaments up.
I hope for a really solid teamleague. But i would love to see all teams there including the european ones. But if you want to set something like the gstl its way better to have the players at one place. Hard to call.
This is why announcements of announcements need to stop, TeamLiquid didn't announce shit about TSL until THEY ANNOUNCED IT and that kept all the hype and excitement balled up for when it was out.
On March 23 2011 08:56 Enervate wrote: This team league is incredible! Korea hasn't even established a team league yet (GSTL is more like a team tournament, not seasonal league), and I think foreigners can finally set a precedent! Tbh, I think proleague is a bit more exciting, or at least refreshing, than individual tournaments like MSL or OSL, and I was sad there hadn't been a proleague for SC2 yet. I liked the GCPL a lot, but it just didn't feel that serious and there wasn't as much hype around it.
Also, IGN is huge! Can't think of a better organization to have done this.
Yea i agree GCPL didnt really feel that serious =( i wish that it did, but it felt kind of amateurish i watched the finals and on a few other occasions , but it all just seemed really casual. If they could mix the competiveness of the GSTL with a seasonal team league format (wich is im sure what they are trying to do) this could be a huge deal. Also im wondering if they are planning on doing it online or offline (obviously online makes the most sense) but it would be interesting to see how many teams they could attract for an offline league say the prize pool was 100-150k every month or so (they didnt specify on that) i mean that is comparable to the GSL and foreigners travel there, i want to see someone attempt an offline league sooner or later and see how it does :D offline leagues are just infinitely more interesting to me.
On March 23 2011 08:43 TrainFX wrote: Will be interesting to see if the sc2 scene gets over saturated. I hope not and if it does I doubt it'll happen anytime soon.
How big is the market for e-sports excluding Korea? One or two thousands committed viewers worldwide and less than a million if you add all the very casual viewers? I have to agree with 'fams', there is no way this business model is going to be sustainable with so many competing events at the same time. NASL, MLG, IGN new league, IEM, Assembly and the GSL are all trying to catch the same small niche market. Of course, this is a speculative business and everybody is betting on the growth of the market for e-sports, but how long does it gonna take? Who's going to have the financial back-up to have several seasons in the red as it is going to probably happen? I would love to see a post on the viewer-ship of SC2, the estimated costs of running a tournaments (prizes + one/two full-timers + casting equipment) and the income sources. Frankly,
On March 23 2011 09:09 TheHunksta wrote: This is why announcements of announcements need to stop, TeamLiquid didn't announce shit about TSL until THEY ANNOUNCED IT and that kept all the hype and excitement balled up for when it was out.
For TSL1 we had a 3 week long countdown timer :D . But yes i agree, announcements of announcements need to stop.
I almost wish MLG would be the main league based in NA and ESL be the main league based in Europe ... and instead of having all these new leagues trying to start up with huge hype, they would invest more money in MLG and ESL since they already have a solid foundation.
I wonder if they're going to charge for VODs. I don't think the market can sustain three different leagues all charging for VODs, and if their business model requires it then it would be bad
The friction between a member of Fnatic and an IGN employee, do you think that may have to do with the NASL? as i know some people from fnatic are involved with the NASL
On March 23 2011 09:09 TheHunksta wrote: This is why announcements of announcements need to stop, TeamLiquid didn't announce shit about TSL until THEY ANNOUNCED IT and that kept all the hype and excitement balled up for when it was out.
For TSL1 we had a 3 week long countdown timer :D . But yes i agree, announcements of announcements need to stop.
But at least TSL 3 led to just new years, so speculation and leaks about weren't BEGGING to happen.
I just want these leaks to show that these companies need to keep their hype up for one big announcement, GSL did it at first, TSL3 did it well.
announcements of announcements are a safe way of testing the waters to see how eager the market remains, unfortunately the more we see people interested in taking SC2 further the more we will have to wait through tentative news articles
On March 23 2011 09:15 hugman wrote: I wonder if they're going to charge for VODs. I don't think the market can sustain three different leagues all charging for VODs, and if their business model requires it then it would be bad
I think IGN will be more of a advertisement based model as they have so many advertisers for their site already + all the connections through their parent company, id assume its probably going to be completely free with advertisements its something IGN could defenetly do.
On March 23 2011 09:09 TheHunksta wrote: This is why announcements of announcements need to stop, TeamLiquid didn't announce shit about TSL until THEY ANNOUNCED IT and that kept all the hype and excitement balled up for when it was out.
For TSL1 we had a 3 week long countdown timer :D . But yes i agree, announcements of announcements need to stop.
Looks like this isnt an announcement, but a leak.
(Im seriously fed up of announcements of announcements too, letting people run away with their imagination isnt such a good idea, they just end up being disappointed)
On March 23 2011 09:15 Zechs wrote: So, nobody sees Rupert Murdoch's name involved with esports again as a bad thing?
What has he done in the past? I tried googling and couldn't find anything esports related.
CGS... with CS: Source and some shitty Xbox games, and playboy bunnies, and horrible corny team names, faux-drama, even more hype than this (although it's early days for this one)... the list of flaws CGS had is pretty long.
On March 23 2011 09:15 Zechs wrote: So, nobody sees Rupert Murdoch's name involved with esports again as a bad thing?
What has he done in the past? I tried googling and couldn't find anything esports related.
Liberals hate him because of Fox News. I don't see this affecting much of anything since the market is young gamers who don't care about liberal vs conservative politics.
So much starcraft to follow. No idea how I'm going to be able to keep up with the TSL, GSL, GSTL, and million other small tournaments a day.
Still really cool to see someone as big as IGN hosting a pretty big league though. And a team league at that, team leagues are awesome, and we don't have one right now.
On March 23 2011 09:15 Zechs wrote: So, nobody sees Rupert Murdoch's name involved with esports again as a bad thing?
What has he done in the past? I tried googling and couldn't find anything esports related.
Liberals hate him because of Fox News. I don't see this affecting much of anything since the market is young gamers who don't care about liberal vs conservative politics.
This is really exciting news, but we really need more information on how its going to work with nasl and other events. I dont want to wait 13 days to find out!! gah
On March 23 2011 09:15 Zechs wrote: So, nobody sees Rupert Murdoch's name involved with esports again as a bad thing?
What has he done in the past? I tried googling and couldn't find anything esports related.
CGS... with CS: Source and some shitty Xbox games, and playboy bunnies, and horrible corny team names, faux-drama, even more hype than this (although it's early days for this one)... the list of flaws CGS had is pretty long.
Maybe they learned something this time around?
Ok I didn't know that he was involved, but I doubt he was involved directly with the stuff that went wrong.
CGS.. what a fuckup. I remember that they fined CS some players several thousand dollars for playing CS 1.6 at a small LAN tournament.
On March 23 2011 09:15 Zechs wrote: So, nobody sees Rupert Murdoch's name involved with esports again as a bad thing?
What has he done in the past? I tried googling and couldn't find anything esports related.
CGS... with CS: Source and some shitty Xbox games, and playboy bunnies, and horrible corny team names, faux-drama, even more hype than this (although it's early days for this one)... the list of flaws CGS had is pretty long.
Maybe they learned something this time around?
I remember that. Didn't they used to play FIFA and have commentators who would pretend it was a real game? 'And Giggs lays it off to Rooney' etc.
On March 23 2011 09:15 Zechs wrote: So, nobody sees Rupert Murdoch's name involved with esports again as a bad thing?
What has he done in the past? I tried googling and couldn't find anything esports related.
CGS... with CS: Source and some shitty Xbox games, and playboy bunnies, and horrible corny team names, faux-drama, even more hype than this (although it's early days for this one)... the list of flaws CGS had is pretty long.
Maybe they learned something this time around?
Ok I didn't know that he was involved, but I doubt he was involved directly with the stuff that went wrong.
CGS.. what a fuckup. I remember that they fined CS some players several thousand dollars for playing CS 1.6 at a small LAN tournament.
Yeah, that's the one. He obviously wasn't involved directly, since he's the omnipresent behind-the-scenes guy (if that isn't an oxymoron) of 90% of popular media. In other words, he's arguably the most evil human being to ever have lived.
On March 23 2011 09:15 Zechs wrote: So, nobody sees Rupert Murdoch's name involved with esports again as a bad thing?
-_- I just went from "YEY!" to "O FUCK!" when I saw your post. Now I'm a bit concerned about this as well. I hope it goes well, is all I can really say. Just hope he has no influence on this.
On March 23 2011 09:15 Zechs wrote: So, nobody sees Rupert Murdoch's name involved with esports again as a bad thing?
What has he done in the past? I tried googling and couldn't find anything esports related.
CGS... with CS: Source and some shitty Xbox games, and playboy bunnies, and horrible corny team names, faux-drama, even more hype than this (although it's early days for this one)... the list of flaws CGS had is pretty long.
Maybe they learned something this time around?
I remember that. Didn't they used to play FIFA and have commentators who would pretend it was a real game? 'And Giggs lays it off to Rooney' etc.
Shit, i'm worried now.
Well im pretty sure they arent going to try and do the exact same thing because of how badly CGS failed, im happy that they have tried and failed already it means the second time around they will have learned from their mistakes and it will be of better quality
On March 23 2011 09:15 Zechs wrote: So, nobody sees Rupert Murdoch's name involved with esports again as a bad thing?
What has he done in the past? I tried googling and couldn't find anything esports related.
CGS... with CS: Source and some shitty Xbox games, and playboy bunnies, and horrible corny team names, faux-drama, even more hype than this (although it's early days for this one)... the list of flaws CGS had is pretty long.
Maybe they learned something this time around?
I remember that. Didn't they used to play FIFA and have commentators who would pretend it was a real game? 'And Giggs lays it off to Rooney' etc.
Shit, i'm worried now.
The one time i managed to watch it on TV (yeah it was on TV for five minutes) they actually had Chris Kamara commentating. The fact that they could only rope in the circus-clown of the commentating circuit says a lot. And yeah, i think they did treat it like real football, though i dunno how else you could do it, to be fair. I haven't watched a lot of fifa/pes outside my own playing.
Wow this just keeps getting better and better for NA and foreign eSports SUPER STOKED!! And a league no doubt, this is really good news thanks for sharing!!!!!!
Considering rupert murdoch is probably making 0 decisions about this league (besides maybe financial decsions) i wouldnt be to worried, and its IGN running this and their employees so it is in now way the same people that did CGS.
On March 23 2011 09:15 Zechs wrote: So, nobody sees Rupert Murdoch's name involved with esports again as a bad thing?
What has he done in the past? I tried googling and couldn't find anything esports related.
CGS... with CS: Source and some shitty Xbox games, and playboy bunnies, and horrible corny team names, faux-drama, even more hype than this (although it's early days for this one)... the list of flaws CGS had is pretty long.
Maybe they learned something this time around?
I remember that. Didn't they used to play FIFA and have commentators who would pretend it was a real game? 'And Giggs lays it off to Rooney' etc.
Shit, i'm worried now.
It's clear that they're talking to all the right people. If IGN talks to fifty players about what needs to be done with this project and they bounce ideas off of each other, I'm positive that they'll come up with something that we all can appreciate.
It'd be one thing if they just threw together a tournament and nobody who knew anything about StarCraft or Esports was involved, but either they've learned from their mistakes or have the right idea from the beginning.
I'm more psyched for this than the NASL, to be honest. I just worry about having too much competitive SC2 going on at once. If these are to be successful, people can't get burned out StarCraft. People need to get excited and support an event, but if there's too much divided attention it may not be profitable.
I know I'm already looking ahead at my busy life schedule in April and beyond and thinking it's going to be impossible to follow all of these leagues. Watching all the GSL and GSTL matches is already taxing on my schedule. Throwing in three hours a night of NASL and whatever else IPL is going to offer is just going to be too much.
On March 23 2011 09:09 TheHunksta wrote: This is why announcements of announcements need to stop, TeamLiquid didn't announce shit about TSL until THEY ANNOUNCED IT and that kept all the hype and excitement balled up for when it was out.
For TSL1 we had a 3 week long countdown timer :D . But yes i agree, announcements of announcements need to stop.
Looks like this isnt an announcement, but a leak.
(Im seriously fed up of announcements of announcements too, letting people run away with their imagination isnt such a good idea, they just end up being disappointed)
I'm just speculating but it feels like an intentional leak to me. You don't have a count down on your website if you aren't expecting people :p. You also dont make a preannouncement thread with pictures either ^^.
On March 23 2011 09:15 Zechs wrote: So, nobody sees Rupert Murdoch's name involved with esports again as a bad thing?
What has he done in the past? I tried googling and couldn't find anything esports related.
CGS... with CS: Source and some shitty Xbox games, and playboy bunnies, and horrible corny team names, faux-drama, even more hype than this (although it's early days for this one)... the list of flaws CGS had is pretty long.
Maybe they learned something this time around?
I remember that. Didn't they used to play FIFA and have commentators who would pretend it was a real game? 'And Giggs lays it off to Rooney' etc.
Shit, i'm worried now.
It's clear that they're talking to all the right people. If IGN talks to fifty players about what needs to be done with this project and they bounce ideas off of each other, I'm positive that they'll come up with something that we all can appreciate.
It'd be one thing if they just threw together a tournament and nobody who knew anything about StarCraft or Esports was involved, but either they've learned from their mistakes or have the right idea from the beginning.
I'm more psyched for this than the NASL, to be honest. I just worry about having too much competitive SC2 going on at once. If these are to be successful, people can't get burned out StarCraft. People need to get excited and support an event, but if there's too much divided attention it may not be profitable.
I know I'm already looking ahead at my busy life schedule in April and beyond and thinking it's going to be impossible to follow all of these leagues. Watching all the GSL and GSTL matches is already taxing on my schedule. Throwing in three hours a night of NASL and whatever else IPL is going to offer is just going to be too much.
Although there is very little information so far, i am also more stoked for this than the NASL. Mainly because such a huge gaming site (look at the TSL from teamliquid :D) is behind it and they have huge financial backing, i am also pretty sure they will be using an advertisement model (IE completely free in the highest quality) and the chances of the production value being top notch and it gaining widespread popularity are much higher with a site like IGN behind it (they could get ads in newspapers and on Tv pretty easily if they wanted to) also the chances of it being on tv from the get go or sometime in the future is much higher considering their parent company. All in all the most exciting news for e-sports this year, incontrol may have had the biggest announcement for half a month but it was overhyped anyways lol
I can 100% confirm that Rupert Murdoch will have nothing to do with any decision making as far as the league is concerned. I doubt he even knows about it.
On March 23 2011 09:09 TheHunksta wrote: This is why announcements of announcements need to stop, TeamLiquid didn't announce shit about TSL until THEY ANNOUNCED IT and that kept all the hype and excitement balled up for when it was out.
For TSL1 we had a 3 week long countdown timer :D . But yes i agree, announcements of announcements need to stop.
Looks like this isnt an announcement, but a leak.
(Im seriously fed up of announcements of announcements too, letting people run away with their imagination isnt such a good idea, they just end up being disappointed)
I'm just speculating but it feels like an intentional leak to me. You don't have a count down on your website if you aren't expecting people :p. You also dont make a preannouncement thread with pictures either ^^.
Agreed. And now that I see evoli is involved in this project, I wouldn't be surprised if the "leak" of the NASL was also planned.
The only problem I see with all these extra American leagues is the money. I really feel like IGN is going to milk the shit out of SC2, I really hope it doesn't cost a lot to watch the games. Between GSL, NASL, and IGN I'm going to need another job.
This is amazing news and super super cool. The fact that we are seeing MAJOR tournaments / leagues from multiple sources in the US is pretty gigantic. Lets hope for the best!
On March 23 2011 09:37 Jayrod wrote: ugh too much incontrol. He better get funny in a hurry
he may have been there to see if the IPL will be stepping on the feet of the NASL, i cant imagine him having much to do with this (unless he didnt get accepted into the nasl as a player and hes desperate to try and get into a league lol) considering how immersed he is with the NASL.
I don't have enough time to watch all the SC2 going on currently between TSL, GSL, GSTL, NASL, MLGs, IEMs, etc etc..., let alone a ton of new tournaments!. This is actually really awesome for the players and the community though, the bigger and more the better. I will probably still watch the finals, or more depending on format/who's playing/commentating, etc.
On March 23 2011 09:41 v3chr0 wrote: The only problem I see with all these extra American leagues is the money. I really feel like IGN is going to milk the shit out of SC2, I really hope it doesn't cost a lot to watch the games. Between GSL, NASL, and IGN I'm going to need another job.
Really? i think the IPL will most likely be advertisement based model, considering all the advertisers that already pay IGN and all the advertising connections their parent company has i could easily see it being advertisement based. well just have to wait and see though, its not like IGN hasnt had subscription based services in the past
On March 23 2011 09:09 TheHunksta wrote: This is why announcements of announcements need to stop, TeamLiquid didn't announce shit about TSL until THEY ANNOUNCED IT and that kept all the hype and excitement balled up for when it was out.
For TSL1 we had a 3 week long countdown timer :D . But yes i agree, announcements of announcements need to stop.
Looks like this isnt an announcement, but a leak.
(Im seriously fed up of announcements of announcements too, letting people run away with their imagination isnt such a good idea, they just end up being disappointed)
I'm just speculating but it feels like an intentional leak to me. You don't have a count down on your website if you aren't expecting people :p. You also dont make a preannouncement thread with pictures either ^^.
I'm thinking they threw up the countdown because I went to them, asked them for comment on the leaked information and knew it was coming. I posted it, they saw it was legit and said 'fuck it, we're rolling with it, NASL style.'
Hype works. Not an intentional leak on my end or from my source. I can't reveal anymore. It's always possible that they wanted me to find out and started throwing information out for me but neither me nor my source was or is involved with IGN on this. They have the countdown up because I approached them out of professional courtesy.
Wow now we're talking... IGN is HUUUUUGE, this is great news for sc2's future. Hopefully we'll see more team houses like the ROOT-Gaming/FnaticMSI House
On March 23 2011 09:40 evoli wrote: I can 100% confirm that Rupert Murdoch will have nothing to do with any decision making as far as the league is concerned. I doubt he even knows about it.
I don't really understand why anyone who wants to see E-sport become popular would object to the world's most successful media titan getting involved in this new proleague. The guy practically shits success.
This would be good, but I hope they co-ordinate with other leagues instead of trying to dominate the scene with their mega corporation resources. I am only concerned about that because Rupert Murdoch isn't known for playing nice.
I wonder what their business model will be. Subscriptions like GOM? Ticket sales? Charging players to enter? All of the above?
Rupert Murdoch is the guy who wants to make internet news a subscription service after all.
On March 23 2011 09:40 evoli wrote: I can 100% confirm that Rupert Murdoch will have nothing to do with any decision making as far as the league is concerned. I doubt he even knows about it.
I'm sure he had nothing directly to do with CGS either, that's not the point. It's the same company. I don't know if it's exactly the same people, but talking to the players is definitely a good starting point - assuming it wasn't just a PR exercise. My concern is that they had the ear of the community last time around and ignored what they said.
Still, at least they won't be stupid enough to pick up a Source equivalent since nothing really compares to SC2 now. I just hope they don't take the "throw money at it and treat it like pro wrestling" approach again. The first playboy bunny i see means i'm never watching it again.
On March 23 2011 09:40 evoli wrote: I can 100% confirm that Rupert Murdoch will have nothing to do with any decision making as far as the league is concerned. I doubt he even knows about it.
I don't really understand why anyone who wants to see E-sport become popular would object to the world's most successful media titan getting involved in this new proleague. The guy practically shits success.
Shit is really the most appropriate adjective possible here.
This is very unexpected. IGN will help spread SC2 very much...even just a small permanent menu heading on their homepage will draw in lots of new people. But currently, don't even think SC2 or eSports is anywhere near that in Korea. Overall or on a per capita comparison, North America trails Korea a lot in SC2 or eSports culture.
I strongly dislike the idea of rupert murdoch being involved in any Starcraft, he is literally the devil.
But I guess this is what's gonna happen if Starcraft 2 is gonna get big. In fact, it already has, it's happened guys. Starcraft 2 is going to be huge this year. And hopefully it'll last too.
lol... you guys and the Rupert Murdoch stuff. Do you really even think that Rupert Murdoch knows what StarCraft is? Events and such like this are many many layers from the top in a conglomerate as big as News Corp.
And instead of hating on the company, let's try and be positive- Maybe they're doing something good.
Just because a company does a lot of crappy things doesn't mean you have to hate everything it does.
On March 23 2011 09:57 wristuzi wrote: I strongly dislike the idea of rupert murdoch being involved in any Starcraft, he is literally the devil.
But I guess this is what's gonna happen if Starcraft 2 is gonna get big. In fact, it already has, it's happened guys. Starcraft 2 is going to be huge this year. And hopefully it'll last too.
I hope everyone knows what kind of an evil person he is. He owns so much of the media its nearly impossible to know whether or not you're funding his corporate hydra of doom. I will literally never watch one game from this league because every time I see an ad his empire makes money.
On March 23 2011 09:57 wristuzi wrote: I strongly dislike the idea of rupert murdoch being involved in any Starcraft, he is literally the devil.
But I guess this is what's gonna happen if Starcraft 2 is gonna get big. In fact, it already has, it's happened guys. Starcraft 2 is going to be huge this year. And hopefully it'll last too.
I hope everyone knows what kind of an evil person he is. He owns so much of the media its nearly impossible to know whether or not you're funding his corporate hydra of doom. I will literally never watch one game from this league because every time I see an ad his empire makes money.
I'm not going to look a gift proleague in the mouth.
On March 23 2011 09:09 TheHunksta wrote: This is why announcements of announcements need to stop, TeamLiquid didn't announce shit about TSL until THEY ANNOUNCED IT and that kept all the hype and excitement balled up for when it was out.
Well that's false. TSL 3 did the same thing. They announced the korean invites separately. Remember needing to tune in each sat to get the tsl invites? Remember needing to tune in to the bracket announcement? Remember still needing to tune in to find out the schedule of what games will be aired as they only announce those at the end of each sunday? TSL 3 did just as much milking with their announcements as NASL or IGN are doing.
The IGN network is the biggest conglomeration of video game websites. They have higher access to legitimate advertising and will 9hopefully) put this proleague in front of potentially hundreds of thousands of gamers, many of whom have never seen a pro caliber match before.
This might be the best thing for Starcraft as an e-Sport; better than TV coverage even. If you think about it pushing it on mainstream television consumers will result in low chance of success. But, by putting it in a bigger market of gamers (console, PC, handheld, etc.) there is a much bigger chance of success. Advertising can be niche specific. This is a win for the community. The only thing better that I could think of is putting matches on the Xbox Live Network.
Question: Is this at all confirmed to be a team league other than the name IPL and the fact that IGN was contacting teams (which seems like a damn decent way to get in touch with most players if you wanted to run an individual tournament too)?
On March 23 2011 10:11 Layden wrote: The IGN network is the biggest conglomeration of video game websites. They have higher access to legitimate advertising and will 9hopefully) put this proleague in front of potentially hundreds of thousands of gamers, many of whom have never seen a pro caliber match before.
This might be the best thing for Starcraft as an e-Sport; better than TV coverage even. If you think about it pushing it on mainstream television consumers will result in low chance of success. But, by putting it in a bigger market of gamers (console, PC, handheld, etc.) there is a much bigger chance of success. Advertising can be niche specific. This is a win for the community. The only thing better that I could think of is putting matches on the Xbox Live Network.
What you say about TV is very, very true, and something that mindless "lets go mainstream" people seem to overlook. I still hold plenty of reservations about this whole thing though.
On March 23 2011 10:11 Layden wrote: The IGN network is the biggest conglomeration of video game websites. They have higher access to legitimate advertising and will 9hopefully) put this proleague in front of potentially hundreds of thousands of gamers, many of whom have never seen a pro caliber match before.
This might be the best thing for Starcraft as an e-Sport; better than TV coverage even. If you think about it pushing it on mainstream television consumers will result in low chance of success. But, by putting it in a bigger market of gamers (console, PC, handheld, etc.) there is a much bigger chance of success. Advertising can be niche specific. This is a win for the community. The only thing better that I could think of is putting matches on the Xbox Live Network.
What you say about TV is very, very true, and something that mindless "lets go mainstream" people seem to overlook. I still hold plenty of reservations about this whole thing though.
Well, as long as the BW scene doesn't get shut down, we'll always have that, even if this whole mainstream thing ends up being bad in the long run, right?
Don't get me wrong, I'm always up to watch some casted pro-level starcraft, but this is starting to get a little ridiculous. Two major north american leagues announced in such a short time period (plus mlg). Alot of people love basketball, but there is only one NBA. Hopefully neither league fails, but I can't foresee sustainable growth for both the NASL and IPL, while the GSL retains alot of the top talent.
To the point, if two major north american leagues attempt to exist simultaneously, one will most likely fail. Hopefully, the divided viewer base doesn't cause both to fail.
This is fantastic news! A tournament run by a mainstream gaming outlet like IGN is the next step towards getting it on western TV. If it's a success, there's an easy link to getting it broadcasted on TV by one of news corps channels.
On March 23 2011 10:25 iMeriX wrote: Don't get me wrong, I'm always up to watch some casted pro-level starcraft, but this is starting to get a little ridiculous. Two major north american leagues announced in such a short time period (plus mlg). Alot of people love basketball, but there is only one NBA. Hopefully neither league fails, but I can't foresee sustainable growth for both the NASL and IPL, while the GSL retains alot of the top talent.
To the point, if two major north american leagues attempt to exist simultaneously, one will most likely fail. Hopefully, the divided viewer base doesn't cause both to fail.
There are many major soccer leagues in Europe. I'm not saying we're at that level, just that it's possible!
Also, there is only one NBA in part because they've monopolized the industry, not simply because there's room for only one basketball league.
this is a great news! but i am not sure how proleague will work out... if its like GSTL or BW where teams all gather its going to be great but i have hard times seeing all the eu team moving in to america for number of months just to have a chance of winning and without eu teams its not going to be that competitive for western teams, but if its online i see it working however online means no drama and thats not really that exciting
just my piece of thought on all this i hope it will explode esports nevertheless
Hopefully all these north american tournaments will encourage more people to game more seriously, and the top talents will start coming from NA/Europe, and just around the world in general instead of just mainly Korea. This has be tempted to play a little more seriously
On March 23 2011 10:25 iMeriX wrote: Don't get me wrong, I'm always up to watch some casted pro-level starcraft, but this is starting to get a little ridiculous. Two major north american leagues announced in such a short time period (plus mlg). Alot of people love basketball, but there is only one NBA. Hopefully neither league fails, but I can't foresee sustainable growth for both the NASL and IPL, while the GSL retains alot of the top talent.
To the point, if two major north american leagues attempt to exist simultaneously, one will most likely fail. Hopefully, the divided viewer base doesn't cause both to fail.
There are many major soccer leagues in Europe. I'm not saying we're at that level, just that it's possible!
Also, there is only one NBA in part because they've monopolized the industry, not simply because there's room for only one basketball league.
There is only one main football league in each country. Remember, Europe = continent.
Too much money in the system is a good thing for everyone else for a few reasons:
1) It will be vastly more profitable (and less risky) for pro players to take shots since there is a lot more prize money to go after. Take TT1 for example, he is the highest earning NA pro who hasn't competed in Korea, and he has only about $9,500 in prize money in 9 months of competition. It's possible that the top 10 NA players (or top 10 players who compete in NA) can earn about $25k-$30k each. Outside of halo this type of money hasn't been seen since the CPL used to give the top team $100k once every quarter, and the CPL only had a few corporate patrons.
2) Pros will likely pass on low buy-in tournaments, leaving a niche for '2nd tier' players to make a mark and earn some coin.
3) Money begets more money. This is the beginning of the snowball. The IGN league will simultaneousness promote every other league by simply putting SC2 eSports in front of a bigger audience. IEM, MLG, and even GSL will experience growth in viewership, this I have no doubt.
On March 23 2011 10:27 TicketoHELL wrote: this is a great news! but i am not sure how proleague will work out... if its like GSTL or BW where teams all gather its going to be great but i have hard times seeing all the eu team moving in to america for number of months just to have a chance of winning and without eu teams its not going to be that competitive for western teams, but if its online i see it working however online means no drama and thats not really that exciting
just my piece of thought on all this i hope it will explode esports nevertheless
yea its like a catch 22 dilema, it would be great if it was offline, but you cant see players moving for that, so it will probably be online, wich takes all the drama out of teamleague. maybe thats not a catch 22 but w/e lol
Either way i know the production quality will be off the hook and if it is 150-200k per season (monthly or something) then thats huge and i could maybe see teams moving for it, ugh i totally understand why korea's pro scene is so succesful now, their logistics allow them to have offline tournaments that last a month, wich is 10x more exciting then offline tournaments its really annoying actually i want the same thing for the NA. If only it was as big as real sports and players could fly in and out to all the tournaments all over the world =(
Depending on the schedule I think you will see teams partition thier players into certain leagues, or leagues will start to have rules about players transacting with other leagues. This is good because it will create a larger pool of professional players.
On March 23 2011 10:25 iMeriX wrote: Don't get me wrong, I'm always up to watch some casted pro-level starcraft, but this is starting to get a little ridiculous. Two major north american leagues announced in such a short time period (plus mlg). Alot of people love basketball, but there is only one NBA. Hopefully neither league fails, but I can't foresee sustainable growth for both the NASL and IPL, while the GSL retains alot of the top talent.
To the point, if two major north american leagues attempt to exist simultaneously, one will most likely fail. Hopefully, the divided viewer base doesn't cause both to fail.
There are many major soccer leagues in Europe. I'm not saying we're at that level, just that it's possible!
Also, there is only one NBA in part because they've monopolized the industry, not simply because there's room for only one basketball league.
There is only one main football league in each country. Remember, Europe = continent.
Also a player can't play in two diff soccer leagues at the same time. The NA sc2 leagues will need to draw from the same pool of players.
Also you can have more than one basketball league in the US, but only 1 will have the best players. Basketball has the nba development league as their minor league, while the NHL has the AHL as their minor league and MLB has AAA as their minor league. So it's not really anything to do with the NBA having a monopoly, but the fact that you can only have 1 league with the best players because unlike sc2, a player can't play in 2 diff leagues at the same time.
Well this is good in many ways including more viewers and more opportunities for teams to sustain themselves from tournaments... but it is also bad that while so many tournaments are trying to take off and be successful, there are so many other competing tournaments.
I am by no means disappointed, but I personally have trouble watching the limitless amounts of tournaments as is... I hope this doesn't spread viewers too thin, even if they do introduce many new ones. Of course if enough avid viewers are introduced then it will only help the situation, but that may not be the case.
On March 23 2011 10:25 iMeriX wrote: Don't get me wrong, I'm always up to watch some casted pro-level starcraft, but this is starting to get a little ridiculous. Two major north american leagues announced in such a short time period (plus mlg). Alot of people love basketball, but there is only one NBA. Hopefully neither league fails, but I can't foresee sustainable growth for both the NASL and IPL, while the GSL retains alot of the top talent.
To the point, if two major north american leagues attempt to exist simultaneously, one will most likely fail. Hopefully, the divided viewer base doesn't cause both to fail.
There are many major soccer leagues in Europe. I'm not saying we're at that level, just that it's possible!
Also, there is only one NBA in part because they've monopolized the industry, not simply because there's room for only one basketball league.
There is only one main football league in each country. Remember, Europe = continent.
I do remember that, thanks.
North America = continent. It's a big place. We have a lot of people and so the comparison is warranted.
Anyway, I have no idea if it'll all work or fail miserably. We'll see!
Pro starcraft 2 advertisement on a site like IGN? For their own tourney? That's just about the best thing that could ever happen. Every gamer on the planet will know about professional starcraft 2 before that would be over. This is the kind of stepping stone you need to go from "just for SC2/Esports fans" to "for every interested gamer on the planet."
Get a big enough turnout for it (which, seeing as it's IGN, a 200k tourney by them would likely net 10x more than any previous SC2 tourney) and putting it on TV becomes a real option. (specialty channels, but TV none the less)
Woah... The explosion of e-sports growth since just a few months ago is really incredible... I doubt I would have believed there would be such a huge infusion of prize money and whatnot if I went back in time and told myself.
Feel like some of you guys don't realise how amazing this is.
IGN is the home for literally millions of gamers, who have no idea about "eSports" - If they get hooked from this tourney stuff will "explode". For real this time.
Only concern for me it's by the same guy who was apart of CGS, which just completely flopped.
Ok so.. I guess we all thought the e-sports side of things would grow this year, it seemed logical. This is getting slightly ridiculous however, it's only March guys, slow it down!
(Please don't slow it down.)
Wonder what the people who predicted it would really blow up knew though, aside from those who knew what Inc's announcement singularity would be. I guess we really are marketable these days :O
With so many leagues coming up and so many games I think in the end viewers are going to follow their favourite players and not watch all the games of just one league. Thus viewership for certain games with high profile players will hit the roof while games with low profile players will be circling the drain.
On March 23 2011 10:50 Bart wrote: With so many leagues coming up and so many games I think in the end viewers are going to follow their favourite players and not watch all the games of just one league. Thus viewership for certain games with high profile players will hit the roof while games with low profile players will be circling the drain.
Yeah I will definitely only have time to catch select games of players I like, cause I already watch like 3 hours of gsl per day and I don't have enough free time to watch 3 hours of NASL as well, and how ever many hours of ign pro league on top of that. Just not enough hours in the day unless I watched sc 2 24/7.
On March 23 2011 10:40 chonkyfire wrote: How long until guys like flash, jaedong and bisu switch over?
SC2 seems like it's starting to get pretty big.
They will switch when they have contracts as big as they have now. ( $200k )
Yeah... MC will probably make 200k in the first year of SC2's existence.
they're not going to get a 200k contract without winning anything in sc2 and those contracts will be coming if SC2 continues the way it's going. The teams we know now might not include a majority of their members. Eventually there are going to be some super teams if SC2.
crazy money being thrown around. I'm really glad they went the route of team leagues, gstl/gcpl has shown how fun those are, and there are already enough individual leagues. can't wait to here more news on this.
Remember to spread the word about things like this as much as possible. The more viewers these events attract, the more likely they are to become regular events.
The idea of a true western progamer is starting to seem like reality.
Wait so now there is NASL, IGNProleague, MLG, plus all the smaller tournaments and online tournaments? Can you really sustain such an expansive competitive scene while competeing with Tournaments in Europe and Korea for the pro gamer's attention? There are only so many pro's and so many days in the year. Even with a huge movement to organize schedules around one another, it seems like its going to get kinda stuffy. Especially considering how relatively small and unorganized the foreign scene has been up until this point.
You would need some kind of umbrella organization. A VESPA, or SEXESPA. I something along those lines. And that never came back to hurt anyone.
I really do hope that this is a team league as it would be something different. But even if its another individual league, its still pretty fucking awesome. In sc2 the same players can play in multiple leagues (as long as leagues work together so they don't conflict, which they seem to be doing ie MLG and NASL). So when you compare it to other sports like basketball and baseball its not really possible.
IGN is HUGE. Having them behind a pro league is exactly what is needed. I hope they make it completely free to watch as they are big enough where they can get tons of ad revenue from something like this.
On March 23 2011 11:07 Lexpar wrote: I wonder how the gents at NASL feel about this.
I think they should just merge, or IGN just buy NASL. (if possible) NASL seems pretty disorganized right now. IGN could straighten a lot out. The least of which being a half-decent website.
BW has the OSL, the MSL and the proleague going on at the same time so it should be fine. If this is really a proleague, I think Im even more excited for this than for NASL.
It has to be a team league cause that's the only thing the foreign scene is missing at the moment and will be the one thing that will make it unique. However, I don't see a way to make it anything other than an online league unless you only want to include NA teams cause I doubt you could get everyone from teams around the world live on location for anything more than a 1 week tourney at max. Would just be too expensive for teams to fly all their players over and stay long term.
On March 23 2011 11:07 Lexpar wrote: I wonder how the gents at NASL feel about this.
I think they should just merge, or IGN just buy NASL. (if possible) NASL seems pretty disorganized right now. IGN could straighten a lot out. The least of which being a half-decent website.
Merging would be a good idea. Expand the amount of players who can participate, pool resources for broadcasting and production, not to mention pool the prize money. Pros wouldn't need to pick one or the other, which would only exacerbate issues like Jinro's where he can't just pick up and leave the GSL without losing his spot kind of thing.
On March 23 2011 11:07 Lexpar wrote: I wonder how the gents at NASL feel about this.
I think they should just merge, or IGN just buy NASL. (if possible) NASL seems pretty disorganized right now. IGN could straighten a lot out. The least of which being a half-decent website.
Merging would be a good idea. Expand the amount of players who can participate, pool resources for broadcasting and production, not to mention pool the prize money. Pros wouldn't need to pick one or the other, which would only exacerbate issues like Jinro's where he can't just pick up and leave the GSL without losing his spot kind of thing.
Honestly, competition is a good thing! Having more leagues can help the e-sports scene. If it can be sustained financially, I'm all for having choice.
Dude how much Starcraft 2 can I watch, I'm having tons of trouble fitting GSL, TSL and Day9 daily on my schuedle, imagine a new tournament to watch now xD
On March 23 2011 11:07 Lexpar wrote: I wonder how the gents at NASL feel about this.
I think they should just merge, or IGN just buy NASL. (if possible) NASL seems pretty disorganized right now. IGN could straighten a lot out. The least of which being a half-decent website.
Or they could just have two separate leagues... competition will make both of them better; I have a feeling in particular though, IGN being a solid business will already have a polished tournament and NASL will yeah indeed suffer some competition. I'm willing to bet NASL was the tipping point that made IGN be like, "ok, it's go time" and GSL was what made them at least acknowledge SC2 as a potential means to ad-revenue.
On March 23 2011 08:32 hmunkey wrote: Too many leagues now. These companies should get together and sponsor a larger league or multiple seasons of one, but having 3+ major leagues is a bit silly.
I can't really think of one legitimate sport that has leagues upon leagues.
i think the worlds most popular sport, soccer, is a legitimate sport that has several leagues
On March 23 2011 11:07 Lexpar wrote: I wonder how the gents at NASL feel about this.
im sure they are stepping on some toes, but i like it. I bet incontrol was there just to see what they had
i bet there studio is 20x more impressive then the NASL studio with the kind of money they have.
Yeah IGN has buckets and buckets of money. I believe they're owned by the same parent company as Fox. They could completely swallow NASL with prize pools twice as large and higher production values. Hopefully this community isn't so fickle that they'll jump on the shinier tournament, rather than the one being run by our own people.
why is everyone dumping so hard on the nasl. theres threads and blog posts to discuss what you do and dont like about the nasl, but this isnt the place to take an extra crap on someone else.
Personally, I would like to see a merger of some sort. But who knows and I don't want to speculate without knowing anything about it first. Either way this can only be good!
Considering everyone is following 15 other players with IPL. in their name and the blog post said there were 16 players invited, this may be a list of everyone playing in it.
What I'm wondering is, is this a "league" as we think of one (gsl, nasl, etc), or is it more a "series of tournaments" like MLG and this new FXO thing they announced? The blog post uses both the terms "league" and "series of tournaments," so I'm not sure what to think.
Considering everyone is following 15 other players with IPL. in their name and the blog post said there were 16 players invited, this may be a list of everyone playing in it.
Edit- Added IPL.machine
Hm that line-up doesn't interest me in the slightest, which means I will have somewhat of a real life left with all these leagues around. Glad they made it NA only. ^^
On March 23 2011 12:13 FakePlasticLove wrote: Its ridiculous to think how many lives/businesses Blizzard can ruin if they ever decide to release a crap expansion that breaks balance
Considering everyone is following 15 other players with IPL. in their name and the blog post said there were 16 players invited, this may be a list of everyone playing in it.
Edit- Added IPL.machine
Hm that line-up doesn't interest me in the slightest, which means I will have somewhat of a real life left with all these leagues around. Glad they made it NA only. ^^
Idd ill tune in for the select idra finals but thats it tbh
IGN’s upcoming announcement is very much so a venture of their own. Those working in the newly formed eSports division of the company have been working extremely hard to build an IGN eSports brand that is distinctly theirs. I feel comfortable dismissing the rumors that this announcement is that IGN will be teaming with NASL; IGN sees the potential in eSports, specifically Starcraft, and they want to do things themselves. Their current project is big, very fucking big, and the plans they have for future projects are even bigger.
I’m going to give their efforts and vision a solid 8/10. The project itself relatively straightforward. Those in charge of arranging the specifics for the project did their homework and got things right; I don’t think anyone in the community will surprised, confused, or disappointed in what’s to come.
I can assure you that IGN’s production facilities are down right incredible. The equipment was sick and the crew running everything was very competent. I sat in some of the filming and I was impressed with most of what I saw. The community should be delighted when they see the quality of the finished product.
Considering everyone is following 15 other players with IPL. in their name and the blog post said there were 16 players invited, this may be a list of everyone playing in it.
Edit- Added IPL.machine
Hm that line-up doesn't interest me in the slightest, which means I will have somewhat of a real life left with all these leagues around. Glad they made it NA only. ^^
Same. I'd like at least one or two kr invites, or eu invites at least.
NA scene is definitely bigger in terms of available prize money than the Korean scene now...
GSL has a total prize pool of 1.3-1.5 million for the year. How is NA still bigger?
Not only that, but there also seemed to be a ton of money poured into production, studio, tryout computer lab, and professional TV cameras. Just look at the lighting inside GOM studio and fire shooting up from tubes to create excitement. People have no idea how much money GOMtv put into behind-the-scene production. They also have to pay that Secret K-pop group, too.
Consider how NASL was hyped up at the beginning. $400,000 popped out of nowhere and they try to create a false impression that it's the prize pool. It turned out the prize pool is $100,000 for the 1st season. I wouldn't be surprise if there's going to be one season/year since it takes almost 4 months to finish a season, and then there's break.
Now IGN pops out $150k. I wouldn't be surprise if it's going to be one season/year also; and prizes might be earned as a team of five or six players instead of single player.
It's hard to be optimistic when tournament organizers always try to give wrong impressions of the prize pool.
tbh, I love it when esport grows, but I'm not a fan of over hyping when they give wrong impression numbers.
Think about it, if Idra was to stay in code S he would have been playing 7 GSL seasons/year plus the GSL World and potentially much more endorsement (the reason Idra and Jinro are big names and attracting sponsors is because they're in code S). Now he's in NASL thinking he could dominate but the Koreans are following him and go after the NASL.
Considering everyone is following 15 other players with IPL. in their name and the blog post said there were 16 players invited, this may be a list of everyone playing in it.
Edit- Added IPL.machine
Hm that line-up doesn't interest me in the slightest, which means I will have somewhat of a real life left with all these leagues around. Glad they made it NA only. ^^
Well, we don't know anything for sure yet. Also the blog post did say that they had invited 16 North American players. Its always possible that they are planning on inviting other players from other regions.
They could also be planning on having multiple tournaments like GSL and GSTL.
Considering everyone is following 15 other players with IPL. in their name and the blog post said there were 16 players invited, this may be a list of everyone playing in it.
Edit- Added IPL.machine
Hm that line-up doesn't interest me in the slightest, which means I will have somewhat of a real life left with all these leagues around. Glad they made it NA only. ^^
Well, we don't know anything for sure yet. Also the blog post did say that they had invited 16 North American players. Its always possible that they are planning on inviting other players from other regions.
They could also be planning on having multiple tournaments like GSL and GSTL.
Well the blog post said there will be a series of tournaments looking for the best player in America, so that rules out euros and koreans.
A thing I think a lot of people, including myself sometimes, overlook when they say, "Well they're excluding Korea so the League is going to be worse games" or the same with Europe etc. etc. However I think with something like this with so much money on the line, the NA players are going to get a lot more serious, and start to be able to equal or surpass European and Korean players in terms of skill.
On March 23 2011 12:24 hifriend wrote: Hm that line-up doesn't interest me in the slightest, which means I will have somewhat of a real life left with all these leagues around. Glad they made it NA only. ^^
Well, we don't know anything for sure yet. Also the blog post did say that they had invited 16 North American players. Its always possible that they are planning on inviting other players from other regions.
They could also be planning on having multiple tournaments like GSL and GSTL.
Well the blog post said there will be a series of tournaments looking for the best player in America, so that rules out euros and koreans.
Yeah, you're right, disregard everything I said in that post. Though I suppose a team league is still possible.
This is great news. However, I find it extremely peculiar that the timer counts down to midnight on April 5th, which was the date originally given for the NASL launch.
Their layout is already kicking the shit out the NASL's site. And I'm talking about the countdown not the cached content. Just kidding. Seriously, this is going to be great.
On March 23 2011 13:46 Yoshi Kirishima wrote: Wonder if any Koreans or "asian foreigners" (lol) will come over.
Surely oGsMC might want to come over and own everyone xD
Anyways this is pretty cool, though i'm not sure if i like the esports mecca shifting away from Korea heheh
it's not shifting, only growing in NA. i think it's a good thing. We're really far from Europe and i guess this will help reduce the gap a bit. But i am wondering if both NASL and IGN can co exists. But i hope i am wrong.
No, IPL seems to be a fan-made thing. They're probably just going to use their own domain though....they're like the biggest general gaming site on the internet lol.
On March 23 2011 14:40 Zlasher wrote: No, IPL seems to be a fan-made thing. They're probably just going to use their own domain though....they're like the biggest general gaming site on the internet lol.
oh cool,I just don't want my country to fuck with them.
On March 23 2011 14:40 Zlasher wrote: No, IPL seems to be a fan-made thing. They're probably just going to use their own domain though....they're like the biggest general gaming site on the internet lol.
This is absolutely amazing. 2011 is already shaping up to be a great year for SC2 and now this is happening as well! I'm so happy competitive gaming is getting bigger and bigger.
I'm so happy to see another league pop up. One league isnt enough to grow eSports to its full potential. Especially if one of the leagues loses sponsorship in the future. I can't wait for Starcraft 2 to totally captivate americans far and wide!
So just to clear things up, this is a seperate event from the NASL? or is this just announcement of NASL's main sponsor? Sorry if it's been stated already, I haven't had much sleep.
On March 23 2011 14:40 Zlasher wrote: No, IPL seems to be a fan-made thing. They're probably just going to use their own domain though....they're like the biggest general gaming site on the internet lol.
Mmm with those players it will not be really entertaining to watch for anyone outside US I believe. Not that that's a bad thing, just personally would have liked to see some players from Europe for.example. for ign would also be better for amount of hype and viewers.
Though without a doubt its good for US esports scene.
Ps. Above of course only counts if that player list is final.
Team league just makes more sense for IGN. It'll provide a platform for team sponsors and foster connections between the sponsors and IGN. Also the prize pool would be ridiculous for an individual, but split amongst a team makes it more appropriate. Anyway very exciting, I'm glad to see this.
Finally a respected/unbias'd team is putting together a league. IGN will actually help E-Sports grow just because they aren't SC2 based like NASL etc, IGN is a popular gaming website, but not for SC2, so they will bring a whole different audience than NASL/GomTV etc.
On March 23 2011 17:52 ImHuko wrote: Finally a respected/unbias'd team is putting together a league. IGN will actually help E-Sports grow just because they aren't SC2 based like NASL etc, IGN is a popular gaming website, but not for SC2, so they will bring a whole different audience than NASL/GomTV etc.
No one respects IGN! No one! Not since...not since that day...that rainy day....
On March 23 2011 17:31 Zim23 wrote: Team league just makes more sense for IGN. It'll provide a platform for team sponsors and foster connections between the sponsors and IGN. Also the prize pool would be ridiculous for an individual, but split amongst a team makes it more appropriate. Anyway very exciting, I'm glad to see this.
Agreed.
I'm so disappointed considering that the prize pool was actually quite big. IGN has the brand power and infrastructure to make a team league, which would be infinitely more prestigious than just another NA-exclusive invitational. Maybe they lack the experience to make a project as ambitious as a proleague, but really, the time is RIPE for a extended team league (e.g. 10-20 weeks long) and with IGN's backing, it could easily become the biggest tournament in the world.
Still, this is a huge step forward for SC2, as IGN has a huge fanbase and will probably syphon a lot of that into the SC2 spectator scene.
Edit: Sorry, the GCPL and the SGL currently has nowhere near the capital or infrastructure to make a proleague as big as it was in pinnacle of the BW scene in Korea; but IGN does - it just needs the right people
While I think it's great that big corporations have an interest in the SC2 scene, just injecting money into a scene that's not really that large and invite the few players who are pretty much always invited... It feels like it could turn stale pretty soon. If IGN actually would sponsor a tournament that had a regional qualifier - > national championship I feel that it could really help grow the scene in north america.
Can we really say there aren't someone out there who is at least twice as talented as Idra or incontrol but really aren't able to discover their own potential because the scene just havent reached them? If you build it, they will come.
[edit] Of course I will support a tournamnet like this regardless, but I wish there was more.
Considering everyone is following 15 other players with IPL. in their name and the blog post said there were 16 players invited, this may be a list of everyone playing in it.
Edit- Added IPL.machine
First of all, I'm less excited now. This doesn't seem like a true proleague. Second, where is Tyler and Huk? I cannot believe IGN didn't invite them. Wow.
A 16 person tournament limited to just NA people, why? Plus they are calling it a proleague which is misleading since there's nothing about teams and it's not even all pro's :/
Also it's YET AGAIN just an invitational. I seriously doubt this is the top 16 players that would end up if you had an NA open qualifiers, i know guys who can beat some people on this list 60% of the time. Yet oh they aren't 'well known' so no chance. Might as well just give IdrA the top prize now.
On March 23 2011 23:01 infinity2k9 wrote: A 16 person tournament limited to just NA people, why? Plus they are calling it a proleague which is misleading since there's nothing about teams and it's not even all pro's :/
Also it's YET AGAIN just an invitational. I seriously doubt this is the top 16 players that would end up if you had an NA open qualifiers, i know guys who can beat some people on this list 60% of the time. Yet oh they aren't 'well known' so no chance. Might as well just give IdrA the top prize now.
You can only hope that overtime things balance out for the better players.
NASL is looking a bit better in terms of openness now, no ?
While I would find it hilarious, in the light of all the moaning about NASL, if that was the final roster competing for the whole $150k, I would wait at least until they've actually announced anything. It's possible, for instance, that this is only the NA qualifiers and they'll hold similar tournaments in EU and possibly even in Korea, though that's unlikely. Regardless of the format and who gets invites, I highly doubt they would hold a single 16 player tournament with that kind of prize pool.
On March 23 2011 23:01 infinity2k9 wrote: A 16 person tournament limited to just NA people, why? Plus they are calling it a proleague which is misleading since there's nothing about teams and it's not even all pro's :/
Also it's YET AGAIN just an invitational. I seriously doubt this is the top 16 players that would end up if you had an NA open qualifiers, i know guys who can beat some people on this list 60% of the time. Yet oh they aren't 'well known' so no chance. Might as well just give IdrA the top prize now.
You can only hope that overtime things balance out for the better players.
NASL is looking a bit better in terms of openness now, no ?
What people fail to take into account is the fact that this may well not be the true "league" per say. Its very possible that it is just a 'hype machine' , very similar to what Clash of the Titans was for NASL.
On March 23 2011 08:32 hmunkey wrote: Too many leagues now. These companies should get together and sponsor a larger league or multiple seasons of one, but having 3+ major leagues is a bit silly.
I can't really think of one legitimate sport that has leagues upon leagues.
i think the worlds most popular sport, soccer, is a legitimate sport that has several leagues
There are indeed "several leagues", but that's because of location. It wouldn't make sense for the German team to compete in the African leagues, for instance.
All "multiple leagues" within a country are based on skill, some subdivisions are based on age (e.g. <18, <21). It's as if there was a league for bronze, silver, gold, diamond players as well and I don't see that happening for SC2 in EU/NA.
Some people here claim players could easily compete in both leagues, but I doubt it. 1) We may see something like Zotac vs Go4SC2 (iirc), conflicting time schedules, whether intended or not, 2) contracts prohibiting players to play in other leagues or simply 3) higher pay/prizes in one league, attracting the best players, making the other big league(s) become 2nd class.
Out of curiosity though, can someone explain why this thread became front page news here considering the only article he cited as a source (when that occurred) was posted here by evoli and that thread was locked immediately by an admin for not "having enough facts?" It would seem to me evoli was treated unfairly since he broke the story first, just like he did with the NASL :/
On March 23 2011 08:32 hmunkey wrote: Too many leagues now. These companies should get together and sponsor a larger league or multiple seasons of one, but having 3+ major leagues is a bit silly.
I can't really think of one legitimate sport that has leagues upon leagues.
i think the worlds most popular sport, soccer, is a legitimate sport that has several leagues
There are indeed "several leagues", but that's because of location. It wouldn't make sense for the German team to compete in the African leagues, for instance.
All "multiple leagues" within a country are based on skill, some subdivisions are based on age (e.g. <18, <21). It's as if there was a league for bronze, silver, gold, diamond players as well and I don't see that happening for SC2 in EU/NA.
What about pro boxing? WBC, WBO, IBF, WBA? Everyone of those has a "league" for all the different weight classes, and they all crown their own world champions and basically do the same.
On March 23 2011 23:37 Dagobert wrote: Some people here claim players could easily compete in both leagues, but I doubt it. 1) We may see something like Zotac vs Go4SC2 (iirc), conflicting time schedules, whether intended or not, 2) contracts prohibiting players to play in other leagues or simply 3) higher pay/prizes in one league, attracting the best players, making the other big league(s) become 2nd class.
Why would that be the problem? Follow the league with the best players in it, forget about the other one, problem solved. I think the only problem that can evolve due to too many tournaments is that the good players are spread between multiple leagues and there is not some kind of the big thing where everybody competes against each other, which is quite the opposite of what you described. I don't think we are that point though, and I think too much big money being thrown around is the least of Esports' problems.
How do you guys even know the 16 players listed are a complete list?
Maybe they're still working on invites and confirmations and getting more profiles up. Relax. The league hasn't even officially been announced yet and you people are criticizing the hell out of it.
You also have to understand that theres a lacking of purely talented players because they do not have the chance to make a living based off this game such as people in Korea. With this large amount of money pouring into the North America scene, I would hope that peoples talent grows greatly soon.
On March 23 2011 23:50 Ayush_SCtoss wrote: Holy shit this is huuuuuuuuuuuge! If this is a team league as this name suggests then my mind will be blown even more.
I'm not sure calling it proleague has anything to do with it being teams unfortunately.
On March 24 2011 00:25 likeaboss wrote: You also have to understand that theres a lacking of purely talented players because they do not have the chance to make a living based off this game such as people in Korea. With this large amount of money pouring into the North America scene, I would hope that peoples talent grows greatly soon.
High prize money doesn't = talented players. If anything it just means all the money goes to a few people. We need more team sponsors actually paying salaries to make this actually sustainable. If IGN sponsored a new team, THAT would be a good thing. But this; I don't see how it helps anyone else but the current top players at all. Players can't live off prize money. That model will never work.
Happy that more corporations are investing in e-sport!
TeamLiquid shall dominate!
Oh god, if e-sport becomes legit in North America and TeamLiquid is like the SKT T1 of western world...lmao, we joined TL when this site is just for browsing Korean Brood War news and strategies...
My friend was saying he heard HDstarcraft is tied with this tournament? I tried to browser through the forums for anything..But nothing. Has anyone else heard this?
On March 24 2011 01:06 Sneddo wrote: My friend was saying he heard HDstarcraft is tied with this tournament? I tried to browser through the forums for anything..But nothing. Has anyone else heard this?
Let's hope IGN will look further than just a few youtube channels, but probably they won't. :/
On March 23 2011 23:54 hydra21 wrote: Interesting.
Out of curiosity though, can someone explain why this thread became front page news here considering the only article he cited as a source (when that occurred) was posted here by evoli and that thread was locked immediately by an admin for not "having enough facts?" It would seem to me evoli was treated unfairly since he broke the story first, just like he did with the NASL :/
obviously you haven't read the thread but just to clarify once more, i am citing an anonymous source. evoli is working within ign is really not related to this report. evoli is not being treated unfairly at all nor, for the most part, was he during the nasl story which he did break. evoli is doing quite nicely now as far as i can tell
a tourney by Rupert Murdock is as real as it gets. this guy is flowing with cash. even if sc2 makes him zero money he still has a few billion. and unlimited money flow. and this guy knows broadcast, since many of his business is based on broadcast.
this guy can be bigger than kespa himself if he wanted to.
if he wanted publicity he can in one flip of a second have commercials of his league on his many TV stations and internet web sites.
This has me nervous. I think what we need right now is 1-2 big American leagues to get things started, and perhaps branch out later. If we start with a plurality of leagues, it will become a fad and burn out very quickly.
Like OP says, when it rains it pours. I've got to wonder how scheduling's going to work, and if players are going to be forced to choose between participating in GSL, NASL, IPL, GCPL, and whatever else starts popping up.
That said, I hope IPL wins, because team leagues are the best leagues
On March 24 2011 01:53 deth2munkies wrote: This has me nervous. I think what we need right now is 1-2 big American leagues to get things started, and perhaps branch out later. If we start with a plurality of leagues, it will become a fad and burn out very quickly.
That's my biggest fear too. North Americans have the attention span of goldfish. So many fads are born and die in the blink of an eye (WWE, UFC, Poker etc.)
Don't want to be a bitch, but most of those players (with few exceptions) do not deserve such a high prize pool for the amount of efforts to put in the game....I mean, is the list even remotely serious? The NASL looks a lot more interesting, done by a bunch of people who actually knows the community.
That IGN league made entirely of NA players is a joke.
On March 24 2011 02:34 HowSoOnIsNow wrote: Don't want to be a bitch, but most of those players (with few exceptions) do not deserve such a high prize pool for the amount of efforts to put in the game....I mean, is the list even remotely serious? The NASL looks a lot more interesting, done by a bunch of people who actually knows the community.
That IGN league made entirely of NA players is a joke.
IGN is a NA company and the players they selected are the top players in NA. Sure not every top player was included but don't try to diminish the talent of the players that were. To grow esports in America, American players have to be involved or it will never work for a long list of reasons.
On March 23 2011 08:32 hmunkey wrote: Too many leagues now. These companies should get together and sponsor a larger league or multiple seasons of one, but having 3+ major leagues is a bit silly.
I can't really think of one legitimate sport that has leagues upon leagues.
lol BW? Proleague, MSL, OSL, and there used to be GOM.
On March 24 2011 01:53 deth2munkies wrote: This has me nervous. I think what we need right now is 1-2 big American leagues to get things started, and perhaps branch out later. If we start with a plurality of leagues, it will become a fad and burn out very quickly.
That's my biggest fear too. North Americans have the attention span of goldfish. So many fads are born and die in the blink of an eye (WWE, UFC, Poker etc.)
I'm not American, and not interested in any of these, but they died out? I thought WWE has gone on for decades.
Sounds cool, except for the fact that IGN is most likely going to place their own "know-nothing bronzies" as casters in the league. Hope they can get legitimate figures placed in the league and gel with the community instead of fracturing the community for their benefit
On March 24 2011 03:31 tehemperorer wrote: Sounds cool, except for the fact that IGN is most likely going to place their own "know-nothing bronzies" as casters in the league. Hope they can get legitimate figures placed in the league and gel with the community instead of fracturing the community for their benefit
seeing HD in the picture you're probably right ( sorrry HD fans! )
the impression I"m getting from this is IGN is hosting a huge tournament and don't even care about the rest of the world.. or know of not sure
On March 24 2011 01:53 deth2munkies wrote: This has me nervous. I think what we need right now is 1-2 big American leagues to get things started, and perhaps branch out later. If we start with a plurality of leagues, it will become a fad and burn out very quickly.
That's my biggest fear too. North Americans have the attention span of goldfish. So many fads are born and die in the blink of an eye (WWE, UFC, Poker etc.)
I'm not American, and not interested in any of these, but they died out? I thought WWE has gone on for decades.
On March 24 2011 02:34 HowSoOnIsNow wrote: Don't want to be a bitch, but most of those players (with few exceptions) do not deserve such a high prize pool for the amount of efforts to put in the game....I mean, is the list even remotely serious? The NASL looks a lot more interesting, done by a bunch of people who actually knows the community.
That IGN league made entirely of NA players is a joke.
IGN is a NA company and the players they selected are the top players in NA. Sure not every top player was included but don't try to diminish the talent of the players that were. To grow esports in America, American players have to be involved or it will never work for a long list of reasons.
But what does it matter when its only the same 16 people every time? I mean honestly, take and leave a few but this is ridiculous.
Amazing how much people fill in unknown information with their own pessimistic "facts".
I see TL'ers supporting smaller community efforts blindly, yet when a "big boy" enters the fray, it's almost immediately ATTACK ATTACK ATTACK. I know I'm generalizing quite a few of the posts, but I feel like I'm reading the GOMtv GSL Season 1 thread again. Where everyone was like, "THIS IS GONNA FAIL, I WON"T PAY BLAH BLAHHHHHHHHH".
Look at everything 6 months later.
Guys, companies are willing to put money into expanding this industry. I don't understand why people are so quick to jump on something when they don't even know what it is yet.
Don't be a bunch of ungrateful fucks (for those who are being exactly that).
On March 24 2011 03:44 djWHEAT wrote: Amazing how much people fill in unknown information with their own pessimistic "facts".
I see TL'ers supporting smaller community efforts blindly, yet when a "big boy" enters the fray, it's almost immediately ATTACK ATTACK ATTACK. I know I'm generalizing quite a few of the posts, but I feel like I'm reading the GOMtv GSL Season 1 thread again. Where everyone was like, "THIS IS GONNA FAIL, I WON"T PAY BLAH BLAHHHHHHHHH".
Look at everything 6 months later.
Guys, companies are willing to put money into expanding this industry. I don't understand why people are so quick to jump on something when they don't even know what it is yet.
Don't be a bunch of ungrateful fucks (for those who are being exactly that).
On March 24 2011 03:44 djWHEAT wrote: Amazing how much people fill in unknown information with their own pessimistic "facts".
I see TL'ers supporting smaller community efforts blindly, yet when a "big boy" enters the fray, it's almost immediately ATTACK ATTACK ATTACK. I know I'm generalizing quite a few of the posts, but I feel like I'm reading the GOMtv GSL Season 1 thread again. Where everyone was like, "THIS IS GONNA FAIL, I WON"T PAY BLAH BLAHHHHHHHHH".
Look at everything 6 months later.
Guys, companies are willing to put money into expanding this industry. I don't understand why people are so quick to jump on something when they don't even know what it is yet.
Don't be a bunch of ungrateful fucks (for those who are being exactly that).
Ungrateful fucks? It's just opinions, I doubt criticism has ever hurt a cause more than helped it. There are always improvements to be made, and we don't even have all the information either but we can only work with what's been given us.
I'm curious if they are going to try and get one of the IGN editors involved in the casting, as maybe the third wheel, between two known commentators.
I guess in general i'm really curious how they are going to present the games, I can only imagine very solid production though. IGN's video team is top class now a days.
On March 24 2011 02:34 HowSoOnIsNow wrote: Don't want to be a bitch, but most of those players (with few exceptions) do not deserve such a high prize pool for the amount of efforts to put in the game....I mean, is the list even remotely serious? The NASL looks a lot more interesting, done by a bunch of people who actually knows the community.
That IGN league made entirely of NA players is a joke.
IGN is a NA company and the players they selected are the top players in NA. Sure not every top player was included but don't try to diminish the talent of the players that were. To grow esports in America, American players have to be involved or it will never work for a long list of reasons.
Select is technically Korean and most of the best ''American'' players are in fact Canadians.
I sure can voice my lack of interest in the league. I don't see the problem in doing that.
On March 24 2011 03:44 djWHEAT wrote: Amazing how much people fill in unknown information with their own pessimistic "facts".
I see TL'ers supporting smaller community efforts blindly, yet when a "big boy" enters the fray, it's almost immediately ATTACK ATTACK ATTACK. I know I'm generalizing quite a few of the posts, but I feel like I'm reading the GOMtv GSL Season 1 thread again. Where everyone was like, "THIS IS GONNA FAIL, I WON"T PAY BLAH BLAHHHHHHHHH".
Look at everything 6 months later.
Guys, companies are willing to put money into expanding this industry. I don't understand why people are so quick to jump on something when they don't even know what it is yet.
Don't be a bunch of ungrateful fucks (for those who are being exactly that).
They've seen Hd in pictures. They've read NA players only. For any European players or fans, that's a blow. For any fan of Starcraft it's a blow. For any Korean fan it's a blow.
Ungrateful for what? It's not because of the fact that some richer investors wants to dump money in Esports that we have to be okay with their choices. We are the people. You listen to what we say, or we don't buy your shit.
I really don't like your discourse, my dude. Not at all.
On March 24 2011 03:44 djWHEAT wrote: Amazing how much people fill in unknown information with their own pessimistic "facts".
I see TL'ers supporting smaller community efforts blindly, yet when a "big boy" enters the fray, it's almost immediately ATTACK ATTACK ATTACK. I know I'm generalizing quite a few of the posts, but I feel like I'm reading the GOMtv GSL Season 1 thread again. Where everyone was like, "THIS IS GONNA FAIL, I WON"T PAY BLAH BLAHHHHHHHHH".
Look at everything 6 months later.
Guys, companies are willing to put money into expanding this industry. I don't understand why people are so quick to jump on something when they don't even know what it is yet.
Don't be a bunch of ungrateful fucks (for those who are being exactly that).
It's great that IGN is hosting a big tournament like this, but honestly it doesn't really even seem like they know much of anything going on in the SC2 world right now.
I'll admit that's a pretty bold assumption to make, but with how much money is on the line and the players that were invited? I don't know... I'm sure as time goes on it will change though.
edit: also I don't understand this "american" only argument for e-sports to grow. I've honestly asked the question to numerous friends/family of mine who haven't watched a Sc2 game in their life and I don't get the impression that it has to be american only for them to watch.
NA is without a doubt the continent displaying the least amount of talent. It's a fact, not an opinion
On March 24 2011 03:44 djWHEAT wrote: Amazing how much people fill in unknown information with their own pessimistic "facts".
I see TL'ers supporting smaller community efforts blindly, yet when a "big boy" enters the fray, it's almost immediately ATTACK ATTACK ATTACK. I know I'm generalizing quite a few of the posts, but I feel like I'm reading the GOMtv GSL Season 1 thread again. Where everyone was like, "THIS IS GONNA FAIL, I WON"T PAY BLAH BLAHHHHHHHHH".
Look at everything 6 months later.
Guys, companies are willing to put money into expanding this industry. I don't understand why people are so quick to jump on something when they don't even know what it is yet.
Don't be a bunch of ungrateful fucks (for those who are being exactly that).
It's great that IGN is hosting a big tournament like this, but honestly it doesn't really even seem like they know much of anything going on in the SC2 world right now.
I'll admit that's a pretty bold assumption to make, but with how much money is on the line and the players that were invited? I don't know... I'm sure as time goes on it will change though.
edit: also I don't understand this "american" only argument for e-sports to grow. I've honestly asked the question to numerous friends/family of mine who haven't watched a Sc2 game in their life and I don't get the impression that it has to be american only for them to watch.
NA is without a doubt the continent displaying the least amount of talent. It's a fact, not an opinion
You realize the best way to monetize starcraft and grow it as an esport is through corporate sponsors and advertising and not through an online subscription service, right? And you realize there's a plethora of problems when the market you are trying to sell ad space for is a bunch of random people across the planet, right?
Here's an example for one... Dr.Pepper is a sponsor of MLG. Do you think they care remotely about spending money so people from Croatia see their ads? Absolutely not because it's not a target market and they probably don't even have the infrastructure to sell there.
On March 24 2011 03:44 djWHEAT wrote: Amazing how much people fill in unknown information with their own pessimistic "facts".
I see TL'ers supporting smaller community efforts blindly, yet when a "big boy" enters the fray, it's almost immediately ATTACK ATTACK ATTACK. I know I'm generalizing quite a few of the posts, but I feel like I'm reading the GOMtv GSL Season 1 thread again. Where everyone was like, "THIS IS GONNA FAIL, I WON"T PAY BLAH BLAHHHHHHHHH".
Look at everything 6 months later.
Guys, companies are willing to put money into expanding this industry. I don't understand why people are so quick to jump on something when they don't even know what it is yet.
Don't be a bunch of ungrateful fucks (for those who are being exactly that).
Ungrateful fucks? It's just opinions, I doubt criticism has ever hurt a cause more than helped it. There are always improvements to be made, and we don't even have all the information either but we can only work with what's been given us.
Chillout!
The useless banter that has absolutely no value does hurt because people start jumping on that bandwagon. Want an example? Look at when kelly was announced as a caster, about 98% jumped on her without ever hearing a cast, and more and more people start growing hatred towards it.
What WHEAT could be saying is that, yes it is IGN, and yes they are going to cater to a non playing audience, but believe it or not, a tournament that may sound like pants on head retardation in terms of commentary and casting, might be BETTER for starcraft 2. Why should IGN, the biggest FUCKING gaming website on earth, cater only to a hardcore audience like the ~30,000 people on teamliquid when they could be catering to an audience of hundreds of thousands, if not millions, and maybe just 10% of those start to come to TL or start to follow youtube commentaries, or start watching a NASL and TSL.
Why bitch about it? Just because you don't like the owner of the company who probably could give two fucks less about starcraft 2, he's not going to be doing jack shit but signing his name on a document saying that its a go.
Theres utterly useless banter, and then theres constructive criticism, and i'd say about 25% of the negative comments here are constructive.
You realize the best way to monetize starcraft and grow it as an esport is through corporate sponsors and advertising and not through an online subscription service, right? And you realize there's a plethora of problems when the market you are trying to sell ad space for is a bunch of random people across the planet, right?
Here's an example for one... Dr.Pepper is a sponsor of MLG. Do you think they care remotely about spending money so people from Croatia see their ads? Absolutely not because it's not a target market and they probably don't even have the infrastructure to sell there.
Yeah I understand.
But let's use the NA players only to grow the NA esports scene argument here.
By this logic, why is anybody from Germany, UK, France, Holland or Sweden going to watch this tournament?
Depends on the time for the broadcast. I wouldnt watch it, If they are streamed in the middle of the night. If it is a decent time i don't see any problems to look a NA league at all. Your looking european tournament aswell i guess.
On March 24 2011 04:15 hydra21 wrote: Here's an example for one... Dr.Pepper is a sponsor of MLG. Do you think they care remotely about spending money so people from Croatia see their ads? Absolutely not because it's not a target market and they probably don't even have the infrastructure to sell there.
This is nonsense. Dr Pepper also owns the 7-up brand, which is sold internationally by Pepsi.
Of all things you chose a soft drink which you can literally sell to anyone in the entire world. Of all things.
On March 24 2011 04:24 chonkyfire wrote: By this logic, why is anybody from Germany, UK, France, Holland or Sweden going to watch this tournament?
Because I like Starcraft 2 and I am a fan of IdrA.
Please don't post stupid things. I dont give a fuck if this is US-only, if IdrA plays I am going to watch it. Fans of other US players also will watch it.
On March 24 2011 01:53 deth2munkies wrote: This has me nervous. I think what we need right now is 1-2 big American leagues to get things started, and perhaps branch out later. If we start with a plurality of leagues, it will become a fad and burn out very quickly.
That's my biggest fear too. North Americans have the attention span of goldfish. So many fads are born and die in the blink of an eye (WWE, UFC, Poker etc.)
I'm not American, and not interested in any of these, but they died out? I thought WWE has gone on for decades.
Literally all the things he mentioned are still going on right now and are still lucrative.
Their countdown site looks pretty legit. Very exciting indeed! I know IGN has several people that are very into SC2. Their random SC2 articles show that much, at least.
People got on my junk when I said the EXACT same thing about GOMtv's GSL. And I stuck by my word the entire time.
I'm fine if people don't like what I've said in this thread, I've got 10 years of experience seeing leagues start, fail, succeed, and grow. You can ignore the past 10 years of history... or you can use it to see why many of their decisions are in fact "smart".
Here are some FACTS: - CGS, the first North American Televised Gaming Show, was destroyed because they tried to bite off more than they could chew. They thought they NEEDED to go global with their initiative and the end result was a waste of nearly $20 million dollars. That league died so fast because money was spent poorly. So for those who are expressing their concern over the fact that it's a NA focused league should consider that any company who's "breaking" into SC2 would be silly to attempt a "global" league when it could indeed fail. It's MUCH SMARTER to start with a very controlled and cost effective project, and grow from there. Just because it appears NA is their target for their first venture, doesn't mean they are ignoring the rest of the world.
And because I know someone will mention GSL, keep in mind that although GSL has "GLOBAL" in the title, they do not really have much operating cost outside of Korea. If you want to compete in that league you still have to get yourself to Korea to play. In CGS's case, they were fronting the cost of travel and accommodations for hundreds of players who ultimately (aside from a few Euro teams) brought nothing to the league.
- IGN is a North American company. Although they have reach well beyond NA, it makes sense (even if strictly from an advertising POV) that it would limit the first project to NA. That's just business folks. And it's smart business. You might not agree with it, but it's a pretty wise move especially considering all the other leagues which have fallen due to their urgency to expand "globally".
- North America has been look at in the eSports community as being "FUCKED UP" for the past 4 years. And technically, everyone who says this is right. We lost CPL, CGS, basically every major league which was present during the 2002-2005 eSports era. We need to rebuild like Doozers in Fraggle Rock. We need more potential for LAN events here in the US. As much as I preach global exposure to eSports, North America needs some SOLID leagues, events, and exposure to regain the prestige that NA once had. MLG is contributing to this and is a great effort, but we can't put all our eggs in one basket. NASL is a great start too... seeing IGN jump in the mix is equally as exciting.
- And since we're on the topic of IGN. NASL, ESL, MLG, etc... sorry but those guys are small potatoes compared to the potential exposure, revenue, and stability that IGN has to offer. Sure they might not have a glowing history in Pro-Gaming, but does that mean we should crucify them before they've even technically announced their intentions? In fact, I think we should as supportive as possible because don't we, as fans, just want more content, games, etc?
Additionally, it's a good time to reference the SotG PAX Edition in which Day[9] said one of the best way you can support SC2 is by SUPPORTING THE PLAYERS. With each new league that shows potential in this space, it's another opportunity for our rising NA stars to play, win, and earn. I for one would be tickled if I found out that my favorite NA players could focus 150% on SC2 because the amount of leagues (and potential prize money) continues to rise. Therefore... if we support the leagues, we're supporting the players (and even more than that - but I think this is a good time to reiterate what Day was saying).
I understand my post may have come off as harsh... but I'm tired of seeing communities shit on efforts which can only further the cause. And if this turns out to be one massive pile of shit (which I really doubt will be the case) - then I'll gladly come back and say ALL YOU GUYS WERE RIGHT. Until then, I'll continue to be the snobby optimist that I am.
On March 24 2011 04:15 hydra21 wrote: Here's an example for one... Dr.Pepper is a sponsor of MLG. Do you think they care remotely about spending money so people from Croatia see their ads? Absolutely not because it's not a target market and they probably don't even have the infrastructure to sell there.
This is nonsense. Dr Pepper also owns the 7-up brand, which is sold internationally by Pepsi.
Of all things you chose a soft drink which you can literally sell to anyone in the entire world. Of all things.
On March 24 2011 04:24 chonkyfire wrote: By this logic, why is anybody from Germany, UK, France, Holland or Sweden going to watch this tournament?
Because I like Starcraft 2 and I am a fan of IdrA.
Please don't post stupid things. I dont give a fuck if this is US-only, if IdrA plays I am going to watch it. Fans of other US players also will watch it.
Is this a joke? Dr.Pepper-Snapple owns the brand rights to 7-up only in the United States. Pepsi sells it in Europe, and Pepsi is not the same company as Dr.Pepper-Snapple. Why would they advertise for a competing company when it would net them a much lower return on investment (i am not sure what the licensing deal looks like exactly, it's fully possible they get payed a flat rate for the rights and get no % of the sales, or even nothing at all)? How does that remotely make any sense? No seriously explain why they should pay to run ads so Europeans can buy a product from another distributor; you brought it up. Additionally, the Dr.Pepper brand is the brand they are targeting the gaming market with; not 7up. They are not going to pay to run Dr.Pepper ads to an international market seeing how Dr.Pepper isn't sold in half of Europe (Italy,Ukraine, Russia etc). And in some of the countries it is sold, Dr.Pepper-Snapple is not the company distributing it because of anti-trust proceedings. Do you even a clue how businesses work?
I completely agree with everything djwheat said. I am from EU but I do not have a problem with IGN only doing NA if that will promote SC2 and make it a popular esport. In time it will grow to EU and rest of the world (it is not like EU does not have big tournaments already).
Also GSL asks anyone wanting to compete to move to S. Korea, I am sure IGN would not disallow EU players that moved to US to be a part of this.
Why should European fans support the IGN league when they didn't invite none. Why would SC fans, such as me, who followed the whole thing since 99, would want to support players that i don't really care for? Because they're from NA? That's all? There's the MLS in Canada and the States and i don't watch it, i watch the Premier league. It's not because that there is a team in Montreal that i'm going to cheer for them, when compared to Arsenal, it's just painful to watch.
Online games are international by nature, protectionism goes against the philosophy behind playing online. SC comes from that philosophy. That NA thing, in my mind, is not viable.
I think it's a pretty good argument against that league. I would much rather, like is said, support the NASL, which listen to the people, than that league. And i do believe that my money is tight, that people will selectively choose which league they'll watch, and since i can't watch SC 24-7, i won't watch that one. I guess, that i wont be the only one making that choice.
I think some skepticism is warranted and probably beneficial. That said, a significant portion of people are shitting on this venture with no real justification.
On March 24 2011 05:18 HowSoOnIsNow wrote: I think it's a pretty good argument against that league. I would much rather, like is said, support the NASL, which listen to the people, than that league. And i do believe that my money is tight, that people will selectively choose which league they'll watch, and since i can't watch SC 24-7, i won't watch that one. I guess, that i wont be the only one making that choice.
How do you know IGN doesn't "listen to the people"? They haven't even announced anything. You probably ought to give them some time before enthusiastically dismissing the whole thing.
If I could offer everyone one piece of advice: listen to Wheat. The guy knows what he's talking about.
im always hoping that each big league will be open tournament qualifier + wildcards aka invites. i dont care about the nationality, age or gender of the best players.
unfortunately there are those who care and believe that there is a market big enough of people that do care. reading nationality limitations and invites makes me a sad panda, and even more not the slighest interested in such leagues.
but every big league is a step forward for esports and starcraft 2 so i hope ign does well with whatever they do. I,ll always have the GSL and never have to think if there is any other league out there that has a higher level of competition.
On March 24 2011 05:18 HowSoOnIsNow wrote: Why should European fans support the IGN league when they didn't invite none. Why would SC fans, such as me, who followed the whole thing since 99, would want to support players that i don't really care for? Because they're from NA? That's all? There's the MLS in Canada and the States and i don't watch it, i watch the Premier league. It's not because that there is a team in Montreal that i'm going to cheer for them, when compared to Arsenal, it's just painful to watch.
Online games are international by nature, protectionism goes against the philosophy behind playing online. SC comes from that philosophy. That NA thing, in my mind, is not viable.
I think it's a pretty good argument against that league. I would much rather, like is said, support the NASL, which listen to the people, than that league. And i do believe that my money is tight, that people will selectively choose which league they'll watch, and since i can't watch SC 24-7, i won't watch that one. I guess, that i wont be the only one making that choice.
Do you watch the GSL? Do you watch TSL games that don't involve europeans? Do you watch any starcraft matches ever that have not included a european in that individual match?
On March 24 2011 05:23 chobopeon wrote: I think some skepticism is warranted and probably beneficial. That said, a significant portion of people are shitting on this venture with no real justification.
I'd like to echo this sentiment.
I can understand someone being skeptical when a new name like IGN enters the scene. As chobopeon said, it's probably for the best.
It is a little disheartening to see so many people make assumptions based on absolutely no evidence and then try and damn IGN, before they've even started mind you, with baseless accusations though. There are a handful of people who are involved in this project, and for the most part they've been careful about what information they've let out. You shouldn't just blindly start shitting on IGN because of some hunch you pulled out of thin air.
I understand it's a drag because all the details aren't available. I know it's unfortunate that there aren't more specifics on the table. That's just how it goes. You guys should at least wait until April 4th before you whip out the torches and pitch forks.
Edit: Inversely, you shouldn't go ape shit with delight before you know more too.
On March 24 2011 05:07 djWHEAT wrote: People got on my junk when I said the EXACT same thing about GOMtv's GSL. And I stuck by my word the entire time.
I'm fine if people don't like what I've said in this thread, I've got 10 years of experience seeing leagues start, fail, succeed, and grow. You can ignore the past 10 years of history... or you can use it to see why many of their decisions are in fact "smart".
Here are some FACTS: - CGS, the first North American Televised Gaming Show, was destroyed because they tried to bite off more than they could chew. They thought they NEEDED to go global with their initiative and the end result was a waste of nearly $20 million dollars. That league died so fast because money was spent poorly. So for those who are expressing their concern over the fact that it's a NA focused league should consider that any company who's "breaking" into SC2 would be silly to attempt a "global" league when it could indeed fail. It's MUCH SMARTER to start with a very controlled and cost effective project, and grow from there. Just because it appears NA is their target for their first venture, doesn't mean they are ignoring the rest of the world.
And because I know someone will mention GSL, keep in mind that although GSL has "GLOBAL" in the title, they do not really have much operating cost outside of Korea. If you want to compete in that league you still have to get yourself to Korea to play. In CGS's case, they were fronting the cost of travel and accommodations for hundreds of players who ultimately (aside from a few Euro teams) brought nothing to the league.
- IGN is a North American company. Although they have reach well beyond NA, it makes sense (even if strictly from an advertising POV) that it would limit the first project to NA. That's just business folks. And it's smart business. You might not agree with it, but it's a pretty wise move especially considering all the other leagues which have fallen due to their urgency to expand "globally".
- North America has been look at in the eSports community as being "FUCKED UP" for the past 4 years. And technically, everyone who says this is right. We lost CPL, CGS, basically every major league which was present during the 2002-2005 eSports era. We need to rebuild like Doozers in Fraggle Rock. We need more potential for LAN events here in the US. As much as I preach global exposure to eSports, North America needs some SOLID leagues, events, and exposure to regain the prestige that NA once had. MLG is contributing to this and is a great effort, but we can't put all our eggs in one basket. NASL is a great start too... seeing IGN jump in the mix is equally as exciting.
- And since we're on the topic of IGN. NASL, ESL, MLG, etc... sorry but those guys are small potatoes compared to the potential exposure, revenue, and stability that IGN has to offer. Sure they might not have a glowing history in Pro-Gaming, but does that mean we should crucify them before they've even technically announced their intentions? In fact, I think we should as supportive as possible because don't we, as fans, just want more content, games, etc?
Additionally, it's a good time to reference the SotG PAX Edition in which Day[9] said one of the best way you can support SC2 is by SUPPORTING THE PLAYERS. With each new league that shows potential in this space, it's another opportunity for our rising NA stars to play, win, and earn. I for one would be tickled if I found out that my favorite NA players could focus 150% on SC2 because the amount of leagues (and potential prize money) continues to rise. Therefore... if we support the leagues, we're supporting the players (and even more than that - but I think this is a good time to reiterate what Day was saying).
I understand my post may have come off as harsh... but I'm tired of seeing communities shit on efforts which can only further the cause. And if this turns out to be one massive pile of shit (which I really doubt will be the case) - then I'll gladly come back and say ALL YOU GUYS WERE RIGHT. Until then, I'll continue to be the snobby optimist that I am.
DJWheat really said it well here. I agree with this 100%.
This is sick, with the number of leagues available in the US, I wouldnt be surpirised if we see more dedicated SC2 gaming houses such as what ROOT and EG us doing. If this happens then we should be able to move the focus from Korea as well as cross the "skill barrier" that has been set up. The reason that Koreans are better than Foreigners is not something dif in their blood. Its the fact that they live and breathe Starcraft, if foreigners get a practice regimen like the Koreans have right now there is absolutely no reason why Starcraft 2 cant be more of a global game .
IGN will be able to bring so much exposure to the mainstream if this has even moderate success. We are all apart of something big that is taking shape. Support your players, teams, and venues at every opportunity you can.
On March 24 2011 05:55 evoli wrote: There are a handful of people who are involved in this project, and for the most part they've been careful about what information they've let out.
Not careful enough
Lol but on a serious note, I agree with your sentiment, what chobopeon wrote in his post is the information he's received, meanwhile there have been minimum 50 posts that I've seen in this thread already of people making the wildest assumptions based off of nothing but 8 pictures or so.
On March 24 2011 05:23 chobopeon wrote: I think some skepticism is warranted and probably beneficial. That said, a significant portion of people are shitting on this venture with no real justification.
On March 24 2011 05:18 HowSoOnIsNow wrote: I think it's a pretty good argument against that league. I would much rather, like is said, support the NASL, which listen to the people, than that league. And i do believe that my money is tight, that people will selectively choose which league they'll watch, and since i can't watch SC 24-7, i won't watch that one. I guess, that i wont be the only one making that choice.
How do you know IGN doesn't "listen to the people"? They haven't even announced anything. You probably ought to give them some time before enthusiastically dismissing the whole thing.
If I could offer everyone one piece of advice: listen to Wheat. The guy knows what he's talking about.
Well for one, I'm not one of those who claim that the league is doomed to failure, nor do i have a problem with which company promote the league. I don't have problems with sponsors or nothing of this nature, just with the NA policy which seems to be in vigor. That's the only part i have a problem with.
As for my assumption over them not listening to us, it's just an impression that i have. If they are, good for them. But if they keep the NA thing alive, I'm personally not down with that policy. Like i said, i've been watching Bw and Esports for 13 years, I'm looking for games of high quality. In the beginning, i wasn't interested in the NASL, but they changed certain policies that they had, and now I'm looking forward the tournament.
We got MLG already, and i think that's enough. I also think that the price pool is inflated for the amount of skill in their choice of players. That's my personal concerns. I don't think I'm in any way, hating. I don't think I'm unreasonably pessimistic. Those are concerns from someone with relative experience dealing with Esports. I remember when Romero gave his Ferrari to the winner of a quake tournament. It was big. Didn't help Esports in any way.
On March 24 2011 05:23 chobopeon wrote: I think some skepticism is warranted and probably beneficial. That said, a significant portion of people are shitting on this venture with no real justification.
On March 24 2011 05:18 HowSoOnIsNow wrote: I think it's a pretty good argument against that league. I would much rather, like is said, support the NASL, which listen to the people, than that league. And i do believe that my money is tight, that people will selectively choose which league they'll watch, and since i can't watch SC 24-7, i won't watch that one. I guess, that i wont be the only one making that choice.
How do you know IGN doesn't "listen to the people"? They haven't even announced anything. You probably ought to give them some time before enthusiastically dismissing the whole thing.
If I could offer everyone one piece of advice: listen to Wheat. The guy knows what he's talking about.
Well for one, I'm not one of those who claim that the league is doomed to failure, nor do i have a problem with which company promote the league. I don't have problems with sponsors or nothing of this nature, just with the NA policy which seems to be in vigor. That's the only part i have a problem with.
As for my assumption over them not listening to us, it's just an impression that i have. If they are, good for them. But if they keep the NA thing alive, I'm personally not down with that policy. Like i said, i've been watching Bw and Esports for 13 years, I'm looking for games of high quality. In the beginning, i wasn't interested in the NASL, but they changed certain policies that they had, and now I'm looking forward the tournament.
We got MLG already, and i think that's enough. I also think that the price pool is inflated for the amount of skill in their choice of players. That's my personal concerns. I don't think I'm in any way, hating. I don't think I'm unreasonably pessimistic. Those are concerns from someone with relative experience dealing with Esports. I remember when Romero gave his Ferrari to the winner of a quake tournament. It was big. Didn't help Esports in any way.
To be fair, IGN is looking at a much wider spectrum than fans like you. They want to get these casual fans in, the ones that watch HD and Husky, the ones who check IGN regularly. The players chosen are damn good players and have some personality that will attract those type of fans.
Not to sound like a dick, but right now, the posters on Team Liquid aren't the people this league really needs to cater. Its going after those who aren't really into eSports at all. A lot of people from TL will still tune in because of the games, but they are thinking much bigger than that, which is great.
DJ Wheat, thank you for such a great post. I am also an optimist and love to see all the effort that is going in to growing the NA eSports scene. A few months ago I didn't see anything like this happening, but now, I think eSports is about to fucking blow NA up. And it seems sc2 will be leading the way.
Like I said earlier, They probably wouldn't mind if their tournament didn't cater to the 30,000 of us on TeamLiquid, if instead their viewership comes from the 200,000 people that casually play games and browse their site, and if some of those viewers convert to TL, then as far as we are concerned it is a success.
On March 24 2011 03:44 djWHEAT wrote: Amazing how much people fill in unknown information with their own pessimistic "facts".
I see TL'ers supporting smaller community efforts blindly, yet when a "big boy" enters the fray, it's almost immediately ATTACK ATTACK ATTACK. I know I'm generalizing quite a few of the posts, but I feel like I'm reading the GOMtv GSL Season 1 thread again. Where everyone was like, "THIS IS GONNA FAIL, I WON"T PAY BLAH BLAHHHHHHHHH".
Look at everything 6 months later.
Guys, companies are willing to put money into expanding this industry. I don't understand why people are so quick to jump on something when they don't even know what it is yet.
Don't be a bunch of ungrateful fucks (for those who are being exactly that).
So your points are just one big SUPPORT ESPORTS.
Whats the point of even discussion besides 'This will be great! eSports!!!!!' when any opinions are just met with constant defence? Nothing about this IGN thing so far seems to have an interest for me. As for it's relation to eSports, it's a big prize pool but we've all seen in the past big prize pools don't necessarily lead to a stable scene. We need teams with salaries, not massive prizes all going to the same people. The Romero Ferrari example is a great choice of comparison.
Let's say IGN sponsored a team, got them a practice house and paid for their travel to play in tournaments around the world while making big articles about their home team. That would be something. But this? 150k that helps nothing but the top 3 players (and competed for by a lot of mediocre players in comparison to the worlds best). Someone up the top of this page said the ridiculous, 'The dream is coming true'. Fuck that. To me the dream was already realized in Korea, just lacking a foreign element. This isn't even close to a dream. This is just typical flawed Western eSports model repeating its mistakes.
So much money for so little talent... Financial back-up and a smooth already working organization are huge assets for a sports league, but at the end of the day, you are going to need to deliver a good show. If the league really is NA only, with those 16 players, i doubt the quality is going to be huge. Frankly, they could have just streamed a bunch of ladder games for 0 dollars and you would have had the sames names and the same games.
I dunno what the situation is right now with these NA league(s) but I'm definitely pumped. Just start the action already!
I'm a little curious about how much audience are the sponsors of these 100k+ leagues going to be satisfied with. Is it enough if just the gamer population watches it online or does it eventually need to go mainstream to satisfy them. They are obviously ventures that believe in the growth and potential of esports.
On March 24 2011 03:44 djWHEAT wrote: Amazing how much people fill in unknown information with their own pessimistic "facts".
I see TL'ers supporting smaller community efforts blindly, yet when a "big boy" enters the fray, it's almost immediately ATTACK ATTACK ATTACK. I know I'm generalizing quite a few of the posts, but I feel like I'm reading the GOMtv GSL Season 1 thread again. Where everyone was like, "THIS IS GONNA FAIL, I WON"T PAY BLAH BLAHHHHHHHHH".
Look at everything 6 months later.
Guys, companies are willing to put money into expanding this industry. I don't understand why people are so quick to jump on something when they don't even know what it is yet.
Don't be a bunch of ungrateful fucks (for those who are being exactly that).
So your points are just one big SUPPORT ESPORTS.
Whats the point of even discussion besides 'This will be great! eSports!!!!!' when any opinions are just met with constant defence? Nothing about this IGN thing so far seems to have an interest for me. As for it's relation to eSports, it's a big prize pool but we've all seen in the past big prize pools don't necessarily lead to a stable scene. We need teams with salaries, not massive prizes all going to the same people. The Romero Ferrari example is a great choice of comparison.
Let's say IGN sponsored a team, got them a practice house and paid for their travel to play in tournaments around the world while making big articles about their home team. That would be something. But this? 150k that helps nothing but the top 3 players (and competed for by a lot of mediocre players in comparison to the worlds best). Someone up the top of this page said the ridiculous, 'The dream is coming true'. Fuck that. To me the dream was already realized in Korea, just lacking a foreign element. This isn't even close to a dream. This is just typical flawed Western eSports model repeating its mistakes.
Except when they are getting tons of people tuning in to watch these games and companies realize, hey paying for advertising during this sc2 league is a really good idea. When you get someone as big as IGN behind something it is cause for great excitement. They provide a platform that sc2 in NA hasn't seen yet. It is going to help bring in other companies for advertising and they could even become team sponsors. This is how things start.
And why are so many people shitting on NA players? Their are some great NA players, including the ones linked to this IGN pro league. They will give us great games and I have little doubt about it.
On March 24 2011 03:44 djWHEAT wrote: Amazing how much people fill in unknown information with their own pessimistic "facts".
I see TL'ers supporting smaller community efforts blindly, yet when a "big boy" enters the fray, it's almost immediately ATTACK ATTACK ATTACK. I know I'm generalizing quite a few of the posts, but I feel like I'm reading the GOMtv GSL Season 1 thread again. Where everyone was like, "THIS IS GONNA FAIL, I WON"T PAY BLAH BLAHHHHHHHHH".
Look at everything 6 months later.
Guys, companies are willing to put money into expanding this industry. I don't understand why people are so quick to jump on something when they don't even know what it is yet.
Don't be a bunch of ungrateful fucks (for those who are being exactly that).
So your points are just one big SUPPORT ESPORTS.
Whats the point of even discussion besides 'This will be great! eSports!!!!!' when any opinions are just met with constant defence? Nothing about this IGN thing so far seems to have an interest for me. As for it's relation to eSports, it's a big prize pool but we've all seen in the past big prize pools don't necessarily lead to a stable scene. We need teams with salaries, not massive prizes all going to the same people. The Romero Ferrari example is a great choice of comparison.
Let's say IGN sponsored a team, got them a practice house and paid for their travel to play in tournaments around the world while making big articles about their home team. That would be something. But this? 150k that helps nothing but the top 3 players (and competed for by a lot of mediocre players in comparison to the worlds best). Someone up the top of this page said the ridiculous, 'The dream is coming true'. Fuck that. To me the dream was already realized in Korea, just lacking a foreign element. This isn't even close to a dream. This is just typical flawed Western eSports model repeating its mistakes.
If this dream is already realized for you in Korea, you're dreaming awfully small.
Paying for advisement isn't the same kind of money as i'm talking about in actually running teams though. This method of big money tournaments early in a games life didn't work in the past, so until it actually happens i'll be apprehensive about the situation. For one thing the totally average gamer is fickle and especially considering the kind of average gamer to go on IGN, probably is only half interested in strategy games at most. The most popular NA eSport so far if i'm not mistaken is Halo... totally different games we're talking about here. I don't see SC2 offering anything to these guys.
Just my opinion anyway you're entitled to be excited if you have high hopes but i'm just trying to be realistic here.
On March 24 2011 08:05 chobopeon wrote: If this dream is already realized for you in Korea, you're dreaming awfully small.
You must be one of the crazy people like the guy who thought that American Football downtime would lead to somehow more SC2 viewers right? BW got 100,000 people live at a Proleague final in it's peak. If that's dreaming small then i got no idea wtf you are thinking this is going to turn into.
On March 24 2011 07:53 legaton wrote: So much money for so little talent... Financial back-up and a smooth already working organization are huge assets for a sports league, but at the end of the day, you are going to need to deliver a good show. If the league really is NA only, with those 16 players, i doubt the quality is going to be huge. Frankly, they could have just streamed a bunch of ladder games for 0 dollars and you would have had the sames names and the same games.
When I first started watching Starcraft (I'm relatively new to the scene) I thought players like Kiwikaki and CatZ were the best of the best. This is actually a great set up to attract many new viewers, people who aren't hardcore SC fans yet. After this, if they enjoy this tournament, they will come on sites like this one and learn more about the community and the players in Korea. This is the audience IGN is catering to, these are the majority of the people who browse IGN.
Not to mention the impact of having many larger tournaments could have on the NA players, they could train harder and dedicate much more time to improving their game as it will become a more and more viable option for income.
Lastly, this is a startup, sure the players may seem unimpressive now, but imagine when they get all the kinks worked out. Then they can have higher caliber players come into a tournament that has amazing quality. You have to start small, trying to take on too much will lead to failure more often then not. Give this whole idea a chance.
(This isn't directed specifically at you, Just to all the people who have taken a pessimistic view to this league.)
On March 24 2011 08:05 chobopeon wrote: If this dream is already realized for you in Korea, you're dreaming awfully small.
You must be one of the crazy people like the guy who thought that American Football downtime would lead to somehow more SC2 viewers right? BW got 100,000 people live at a Proleague final in it's peak. If that's dreaming small then i got no idea wtf you are thinking this is going to turn into.
Brood War was and is great. This is a new game and, overall, it has taken over as torch bearer for e-sports. The current state of SC2 in Korea is not the dream at all, not for me. In my opinion, it's just a start.
I have no idea what you're talking about with the football strike meaning more SC2 viewers but no, I don't think that.
Prize money is never a viable source of income. That is a terrible way to do things, prize money goes towards an individual not a team. You think IdrA is gonna share his prize money among the members of EG if he wins? Think he'll pay the rent for the team house? Buy plane tickets for everyone to go to Korea? Prize money is almost NEVER going back into eSports, so keep it in mind. Even if it was a team tournament, you can't run a team on the basis that you have to win prizes to even stay afloat. Can't you see that's completely unsustainable? People see a large sum of money and all logic goes out the window.
On March 24 2011 08:22 chobopeon wrote: Brood War was and is great. This is a new game and, overall, it has taken over as torch bearer for e-sports. The current state of SC2 in Korea is not the dream at all, not for me. In my opinion, it's just a start.
I have no idea what you're talking about with the football strike meaning more SC2 viewers but no, I don't think that.
Somebody started a thread about American Football downtime leading to more SC2 viewers, guess you didn't see it. And of course you don't think SC2 in Korea is the dream, but i never meant SC2 as the current situation there isn't ideal or a dream at all. I think people have to keep in mind BW was just the right game in the right place at the right time, coinciding heavily with the boom of PC Bangs in Korean and managing to somehow obtain a large female fanbase too which helped audiences a lot.
Prize money is not a viable source of income in and of itself. Okay. Understood. What does that have to do with this tournament? You don't know the way the prizes will be handed out, how intimately the teams are involved (are they sharing ad revenue?) or anything. Really, you don't know anything about this league. Not many of us do.
Wheat isn't saying SUPPORT ESPORTS UNCONDITIONALLY and neither am I. No one with a good head on their shoulders is. Without speaking for anyone else, I am saying that no one should be chanting "DOWN WITH IGN" or "LONG LIVE IGN" based on this. This is very interesting news with huge potential. Maybe it will be a wash, maybe it will succeed. That depends on a million details and we have very, very few of them.
On March 24 2011 08:11 infinity2k9 wrote: Paying for advisement isn't the same kind of money as i'm talking about in actually running teams though. This method of big money tournaments early in a games life didn't work in the past, so until it actually happens i'll be apprehensive about the situation. For one thing the totally average gamer is fickle and especially considering the kind of average gamer to go on IGN, probably is only half interested in strategy games at most. The most popular NA eSport so far if i'm not mistaken is Halo... totally different games we're talking about here. I don't see SC2 offering anything to these guys.
Just my opinion anyway you're entitled to be excited if you have high hopes but i'm just trying to be realistic here.
On March 24 2011 08:05 chobopeon wrote: If this dream is already realized for you in Korea, you're dreaming awfully small.
You must be one of the crazy people like the guy who thought that American Football downtime would lead to somehow more SC2 viewers right? BW got 100,000 people live at a Proleague final in it's peak. If that's dreaming small then i got no idea wtf you are thinking this is going to turn into.
Getting the companies to come in an sponsor any thing in eSports is huge, and quite frankly it makes most sense for a company to pay for ads first. They aren't going to leap out and sponsor a team right away. When companies realize that hey this is working out really well for us with the ads, then they will look more into sponsoring teams. Like I said before, it has to start somewhere.
Even if IGN only gets a certain amount interested in strategy games, it doesn't mean people interested in others won't check out this tournament. sc2 is my first strategy game and now I'm completely obsessed with it. This league is about bringing in those new fans. Lots of people will just click and check it out. Thats the beauty of the internet. If IGN has this on their main page as the top story, you better believe a lot of people will check it out and a lot will get hooked, as long as it is presented well.
On March 24 2011 08:30 infinity2k9 wrote: The prize money as income was responding to H2O who directly inferred that.
I did not mean to infer that prize money be the sole source of income for any person/team. My wording was bad on that part. My point was more along the lines of "More money means people will spend more time practicing". Whether or not it goes directly back into eSports was irrelevant to that point. I'm not a great writer, and I tend to mess up my words and struggle to make myself clear often. I have to apologize for that.
On March 24 2011 04:15 hydra21 wrote: Here's an example for one... Dr.Pepper is a sponsor of MLG. Do you think they care remotely about spending money so people from Croatia see their ads? Absolutely not because it's not a target market and they probably don't even have the infrastructure to sell there.
This is nonsense. Dr Pepper also owns the 7-up brand, which is sold internationally by Pepsi.
Of all things you chose a soft drink which you can literally sell to anyone in the entire world. Of all things.
Why must people argue with DjWheat. Man knows what he's talking about.
But I guess people love complaining on the internets. Bottom line, this will generate more money and awareness toward SC2 in america, which will draw more sponsorship. This will generate more money and awareness, and the feedback cycle continues until someday gaming will be as popular as say ...... Poker or Magic the Gathering (the main magic tournament has a million dollar grand prize IIRC) or even chess.
On March 24 2011 08:15 Gentleman7 wrote: If tylers not in it it's not the top 16 in USA.
While I don't disagree with this sentiment, if you read the statement, they contacted certain teams, and also it seems like many of the players tehre are people who are alerady in california or in the west coast.
I totally agree with that was djwheat said. A good example for this business is the ESL. It started exactly like the IGN. With a german based series, german fans, players and stories. NOW it's an international player but based on the success they had withthin the german community. The ESL is based on 2.650.000 million registred players. I totally think it is the smartest way to start a local based company and go for an organic growth. Anyways; super excited and i'm gonna watch americans playing because i don't care about nationalites just about games as a viewer.
On March 24 2011 05:07 djWHEAT wrote: People got on my junk when I said the EXACT same thing about GOMtv's GSL. And I stuck by my word the entire time.
I'm fine if people don't like what I've said in this thread, I've got 10 years of experience seeing leagues start, fail, succeed, and grow. You can ignore the past 10 years of history... or you can use it to see why many of their decisions are in fact "smart".
Here are some FACTS: - CGS, the first North American Televised Gaming Show, was destroyed because they tried to bite off more than they could chew. They thought they NEEDED to go global with their initiative and the end result was a waste of nearly $20 million dollars. That league died so fast because money was spent poorly. So for those who are expressing their concern over the fact that it's a NA focused league should consider that any company who's "breaking" into SC2 would be silly to attempt a "global" league when it could indeed fail. It's MUCH SMARTER to start with a very controlled and cost effective project, and grow from there. Just because it appears NA is their target for their first venture, doesn't mean they are ignoring the rest of the world.
And because I know someone will mention GSL, keep in mind that although GSL has "GLOBAL" in the title, they do not really have much operating cost outside of Korea. If you want to compete in that league you still have to get yourself to Korea to play. In CGS's case, they were fronting the cost of travel and accommodations for hundreds of players who ultimately (aside from a few Euro teams) brought nothing to the league.
- IGN is a North American company. Although they have reach well beyond NA, it makes sense (even if strictly from an advertising POV) that it would limit the first project to NA. That's just business folks. And it's smart business. You might not agree with it, but it's a pretty wise move especially considering all the other leagues which have fallen due to their urgency to expand "globally".
- North America has been look at in the eSports community as being "FUCKED UP" for the past 4 years. And technically, everyone who says this is right. We lost CPL, CGS, basically every major league which was present during the 2002-2005 eSports era. We need to rebuild like Doozers in Fraggle Rock. We need more potential for LAN events here in the US. As much as I preach global exposure to eSports, North America needs some SOLID leagues, events, and exposure to regain the prestige that NA once had. MLG is contributing to this and is a great effort, but we can't put all our eggs in one basket. NASL is a great start too... seeing IGN jump in the mix is equally as exciting.
- And since we're on the topic of IGN. NASL, ESL, MLG, etc... sorry but those guys are small potatoes compared to the potential exposure, revenue, and stability that IGN has to offer. Sure they might not have a glowing history in Pro-Gaming, but does that mean we should crucify them before they've even technically announced their intentions? In fact, I think we should as supportive as possible because don't we, as fans, just want more content, games, etc?
Additionally, it's a good time to reference the SotG PAX Edition in which Day[9] said one of the best way you can support SC2 is by SUPPORTING THE PLAYERS. With each new league that shows potential in this space, it's another opportunity for our rising NA stars to play, win, and earn. I for one would be tickled if I found out that my favorite NA players could focus 150% on SC2 because the amount of leagues (and potential prize money) continues to rise. Therefore... if we support the leagues, we're supporting the players (and even more than that - but I think this is a good time to reiterate what Day was saying).
I understand my post may have come off as harsh... but I'm tired of seeing communities shit on efforts which can only further the cause. And if this turns out to be one massive pile of shit (which I really doubt will be the case) - then I'll gladly come back and say ALL YOU GUYS WERE RIGHT. Until then, I'll continue to be the snobby optimist that I am.
CGS failed also because they chose CS:S over 1.6, alienating most of their fan base, and they did not have the benefit of having a game that has largely unified the esports world like SC2. Viewers equals revenue, and CGS did not have them. IGN doesn't have the problem of choosing the right game.
I think people are just naturally expressing their concern about how to make it the best possible product it can be. It seems like you're directing your frustration with the lackluster progress of esports in NA toward the community for not supporting organizations, which seems misplaced. Esports will become mainstream when they have an entertaining product that speaks to the masses. Yes, support of the hardcore is always good, but that alone will not lead to breakthrough. Internet forums are always going to have a diverse set of opinions both informed and ignorant, you can't really take it all too seriously. The proof will be in the pudding, and SC2 has shown far more potential for becoming mainstream in NA than all of its predecessors combined.
In regards to the league itself, if the prize pool is ~150k I feel like IGN has to have a slickly produced LAN finals at bare minimum. Online tournaments make for a comparatively boring show. Ideally this would be a LAN only league, but I understand if they want to dip their toes in the water before diving in.
Man seeing all the huge sc2 leagues pop up everywhere makes me so happy. It really show how far essports has grown in the last 10 years. I remember Yellow saying that, when he first started they didnt have much money and was like 3 guys living in a 2 room apartment and shit like that.
It just makes all warm inside to see all this. Also when you look at bw, and how it was the last 7-8 years. I didnt get any attention outside of korea, and foreigners had a really hard time becomming pros. Man this makes me so happy - It really does!
On March 24 2011 05:07 djWHEAT wrote: People got on my junk when I said the EXACT same thing about GOMtv's GSL. And I stuck by my word the entire time.
I'm fine if people don't like what I've said in this thread, I've got 10 years of experience seeing leagues start, fail, succeed, and grow. You can ignore the past 10 years of history... or you can use it to see why many of their decisions are in fact "smart".
Here are some FACTS: - CGS, the first North American Televised Gaming Show, was destroyed because they tried to bite off more than they could chew. They thought they NEEDED to go global with their initiative and the end result was a waste of nearly $20 million dollars. That league died so fast because money was spent poorly. So for those who are expressing their concern over the fact that it's a NA focused league should consider that any company who's "breaking" into SC2 would be silly to attempt a "global" league when it could indeed fail. It's MUCH SMARTER to start with a very controlled and cost effective project, and grow from there. Just because it appears NA is their target for their first venture, doesn't mean they are ignoring the rest of the world.
And because I know someone will mention GSL, keep in mind that although GSL has "GLOBAL" in the title, they do not really have much operating cost outside of Korea. If you want to compete in that league you still have to get yourself to Korea to play. In CGS's case, they were fronting the cost of travel and accommodations for hundreds of players who ultimately (aside from a few Euro teams) brought nothing to the league.
- IGN is a North American company. Although they have reach well beyond NA, it makes sense (even if strictly from an advertising POV) that it would limit the first project to NA. That's just business folks. And it's smart business. You might not agree with it, but it's a pretty wise move especially considering all the other leagues which have fallen due to their urgency to expand "globally".
- North America has been look at in the eSports community as being "FUCKED UP" for the past 4 years. And technically, everyone who says this is right. We lost CPL, CGS, basically every major league which was present during the 2002-2005 eSports era. We need to rebuild like Doozers in Fraggle Rock. We need more potential for LAN events here in the US. As much as I preach global exposure to eSports, North America needs some SOLID leagues, events, and exposure to regain the prestige that NA once had. MLG is contributing to this and is a great effort, but we can't put all our eggs in one basket. NASL is a great start too... seeing IGN jump in the mix is equally as exciting.
- And since we're on the topic of IGN. NASL, ESL, MLG, etc... sorry but those guys are small potatoes compared to the potential exposure, revenue, and stability that IGN has to offer. Sure they might not have a glowing history in Pro-Gaming, but does that mean we should crucify them before they've even technically announced their intentions? In fact, I think we should as supportive as possible because don't we, as fans, just want more content, games, etc?
Additionally, it's a good time to reference the SotG PAX Edition in which Day[9] said one of the best way you can support SC2 is by SUPPORTING THE PLAYERS. With each new league that shows potential in this space, it's another opportunity for our rising NA stars to play, win, and earn. I for one would be tickled if I found out that my favorite NA players could focus 150% on SC2 because the amount of leagues (and potential prize money) continues to rise. Therefore... if we support the leagues, we're supporting the players (and even more than that - but I think this is a good time to reiterate what Day was saying).
I understand my post may have come off as harsh... but I'm tired of seeing communities shit on efforts which can only further the cause. And if this turns out to be one massive pile of shit (which I really doubt will be the case) - then I'll gladly come back and say ALL YOU GUYS WERE RIGHT. Until then, I'll continue to be the snobby optimist that I am.
Amen to that djWHEAT! Not to give the finger to people here on TL but E-sporters in general are very narrowed minded, thinking that E-sports is a huge part of the gaming industry. Yes it's getting bigger and bigger but still it's just by a margin. Starcraft 2 is helping a lot though.
I think what IGN is doing is what NASL should had done (hello North American StarLeague). In my book only one can survive in the long run and my money is going for IGN. I don't think that two Starcraft 2-only high paying organizations can survive.
I think it's extremely bad and even ignorant to think that the IGN Proleague project will be handle like CGS because of the fact that both companies are owned by Rupert Murdoch. I'm quite confident in saying without knowing anything about it that the link stops there.
When saying that only one Starcraft 2 league will survive in the states I don´t include MLG as I think that either IGN Proleague or NASL can coexist with MLG. MLG is so much more and well established and Starcraft 2 is not their only game. Good to point out that MLG is putting up $200 000 for 2011 season, I think it's easy to forget that when you see NASL and IGN Proleague presenting their prize money.
On March 24 2011 05:07 djWHEAT wrote: People got on my junk when I said the EXACT same thing about GOMtv's GSL. And I stuck by my word the entire time.
I'm fine if people don't like what I've said in this thread, I've got 10 years of experience seeing leagues start, fail, succeed, and grow. You can ignore the past 10 years of history... or you can use it to see why many of their decisions are in fact "smart".
Here are some FACTS: - CGS, the first North American Televised Gaming Show, was destroyed because they tried to bite off more than they could chew. They thought they NEEDED to go global with their initiative and the end result was a waste of nearly $20 million dollars. That league died so fast because money was spent poorly. So for those who are expressing their concern over the fact that it's a NA focused league should consider that any company who's "breaking" into SC2 would be silly to attempt a "global" league when it could indeed fail. It's MUCH SMARTER to start with a very controlled and cost effective project, and grow from there. Just because it appears NA is their target for their first venture, doesn't mean they are ignoring the rest of the world.
And because I know someone will mention GSL, keep in mind that although GSL has "GLOBAL" in the title, they do not really have much operating cost outside of Korea. If you want to compete in that league you still have to get yourself to Korea to play. In CGS's case, they were fronting the cost of travel and accommodations for hundreds of players who ultimately (aside from a few Euro teams) brought nothing to the league.
- IGN is a North American company. Although they have reach well beyond NA, it makes sense (even if strictly from an advertising POV) that it would limit the first project to NA. That's just business folks. And it's smart business. You might not agree with it, but it's a pretty wise move especially considering all the other leagues which have fallen due to their urgency to expand "globally".
- North America has been look at in the eSports community as being "FUCKED UP" for the past 4 years. And technically, everyone who says this is right. We lost CPL, CGS, basically every major league which was present during the 2002-2005 eSports era. We need to rebuild like Doozers in Fraggle Rock. We need more potential for LAN events here in the US. As much as I preach global exposure to eSports, North America needs some SOLID leagues, events, and exposure to regain the prestige that NA once had. MLG is contributing to this and is a great effort, but we can't put all our eggs in one basket. NASL is a great start too... seeing IGN jump in the mix is equally as exciting.
- And since we're on the topic of IGN. NASL, ESL, MLG, etc... sorry but those guys are small potatoes compared to the potential exposure, revenue, and stability that IGN has to offer. Sure they might not have a glowing history in Pro-Gaming, but does that mean we should crucify them before they've even technically announced their intentions? In fact, I think we should as supportive as possible because don't we, as fans, just want more content, games, etc?
Additionally, it's a good time to reference the SotG PAX Edition in which Day[9] said one of the best way you can support SC2 is by SUPPORTING THE PLAYERS. With each new league that shows potential in this space, it's another opportunity for our rising NA stars to play, win, and earn. I for one would be tickled if I found out that my favorite NA players could focus 150% on SC2 because the amount of leagues (and potential prize money) continues to rise. Therefore... if we support the leagues, we're supporting the players (and even more than that - but I think this is a good time to reiterate what Day was saying).
I understand my post may have come off as harsh... but I'm tired of seeing communities shit on efforts which can only further the cause. And if this turns out to be one massive pile of shit (which I really doubt will be the case) - then I'll gladly come back and say ALL YOU GUYS WERE RIGHT. Until then, I'll continue to be the snobby optimist that I am.
CGS failed also because they chose CS:S over 1.6, alienating most of their fan base, and they did not have the benefit of having a game that has largely unified the esports world like SC2. Viewers equals revenue, and CGS did not have them. IGN doesn't have the problem of choosing the right game.
I think people are just naturally expressing their concern about how to make it the best possible product it can be. It seems like you're directing your frustration with the lackluster progress of esports in NA toward the community for not supporting organizations, which seems misplaced. Esports will become mainstream when they have an entertaining product that speaks to the masses. Yes, support of the hardcore is always good, but that alone will not lead to breakthrough. Internet forums are always going to have a diverse set of opinions both informed and ignorant, you can't really take it all too seriously. The proof will be in the pudding, and SC2 has shown far more potential for becoming mainstream in NA than all of its predecessors combined.
In regards to the league itself, if the prize pool is ~150k I feel like IGN has to have a slickly produced LAN finals at bare minimum. Online tournaments make for a comparatively boring show. Ideally this would be a LAN only league, but I understand if they want to dip their toes in the water before diving in.
I don't suggest telling WHEAT different reasons why CGS failed lol.
Source over 1.6 was necessary to satisfy direct TV, just like spectating in 3rd person view, and starting out with max money. But that is by no means a primary reason, what Wheat stated is pretty much the big reason.
Also, people need to stop thinking of this as 150k for one 16 man invitational, given the information that has been found so far, it could very well be that the 150k is the TOTAL prize pool, and these 16 players were just the first in a qualification process or ANYTHING.
Speculation and assuming that 150k for one tournament is pretty foolish given that every bit of information written in the OP is all we have to go by right now.
On March 24 2011 05:07 djWHEAT wrote: People got on my junk when I said the EXACT same thing about GOMtv's GSL. And I stuck by my word the entire time.
I'm fine if people don't like what I've said in this thread, I've got 10 years of experience seeing leagues start, fail, succeed, and grow. You can ignore the past 10 years of history... or you can use it to see why many of their decisions are in fact "smart".
Here are some FACTS: - CGS, the first North American Televised Gaming Show, was destroyed because they tried to bite off more than they could chew. They thought they NEEDED to go global with their initiative and the end result was a waste of nearly $20 million dollars. That league died so fast because money was spent poorly. So for those who are expressing their concern over the fact that it's a NA focused league should consider that any company who's "breaking" into SC2 would be silly to attempt a "global" league when it could indeed fail. It's MUCH SMARTER to start with a very controlled and cost effective project, and grow from there. Just because it appears NA is their target for their first venture, doesn't mean they are ignoring the rest of the world.
And because I know someone will mention GSL, keep in mind that although GSL has "GLOBAL" in the title, they do not really have much operating cost outside of Korea. If you want to compete in that league you still have to get yourself to Korea to play. In CGS's case, they were fronting the cost of travel and accommodations for hundreds of players who ultimately (aside from a few Euro teams) brought nothing to the league.
- IGN is a North American company. Although they have reach well beyond NA, it makes sense (even if strictly from an advertising POV) that it would limit the first project to NA. That's just business folks. And it's smart business. You might not agree with it, but it's a pretty wise move especially considering all the other leagues which have fallen due to their urgency to expand "globally".
- North America has been look at in the eSports community as being "FUCKED UP" for the past 4 years. And technically, everyone who says this is right. We lost CPL, CGS, basically every major league which was present during the 2002-2005 eSports era. We need to rebuild like Doozers in Fraggle Rock. We need more potential for LAN events here in the US. As much as I preach global exposure to eSports, North America needs some SOLID leagues, events, and exposure to regain the prestige that NA once had. MLG is contributing to this and is a great effort, but we can't put all our eggs in one basket. NASL is a great start too... seeing IGN jump in the mix is equally as exciting.
- And since we're on the topic of IGN. NASL, ESL, MLG, etc... sorry but those guys are small potatoes compared to the potential exposure, revenue, and stability that IGN has to offer. Sure they might not have a glowing history in Pro-Gaming, but does that mean we should crucify them before they've even technically announced their intentions? In fact, I think we should as supportive as possible because don't we, as fans, just want more content, games, etc?
Additionally, it's a good time to reference the SotG PAX Edition in which Day[9] said one of the best way you can support SC2 is by SUPPORTING THE PLAYERS. With each new league that shows potential in this space, it's another opportunity for our rising NA stars to play, win, and earn. I for one would be tickled if I found out that my favorite NA players could focus 150% on SC2 because the amount of leagues (and potential prize money) continues to rise. Therefore... if we support the leagues, we're supporting the players (and even more than that - but I think this is a good time to reiterate what Day was saying).
I understand my post may have come off as harsh... but I'm tired of seeing communities shit on efforts which can only further the cause. And if this turns out to be one massive pile of shit (which I really doubt will be the case) - then I'll gladly come back and say ALL YOU GUYS WERE RIGHT. Until then, I'll continue to be the snobby optimist that I am.
DJ Wheat spittin' mad truth! I've been trying to say the same thing in various threads. eSports can't grow if it continues to try to bite off more than it can chew. Even GSL focuses it's efforts to Korea. And from the start, Korean eSports has always been about Korea. The NBA is not a global league. World wide events are few and far between for sports. Sure, since it's a video game we can play online, but honestly that stuff lacks the spectacle and energy of a live event. We can still have our big international tournaments. We got Blizzcon. We got GOM's up and coming world championship. IEM's world championship. If you look at live events, the participants are often local. A few players may fly in on sponsorships, but compete at a loss. It's too rough on players to have to be traveling around all the time. We can only go so far with online tournaments.
Thanks for quoting DJwheat so I didnt have to go looking for it. Wheat is so awesome and this is awesome news. How anyone could see anything negitive about more exposure for a game that we all love and live for is beyond me.
While still unclear in regards to the details, this appears to be another advancement for SC2 in the NA scene. People spinning this in a negative light need to wake up and smell the reality.
That was a good rant by DJWheat. I think the issue is that people have gotten so used to the scene being so international. In something like CS nobody would think it's weird with an NA only league.
A pity i refused to support something owned by murdoch :/
Dammit, i hate it when ethics get in the way of my gaming. Maybe it'll raise the profile of the esports community more and then i will be able to support his competitors :D
Well, I was a member of IGN for some time, watching gaming news, but, since I read this, I am all over following Idra, Drewbie and all the other players ( thanks for links in the OP) - tho I am not much of a follower in these social networks; I do this because I think its important to get my support to these players registered on IGN and to hype and support the players of this future league. All the best, guys!
I haven't read the rest of the thread yet... but considering HD's IGN tournament... I'm betting they're going after HD to cast it... possible Husky as well?
On March 24 2011 22:54 MrSexington wrote: I haven't read the rest of the thread yet... but considering HD's IGN tournament... I'm betting they're going after HD to cast it... possible Husky as well?
(Seems like a very IGN thing to do.)
I doubt both...Husky lives in Socal now and IGN and HD are both from SF Bay Area. The latter is more likely but not by any means confirmed, and Husky....just....doubt it
On March 24 2011 05:07 djWHEAT wrote: People got on my junk + Show Spoiler +
when I said the EXACT same thing about GOMtv's GSL. And I stuck by my word the entire time.
I'm fine if people don't like what I've said in this thread, I've got 10 years of experience seeing leagues start, fail, succeed, and grow. You can ignore the past 10 years of history... or you can use it to see why many of their decisions are in fact "smart".
Here are some FACTS: - CGS, the first North American Televised Gaming Show, was destroyed because they tried to bite off more than they could chew. They thought they NEEDED to go global with their initiative and the end result was a waste of nearly $20 million dollars. That league died so fast because money was spent poorly. So for those who are expressing their concern over the fact that it's a NA focused league should consider that any company who's "breaking" into SC2 would be silly to attempt a "global" league when it could indeed fail. It's MUCH SMARTER to start with a very controlled and cost effective project, and grow from there. Just because it appears NA is their target for their first venture, doesn't mean they are ignoring the rest of the world.
And because I know someone will mention GSL, keep in mind that although GSL has "GLOBAL" in the title, they do not really have much operating cost outside of Korea. If you want to compete in that league you still have to get yourself to Korea to play. In CGS's case, they were fronting the cost of travel and accommodations for hundreds of players who ultimately (aside from a few Euro teams) brought nothing to the league.
- IGN is a North American company. Although they have reach well beyond NA, it makes sense (even if strictly from an advertising POV) that it would limit the first project to NA. That's just business folks. And it's smart business. You might not agree with it, but it's a pretty wise move especially considering all the other leagues which have fallen due to their urgency to expand "globally".
- North America has been look at in the eSports community as being "FUCKED UP" for the past 4 years. And technically, everyone who says this is right. We lost CPL, CGS, basically every major league which was present during the 2002-2005 eSports era. We need to rebuild like Doozers in Fraggle Rock. We need more potential for LAN events here in the US. As much as I preach global exposure to eSports, North America needs some SOLID leagues, events, and exposure to regain the prestige that NA once had. MLG is contributing to this and is a great effort, but we can't put all our eggs in one basket. NASL is a great start too... seeing IGN jump in the mix is equally as exciting.
- And since we're on the topic of IGN. NASL, ESL, MLG, etc... sorry but those guys are small potatoes compared to the potential exposure, revenue, and stability that IGN has to offer. Sure they might not have a glowing history in Pro-Gaming, but does that mean we should crucify them before they've even technically announced their intentions? In fact, I think we should as supportive as possible because don't we, as fans, just want more content, games, etc?
Additionally, it's a good time to reference the SotG PAX Edition in which Day[9] said one of the best way you can support SC2 is by SUPPORTING THE PLAYERS. With each new league that shows potential in this space, it's another opportunity for our rising NA stars to play, win, and earn. I for one would be tickled if I found out that my favorite NA players could focus 150% on SC2 because the amount of leagues (and potential prize money) continues to rise. Therefore... if we support the leagues, we're supporting the players (and even more than that - but I think this is a good time to reiterate what Day was saying).
I understand my post may have come off as harsh... but I'm tired of seeing communities shit on efforts which can only further the cause. And if this turns out to be one massive pile of shit (which I really doubt will be the case) - then I'll gladly come back and say ALL YOU GUYS WERE RIGHT. Until then, I'll continue to be the snobby optimist that I am.
I think you make some exellent points here, keeping it NA focused to start with is fine in my opinion.
I do however hope that EU/KR/etc players are given the opportunity to compete in the league if they move to US, temporary or permanently, during the league. And from the invites that does seem to be the case, meaning i am very much happy =)
NASL/IGN and all this leagues need to not just give prise money to the winner, it needs to be divided like the GSL/TSL where everyone in the league makes an okay sum of money, 1k for 1month or so of work is pretty good for coming last (and this also means you only had to compete for not even a month), give the winner 50k/100k and dived the rest 50k/100k (NASL giving 100k/100k/200k), that way everyone can make some money out of it, and then they can sustain themselves so they can just practice and they don't need to go and work and part time practice. I don't understand this craze where no one gets anything but one person.
If you look at it just from a busyness standpoint they worked for you, give them a sum that pays them for the work they did for you, (created x amount of games which means they got x amount of rounds, which then at the end you pay them for).
On March 25 2011 04:25 elementz wrote: NASL/IGN and all this leagues need to not just give prise money to the winner, it needs to be divided like the GSL/TSL where everyone in the league makes an okay sum of money, 1k for 1month or so of work is pretty good for coming last (and this also means you only had to compete for not even a month), give the winner 50k/100k and dived the rest 50k/100k (NASL giving 100k/100k/200k), that way everyone can make some money out of it, and then they can sustain themselves so they can just practice and they don't need to go and work and part time practice. I don't understand this craze where no one gets anything but one person.
If you look at it just from a busyness standpoint they worked for you, give them a sum that pays them for the work they did for you, (created x amount of games which means they got x amount of rounds, which then at the end you pay them for).
I don't think the prize pool is simply a lump sum for 1st place. Generally the prize pool is divided amongst the top players. Sort of like Golf. The top X players all get paid, they just get paid more the higher they placed.
On March 24 2011 08:05 chobopeon wrote: If this dream is already realized for you in Korea, you're dreaming awfully small.
You must be one of the crazy people like the guy who thought that American Football downtime would lead to somehow more SC2 viewers right? BW got 100,000 people live at a Proleague final in it's peak. If that's dreaming small then i got no idea wtf you are thinking this is going to turn into.
Brood War was and is great. This is a new game and, overall, it has taken over as torch bearer for e-sports. The current state of SC2 in Korea is not the dream at all, not for me. In my opinion, it's just a start.
I have no idea what you're talking about with the football strike meaning more SC2 viewers but no, I don't think that.
That's where i don't agree with certain people right there. The Koreans have integrated gaming into their culture. The only reason why SC2 isn't bigger in Korea right now,is most probably because the main gaming channels aren't involved with the game because of the Kespa situation. This is not like WC3 and it's downfall in Korea. There's a few other games there that attracts viewers other than Broodwar and Sc2. There's 2 channels dedicated to gaming, pc bangs everywhere, and an environment where gaming is cool. Being a nerd can be attractive in Asia. There's alot of different stuff that differs from the American Culture. I personally believe that in places like Canada, Germany and Sweden, Esports has more chances to take place than the United States.
I think that it's going to take a lot more than money and exposure in the United States for Esports to be legitimized. On the other hand, i think that in Sweden, the thing that is happening there that Sjow and TLO were kind of talking about could very much work. It seems much more accepted there. I can't explain why. Maybe I'm dead wrong though. Maybe it's also the scientist in me that always view claims being made pessimistically. I don't know.
But i don't agree with Korea not being the dream at all. That, i just can't agree with you.
Sorry so I haven't been following past day or so - with the new updates - this appears to be an INDIVIDUAL league correct? and not a team league anymore?
On March 24 2011 05:07 djWHEAT wrote: People got on my junk when I said the EXACT same thing about GOMtv's GSL. And I stuck by my word the entire time.
I'm fine if people don't like what I've said in this thread, I've got 10 years of experience seeing leagues start, fail, succeed, and grow. You can ignore the past 10 years of history... or you can use it to see why many of their decisions are in fact "smart".
Here are some FACTS: - CGS, the first North American Televised Gaming Show, was destroyed because they tried to bite off more than they could chew. They thought they NEEDED to go global with their initiative and the end result was a waste of nearly $20 million dollars. That league died so fast because money was spent poorly. So for those who are expressing their concern over the fact that it's a NA focused league should consider that any company who's "breaking" into SC2 would be silly to attempt a "global" league when it could indeed fail. It's MUCH SMARTER to start with a very controlled and cost effective project, and grow from there. Just because it appears NA is their target for their first venture, doesn't mean they are ignoring the rest of the world.
And because I know someone will mention GSL, keep in mind that although GSL has "GLOBAL" in the title, they do not really have much operating cost outside of Korea. If you want to compete in that league you still have to get yourself to Korea to play. In CGS's case, they were fronting the cost of travel and accommodations for hundreds of players who ultimately (aside from a few Euro teams) brought nothing to the league.
- IGN is a North American company. Although they have reach well beyond NA, it makes sense (even if strictly from an advertising POV) that it would limit the first project to NA. That's just business folks. And it's smart business. You might not agree with it, but it's a pretty wise move especially considering all the other leagues which have fallen due to their urgency to expand "globally".
- North America has been look at in the eSports community as being "FUCKED UP" for the past 4 years. And technically, everyone who says this is right. We lost CPL, CGS, basically every major league which was present during the 2002-2005 eSports era. We need to rebuild like Doozers in Fraggle Rock. We need more potential for LAN events here in the US. As much as I preach global exposure to eSports, North America needs some SOLID leagues, events, and exposure to regain the prestige that NA once had. MLG is contributing to this and is a great effort, but we can't put all our eggs in one basket. NASL is a great start too... seeing IGN jump in the mix is equally as exciting.
- And since we're on the topic of IGN. NASL, ESL, MLG, etc... sorry but those guys are small potatoes compared to the potential exposure, revenue, and stability that IGN has to offer. Sure they might not have a glowing history in Pro-Gaming, but does that mean we should crucify them before they've even technically announced their intentions? In fact, I think we should as supportive as possible because don't we, as fans, just want more content, games, etc?
Additionally, it's a good time to reference the SotG PAX Edition in which Day[9] said one of the best way you can support SC2 is by SUPPORTING THE PLAYERS. With each new league that shows potential in this space, it's another opportunity for our rising NA stars to play, win, and earn. I for one would be tickled if I found out that my favorite NA players could focus 150% on SC2 because the amount of leagues (and potential prize money) continues to rise. Therefore... if we support the leagues, we're supporting the players (and even more than that - but I think this is a good time to reiterate what Day was saying).
I understand my post may have come off as harsh... but I'm tired of seeing communities shit on efforts which can only further the cause. And if this turns out to be one massive pile of shit (which I really doubt will be the case) - then I'll gladly come back and say ALL YOU GUYS WERE RIGHT. Until then, I'll continue to be the snobby optimist that I am.
Amen, I really liked the CGS, but yes it tried to grow to fast. Was my first taste of the Wheat miester lol. So yes please give it a chance to start small and not be to be ambitious. If players globally wanna participate helllz yeah ,but plz god don't let it fall like CGS did.
If any company or organization is trying to form a league by not providing much detail and let the community guess like the NASL and IGN do, then they deserve criticism. They're asking for hypes and opinions from the community; some opinions might not be in their favor. Criticism usually leads to better outcome. So, people should stop complaining about others for being pessimistic. Nobody wants these leagues to fail. They just want voice their opinion, which is what NASL and IGN are asking for by over hyping things with just a number and not much detail.
Just because people are criticizing the tournament format doesn't mean they're "not supporting the players and growth of esport". <= A pretty old trick used a lot in politic and now being used by djWHEAT, I think.
On March 25 2011 08:55 HowSoOnIsNow wrote: But i don't agree with Korea not being the dream at all. That, i just can't agree with you.
I don't know what to tell you. Brood War was great but excluded the foreigners and often treated their own players like shit. The scene is far from perfect and not "the dream" at all.
"The dream" for me is a truly global scene in which everyone in the industry is treated fairly and with respect (at least as far as getting a salary that they can live on), where professionalism is the status quo, where stability and responsibility are the names of the game.
I'm sure there are more things I can dream of but those are but a few dreams I came up with in 60 seconds. Korea was not that. Maybe we'll get there one day!
On March 25 2011 15:08 nart wrote: If any company or organization is trying to form a league by not providing much detail and let the community guess like the NASL and IGN do, then they deserve criticism. They're asking for hypes and opinions from the community; some opinions might not be in their favor. Criticism usually leads to better outcome. So, people should stop complaining about others for being pessimistic. Nobody wants these leagues to fail. They just want voice their opinion, which is what NASL and IGN are asking for by over hyping things with just a number and not much detail.
Just because people are criticizing the tournament format doesn't mean they're "not supporting the players and growth of esport". <= A pretty old trick used a lot in politic and now being used by djWHEAT, I think.
Much of the criticism of the criticism has actually focused on the way and the tone people have brought forth their complaints.
It's hard to appreciate criticism when someone comes off as an insanely rude and condescending prick/manchild full of self-entitlement. Constructive criticism is great, but some of the stuff I've seen in the NASL thread... Damn. I know this is the internet, where the sense of anonymity baits so many decent people into behaving like assholes, but that's simply not conductive to any sort of proper discussion. People cannot expect to be treated fairly and rationally when all they do is bitch and moan in the most annoying way possible.
Again, I think (and I'm not speaking for the NASL or IGN people, so they can correct me if I'm wrong) user feedback and actual, constructive criticism is welcomed, not chastised.
Hmm ign seem pretty ignorant a lot of the time but if they do their research and listen to the community it should be pretty damn good. Also i hope it includes europeans and koreans otherwise it will be kinda lame.
It always seems very strange that people are sketchy on releasing details about something until days before the release or not at all until the release itself. Seems like it would be better to get feedback before everything goes live and they have to have the pressure of fixing it quickly then.
Of course I'm still excited about it and I'm sure it's a hype thing. I just would prefer to see a bit more of what's to come but I suppose at this point anything to help eSports is good. :x
I'd love to hear what they aim for with this league. It just doesn't seem to fit in. The prize pool seems to suggest that they want to be up there with the big leagues like NASL when it comes to spectators, or TSL for that matter, but with these players I can't see them getting anywhere near that. I hope NA is ready for this because I doubt they'll have many viewers from outside of NA.
It's great what they're doing, I just hope they haven't set their aim too high.
On March 25 2011 08:55 HowSoOnIsNow wrote: But i don't agree with Korea not being the dream at all. That, i just can't agree with you.
I don't know what to tell you. Brood War was great but excluded the foreigners and often treated their own players like shit. The scene is far from perfect and not "the dream" at all.
"The dream" for me is a truly global scene in which everyone in the industry is treated fairly and with respect (at least as far as getting a salary that they can live on), where professionalism is the status quo, where stability and responsibility are the names of the game.
I'm sure there are more things I can dream of but those are but a few dreams I came up with in 60 seconds. Korea was not that. Maybe we'll get there one day!
I agree with you that the Brood War scene was far from perfect. As a matter of fact, i said the same thing as you in the SaviOr thread. But i do believe that those things that needs to be done, have to sprout of Korea since Esports have it's root there. Ithink the GSL is working towards that goal. I remember alot of coaches in the SC2 community having a go at KeSPA and teams being formed under the impression that fun was an important part of the whole deal.
And as for Stability, i think that it would be hard for any scene not to start from SK. If it can't happen there, i personally fear for the worst. But I'm very positive about the GSL and it's willingness to work towards those dreams of yours, they are mine as well i must say.
And when i say that Korea is the dream, it's more in term of general acceptance and just acknowledgment that pros have.
The only thing that could knock Sc2 down would be Kespa and the inability for the gaming tv stations to broadcast games. Hopefully, things will get sorted out positively.
On March 27 2011 02:17 kommunalka wrote: Maybe im alone on this, but I think a caster like Catspajamas would be a great fit for a tourney like this.... that man has a golden voice.
On March 27 2011 02:17 kommunalka wrote: Maybe im alone on this, but I think a caster like Catspajamas would be a great fit for a tourney like this.... that man has a golden voice.
On March 27 2011 02:17 kommunalka wrote: Maybe im alone on this, but I think a caster like Catspajamas would be a great fit for a tourney like this.... that man has a golden voice.
On March 24 2011 05:07 djWHEAT wrote: People got on my junk when I said the EXACT same thing about GOMtv's GSL. And I stuck by my word the entire time.
I'm fine if people don't like what I've said in this thread, I've got 10 years of experience seeing leagues start, fail, succeed, and grow. You can ignore the past 10 years of history... or you can use it to see why many of their decisions are in fact "smart".
Here are some FACTS: - CGS, the first North American Televised Gaming Show, was destroyed because they tried to bite off more than they could chew. They thought they NEEDED to go global with their initiative and the end result was a waste of nearly $20 million dollars. That league died so fast because money was spent poorly. So for those who are expressing their concern over the fact that it's a NA focused league should consider that any company who's "breaking" into SC2 would be silly to attempt a "global" league when it could indeed fail. It's MUCH SMARTER to start with a very controlled and cost effective project, and grow from there. Just because it appears NA is their target for their first venture, doesn't mean they are ignoring the rest of the world.
And because I know someone will mention GSL, keep in mind that although GSL has "GLOBAL" in the title, they do not really have much operating cost outside of Korea. If you want to compete in that league you still have to get yourself to Korea to play. In CGS's case, they were fronting the cost of travel and accommodations for hundreds of players who ultimately (aside from a few Euro teams) brought nothing to the league.
- IGN is a North American company. Although they have reach well beyond NA, it makes sense (even if strictly from an advertising POV) that it would limit the first project to NA. That's just business folks. And it's smart business. You might not agree with it, but it's a pretty wise move especially considering all the other leagues which have fallen due to their urgency to expand "globally".
- North America has been look at in the eSports community as being "FUCKED UP" for the past 4 years. And technically, everyone who says this is right. We lost CPL, CGS, basically every major league which was present during the 2002-2005 eSports era. We need to rebuild like Doozers in Fraggle Rock. We need more potential for LAN events here in the US. As much as I preach global exposure to eSports, North America needs some SOLID leagues, events, and exposure to regain the prestige that NA once had. MLG is contributing to this and is a great effort, but we can't put all our eggs in one basket. NASL is a great start too... seeing IGN jump in the mix is equally as exciting.
- And since we're on the topic of IGN. NASL, ESL, MLG, etc... sorry but those guys are small potatoes compared to the potential exposure, revenue, and stability that IGN has to offer. Sure they might not have a glowing history in Pro-Gaming, but does that mean we should crucify them before they've even technically announced their intentions? In fact, I think we should as supportive as possible because don't we, as fans, just want more content, games, etc?
Additionally, it's a good time to reference the SotG PAX Edition in which Day[9] said one of the best way you can support SC2 is by SUPPORTING THE PLAYERS. With each new league that shows potential in this space, it's another opportunity for our rising NA stars to play, win, and earn. I for one would be tickled if I found out that my favorite NA players could focus 150% on SC2 because the amount of leagues (and potential prize money) continues to rise. Therefore... if we support the leagues, we're supporting the players (and even more than that - but I think this is a good time to reiterate what Day was saying).
I understand my post may have come off as harsh... but I'm tired of seeing communities shit on efforts which can only further the cause. And if this turns out to be one massive pile of shit (which I really doubt will be the case) - then I'll gladly come back and say ALL YOU GUYS WERE RIGHT. Until then, I'll continue to be the snobby optimist that I am.
Hah... I like how Wheat thinks he may have been harsh there... he's such a nice guy, and I completely agree with him.
I can't say I have a lot of experience watching leagues, but simply through common sense it would seem that even if a NA league kicks off with only NA players, if it were to be successful, it would eventually lead to expansion outside of North America. I guess now that I think about it he kind of already said that... but the point is if we really do (over the next few years or however long it takes) help esports explode in North America, it will be so much easier to have huge tournaments with players from all around the world rather than trying to grab them all right at the beginning. In other words... ya I think I'm pretty much just repeating what Wheat is saying... I will just stop and say...
Very well said Wheat... I don't think I can agree more.
Wheat pretty much hit the nail on the head with his post tbh, good to see more leagues opening up.
the ONLY thing that i have against it was mirrored by the comments on last weeks SotG, There are begining to be "too many" tournaments/leagues to keep track of. GSL flourishes because it is the best of the best, now theres going to be 3 NA leagues which ever is "the best" will succeed.
Id like to be optomistic and see all 3 succeed but at the same time, why not move away from more leagues and invest the leagues currently planned, if that money could be fueled into ongoing projects, there is the definate possibilty of getting the best players involved, you can pay for flights, accomodation, equipment, improving the viewing experience etc.
Instead were getting more leagues with "tier 2" competition due them not getting the huge names the NASL/GSL will get. Theres nothing to say the NASL will pull in the Koreans every season, if the TSL is anything to go by the "lag" would exclude them from the prize before they start.
Invest in the foundation thats already there, build the product we have now upwards, not spread it out.
So THIS is what IGN has been brewing up this last month. I'm excited for this, however I'm very curious as for whether or not this many leagues will be a good thing or a bad thing for the SC2 community. All in all I'm very optimistic, 150k cash, who wouldn't want to watch?
Having too many leagues seems like a good problem. Probably not all of them will survive, unless they have some nische, but what can you do.
So I'm kind of sad that EU or more specifically swedes probably won't be able to do anything here, but it's a good thing for e-sports overall and NA especially. It's interesting how Sweden has been able to do so well in the e-sports scene from CS to war3 and SC2 and many others, and I think it's because of dreamhack and a larger culture for gaming. So something similar for NA should definetely get more players motivated and better I guess.
But.. how many viewers are EU-based? I guess from a marketing perspective it's easier to get new viewers and ads for NA like pointed out. But an event like TSL3.. it wouldn't suprise me if the majority of viewers are EU? Or at least close? Just looking that that old TL.net poll "where are you from?" anyway. I hope they notice that there is a big market share on this side of the atlantic.
In the meantime I can only think that it's a good thing that many tournaments are popping up and that prize pools are growing. Even if all of them can't make it it's good with a little competition I think, at least for me as a viewer.
On March 29 2011 23:31 Sablar wrote: Having too many leagues seems like a good problem. Probably not all of them will survive, unless they have some nische, but what can you do.
So I'm kind of sad that EU or more specifically swedes probably won't be able to do anything here, but it's a good thing for e-sports overall and NA especially. It's interesting how Sweden has been able to do so well in the e-sports scene from CS to war3 and SC2 and many others, and I think it's because of dreamhack and a larger culture for gaming. So something similar for NA should definetely get more players motivated and better I guess.
But.. how many viewers are EU-based? I guess from a marketing perspective it's easier to get new viewers and ads for NA like pointed out. But an event like TSL3.. it wouldn't suprise me if the majority of viewers are EU? Or at least close? Just looking that that old TL.net poll "where are you from?" anyway. I hope they notice that there is a big market share on this side of the atlantic.
In the meantime I can only think that it's a good thing that many tournaments are popping up and that prize pools are growing. Even if all of them can't make it it's good with a little competition I think, at least for me as a viewer.
I have the same suspicion. As there are so many good leagues, I won't watch like I watch TSL/GSL/NASL/MLG. I will watch some matches like Idra/Kiwikaki and similar, but otherwise there are too many other things to watch. So they probably will have to generate a lot of new NA viewers to reach the numbers the other leagues get, but hopefully they can do it as that will definitely be big for NA scene.
A: $5,000 is the maximum you can give as prize money before you have to jump a bunch of hoops with Blizzard. We're working with Blizzard in regards to our future events but for now, for our test run, we're just working with that amount. Also, not to say that $5,000 is an insignificant amount, but our future events will significantly eclipse that mark.
IGN already has the prize pool distribution [ 1st - $2500 2nd - $1500 3rd - $1000 ], start times and dates for each match, brackets already populated, and map pool listed. NASL should take notice...
I must say I am not to excited to see TotalBiscuit shout casting the event. Having an ascent is only entertaining for so long before I actually want to hear someone with actual game knowledge commentating.
The tournament looks great though and I am really excited, IGN looks like they are doing things right and I am excited to see the games! EG Fighting!
Wow, this looks good. The 40s intro video was done better then the whole NASL thing.
And the tournament info looks great (for 2nd season and beyond). It seems like this will blow NASL out of the water. I really like their plan to eliminate 16 players after each season and have qualifiers for 16 spots. I also like that season two will have qualifiers for 28/32 spots. No invite bullshit like NASL
EPT
efinitely too early to make any substantive judgements about any of the leagues. ![[image loading]](http://s.sk-gaming.com/image/image/1a2dcd29005d1d50m.jpg)
![[image loading]](http://www.sixjaxgaming.com/wp/scimages/IGN/happyhd.jpg)
![[image loading]](http://www.sixjaxgaming.com/wp/scimages/IGN/hungover.jpg)
![[image loading]](http://www.sixjaxgaming.com/wp/scimages/IGN/cards.jpg)
![[image loading]](http://www.sixjaxgaming.com/wp/scimages/IGN/bar.jpg)
