[Interview] The Philosophy of the GSL - Page 4

"We are simply Starcraft 2's exclusive entrepreneurs. We are not a monopolistic entrepreneur."

On August 09 2010 08:14 waffling1 wrote:


umm... tell me how those two are actually different.

On August 09 2010 16:13 aimaimaim wrote:
lol people are so hyped about amateurs playing .. while making this tournament MIGHT bring up SC2 in korea, its still very very VERY early to say this is gonna replace BW as the next gen eSport big-timer .. We watch organized leagues because the games are awesome. players have great experience with the game to deliver a great and ENTERTAINING match. amateurs playing a 2-week old game with that kind of pot money only tells us 1 thing .. "forget about BW, we got better prize money and its open for everyone. you dont need BW" .. its like blizzard shoving SC2 in people's asses

- I'm curious about the league format.
▲ All the games are offline. TeamLiquid asked us if we could have the preliminaries online, but then we would need more preparation, so we decided to make the pre-season offline from the preliminaries. Those who want to participate would have to come to Korea. During the main league there is a possibility of inviting foreign gamers, but I think we'll have to focus on the Korean gamers for the pre-season. Players will have to spend their own money to come to Korea if they wish to participate. I don't know if this is a good analogy, but like how soccer players have to go to England if they want to participate in the Premier League, the players will have to come to Korea if they want to participate in a Korean league. There's no artificial way to incorporate foreign gamers for the main league. GomTV only has the rights for Korea. It is out of our ability to run a league outside of Korea.

On August 10 2010 01:28 Jienny wrote:
All that bugs me about this, is that when I see sc:bw tournament, I look at the players and teams to see if there might be intresting games.

When i see this one, I see "INSERT HUGE MONEY" crap. That's far from intresting, sadly.

- I'm curious about the e-sports Gretech is picturing.
▲ We're concentrating the most on the players. The B-team progamers are earning little and living in dorms without going to school. We don't want to criticize the current structure of e-sports, but we just want to say that the current e-sports structure is a little twisted since it wasn't planned out from the beginning. We don't want progamers to have to give up working or going to school. You shouldn't be denied participation just because you don't belong to a larger group. That's why we decided to not regulate progaming status. Some people say this will cause a problem, but I think if there are a lot of leagues and many ways to qualify, this will get better. Right now, the world of e-sports is hard to get into. We want to change this. Viewers have been watching e-sports for 10 years and have been watching new games every week. We don't want fans to be left with nothing to watch. If GSL goes as planned, viewers will be able to watch more matches then they do now.

On August 10 2010 02:44 Jayson X wrote:


I see what you're trying to say, still it is the right first step.

People should not be fooled. This is not a "everyone around the world" tournament. Don't get me wrong this league right now is the best choice. Pump money in it, watch it grow. The only Problem is that Blizzard/GOM decide about the future of a professional Starcraft2 scene. And i have a bad taste when i read stuff like that:



One might think everyone played BW and then some guys suddenly decided to shut the doors and form this evil elitist circle. You don't want them to give up work? That's just another way of saying that they want everything to themselves but can't sustain a professional environment. Because fact of the matter is that price money is just a tinny part of the current proscene. Back a few years ago when they compared e-sport salaries there were also numbers which showed that the SKT1 house alone has yearly costs who go into the millions (dollars).

So multiply that by 11, remember that everyone had the chance to go through courage every time, take into consideration how many hundreds of people work around the players / in the background, the insane amount of organisation that has to be done and then remember that we are talking about gaming here. Step back in AWE people, in AWE to what the professional bw korean progaming scene has build up in just a few years.

Al tough not comparable to soccer or any other major sport, the stability pro teams provide their gamers allows for real E-SPORTS in the first place. Of course you don't want your participants to quit their job, because there is no contract or guarantee for the players whatsoever that might provide security to this profession.