Great read and coverage as always Wax, thank u for providing us with this type of content! U make e-sports a little bit better with each article u add xD

kanadiasteve

United States313 Posts

October 20 2011 08:19 GMT

#45

Weird that at a 21+ event, you were still carded at concessions and could only buy a round of beers if you had the same number of ID's on your person. That's my only complaint as an audience spectator! About not enjoying the theater's surroundings... well, that's Atlantic City for ya.

Literally had to avoid a stabbing at the nearby Hooters, but I suppose that's unrelated

Tommylew

Wales2717 Posts

October 20 2011 08:28 GMT

#46

Well Seems like it was a fantastic event!!! Well played both Lucky and Stephano!!!

iNcontroL

USA29055 Posts

October 20 2011 08:37 GMT

#47

nice writeup and an amazing event <3

Dingobloo

Australia1903 Posts

October 20 2011 08:42 GMT

#48

Wow I didn't know they changed the lighting for battles that seems kick-ass. If nothing else IPL is certainly ambitious, maybe the surrounding of the venue didn't quite fit the tournament but the stagecraft and choice to go for a venue with theater seating certainly seems like the right one going forward. And the lighting on the players seem gorgeous I really wish we'd got more high quality photos coming from the venue.

Ilvy

Germany2445 Posts

October 20 2011 08:46 GMT

#49

Nice writeup, must have been great there. Btw i thought a real gamer is also good in cardgames

Eufouria

United Kingdom4425 Posts

October 20 2011 08:51 GMT

#50

Good writeup, I enjoyed all the articles, but Wax's one on Lucky really struck a chord. Maybe it's the difference in culture, but I'm sure I wasn't the only one who let TheSTC's apology go right past me. At the time I thought he just knew IdrA is a popular player, but after reading the article I'm not so sure.

In the future I think every player at a live event should be made to feel welcome and wanted. Cheer for both players and just cheer loudest for your favourite. A lot of ESPORTS fans are used to other spectator sports, where you cheer for your team and boo the other and some translate that over into SC2, one example being DRG at Dreamhack. In that case it probably didn't affect DRG too much, because he knows he's popular, but I don't think that crowd would have differentiated between DRG and Lucky.

We need at least 2 players to give us a great game or storyline, so they all deserve support for helping provide the entertainment.

blahz0r

3030 Posts

October 20 2011 08:59 GMT

#51

Nice article. That last picture is good

Order

Lithuania231 Posts

October 20 2011 09:08 GMT

#52

This article seems to agree with my point:

Going to IPL < Going to other events
Watching IPL at home > Watching other events

Hemula

Russian Federation1849 Posts

October 20 2011 09:29 GMT

#53

It was a really nice read, thank you.
Stephano with his play made me watch him just because of the way he plays, though I don't need to learn something from him or anything, I don't play myself, but his play is just so damn impressive.
Shame on us for not cheering on Lucky. But he god some $, which is good.

And yeah, Hayder's photo is just amuzing.

felisconcolori

United States6169 Posts

October 20 2011 09:56 GMT

#54

Nice write up. I'll freely admit, I missed the IPL streams, but something you mentioned caught my eye. Entertaining play, rather than winning, does seem to be important. Best of all (of course) is entertaining winning, but when I read that I thought about some of the matches I saw in Orlando at MLG. In particular, the crowd seemed to really enjoy MarineKing's whimsical play and Huk's probe hearts. And the Huk vs MC 4-gate dueling got some good reaction. (Of course, as always Huk's chat with his opponent was well received in the live venue.)
I think the entertainment value of matches, and the showmanship of presenting matches, will be important to the success of esports as spectator events. But the underlying truth (to me) is that eSports should not go the path of professional wrestling (entertainment) over true competition (aka, football (both kinds), baseball, cricket, etc). There are dull matchups in all competitions, but they help to make the amazing games really stand out.

WArped

United Kingdom4845 Posts

October 20 2011 10:32 GMT

#55

Interesting about Lucky and how the other Korean guys treated him, he just manhandled them completely all weekend. Wax hit the nail on the head, he deserved all the success at the end of the tournament.

Lucky fighting!!

Noocta

France12578 Posts

October 20 2011 11:01 GMT

#56

The part about Lucky is so sad. :s

Talin

Montenegro10532 Posts

October 20 2011 11:23 GMT

#57

Eh, I have to say that the article about Lucky is way off the mark. First of, I'm not sure what the point is in sugarcoating a player's performance so much. To say that there wasn't anything lucky about his run is simply factually incorrect.

Secondly, It really has nothing to do with personalities, entertainment and star power factor. Plenty of unknown and unpopular players have made deep tournament runs and earned instant admiration and respect of the audience because of how impressive they've played.

Even at IPL3 alone, there is a reason why Inori was better "received" by fans than Lucky. His run was nowhere as deep, but he absolutely dominated HuK and MC by sticking to a macro based PvP style every single game. He took out two of the best and most popular Protoss players in the world that everyone wanted to progress in the tournament, yet I'd say there were fewer negative comments about him than about Lucky and he gained quite a few fans for the play he showed.

"I want to show good games" is probably the most common sentence heard in Korean players' interviews. It's not so much because they want to be entertainers and become popular that way. It's because they're aware that being dominant and having clear displays of skill and superiority is what makes a difference between a champion that everyone will remember and a fluke winner that people will either resent or forget about (probably both). This is especially the case in SC2, which still has far too much volatility in gameplay and variance in results.

Oh by the way, when he said that he didn't do well in Brood War because he was unlucky... that's just asking for it.

Speaking of BW, in recent OSL, how many people wanted Soo to beat JangBi, or even how many were happy about him beating Killer? Very, very few. I was one of them, and even that was all T1 bias and wanting a compensation for losing SPL than anything related to Soo specifically. It's nothing new and nothing unnatural. A lot of people can be winners, but not everyone can be a recognized champion.

Shuray

Brazil642 Posts

October 20 2011 11:36 GMT

#58

Damn, that must suck when almost no one is cheering for you, I'm glad that Lucky showed us that he can do very well among the star players. I specificaly really like when underdogs like him and Stephano wins tournaments like this, I enjoy that suprise factor in it.

Steel

Japan2283 Posts

October 20 2011 11:55 GMT

#59

Poor Lucky. Sure, he might not have the mechanics that a player like MMA does, but he sure proved that he had some good notions of strategy- knowing MMA's style he clearly picked that roach build. Whats astonishing is that MMA did something weak against roaches and Lucky, wisely, punished it every time. Why not? He must not of known much about Stephano though, xD

Great write up. I really enjoyed IPL. From a viewer perspective it was the best event I had seen, but I think MLG topped them right after. But come on, MLG has SO much experience. If you compare the first live MLG to the first live IPL...they did a wonderful job. Hopefully they just plan a more central/accessible venue for the next one. Though it doesn't really encourage live views, I think that starting a tournament on thursday is a good idea and works well overall, and MLG could learn something from it if only to make the Open bracket less horrible.

BirdKiller

United States428 Posts

October 20 2011 12:07 GMT

#60

Commenting on the 3rd article, it felt like this tournament was catered toward the 30+ year old types with solid jobs who can afford to stay in the Hotel / Casino for a few days and play some slots during downtime, unlike for the 18+ year old types who maybe can't spend more than $50 for an event each day. Overall, the tournament seemed very sophisticated for those who never followed SC2 / E-sports, but not so for those who are familiar to the scene.

I still believe MLG > IPL for right now, but I'm now a fan/follower of IPL and hope it continues to improve. In fact, I hope IPL overtakes MLG considering that the former has solid financial backing from IGN and therefore have huge potential to become THE SC2 live tournament in United States.