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On May 16 2012 00:16 Aunvilgod wrote:
I don´t like this. MLG is getting too much power and MLG has shown that they are more interested in money than any other organzation.
That's funny, because if there is anyone here that puts greed above all is Gom. Inviting foreigners who haven't earned the privilege of playing in code s just to get more tickets, prime examples are Idra and Sen who got owned and proved they had no business being there. Just gom trying to make more money off of their fans.
I prefer MLG making money and growing, they want to support the foreign scene more than anyone at the moment. Hating them because they want to make money OFF OF their BUSINESS is just silly, that's the goal of all these organizations.
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On May 15 2012 23:47 ragz_gt wrote:
I kinda get what they are saying, but I can't be the only one who feels they came off sounding like a-holes right?
You probably are. What did you want them to say? When someone asks a retarded question like "But you're not a purely competitive league, you're a business. And from a business standpoint, you want the most fans, and to get the most fans, you need to figure out what the most fans want." What fucking professional league isn't a business? Is this some "businesses are inherently evil and everything they do is suspect and void of good intentions" bullshit question? How are they supposed to respond when someone outright questions their integrity? This entire interview oozes with suspicion and judgement and general negativity from the interviewer, so I don't how they were so supposed to respond differently than they did.
Are they a-holes because things fell through with GomTV? Look at that from MLG's standpoint--those players were definitely receiving preferential treatment, and MLG clearly doesn't want that preferential treatment to exist. Look at how much of their prize pool have in the past gone to people who received arbitrary invitations, people who didn't go through any type of qualifier to participate in pool play--those players won (and earned and deserved) the prize they received, but it does strike as being unfair and inequitable to players who do have to qualify through normal means; especially since GomTV started doing this with other leagues, making the MLG connection less special and clearly indicating that GomTV had no problem exploiting other leagues by having their players placed in favorable positions. Furthermore, sometimes business relationships just don't work out; clearly, there are important philosophical differences between the way GomTV and MLG are run that simply don't allow for a long-term relationship.
Also, if you're going to say people come off sounding like a-holes, maybe try writing a bit more to elaborate -- you won't come across as quibbling, and you might realize your initial impression is mistaken when you take the time to think it through and ultimately decide not to post a half-baked thought.
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On May 16 2012 01:16 31415926535 wrote:Show nested quote +On May 16 2012 01:12 FakeDeath wrote:On May 16 2012 01:00 31415926535 wrote:
I don't really get the whole "players have to get an authorization from Kespa to play in another league". I mean, I get it from MLG/Kespa POV as they get the exclusivity on top players, but I don't see how this could benefit SC2 as a whole.
This seems really bad for foreign tournaments wanting to invite koreans (dreamhack, homestorycup, ironsquid). Basically, MLG/Kespa will have a monopoly on top players. If we had this situation when SC2 started, a lot of the high quality foreign tournaments would never have developed. With the GSL and Proleague Season 2 and even MLG, i doubt many korean players will go to other foreign tournament apart from MLG. Will Kespa players be even allowed to play in GSL ?
I doubt it, Kespa will be Kespa they will not just change there way of business because of a new game.
This exclusive partnership kinda shows it.
They want to be top dog, same as MLG, i can respect that just wonder what it will do for us af viewers and more important players and other (non) Kespa events.
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Either MLG is trying to obfuscate, or they don't know what they are talking about.
KeSPA is not a league. It is not comparable to GSL or MLG. It's counterpart in SC2 scene is (or was) sc2con.
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I like that you didnt stop with the questioning when they were..less eager.. to come forward with a staight answer. My current feeling on the 'global' partnership between the two is fairly neutral. I'll see how this plays out because I dont want to look like a fool for guessing wrong.
The best thing to come out of this interview is hands down that they are going to rethink the way the region specific qualifiers work. It shouldnt have taken so long to realise that the current format isnt quite right, although I appreciate they have a lot on their plate right now.
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Can't help but think that this is going to be controversial - not sure where I stand on this issue yet - but it's like having NBA league moving into some other country where they already have their own pro basketball league.
As much as I support KeSPa moving into SC2, I'm not sure how I'd feel about them isolating and potentially killing off GOM when they already did so much work establishing SC2 as a pro gaming scene.
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I don't get it.... MLG can do their thing if they wanted to.... we'll just bring iNControl over to Sweden for another DH and beat your ratings and surpass the "shock and awe" you MLG-fanatics so vigorously described at MLG Anaheim last year.... besides who actually gets offended if a company actually tries to monetize/industrialize E-.sports? all it does it push forward the date for when we have ACTUAL televised matches on your local news network..... Canal+(CanalDigital in Scandinavia) Sky Sports (Sky Network in GB+ most of Europe) and ESPN for the US ..... isn't that the end goal/point of the whole attempt to make esports professional?
anyways thats just my 2cents
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I really have lost a lot of respect for MLG. I love watching their events, the production is great, great players compete and the commentators are good too. But they still don't have big enough prize pools, they make the lesser known players play through extremely difficult open brackets and let fan favourites into the much more forgiving pool play(either by picking 4 liked Koreans from GSL eg.boxer or by "seeding" in players like incontrol and machine). Its as if the player is always put last. Then they go off and say: "But as a league, the cornerstone of what we do has to be sacred. If that's not sacred, then we have nothing to stand on." Seems to me like they now have nothing to stand on since they are about to let people who have barely played SC2 have spots in their event purely because they have a lot of fans willing to pay to see them. Why not let them join via open qualifiers so it is fair on everyone?
So long as MLG get to show the fan favourites being casted by well known casters they will make their money so it's ok (I thought I saw somewhere that the casters got paid more then the players- not 100% sure though). The people who don't finish high don't really get any money at all and even those who do well don't get as much as the players who do well in IPL or NASL, they still show their events at times that don't suit Europe and they always give off the impression that all they care about is money and power. It seems unfair how they have become known as the major non-Korean event.
Its as if they abused their high viewership nubers to get GOM to send players over just so MLG could get even more viewers and now that kespa has joined the scene MLG just leave GOM and do the same thing with kespa.
They blame GOM for not seeding naniwa but I though it was MLGs job to get naniwa that seed, they promised it to him it but did not even check with GOM if he had it. They could hardly claim to be a partner with GOM if they did not even know GOM had a new format. Does this not hint towards them not trying to get nani his seed? and now they blame GOM and give that as their reason for ending the partnership. Once again not caring at all about their players, just trying to get more viewers.
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Am i the only one, who thinks this interview was terribly uninformative?
A lot of the questions about the KeSPA partnership were answered how its the first time for both to coorparate one such a scale and so on and so forth, but not actually stating what excactly will happen in this year or what the further goal is even more in the future. Of course they said, they want to bring the KeSPA players to the west, and maybe bring some foreigners to the to korea, but for me it feal like, they both signed an empty contract and still figuring out what to do next.
Also they needed to be asked 3 times to clarify their opinion about less and less chances for foreign players to compete successful at MLG and the potential loose of fans watching the competition. I think most people rooting for foreigners who get far in the tounament instead of the mass of koreans (besides maybe one or two fanfavourites). A lack of foreigners makes MLG a lot more uninteresting, even if the play is not top-notch compared to the korean guys. You already see, that basicly no europeans attending in the open bracket anymore, because its just not worth the money to fly over.
And MLG can't tell me, that they allways want to see the best player win. Of course they hope, that at least a handfull of foreigers do well in the up and coming arenas, so they will attend the Pro Circuit. I think it would be horrible, to see only koreans in the pool play.
For me, this interview is as uninformative, as the KeSPA/Blizzard/OGN/Gom conference. Its just announcing, that they are now partnered without telling what the overall plan is in the future. I mean, it's basicly clear to everyone, that they will ship the BW players over but i dont heard anything interresting new since the announcement of the partnership a few days ago.
I also don't know much more about this "players licencing" and what the real deal with it is.
In my opinion MLG should try to focus more about the facts when dooing interviews instead of just talking around the situation without stating anything. I like the threads from the MLG Account oder MLG Officials here on TL because, they are informative and you can see whats going on a the next MLG/Arena/Whatever, but this interview and both latest two SOTG interviews were just beating around the bush with leaving more questions for the viewers then before.
I hope i don't sound to whiny : )
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On May 16 2012 02:02 Adellund wrote:
I don't get it.... MLG can do their thing if they wanted to.... we'll just bring iNControl over to Sweden for another DH and beat your ratings and surpass the "shock and awe" you MLG-fanatics so vigorously described at MLG Anaheim last year.... besides who actually gets offended if a company actually tries to monetize/industrialize E-.sports? all it does it push forward the date for when we have ACTUAL televised matches on your local news network..... Canal+(CanalDigital in Scandinavia) Sky Sports (Sky Network in GB+ most of Europe) and ESPN for the US ..... isn't that the end goal/point of the whole attempt to make esports professional?
anyways thats just my 2cents
Why would we want to move to TV? TV is dying man. Also watching an event on TV would be so much worse than watching it on say twitch tv. Theres chat so you can talk with other people, there would be no TV timeouts(which do exist) for commercials. Also Starcraft would be terrible for TV, as matches can go from anywhere between 4 minutes and an hour.
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On May 16 2012 01:32 BreakfastTea wrote:Show nested quote +On May 15 2012 23:47 ragz_gt wrote:
I kinda get what they are saying, but I can't be the only one who feels they came off sounding like a-holes right? You probably are. What did you want them to say? When someone asks a retarded question like "But you're not a purely competitive league, you're a business. And from a business standpoint, you want the most fans, and to get the most fans, you need to figure out what the most fans want." What fucking professional league isn't a business? Is this some "businesses are inherently evil and everything they do is suspect and void of good intentions" bullshit question? How are they supposed to respond when someone outright questions their integrity? This entire interview oozes with suspicion and judgement and general negativity from the interviewer, so I don't how they were so supposed to respond differently than they did. Are they a-holes because things fell through with GomTV? Look at that from MLG's standpoint--those players were definitely receiving preferential treatment, and MLG clearly doesn't want that preferential treatment to exist. Look at how much of their prize pool have in the past gone to people who received arbitrary invitations, people who didn't go through any type of qualifier to participate in pool play--those players won (and earned and deserved) the prize they received, but it does strike as being unfair and inequitable to players who do have to qualify through normal means; especially since GomTV started doing this with other leagues, making the MLG connection less special and clearly indicating that GomTV had no problem exploiting other leagues by having their players placed in favorable positions. Furthermore, sometimes business relationships just don't work out; clearly, there are important philosophical differences between the way GomTV and MLG are run that simply don't allow for a long-term relationship. Also, if you're going to say people come off sounding like a-holes, maybe try writing a bit more to elaborate -- you won't come across as quibbling, and you might realize your initial impression is mistaken when you take the time to think it through and ultimately decide not to post a half-baked thought.
I posted my post as a genuine question. I like what MLG has done, I think their PPV event + Championship event combination is a more sustainable model than what many others are doing (and I have subscription + spring pass), I like their production and love their quality of competition. But after reading the interview I can't help but think there are something "off". There are answers where I feel they come off either arrogant of a bit whiny, and overall pretty raw. But I don't see anything glaring when I parse it sentence by sentence, which makes me very curious.
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Great interview! This makes me really excited to see where this partnership goes.
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On May 16 2012 02:08 paddyz wrote:
I really have lost a lot of respect for MLG. I love watching their events, the production is great, great players compete and the commentators are good too. But they still don't have big enough prize pools, they make the lesser known players play through extremely difficult open brackets and let fan favourites into the much more forgiving pool play(either by picking 4 liked Koreans from GSL eg.boxer or by "seeding" in players like incontrol and machine). Its as if the player is always put last. Then they go off and say: "But as a league, the cornerstone of what we do has to be sacred. If that's not sacred, then we have nothing to stand on." Seems to me like they now have nothing to stand on since they are about to let people who have barely played SC2 have spots in their event purely because they have a lot of fans willing to pay to see them. Why not let them join via open qualifiers so it is fair on everyone?
So long as MLG get to show the fan favourites being casted by well known casters they will make their money so it's ok (I thought I saw somewhere that the casters got paid more then the players- not 100% sure though). The people who don't finish high don't really get any money at all and even those who do well don't get as much as the players who do well in IPL or NASL, they still show their events at times that don't suit Europe and they always give off the impression that all they care about is money and power. It seems unfair how they have become known as the major non-Korean event.
Its as if they abused their high viewership nubers to get GOM to send players over just so MLG could get even more viewers and now that kespa has joined the scene MLG just leave GOM and do the same thing with kespa.
They blame GOM for not seeding naniwa but I though it was MLGs job to get naniwa that seed, they promised it to him it but did not even check with GOM if he had it. They could hardly claim to be a partner with GOM if they did not even know GOM had a new format. Does this not hint towards them not trying to get nani his seed? and now they blame GOM and give that as their reason for ending the partnership. Once again not caring at all about their players, just trying to get more viewers.
Taken from the interview:
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interviewer: I'm still not getting a good sense of how vastly different this is from the Gom partnership. Giving their players berths in your events seems pretty similar to what you had going on with Gom.
LC: I think what actually went on there was Gom started that relationship with us, then they kind of started those relationships with everybody else, too. Which is great, because they exposed a tremendous number of very talented, great players from the [then] Starcraft II Association and independent teams to the entire world.
But those were all preferential seeding arrangements, the reality is we slotted four players from the current pool of SC II players right into our championship. That's not the relationship we have with KeSPA. There's going to be a qualification process within KeSPA that decides who will get certain spots at MLG events. It's not just a random, abitrary “oh, I love Boxer, we're inviting Boxer,” kind of thing. It's a true league type structure.
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Bottom line, fucking read the whole thing, not just the cherry-picked selections that "confirm" your prejudices. I'll quote more from the interview under the question on whether or not KesPa players would get advantages:
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LC: [abridged]...because I've seen a lot of stuff on TL or Reddit about how this means that progamer licenses are coming to the West, or that you'll only be able to see these players in the West behind a PPV wall at Arenas, or all kinds of insanity that are based around rumor mongering...
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And some more:
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interviewer: Not to ask you to throw Gom under the bus, but what happened with Gom? It seemed to be going well, and then thing started falling apart rapidly. Now you see them going with IPL, and people are wondering about what happened.
AA: Yes, GSTL finals happened at IPL, but just to be clear, we were offered that before and we didn't want to do it. I mean, we were offered Code S finals at one of our events, and the details of that deal, which will remain behind closed doors, were not something we were interested in.
But as to why the actual partnership ceased, we're not really sure. We're not sure why they revoked NaNiwa's seed...
interviewer: Oh, that was actually a thing?
LC: I think there was a sequence of events there that we're still not clear on, and we've really felt like we haven't gotten a straight story. We're happy to sit down and chat with Gom, but I think this is one of those thing the community has made a bigger deal out of than it really is. We don't sit around trying to figure out what happened there, because it's pretty clear that their priorities were elsewhere.
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Oh noes eSports organizations actually try to make money.
That is bad for eSporst right?
There is nothing wrong with MLG trying to be the best league and to make the most money.eSports needs to make money so that it can be more legit thing.
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Absolutely fantastic questions asked by Wax but terribly vague and repetitive answers. MLG's secretive PR is really starting to worry me, and it seems as though it concerns others as well.
Let's be clear on that, because I've seen a lot of stuff on TL or Reddit about how this means that progamer licenses are coming to the West, or that you'll only be able to see these players in the West behind a PPV wall at Arenas, or all kinds of insanity that are based around rumor mongering. I mean, fair enough, we haven't actually said that much about it yet.
This was my favourite part of the interview. Lee criticises the 'rumour mongering' and then retreats when he realises that the rumour mongering is perfectly understandable given MLG's unforthcoming approach to the KESPA deal.
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On May 16 2012 03:00 milesfacade wrote:Absolutely fantastic questions asked by Wax but terribly vague and repetitive answers. MLG's secretive PR is really starting to worry me, and it seems as though it concerns others as well. Show nested quote +Let's be clear on that, because I've seen a lot of stuff on TL or Reddit about how this means that progamer licenses are coming to the West, or that you'll only be able to see these players in the West behind a PPV wall at Arenas, or all kinds of insanity that are based around rumor mongering. I mean, fair enough, we haven't actually said that much about it yet. This was my favourite part of the interview. Lee criticises the 'rumour mongering' and then retreats when he realises that the rumour mongering is perfectly understandable given MLG's unforthcoming approach to the KESPA deal.
From reading the interview, it seems that not all of the details have been figured out. So they can't be forthcoming because not everything is in place. Additionally, you don't know whether or not there's any level of NDA in the agreement MLG and KeSPA came to--they might not be in a position to say anything regarding certain issues. Why not give them time to further figure out what the concrete results of the agreement are going to be before accusing people of being secretive in a "concerning" and "worrying" way? Neither you, me, or anyone else outside of MLG and KeSPA know what is or isn't appropriate to release at this time.
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I don't think there will be another free MLG event...
They will absolutely be PPV-Walling in the near future.
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I'm sorry if this has been answered somewhere, but does this 'exclusive' deal mean no KeSPA players in the GSL and vice versa?
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“Hey, I'd love for you to come play at MLG Anaheim.” They don't allow that
So wrong and far from western model, too bad MLG will encourage it.
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EPT
