ONOG 3K Online Invitational Jan. 28th & Jan. 29th - Page 113

On January 31 2012 03:50 rotegirte wrote:


The question raised is exactly how such a rule regarding specifically forfeiting should be formulated. No one is blaming ONOG for handling an uncovered incident, since almost all major tournaments reserve their right to disqualify upon generic exception clauses and general sportsmanship codes. This is what allows them to disqualify players on a whim and handle exotic situations.

The argument is that one side acknowledges the right to forfeit and the other doesn't. The argument is a competitor has no obligation to compete, but an entertainer has. As a competitor I am but only accountable by my personal ambition. As an entertainer providing production value I am accountable towards my team, organizers and fans. There are voices demanding both of the extremes, either full right to forfeit without reasons needed or full refusal of such a right no matter what.

And there are other voices that realize that such extremes are not enforceable, damaging business and/or giving organizers disproportionate amounts of power. It is the question of how much you want one to be a competitor, which includes taking care of personal well-being, and how much of an entertainer providing public value he should be. And what ratio could be healthy to fairly represent both sides of a mutual relationship.

On January 31 2012 03:46 syllogism wrote:

Incorrect, the purpose is to find out whether you think that the "right" to receive the "earned" prize money comes before all other considerations. The situations are obviously completely different, but the fundamental issue is the same. Further, it relates to the lack of applicable rules.


It is within the right of every tournament admin to determine what is appropriate and how the rules are interpreted and in addition to determine how situations that haven't been accounted for should be handled. This is true even in real life sports and there are even governing bodies that make these decisions. If the tournaments abuse this right, they should and will be boycotted by players and possibly by viewers. Of course, if the players are not in a position to do so due to market realities and such, this may be a problem but it certainly isn't a problem right now. Finally, it is not an arbitrary it is by definition based on a reasonable argument, whether you disagree with it or not. Arbitrary does not mean the lack of rules.

Please, do elaborate. Difficult for whom to trust whom? After having answered that, please provide sources or at least attempt to explain what you base the claim upon

On January 31 2012 03:46 syllogism wrote:

Incorrect, the purpose is to find out whether you think that the "right" to receive the "earned" prize money comes before all other considerations. The situations are obviously completely different, but the fundamental issue is the same. Further, it relates to the lack of applicable rules.


It is within the right of every tournament admin to determine what is appropriate and how the rules are interpreted and in addition to determine how situations that haven't been accounted for should be handled. This is true even in real life sports and there are even governing bodies that make these decisions. If the tournaments abuse this right, they should and will be boycotted by players and possibly by viewers. Of course, if the players are not in a position to do so due to market realities and such, this may be a problem but it certainly isn't a problem right now. Finally, it is not an arbitrary it is by definition based on a reasonable argument, whether you disagree with it or not. Arbitrary does not mean the lack of rules.

Please, do elaborate. Difficult for whom to trust whom? After having answered that, please provide sources or at least attempt to explain what you base the claim upon

On January 31 2012 04:12 syllogism wrote:
I did not misinterpret your position and as such it is not a straw man. That is is not arbitrary. Those links do not support your broad assertions. We are back to square one and it appears you do not have the intellectual honesty to discuss the matter, so I am done here.

On January 31 2012 03:47 BloodThirsty wrote:


How so? Its their tournament, they don't HAVE to pay you, unless there was a contract that was signed and what I have heard there was none. The tournament has to consider their own integrity for providing entertainment. VIEWERS are what pays for entertainment not a french player who is "le tired" and cant nap during 3rd place match drink energy drinks and try to play the finals. God forbid anyone stays up for a whole night in their life for 1500 dollars.

IF YA DONT WANT TO STAY UP LATE FOR A NA TOURNAMENT DONT PLAY IN IT. Simple as that GG

[...]

If One Nation of Gamers is going to work out and do our part to grow eSports, we have to be an organization that puts the fans first. Given that principle, I came to the decision to penalize Stephano and move him to 4th place, have Catz and Illusion play for 2nd/3rd, and have the victor play against Kas.

Everyone involved with One Nation of Gamers has worked incredibly hard -for months- to raise the $3,000 that we've put up for grabs. It's not a lot to everyone, but it's a lot to us and represents month of volunteer work. We decided to run this tournament to give back to eSports, we wanted to help the pros earn a little more and we wanted to provide some great content to the fans. We believe everyone deserves to see an appropriate final series for $1,500.

[...]

On January 31 2012 04:12 shaberu wrote:


I'm glad, because you haven't disputed any of my points and are patently incorrect.

On January 31 2012 03:56 syllogism wrote:

This is a very reasonable position to hold and I do not have any issues with it. Well put

On January 31 2012 04:23 Ghanburighan wrote:


Eh, no... It's not a good position to hold. He's effectively blaming us of being narrow-minded because we refuse to discount one aspect of the professionalism of progamer - the entertainment/organizational side. He wants us to forget that we need players to show up to games if we want to run tournaments and have fans at barcrafts.

As a middle-ground he claims we need "the right to forfeit." Which isn't middle-ground at all, in fact it's a ridiculous extreme unknown in professional sports across the globe. A forfeit can happen in the status quo, but only because of reasons beyond their control. He advocates for a right to forfeit for the lolz.

On January 31 2012 04:28 syllogism wrote:

I did not read his other posts so I may be lacking context, but I do not have an issue with the content of that single post, even if I think the "middle ground" isn't correct. I do not see him blaming anyone there or even suggesting what the correct answer is. I suppose then I'm wrong in that it's not a position at all.

On January 31 2012 04:12 rotegirte wrote:


What the fucking hell. If you meet the requirements of placement, of course you have a right to receive the advertised prize. The difference is, every organizer reserves its right of extraordinary disqualification at their own disclosure. That's what exception clauses are for, to prepare for rare situations. It is then the duty of the organizer to state the reason of exception handling.

In this case, the reasons were:



Which consists of two reasons:

1) Stephano did not put the fans first
2) Stephano did not provide a final series worth 1,500$

No need to interpret, these were the reasons given by the head organizer.

The implications for any future player of ONOG would be:

1) You play for entertainment value first and second for the spirit of competition
2) If we deem your performance not worth a specific, but undefined measure of entertainment value, you can be stripped of your earnings at any given time.

The disrupt occurs in the perceived purpose of a player. Organizers, players and fans are inter-dependent. As much as players rely on events as funding source and public promotion platform, tournaments rely on the players as audience provider. As much as we support them do what they do by our customer dollars, we are dependent on them to exist and willing to provide the entertainment we want.

To say that entertainment value should be prioritized over everything else is debatable.

On January 31 2012 05:45 holydevil wrote:


I wouldn't say that was the take away. I think a big problem here is that is appears that my restructure was arbitrary. It wasn't. I will try my best to explain.

Look, Stephano started his series pretty late. I think Stephano v. vileIllusion started their semi-finals series at like 7 EST (1 AM France time?).

Before the start of this series, Stephano was aware that we would be playing for 3rd before the finals. I feel like, as a player at this point in the tournament, he was on notice that semi-finals -> finals would probably extend to 4 am.

Immediately after finishing his series with vileIllusion, Stephano said he was tired and did not want to continue playing. This felt pretty abrupt because he was pretty chatty with vileIllusion throughout the series. He told us he either wanted to play the final tomorrow or he would quit. We made two offers which, I believe, was gracious: We offered to switch and let Stephano and Kas to play their finals match first and we offered to have them play at the same time of the third and cast the final from replays. Stephano declined both options and logged off.

At this point I was pretty much in a bind and needed to make a choice. My thought process was that I should give the audience a final match (esp barcrafts in NA). My other thought process was that Stephano, because of his experience and intelligence, had to know that this would go until like 4 am in France before he started his semi-final round at 7 EST. Accordingly, because he should have known the general end time of the tournament, I felt he should have made a decision to forfeit before starting the semi-final match against vileIllusion. So, I decided to place Stephano back to a point in the tournament where I felt -based on the forfeit reason provided i.e., fatigue- he would have been reasonably aware of the likely end time of the tournament and should have made a decision. I then adjusted the positions of Catz and Illusion accordingly.

Lastly, tournaments do not have full control of scheduling - Stephano was participating in SCAN and Bitter had a prior commitment and also could not start earlier. Given who was involved, that was the earliest we could start the event. Originally, we wanted to start at 1 EST.

I think it's arguable whether I am right or wrong, but my decision definitely wasn't arbitrary. I had reasoning and I guess you can now go ahead and decide if it's 'stupid' or not. I'm sorry this has become such a huge issue and I am also sorry that Stephano is being dragged in the mud so much. He has since apologized for his actions and I do not harbor any ill will. Both sides made mistakes it happens. I think some valuable lessons for organizers and players is to make sure your tournament rules are comprehensive so that situations like this aren't 'winged.' As a player, you should be aware of time zones that online tournaments are based out of when you decide to accept invitations.

On January 31 2012 05:45 holydevil wrote:
We offered to switch and let Stephano and Kas to play their finals match first and we offered to have them play at the same time of the third and cast the final from replays. Stephano declined both options and logged off.

On January 31 2012 06:09 era909 wrote:


So if he'd had to forfeit due to injury would you have decided that it was probably just before the semi finals that he started to feel pain and thus it was at that point he should have quit?

Just curious.