There are way to many variables that are uncontrollable in tournaments.
Players have to set up their hardware, drivers, and settings. Sometimes this takes forever if they are having issues with a computer. Not to mention battlenet....how many times has this caused issues in all tournaments we have watched?
I agree that there are many things that need to be corrected by the management of each tourney, but some of the variables are just a product of the technology / infrastructure that fuels the games. There needs to be more communication between casters, production, ref's and players alerting everyone as to what is going on. Not just, "hurry up and sit down to play" and then.... "hold on, we are not ready yet, it will be 10 minutes more"
On December 01 2011 03:02 Trizz wrote: Lol @ iNcontroL saying fOrGG was one of the greats on SC1.
Yeah.. what a joke.. he won a WCG and a MSL..
LOL @ random forum hero not knowing shit.
He did? I can't remember him winning WCG. Might have mixed him up with FORu. Point still stands though. Not any randoms can win MSL. fOrGG was definitely a great BW player.
Regarding the Artosis rant, i think people are mixing up two different things. Casters should not bm and be rude towards players as Huk pointed out and Artosis agreed with. If casters are BM, then it's understandable if the players lashed out back at the casters. No arguments here.
But it is totally out of place for players to treat casters as outlet of frustrations especially on matters regarding which the casters have no control about. If the players are instructed to wait a few minutes for commercial, or that he was rushed because of terrible scheduling, players shouldn't take it out on the casters. Most of the times, casters had nothing to do with it.
So Artosis's rant is very understandable. He thinks that he ( and other casters) are treated like shit even though they have done nothing wrong.
On December 01 2011 03:50 price wrote: listening to the podcast now and just heard artosis rant - i can think of a few hotheaded players that might be doing that shit.
I am pretty sure it is a limited number of players, but none of them should be having a confrontational relationship with the caster. That is like a tennis player freaking out at the camera guy on the side of the court because their next set is delayed due to a commerical. It is dumb and they should be called out for it. The only reason they do it is because they believe no one notices.
It is stupid to put a commercial in it. The players are not playing it for the TV/Stream but for the win, they just want to play, focus on the game and not getting interrupted in the middle of a match (read: series) for a commercial. Ofc it is not good to insult the camera man for that, but it has to be understandable to be angry as a player.
Without commercials and sponsors there are no tournaments and gamers are back to playing lans at their friend's houses.
On December 01 2011 03:50 price wrote: listening to the podcast now and just heard artosis rant - i can think of a few hotheaded players that might be doing that shit.
I am pretty sure it is a limited number of players, but none of them should be having a confrontational relationship with the caster. That is like a tennis player freaking out at the camera guy on the side of the court because their next set is delayed due to a commerical. It is dumb and they should be called out for it. The only reason they do it is because they believe no one notices.
It is stupid to put a commercial in it. The players are not playing it for the TV/Stream but for the win, they just want to play, focus on the game and not getting interrupted in the middle of a match (read: series) for a commercial. Ofc it is not good to insult the camera man for that, but it has to be understandable to be angry as a player.
Without commercials and sponsors there are no tournaments and gamers are back to playing lans at their friend's houses.
It has to be possible to adapt the commercials to the game. Be it splitscreen commercials or we just ignore the first 30 seconds of the game because nothing will happen. You dont have to delay the games for that.
It is stupid to put a commercial in it. The players are not playing it for the TV/Stream but for the win, they just want to play, focus on the game and not getting interrupted in the middle of a match (read: series) for a commercial. Ofc it is not good to insult the camera man for that, but it has to be understandable to be angry as a player.
Actually they are playing it for the stream. There is no e-sport without viewers.
I also think that people need to remember that this events can be extremely stressfull for the players (for so many reasons) and both players/casters/admins are probably exhausted by the end of it therefore everyone might say stuff in a way he wouldn't in other situations.
(obviously player shouldn't take it on caster/tournament and admins should try to keep the waiting and everything that could tilt a player to a minimum, but it's probably very hard to do for multiples reasons.)
Artosis brought up an emergent issue within the pro scene, which is that some players are venting their frustration at the casters (/admins/staff) in a wholly unprofessional manner, and that this needs to stop, and that tournament organizations must be ready to take action against the offenders, and the community should accept those decisions should they be necessary.
HuK presented the problem that the players are often treated less than ideally (to put it politely), forced to sit and wait unnecessarily long time periods before games start etc.
Reminds me of when the NBA had a crackdown on players a few years ago for dressing like jackasses while on the bench, or yelling and cursing out referees during the game.
In order for e-sports to become mainstream, it's going to have to overcome it's 'perception problem'.
The NBA is predominantly Black, and the league recognized it would have to go out of it's way to prove that it wasn't a league of gangsters and thugs. Players are expected to do more charity work than every other league, for instance.
E-sports has to acknowledge their perception problem: that players are a bunch of malnourished, skinny, raging nerds. When you bring up the concept of 'professional gamer' to the average person, they don't imagine a charismatic, mature or intelligent person with any real talent -- they imagine a sad loser nerd in a darkroom next to a Kleenex box jacked up on Jolt cola.
When players mistreat commentators or vice-versa, it reinforces negative stereotypes of the scene. As emotional as the game can be sometimes, having a public hissy-fit is not good for the sport overall.
On December 01 2011 04:11 Zzoram wrote: Whatever happened between Tasteless and Huk was probably just a one off, and not really part of the greater discussion.
Players are frustrated with bad tournament organization that makes them wait around a lot when they would rather be playing, eating, or going to the washroom. They only really interact with casters so they vent their frustration by being rude to the casters. Casters don't have control over the situation either because they are told by production people to stand by, stall for time between games, then to play commercials. Casters don't feel it's fair that players vent on them for problems associated with tournament organization that they have no control over. Huk's bit about "sometimes we invite a caster into the game and they don't join" makes it sound like casters are purposely not starting games, when a little bit of thinking makes it obvious that's not the case. If the casters aren't joining a game, it's because production people told them not to start a game yet, not because they're trying to piss off players. Casters would rather start the game too, since stalling for time clearly makes them uncomfortable compared to casting a game.
There is the one exception of Day9 sometimes doing quick runs through a replay between games. However, that's usually because of a technical or scheduling issue where he is told to kill time. If there isn't a technical or scheduling delay that requires him to kill time, he shouldn't do it, but I'm pretty sure he's only done replays when he was told to kill time. Maybe the players weren't told about the need to kill time so from their perspective it was Day9 delaying their game, but if it's really the tournament organizers, maybe they should do a better job of letting players know what's going on. If Day9 is sometimes doing this on his own (which is possible, but the only time I can remember him doing it was during a technical problem delay), players should tell him in a mature way that they don't like it and request that he save the replay to go over later instead of making fun of him.
Instead of making this out to be players vs casters, they are all missing the point and that is that it's tournament organization that is the problem. If tournaments smoothed out their schedules and stopped having people sit around waiting for unknown periods of time, everyone would be happier. For example, as Idra proposed, why don't they hand out those wireless restaurant buzzers to players and only buzz them when things are set up, commercials have been run, and production is ready for them to play? What about a 1 hour break in the middle of events for food and washroom breaks, for EVERYONE, and have the time filled with previously recorded video interviews or going over replays then?
Instead of players bitching out casters and making rude outbursts, they should be telling their managers to pressure the tournament organizers for change. Casters have almost as little control over the running of a tournament as the players. Yes casters should be more careful about not offending players when they are really emotional, but for the most part they seem to be doing their job correctly, as are the players. Really public angry outbursts like Naniwa calling MLG a joke tournament in-game, on stream, is not the mature, professional, or correct way to solve tournament organization problems.
This. This. This. 100% of the way. In order for us to progress as a community and be a recognized and supported group, these issues need to be brought to light and abolished, professionalism needs to be taken more seriously going forward within the game (from all standpoints, show hosts, players, casters, production, everyone involved). I certainly don't think every individual (LOL White-ra/Sheth<3) needs to clean up their act or even that it needs that much of a cleaning but it is the unfortunate truth that these occurrences are bad for all of us. Again I don't know if they're frequent or getting worse as Artosis stated but regardless, it needs to stop. Imagine these kinds of situations become a big issue or even making it to a stream viewers screen, sponsors will begin to think twice about putting their product in front of this kind of behavior. It de-legitimizes us all as a community and it is not good for Starcraft or eSports. I am not blaming any one person or group of community members but if this is that big of a gripe, it should be communicated quickly and effectively and stopped. Players to managers, casters to production, whatever it has to be, nip this thing quick.
P.S. Thanks for saving me the trouble of typing an equally scary yet perfect wall of text (:
The situation is that this is the wild west, everyone needs a bit more structure and discussion about this. Be it player unions, caster guilds or team organisations all talking with tournaments etc.
Who wants to be the first to ban a player that might have won the last tournament,places top 3 the next and turns out to be the best that year? Not many. Everyone needs to be on the same page about this, or it will just fall apart.
Really hate tv.majorleaguegaming.com, for some reason I can't fast forward. So in the beginning I have to listen on some stupid piano instead of the podcast that I wanted to hear.
On December 01 2011 04:53 superjoppe wrote: Really hate tv.majorleaguegaming.com, for some reason I can't fast forward. So in the beginning I have to listen on some stupid piano instead of the podcast that I wanted to hear.
STUPID PIANO? :O How dare you call JP's troll music stupid?
On December 01 2011 04:22 Defacer wrote: jacked up on Jolt cola.
OMG I miss Jolt =(
Decent points were made on both sides. As the scene becomes bigger and matures it'll eventually have to be sorted out. It's just a weird situation where the casters are "in the same room" (game) with the players themselves so there's this crossfire. Every other pro sport the guy on the TV casting the game is removed from the game itself. Marv Albert isn't putting up with the players directly, the players aren't dealing with him, it all falls on the refs/coaches to deal with the players during the game.
If casters and players are being assbags to each other that doesn't help anyone. In the heat of the moment things get said but they're not being channeled in the proper angle, the refs should be the ones taking control of the situation. Like any pro sport if you get too mouthy to a ref you can be penalized, fined, ejected, etc.
Since there's no entity controlling aspects (players union, official overarching league, owners association, etc) things are always going to be a little sketchy in the grey area things are now. Plus with casters being directly plugged into the game that throws a wrench in things too. If no official control ever enters people need to sort of come to a gentlemens agreement of sorts where they try and keep shit from getting too nuts.
It's a symbiotic relationship and everyone involved needs to be on the same page. No tourney without money so commercials are necessary. Rules need to be respected as they are in every sports of there are consequences. A tourney can't make money without players so treat them properly (this doesn't mean like gods though, common decency stuff). Casters are the link between the players and the people so don't piss them off either. Without good casters something can become unwatchable. Personally I VERY rarely watch monday night football even though I love football. I can't stand the casters at all. Same with some of the Sunday game casting crews, they're awful. But I'll watch even games I don't care about on Sunday night because Al Michaels is the best caster there is.
On December 01 2011 04:53 superjoppe wrote: Really hate tv.majorleaguegaming.com, for some reason I can't fast forward. So in the beginning I have to listen on some stupid piano instead of the podcast that I wanted to hear.
STUPID PIANO? :O How dare you call JP's troll music stupid?
It was better last time, with deppressing classy pieces. Missed them this episode
EPT
