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The fact that we're even having this discussion means that the e-sports community in general acknowledges that Koreans are, on average, better than Westerners... So why not add some legitimacy to NASL by having the best compete with each other?
No one ever made progress by shutting themselves off from the outside world. Yea, maybe the Westerners will be crushed... or maybe a Westerner surprises us all and dominates the big names, but it's the only way Westerners will get better. I'm sure when Asians starting playing baseball internationally, there were more than a few embarrassing defeats at the hands of the Westerners, but now look at them... Korea and Japan took golds in the olympics and world baseball classic.
Opening up is always good... I understand that maybe people feel like its just an NA tourney... but the esports community isn't stupid... we don't want to watch the special olympics do we? we want the real thing, the best in the world playing against each other in an epic battle royale.
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Now that i think about this will actually promote Esport in the west.
There are the best of the best flying all over the world to participate (partially) in the tournament.
If anything it shows how serious it is and it motivates the western players to become better just to beat the koreans.
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Entertaining games make for entertainment.
Nationality shouldn't matter so much. I think that this is a HUGE opportunity for NA/Europe players to actually beat the koreans and make the sport way bigger than a bunch of white dudes fighting it out. If you toss in basicly a bad guy (the koreans who dominate computer sports) and have them go against NA (not known for it's sc players, no offense) and NA wins it's a huge upset and that'll gain way more press.
Plus in WoW (be gentle lol) the scene was dominated by US teams almost all of it's esport scene. The best matches were the ones between rival nations like europe/asia.
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I wanna know if the 'No Koreans' camp is against Jinro playing in the NASL also. Jinro lives in Korea, is Korean trained, is participating in the GSL code S, is as skilled as the best Koreans, and has said he plans on staying in Korea in the near future. Much like MC/MVP/Nestea, if Jinro played in the NASL he'd roll his way through the tournament until he plays against Idra. The only difference between him and the other Koreans is his country of origin and his fluency in English.
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On March 16 2011 13:08 abominare wrote:Show nested quote +On March 16 2011 13:00 Baarn wrote:On March 16 2011 12:55 abominare wrote:
Koreans wont be marketable for making this mainstream. Theyre great to watch but theyll kill esports here in the west. Like all the japanese pitchers that play in MLB? metahpor fail! Baseball was already established here in the US the japanese were draw to getting into the established sport its mroe akin to westerners going to korea if anything it added to the feeling that MLB was the top baseball league in the world. However if you want to sell this to the broader spectrum of the western(or atleast in america) populace a show full of koreans you cant understand, relate to, empathize with playing a 'nerdy' game will kill the league. Their personas are not compatible with what the mainstream audience wants to see. Dont get me wrong I love GSL i love international competition and Id love to see them play but you cant ignore what the new consumer is more likely to buy into.
Japanese pitchers actually do really well here. They have a great training regiment in japan. Hell the MLB is in talks with Nippon to have world series champion play their champion at end of season. I think that is great. Should be that way in Star-leagues.
Ok so you get someone to watch that has no idea about starcraft then a month later they discover GSL. Then they ask themselves why they are watching NASL when the best players are in Korea. Then they wonder why they never heard of these players or why the level of competition is so different. Nobody is asking to just invite Koreans but there is an audience for them which is showing in this thread. First professional starcraft match I watched for me it was korean. I wasn't running for the hills. I'm more interested in the players not the race. Though I do prefer Protoss. 
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I would be really upset if the best Koreans were not invited. I understand that players probably don't want them in the league because their chances will be greatly reduced, but too bad! If people are so worried about the Korean to English communication problem, it's simple. Get a REALLY hot Korean translator!
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On March 16 2011 13:08 abominare wrote:Show nested quote +On March 16 2011 13:00 Baarn wrote:On March 16 2011 12:55 abominare wrote:
Koreans wont be marketable for making this mainstream. Theyre great to watch but theyll kill esports here in the west. Like all the japanese pitchers that play in MLB? metahpor fail! Baseball was already established here in the US the japanese were draw to getting into the established sport its mroe akin to westerners going to korea if anything it added to the feeling that MLB was the top baseball league in the world. However if you want to sell this to the broader spectrum of the western(or atleast in america) populace a show full of koreans you cant understand, relate to, empathize with playing a 'nerdy' game will kill the league. Their personas are not compatible with what the mainstream audience wants to see. Dont get me wrong I love GSL i love international competition and Id love to see them play but you cant ignore what the new consumer is more likely to buy into.
I feel like TL as a community is grossly misunderstanding the "average consumer" and their knowledge AND interest in Starcraft. You go to the average consumer and they have no idea what the hell Starcraft even is, let alone that pro leagues exist. A subset of them would even be repulsed at the thought because videogames are "harmful".
Ok, so you take gamers, who already are accepting of games. How many of them care about starcraft? Ok, we want to get them to care. Are they going to care about
a) the fact that the people playing look and talk like them
or
b) they play starcraft really well and in an entertaining fashion.
Furthermore, how many of you first saw a pro tourney game as the thing that drew you into esports? It wasn't for me, I saw a youtube replay. I don't remember the players but I sure as hell didn't know what they looked like, what language they spoke, or where they came from, and I didn't care. All I knew is that they made playing starcraft exciting and fun as hell.
People aren't going to be turned on to Starcraft because the players are white/speak English. They want to watch good games. No person who's never heard of Pro starcraft is going to stumble upon a player interview, watch it, say "Yo that dude talked some serious SMACK!" and then start watching it, nor are they going to watch a game, think "that was ok, but why do I care?", watch the interview, and then think "I didn't really like that game, but MAN is that dude funny! I'm going to watch more starcraft!" The idea is ridiculous. Either you're assuming the general public is racist or xenophobic, or they won't care if the Koreans have to speak through a translator.
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I dont get when some of you say stuff like "You got to think about whats marketable".
What kind of a fucking world do you live in? Do you think this NASL is gonna make SC mainstream all of a sudden? Do you think 1 year from now people are gonna sit at home on a saturday night and say "No fuck it, we dont watch the fotball game, lets watch MVP instead!"? No. It wont happen. Those who are gonna watch NASL are the same people who watch GSL, aka PLAYERS. And 99% of us dont give a flying fuck about where people are from or how they look.
Grow the fuck up, its not hard to see why America is what it is when you act like this.
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Someone tell me if the Little League World Series would be televised on ESPN, if all the competing teams were from America? There would ZERO interest from the networks for that. Without the best players from around the world, there will be limited interest at best. Personally, I wont buy it, and probably wont watch VODs from it, if it isnt the top level play I want to see.
The whole idea that the large prize money will attract viewers as well as players is a fallacy. They would be better off cutting the prize money in half and hiring someone who knows what they are doing from a marketing perspective.
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On March 16 2011 11:07 Rokusha wrote:
I hate the argument that Korean players show no emotion or character which makes them less exciting than foreign players. SlayersCella has a great personality, so does many others like in the GSTL many of the players were bm'ing each other in game and out in public (in good fun).
I don't want NASL to be a MLG. No. That is just stupid. I believe it should be international. 1/3 Asian, 1/3 American (North and South), 1/3 European.
I think something like the GSL championships would be fine, half north american players and half foereigners outside of north america split up based on wich region has the most good players that would be fine and would still give the name north american star league some meaning.
so 25 players from NA, 25 players fromm elsewhere, maybe 10 from korea 10 from europe and 5 from SEA/Latin America.
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On March 16 2011 13:16 red4ce wrote:
I wanna know if the 'No Koreans' camp is against Jinro playing in the NASL also. Jinro lives in Korea, is Korean trained, is participating in the GSL code S, is as skilled as the best Koreans, and has said he plans on staying in Korea in the near future. Much like MC/MVP/Nestea, if Jinro played in the NASL he'd roll his way through the tournament until he plays against Idra. The only difference between him and the other Koreans is his country of origin and his fluency in English.
Of course not Jinro speaks fluent english and has a western background.
Hes way more marketable in the west than a person like MC, MKP, or even Slayers_Boxer. There I said it. You will have a much easier time marketing jinro to the west than you would even some one as legendary as boxer.
Little Joe Swede is far more likely to look up to Jinro than Boxer, just like a korean is more likely to look up to boxer. NASL is not looking to sell anything in Korea atleast not yet theyre looking for what will sell in Europe America and koreans wont sell shit past the already ordained.
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Invite players who deserve to be there *and* demonstrate willingness to engage the community. If lots of top Koreans fit that bill, great. Not everyone in the league needs to be a top caster/streamer or 'controversial' personality, but players who don't produce any English language content (streams, VODs, etc.), won't even be in the region all season unless they make the Grand Finals, and have virtually no fanbase among NA fans are questionable.
For people making the "GSL lets foreigners in" comparison, I think there's a valid concern about letting tons of foreign players *who aren't and don't intend to be playing from the US at all unless they make Grand Finals* dominate the league. I don't think it should be local players only, by any means, but there has to be some minimum standard for engaging the North American fan scene to qualify, IMO. Being willing to come to LA for a long weekend if you're a finalist isn't quite good enough. If you want to qualify for the GSL, you need to play in Code A qualifiers *in Korea* to earn the right to play GSL matches *in Korea*. The foreign players that play(ed) in the GSL became part of the Korean fan scene. Obviously, things are different with a live, in-person tournament versus a mostly online tourney, but the fact remains that players like IdrA and Jinro were asked to make a major commitment to the Korean scene to earn the right to compete in the Korean scene's star league.
tl;dr: yes, let Korean players in, but only those that engage the NA community to a meaningful extent. What the exact minimum benchmark should be, I dunno, but things like attending lots of other NA tournaments, producing streams/VODs in English or just having a large fan base here would be good examples.
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On March 16 2011 13:22 abominare wrote:Show nested quote +On March 16 2011 13:16 red4ce wrote:
I wanna know if the 'No Koreans' camp is against Jinro playing in the NASL also. Jinro lives in Korea, is Korean trained, is participating in the GSL code S, is as skilled as the best Koreans, and has said he plans on staying in Korea in the near future. Much like MC/MVP/Nestea, if Jinro played in the NASL he'd roll his way through the tournament until he plays against Idra. The only difference between him and the other Koreans is his country of origin and his fluency in English. Of course not Jinro speaks fluent english and has a western background. Hes way more marketable in the west than a person like MC, MKP, or even Slayers_Boxer. There I said it. You will have a much easier time marketing jinro to the west than you would even some one as legendary as boxer. Little Joe Swede is far more likely to look up to Jinro than Boxer, just like a korean is more likely to look up to boxer. NASL is not looking to sell anything in Korea atleast not yet theyre looking for what will sell in Europe America and koreans wont sell shit past the already ordained.
Who the hell are you marketing to? The people already in esports and don't care? Some dude isn't going to go on the internet, look at shit, hit the NASL, and then stop because the dude is Asian. If he is, fuck that guy. We already ignore all the racists in our country. Nor is the NASL going to break into the mainstream. It's another SC tourney that will be watched and loved by us on TL, it's not suddenly going to get Joe Schmoe to watch SC.
edit- also, foreigners aren't watched by the US? How do you explain all the Hispanic and Japanese players in the MLB? When top teams get the coveted Japanese players no one was like "Fuck this team, I'm not going to watch now that we have a star Japanese player" they were hella excited.
What happens if you don't invite any Koreans? Average viewer comes in, thinks "damn these guys are good", watches an IEM and thinks "the GSL is where it's at". You don't invite Koreans, you don't deserve to be called a top-tier competition.
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I like the idea of just inviting Code A players and below.
The Korean scene is stronger than the foreign scene, plain and simple.
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I really hope as many koreans as possible are invited given the timezone is not too much of a pain. Back in warcraft 3, koreans were everywhere internationally and it was much more fun. Interviews and such were also decent.
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On March 16 2011 13:17 DystopiaX wrote:Show nested quote +On March 16 2011 13:08 abominare wrote:On March 16 2011 13:00 Baarn wrote:On March 16 2011 12:55 abominare wrote:
Koreans wont be marketable for making this mainstream. Theyre great to watch but theyll kill esports here in the west. Like all the japanese pitchers that play in MLB? metahpor fail! Baseball was already established here in the US the japanese were draw to getting into the established sport its mroe akin to westerners going to korea if anything it added to the feeling that MLB was the top baseball league in the world. However if you want to sell this to the broader spectrum of the western(or atleast in america) populace a show full of koreans you cant understand, relate to, empathize with playing a 'nerdy' game will kill the league. Their personas are not compatible with what the mainstream audience wants to see. Dont get me wrong I love GSL i love international competition and Id love to see them play but you cant ignore what the new consumer is more likely to buy into. I feel like TL as a community is grossly misunderstanding the "average consumer" and their knowledge AND interest in Starcraft. You go to the average consumer and they have no idea what the hell Starcraft even is, let alone that pro leagues exist. A subset of them would even be repulsed at the thought because videogames are "harmful". Ok, so you take gamers, who already are accepting of games. How many of them care about starcraft? Ok, we want to get them to care. Are they going to care about a) the fact that the people playing look and talk like them or b) they play starcraft really well and in an entertaining fashion. Furthermore, how many of you first saw a pro tourney game as the thing that drew you into esports? It wasn't for me, I saw a youtube replay. I don't remember the players but I sure as hell didn't know what they looked like, what language they spoke, or where they came from, and I didn't care. All I knew is that they made playing starcraft exciting and fun as hell. People aren't going to be turned on to Starcraft because the players are white/speak English. They want to watch good games. No person who's never heard of Pro starcraft is going to stumble upon a player interview, watch it, say "Yo that dude talked some serious SMACK!" and then start watching it, nor are they going to watch a game, think "that was ok, but why do I care?", watch the interview, and then think "I didn't really like that game, but MAN is that dude funny! I'm going to watch more starcraft!" The idea is ridiculous. Either you're assuming the general public is racist or xenophobic, or they won't care if the Koreans have to speak through a translator.
The average consumer that the NASL will be targeting is 15-40 year old males who play video games, that is a huge demographic as i think over 50% in that demographic play video games at least casually, that would be your average consumer for a league like this, it is also the most valued demographic on tv. 99% of these video game players in this demographic will have at least heard of starcraft. I completely agree with everything else you said though no one is gonna care about stupid smack talk we arent looking to attract the same demographic that watches wrestling. (if we were that would be terrible) The first proffesional starcraft game i watched was on HDstarcrafts youtube channel i didnt know any of the players and the game wasnt released yet and i had a beta account but had only logged on once or twice to play a custom. I immediatley was taken in by the exciting commentary of HD and the amazing feats that some of the players were pulling off in game, it had nothing to do with smack talk or back story.
If you try to base the NASL off anything more then great players playing great games its just not going to work, if you degrade the quality by adding a bunch of filler smack talk that nobody cares about and they just want to get the games going ppl will stop watching before it even starts, short interviews with players before the games is fine , but i doubt they will beable to do much of that (at least in any decent quality) for the online portion anyways, for the online portion just let the games speak for themselves no one is gonna be interested in what the players have to say if they arent actually there playing, you cant see their emotions when they win or lose or get hit by a burrowed baneling, so i think for the online portion it should just be about quality games any type of interview or anything beyond a picture of the player and some statistics will just seem cheap coming from their moms basement.
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On March 16 2011 13:22 abominare wrote:Show nested quote +On March 16 2011 13:16 red4ce wrote:
I wanna know if the 'No Koreans' camp is against Jinro playing in the NASL also. Jinro lives in Korea, is Korean trained, is participating in the GSL code S, is as skilled as the best Koreans, and has said he plans on staying in Korea in the near future. Much like MC/MVP/Nestea, if Jinro played in the NASL he'd roll his way through the tournament until he plays against Idra. The only difference between him and the other Koreans is his country of origin and his fluency in English. Of course not Jinro speaks fluent english and has a western background. Hes way more marketable in the west than a person like MC, MKP, or even Slayers_Boxer. There I said it. You will have a much easier time marketing jinro to the west than you would even some one as legendary as boxer. Little Joe Swede is far more likely to look up to Jinro than Boxer, just like a korean is more likely to look up to boxer. NASL is not looking to sell anything in Korea atleast not yet theyre looking for what will sell in Europe America and koreans wont sell shit past the already ordained.
So we should exclude all the europeans and others that don't have fluent english? I guess we should make everyone pass an oral english exam before permitting them to play.
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Canada13391 Posts
I for one just don't want to see NASL be GSL Alternate. I know foreigners went to GSL for the same reasons Koreans want to come to NASL but IMO if we allow all koreans who want in in then we won't really see SC2 grow in NA and we won't foster a higher level of skill among the players. Part of the reason for the NASL is to see NA players get more exposure and improve their overall skill by growing esports. We can't do that if the league is filled with top koreans who dominate and become the majority of the NASL players over time.
I feel that Korean players whose only interest isn't in winning some money and learning 5 words in englishshould be invited .
I mean foreigners go to Korea to play in a major tournament, maybe win some money, explore a new country but most importantly grow as players. I don't feel that Koreans can come to NA to grow as players tbh, to me its more of a cash grab since they expect to win. I mean someone like Cella who interacts with the NA community and the foreigner scene is cool as he wants to help e-sports and starcraft here as well whereas someone like MOON would probably only be in it for the money unless he really makes a commitment to improving the over all skill level of the NA community and chooses to say something more than "koreans own white dudes" after winning :/
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On March 16 2011 13:22 abominare wrote:Show nested quote +On March 16 2011 13:16 red4ce wrote:
I wanna know if the 'No Koreans' camp is against Jinro playing in the NASL also. Jinro lives in Korea, is Korean trained, is participating in the GSL code S, is as skilled as the best Koreans, and has said he plans on staying in Korea in the near future. Much like MC/MVP/Nestea, if Jinro played in the NASL he'd roll his way through the tournament until he plays against Idra. The only difference between him and the other Koreans is his country of origin and his fluency in English. Of course not Jinro speaks fluent english and has a western background. Hes way more marketable in the west than a person like MC, MKP, or even Slayers_Boxer. There I said it. You will have a much easier time marketing jinro to the west than you would even some one as legendary as boxer. Little Joe Swede is far more likely to look up to Jinro than Boxer, just like a korean is more likely to look up to boxer. NASL is not looking to sell anything in Korea atleast not yet theyre looking for what will sell in Europe America and koreans wont sell shit past the already ordained.
Im sure jinro would agree with me, i bet you more people still look up to boxer than to him, if people knew boxer's background (something this league intends to provide) im sure they would feel the same way as boxer fans everywhere, i only started becoming a esports fan during sc2, i didnt really know who boxer was i watched him in the gsl, heard he was legendary and loved his style (first game i watched of his was when he won against nada in season 2) then i looked him up and started watching alot of his legendary games fromm back in the day now i am the biggest boxer fan. Boxer just has so much history and content to go off of. Just because someone is white doesnt mean they cant look up to someone of another race, that is just ignorant.
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having the best players play will only help the sport. i dont see how people can think it damages it. if you put lebron james in europe it would surely help basketball over there.
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