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This is just my personal thoughts and feelings on things regarding Korea.
We have found out that the practice would be really poor if you lived in the GOM house with other foreigners and not in a house with koreans who are in Code S like the oGs/TL house. If you are eliminated early you have like a month of dead time to kill in a country where you doesn't know anyone and there is a huge language barrier. You have no chance to play any other tournies and earn some money and you will probably just play ladder and customs with your house mates and that won't make your chances to go far in Code A any bigger just because you're doing it in Korea.
And even if you lived in an korean prohouse I personaly would not have the mentality to stay there long. I'm a guy that needs some own time and a personal space, in a house like that you won't get that. You will sleep in a room full with bunk beds and guys, I bet I'm not the only one who is like this. When I watch videos Artosis uploads from all the prohouses I think it all looks so depressing, but hey thats me. Some people may think it's awesome living with a bunch of guys you barely can talk with and play Starcraft a shitload of hours and having some chick cook and clean everything for you.
Is it really worth for a top tier player in EU/NA to give up pretty much his whole life (family, friends, social life and his personal space) for going to Korea to MAYBE have a shot at the big juicy price pool you get when you finish in the top of Code S? I personally don't think so since he already cash in so much money from everything here alreday.
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I agree about the whole live being better thing. But at the end of the day unfortunately it all comes down to money and people living from gaming. When you get so many people together to one location to play, even if you make a very generous spread of money for the placements, some people are gonna always not have enough to live from.
Let's just say a month long tournament started in the US with everything live and people living there for the duration. Prehaps 16 people would place high enough to pay for their costs and more. That leaves 48 people who don't earn their costs. Some might get paid by their teams to make up the costs but at the end of the day if you don't place high enough it's simply not going to work. You might say that's fair, because they didn't place high enough, but in a stable scene everyone should earn enough to at least live and compete. It needs salaries for this to work at all, prize money does not make a stable scene i'm afraid.
The BW scene has MSL/OSL and always the Proleague to contribute games for your team, meaning placing high in individual tournaments isn't needed at all (ask Sea[shield]). Until there's a location which offers these multiple opportunities salaries from teams then everything is going to be scattered all over the place like it is now.
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I don't like the title of this thread.. it would be so easy for Gom to just focus solely on Korea and wait for SC2 to grow a bit before moving onto bigger things. They are going out of their way to reach out to foreigners and help E-sports grow globally AND locally, which is extremely ambitious given the game is less than a year old. Granted, things aren't perfect and a lot of your suggestions are great, but we have to be patient. There's just not enough money to do everything well.
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Personally i don't care where a player is from, i don't see why people are so infatuated with players just because they might hail from a country that isn't Korea. I wouldn't get any more pleasure out of watching, GSL just because a player isn't Korean. Really annoying mentality people on this site have.
Making Code A an online tournament would completely ruin everything. I don't care about online tournaments anymore, this isn't the beta. Online results vary wildly, where as "Lan" results are much more consistent. Its the reason i'm not as invested in TSL, NASL, IPL, i watch these games with about as much interest as players streaming ladder games.
Also giving a Code S spot isn't something that GSL is really capable of doing. MLG extended its groups from 4 to 5 players, it wasn't that hard to accomplish to find 4 Koreans willing to play an overseas tournament for a few days. Where as if they just give code S spots, they have to find 8 + Show Spoiler +(to match with the # of Groups Code S Ro32)
Also Last time GSL gave away spots to foreigners, they crashed and burned. Huk was the only one who as able to capitalize.
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Giving the winner of MLG Code S makes perfect sense. It is very easy to get knocked out of Code S, and if they get knocked out they go down to Code A..which was the original prize intended for winning MLG in the exchange. Besides, looking at last MLG's winner, who wouldn't want to see how well Naniwa would fair in Code S? Great writeup Xeris
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America is literally almost 100 times bigger geographically than South Korea. Offline tournaments are just not feasible at this point in time.
SC2 isn't at the level of professional sports who draw big enough crowds to fly teams all over the country.
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Excellent write up. This is the truth.
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But the fighting game scene has tones of offline tournaments in the west. Maybe organizers should copy whatever they did.
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First off, making GSL an online tourney is never going to happen. It just is not the way to increase / advance the SC2 scene in Korea. You have to understand that when it comes to a decision to appeal between Korean or foriegn fan bases, it's Korea > the rest.
Secondly, the GSL will never be a tourney which a player can simply walk in, win the prize money, and move on to the next tourney. The goal of the GSL (other than make money) is to establish itself as the premier SC2 tournament amongst all. With this in mind, the player's perspective should be that participating in the GSL should not be a way to make a big bucks, but rather it should be a challenge to get to the very top of the world. From the sponsor's perspective, it should be an investment and a project to send a player to Korea for an extended period of time. Imagine how much sweet it would be to see names like Fnatic.TT1 or EG.Idra at the very best of the Code S. One problem with this is that you can make a good argument that GSL is yet the clear cut above the rest of the world, but it looks like it's only a matter of time until Korea pulls away (again) as more money and resources will be poured into the SC2 infrastructure in Korea.
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On May 18 2011 08:16 insidethesun wrote:
Giving the winner of MLG Code S makes perfect sense. It is very easy to get knocked out of Code S, and if they get knocked out they go down to Code A..which was the original prize intended for winning MLG in the exchange. Besides, looking at last MLG's winner, who wouldn't want to see how well Naniwa would fair in Code S? Great writeup Xeris
Yeah because a Round of 33 is really logical.
I don't understand what you people are thinking, What?? they just kick out some unlucky Code S Korean to code A again? What about the unlucky Code A player that drops to Code B?
Its very hard to add players to GSL's current system. Groups of 8 are necessary.
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On May 18 2011 08:01 cheesemaster wrote:Show nested quote +On May 18 2011 07:47 Kazang wrote:
I think it comes down to the simple fact that Korean tournaments expect you live or stay in Korea for extended periods of time. Whereas western tournaments are at most 5 days long.
It just isn't viable for western players to up and move to Korea.
Western tournaments expect players to just turn up for one week or weekend. Consider the MLG/GLS swap.
Koreans come compete in a prestigious one weekend tournament, all expenses paid, with a $14k in prize pool. That can get $400 just for turning up if they are a registered pro. It is also a double elimination tournament too so they have to lose at least twice to be knocked out. There is literally no downside to that at all even if they don't win anything.
But Western players have to live in Korea for at least a month, accommodation and travel expenses are paid for but players still have to pay normal expenses of living in a foreign country, and just to compete for a spot in Code S. Nothing is guaranteed and the Code A winner gets a measly $1.4k. Code A is a single elimination format which means players could lose a single Bo3 and be out.
That's so bad it seems wrong to even compare them. 14k? is that the entire prize pool for the tournament? because the winner gets 5k i know that. if so it really isnt that far off from code a..... Code a is 11,520 but isnt as top heavy, there are also far less people competing in the tournament so your chances of doing better are greater and you guaranteed get 200 bucks (obviously not great but its something) and then the code s prize pool is something like 125k. I dont see why people keep saying western players have to live in korea for at least a month and then put in the same sentance that nothing is guaranteed or they probably wont get very far. If you get out in the first week you dont have to stick around you can leave. If you go far its probably worth it, if you make it to the top 2 your chances of getting into code s are pretty decent as you get to pick your opponents as well.
I said 1.4k because I don't know what the entire prize pool for Code A is.
What's your source for the 11,520? I couldn't find anything on the GomTV site about the size of the Code A pool.
If there is a minimum of 200 that isn't so bad.
They still have to stay another month even if they get into Code S, and it is the time factor that is a problem.
Living a foreign country for that amount of time is difficult.
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Well, I agree with most of this stuff save for one point
You mention the super tournament coinciding with MLG
Well personally, I feel SC2 needs to transition more the way Koreans prepare for BW tourneys
They should spend all their time preparing for A single tournament, not trying to win 2
This would allow for a higher level of competitive play
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Personally, I think Gretech or rather Blizzard Korea are going to be in a difficult spot in about a year, for these reasons.
1) The GSL is the only major StarCraft II league going on in South Korea, which is disappointing considering the huge history of e-sports and particularly Brood War in SK. You can pretty much blame the exclusivity deal between Blizzard and Gretech for this!
2) The actual amount of success the GSL has recieved in Korea. It's been nowhere near as popular as Brood War has been, despite the now hugely dated 1997 graphics of the latter game. And this could be for two main reasons, either A) The contoversy surrounding the (now settled) Blizzard/KeSPA lawsuit or B) The fact that Gretech have an exclusivity deal for e-sports televising in South Korea, it only being aired for a few hours a day on a cable channel when Brood War matches were pretty much casted 24/7 on some more freely available channels, which is going back to Point #1
3) The fact that GOM Player is REQUIRED to watch the livestream for the GSL. Well, it wasn't always required until this change was made in a draconian way which hurt the experiences of a lot of Mac/Linux viewers who at the time couldn't use GOM Player (Linux viewers now still can't view the GSL livestream.)
Plus others like myself would perfer not to download their application in order to view their stream. It's the same reason why I only watched the MLG livestream for Dallas 2011 because the low quality stream no longer required the OctoShape plugin.
I am aware that GOM Player has some popularity in South Korea but this more impacts those outside South Korea, who would rather use other programs like VLC to watch the livestream.
4) This particularly goes for foreign viewers but the livestreaming times are ridiculously bad for Western viewers. American audiences have to watch the GSL at like 3 - 4am whereas European viewers have to watch it at about 9am - 12pm
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I agree alot with the topic and replies BUT :
The whine about Koreans owning MLG or whatnot is totally sadface silly... seriously what kind of people are in the foreign scene when they WANT quality on-par with Korea, yet no one wants to practice asmuch as they do or even try to perform as they do?
If foreigners are afraid of Koreans winning everything then they do not deserve to win it themselves; The people who practice the most and play the best should win. There is no excuse. Yeah get a team house, practice alot, perhaps not Kespa-alot with 16 hours a day training but still fearing that Koreans will outclass westerners in every MLG/NASL/EU even is a fucking sham. Don't play then. Because I don't want to pay for the NASL/GSL if my money goes to foreigners who think they don't have to work as hard for the money as koreans do.
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how is this the Korean problem and not the Foreigner problem?
aren't the same issues faced by a European player who speaks no English moving to America for tournaments? or an American or Korean player who speaks no Swedish moving to Sweden?
you mention things like only giving 3 weeks notice to plan travel arrangements, but what about online tournaments like NASL which screwed up scheduling and made Korean players sit around waiting 3 hours at 4am just to say their opponent won't show up?
these aren't issues with Korea. these are issues any e-sport will face when going global. and it's not a problem that GOM is making arrangements with MLG. it's a brand new venture for both companies and there will obviously be rough times getting it started up, but in the end it'll be good for SC2, good for GOM, good for MLG, good for e-sports, good for KR, good for NA, good for the players, good for the fans... how is this a problem? oh no, they haven't executed to perfection a brand new venture that hasn't even started yet, let's blog about how big of a problem it is! how about waiting to see how it affects MLG and the Super Tournament before criticizing it? how about giving the people taking a huge risk a decent chance at doing something good for the game before dismissing them?
why not criticize the players who turn down the opportunity to play overseas and instead spend more attention praising the ones who are willing to represent their teams and countries in foreign tournaments?
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I don't really see anything drastic that needs to be changed except maybe more tournaments in KR. So that the foreigners flying out aren't in a "put-eggs-in-one-basket" situation. With more tournaments then prize and difficulty wouldn't be so much of an issue.
I really would like to see more foreigners in KR and koreans participating in foreign tourneys as well on a level playing field (same server/no lag issues). However, I like that Code S GSL is the hardest and most competitive league in the world atm with the greatest prize pool. The difficulty to maintaining and qualifying for Code S should be seen as an accomplishment. Is winning Code A more difficult than maintaining Code S? (If it is, then the player should be in Code S anyways, but they're not so... its hard to gauge )
I hope they restrict and really evaluate how they give out "Free invites to code S". At most, I hope just 1 or 2 through collaborations between major tourneys in the region.
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Pretty much agree with everything you said xeris. I hope the GSL will live up to their name as the global starcraft league. Not hating on GOM or Korea at all, I just want e-sports to thrive as much as possible.
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I really wish we could see more nonkoreans in the GSL, but like many others have said it's expensive and they don't get much money unless they do really well. I think that korea is THE place if you want to prove that you're one of the best in the world though. The practice there probably helps a ton too.
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someone open a foreigners house/team in korea, with korean style coaching and practice. foreigners going to korea have be able to perform and practices as koreans do if they expect to get ahead. a foot in the door is only good if you plan on walking through it if you know what i mean..
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On May 18 2011 08:47 eggs wrote:
how is this the Korean problem and not the Foreigner problem?
aren't the same issues faced by a European player who speaks no English moving to America for tournaments? or an American or Korean player who speaks no Swedish moving to Sweden?
you mention things like only giving 3 weeks notice to plan travel arrangements, but what about online tournaments like NASL which screwed up scheduling and made Korean players sit around waiting 3 hours at 4am just to say their opponent won't show up?
these aren't issues with Korea. these are issues any e-sport will face when going global. and it's not a problem that GOM is making arrangements with MLG. it's a brand new venture for both companies and there will obviously be rough times getting it started up, but in the end it'll be good for SC2, good for GOM, good for MLG, good for e-sports, good for KR, good for NA, good for the players, good for the fans... how is this a problem? oh no, they haven't executed to perfection a brand new venture that hasn't even started yet, let's blog about how big of a problem it is! how about waiting to see how it affects MLG and the Super Tournament before criticizing it? how about giving the people taking a huge risk a decent chance at doing something good for the game before dismissing them?
why not criticize the players who turn down the opportunity to play overseas and instead spend more attention praising the ones who are willing to represent their teams and countries in foreign tournaments?
I agree with this post. I think the process to truly making SC2 global or having a league with the best of the best should rest on the shoulders of all the people involved, foreign or not. Well, just so happens, the koreans are still generally better so it is of course not uncommon to see more koreans at the top.
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EPT
