The Problem with Korea - Page 14

On May 18 2011 12:46 NoobSkills wrote:


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Every event is live except NASL.

On May 18 2011 12:09 Goibon wrote:
The key has to be creating incentive to stay in Korea for more than a month. I do see huge incentive for someone to just go for a few months for the experience. But without GSL success that is short lived. And training on the Korean ladder and with Koreans is clearly not a big enough incentive. Much of these players i assume are in this for the money, which is found in America/Europe, as opposed to actually getting better at the game, which is something they would do in Korea.
Easier Money > Challenge and Experience.

Not sure what i think about the exchange. I don't feel it solves the Korean issue. It certainly is awesome for me in that i get to see Koreans in MLG. But i really want foreigners in GSL. I know they can compete, but the incentive is too weak and the barriers too big.

On May 18 2011 13:56 PR4Y wrote:




This is COMPLETELY backwards...

NASL = Live matches, recorded + broadcasted @ a later time
TSL = Casted from replays
IPL = Casted from replays
GSL = Live matches, on-site, broadcasted live
MLG = Live matches, on-site, broadcasted live

On May 18 2011 09:27 simme123 wrote:
To be honest I don't really care that much about korean sc2. It's just not interesting to me as I think the foreigners can play at a level that at least comes very close to the top of the korean community. And since I know the back story to most foreigners and it's a lot easier to figure out stuff / go through interviews with them I find it a lot more interesting to follow. So I don't really mind if a BW scenario were to pop up where the Koreans do their thing and the foreigners to their thing.

However I do get that the players especially get pissed over the MLG partnership because it's just plain unfair but to be honest it's not the biggest deal to me as a spectator.

700th post btw .. yey! haha .p

On May 18 2011 07:05 Xeris wrote:
Hey -- you guys are right! I totally forgot that 4 foreign players were invited to Code A. However, I think my point generally still stands.

"There isn't a lot of propose solutions to your criticisms. Code A online would be horrible, I just don't see that working at all. And the your proposed solution to direct invite to code S is already a reality with the first place in MLG getting a spot."

How would Code A online be horrible? If you want to make an outlandish claim like that you should at least explain it...

On May 18 2011 14:41 Simberto wrote:


In my opinion, that is a systematic problem. If there is easier and more money in not going to Korea than there is in going there, while the competition and challenge in Korea are harder, that is a problem. I think most people would agree that the money should go towards the better players generally. Lets just ignore the whole heroic stance of "players should focus on getting better instead of getting money" for a moment, since in an ideal system, there should be no need to make that decision.

An important thing here is that the actual cost of attending a tournament vastly differs depending on the location of the player, unless the tournament is completely online. However, completely online tournaments are usually not as exciting as an offline event.

A tournament has an expected return depending on pricepool and probable result of a specific player. There is a flat cost in attending a tournament in flight costs + housing. Sometimes some of those are covered by the tournament organizers for players, sometimes not. Also, the better a player is, the higher his probable result, and directly following the expected return. For a tournament to be attractive for a player, the expected return needs to be a substantial amount higher than the cost of attending. How much higher, exactly, depends on the person.

The cost of attending the GSL is higher for a foreign player than for a Korean, since a flight needs to be paid for. However, in the same way the cost of attending a european tournament is higher for americans, american tournaments are more costly for europeans, and obviously both are more costly for koreans. So the further away a tournament is, the higher the expected return needs to be to make it worth it. To complicate things further, the cost assoziated with a tournament can be reduced by attending multiple tournaments that are less costly to reach in succession than individually if they are geographically near each other.

It seems to be common knowledge that the expected return of going to Korea is usually not worth the effort for foreign gamers at the moment. I do not know if this is really the case, but a lot of people seem to be concerned about this. Now, there are effectively only two ways to combat this. Either decreasing the cost, or increasing the expected return. If one takes a look at this thread, all sensible ideas follow these lines.

Giving out slots higher in the GSL increases the expected return for the foreigners going there. Increasing the earnings at Code A and lower placements also increases the expected return for foreigners, since realistically in most cases they will not win in code S for a long time. Having more different tournaments in Korea decreases the costs for attending the GSL. Reducing the time Code A takes also reduces the costs indirectly, since it gives more time to attend different tournaments. However, if those tournaments are on an other continent, it actually does not help a lot since the cost of the flights, which to my knowledge is the bulk of it, still remains the same. So this solution would be far less effective than people expect it too.

Interestingly, all this works the other way around, too. It is expensive for Koreans to get to europe or america, so for them to be worth it, there needs to be substantial return expected. So they either need to attend multiple tournaments, or they need to position high enough in the ones with higher pricepools. Which is also why we do not see mid-level Korean Progamers flooding events throughout the world.

Obviously, the easiest way to get a true global Esports community would be expected returns to always dwarf flight costs. However, money does not grow on trees, so this is completely unrealistic too.

Now, one needs to examine which goals one has. If Gomtv wants to create a true global league, it is necessary that the expected returns for foreigners attending the GSL is substantially higher (About the cost of a flight to Korea and back) than that of Koreans. Now, this certainly is not fair for the Koreans. But this is not the point. Fairness actually does not have anything to do with this. It is a simple necessity if they want to be attractive to international players. Now, this need would decrease if there were more tournaments in Korea, because again, this lowers the cost of attending the GSL for those players. If GSL instead chooses that they want to make it exactly equivalently hard to achieve something for each player, no matter where he is from, they need to realize that they will get less competitors from further away. All of this is a matter of logic. It has nothing to do with a culture of "everyone being a winner" versus actual hard work, or anything like that.

Of course, the experience in itself is worth it for some players, but since one really can not logically investigate this, the best way to go at it is from a monetary standpoint.

Also, all of what i just stated works the exact same way in the opposite direction, too. If a european contest wants more korean players in it, the expected results for those needs to be higher that the expected result of a european. This is why only very few very top level koreans actually attend outside tournaments, because for them, that calculation works because they can expect to achieve a high position in every tournament they enter.

It is pretty easy to say that progamers should disregard the monetary aspects and try to compete at the toughest competition they can find if one is not the person giving up the money, so i don't really think this is a valid argument.

On May 18 2011 14:44 NoobSkills wrote:


You named one even that was doing a test run. I do believe their thread says live casts when the real IPL starts. TSL is casted from replays except for the final. You are right. But the major events. DreamHack IEM ESL MLG GSL those are all live.

On May 18 2011 13:27 HolyArrow wrote:
I agree that the problems stated in the OP are very valid and need addressing. However, the solutions are ones that I STRONGLY, STRONGLY disagree with.

1. Code A being online would severely hamper its legitimacy. Just as we've seen Korean players often underperform in online tournaments with the issue of lag constantly hanging over any online tournament (and the ensuing controversy is always a pain), Code A being online would be a similar issue, but instead with the foreign players being affected by lag (assuming it's played on KR which makes sense, since it's a Korean tournament). Online tournaments simply do not match up to LANs.

2. Putting a foreigner into Code S seems like a nice way to help the foreign scene get its foot in the door, but I feel that that's simply massively unfair to Korean players. We've seen how ridiculously difficult it is to even get through Code A qualifiers. To forgo that, and also, getting to the Ro8 in Code A, along with dealing with the Up/Downs, just feels like far too large of a sacrifice in terms of fairness. I have no doubt that many progamers have a huge stake in the GSL. It's not fair to just give a free ticket into Code S, even if it is to an MLG winner or something.

I feel that as things are now, finding a solution to the problem lies in Blizzard bettering Battle.net so that lag becomes a non-issue. I never followed BW, but in the midst of the lag discussions following the TSL and NASL games, I've heard many people say that BW didn't have this sort of problem with lag in online games.

On May 18 2011 15:17 -miDnight- wrote:
I can felt by the operation of Gom, they don't care about foreigner player in GSL or not.

On May 18 2011 18:47 Lann555 wrote:
So how does that Code-S seeding actually work? Isn't Code-S already full as it is? You cannot make a bracket with 33 players, so they would have to kick someone out right?