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Running a primarily lan based tournament in North American over a significant period of time similar to how the GSL is done in Korea is extremely prohibitive. Keep in mind the region is 250 times the size of South Korea, and even within South Korea all the major pro gaming teams are concentrated within a much smaller area than the actual breadth of the entire country. So anything with major lan elements would be nearly as prohibitive to many North American players as those from overseas.
Anything with a major online component such as NASL for example would really be remiss as a business enterprise to disallow players who are not North American residents to play in their tournaments. There are many fans who are far more interested in the proposition of a league that is open to all rather than one limited to a specific geographical region. Especially one that is considered a secondary region in terms of skill. In addition there is very little if any additional cost to the tournament organizers that would maybe make them inclined to limit participation from said international players. As such there is no real economic incentive for organizers of big tournaments to run a league specifically for the North American region. As the majority of data that exists suggests that such a proposition would be less profitable for the investors, organizers and sponsors.
Long story short North American players are probably just going to have to get used to the situation, because unless someone wants to start a, "major" league only for them out of pure altruism, everything is likely to stay the same.
Whether or not the need to step up, or get out of the way will prove to be a positive or negative influence for the North American scene is really at the moment an unanswered question.
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What CatZ is trying to say is that it is simply not fair that koreans get to compete in our biggest tournaments while staying in korea and competing in the GSL at the same time. Allowing Koreans or even Europeans to compete in the North American Star League is absurd, it should not even be named the North American Starleague, just "Starleague." What the NASL is right now is a global online tournament where the koreans only have to travel to North America is when they know they are going to walk away with at least $25,000. CatZ is 100% correct when it comes to growing eSports internally. Especially for someone like me, who is an up and comer and wants to make a name for himself and become a dominant force in the starcraft community, feels like crap when in order to qualify for our North American leagues I would have to beat the biggest names in the world, which discourages new talent. How many new names did you see making NASL application videos, little to none because what kind of Masters league idiot would even attempt to beat oGsMC or Naniwa, and better yet, who would even get picked through an application process. Making a name for yourself in the starcraft community is something that is very difficult to do, maybe too difficult. What it boils down to is, eSports should be a profession. Money is always what it comes down to. Someone should be able to say when asked, I am a professional video game player, and they need to be able to say that without being one of the best starcraft players in the nation. Being a professional at anything implies that they should be able to make a living off of it, and in this case, the average Grandmaster player cannot.
But when it comes to a viewers standpoint and entertainment value, the producers of the Starleague would not give us anything less than the best for how hyped it was, and it has not failed. In that regard, yes, if thats how you want the world of starcraft to be, centrated around korea, then everything should be going quite nicely for you. The MLG/GSL partnership makes it where our best players are shipped off to Korea to play in the GSL, simply putting Korea on an even higher pedestal, making Korea some sort of prize that should be sought after.
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I'm going to get hated for saying this but I feel it's also the fan's expectations' fault. As others have said the Koreans do bring the money to Western Esports. But this is because everyone has such a high expectation of wanting to see the 'absolute best' players, almost just because they are the 'absolute best'. It means slightly less significant tournaments such as Dreamhack have a significant incentive to bring koreans into the tournament, even though the rest of the players are of a lower level and the tournament is not a big one; these players are disadvantaged by the huge jump in skill level. If we weren't so damn high-maintenance and realised that even players like Huk, Axslav, CatZ, Painuser are still in 0.01% upper percentile of players then smaller leagues could still prosper and we wouldn't need the backing of a company like IGN to bring in viewers to these tournaments. Just think how few viewers the IPL would get if it was a more amateur tournament with the same player pool. It's a sad time for SC2 when fans don't care enough about their own nation's players simply because their play isn't at the utmost highest level.
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Poll: Would you buy a pass to pro sc2 gaming events without koreans?No, because I want to see the best vs the best (28) 85% NASL (2) 6% No, I wouldn't (2) 6% Don't Care (1) 3% MLG (0) 0% IEM (0) 0% Dreamhack (0) 0% Other (0) 0% No, because I only watch foreigners (0) 0% 33 total votes Your vote: Would you buy a pass to pro sc2 gaming events without koreans? (Vote): NASL
(Vote): MLG
(Vote): IEM
(Vote): Dreamhack
(Vote): Other
(Vote): No, I wouldn't
(Vote): No, because I want to see the best vs the best
(Vote): No, because I only watch foreigners
(Vote): Don't Care
Poll: Your opinion if there were no koreansForeign players should improve play (12) 75% By letting Koreans compete NA will step up their game and give us better games (4) 25% That would only mean players from NA can particpate if we exclude koreans and everyone else (0) 0% Will it make the NA scene a lot stronger? (0) 0% No, MLG and NASL will love a lot of viewers (0) 0% Other- Specify (0) 0% 16 total votes Your vote: Your opinion if there were no koreans (Vote): That would only mean players from NA can particpate if we exclude koreans and everyone else
(Vote): Will it make the NA scene a lot stronger?
(Vote): By letting Koreans compete NA will step up their game and give us better games
(Vote): No, MLG and NASL will love a lot of viewers
(Vote): Foreign players should improve play
(Vote): Other- Specify
edit NASL Will lose a lot of viewers not love sigh
basically what I did was take, well try to anyways most of the people's argument in this thread so let's see how it holds up
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I think what Catz is trying to say, which I agree with largly, is from the perspective of a pro gamer. People who may look at tournaments and want to compete and become a pro gamer may get discouraged if korean players are there to take the money that they would need to win to get their confidence up/ start playing more professionally and contribute to the gaming aspect of the esports scene.
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Here's a simpler poll.
Poll: Would you buy a pass for a national or western-only tourney?No (26) 79% Yes (7) 21% 33 total votes Your vote: Would you buy a pass for a national or western-only tourney? (Vote): Yes
(Vote): No
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i think is good the koreans play in NASL and MLG it lest the other players know how far behind or how close they are to the korean players, and i think that if they do a tournament for NA only with big price money most NA players would just get as good as it takes to win that tournament but not as good as they can to compete world wide.
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On June 18 2011 13:51 nichan wrote:
i think is good the koreans play in NASL and MLG it lest the other players know how far behind or how close they are to the korean players, and i think that if they do a tournament for NA only with big price money most NA players would just get as good as it takes to win that tournament but not as good as they can to compete world wide.
This is why we need global tournaments as well as national and local tournaments, so they can do well nationally even if they do poorly on a global scale.
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On June 18 2011 13:48 XenoX101 wrote:Here's a simpler poll. Poll: Would you buy a pass for a national or western-only tourney?No (26) 79% Yes (7) 21% 33 total votes Your vote: Would you buy a pass for a national or western-only tourney? (Vote): Yes
(Vote): No
haha damn first time doing poll but yeah great job lol
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Seriously all of you who believe what catz is saying must not really know how the world runs. How in the world would it be in anyone's best interest to put money up for players no one wants to watch? That would never help a sponsor's bottom line. Do you not think every sport in the world is the same exact way it is in starcraft? What percentage of athletes make their living off of their sport? I bet you it's a smaller percentage than in SC due to the huge pool of people playing sports. I can play SC2 for 5 hours a week and be in the 95th percentile...... I played basketball in high school and if I kept doing it for 5 hours a week I wouldn't have made it to the 75th percentile.
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On June 18 2011 13:52 XenoX101 wrote:Show nested quote +On June 18 2011 13:51 nichan wrote:
i think is good the koreans play in NASL and MLG it lest the other players know how far behind or how close they are to the korean players, and i think that if they do a tournament for NA only with big price money most NA players would just get as good as it takes to win that tournament but not as good as they can to compete world wide. This is why we need global tournaments as well as national and local tournaments, so they can do well nationally even if they do poorly on a global scale.
Yes but I don't think people will watch those tournaments knowing that the players that are playing those tournament are not as good as other players is like watching high school football when you can be watching college or the NFL
or it might be like watching the NFL but with high school player i think in time people just wont watch.
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...however, it *is* amusing to see protectionism emerge even in sectors where you would not necessarily expect it to.
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On June 18 2011 14:10 nichan wrote:Show nested quote +On June 18 2011 13:52 XenoX101 wrote:On June 18 2011 13:51 nichan wrote:
i think is good the koreans play in NASL and MLG it lest the other players know how far behind or how close they are to the korean players, and i think that if they do a tournament for NA only with big price money most NA players would just get as good as it takes to win that tournament but not as good as they can to compete world wide. This is why we need global tournaments as well as national and local tournaments, so they can do well nationally even if they do poorly on a global scale. Yes but I don't think people will watch those tournaments knowing that the players that are playing those tournament are not as good as other players is like watching high school football when you can be watching college or the NFL or it might be like watching the NFL but with high school player i think in time people just wont watch.
It's not like that at all, being the best in your country is a far, far bigger achievement than being the best in your high school, and the players are still of a very high caliber.
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The fact is Korea has decent players sprouting & participating in NA tournaments (which are then streamed here), way too rapidly. I feel like we're still watching the same old NA players compete that we saw when the beta just came out. The problem is, these new Korean players popping up every now and then reduce the hype & "passion" if you will, for NA viewers. It's like seeing a soccer game and you have Brasil (which everyone knows and loves) face against a team nobody knows about. I mean, it's just not fun. Not to mention, if we start to like a Korean player we cannot find any replays or information of him to really "attach" ourselves or root for that player in the future. If we had more North American players participating in NA tournaments, fans would be able to connect with these players. Next big tournament you'll see another Korean that nobody knows about, but wait, hes famous in Korea so it's okay. This is really hurting E-Sports in general. I for one hardly watch tournament streams now because, well, I can't watch two NA players that I really love go head to head and play a simple decent game.
Here's a simple analogy that I hope makes sense to everyone:
There's a tennis team with 100 players. They're all local players from Canada. Each week 20 of the players face each other one on one, however, the lineup is different every time. Each week 5 new players are added and 5 old players are removed. Now if you have 3 random players (i.e Koreans) & 2 local players (i.e Canadians) coming in, there's no real game. The crowd will lessen because there are now 3 less players they know about. Now if one of those 3 players ends up winning the whole thing, the crowd is left with an amazing player, who's really just a stranger.
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Catz instead of complaining about other tournaments accepting foreign participants maybe you should consider creating your own league something like the American League?
There are PLENTY of online tournaments you can play for a smaller price pool with an higher chance of success. It is called North American STAR league! Not North American Amateur League! To have a Star league and not have the actual stars would be stupid.
You say that it is not possible to make a living off Starcraft, yet there are tons of people making alot of money through playing. You should not live on price pool money, you don't see any athletes live on nothing but the money they make from the olympics, why should Starcraft players be able to? You might say that only the top top top players can make a living off it, then why are players such as Trump who is not a pro tournament player able to quit his job and focus only on Starcraft?
And you say that it's unfair for koreans to live in korea and participate in the GSL and still do online qualifications for NASL and similar. WHY is this not possible for you? You say money, it cost too much. But do you not think it cost just as much for the koreans? There is nothing stopping you from moving to korea and play in the GSL and qualify for the NASL from Korea except your own skill and the reason you do not want to live there. Until you make the sacrifice to live in the Starcraft mecca of the world you can not complain over the people who currently live there, it may not be fair but guess what? Life ain't fair.
How many Koreans are able to participate in the MLG? How many Koreans are there that are better than 90% of the foreign players who participate? If you get good enough, sponsors will make it possible for you to live in Korea (just look at the Liquid team). But until then do not complain about the best players in the world participating in the most prestigious leagues.
Summary: Do not whine about fighting the best players in the world in Star leagues if you want more smaller tournaments then do something about it. Do you think IGN, NASL or even the EGcup would be possible without Starcraft players initiative? Get sponsors and set up your own tournament, sure it might be hard, but to talk about no one doing it and not actually doing anything yourself is just plain lazy.
Over and out. 
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Oh my God some people posting in the video makes me sick
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This is like soccer(football) in the US, the US has it's own national league, and it has time to develope, but no one really gives a shit about it, but when the world cup came around recently, everyone started to watch it as the best US representatives played for a shot at the finals in the world cup, they went in as major underdogs, and most people even Americans thought they weren't going to win the championship, but people still watched and supported it regardless.
You had a lot more people watch the world cup, and got more interested in soccer, because the best of the best for each country was playing it generates more interest than decent but second rate players playing each other.
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On June 18 2011 13:23 CatNzHat wrote:
his argument and logic is totally solid, but the NASL isn't interested in being fair, all they care about is getting lots of viewers, and the korean pros competing helps out.
so.. then you would have to agree that inviting the koreans was a good thing??
After all being 'fair' to random NA players isn't going to GROW ESPORTS which you seem to champion so diligently. What will grow ESPORTS is to have a huge tournament in NA that gets a ton of views and exposure, something the koreans have brought to the NASL.
People are seriously out of their minds with this 'debate.' Hey guys, newsflash ESPORTS is NOTHING yet, not everyone is going to have a fair chance at making a living through ESPORTS. There simply isn't enough money or attention in the sport to give everyone a chance, yet...
The most important thing we can do right now is hold huge draw (viewers/attention) tournaments to keep the momentum going and continue to build an infrastructure. Having Koreans and other ACTUAL professional level players is key to this. These people will consistently perform well or win tournaments and build fan bases.
The biggest events in SC2 history in terms of viewership have been the GSL and big international tournaments where people from all over the world are competing with great competition. These tournaments generally have mega prize pools and tons of HYPE. The exception is MLG whose prize pool is laughable but still they maintain a lot of respect for their tournament because of the competition and team representation.
Eventually as ESPORTS hopefully grows to the level of other second tier (read: not the NFL or NBA, or the other highest echelon sports) individual sports in the west things will balance out. There will be more than enough local homegrown tournaments and events that bad amateur level NA players can earn a living just like golfers that are good enough to qualify for PGA tour cards but have no hopes of winning a major.
The people who follow the weekly cups aren't the people who are going to make esports explode. The ones that gain all of the attention are the huge international leagues like the NASL, GSL, MLG, and DreamHack. Investors and sponsors want to see big stream numbers, big attendance numbers and a potential to see a ROI. They don't care who the players are or where they are from, they care that consumers give a shit about the tournament they're sponsoring or hosting.
The only way for esports to grow is to get more money, esports and SC2 are a business. Some people really need to grow up. Not everyone gets a piece of the pie, not everyone is good enough to make a living in video games. ESPORTS isn't for kids, its business.
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On June 18 2011 15:01 primebeef wrote:
This is like soccer(football) in the US, the US has it's own national league, and it has time to develope, but no one really gives a shit about it, but when the world cup came around recently, everyone started to watch it as the best US representatives played for a shot at the finals in the world cup, they went in as major underdogs, and most people even Americans thought they weren't going to win the championship, but people still watched and supported it regardless.
You had a lot more people watch the world cup, and got more interested in soccer, because the best of the best for each country was playing it generates more interest than decent but second rate players playing each other.
Yes but if foreign soccer teams came to america and won all our games then making money as an american soccer player would be impossible, and there would never be a competitive american team in the world cup.
I agree it should be done the way soccer and other sports are done, but that's actually the opposite of your argument. No one ever said there shouldn't be global tournaments.
Edit: What is all this about being "fair" to NA players, we just want starcraft here run like it is in Korea, or like every other sport in the world is run, as that is a proven way to grow a sport.
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]On June 18 2011 15:13 AKA. wrote:
No one ever said there shouldn't be global tournaments.
Quoted for emphasis
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EPT
