EPTYou talk briefly about motivation to practice/improve. Do you think prize money is a solution, or would you prefer to see pro-houses and better links between practice partners?
(You've still got Root Gaming in your sig btw mate)
Catz's argument explained - Page 3
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drop271
New Zealand286 Posts
You talk briefly about motivation to practice/improve. Do you think prize money is a solution, or would you prefer to see pro-houses and better links between practice partners? (You've still got Root Gaming in your sig btw mate) | ||
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svi
405 Posts
most people don't care about watching 5th rate americans play each other. there's a reason why mlg's ratings were this high recently. it's because people want to watch the koreans go against the best foreigners like idra. in comparison, very few people give a damn about watching something like drewbie vs fenix. | ||
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dredd276
United States80 Posts
Just sayin' | ||
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Diks
Belgium1880 Posts
People needs to remember that location matters A LOT for sponsors. A local brand will never sponsor a player that mainly plays in foreign tournaments. | ||
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Gamegene
United States8308 Posts
On June 17 2011 12:27 coL.CatZ wrote: lol surprised to see this brought up again, you're right about what I ment to say for the most part. Its not just about economics of esports, its more of a spiral effect I supposse, but also about players outside of korea to keep up with koreans, Rekrul says "if you wanna compete with the koreans get better, simple as that" But the truth is there's a lot less motivation for an up-and-comming scene to get better as individuals if there is less money involved. Koreans came to MLG and it was great, the crowd was amazing, bigger than before, and they had to come over to compete here, I have nothing against koreans. But I do still think that in order for E-Sports to grow outside of korea as it has in korea, we need the players that LIVE outside of korea to have the proper motivation to stay on par or catch up to koreans. Koreans aren't genetically better at games than the rest of us are, I don't believe. But they have a scene that has been built up for years, much better infrastructure and a much larger following/acceptance of their community. Sure its tougher, there's more competition, but that's exactly the point im trying to make, there is also more motivation to become the very best, there is more motivation to make "pro houses". I don't understand how that makes sense. At all. How is there less and less money being involved? Western Tournaments are offering more and more RIDICULOUS sums of money for top finishers in their tournaments. In fact sponsors are dishing out more cash to tournaments WITH Korean players in them because it draws in more viewers. Yeah there's less money for you if there's a lower chance for you to place, but the tournament organizations and tournament sponsors themselves get more money regardless of who wins, which only ENCOURAGES more and more tournaments. And how do Koreans have all of a sudden an unfair advantage? They just practice more. Do they have magical infrastructure that makes babies with faster mouse fingers? Should we bar Swedish players since they're doing so well too? And dude. I'm sorry for speaking out of place, but I think it makes professional gamers look weak when you whine about stronger competition from Koreans. They're more than motivated to take it to the Koreans. A lot of them tweet about how EXCITED they are when they get to face Koreans. Liquid Tyler was bragging about how he wanted to face MC and BEAT him. no actually i'm not sorry. i'm not sorry at all. THEY'RE WORKING THEIR ASSES OFF TO PLAY AS WELL AS THEY CAN AND BEAT THEM. AND THEY WILL. If this is hurting your personal income, that sucks, but speak for yourself, not for your colleagues. | ||
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sparC
Germany162 Posts
it's not only about the prizepool in that sense, it's about makeing more people join e-sports. for the sake of this argument, let's pretend sc2 wouldn't be there, and we would talk about BW. now, if there would be high-prize-pool tournaments, that would attract koreans to take part and win it. the result would be, that almost noone who plays BW more as a hobby would ever even consider to practice more with the goal in mind to play in such a tournament to win it (maybe to get to play one of the korean stars). everyone would know, they could never ever win an event, where Flash, Jaedong and the likes would be playing and thus the scene would never really evolve and reach "the next level". what catz is saying is: make it more regional, so the chances for potential pros become more realistic or atleast thinkable rather than merely a dream. and that's not only talking about big events like NASL. if smaller events for smaller regions like citys would be established, then for the next bigger kind of region, let's say statewide and so on. that would motivate and inspire players to actually commit to e-sports as a real option. and that what is ment when we talk about "growing e-sport and making it more popular". now back to sc2, right now it is possible for "non-koreans" to beat anyone in a bo3/bo5. but that doesn't change the fact that huge names like MC and MMA right now don't have any value or impact (obviously the same goes for the top notch "non-korean" players). how many of you TL users would seriously practice for a huge tournament for months to qualify and ultimately with the goal to win the entire thing? the mere appearence of all those high-lvl players make it seem impossible to justify the potential time spend on said practice. for e-sports to grow in the west, you have to encourage more players to take part in it. this alone would make e-sports grow, however over very long period of time. but it's an important step nontheless, creating regional events help out a lot and provide a less scary player/team-pool. then it would be possible to "slowly progress" and work your way up to the top, with small but noticeable and encouraging rewards. right know it still somewhat seems like there is this giant leap from zero to hero you have to make in order "to be up there where the real $ is". edit: now it took to long to write this T_T | ||
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Lennon
United Kingdom2275 Posts
Koreans are mostly better than non-Koreans. e.g. IEM was a global tournament and the invited Koreans were Ace, Moon and Squirtle who placed 1st, 2nd and 3rd respectively. e.g. MLG was the same story with MMA, LosirA and MC. There will only be repeats in the future. Non-Koreans will receive less prize money since the Koreans will take it so they won't be able to live off progaming and this deters e-sports from growing in the West. Semi-professionals will give up because they'll be knocked out by Koreans. Full-time professionals won't be able to support themselves financially meaning less time to play and a reduced probability of non-Koreans winning versus Koreans. | ||
Rekrul
Korea (South)17174 Posts
On June 17 2011 12:27 coL.CatZ wrote: lol surprised to see this brought up again, you're right about what I ment to say for the most part. Its not just about economics of esports, its more of a spiral effect I supposse, but also about players outside of korea to keep up with koreans, Rekrul says "if you wanna compete with the koreans get better, simple as that" But the truth is there's a lot less motivation for an up-and-comming scene to get better as individuals if there is less money involved. Koreans came to MLG and it was great, the crowd was amazing, bigger than before, and they had to come over to compete here, I have nothing against koreans. But I do still think that in order for E-Sports to grow outside of korea as it has in korea, we need the players that LIVE outside of korea to have the proper motivation to stay on par or catch up to koreans. Koreans aren't genetically better at games than the rest of us are, I don't believe. But they have a scene that has been built up for years, much better infrastructure and a much larger following/acceptance of their community. Sure its tougher, there's more competition, but that's exactly the point im trying to make, there is also more motivation to become the very best, there is more motivation to make "pro houses". It's ok to be a 'professional gamer' in korea, not even that, its great to be one. In the west, a lot of people would be afraid to say they're professional gamers ( before people start talking without base, by this I mean making $/living off the game, not skill ), When I say im a professional gamer, I have to explain for the following 10 minutes what that means and how its possible to generate revenue off of it. Last time I had to explain this to a couple of my friends that came over TT1 was sitting next to me and he said something like "I can't believe you told em that, im always to embarrassed to say im a professional gamer". I have a degree and I could easily work in my field, but I would much rather do this, I clearly enjoy it a lot more. To sum things up, for Esports to grow in the west, to become widely accepted, to become a big industry, I believe we need local, home grown talent and in order for this home grown talent (the players) to keep up with the koreans skill-wise and to have a comparable following, they need proper motivation ($). Its much like college footbal or basketball in a sense too, If you threw the same players right off the bat to the NFL or the NBA, they would probably suck and never get better if you throw a first year college basketball team into the major leagues and tell them the prizepool is sick, I doubt they'd train as much or pursue basketball as a career as if they were playing other colleges. Still PLENTY people watch college basketball, and its incredibly likely that these players you're watching right now will become the big stars of tomorrow and everyone knows that, but first they need to be let grow, by putting them in leagues that they honestly believe they can win. Its not as extreme with starcraft 2, because I believe forgeiners CAN still compete with koreans, altough the gap seems to be growing every time, its still small in comparison to broodwar for example. Anyways not trying to be the bad guy here, and im not gonna argue much on this thread, this is what I believe we need in order to see something like this: http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images/535/koreastarcraft.jpg/ outside of korea. Many top SC1 players had motivation year-round despite the fact that the most they could potentially win was a trip somewhere for WCG (just ask Artosis LOL). Just because of the fact that the gaming industry is ready for SC2 to be it's new big competitive game does not mean that the current top foreign players are simply 'entitled' to having a good shot at that prize money. I believe within 1-2 years we'll be seeing many new hungry talented faces competing for prizes in and outside of Korea so for you to say "we are trying hard to help e-sports blah blah" is extremely self serving. The gamers of course are needed to drive the industry, but the fact is that gamers are not playing for 'E-SPORTS' they are playing for themselves. For a foreign player to argue that it should be more segregated for the sake of 'E-sports' is pretty pathetic. One thing you are right about is that if the Koreans are so much better and will just rape everything if they are all allowed to compete in foreign tournaments via-online qualifiers etc. it will certainly hamper the growth in some ways (though might help in many ways you have not addressed). This is true and certainly some non-korean 'Champions' would certainly help 'E-SPORTS.' I believe that Koreans wiill dominate long term over-all but once some solid foreign team houses with good practice environments (with koreans) get established over the next couple of years it will certainly narrow the gap. But for you, as a player, if you want to help E-Sports it's probably better for you to try and get to the level of the Koreans rather than sit around making some mundane arguments which pretty much are saying 'we deserve an easier shot at the $' | ||
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Probulous
Australia3894 Posts
On June 17 2011 12:38 coL.CatZ wrote: Ideally in my fantasy would there would be plenty of tournaments as there are now where koreans can be measured against non-koreans, and provided the scene has some time to breathe and grow, I think you'd get to see a lot more interesting matches. Like I mentioned earlier, this will only be a problem if the "flow of money" become systemic and structured. The number of tournaments around is huge, just look at the monthly wrap up if you don't believe this. If being the best is not your motivation for playing, then perhaps this is not what you should be doing. The number of tournaments that have major Korean players is relatively small, and they increase the demand for tournaments in general. I don't see how this is a bad thing. Edit: On June 17 2011 12:46 Rekrul wrote:+ Show Spoiler + On June 17 2011 12:27 coL.CatZ wrote: lol surprised to see this brought up again, you're right about what I ment to say for the most part. Its not just about economics of esports, its more of a spiral effect I supposse, but also about players outside of korea to keep up with koreans, Rekrul says "if you wanna compete with the koreans get better, simple as that" But the truth is there's a lot less motivation for an up-and-comming scene to get better as individuals if there is less money involved. Koreans came to MLG and it was great, the crowd was amazing, bigger than before, and they had to come over to compete here, I have nothing against koreans. But I do still think that in order for E-Sports to grow outside of korea as it has in korea, we need the players that LIVE outside of korea to have the proper motivation to stay on par or catch up to koreans. Koreans aren't genetically better at games than the rest of us are, I don't believe. But they have a scene that has been built up for years, much better infrastructure and a much larger following/acceptance of their community. Sure its tougher, there's more competition, but that's exactly the point im trying to make, there is also more motivation to become the very best, there is more motivation to make "pro houses". It's ok to be a 'professional gamer' in korea, not even that, its great to be one. In the west, a lot of people would be afraid to say they're professional gamers ( before people start talking without base, by this I mean making $/living off the game, not skill ), When I say im a professional gamer, I have to explain for the following 10 minutes what that means and how its possible to generate revenue off of it. Last time I had to explain this to a couple of my friends that came over TT1 was sitting next to me and he said something like "I can't believe you told em that, im always to embarrassed to say im a professional gamer". I have a degree and I could easily work in my field, but I would much rather do this, I clearly enjoy it a lot more. To sum things up, for Esports to grow in the west, to become widely accepted, to become a big industry, I believe we need local, home grown talent and in order for this home grown talent (the players) to keep up with the koreans skill-wise and to have a comparable following, they need proper motivation ($). Its much like college footbal or basketball in a sense too, If you threw the same players right off the bat to the NFL or the NBA, they would probably suck and never get better if you throw a first year college basketball team into the major leagues and tell them the prizepool is sick, I doubt they'd train as much or pursue basketball as a career as if they were playing other colleges. Still PLENTY people watch college basketball, and its incredibly likely that these players you're watching right now will become the big stars of tomorrow and everyone knows that, but first they need to be let grow, by putting them in leagues that they honestly believe they can win. Its not as extreme with starcraft 2, because I believe forgeiners CAN still compete with koreans, altough the gap seems to be growing every time, its still small in comparison to broodwar for example. Anyways not trying to be the bad guy here, and im not gonna argue much on this thread, this is what I believe we need in order to see something like this: http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images/535/koreastarcraft.jpg/ outside of korea. Many top SC1 players had motivation year-round despite the fact that the most they could potentially win was a trip somewhere for WCG (just ask Artosis LOL).+ Show Spoiler + Just because of the fact that the gaming industry is ready for SC2 to be it's new big competitive game does not mean that the current top foreign players are simply 'entitled' to having a good shot at that prize money. I believe within 1-2 years we'll be seeing many new hungry talented faces competing for prizes in and outside of Korea so for you to say "we are trying hard to help e-sports blah blah" is extremely self serving. The gamers of course are needed to drive the industry, but the fact is that gamers are not playing for 'E-SPORTS' they are playing for themselves. For a foreign player to argue that it should be more segregated for the sake of 'E-sports' is pretty pathetic. One thing you are right about is that if the Koreans are so much better and will just rape everything if they are all allowed to compete in foreign tournaments via-online qualifiers etc. it will certainly hamper the growth in some ways (though might help in many ways you have not addressed). This is true and certainly some non-korean 'Champions' would certainly help 'E-SPORTS.' I believe that Koreans wiill dominate long term over-all but once some solid foreign team houses with good practice environments (with koreans) get established over the next couple of years it will certainly narrow the gap. But for you, as a player, if you want to help E-Sports it's probably better for you to try and get to the level of the Koreans rather than sit around making some mundane arguments which pretty much are saying 'we deserve an easier shot at the $' | ||
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ROOTCatZ
Peru1226 Posts
On June 17 2011 12:40 Galleon.frigate wrote: Not sure how this isn't a very straight forward issue - If you want access to korean sc2 winnings, you need to live in korea. If you want access to western sc2 winnings, you can live anywhere in the world. When you have litterally the very best in the world flying around the world to scoup up a 5k prize from your 'local' turny, it's going to feel like a kick in the balls. And it makes it difficult for the scene to support a larger wester player base. Less prize money to westerns, and more importantly less star power for western player to pick up sponsor money. Is it good or bad for the western sc2 scene? Prob bad short term, but by forcing western players to play at top korean level it maybe good long term. South Korean events are built longer, generally for tv. There have no big money prizes awarded where someone could fly into korea, play for a weekend/week and go home. Dispite some fairly serious effort by GSL to make it easier to people to move to korea -you don't fly in for an event like golf, tennis, formula one, or any other international sport- you have to live there. I agree with everything you said, except on the long-term brood war has proven what's gonna happen it won't be better for e sports outside of Korea, period, sure you can still turn on your computer and watch the korean tournaments and the best players in the world in a couple of years from now, but if you wanna go watch those events live, you'll have to fly over. There's a reason blizzard put starcraft logos in Air Korea planes and not American Airlines, why blizzard helped make the GSL in korea and not somewhere else, its strictly financial in this cases, the scene there is already built, e-sports are widely accepted and so to sell their new game and generate more revenue, they chose to go to the already-stablished country, the 'home' of esports, or why Liquid moved to korea in the first place, the scene is much bigger and so is the support and acceptance, its just better atm, its a much more player-friendly environment systems and practice houses and coaches are in place, its better to move to korea if you want to improve as a player, there's no doubt about that. Here in the west its just getting started, there are very few houses, with very few players, none with a coach, and likely none with practice / eating schedules, its MUCH harder to start doing something like this here, because we (esports) are just starting (hopefully) to grow here. | ||
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sleigh bells
United States358 Posts
When top pros express this sentiment, it may be worrisome, but if I played at catz's level as a pro, I probably wouldn't want top players in tournaments either. Most top players haven't really said much about this, and those that have want to bring on the competition. Hmm who to listen to? Cloud? Or thorzain? | ||
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infinity2k9
United Kingdom2397 Posts
On June 17 2011 11:58 sc2olorin wrote: As long as the prize distribution at foreign tournaments such as the NASL and MLG remains so top-heavy, this position is fundamentally flawed. When the winner is taking home roughly half the prize pool, it doesn't matter whether that winner is Korean, or American, or whatever. Until prize pools rise to the point where professional players can be in the middle of the pack skill-wise and still make a living off of their earnings, we don't need to worry about such matters. If anything, having more Koreans participate will speed up the process of having higher prize pools since they draw more viewers, and more viewers equals more money from sponsors. The top heavy prize distribution is completely stupid and like nobody learned anything from the past. Yes let's allow a few people ALL of the money in gaming! Putting are putting like over a million into tournament winnings yet how much is into teams and salaries? Scene is fucked. Again. | ||
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sleigh bells
United States358 Posts
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hmmm...
632 Posts
whether or not koreans are hurting esports (they don't), as a professional foreign gamer for FUCKS sake, why isn't your #1 concern about improving? stop worrying about koreans' effect of western esports and worry about yourself. no wonder you guys are always behind the bell curve. | ||
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Itsmedudeman
United States19229 Posts
The code S players are guaranteed $1500 a month. Let me know when $1500 is enough to sustain a decent living for anyone in a 1st world country . Anyone below that line is essentially getting nothing. The reason they train so hard is because they want to make it and they devote their lives to it. For every successful story of someone making it big like Nestea, there's 50 more players basically living off nothing. Does Catz also not understand that having a player pool consisting only a pool of NA players would probably contribute to a prize pool of like $5000 compared to $50000? | ||
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cive
Canada370 Posts
On June 17 2011 12:27 coL.CatZ wrote: + Show Spoiler + lol surprised to see this brought up again, you're right about what I ment to say for the most part. Its not just about economics of esports, its more of a spiral effect I supposse, but also about players outside of korea to keep up with koreans, Rekrul says "if you wanna compete with the koreans get better, simple as that" But the truth is there's a lot less motivation for an up-and-comming scene to get better as individuals if there is less money involved. Koreans came to MLG and it was great, the crowd was amazing, bigger than before, and they had to come over to compete here, I have nothing against koreans. But I do still think that in order for E-Sports to grow outside of korea as it has in korea, we need the players that LIVE outside of korea to have the proper motivation to stay on par or catch up to koreans. Koreans aren't genetically better at games than the rest of us are, I don't believe. But they have a scene that has been built up for years, much better infrastructure and a much larger following/acceptance of their community. Sure its tougher, there's more competition, but that's exactly the point im trying to make, there is also more motivation to become the very best, there is more motivation to make "pro houses". It's ok to be a 'professional gamer' in korea, not even that, its great to be one. In the west, a lot of people would be afraid to say they're professional gamers ( before people start talking without base, by this I mean making $/living off the game, not skill ), When I say im a professional gamer, I have to explain for the following 10 minutes what that means and how its possible to generate revenue off of it. Last time I had to explain this to a couple of my friends that came over TT1 was sitting next to me and he said something like "I can't believe you told em that, im always to embarrassed to say im a professional gamer". I have a degree and I could easily work in my field, but I would much rather do this, I clearly enjoy it a lot more. To sum things up, for Esports to grow in the west, to become widely accepted, to become a big industry, I believe we need local, home grown talent and in order for this home grown talent (the players) to keep up with the koreans skill-wise and to have a comparable following, they need proper motivation ($). Its much like college footbal or basketball in a sense too, If you threw the same players right off the bat to the NFL or the NBA, they would probably suck and never get better if you throw a first year college basketball team into the major leagues and tell them the prizepool is sick, I doubt they'd train as much or pursue basketball as a career as if they were playing other colleges. Still PLENTY people watch college basketball, and its incredibly likely that these players you're watching right now will become the big stars of tomorrow and everyone knows that, but first they need to be let grow, by putting them in leagues that they honestly believe they can win. Its not as extreme with starcraft 2, because I believe forgeiners CAN still compete with koreans, altough the gap seems to be growing every time, its still small in comparison to broodwar for example. Anyways not trying to be the bad guy here, and im not gonna argue much on this thread, this is what I believe we need in order to see something like this: http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images/535/koreastarcraft.jpg/ outside of korea. I see where you are coming from. However, I cannot agree with you because the viewers can view tournaments from all over the world. I think IGN Pro League was one of the most professionally presented Starcraft 2 until now. However, the player pool was not what we call the best. To borrow IdrA's words "It was just a bunch of Americans". It looked great but I would watch DreamHack or MLG over IPL. Going back to your words, you stated that Koreans take all the prize which discourages people in America to compete. I can translate it as "Koreans are better than Americans (in SC2)". But the viewers want "the best players". If these are true, and we cut Koreans out of the tournament viewers will decrease until Americans become as good as Koreans. But wait, we are in a closed system so we don't know if Americans are better than Koreans unless they compete in Korea or European tournaments with Koreans. IMO, American players are inevitable to face Koreans. The problems you speak of now will happen sooner or later. I don't think your trying to be a bad guy. You want to have a long career in SC2 with many other pros in America like IdrA, InControl, Select and Cruncher. However we should all think about why MLG, DreamHack, FXO, Team Liquid, Naniwa, Thorzain and many others feel it is really important to be connected with Korean players. | ||
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Sakarabu
United Kingdom132 Posts
Untill then this whole argument is like saying "Well, Canada just trained harder for the olympics this year, It's kind of unfair and we shouldn't invite them next time". As for the whole idea of money all getting sucked into Korea, I believe previous posts have already addressed that. The majority of the money comes from viewers, streams, merch etc not prize money. Now.. this might then lead to a situation where less people want to become progamers, because they think there is simply no chance of making a living off of it. In which case all these events will have only Korean players. You then might ask what the point of American leagues are then? But the answer is obviously so the fans can watch these players fight it out live. You then might say.. well.. will people keep supporting the game if they don't have a 'local' hero to cheer for and support? And that's really the bulk of the argument, if it came down to this scenario would it just return to like it was in SC1 but with competitions being held all over the world but still being won by all koreans? and is that a bad thing? So really, it's the arguement of: Watching people player who you can relate to but have slightly lower skill Vs. Watching all Koreans play who you can't really relate to, but the games are super high level. Personally i'm on the fence, but i'm a spectator.. not a progamer. | ||
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NHY
1013 Posts
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baoluvboa
743 Posts
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toastnbutter
United States62 Posts
he just wants to see the foreign e-sports scene to become more fully developed first in their respective regions. and by that i mean for e-sports to eventually become a legitimate competition in the eyes of a John Smith who would otherwise hear the word "e-sports" and go "wtf is that?". let's take professional soccer or basketball or any other major sport as an example. each country has their own developed leagues for such sports. and within each of those leagues are their own teams who compete amongst each other. and once in a while there are prestigious global events where these leagues compete against one another for a World Title (example: Olympics, etc.) i think catz just means that he would like to see the foregin e-sport scenes to develop nicely on their own and catch up tp the developed Korean scene before they try to compete together. that's not to say that if a Korean player wanted to come to MLG they can't...they most certainly are welcome to come over to compete. however, it'd be better for the foreign scene if these players decided they wanted to compete by living in the foreign scene. (example: Yao Ming of the NBA) that's just my take on CatZ's ideas. im not agreeing or disagreeing with him, i just feel like people are bashing his thoughts for no reason or bashing him because they are misunderstanding the points being made. | ||
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