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Vancouver14381 Posts
On July 22 2011 14:15 WolfintheSheep wrote:
Just wanted to say my 2 cents regarding the whole "journalist integrity" that Garfield brought up.
No, it's obviously not reasonable to expect a forum to hold the same level of standards that a newspaper or magazine would be held at. At the same time, I perfectly understand his anger at the situation. 24 hours ago he still didn't know what Puma's final decision would be, or how the discussion with the coach would go, and in the blink of an eye, Lee goes public with some rant about "stopping foreign" teams, and Team EG is faced with a firestorm that was created solely on the back of a rumour mill.
In an industry where "breaking news" is, at best, gossip being shouted to a huge audience that is taken at face value, it's a nightmare to handle.
I'm not saying there's anything that can be done about it, because the root of the problem is a community of a few thousand jumping to whatever juicy conclusion they can think of, but it's perfectly justified to be pissed off about it.
The issue I see with the EG PR situation is that they left it up to chance and wouldn't accept the consequences. AG, or whoever else at EG, could have handled the deal themselves with TSL and both teams can release the info whenever they feel like (if the deal goes through). However, they wanted to keep their hands off and let Puma do it himself. Since Puma is now a middleman in the deal, there are many variables that EG cannot control - leak of information, team reaction, public reaction, etc. You can't be lazy about this sort of thing and expect things to just work out perfectly.
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Alex Garfield does not know enough about Korea, Korea's history in Broodwar or Korean business culture to comment on what is best for Korean players or what will hurt Korean players. The money that he talks about going to Koreans from foreigner teams being able to invest in them is peanuts compared to what they could make if StarCraft2 gains traction in Korea. There is a reason why it was Korea and everyone else in Broodwar.
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I want to post now while I still have the drive and fresh thoughts swimming 'round my brains.
Great OP. Lots of good thoughts, ideas, conclusions. However, I have a few bones to pick.
I would like to say that the possibility of players being thrown out of a practice house and onto the street into a life of poverty are small enough to be considered effectively zero. There's a few reasons why this can't happen.
Kicking out a player is a mark of failure for both the player and the team; I don't think either party would let it get there in the first place. The team has the motivation to vet its players extremely strongly, for both talent and work ethic. A high barrier to entry into professional esports has always, and I believe almost will always exist. Because so much energy, money, and time has been spent recruiting, both player and team will resist an unconditional termination of a player. If it does come to that point, however, the background of the player comes... into play. The player has to come from somewhere. He has to be good enough to be noticed and recruited. You cannot have the time to get this good without the proper "infrastructure", i.e. a computer, food, internet, etc. He's coming into the house relatively well off already. Banking on the fact that team houses pay for all the upkeep of a player (room and board; I'm not sure about this TBH. Can someone fact check this, for B teamers?), a player should not come out a professional house worse off.
These two reasons are why I would effectively dismiss the fear of a huge PR scandal for esports. On that note, I would call out the OP and his first bit on poverty-stricken ex-players as somewhat close to fearmongering.
In general, I don't worry about defamation in esports. While it will be a problem, it's nothing special to esports, and in general business people already know how to handle it.
I do like the last bit about how governmental regulation will come about. It's a problem that I see having the biggest impact on the community - and something that this community can have the biggest impact on. I completely agree with the OP's final call to action to address the issue of player representation - if we can come up with a great system before the government decides to do their own thing, everyone wins! In conclusion to this lengthy ass post, however, I would like to expand this call to action to more than just representation - as esports grows, and as our community expands, we should be putting a lot more thought and effort into the legitimization and legalization of esports as an industry, as a business, and as a sport.
MA JAE YOON
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(This will be somewhat long. Please choose to read it all before responding to any piece of it.)
I think this article/post makes many excellent points, but it ignores one significant piece: The display of international business ethics (or in my opinion, lack thereof) from Evil Geniuses.
Indeed, if you re-watch the recent Weapon of Choice episode and trace the conversation, it is easily to notice that the conversation originally was a debate over TSL Coach Lee Won Jae's anger at EG's behavior. The salient observation is that after Milkis (convincingly) made the point that EG's behavior was extremely rude and improper by Korean cultural standards, Mr. Garfield of EG changed the entire direction of the conversation towards his insinuation that Milkis was at fault for damaging EG. Indeed, as a previous poster points out, Mr. Garfield has significant experience and skill with PR compared to Milkis, and in my opinion, he specifically leveraged this advantage to deflect the fact that Evil Geniuses blatantly disrespected Team TSL (at least, we can all presumably agree: "by Korean standards").
So while the OP brings up a number of "lessons" from this whole event (highlighted in bold), allow me to claim another:
As Starcraft 2 ESPORTS grows to a global scale, managers and other ESPORTS agents must strive to be aware of and (reasonably) sensitive to individual countries' cultural values.
And a corollary:
If you ignore or disregard a culture's values, you're digging your own grave.
[[For the next chunk, I'm going to make an assumption about international business ethics that I believe is true, but I'll briefly address "if you believe something else" right afterward. Look after the first set of dashes separating sections for that.]]
From the perspective of an international businessman interested in signing a player in Korea, you have to take the (general) perspective that you're a non-native purchasing an asset in a foreign country. Necessarily, this is going to involve some type of interaction with the people of that country. After all, you're entering another country in order to do business.
Thought experiment time:
Imagine that a foreign company enters your country to do business and sets up a factory a mile from your hometown. Then suppose they dump all types of industrial pollutants into the environment, including toxic waste into a river that supplies your town with drinking water. As a result, many of your friends become sick. Your mother comes down with a severe fever and must go to the hospital for two weeks to recover.
Obviously, this company is in the ethical wrong, yes? Of course if your country has domestic environmental policy laws forbidding this behavior, the company would be in the legal wrong too. But let's even suppose that no such laws exist. Still -- What would your reaction be? (Feel free to insert alternate culturally/ethically offensive behavior by this hypothetical company as desired.)
I think you'd be pissed. I think you'd be mad as hell. I think you'd be right.
No one's argued with the fact that it's a cultural expectation in Korea that if a team is interested in recruiting the player, that the manager of that team speak with the manager of the player's team directly. In my opinion, EG blatantly violated this, a cultural value of Korea, in allowing the negotiations regarding Puma to go as far as they did before contacting TSL management directly.
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On the other hand, there's the tacit response: "Look. This is Business; stop being so naive. Business is a cut-throat, no-holds-barred, cold-hearted thing, where money talks, and that's that." So hey, let's throw ethics entirely out the window (or, perhaps, just disagree with me about whether it's Korea's ethics that should be respected (despite the fact that, well, this is a Korean player previously on a Korean team we're discussing)). What's the bare-bones utilitarian outcome of this entire thing?
Frankly, even if EG profits considerably by adding Puma to their roster (even with all of this dramatic ado), they've still seriously damaged their relationship with Coach Lee Woon Jae, their relationship with Team TSL, and their reputation in the eyes of some (if not many) Korean fans. A clear consequence is that EG cannot continue behaving this way repeatedly. If they do, they risk alienating a greater and greater segment of the SC2 community.
Cut off one friend. Cut off another. Eventually, you won't have any friends. (This means you, EG.)
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That all said, I tend to agree with djWHEAT's commentary at the end of the Weapon of Choice episode (as well as the general theme of the OP): Despite everything going on here, Puma should end up ahead, and that's a GOOD thing.
But importantly, don't let that distract you from the fact that there's a possible world out there, where EG behaves more appropriately, TSL's coach keeps his dignity, and Puma still gets the same great outcome in the end.
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....did you just compare hiring a player to dumping tons of toxic waste and sickening / killing off a village?
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On July 22 2011 12:49 ComusLoM wrote:What I took most offense too was this: Show nested quote +I'm not using the word defamation lightly here. In essence, Garfield was insinuating that Milkis was partially responsible for the damage caused to EG by translating content without doing proper justice to the "facts". Basically he was telling Milkis to do EG's work for them, and that's ridiculous, let's not forget this is the team that only represented their point of view (with intentional misinformation) regarding why TL was not participating in their team league. Now they're saying these kinds of threads on TL are damaging and should be done better. .
OMG why was this not brought up sooner.
Eg was saying in the issue of liquid in the team league that "it was not our job to comment on team liquids point of view" or something of that nature. Now Alex is stating the complete opposite to be true.
Double standards if you ask me, i cant remember the whole story but i do remember that they only told the story from their point of view and left a very vague description of why Liquid was not participating and said it was not their place to say why or why not liquid wasnt participating.
=/
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On July 22 2011 15:30 TheButtonmen wrote:
....did you just compare hiring a player to dumping tons of toxic waste and sickening / killing off a village?
As I said in my post, pick your favorite type of behavior. The degree isn't the issue here: This is a big enough issue in the eyes of TSL, and especially Coach Lee Won Jae, for them to be seriously offended by it. That's the piece that matters.
[Edit]:
But yes, using the example of a company dumping toxic waste and hurting a village is meant as a "generic" international business ethics violation that everyone will recoil at, regardless of what country in the world they live in or what values they have. This is in contrast to EG not talking to TSL management before proceeding in negotiating too far with Puma, which (apparently) is only unethical/disrespectful in the context of Korean culture (but perhaps not so, say, from the perspective of an American or a Canadian necessarily - or at least not in the same way).
I'm not intending to equate the two. I'm intending to play the Golden Rule card solely for the purposes of the ethical argument (i.e. "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you."). The intent, rather, is to paint a picture everyone can relate to (instead of trying to convince people to directly relate to TSL/Coach Lee Won Jae's exact position, which may just.. well.. not happen, depending on your personal/cultural beliefs).
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People are getting butthurt about the transfer of Puma, but let's keep in mind this is all to the benefit of Puma; whatever happens, he is going to benefit. Most likely, he would have gotten some form of contract or improved conditions at TSL. He could probably still acquire that if a deal with EG cannot be worked out. And, obviously, EG want to secure him as a player.
Also i dont agree with this. Sure if puma plays the teams off each other to get a better deal, financially he stands to benifit that is obvious. In terms of practice environment / coaching and interaction with other players he stands to lose everything (IMO) by joining EG. Sure AG says that they are setting up an infrastructure that will be conducive to Puma's practice environment or w/e AG said, but lets be realistic here. What exactly can EG provide in that sense (from overseas mind you) that would not be ALOT better in TSL?
They said this was a safe way for EG to invest in the korean market without starting up a team house , buying a team or signing many players (something along those lines) so what exactly are they going to provide for him to make sure his skill level continue's to improve over there? Clearly its something but can anyone see it being anywhere near the type of environment he would get from practicing and living in the TSL house, i certainly cant.
In my opinion if Puma joins EG within months i dont think his skill level will be improving as fast as top koreans who have team houses full of players to practice with and discuss strategies as well as a coach for support and advice. I could see this venture being somewhat dissapointing for EG in the future as without the proper support Puma will be no better than a foreigner with a few online practice partners grinding the ladder everyday (no offense). Aside from financially i dont see this being a good deal for puma, and i find it strange that he either didnt ask TSL for a contract or that TSL didnt come up with some sort of counter offer. Obviously he hasnt signed with EG yet, but i hope Coach lee doesnt give up so easily and tries make a counter offer of some sort with a contract to puma. I mean no one at EG even speaks the same language as puma and from the sounds of it he will be staying in korea, so beyond paying for him to go to foreign tournaments and giving him a salary, what exactly can EG do for puma? Thats my main question.
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On July 22 2011 15:42 Dayrlan wrote:Show nested quote +On July 22 2011 15:30 TheButtonmen wrote:
....did you just compare hiring a player to dumping tons of toxic waste and sickening / killing off a village? As I said in my post, pick your favorite type of behavior. The degree isn't the issue here: This is a big enough issue in the eyes of TSL, and especially Coach Lee Won Jae, for them to be seriously offended by it. That's the piece that matters. [Edit]: But yes, using the example of a company dumping toxic waste and hurting a village is meant as a "generic" international business ethics violation that everyone will recoil at, regardless of what country in the world they live in or what values they have. This is in contrast to EG not talking to TSL management before proceeding in negotiating too far with Puma, which (apparently) is only unethical/disrespectful in the context of Korean culture (but perhaps not so, say, from the perspective of an American or a Canadian necessarily - or at least not in the same way). I'm not intending to equate the two. I'm intending to play the Golden Rule card solely for the purposes of the ethical argument (i.e. "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you."). The intent, rather, is to paint a picture everyone can relate to (instead of trying to convince people to directly relate to TSL/Coach Lee Won Jae's exact position, which may just.. well.. not happen, depending on your personal/cultural beliefs).
EG even said themselves that this is the first time they have tried to pick up a player on a team without contacting the organization first, but they think that under the circumstances it was appropriate (because he didnt have a contract i guess).
It still seems rather unacceptable to me, puma is like 19 years old and doesnt even speak the same language and is dealing with a foreign company and they approach him and put all the burden on him to make the decision himself especially since he probably doesnt come fromm a rich background if he sees a number thrown at him that makes him excited he would probably just jump at it without thinking. I think TSL would have liked it to be more of a team decision (from what i understand) or at least have some type of back and forth between EG and the coach first. Like coach lee said he wants whats best for puma and he could read over the contract to make sure puma gets a fair deal etc. If thats what puma really wanted.
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Due to popular demand i went ahead and compiled all the sponsors EG has listed on their website. So if anyone wants to boycott their products here they are:
Intel,
Steel Series,
Monster Energy,
Kingston HyperX,
In Win development Inc,
6 pool gaming,
BigFoot Networks,
Split Reason Clothing,
Inferno Online,
G7 Teams,
NFO Servers,
Ventrilo.net
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I think this is a very important topic, and I salute you for writing an awesome post about it. Looking forward to reading all of the replies. 
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this isn't just a kid's game anymore, i really wish ppl realize that :/
Alex may be wrong on insinuating Milkis affected or diifamated EG, I mean, he "did", but it's not his fault, In any case Milkis just translated, he's just a translator, not the source. Anyhow, he didn't just "translate", he published someone else's work on TL, maybe if someone else made the Original Thread and used Milkis "just to" translate, there would not be such a deal..
I repeat, we can't expect players live out of love and good wishes, so sorry most ppl can't just get that into their heads
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On July 22 2011 15:58 BackSideAttack wrote:
Due to popular demand i went ahead and compiled all the sponsors EG has listed on their website. So if anyone wants to boycott their products here they are:
EG didn't do anything wrong, why would you boycott them?
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Sorry for not responding directly to the Op. I just wanted to say thank you for such a great post. So few are capable of fulfilling what the commandments demand and this posts does. Thanks for contributing.
* Yeah Fairs fair in war and business. I can't believe people have already forgotten the slave drivers running Broodwar. Weren't we bitching about how evil kespa was months ago?
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*double post, mod please delete*
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United States4796 Posts
You're a fucking legend. Truly insightful and a sensible and well-written read. Thank you for being a productive member of Team Liquid and for providing content such as this.
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On July 22 2011 12:20 Kaal wrote:Kespa has been screwing over players since it's beginning. Why would you even want this? KESPA has functioned to protect the interests of the sponsors, not the players. IE, Kespa vs GOM drama for the GOM booster tournaments, etc. etc.
What the fuck do you know about kespa? If not kespa there would've been no professionalism in this, and it would look like sc2 is looking now - like it's running in my backyards with 14yo kids.
shiet where does people like you come from, not having any background whatsoever.
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The NASL ended 2 weeks ago almost? With all that went on and how precarious the situation was I would've at least prepared a brief statement in case the other team got upset about it. I would think taking advantage of a situation where the other party will likely be upset would make it obvious what was gonna occur at a later date.
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+ Show Spoiler +On July 22 2011 15:15 Dayrlan wrote:(This will be somewhat long. Please choose to read it all before responding to any piece of it.) I think this article/post makes many excellent points, but it ignores one significant piece: The display of international business ethics (or in my opinion, lack thereof) from Evil Geniuses. Indeed, if you re-watch the recent Weapon of Choice episode and trace the conversation, it is easily to notice that the conversation originally was a debate over TSL Coach Lee Won Jae's anger at EG's behavior. The salient observation is that after Milkis (convincingly) made the point that EG's behavior was extremely rude and improper by Korean cultural standards, Mr. Garfield of EG changed the entire direction of the conversation towards his insinuation that Milkis was at fault for damaging EG. Indeed, as a previous poster points out, Mr. Garfield has significant experience and skill with PR compared to Milkis, and in my opinion, he specifically leveraged this advantage to deflect the fact that Evil Geniuses blatantly disrespected Team TSL (at least, we can all presumably agree: "by Korean standards"). So while the OP brings up a number of "lessons" from this whole event (highlighted in bold), allow me to claim another: As Starcraft 2 ESPORTS grows to a global scale, managers and other ESPORTS agents must strive to be aware of and (reasonably) sensitive to individual countries' cultural values.And a corollary: If you ignore or disregard a culture's values, you're digging your own grave.[[For the next chunk, I'm going to make an assumption about international business ethics that I believe is true, but I'll briefly address "if you believe something else" right afterward. Look after the first set of dashes separating sections for that.]] From the perspective of an international businessman interested in signing a player in Korea, you have to take the (general) perspective that you're a non-native purchasing an asset in a foreign country. Necessarily, this is going to involve some type of interaction with the people of that country. After all, you're entering another country in order to do business. Thought experiment time: Imagine that a foreign company enters your country to do business and sets up a factory a mile from your hometown. Then suppose they dump all types of industrial pollutants into the environment, including toxic waste into a river that supplies your town with drinking water. As a result, many of your friends become sick. Your mother comes down with a severe fever and must go to the hospital for two weeks to recover. Obviously, this company is in the ethical wrong, yes? Of course if your country has domestic environmental policy laws forbidding this behavior, the company would be in the legal wrong too. But let's even suppose that no such laws exist. Still -- What would your reaction be? (Feel free to insert alternate culturally/ethically offensive behavior by this hypothetical company as desired.) I think you'd be pissed. I think you'd be mad as hell. I think you'd be right. No one's argued with the fact that it's a cultural expectation in Korea that if a team is interested in recruiting the player, that the manager of that team speak with the manager of the player's team directly. In my opinion, EG blatantly violated this, a cultural value of Korea, in allowing the negotiations regarding Puma to go as far as they did before contacting TSL management directly. --- On the other hand, there's the tacit response: "Look. This is Business; stop being so naive. Business is a cut-throat, no-holds-barred, cold-hearted thing, where money talks, and that's that." So hey, let's throw ethics entirely out the window (or, perhaps, just disagree with me about whether it's Korea's ethics that should be respected (despite the fact that, well, this is a Korean player previously on a Korean team we're discussing)). What's the bare-bones utilitarian outcome of this entire thing? Frankly, even if EG profits considerably by adding Puma to their roster (even with all of this dramatic ado), they've still seriously damaged their relationship with Coach Lee Woon Jae, their relationship with Team TSL, and their reputation in the eyes of some (if not many) Korean fans. A clear consequence is that EG cannot continue behaving this way repeatedly. If they do, they risk alienating a greater and greater segment of the SC2 community. Cut off one friend. Cut off another. Eventually, you won't have any friends. ( This means you, EG.) --- That all said, I tend to agree with djWHEAT's commentary at the end of the Weapon of Choice episode (as well as the general theme of the OP): Despite everything going on here, Puma should end up ahead, and that's a GOOD thing. But importantly, don't let that distract you from the fact that there's a possible world out there, where EG behaves more appropriately, TSL's coach keeps his dignity, and Puma still gets the same great outcome in the end.
Saying it is a cultural expectation that you talk with the coach first is ludicrous. I haven't read the whole thing, but I don't think eSports is mentioned in the "Analects of Confucius". Tell you what, set up a poll and ask all the employees over at Samsung if they think it'd be cool to, just, you know, hang out and work without a contract so they can sleep on a 요 and eat 만두 and 냉면 all summer. Mmmmm 냉면.
To tell you the truth, I think EG will be one of the few teams to survive as this scene becomes more and more popular. At least they have an inkling of business sense.
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On July 22 2011 15:58 BackSideAttack wrote:
Due to popular demand i went ahead and compiled all the sponsors EG has listed on their website. So if anyone wants to boycott their products here they are:
Intel,
Steel Series,
Monster Energy,
Kingston HyperX,
In Win development Inc,
6 pool gaming,
BigFoot Networks,
Split Reason Clothing,
Inferno Online,
G7 Teams,
NFO Servers,
Ventrilo.net
Dude you're going around and posting this in multiple threads really?
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EPT
