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First of all, great post k!llua. 
I'm of the opinion that EG didn't do anything wrong in this situation until the thread came up and they started getting heat from it. Then they crumbled. This to me seems to be the major problem that EG has, the people they've put in charge of PR doesn't seem to know what the heck they're doing, at least when it comes to responding to our fickle eSports scene.
In the past few months we've had what.. three negative EG stories blown up huge by the community? Two of them shouldn't really have been stories if EG had handled the information flow better (talking about no TeamLiquid in EG Masters Cup and the SotG/ItG debacle), Now we have this Puma story, granted it is more of a story, but still.. EG has seemingly behaved in an acceptable manner.
So Puma talks to his team, then we fast forward however much time it took, and suddendly there is an PlayXP post about this, where the TSL Coach isn't happy, naturally (and obviously!) this gets translated and put on TeamLiquid within minutes and that's when EGs problems begin.
Instead of expecting this to happen and thus having something written up in advance, or just having people ready to respond to the community, EG does the following:
SirScoots on twitter:
I see esports journalism continues its fine tradition of no fact checking! Bravo! Bravo! /me rolls eyes
You seem like a smart guy Scoots, but how often do you really find sarcasm working for you?
Then they get Alex Garfield and Milkies on WoC with djWHEAT, where the situation is explained better, but still EG manages to mess their shit up by partly blaming Milkies for posting the thread before getting EGs side of the story. Milkies isn't writing an article for the New York Times, he's taking a post from PlayXP and translating it to the best of his ability and posting it on TL. If EG wants their side of the story out, it's up to them to pounce on the thread with their response (sorry for the pun), and that's where they fail, and have been failing for a long time.
If you got the cash to hire the "best" korean and the best NA talent, hire some guy to take care of your brand as well. As I said initially, you've had three non-stories getting blown up huge in almost as many months. There is even some guy above me posting all your sponsors, telling people to boycott them. All this and you haven't really done anything exceptionally wrong, except for being completely unable to communicate with the scene.
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On July 22 2011 13:09 PHC wrote:Show nested quote +On July 22 2011 12:30 Invoker wrote:I like Koreans a lot. And I respect their culture and customs without holding any preconceived notions of how they should act. On July 22 2011 12:03 k!llua wrote:
Anything purporting to be "professional" cannot exist on a system of handshakes and verbal agreements.
But I also completely agree with this quote. This is what every employer should know. The biggest issue that needs to be addressed, which Milkis touched on, was that right now in 2011, is similar to what KeSPA did in the BW scene in 2003. They wanted to provide contracts for the players. But look where they are now - KeSPA has an iron-grip on the players & coaches to almost slave like conditions in their contracts and a free agency where the pro is stripped of his license if the deal falls through. When Koreans decided to form a player's association for SC2, it was huge precedence - they elected a member/player/coach to represent the players' own interests. It is well documented that SC2 is not thriving in a BW-dominated Korea (with teams like fOu struggling "to find their next meal" according to FXOBoSs), and the teams have a collected mentality that they will get the big sponsors in due time. If what Coach Lee has said is true, then what EG has essentially done is force the SC2 Players Association to have contracts (things the Korean SC2 proteams wanted to avoid due to KeSPA-like conditions) this early in the growth of the Korean SC2 scene. And if history repeats itself the Player's Association for SC2 will become KeSPA 2."Worst" case scenario is, which is relative depending on the viewpoint, is that the majority of Korean SC2 Pros get contracted by foreign teams. This could very well snowball into Korean SC2 Teams disappearing due to lack of players, which means less viewers for GSL, which means GSL/GSTL disappears due to lack of money/interest, which ultimately will lead to a nonexistent SC2 scene in Korea and Brood War lives on. Perhaps I am completely off on my assessment of the situation, but as a longtime Brood War fan that followed the Korean ESPORTS scene, am I being overly paranoid or is there at least some cause for concern for the dark path this is leading the Koreans?
What is the point of the "license" system anyways? If a player is good enough to compete, he has to be a professionals, and if he's not good enough to compete, why do tournament organizers care? The license system is also part of the problem and would also not be good for sc2.
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On July 22 2011 16:42 IslandLife wrote:+ 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.
If it was the case that talking to the TSL coach first couldn't be considered a proper/appropriate thing to do, Mr. Garfield would have said as much. Instead, he tried to provide rationale to mitigate EG's culpability ("this is the first time we've done it without talking to a coach first, ok guys?!").
My point is, he implicitly conceded the "cultural value" point while on Weapon of Choice. Whether he intended to or not is a different issue.
...honestly, if EG just came out and made an apology to the TSL coach or tried to work things out on a relationship level, they would come out of this unscathed and without an enemy in TSL. The SC2 community is in love with the good guy (think of Day[9]'s super positive energy), and if EG came across as at least TRYING to be the good guys here (instead of flipping their nose at TSL/Korea and justifying themselves), I think all of this would disappear in a split second.
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I feel like an additional consideration is that its not really fair to players to have them sitting there without a contract. I'm not saying TSL did this (or that they didn't, who knows), but what is to stop such an organization from simply leading a player on. "Oh, live here and help us practice. No, no, one day you'll make it big and it will be worth it, really." Thats a service, and deserves pay.
Also, you can have contracts that are better than "Be our unpaid practice partner for the next 10 years." It takes some complexity, but you can arrange for opt outs based on offers, or results, or w/e. Korea is doing no favors for these players by leaving them off contracts, especially if they're gonna go off the handle like this when a player uses the fact that they didn't have a contract.
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Very well written original post and a good read.
The part about Cricket in k!llua's original post was very intriguing; I think a big mistake people keep making is that we keep comparing eSports to professional sports organizations like the NHL or the NFL (USA examples). The US Major league sports contract players/teams and those players can play and compete only for that specific league. where as there iS no unified league system in SC2.
GOM and MLG are taking steps towards a unified, highly professional league in their region, but they don't contract and forbid players from other leagues/tournaments like Major league sports do. Doing so would kill the growth of our game in my eyes, and I'm sure theirs as well.
Since SC2 is largely a solo sport, other options on how to globally 'professionalize' the sc2 industry need to be looked into. I do not know much about cricket, but the model they have seems interesting. I'd like to take a look into how companies/teams in solo 'eXtreme' sports such as skateboarding or other leagues similar to cricket contact new prospects and handle contracts.
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Pandemona
Charlie Sheens House51449 Posts
Awesome post, well written nice pictures :3
However, the last comment sticks in the most with me. Agents...These are the devils of the sporting world my friend. Take world FOOTBALL for instance, you have say Luka Modric (Luka Modric Wiki) who is highly linked with Chelsea for a big transfer fee, his "Agent" doesn't care if he wants to stay at Totenham, he doesn’t make any money if he does, he would be persuading and helping Modric to get a transfer to Chelsea so he could get his 1-5% of the transfer fee which is reported to be around £27-30million, you do the math! Agents are bad for the sport; they want money as quick and as fast as possible. Adding in Agents to any sporting organisation just ends up with even more transfer "embargoes" and possible, like in world Football today, will you see the players being more powerful than their "teams" which is not what we want.
I agree with most of your comments about the Media aspects to. NO ONE can control the media the internet is the biggest tool in today’s media as you rightly said. Take Libya/Syria etc, there people who were rioting first came to light via the internet and people posting videos of being shot at by government etc as no one was allowed in to whiteness what was going on. Same with the EG/TSL thing, you can't control Milkis or whoever for translating a pure Korean interview with a manager of a team or from a site in Korea, you just can't. What you can like he said is get your opinion out as soon as you can be in the other corner. Don't even have to write a whole essay on what has happened of who has done this/that. All you need to do is say, EG/TSL have read the incident and will bring you a statement in "x" amount of hours or in whenever it is ready. Twitter/Facebook is a good way to do this. Media speculation is in every sport, comments from managers/chief executives happen regularly to kill speculation. Take football again, a team is constantly linked with signing a player during a transfer window, no 1 can confirm or deny this until the manager specifically states " I am interested in that player " or " no, I don’t want that player " until then the media is free to write/publish/comment on any story they feel is "truthful"
The contract issue is a strange one, I don't understand why a player IS NOT on a contract, even if he isn't paid you can still give him a contract to sign if he is living in your house or "Working" for you. Puma wasn't on a contract by what we understand at the moment reading the articles I have, thus EG has done nothing wrong. He might of been living/working for TSL but if your not on a contract he doesn't even have to give any notice to leave, he has no legal binding to do so, so thus nothing is wrong. They have learnt from there mistakes and have published a interview where there coach has stated everyone will be on a contact, which is the answer to any problems with "free agents" it's just the nature of the business in any sport, and we all know MONEY TALKS!!! Whether it is in a regular job or a sporting industry, money turns heads more than anything else.
I always have been calling for an Organisation anyway to help Govern the up rising of E-Sports, a guideline to follow certain rules, having x amount of members on a roster, having so much money paid per player so you don't have some rich Qatar oil man buying a team and paying for all the best players to come play for his team and all the other teams left with nothing because Mr Qatar oil man has a Trillion $ (Not a dig @ Manchester City I swear :3). It doesn't take much effort for say SlayerSBoxeR the most respective man in the SC2 to join forces with a few top people in the E-Sports scene to start up an Organisation like FIFA, RFU etc etc to help get some guidelines out, and get a representatives of all teams around the world to voice their opinions or just help vote on ballots like the above organisations are run. Like you say for the E-Sport scene to go further people will be looking for how its run and if they can make money out of it.
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On July 22 2011 17:45 Obant wrote:
Very well written original post and a good read.
The part about Cricket in k!llua's original post was very intriguing; I think a big mistake people keep making is that we keep comparing eSports to professional sports organizations like the NHL or the NFL (USA examples). The US Major league sports contract players/teams and those players can play and compete only for that specific league. where as there iS no unified league system in SC2.
GOM and MLG are taking steps towards a unified, highly professional league in their region, but they don't contract and forbid players from other leagues/tournaments like Major league sports do. Doing so would kill the growth of our game in my eyes, and I'm sure theirs as well.
Since SC2 is largely a solo sport, other options on how to globally 'professionalize' the sc2 industry need to be looked into. I do not know much about cricket, but the model they have seems interesting. I'd like to take a look into how companies/teams in solo 'eXtreme' sports such as skateboarding or other leagues similar to cricket contact new prospects and handle contracts.
Right now, there's more money outside of Korea. However, if Kespa ever comes into the equation and brings all their sponsors with them, there will most definately be more money in Korea. If Kespa demands that their players play exclusively for them, it will be done. Korean sc2 scene will be just fine.
The biggest fear I have is that what EG does, and if other foreigner teams do in the future, offends the Korean people as a whole (coaches, teams, players, fans, netizens), the foreigners may actually push the Korean scene into accepting a Kespa or Kespa like organization from taking sc2. If such an event ever happens (and its becoming more likely as Blizzard and Kespa becomes more friendly) then you can kiss korean players playing outside of korea goodbye. sc2 outside of korea can't compete with the money of sc2 in korea.
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Very interesting ^^ I love the business end of e-sports.
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I completely agree with the OP. If eSports wants to be anything but a "kid's excuse for playing computer games"(which is what the "normal people" see) we have to grow up and treat it like it is more than that. This includes regulation or at least standards that everybody can rely on.
But we shouldn't rush for it now, we will otherwise make mistakes and don't think enough about things we set up.
So I say
"Let's do it, but let's take our time to make it as best as we can."
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On July 22 2011 17:14 sirchatters wrote:
I feel like an additional consideration is that its not really fair to players to have them sitting there without a contract. I'm not saying TSL did this (or that they didn't, who knows), but what is to stop such an organization from simply leading a player on. "Oh, live here and help us practice. No, no, one day you'll make it big and it will be worth it, really." Thats a service, and deserves pay.
Also, you can have contracts that are better than "Be our unpaid practice partner for the next 10 years." It takes some complexity, but you can arrange for opt outs based on offers, or results, or w/e. Korea is doing no favors for these players by leaving them off contracts, especially if they're gonna go off the handle like this when a player uses the fact that they didn't have a contract.
Completely agree with this comment, well said. There's so much pressure on Korean kids to do well in school and get a job with a big company. Taking the time to join these teams is either REALLY going against the wishes of your parents, or your family just didn't have the money to get you through the school system and into a top university.
Slapping a shirt on some kid's back, letting him crash on a bunk bed, and basically just using him as a practice partner doesn't sit well with me. Talk all you want about "family" and "coach as father figure", there's so much room for exploitation with a system like that it scares me. You'd be amazed at the contracts that pop groups are under in Korea...at least they have contracts??
I'm just hoping people get over this whole debacle and start to focus more on the players.
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On July 22 2011 16:43 TheButtonmen wrote:Show nested quote +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?
What do you want from the sponsors? Really?
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Hi Alex Dippa !! missing esau arent we 
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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
No. No No No. You are sticking your head into matters beyond your comprehension and inciting a boycott based on a dispute between two other organisations, not Teamliquid.
Gods of Starcraft forbid TL's members rashly sticking their noses into this fool's charade and creating problems for TL. Look at what Alex said about Milkis. Do you want your words to cause an earthquake which will hit TL the hardest?
Please fucking think before you post, you'll ruin ESPORTS if you manage to pull out the sponsors from under an organisation as big as EG.
Common sense please.
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While i can't see what EG did wrong here i have to disagree with the notion that a written contract is needed to make things serious.
First of all, the diamond trade is made up almost without anything but handshakes, it works fine.
Second, a persons word and a handshake should be worth more than some things on a paper. A paper is just a paper, your word and a handshake is unbreakable.
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a well thought out and detailed post on a topic that had way too much nerdrage going on, hopefully this incident will increase the chances of establishing a more professional international handling of sc2 esport.
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great post! Very informed and well thought out.
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Who exactly are you talking about when you say that "we" need to work to fix these problems? Each of your points revolves around some unspecified body fixing everything.
It comes off as if you're implying that it's every forum reader or tournament viewer's responsibility to make sure that players have a system to fall back upon, that esports won't be given a stigma which sponsors will want to avoid, and that players are well represented. A typical sc2 fan like myself and most of the other people whom you're addressing have absolutely no involvement with resolving any of this, and the entire tone of your post is misguided.
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By 'we' he means the community at large, i.e. 'us'
Specifically he means those of us that most directly engage with esports such as contributors, tournement organisers even players and coaches.
That does not suggest that the humble forum poster or stream viewer does not have some limited say in the future of esports - afterall, it is becuase we are buying into esports that we effectivley force more stringent regulation of esports. If esports wasn't set to continue to grow this level of regulation would be unneccessary.
So by 'we' he also means us as consumers. as well
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Some very excellent points made in the OP. My issue with this whole thing is not that EG picked up Puma but that EG didn't seem to bother with respecting cultural differences in the way things are done.
Certainly players need to be contracted, but contracted or not, there is a different way things are done in Korea that any Korean could tell you if asked. Is it really so difficult to follow those guidelines while doing business in Korea?
I'm happy for EG but the lack of cultural respect(using the guise of a superior Western model) is astounding. You can push a more international a model for Korean SCII, which I think is a good idea, while still respecting the fact that currently Korea does things differently.
If this had been a Korean team that had shown enormous cultural ignorance in its handling of an American player or a European player, I would be just as outraged. It leaves a very taste in my mouth for what should be a really happy moment for e-sports.
I would say, on a separate note, that Milkis is just a translator but he is our voice for Korea and so I think he does have a responsibility to make sure his translations are as accurate and unbiased as possible. It is through Milkis that we form our opinion of Korea and Korean reactions.
Thanks for the write-up, some very well thought out and well articulated.
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EPT
