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WARNING: This is a long post; it's more than 2500 words. Get a drink before reading, and if you can't be bothered reading, then don't post.
At the time of writing, Weapon of Choice has just concluded. I caught the last half of what was, well, a fairly fiery argument.
But a lot of important topics came out of the discussion that deserve its own topic and also some thought about where eSports is going.
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/WHXgr.jpg) This is what came up when I googled "killing esports".
Anything purporting to be "professional" cannot exist on a system of handshakes and verbal agreements.
If we want to take eSports to the level where it is a sustainable, healthy sport, there needs to be some legally binding method of allowing players to move about in the market.
Let's be realistic. Once players get into the situation where they are getting paid and organisations are competing for them: it's a market.
It's a business. This isn't kid's stuff anymore.
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.
But let's think of the reverse.
Give some thought to the players who are on the B-teams, with no formal contracts and are struggling to get by. Eventually, one day, the team decides to cull them. That's it - you're off the team. You can't stay in our house anymore, you can't practice with us. It's just not worth it, you're not good enough.
Get out.
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/aT2kU.jpg) Not everyone gets to win Dreamhack. What happens to the hundreds of players that don't make it?
This situation is not unrealistic at all. Some of you might be saying that the "Korean culture" would prevent such an undesirable situation from occurring. But the reality is that should events line up in a fashion where this could happen: it will happen - because this is a business, a cut-throat, no-holds barred, sport.
A lot of teams would act with more integrity than this, I'm sure, but the point is that there needs to be security for the players. Teams are formed up of players that are essentially no more than children and teenagers devoting some of their best years that could be spent working towards a lucrative career in law, engineering, finance, or hell, even professional sport.
If this was any other industry, any other "sport" - there would be some form of regulation. ESports has no regulation, as Garfield pointed out, although I would argue the generally defined standards on dealing with cheaters is effectively self-regulation as everyone plays by the same book.
But the life-blood and potential growth out of this industry is impossible without the groundswell of players required to make it happen. If kids are in the situation where they get thrown out on the streets, eventually the media is going to find out about it and do one of those "horror" stories that makes everyone shit their pants. You want to talk about killing eSports? Watch what happens to sponsorship dollars when companies run like crazy to avoid the bad PR associated with wasting young people's lives.
We must do everything as a community to avoid the worst case scenarios. This is cut-throat competition. Let's not kid ourselves. Every team wants the best players and wants to win everything. That's what gets them sponsorship dollars and lines people's pockets.
But the only way we can safely navigate all of the treacherous waters is with legally binding agreements that protect everyone. That's a fact.
A worldwide recreation of KeSPA is not, and will never be, possible.
Milkis asked Garfield a few times why this wasn't the case. It works in Korea, so logically, why can't it apply elsewhere?
djWHEAT said it was a "utopia", and I tend to agree. But let's get realistic: we're dealing with humans here and not everybody is going to agree on everything. Players want to play the game a certain way. Teams will want certain players on their teams.
And just like everyone else, organisations will want to do things their way.
Garfield is right. It's all one massive competition. Organisations ARE competing with other teams. Why, do you ask? Because organisations are just as capable of hiring people and running their own sponsored events. Do you think sponsors give a shit about how it plays in the community? That's not what they're in it for. I'm not saying they're evil bastards looking to scam people. They're simply making an investment and they will go where they can get the best return.
That might be sponsoring a player like IdrA or Destiny. It could be sponsoring a particular team so players and websites can sell their products. It might just be a tournament.
But the idea is that everybody is trying to fight for a piece of the same pie. Ideally we want that pie to grow so there's a slice for everyone. Real life, however, is never that kind. Especially business.
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/fucGj.jpg) What otaku think of when you say "utopia"
Organisations have their own interests as stake, chiefly being their continued existence as an organisation. A Korean company can't extend into Europe unless it already has an established foothold there or it takes over a company with an existing presence. That's how business works: if you over-extend, you either get punished for your troubles or you just simply collapse outright. (ABC Learning is an example for Australian readers of what happens when you expand too aggressively.)
So you will have the situation that we have now where different organisations control different sectors of the market. For a KeSPA style model to arise, all of those companies have to give a little and sacrifice to make it work.
Now, you tell me: who's going to give up their money, power and appeal to sponsors first to make this a reality?
No-one will. Because that's business, and the key tenet is that you look after numero uno first.
Defamation is something that needs to be seriously approached - but not in the terms that Garfield framed it.
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".
Garfield's question was an argument - and it would be highly disingenuous of Alex to claim that he wasn't making a point with his "open question" - that the community should apply stricter standards to their content; ie. hold the story until EG had time to prepare a response.
Sorry Garfield, but time waits for no man. If the internet isn't going to wait for major airlines to announce that a plane has been grounded, what on God's green earth makes you think it's going to wait for you?
This is just reality. The author published an article on PlayXP based on the information he had available. There's nothing wrong with him writing from just "one" side of the story, because it's a community contribution. They've done nothing more than write an article about comments from a key industry figure (one of the coaches of a pro-gaming team) about a situation that the community has massive interest in.
EG didn't get time to publish their side of the story. That happens. It's no different from a government withholding press conferences until an hour or two before the news bulletin at dinner time. In that scenario, ministers do that so there is no time to disseminate the information beyond reporting on what's been released.
It doesn't make the reporters irresponsible for not having read the hundreds of pages of supporting documentation. All they've done is their job with the time limited to them.
There's an important line to draw here in what's been reported. Coach Lee has come out and said EG have signed Puma, which EG has denied. The reports are just running headlines off that information. It's not illegal, irresponsible, and nobody in the community is to blame. This. Happens. In. Business. All. The. Fucking. Time.
How many news websites have you seen that update a story after its been published? Hell, some newspapers will update their websites without even notifying readers of the changes. More commonly though, breaking news will often have an Update: This Shit Just Happened above or below the body of a piece. That's what we're talking about here. A story goes to press and the story is later edited with contradictory information. Whoever is writing has a responsibility to report as honestly as possible, which is what PlayXP and Milkis has done. Garfield is unhappy about it because it doesn't reflect his side of the story (or the facts - but this isn't about who's right or wrong).
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/1oF9v.jpg) Qantas plane gets grounded. Passengers tweet about plane failure. Airline shits itself until PR department can produce a statement. Morale of the story? Write faster.
In that case, the onus then shifts to organisations to "control" the story as much as they possibly can. That's how PR works. This is why I mentioned airlines beforehand. Qantas, the largest airline in Australia, now has a Twitter account that they keep updated 24/7, because it is the fastest possible way of disseminating information that they can control. That way, companies give themselves a hedge against journalists who run stories.
(NB. Here's a story about Qantas getting butthurt by social media. Keep in mind, you can't prosecute people for sharing an opinion in the Western world. Thank fuck for that; Twihards are idiots.)
But let's not forget - we're talking about JOURNALISTS here, paid professionals who adhere to a certain code of ethics and particular procedures. Communities don't do that. TeamLiquid doesn't have a set of Terms and Conditions that requires me to talk to all parties involved before I make a post flaming someone. I'm not supposed to ask casters for a comment if I believe their analysis to be batshit-stupid. That's not what a forum is.
So what do companies like EG do then? Are they to be left without any protection whatsoever, for people to disparage their players, procedures and damage their brand freely?
The nature of the internet says this will happen regardless. But what is not unreasonable is for teams to have their own Twitter accounts, their own Facebook accounts and their own ways of getting information out quickly. If you move to correct a story that you believe to be wrong, you can then at least paint something as being in dispute. If someone continues to blindly argue otherwise, despite evidence to the contrary - which you have spread into the public arena - then I think you can have an argue for a case.
This isn't the print media. If you're an hour behind on the internet, you're effectively a day behind in the real world. In situations where things are happening rapidly, you may as well be a week behind. The ability to hold stories for both sides of an argument, sadly, has vanished - because the value of that story diminishes exponentially with every passing hour.
One easy solution is that administrators of websites have an understanding that all "news" posts are open to being edited by a moderator so that more information can be added in the future to reflect the reality of a situation. That might not fit the business utopia that Garfield wants, along with a hell of a lot of other businesses, but that's how the internet works.
Finally:
This could eSports version of the Bosman ruling or the World Series Cricket battle.
I'm not saying TSL and EG are going to end up in court over this.
Here's some links:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bosman_ruling
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_Series_Cricket
The basic idea was that in both situations, the end result was a transfer of power from the teams and governing bodies over to the players. In the Bosman ruling, Jean-Marc Bosman was denied from playing for another team even though his contract had expired.
World Series Cricket was eventually resolved in Britain's High Court. There, the world governing body (the ICC) had tried to prevent players from participating in the 50-over, World Series Cricket, by banning players from Test cricket and first-class cricket had they played in Kerry Packer's tournament. The court eventually found that banning players amounted to preventing citizens from plying their "trade" and that the ICC could not prevent professional cricketers from choosing what leagues they wanted to participate in.
Puma, no doubt, held a very powerful position. He could, and may still be able to, play TSL and EG off against each other for the best possible offer. This is essentially what happens in most professional sports today, just with a shitload more money - and better representation.
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/TzBtz.jpg) Sadly, this man is not in a position of power.
But however it plays out, TSL has now recognised that they have to contract ALL of their players - lest they lose them to foreign organisations. Fact of the matter is, they could lose them to Korean teams as well, because there's nothing legally stopping one team from securing a free agent.
To me, this raises another question: should players be allowed to represent themselves? As eSports grows bigger, I think it is inevitable that some players will remain in the scene as agents, using their experience to help other players navigate a world of contracts and obligations that many, quite frankly, are too young to understand.
I'd imagine parents would act as the "agents" for many players, but that's simply not sustainable if you want to seriously grow eSports. An organisation like the GSL, or KeSPA, could arrange to have some former players or someone acting in an independent role that can oversee the legalities for players concerned.
Should eSports attract the eye of governments, which is inevitable if its grows to the point that we want it to, this type of regulation will be forced upon us anyway. That's another reason why contracts are absolutely essential; sooner or later, eSports is going to have to conform with the labour laws of their respective organisations.
So rather than have the fat foot of governments sort shit out for us, we'd best move our asses and start thinking and developing our own methods of representation. Remember, this is to safeguard all parties involved. Obviously, most financial dealings and contracts are done honestly and in a secure way.
But if we want to really grow this scene so that there's something left behind when we're 40, this is the kind of ballpark we're playing on. Like it or lump it kids, it's time to grow up.
-dippa
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On July 22 2011 12:03 k!llua wrote:
So rather than have the fat foot of governments sort shit out for us, we'd best move our asses and start thinking and developing our own methods of representation. Remember, this is to safeguard all parties involved. Obviously, most financial dealings and contracts are done honestly and in a secure way.
Who's "we"? Don't worry, these organizations will act in their best interests. But I'm sure they appreciate your concern.
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I don't see why things are so different with Starcraft 2 teams compared to teams from Brood war. Was there many/any conflicts like this in the past?
Why all of a sudden is this all important to people?
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Skimmed through, seems like good points. Will read it in detail later. Btw, lol tevez picture.
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On July 22 2011 12:07 AndAgain wrote:Show nested quote +On July 22 2011 12:03 k!llua wrote:
So rather than have the fat foot of governments sort shit out for us, we'd best move our asses and start thinking and developing our own methods of representation. Remember, this is to safeguard all parties involved. Obviously, most financial dealings and contracts are done honestly and in a secure way.
Who's "we"? Don't worry, these organizations will act in their best interests. But I'm sure they appreciate your concern.
Everyone: organisations, tournaments, writers, players, commentators - everyone.
That's how governments handle regulation. One-size-fits-all, unless there's a better working system is already in place.
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I think the only thing you're missing from that post is mention of the Korean Starcraft 2 Association that was created last year to provide
Protection of rights for the gamers and teams
If the association has some terms protecting the teams, then EG may very well have stepped into a pile of mud with this deal.
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better bunker down for the winter, this is a long one
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motbob
United States12546 Posts
Here's a snippet of an old post Mr. Garfield wrote 9 months ago that might shed some light on his point of view.
A lot of you guys are saying that my criticisms are invalid because so much of TL's coverage (this thread, for example) is community-based and generated by community members who aren't officially part of TL. This is not a valid counterpoint to my arguments - but it is, however, a very important observation about the nature of "coverage" and "news" on TL. We're now in an era of journalism and reporting in which a piece doesn't have to be "official" to be coverage. So, while some of you guys are essentially saying, "This isn't coverage - it's a forum thread and therefore you're wrong," I'd make the simple point: the two are not mutually exclusive anymore. It's both a forum thread and a coverage piece. I'd like to think that anyone in this community with enough dedication and passion to contribute to it via doing this kind of forum-based coverage would also apply that kind of dedication and passion to their approach to said community-based journalism.
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I posted this in another, similar, thread and want to throw it into this thread. Great OP.
Pros of Having a Contract System
- Contracts provide stability for both the players, and the teams. If a team and player come to an agreement on paper, it protects the teams investment, while guaranteeing the player that there will be some type of return for their services (whether it be monetary, living conditions, things of that nature). With contracts, teams will be more willing and at ease with investing their resources into their players, who are legally bound to fulfill their obligations
- It creates an infrastructure to really see how teams can shine. It erases alot of the ambiguity involved with having X players on a team. You better believe teams will be wanting return investments from guys they've contracted, because we're talking about business here now. The business of running a successful Starcraft II team that turns profit, or at least, operates above the red. Teams will need to consider if they're willing to commit, just as players will need to make intelligent decisions on what team they join. Say X player is a Terran Mech enthusiast. Does EG need another Terran Mech player? If yes, then it may be a good business decision to go where a slot is open. If no, then it may be best to look elsewhere where the player will be utilized to their maximum potential. Or, maybe this T-Mech player is ok riding the bench on EG while still being sponsored, having a team to grow with, and still having the opportunity to be consider a professional.
- It creates an interesting potential in that if players are contracted, there needs to be an even more large scale system. Teams will A) Wait for players to come off contract then go after them in an open market (Free Agency), making it a huge intrigue as to who is going where. Imagine the hype hearing iDra or other top tier players are going to test the open market once their contracts expire. Imagine the competition for the services. Will money pull guys? Or will sponsor potentials? Play styles? Competition? So many new meta games to consider outside of the game that is SC2.
- It protects players - to an extent. Knowing you will be paid because of this contracts existence alleviates the pressure of being dropped in a moments notice because of A) Performance B) Outside Factors. It's always good to know guys like "us" can eventually get into a contract where we make money, guaranteed, to support playing a video game professionally. Living the dream.
Cons of a Contract System
- Creates potential for strict guidelines, limiting freedoms of players to play carefree (more so than before, at the very least). What if teams require practice logged hours (I'm sure they do already - but not sure its by contract)? Required logged games? Required wins? Required tournament appearances? What if someones brother is getting married the same weekend of an MLG event, and the team has deemed it a breach of contract to miss an MLG event? These are lives we're talking about here, not just the time they spend playing the game itself.
- Creates a mercenary styled system where players can be contracted for wins, and contracts are accepted solely for money. E-Sports is innocent in the sense that it's like college, people play (majority) because they enjoy playing. Some have made it their lifestyle and career, thus being their only "trade skill" so to speak, but the vast majority play competively to play competively. The money just happens to be following, and its undoubtedly a motivational factor just the same.
- Can create an environment where teams take advantage of players. When there is no voice that represents the players as a whole, the disarray leaves the players unprotected since theyd have no other alternative than to comply with owners since they'd essentially control the market. Thus, the players would -need- to create a union that protects them and lays out basic terms that the teams/owners would need to comply by as well. While that could be advantageous, it takes time to tweak such complex matters to a point where both sides are happy just the same.
This is just a starting point for me, looking forward to discussing this and seeing what comes of it.
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A worldwide recreation of KeSPA is not, and will never be, possible.
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.
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On July 22 2011 12:15 motbob wrote:Here's a snippet of an old post Mr. Garfield wrote 9 months ago that might shed some light on his point of view. Show nested quote +A lot of you guys are saying that my criticisms are invalid because so much of TL's coverage (this thread, for example) is community-based and generated by community members who aren't officially part of TL. This is not a valid counterpoint to my arguments - but it is, however, a very important observation about the nature of "coverage" and "news" on TL. We're now in an era of journalism and reporting in which a piece doesn't have to be "official" to be coverage. So, while some of you guys are essentially saying, "This isn't coverage - it's a forum thread and therefore you're wrong," I'd make the simple point: the two are not mutually exclusive anymore. It's both a forum thread and a coverage piece. I'd like to think that anyone in this community with enough dedication and passion to contribute to it via doing this kind of forum-based coverage would also apply that kind of dedication and passion to their approach to said community-based journalism.
There's a difference between making a post - hey, I couldn't find any threads on topic X, so here's
some news - as opposed to regular posters and writers.
People tagged as "writers" definitely carry a different level of reputation among the community. But Garfield made no attempt to draw that line, which would be important legally (particularly if your hinting at the loss of reputation for a business) and ethically, as well.
For example, you can moderate stupid posts and ban people for being morons. But a stupid post doesn't equate to a ban. Someone who represents TeamLiquid, however, is held to a different standard. In that scenario, it's entirely reasonable to apply some standards: spell-check your posts, make sure you use proper grammar, fuck, follow a style guide if you have to.
But my point is that even traditional journalism has instances when only one side of the coin gets out. It happens all the time. It's not the fault of the writer and it's not a breach of any type of ethics. One key value of being a journalist is ensuring that your story gets published while it is still of interest to the public.
Online journalism demands that you publish early and continually add to the story with new information as it becomes available. That's the scenario here. EG's side of the story WASN'T available at the time of posting. SirScoots alleged that they weren't contacted until after something was rushed to publication, but keep in mind the original story on TeamLiquid was a translation. Milkis is not the author here, and it's highly unreasonable to demand he act like a "journalist" when the reality of the matter is that he is just a translator.
Should the original author have contacted EG? Certainly, but if EG couldn't produce a response in time then there's no reason to have withheld the story. In these cases, you just add a note at the bottom: EG was not able to comment at the time of writing. When they do comment, you edit the story and add it in.
A simple solution, and one that befits the mutually exclusive standards Garfield is aiming at. The key here is to identify what Garfield really wants deep down - which was the withholding of the story entirely until EG could get a statement out - with how things operate in practice.
I'm not holding anything against Garfield: his stance is perfectly normal, but the standards he is asking about are far less stringent than what he was intimating at.
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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.
I'm not calling for a recreation of KeSPA. Milkis was asking Garfield on WoC why the Korean model couldn't work overseas, which is what I was addressing.
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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.
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5003 Posts
I think one of the points I really failed to bring out was that it *is* unprofessional for SC2 in Korea to not have contracts. I just wanted to provide the background on why that was the case, and I guess it didn't go through very well. In no way does the Koreans do not want contracts -- this is what they want to aim for as the SC2 scene grows.
So I do apologize for butchering that. Very, Very, badly.
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Grimsong raises some very good points. One question I have is about how contracts or other agreements are enforced when there are so many parties involved. For instance say ByteByByte is from the Ukraine and gets signed on by a team in Australia (EvilDingos) with a $100 breech of contract clause. But a British team (LiquidTea) decides that they can lure EDByteByByte away with a much larger contract, and manage to steal him away, breaching the contract. Now LTByteByByte skips down and is living in Britain. Obviously, team ED wants their money for breached contract, but LTByteByByte will never be in Australia again, and so decides to just ignore them. What legal options does team ED have to recover their money? How expensive is it to pursue?
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Finally finished. Great job on telling everyone how stuff works on the real world from a neutral perspective. Great post!
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On July 22 2011 12:34 Milkis wrote:
I think one of the points I really failed to bring out was that it *is* unprofessional for SC2 in Korea to not have contracts. I just wanted to provide the background on why that was the case, and I guess it didn't go through very well. In no way does the Koreans do not want contracts -- this is what they want to aim for as the SC2 scene grows.
So I do apologize for butchering that. Very, Very, badly.
You went up against a guy that has professional PR as part of his job. And yes, what usually happens when a professional goes up against an amateur happened. I wouldn't even give it a second thought. The community's view of you hasn't changed.
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On July 22 2011 12:34 Milkis wrote:
I think one of the points I really failed to bring out was that it *is* unprofessional for SC2 in Korea to not have contracts. I just wanted to provide the background on why that was the case, and I guess it didn't go through very well. In no way does the Koreans do not want contracts -- this is what they want to aim for as the SC2 scene grows.
So I do apologize for butchering that. Very, Very, badly.
No matter the mistakes I am thankful for your dedicated contributions. Milkis fighting!
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I really liked the OP. It conveyed exactly what I wanted to in the other thread, but a lot more concretely.
I don't know if the part about screwing over the people is as appropriate to the discussion as it could be. There is no system afaik to stop football players from getting washed up if they can't make the big leagues. They use their talents (physical fitness) to do some other jobs such as construction. They aren't earning $300,000 dollars a week, but they will survive.
It's the same thing I think needs to happen here. Players need to have something to fall back on if their dream doesn't come true, which is more than possible. From what I see, many of these players have or are in the process of obtaining university degrees. It is this that I believe would help make a sustainable scene.
Now, about the signing of Puma, I don't like it from a respect POV, and I don't think it was the best timing either. Yes, I am not going to say that EG isn't allowed to sign him, and yes, TSL should've started contracting a bit earlier. However, I will bring in the banking world, as that is the one I have the most experience with due to my family. Star talent, including some of the best risk managers etc... are poached by other banks offering bigger salaries. That is similar to what is happening here. Then they break the contracts, and the bosses do get hurt, and a large majority take it personally. The reason I think this happens is that the time invested into training the others, and the connections you make with them, at the end of the day the player is basically saying "Fuck you, I want more money". Nothing wrong with the ideology, but the other manager has nothing to show for his efforts. This is what the TSL coach is drawing an issue with. All of his efforts were basically thrown down the drain, with someone else profiting from his loss.
If I am to bring a sport into this argument, professional football has the same situation. It is not acceptable for a team to go directly to a player without talking to the manager and agreeing on a transfer fee. There is also a system in place to protect clubs for training players, and stopping those players from bailing from training academies straight to the big clubs. I think this needs to happen in SC2.
I agree with pretty much everything else in the article.
My own opinion on this trade, I think it will hurt Puma in the long run. I don't think he will ever be able to reach the same level of TvP with only Incontrol/Axslav etc... to practice with, they are not GSL level imo, and not GSL 2-time winner calibre by any stretch of the imagination. His TvZ may be the only match-up he can maintain.
EDIT: Milkis, I liked what you did there. I only saw a bit near the end, but you were kind of a sacrificial goat in Alex's eyes imo, which wasn't fair considering you only translated the article that you saw. Wasn't a fair fight.
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What I took most offense too was this:
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.
The thing is, I can only see this going badly for Puma, without TSL he won't have the coaches, the practice partners and the training schedule that allowed him to fully harness his skills that allowed him to win the NASL. EG say this is good for Korean esports and that the SK deal is bad:
The SK deal benefits all of oGs and is a far better way forward than acquiring a single player.
1. Foreign Teams get represented in foreign markets by Korean players
2. Korean players don't lose skill outside of general lack of practice during travel since they keep their support structure
3. Korean teams get more money to spend on gaining sponsorship, adding more players or sending other players to international events (they no longer have to pay for MC or Nada's travel although I believe MC contributed a bit to his own travel too)
Now in an ideal world player acquisitions (permanent) on foreign teams should result in the player being brought into the foreign practice house (currently non-existent) with a head coach and suitable practice partners in the form of similarly skilled teammates (also non-existent).
Compare this to:
1. Buy Player disregarding the players native culture
2. Either leave him in Korea or bring him to an incomplete team house without coaching or suitably skilled practice partners (eg says they have something planned not sure what)
3. Have player represent you either in Korea (good luck) or foreign events where he will be beaten by Koreans on real teams.
I just don't understand what EG is thinking with this kind of move Puma will be terrible in 3 months if he stays outside of the Korean practice ethos with coach and partners. And they'll be left where they started.
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On July 22 2011 12:46 moltenlead wrote:
I really liked the OP. It conveyed exactly what I wanted to in the other thread, but a lot more concretely.
I don't know if the part about screwing over the people is as appropriate to the discussion as it could be. There is no system afaik to stop football players from getting washed up if they can't make the big leagues. They use their talents (physical fitness) to do some other jobs such as construction. They aren't earning $300,000 dollars a week, but they will survive.
It's the same thing I think needs to happen here. Players need to have something to fall back on if their dream doesn't come true, which is more than possible. From what I see, many of these players have or are in the process of obtaining university degrees. It is this that I believe would help make a sustainable scene.
The players' associations in football run courses so that players can develop skills they can use in another trade after their career ends. The UEFA Pro licence, for example, is something players can do during their career so they have another job to transition into (even if it's not much of a *job*). That's kind of what I was thinking for eSports, but maybe at a later stage in its evolution when there is a much more stable environment that pro-gamers can transition into. Writing/journalism is probably the most obvious angle.
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So the proper reaction for Korea would be KESPA 2.0 . Easiest way to save their players from "evil foreigners stealing their players and disrespecting their culture", also killing international Esports and denying foreign talent to benefit from korean players. Winter is coming...
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While I get the idea behind your article, I have to disagree with their even needing to be a globalized version of KeSPA or something. Even KeSPA itself at many times has come under fire as being unfair to players.
Players should have contracts and that should be more then enough. If they are contracted to play for the team standard work laws for w/e country they are in should apply. Then you're covered, past that we don't need a net for them if they fail or anything like that. Any player knows the risks when they put all their hopes and dreams into being a professional in a sport that is in it's infancy. Not even professional sports players have a crutch if they go out their first season and get cut for poor performance they are just as much out on the street as anyone else.
The individual makes that choice and takes that risk and that's the way it should be. Everyone has contracts people make their own choices and the world is fine.
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On July 22 2011 12:55 Nerski wrote:
While I get the idea behind your article, I have to disagree with their even needing to be a globalized version of KeSPA or something. Even KeSPA itself at many times has come under fire as being unfair to players.
That's the opposite of what I advocated.
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I agree with completely with this post. It would be nice if the world of sc2 could just get along and agree on everything, but that is just not going to happen. What we all want is for sc2 to grow and become a big sport, and as it grows it becomes a business. It is time we grew up and faced the facts about the eSports world we all want to see.
Good post, and as a side note: Thanks to Alex Garfield and Milkis for the interesting discussion on Weapon of choice today.
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Don´t try to be a cracked writer ....
And really the whole puma incident wasn´t that such a big deal. And really, by the time I got to people being ¨butthurt¨ about Puma´s transfer(not many were, what many people complained is that EG was... too aggressive with their recruiting, which again its not a big deal) you hurt your credibility a lot.
You also mention that the Korean scene is not regulated when it is waay more regulated than the foreigner scene(not as regulated as the BW scene) as it has an association meant to protect the players, which from what I know the foreigner scene doesn´t have.
I agree in that w worldwide e-sports organization is a far off dream atm, and I don´t really see it becoming a reality in the inmediate future. Of course this can and will happen if e-sports reach a point where it becomes more mainstream. I wouldnt discount it, but yeah so far chances that something like that will emerge are pretty slim.
No comments on the defamation thing. I mainly agree.It was on EGs court to respond to the allegations.
As for the last part I will be honest, and I know I may get a lot of hate from this comment.. but e-sports as far as all the hype we on Tl have for it its still a small small market so I think you are getting ahead of yourself. But it has some fair points.
Anyways, I will commend you for your effort on writing this, you make some good points and some assumptions about the whole thing.
Also, while I may seem like a party pooper, I think your Points could have been said in half the words you used. There is no shame in a more simple and concise (you also won´t get tl:dr as much) post, because as I read all of that you just included a lot of .. fluff.
Anyways, while I agree with some of your points I think you are making out more of this whole incident than what it was.But I guess we will see
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Explain it as whatever you want.
It was still subvert and wrong morally, "business", "Dog eat dog" and "Survival of the fittest" can go fuck itself, I don't like it and I don't care what explanation you'd give us.
If that is what you'd like eSports to become I don't want any part of it, nor do I want to spend any money on that.
Yes there needs to be a better standard, yes there needs to be contracts.
But I will never think what EG did was anything but sneaky and underhanded.
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I only wish for a legit transfer market, players can only represent their teams/co-teams and a more talkative "sc2 player association".
But nice writeup, how long did you take?
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On July 22 2011 13:03 Krehlmar wrote:
Explain it as whatever you want.
It was still subvert and wrong morally, "business", "Dog eat dog" and "Survival of the fittest" can go fuck itself, I don't like it and I don't care what explanation you'd give us.
If that is what you'd like eSports to become I don't want any part of it, nor do I want to spend any money on that.
Yes there needs to be a better standard, yes there needs to be contracts.
But I will never think what EG did was anything but sneaky and underhanded.
This post really came out of nowhere...
Nice article dippa!
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On July 22 2011 13:03 Krehlmar wrote:
Explain it as whatever you want.
It was still subvert and wrong morally, "business", "Dog eat dog" and "Survival of the fittest" can go fuck itself, I don't like it and I don't care what explanation you'd give us.
If that is what you'd like eSports to become I don't want any part of it, nor do I want to spend any money on that.
Yes there needs to be a better standard, yes there needs to be contracts.
But I will never think what EG did was anything but sneaky and underhanded.
This is the nature of the business world mate, and eSports (to sponsors, players and teams) is a business at the professional level. You got your opinions and they're clearly very strong, but reality comes in eventually.
Excellent article dippa, look forward to more from you.
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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. Show nested quote +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?
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On July 22 2011 12:53 Turbo.Tactics wrote:
So the proper reaction for Korea would be KESPA 2.0 . Easiest way to save their players from "evil foreigners stealing their players and disrespecting their culture", also killing international Esports and denying foreign talent to benefit from korean players. Winter is coming...
Oh don´t be so overmelodramatic. If something like this kills international e-sports then it wasn´t standing too strong anyways. And well, before we start saying stuff like this we should wait until things calm down and see what koreans do
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On July 22 2011 12:42 [Atomic]Peace wrote:Show nested quote +On July 22 2011 12:34 Milkis wrote:
I think one of the points I really failed to bring out was that it *is* unprofessional for SC2 in Korea to not have contracts. I just wanted to provide the background on why that was the case, and I guess it didn't go through very well. In no way does the Koreans do not want contracts -- this is what they want to aim for as the SC2 scene grows.
So I do apologize for butchering that. Very, Very, badly. You went up against a guy that has professional PR as part of his job. And yes, what usually happens when a professional goes up against an amateur happened. I wouldn't even give it a second thought. The community's view of you hasn't changed.
I can second that, you represented the Korean's cultural side of things just fine!
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Thank you for this course in "buisness in e-sports" and "how to do modern PR".
This story shows pretty much what happens in a buisness environment without some form of regulation to enforce some kind of fair play.
From what I understood, from a buisness standpoint EG was in their right to approach Puma and make an offer. Was it "honorable" to approach withtout talking to the team ? No, but then again, how many players had been approached by other teams before Puma and that we don't ( and probably never will ) know about ?
EG messed up on the PR side by not preparing in advance a statement in case the story would ( and usually will ) break out in order to make their stance clear. The quantas case is one of the best cases that demonstrate what happens.
For the media case, some professionnal media companies are usually bound to a "journalism council" that sets rules in order to enforce neutrality and verifiable facts in the stories that are published.
Community sites are not bound to such boundaries, the role of enforcing quality journalism in this case is usually managed by either an Head Editor ( or group of senior editors ) or the community itself. And with the speed news come and go on the internet. Its not uncommon to see stories that pop up and get updated when extra information comes in. In that situation, I believe Milkis did a good job in updating as soon as the info was available.
Maybe a recommandation when a similar story would be held is to specify at the end of the article a note saying that : "more info is to come as x and y have been requested for comment " so that ppl dont jump to conclusions too quickly
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On July 22 2011 13:09 Maynarde wrote:Show nested quote +On July 22 2011 13:03 Krehlmar wrote:
Explain it as whatever you want.
It was still subvert and wrong morally, "business", "Dog eat dog" and "Survival of the fittest" can go fuck itself, I don't like it and I don't care what explanation you'd give us.
If that is what you'd like eSports to become I don't want any part of it, nor do I want to spend any money on that.
Yes there needs to be a better standard, yes there needs to be contracts.
But I will never think what EG did was anything but sneaky and underhanded. This is the nature of the business world mate, and eSports (to sponsors, players and teams) is a business at the professional level. You got your opinions and they're clearly very strong, but reality comes in eventually.
Not at all, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tapping_up
What went on here, if it is as claimed (EG approached Puma directly), would result in fines and bans of various sorts in other sports. If you think it's acceptable, then what do you think of rules against such actions in other (professional) sports?
It's just wrong. Nothing to it.
I'm just tired of people defending the moral demise of eSports... what happend to all this talk about "The greatest community!" and all that? There was no honour in this.
Also saying it is bullshit and morally faux does not mean I'm saying it was stupid or un-economical. I just think it was wrong and evidently the law does aswell.
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On July 22 2011 13:09 Maynarde wrote:Show nested quote +On July 22 2011 13:03 Krehlmar wrote:
Explain it as whatever you want.
It was still subvert and wrong morally, "business", "Dog eat dog" and "Survival of the fittest" can go fuck itself, I don't like it and I don't care what explanation you'd give us.
If that is what you'd like eSports to become I don't want any part of it, nor do I want to spend any money on that.
Yes there needs to be a better standard, yes there needs to be contracts.
But I will never think what EG did was anything but sneaky and underhanded. This is the nature of the business world mate, and eSports (to sponsors, players and teams) is a business at the professional level. You got your opinions and they're clearly very strong, but reality comes in eventually. Excellent article dippa, look forward to more from you.
Well the thing is that those guys make business off us so yeah while you are right that business are sometimes ruthless deals, that doesn´t mean we have to shrug it off just because its ¨business¨.
LOL, I still think it was a dick move but overall people are acting as if EG had commited genocide or something, my guess is that had EG contacted TSL they wouldn´t have had any problem with them getting Puma(in the end this was a decision from Puma).
But I don´t really like the ¨its the way it is, either take it or leave it¨ attitude that some people have shown.
In the end, I think both sides screwed up in some way.
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On July 22 2011 13:09 Maynarde wrote:Show nested quote +On July 22 2011 13:03 Krehlmar wrote:
Explain it as whatever you want.
It was still subvert and wrong morally, "business", "Dog eat dog" and "Survival of the fittest" can go fuck itself, I don't like it and I don't care what explanation you'd give us.
If that is what you'd like eSports to become I don't want any part of it, nor do I want to spend any money on that.
Yes there needs to be a better standard, yes there needs to be contracts.
But I will never think what EG did was anything but sneaky and underhanded. This is the nature of the business world mate, and eSports (to sponsors, players and teams) is a business at the professional level. You got your opinions and they're clearly very strong, but reality comes in eventually. Excellent article dippa, look forward to more from you.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tapping_up
This is pretty much exactly what happened and most professional sports leagues don't allow it.
EDIT: Beat to the punch!
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Nice article, it does seem like contracts are the way of the future after reading this and listening to woc.
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Really great article. It's nice to see something focused on the practical reality of this situation instead of more drama.
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On July 22 2011 13:15 Krehlmar wrote:Show nested quote +On July 22 2011 13:09 Maynarde wrote:On July 22 2011 13:03 Krehlmar wrote:
Explain it as whatever you want.
It was still subvert and wrong morally, "business", "Dog eat dog" and "Survival of the fittest" can go fuck itself, I don't like it and I don't care what explanation you'd give us.
If that is what you'd like eSports to become I don't want any part of it, nor do I want to spend any money on that.
Yes there needs to be a better standard, yes there needs to be contracts.
But I will never think what EG did was anything but sneaky and underhanded. This is the nature of the business world mate, and eSports (to sponsors, players and teams) is a business at the professional level. You got your opinions and they're clearly very strong, but reality comes in eventually. Not at all, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tapping_upWhat went on here, if it is as claimed (EG approached Puma directly), would result in fines and bans of various sorts in other sports. If you think it's acceptable, then what do you think of rules against such actions in other (professional) sports? It's just wrong. Nothing to it. I'm just tired of people defending the moral demise of eSports... what happend to all this talk about "The greatest community!" and all that? There was no honour in this. Also saying it is bullshit and morally faux does not mean I'm saying it was stupid or un-economical. I just think it was wrong and evidently the law does aswell.
Was there a rule currently in effect that states that korean players cannot be contacted directly for offers ? As far as i know, no. So on a rule enforcement level, EG did no wrong. If there is no official rule that forbid them to do so, why would thy restrict themselves to make steps to improve their buisness ? Buisness is buisness if the rules are verbal or based on "honor" instead of being set in stone, the rule never exists officially.
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I don't think you can "tap up" a free agent, so EG wouldn't have received a fine. Even if he was on a contract, it is still possible for players in football, for example, to sign pre-agreements with clubs six months before the expiration of their contract.
In addition to this, players can sign a pre-contract with another club for a free transfer if the players' contract with their existing club has six months or less remaining.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bosman_ruling#Players
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I believe that the issue here is Korea's slow adaptation to an evolving market.
For quite a considerable amount of time Korea has been a fairly isolationist nation, particularly in terms of SC. SCBW in essence does not exist outside of Korea in any substantive way and hasn't for quite some time. Due to this, Korea has developed an isolationist and closed system of teams and "contractual agreements". I believe much of Korea's model for SCBW has been directly transplanted into SC2. However, the global environment surrounding SC2 is much different than it was with BW. There is much more money, sponsorship, teams, and sponsorships readily available outside of Korea. Beyond that, many of the business models of the new and developing SC2 and esports teams are very aggressive. They have to be in order to get the money to sustain themselves and profit. EG is simply an example of a somewhat aggressive business model. Even further, the vast majority of players are not yet under contractual obligations in Korea currently. One can only ask why? It is in large part to the September/October mass contract expiration date for SCBW players. In a sense, Koreans who are transferring games will do so there and much of the contract expiration times for both games will be aligned, making it much simpler to consolidate all of the legal dealings to a particular time.
So what do all of these facts mean:
Simply this: While Korean players are quite obviously maturing in terms of skill more quickly than the rest of the world, the world's adaptation to a global SC2 scene versus a Korea only SC2 scene is far more quick and comprehensive. And what has resulted is a situation like the one with Puma: one system has adapted with the times and made an aggressive move to try for some gain, while the other lumbers along stuck in a past system of agreements by word and honor. And we all know that word and honor mean nothing in a capitalist world.
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On July 22 2011 13:30 ritoky wrote:
I believe that the issue here is Korea's slow adaptation to an evolving market.
For quite a considerable amount of time Korea has been a fairly isolationist nation, particularly in terms of SC. SCBW in essence does not exist outside of Korea in any substantive way and hasn't for quite some time. Due to this, Korea has developed an isolationist and closed system of teams and "contractual agreements". I believe much of Korea's model for SCBW has been directly transplanted into SC2. However, the global environment surrounding SC2 is much different than it was with BW. There is much more money, sponsorship, teams, and sponsorships readily available outside of Korea. Beyond that, many of the business models of the new and developing SC2 and esports teams are very aggressive. They have to be in order to get the money to sustain themselves and profit. EG is simply an example of a somewhat aggressive business model. Even further, the vast majority of players are not yet under contractual obligations in Korea currently. One can only ask why? It is in large part to the September/October mass contract expiration date for SCBW players. In a sense, Koreans who are transferring games will do so there and much of the contract expiration times for both games will be aligned, making it much simpler to consolidate all of the legal dealings to a particular time.
So what do all of these facts mean:
Simply this: While Korean players are quite obviously maturing in terms of skill more quickly than the rest of the world, the world's adaptation to a global SC2 scene versus a Korea only SC2 scene is far more quick and comprehensive. And what has resulted is a situation like the one with Puma: one system has adapted with the times and made an aggressive move to try for some gain, while the other lumbers along stuck in a past system of agreements by word and honor. And we all know that word and honor mean nothing in a capitalist world.
Agreed, Korea will have to adapt if they are to retain their position on the global sc2 e-sports buisness.
EDIT : And even then, they will still keep their dominant position, but it will not be as dominant as it was before.
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On July 22 2011 12:07 57 Corvette wrote:
I don't see why things are so different with Starcraft 2 teams compared to teams from Brood war. Was there many/any conflicts like this in the past?
Why all of a sudden is this all important to people?
The Korean competitive BW scene was basically unique and unintended at time of release. Even now, there are only about 150-200 active A-team players at any given time, so except at the very top BW was able to operate on the "handshake" principle (that any new industry tends to). At the same time, top players do have contracts, and even B-teamers clearly can expect certain things even if far more power lies with the team than is fair (at least by Western standards).
The #1 method of "moving" players in Korean BW was to just buy out contracts, which always heavily favored the teams willing (or able) to invest more heavily (yes, I mean SKT and KT). July, Bisu, YellOw, Reach, as well as several from GO/CJ who ended up elsewhere; more recently, fOrGG, as well as STX, WeMade, and Woongjin getting in on the action acquiring July (STX), Midas, Nada (WeMade), and Kwanro and Light (Woonjgin). The only other thing I can think of was the bullshit "free agency" two years ago, where the net result was that Jaedong got a bigger contract. Trades, as far as I know, are unheard of.
I realize that KeSPA of course is way less than perfect and is heavily dependent on the corporate sponsors of the teams (although it's important to recognize both that KeSPA also oversees non-BW leagues as well and that corporate sponsorship of all sports teams is more prevalent in Korea). At the same time, their "public image" is "governing body", not "corporation". Probably the most analogous body in sports would be FIFA (especially fitting given the similar level of stupidity and rumored corruption).
BroodWar never really spread outside of Korea (except for WCG), and since Korean BW had a governing body (no matter how corrupt and hated) from its inception, the issue never really arose except for the GOM spat, which KeSPA won handily, both because they have perceived legitimacy and because the teams largely took their part. (Referencing the cricket example above, a Western court would likely have ruled that teams couldn't, as they in fact did, prevent players from playing in GOM - but the situation was completely Korean, meaning that first the court would have, from my understanding of Korean culture, ruled in the teams' favor had it gone to court and second it was never going to go there anyway. Notice the whole Blizzard vs OGN/MBC thing got settled out of court after all.)
In stark contrast, SC2 has been a worldwide esport practically since beta. (Me, I tend to think this hurt development somewhat as we got used to a beta level of patching, but that's neither here nor there.) In contrast to the BW scene, which in Korea was largely team-driven and overseen by KeSPA, the driving force in the SC2 scene has been corporate: MLG, GOM, etc. As a result, the various corporations aren't particularly interested (so far) in imposing a set of standards as regards contracts, tournament format, etc. Likely, we won't get one until the less successful tournaments start vanishing into the night (unfortunately, probably within the next two years) - at which point the very much fewer remaining leagues will see some value in setting up an "independent" organization. (Actually I think Blizzard intended to do this themselves from the beginning, but had vastly underestimated the popular explosion of tournaments and had to let things go their own way.) So far, the biggest move in this direction is the MLG-GSL exchange, which unfortunately has many practical difficulties - but is still being pursued by both sides.
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Interesting article. Quite the long read. I do think that some people aren't aware that this isn't just about games and there's always business involved.
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On July 22 2011 12:15 motbob wrote:Here's a snippet of an old post Mr. Garfield wrote 9 months ago that might shed some light on his point of view. Show nested quote +A lot of you guys are saying that my criticisms are invalid because so much of TL's coverage (this thread, for example) is community-based and generated by community members who aren't officially part of TL. This is not a valid counterpoint to my arguments - but it is, however, a very important observation about the nature of "coverage" and "news" on TL. We're now in an era of journalism and reporting in which a piece doesn't have to be "official" to be coverage. So, while some of you guys are essentially saying, "This isn't coverage - it's a forum thread and therefore you're wrong," I'd make the simple point: the two are not mutually exclusive anymore. It's both a forum thread and a coverage piece. I'd like to think that anyone in this community with enough dedication and passion to contribute to it via doing this kind of forum-based coverage would also apply that kind of dedication and passion to their approach to said community-based journalism.
While I think that Mr Garfield brings up an interesting point, ultimately it is unrealistic. Between this quote and the Weapon of Choice discussion, it is clear that Mr. Garfield wishes for coverage of various e-sports occurrences to be held to some sort of journalistic standard.
In order for this journalistic standard to hold up, writers and translators would have to be held accountable for their actions. At the present time they are only held accountable to two groups. The first is are the moderators of teamliquid/playxp. They must follow the forum rules and obey the moderators. The second group they must be held accountable to is the readers. You post crap, and nobody will read it.
Obviously, this leaves any regulation to be done by information gateways sites such as teamliquid and playxp. This is quite literally an impossible task. The first reason is that even if information gets held at teamliquid, it will still get out over twitter, reddit, facebook, ect. You can't stop it. But even if you could hold it, it then becomes a pain in the ass to moderate. Do you hold the entire message board to these journalistic standards (lol)? Or only news posts? When do you release it, if at all, if one party doesn't provide a statement?
All that people like Milkis do, is speed the diffusion of information in the internet. But regardless if their presence, it will still be diffused. Their are no mechanisms in place to stop it, and I have yet to hear a reasonable way of creating and applying such mechanisms.
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I having trouble seeing whether this article is really about the future of eSports or if it's a defense of EG.
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It is one thing to have an organisation like KeSPA in a country, having a similar organisation on the worldwide scale is something else entirely. But since sc2 is getting global, it will be necessary. The question is, how to set it up ?
Such organisation will have to be neutral and be acknowledged by all the teams worldwide. As far as I know, only one organisation would be able to pull off such an undertaking : Blizzard.
After all, it's their game and they can do whatever with it. The current buisness is based on their game, so they have all the power and credibility to create such a global organisation. And its in their best interests to keep this industry healthy.
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On July 22 2011 12:15 motbob wrote:Here's a snippet of an old post Mr. Garfield wrote 9 months ago that might shed some light on his point of view. Show nested quote +A lot of you guys are saying that my criticisms are invalid because so much of TL's coverage (this thread, for example) is community-based and generated by community members who aren't officially part of TL. This is not a valid counterpoint to my arguments - but it is, however, a very important observation about the nature of "coverage" and "news" on TL. We're now in an era of journalism and reporting in which a piece doesn't have to be "official" to be coverage. So, while some of you guys are essentially saying, "This isn't coverage - it's a forum thread and therefore you're wrong," I'd make the simple point: the two are not mutually exclusive anymore. It's both a forum thread and a coverage piece. I'd like to think that anyone in this community with enough dedication and passion to contribute to it via doing this kind of forum-based coverage would also apply that kind of dedication and passion to their approach to said community-based journalism.
To look to the community to stand up and take responsibility is a bit much, maybe the more vocal members of the community have a greater responsibility, but at the end of the day it's not our jobs to cover without bias. I don't even think that's possible for a majority of us, we're far to passionate about some of these subject matters to look at it objectively.
What I do know is that TL.net, as an organization does have this responsibility, and that there is a significant difference between just a forum post and a post that makes it to front page news. This isn't the first time this has happened where a story made it to front page before everything had been said. If fingers need to be pointed TL should be included.
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Great read. Unfortunately whenever money is involved shit gets real, and it looks like for e-sports shit just got real. Too bad that it happened in such a way, but it was bound to happen eventually and I'm sort of surprised nothing like this has come out yet. Let's hope there is enough respect in the community to keep things transparent and open as the scene becomes more regulated.
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On July 22 2011 13:44 SiCkO_ wrote:
I having trouble seeing whether this article is really about the future of eSports or if it's a defense of EG.
Nice job refuting any claims in the article and creating a false dilemma. He actually refutes claims that Alex from EG made about journalism on forums and simply explained arguments from today and cleared up things about contracts.
At the end of his piece he has a call to arms suggesting that the players the corporations and the teams need to come together to set up a system before ESPORTS gets to the point where the government sets up a system for us.
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On July 22 2011 12:14 Phaded wrote:I think the only thing you're missing from that post is mention of the Korean Starcraft 2 Association that was created last year to provide If the association has some terms protecting the teams, then EG may very well have stepped into a pile of mud with this deal.
I don't know the "details" of the KSA but not sure that would even apply here anyway, especially if Puma was contacted while outside of Korea but an organization that doesn't fall under the guidelines or clauses established by the KSA. But again, I don't know the details but considering EG's lack of involvement in the Korean scene (no house there, no team there etc) I don't think they'd fall under its requirements, if anything Puma would be the one to face the problems if he falls under any rules, but I would think the rules pertain more toward the teams.
Back on topic.
Extremely nice article their op, very well written and I enjoyed reading it. I completely agree with everything you posted.
On a side note when you went into the area covering journalists and whether people who post stuff that doesn't contain all the evidence, statements etc I couldn't help but keep repeating lines out of Green Street Hooligans... "are you a fucking journal!?" "there's nothing worse than a fucking journal!" (clearly all with a deep british accent) lmao.
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On July 22 2011 13:44 SiCkO_ wrote:
I having trouble seeing whether this article is really about the future of eSports or if it's a defense of EG.
Not really sure how you come to this conclusion... Did we read the same post?
Anyway, nice write-up. Very thought-provoking. Will provide further thoughts after I listen to the Weapon of Choice episode...
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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.
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very interesting OP and some really good and well thought out and argued points in this thread.
unfortunately, judging by the rest of the threads in general, this discussion is far too civilised to stay alive for very long. needs moar drama if its going to stay up for long.
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On July 22 2011 13:10 windsupernova wrote:Show nested quote +On July 22 2011 12:53 Turbo.Tactics wrote:
So the proper reaction for Korea would be KESPA 2.0 . Easiest way to save their players from "evil foreigners stealing their players and disrespecting their culture", also killing international Esports and denying foreign talent to benefit from korean players. Winter is coming... Oh don´t be so overmelodramatic. If something like this kills international e-sports then it wasn´t standing too strong anyways. And well, before we start saying stuff like this we should wait until things calm down and see what koreans do
I agree 100%. I just wanted to exaggerate the possible conclusion of the OPs lesson.
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Thank you.
Before reading this, I was fairly certain about my personal position and allocation of blame of this drama, but afterwards, I don't feel so sure. That means I have been informed, and it points to the ideals TL was found on - where all members, staffs or regulars, are expected to contribute content - still exists despite some evidence to otherwise.
I have been involved in gaming communities heavily for half my life now, and had seen plenty that grew in size then completely implode in an instance. For some time, I saw that TL is following that trajectory, but with threads and posts like this where it shows TLers can clearly be introspective and aware of our failures, I am no longer worried about any impending demise.
ESPORTS. lives. on.
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On July 22 2011 13:15 Krehlmar wrote:Show nested quote +On July 22 2011 13:09 Maynarde wrote:On July 22 2011 13:03 Krehlmar wrote:
Explain it as whatever you want.
It was still subvert and wrong morally, "business", "Dog eat dog" and "Survival of the fittest" can go fuck itself, I don't like it and I don't care what explanation you'd give us.
If that is what you'd like eSports to become I don't want any part of it, nor do I want to spend any money on that.
Yes there needs to be a better standard, yes there needs to be contracts.
But I will never think what EG did was anything but sneaky and underhanded. This is the nature of the business world mate, and eSports (to sponsors, players and teams) is a business at the professional level. You got your opinions and they're clearly very strong, but reality comes in eventually. Not at all, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tapping_upWhat went on here, if it is as claimed (EG approached Puma directly), would result in fines and bans of various sorts in other sports. If you think it's acceptable, then what do you think of rules against such actions in other (professional) sports? It's just wrong. Nothing to it. I'm just tired of people defending the moral demise of eSports... what happend to all this talk about "The greatest community!" and all that? There was no honour in this. Also saying it is bullshit and morally faux does not mean I'm saying it was stupid or un-economical. I just think it was wrong and evidently the law does aswell.
Actually if what was claimed to have gone on is what actually went on then what you brought up has nothing to do with it since Puma wasn't under contract by TSL because they didn't think it was necessary. So EG picked up a player who was playing with another team but currently wasn't under any sort of contract.
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What is wrong with you people? We have an established contract system in esports since half a decade.
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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.
---
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.
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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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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 House51484 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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The OP is spot on.
See this as a learning curve for everyone involved in Esports. No ones really acted 'unethically', its just that people involved in Esports are still learning how to deal with its growth.
My only experiance with following professional sport has been professional football (or soccer). That industry is rife with corruption, and journalistic standards are a joke. There are regulations in place to prevent clubs 'poaching players' but if there werent, the clubs would be poaching players left right and centre, and even with those regulations in place, clubs still find underhanded ways of circumventing them. For example theres something called "tapping up" where the club uses the media to let a player know they are interested, putting pressure on that players club to sell.
I think people need to start laying solid foundations in place now so that as Esports grows, it wont become as corrupt and cut throat as some other industries.
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Ok uhh what is with the references to garfield
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Great write-up dude, really enjoyed reading it
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first off, love the read great job! this is exactly how i felt about the whole situation. Kind of lost a lot of respect for Alex, throwing Milkis under the bus like that. Milkis translated what he saw, fuck you alex do your job properly stop blaming other people? seriously how lame, gj gj keep up the good work everyone!
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Incredibly valuable article. I wish I had something of more value to add but unfortunately after reading every word I can think of nothing more substantial to say other than I think you nailed it. Thank you.
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The OP makes a fatal mistake. All players are not contracted because the teams and players of sc2 do not want a kespa 2.0. They do not want to contract players with no salary for years at a time. If they did they would of stayed as B-teamers/practice partners. Instead coaches want to be able to trust their players to stay with them until they can salary them something worth their time. The coaches of sc2 understand that they are in an immeasurable level of power when it comes to the negotiating table for their pro teams and that there is nothing "legally" stopping them from forcing a 3 year no-pay/transfer contract in exchange for a place to live and food. Hence the emphasis on trust and away from KESPA rules.
Naive but it is noble.
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Ive spent the last 5 hours of my life reading Lee's response, watching WoC, reading OP and every post in this thread. This is the most stimulating thing that has happened in e-Sports for a while with the interesting dilemma and the high level of arguments in general.
On the acquisition of Puma
I came into this whole ordeal thinking that EG were the bad guys and had trespassed on grounds they shouldnt have. But they didnt, Puma wasnt on a contract - hence no legal foul nor dodgy behavior. It was TSLs task to get a contract and they didnt. But an even more important point that i cant remember hearing during any of the discussions about approaching players from Korea is how Korean culture works against players (i guess it has already been hinted at tho). This happens when teams go trough the coaches. And this is of supreme importance to me. djWheat mentioned the hurt feelings and what not when his player suddenly changed teams. This is of even greater importance in Korea where an individual is seen as an integral and inseparable part of a team. Should a foreign team approach a korean one through the coaches, it will naturally lead to the coaches asking their player if he wants to change teams. Should the player confirm this, but the deals falls trough for some reason, the sense of betrayal and honor lost/offence be much larger than in the West where we by and large accept such decisions. Hence, i would argue, a korean player runs a much bigger risk than a foreign one. And Puma definitely is the "little man" in this whole debucle. He has thankfully secured himself a team (more or less), but as we have already read the korean community is in outrage by his behavior (which we in the west for the most part have found acceptable). As the sense of loyalty is entirely different in korea, a medium or low skilled pro may actually run the risk of his whole carreer, should teams take the stance of zero tolerance for accepting foreign propositions. We have already seen this kind of mechanic work with KeSPA/BW and its also a natural and businesslike decision from the korean proteams point of view. Therefore i think the best way to handle such cases is actually to present a player with a binding contract that will be encumbent at a later date. This is clearly a bias towards players rather than teams, but i personally think its the right choice.
Darn it, i didnt even have enough time to finish this while at work. I'll get back to the issue that publicity is the premiere rescource in starcraft 2.
Also, everybody be way more careful about comparing e-Sports with certain sports. Not only is the argument already brought up, namely that e-Sports isnt nearly as institutionalized valid. But also almost every reference to sports that have come is in reference to team games. The discussion about players representing teams is much more different in team games, rather than a sport whose focal point is individual performance than team performance. (GSL more important than, GSTL)
Peace
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On July 22 2011 21:44 T0fuuu wrote:
The OP makes a fatal mistake. All players are not contracted because the teams and players of sc2 do not want a kespa 2.0. They do not want to contract players with no salary for years at a time. If they did they would of stayed as B-teamers/practice partners. Instead coaches want to be able to trust their players to stay with them until they can salary them something worth their time. The coaches of sc2 understand that they are in an immeasurable level of power when it comes to the negotiating table for their pro teams and that there is nothing "legally" stopping them from forcing a 3 year no-pay/transfer contract in exchange for a place to live and food. Hence the emphasis on trust and away from KESPA rules.
Naive but it is noble.
I think this is what a lot of people are missing when they have the OP's and a vast majority of people's mindsets. Yes it is logical to have contracts for all of these players, just like for any other job but I hardly think that the coaches and managers of these Korean teams are juvenile idiots that are incapable of establishing contracting among their players. It just seems to me that they want to avoid it given Korea's past with esports management. Of course it has to go in that direction at some stage for this kind of thing to not occur but I think they were just really hoping there was some way around it. Perhaps they will find some sort of middle ground where the main players for a team are contracted and the players in training are provided with what Puma had and a possibility of a contract should they perform well.
I agree that the information was mishandled regarding the acquisition and no I do not wish to kill Milkis nor should anyone else as a great number of articles from Korea that we all read in English are thanks to him and in this case it was just him doing his job and the source being at fault.
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On July 22 2011 20:37 Spitfire wrote:
The OP is spot on.
See this as a learning curve for everyone involved in Esports. No ones really acted 'unethically', its just that people involved in Esports are still learning how to deal with its growth..
I think people need to start laying solid foundations in place now so that as Esports grows, it wont become as corrupt and cut throat as some other industries.
Correct. If the foundation begins to form in regards to a system that can handle the growing needs of the e-sports world, specifically SC2, then progress is being made for the sport. Contracts are obviously not the only avenue for progressing the industry, but it's a very important starting point.
I think something that people need to realize is - not every player NEEDS to be contracted, either. But the true, professional level, assets of the team should be. Idra should be contracted, but the guy who plays with EG as a practice partner while not really winning or placing in any events, hasn't necessarily earned his contract with EG yet. I would say that teams would need to consider this as well - the less valuable assets are the ones that will float in a more competitive, global market. But at the same time, these fully sponsored teams still are a window of opportunity for guys like that, so there is plenty of reason to stick with team EG until the skills of the player have grown enough to where they warrant a contract.
See, this is the thing. Without a structured system being worked towards, there can be no real exploration of the business side of E-sports. As it stands, I believe it has hit a wall that can only be broken down with a complete overhaul of the basic ideas that the E-Sports world has held on to for X amount of years.
Having such an un-refined infrastructure right now, globally, limits the potential in what can happen in the SC2 scene. On the flip side, I think Korea with Kespa proved that holding onto the scene with an iron fist is detrimental all the same. A happy median needs to be discovered, and I think this EG situation has lit the fire for this lane of thinking to really be picked apart and looked at. I know many people don't want to look at this as a business, but as "competitive gaming", but when people are investing money, it's only a matter of time until the money also comes into play. It's not a sellout move - there's nothing wrong with wanting to manage the business of E-Sports to a higher degree .There's such huge potential for the scene to grow, though, and right now if a few influential heads could come together and start working towards a system where teams, players, and fans all benefit from taking e-sports to the next tier.
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On July 22 2011 22:08 Mr.Brightside wrote:Show nested quote +On July 22 2011 21:44 T0fuuu wrote:
The OP makes a fatal mistake. All players are not contracted because the teams and players of sc2 do not want a kespa 2.0. They do not want to contract players with no salary for years at a time. If they did they would of stayed as B-teamers/practice partners. Instead coaches want to be able to trust their players to stay with them until they can salary them something worth their time. The coaches of sc2 understand that they are in an immeasurable level of power when it comes to the negotiating table for their pro teams and that there is nothing "legally" stopping them from forcing a 3 year no-pay/transfer contract in exchange for a place to live and food. Hence the emphasis on trust and away from KESPA rules.
Naive but it is noble. I think this is what a lot of people are missing when they have the OP's and a vast majority of people's mindsets. Yes it is logical to have contracts for all of these players, just like for any other job but I hardly think that the coaches and managers of these Korean teams are juvenile idiots that are incapable of establishing contracting among their players. It just seems to me that they want to avoid it given Korea's past with esports management. Of course it has to go in that direction at some stage for this kind of thing to not occur but I think they were just really hoping there was some way around it. Perhaps they will find some sort of middle ground where the main players for a team are contracted and the players in training are provided with what Puma had and a possibility of a contract should they perform well. I agree that the information was mishandled regarding the acquisition and no I do not wish to kill Milkis nor should anyone else as a great number of articles from Korea that we all read in English are thanks to him and in this case it was just him doing his job and the source being at fault.
Yeah I hear you. Its really a cultural clash which is probably why the Koreans are taking this very offensively. But many people and the op need to understand that the current situation in SC2 korea is that teams could make the most horrible conditions and the players would have to sign them. You cant be a progamer without a team. You cant join a team "now" unless you are contracted. If you arent a proven player you cant expect to be paid. If you do prove yourself you have no power to renegotiate cos you are already signed and korean management has a history of abusing the shit out of their players. You compound that with the oversaturation of talent in the korean scene and you can guarantee that contracts are not going to be in the players best interests if they arent in the gsl.
Anyways TSL got burnt. Lesson learned now its up to what the korean teams decide to do.
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On July 22 2011 22:35 T0fuuu wrote:Show nested quote +On July 22 2011 22:08 Mr.Brightside wrote:On July 22 2011 21:44 T0fuuu wrote:
The OP makes a fatal mistake. All players are not contracted because the teams and players of sc2 do not want a kespa 2.0. They do not want to contract players with no salary for years at a time. If they did they would of stayed as B-teamers/practice partners. Instead coaches want to be able to trust their players to stay with them until they can salary them something worth their time. The coaches of sc2 understand that they are in an immeasurable level of power when it comes to the negotiating table for their pro teams and that there is nothing "legally" stopping them from forcing a 3 year no-pay/transfer contract in exchange for a place to live and food. Hence the emphasis on trust and away from KESPA rules.
Naive but it is noble. I think this is what a lot of people are missing when they have the OP's and a vast majority of people's mindsets. Yes it is logical to have contracts for all of these players, just like for any other job but I hardly think that the coaches and managers of these Korean teams are juvenile idiots that are incapable of establishing contracting among their players. It just seems to me that they want to avoid it given Korea's past with esports management. Of course it has to go in that direction at some stage for this kind of thing to not occur but I think they were just really hoping there was some way around it. Perhaps they will find some sort of middle ground where the main players for a team are contracted and the players in training are provided with what Puma had and a possibility of a contract should they perform well. I agree that the information was mishandled regarding the acquisition and no I do not wish to kill Milkis nor should anyone else as a great number of articles from Korea that we all read in English are thanks to him and in this case it was just him doing his job and the source being at fault. Anyways TSL got burnt. Lesson learned now its up to what the korean teams decide to do.
Right. Essentially EG said, "This is the way the international market works under this business model," and then went and grabbed up Puma.
TSL and other Korean outlets expressed they were upset with the situation.
AG said this is the way it goes, there's nothing wrong with it.
Korea is left with the thought of how they "lost" one of their own because of the aggressive business decision that EG made.
Will Korea fort up and lock their prize players down? Or did this open a new avenue for the Korean scene to finally start really meshing with the rest of the world?
The ball is in Korea's court in regards to what they do. If they do nothing, then they can expect more of the same to happen over time. Which, at this point, really is just delaying the inveitable in my opinion. E-Sports is only going to bend around Korea for so long until the rest of the world grows tired with these old-world principles that can't be applied to the current state of the scene. It's progressed.
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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.
Consider:
1) In the NFL, MLB, etc. we routinely get media drama when another team's management has allegedly been talking to a player without anybody telling his current team. So even going by the standards of (American) pro sports, EG was out of line here (assuming for the sake of argument that everything went down as TSL alleges).
2) From what I know of Korean culture, the "community" reigns supreme, whether that
"community" is the country, the business you work for, your school, church, etc. - and especially given the esports model Korea is used to TSL clearly would have expected any negotiations to go through them even if Puma wasn't under a formal contract.
So the long and the short of it is that EG screwed up on a politeness/PR standpoint, even though they didn't do anything illegal or even underhanded (from what I know now).
On the other hand, TSL has been repeatedly in the news do to player dissatisfaction, leading several times to players leaving, so I'm inclined to doubt that the screw-ups are all on EG's side.
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dear god, I wish people would stop calling starcraft esports. Esports is A LOT MORE than just starcraft, it really gets annoying.
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Good read, I liked it and I agree with most of what you said. Garfield really cannot expect someone to hold off a story just because he doesn't want it to be public knowledge, regardless of whether this is a forum post or a rakaka/gosugamers/etc. article.
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On July 22 2011 22:44 VGhost wrote:
Consider:
1) In the NFL, MLB, etc. we routinely get media drama when another team's management has allegedly been talking to a player without anybody telling his current team. So even going by the standards of (American) pro sports, EG was out of line here (assuming for the sake of argument that everything went down as TSL alleges).
But in the NFL, NBA, MLB, etc, the teams contract the players. Therefore it goes into the tampering issues. And, with the amount of money that's flowing in those systems (Millions - Billions), they have every reason to play things by the book. There's a ton of money being invested, and a ton of money being made. It makes for the owners, leagues, and unions to take the structures very serious. The teams take the time to protect those things, so by the standard of American sports. TSL did not. Therefore you cant really compare - if you're going to say by American standards you have to consider this, you also have to consider that if this DID happen to an American team, nothing would happen outside of media outlets asking why this team didn't sign their player to a contract if they wanted him to be a permanent part of the team.
On July 22 2011 22:44 VGhost wrote:
2) From what I know of Korean culture, the "community" reigns supreme, whether that
"community" is the country, the business you work for, your school, church, etc. - and especially given the esports model Korea is used to TSL clearly would have expected any negotiations to go through them even if Puma wasn't under a formal contract.
I agree this is definitely a Korean culture thing. While we can all agree that we cant just say the international take on this is right and end all be all, we also have to consider that Korea's mind set may or may not be right.
Or, what I think the bigger here is... Korea is what's best for Globalizing E-Sports, but Globalizing E-Sports isn't what's best for Korea. The Kespa system worked - why should Korea bend for the rest of the world?
So it becomes a very complex, fragile relation.
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Gonna start a bit off topic here. So many (for lack of a politically correct word or phrase) "herp-derp i lol'd so hard at work creep came out my nose" threads get a "zomg best thread ever LOL highlighted" response. IMO, well written non biased relevant OPs with a majority of intelligent banter after the post are what do it for me. SO uh yea, GREAT OP <3
To add a little to the actual discussion, I will simply say I won't support EG. People too often think that new enterprises have to develop in a classical model. I absolutely don't believe this. Furthermore, everything I've ever seen from EG, from it's decisions to it's players statements has been very passive-aggressive, usually done in bad taste, and morally unacceptable for me. And it just gets old in my opinion, among other things.
Since myself, as an individual, won't support them, I will actually do my best to intelligently not support their sponsors. I say intelligently, because some of their sponsors actually also sponsor other great things, or great things in the community. When I look at e-sports as a product, I have to look at not just what I am getting but how I am getting it. Were my e-sports sneakers made by a 4 year old in a sweatshop? Geez, maybe I wont support that anymore. Harsh metaphor, but I'm tired and it makes the point. Of course, you can't have this ideology with everything, i.e. I'm not going to stop using my cellphone because it's impractical, even if people have to mine materials in horrible conditions to make them. The biggest point is, I'm going to try to support and or do what I think is right, mitigating the ethical damage the best I can... I would sincerely hope individuals as well companies or associations would take the same stance or philosophies. But again, just my opinion here and how I feel about things.
And again, great OP
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A longwinded apologia for EG. Wordcount don't bring authority.
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damn dude you wrote alot haha... damn man
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This is a really interesting OP.
Two small points to add:
- I think when a forum post gets featured as community news - it's not just a post anymore, it becomes an actual source of news and the standard of quality should be higher. When new information comes out or something is proven wrong, the post should be updated (by the poster or by teamliquid) as was the case here.
- Had EG posted their point of view on this issue before WoC, the main post would have been updated and it would have cut the "misinformation". They let the TSL point of view run wild for so long that of course it was all over the Internet by then. EG has a company that knows how social media and the gaming communities work should be able to release a statement within an hour or two of an event happening.
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On July 22 2011 16:49 jorge_the_awesome wrote:Show nested quote +On July 22 2011 13:09 PHC wrote: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.
The license system that's in effect under KeSPA requires teams, players, coaches to pay THEM. It's a membership and one of the ways KeSPA gets $$. The winner of the grueling 128 man Courage tournament for BW awards amateurs a progaming license so they can get picked up by one of the professional teams.
I pray that the SC2 Player's Association won't be headed in that direction.
EDIT: I agree that the license system would be a problem for SC2, but it was also a way to weed out the pros and amateurs from being able to play regularly on broadcasted TV.
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On July 22 2011 17:50 Blitz Beat wrote:Show nested quote +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.
Totally agree. Then the only foreigners you see playing SC2 competitively will be the ones at WCG. There's a ton of reason to be worried here folks.
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It's getting to the point where if Hot_Bid got possessed by Satan there would enough drama for the TL forums to become a soap opera.
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On July 22 2011 22:44 VGhost wrote:Show nested quote +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. Consider: 1) In the NFL, MLB, etc. we routinely get media drama when another team's management has allegedly been talking to a player without anybody telling his current team. So even going by the standards of (American) pro sports, EG was out of line here (assuming for the sake of argument that everything went down as TSL alleges). 2) From what I know of Korean culture, the "community" reigns supreme, whether that "community" is the country, the business you work for, your school, church, etc. - and especially given the esports model Korea is used to TSL clearly would have expected any negotiations to go through them even if Puma wasn't under a formal contract. So the long and the short of it is that EG screwed up on a politeness/PR standpoint, even though they didn't do anything illegal or even underhanded (from what I know now). On the other hand, TSL has been repeatedly in the news do to player dissatisfaction, leading several times to players leaving, so I'm inclined to doubt that the screw-ups are all on EG's side.
1) Well yeah, that's because those players are under contract. This is like a team complaining that someone "stole" the water boy who happened to get in the fourth quarter after a bunch of injuries and throw a winning touchdown pass. Just doesn't add up.
2) Yes, you are absolutely correct that there is a large emphasis on the "community", but it doesn't apply in this case. There is no such thing as talking with a potential employee's boss/manager when hiring in Korea. The potential employee doesn't have to say anything, and could put in their notice for any reason (scary thing is it's very common for Korean bosses to immediately fire people who give notice). If you have good rapport with your boss, though, he/she is very likely to beat the offer of the other company if they wish to keep you. It isn't seen as a betrayal or insult.
If you really want to run with the "community" thing, why in the world would that coach say anything before that poor kid signed with EG? Can you even imagine what Puma is going through in his head? Listen, I've dealt with enough Korean bosses to see this as a guy who was angry with himself for not having money to sign Puma, and he lashed out without considering Puma's feelings or future for even a second. Doubt Puma has even gone through mandatory military service yet. With all that in my mind at that age I would crack!
I mentioned this in a post in another thread, but it's applicable here, too. Go look up the history of iPhone releases in Korea and I think you'll see the general Korean response to foreign competition.
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Wow, this post and the one about Puma has made me realize something. The gears are churning, and in a year E-sports will not be the same. Things are changing all around us, and this may very well be the start of E-sport's growth into worldwide recognition. We could be on the verge. Guys, remember this day, because this is when you will think back while watching a starcraft tournament game in AMERICA with most of america watching, you will think "oh yeah, that is when it all began"
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On July 23 2011 00:16 IslandLife wrote:Show nested quote +On July 22 2011 22:44 VGhost wrote: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. Consider: 1) In the NFL, MLB, etc. we routinely get media drama when another team's management has allegedly been talking to a player without anybody telling his current team. So even going by the standards of (American) pro sports, EG was out of line here (assuming for the sake of argument that everything went down as TSL alleges). 2) From what I know of Korean culture, the "community" reigns supreme, whether that "community" is the country, the business you work for, your school, church, etc. - and especially given the esports model Korea is used to TSL clearly would have expected any negotiations to go through them even if Puma wasn't under a formal contract. So the long and the short of it is that EG screwed up on a politeness/PR standpoint, even though they didn't do anything illegal or even underhanded (from what I know now). On the other hand, TSL has been repeatedly in the news do to player dissatisfaction, leading several times to players leaving, so I'm inclined to doubt that the screw-ups are all on EG's side. I mentioned this in a post in another thread, but it's applicable here, too. Go look up the history of iPhone releases in Korea and I think you'll see the general Korean response to foreign competition.
Like...
"A major assault against Apple has come from the Korean press, which promotes the Galaxy S as the "iPhone killer." An article about alleged service problems with the iPhone was headlined "Tasting Apple's bitter fruit." After Jobs suggested that government bureaucracy slowed the release of the iPhone 4 here, one paper ran the headline "Jobs lied, didn't he?"
Industry watchers acknowledge that Samsung, one of the nation's most powerful advertisers, might be behind the stories. "It may be true that they released some misleading news," said Kim Ji-hyun, the author of a book on South Korean telecommunications. "But this kind of marketing did work domestically."
At the end of the day, in regards to Korea, the issue is their culture lends itself to being self sufficient, thus they are perfectly content letting things run the course they've always ran. Why should Korea bother with change when this has always worked? But the international scene has grown exponentially and as it stands has a much broader range of coverage with SC2 than what Korea can offer.
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Part of the issue in how this arose, is that for the foreign community, Milkis is perhaps the ONLY source of korean information. Milkis represents korea, even if he doesn't wish to. Until there is a way to better spread information from the one culture to the other, this same issue will exist.
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I think a big argument that's been beaten to death is the status of contracted vs. uncontracted players in Korean SC2.
If they wanted to stay contracted they could have stuck with their status as B-team practice partners in BW and never switched to SC2 in the first place.
Coach Lee lashing out was the worst thing that could have happened for international esports. Korean-foreign relations for SC2 were extremely good up to this point, and now 95% of the Korean community is wary and it may trigger the end of competitive SC2 as we know it.
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On July 23 2011 00:37 PHC wrote:
I think a big argument that's been beaten to death is the status of contracted vs. uncontracted players in Korean SC2.
If they wanted to stay contracted they could have stuck with their status as B-team practice partners in BW and never switched to SC2 in the first place.
Coach Lee lashing out was the worst thing that could have happened for international esports. Korean-foreign relations for SC2 were extremely good up to this point, and now 95% of the Korean community is wary and it may trigger the end of competitive SC2 as we know it.
Wow these past few days TL forums just went from bearable to FUCKING AWFUL. Come on mods, you got to do something about it. First there was 1 thread about that topic, then 2, then 3, I mean, this shit spreads like cancer, I'm tired of reading speculation, assumptions and bias bullshit.
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On July 23 2011 00:34 DarkKiwi wrote:
Part of the issue in how this arose, is that for the foreign community, Milkis is perhaps the ONLY source of korean information. Milkis represents korea, even if he doesn't wish to. Until there is a way to better spread information from the one culture to the other, this same issue will exist.
He's not. If he hadn't done it, somebody else would have. It would've been one of the many translators on this site: GTR, Roffles, AltaiR_, CanucksJC, Carnivorous Sheep, dinki0825, l10f, Lyriene, Milkis, mrmin123, rotinegg, Selith, Smix, Waxangel. Or one of the many reddit users.
NASL was 2 weeks ago when they approached Puma. Please don't even try to buy into that EG snake's crap thinking that it's Milkis's fault for translating news on playxp 2 weeks after things were set in motion.
EG still hasn't made an official statement more than 24 hours after the news was broken. It sounded like the head of EG never wanted/planned to speak to the team/management of TSL since day 1 honestly.
EDIT: Changed "response" to "official statement" to make it less misleading. I watched yesterday's Weapon of Choice.
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Is it just me, or does Alex Garfield have absolutely no idea what defamation actually is in a legal context? I think it's very difficult for both sides of this conflict to understand each other primarily because of cultural leanings. Americans are, at least in the private sector, in love with lassaiz-faire capitalism, and have devised a hilarious field of 'business ethics' to justify things that, in the public sector, would be considered shady. Conversely, in Korea, there seems to be a lot more emphasis on familial relations. I notice this as a trend in Asian countries in general. A company is treated much like a family, even if there are contracts involved. This problem stems from the importance of the 'family business' in these countries.
Personally, I think EG is utterly in the wrong from any moral perspective imaginable (Alex probably thinks I'm defaming him, hah) but, from a legal point of view, they haven't really done anything wrong. I'm sort of sick of people trying to talk as if EG is immune to any sort of moral or honour code simply because "it's business' and businesses are expected to fuck with each other as much as possible. This is a fundamentally American idea, and it's hardly perfect. Just because businesses do fuck with each other doesn't mean we can't look down on them as being slaves to money and putting said money ahead of respect for their industry.
I'd invite all of you to consider why most leagues have governing bodies. It's because, deep down, everyone knows that the dealings of apathetic businesses aren't reflective of how people want the entertainment industry to play out on an everyday basis. Take a look at football. Everybody hates the Premier League's (e.g. MU) moneygrubbing, but at the very least there's measures in place to stop them from simply buying every player.
So yeah, you can harp on and on about how EG is doing what businesses do, but don't for a second pretend that a widespread extension of those sorts of actions would culminate in an enjoyable eSports experience. It would result in a monopoly of talent doled out to those who entered the game with the most money. And we certainly don't want that. Perhaps it took this event to get teams to realize that contracts are essential when dealing with American organizations (who thrive on capitalism, not respect--EG in particular is especially fond of this) which, by and large, have extremely humble origins (founded by kids with credit cards, essentially).
So, should we have any respect for EG's management? Honestly, not really. Perhaps you can commend them for their excellent business sense, in a coldly financial way, but nobody, I repeat, nobody, can pretend any longer that EG cares about the future of competitive Starcraft 2 except as a means to the end of making them money. Before I get lambasted for suggesting that businesses shouldn't care about money, let me state that my critique is a little different: EG ONLY cares about making money from SC2. They don't care about furthering the game for its own sake. It's possible to do both. I expect that every business wishes to keep itself afloat by bringing in money. That's not to say, however, that they can't at the same time care about the sport or enterprise itself.
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On July 23 2011 00:37 PHC wrote:
I think a big argument that's been beaten to death is the status of contracted vs. uncontracted players in Korean SC2.
If they wanted to stay contracted they could have stuck with their status as B-team practice partners in BW and never switched to SC2 in the first place.
Coach Lee lashing out was the worst thing that could have happened for international esports. Korean-foreign relations for SC2 were extremely good up to this point, and now 95% of the Korean community is wary and it may trigger the end of competitive SC2 as we know it.
If Korea closes their doors to the world in regards to SC2, they're dooming the game in their market. Korea alone in it's current system cannot survive with only itself. Instead of this crazy Korea vs. The World madness that seems to be accepted, they should also consider globalizing (like the rest of the world). SC2 will exist competively with or without Korea's hostility towards the global scene. The competitive scene would be better with Korea, obviously. Just as Korea's scene is stronger with foreign interest also driving it. Ending the competitive SC2 as we know it, may be a good thing if you consider the progress that could be made if it progresses.
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On July 23 2011 00:44 AlBundy wrote:Show nested quote +On July 23 2011 00:37 PHC wrote:
I think a big argument that's been beaten to death is the status of contracted vs. uncontracted players in Korean SC2.
If they wanted to stay contracted they could have stuck with their status as B-team practice partners in BW and never switched to SC2 in the first place.
Coach Lee lashing out was the worst thing that could have happened for international esports. Korean-foreign relations for SC2 were extremely good up to this point, and now 95% of the Korean community is wary and it may trigger the end of competitive SC2 as we know it.
Wow these past few days TL forums just went from bearable to FUCKING AWFUL. Come on mods, you got to do something about it. First there was 1 thread about that topic, then 2, then 3, I mean, this shit spreads like cancer, I'm tired of reading speculation, assumptions and bias bullshit.
It's none of those things you said.
It's called perspective.
Your mindset generally is why E-Sports, in particular SC2, is going to struggling progressing to the next tier of it's potential.
People really need to stop posting about this specific EG/Puma situation and realize that is only a very small representation of a much bigger issue. And this post outlines the bigger issue, while using the Puma situation as an anecdotal reference point that is still fresh in our minds.
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On July 23 2011 00:44 AlBundy wrote:Show nested quote +On July 23 2011 00:37 PHC wrote:
I think a big argument that's been beaten to death is the status of contracted vs. uncontracted players in Korean SC2.
If they wanted to stay contracted they could have stuck with their status as B-team practice partners in BW and never switched to SC2 in the first place.
Coach Lee lashing out was the worst thing that could have happened for international esports. Korean-foreign relations for SC2 were extremely good up to this point, and now 95% of the Korean community is wary and it may trigger the end of competitive SC2 as we know it.
Wow these past few days TL forums just went from bearable to FUCKING AWFUL. Come on mods, you got to do something about it. First there was 1 thread about that topic, then 2, then 3, I mean, this shit spreads like cancer, I'm tired of reading speculation, assumptions and bias bullshit.
Have you read the entire thread dude? I know it's easy to just read a single post and jump to conclusions, but why don't you add to the discussion? I gave many reasons on why the situation is troublesome.
There's absolutely no need to become aggressive. If you're "tired of reading speculation, assumptions, and bias bullshit" either don't read or progress the discussion in a civilized manner. What is wrong with you?
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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.
Thank you soo much for posting this, because that's my opinion as well.
EG is releasing a statement without representing TL's side.
Milkis is translating/releasing a statement without representing EG's side.
One is ok - the other is not? I could understand that Alex's angry if their was an EG statement out and Milkis didnt include / link to this in his translation. But that wasnt the case.
On July 22 2011 12:49 ComusLoM wrote:
The thing is, I can only see this going badly for Puma, without TSL he won't have the coaches, the practice partners and the training schedule that allowed him to fully harness his skills that allowed him to win the NASL. EG say this is good for Korean esports and that the SK deal is bad:
The SK deal benefits all of oGs and is a far better way forward than acquiring a single player.
1. Foreign Teams get represented in foreign markets by Korean players
2. Korean players don't lose skill outside of general lack of practice during travel since they keep their support structure
3. Korean teams get more money to spend on gaining sponsorship, adding more players or sending other players to international events (they no longer have to pay for MC or Nada's travel although I believe MC contributed a bit to his own travel too)
Now in an ideal world player acquisitions (permanent) on foreign teams should result in the player being brought into the foreign practice house (currently non-existent) with a head coach and suitable practice partners in the form of similarly skilled teammates (also non-existent).
Compare this to:
1. Buy Player disregarding the players native culture
2. Either leave him in Korea or bring him to an incomplete team house without coaching or suitably skilled practice partners (eg says they have something planned not sure what)
3. Have player represent you either in Korea (good luck) or foreign events where he will be beaten by Koreans on real teams.
I just don't understand what EG is thinking with this kind of move Puma will be terrible in 3 months if he stays outside of the Korean practice ethos with coach and partners. And they'll be left where they started.
EG isnt stupid. The way he hinted at "something" and "we have working for this for the last 12-14 months" EG certainly has something planned.
My personal speculation would be, since he said they approached all Top4 players, that they did approach other Koreans as well (outside of NASL). So maybe the Korean EG house after all? Filled with Koreans acquired from other teams?
But the ball is currently in the hands of the Korean teams.
Emergency SC2 Association meeting. Everyone agrees to have their players signed immediately ("or find your own EG right now!" - which might play into EG's hands, since the doubting players might switch to EG then).
Team transfers to other members of the SC2 Association or "allowed" teams is ok. Transfers to teams outside of that circle is prohibited by contract aka: it's the team's decision (with player consent & a transfer sum).
"Loaning" players, like MC / Nada to foreign teams still allowed (aka team decision).
Then we have a mini Kespa. They could even force GOM to exclude players "marked" from their association ("or we will all pull our teams out") for example denying Puma a GSL entry.
That's how I would do it
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On July 23 2011 00:50 Grimsong wrote:Show nested quote +On July 23 2011 00:37 PHC wrote:
I think a big argument that's been beaten to death is the status of contracted vs. uncontracted players in Korean SC2.
If they wanted to stay contracted they could have stuck with their status as B-team practice partners in BW and never switched to SC2 in the first place.
Coach Lee lashing out was the worst thing that could have happened for international esports. Korean-foreign relations for SC2 were extremely good up to this point, and now 95% of the Korean community is wary and it may trigger the end of competitive SC2 as we know it.
If Korea closes their doors to the world in regards to SC2, they're dooming the game in their market. Korea alone in it's current system cannot survive with only itself. Instead of this crazy Korea vs. The World madness that seems to be accepted, they should also consider globalizing (like the rest of the world). SC2 will exist competively with or without Korea's hostility towards the global scene. The competitive scene would be better with Korea, obviously. Just as Korea's scene is stronger with foreign interest also driving it. Ending the competitive SC2 as we know it, may be a good thing if you consider the progress that could be made if it progresses.
Korea can close the door to foreigners. They have the SC2 association which can put tremendeous pressure onto GOM.
Can the world close the door to Koreans? What if EG says "MLG/IEM/DH/NASL dont invite Koreans or we dont come" will teams like TL/mout/dignitas/Empire join that notion? I doubt it.
Look at EG's master cup. TL said "We dont join" and nothing changed.
The tournament organizers have to decide "EG or Koreans"? - I'd say the Koreans bring more fans.
The foreign scene is divided heavily. The Korean scene is united. Therefore they have more leverage.
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On July 23 2011 01:08 Zocat wrote:But the ball is currently in the hands of the Korean teams. Emergency SC2 Association meeting. Everyone agrees to have their players signed immediately ("or find your own EG right now!" - which might play into EG's hands, since the doubting players might switch to EG then). Team transfers to other members of the SC2 Association or "allowed" teams is ok. Transfers to teams outside of that circle is prohibited by contract aka: it's the team's decision (with player consent & a transfer sum). "Loaning" players, like MC / Nada to foreign teams still allowed (aka team decision). Then we have a mini Kespa. They could even force GOM to exclude players "marked" from their association ("or we will all pull our teams out") for example denying Puma a GSL entry. That's how I would do it
Why would you do it that way? Why would you promote restrictions in a market that wants to mix and match everyone on a global level? Korea creating a system to protect Korea? It seems to be stunting the growth/health of pushing E-Sports to the next level.
As a whole, it would be best bi-passing this whole Korean BW mindset.
It's not 2000 anymore, and SC2 isn't a booming product in Korea. Time to move on.
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On July 23 2011 01:15 Zocat wrote:Show nested quote +On July 23 2011 00:50 Grimsong wrote:On July 23 2011 00:37 PHC wrote:
I think a big argument that's been beaten to death is the status of contracted vs. uncontracted players in Korean SC2.
If they wanted to stay contracted they could have stuck with their status as B-team practice partners in BW and never switched to SC2 in the first place.
Coach Lee lashing out was the worst thing that could have happened for international esports. Korean-foreign relations for SC2 were extremely good up to this point, and now 95% of the Korean community is wary and it may trigger the end of competitive SC2 as we know it.
If Korea closes their doors to the world in regards to SC2, they're dooming the game in their market. Korea alone in it's current system cannot survive with only itself. Instead of this crazy Korea vs. The World madness that seems to be accepted, they should also consider globalizing (like the rest of the world). SC2 will exist competively with or without Korea's hostility towards the global scene. The competitive scene would be better with Korea, obviously. Just as Korea's scene is stronger with foreign interest also driving it. Ending the competitive SC2 as we know it, may be a good thing if you consider the progress that could be made if it progresses. Korea can close the door to foreigners. They have the SC2 association which can put tremendeous pressure onto GOM. Can the world close the door to Koreans? What if EG says "MLG/IEM/DH/NASL dont invite Koreans or we dont come" will teams like TL/mout/dignitas/Empire join that notion? I doubt it. Look at EG's master cup. TL said "We dont join" and nothing changed. The tournament organizers have to decide "EG or Koreans"? - I'd say the Koreans bring more fans. The foreign scene is divided heavily. The Korean scene is united. Therefore they have more leverage.
The Korean scene is divided - Between BW and SC2.
The SC2 scene in Korea isn't what it is elsewhere, and isn't even a shadow of the popularity it had when it was all BW.
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On July 23 2011 00:59 PHC wrote:Show nested quote +On July 23 2011 00:44 AlBundy wrote:On July 23 2011 00:37 PHC wrote:
I think a big argument that's been beaten to death is the status of contracted vs. uncontracted players in Korean SC2.
If they wanted to stay contracted they could have stuck with their status as B-team practice partners in BW and never switched to SC2 in the first place.
Coach Lee lashing out was the worst thing that could have happened for international esports. Korean-foreign relations for SC2 were extremely good up to this point, and now 95% of the Korean community is wary and it may trigger the end of competitive SC2 as we know it.
Wow these past few days TL forums just went from bearable to FUCKING AWFUL. Come on mods, you got to do something about it. First there was 1 thread about that topic, then 2, then 3, I mean, this shit spreads like cancer, I'm tired of reading speculation, assumptions and bias bullshit. Have you read the entire thread dude? I know it's easy to just read a single post and jump to conclusions, but why don't you add to the discussion? I gave many reasons on why the situation is troublesome. There's absolutely no need to become aggressive. If you're "tired of reading speculation, assumptions, and bias bullshit" either don't read or progress the discussion in a civilized manner. What is wrong with you?
Dude there's nothing personal; I read this thread, I read the "Puma leaves TSL for EG" thread (300 pages), the "weapon of choice" thread (and I watched the show), the "problem with korea" threads, the coach lee interview, anyway I know what I'm talking about. Can't have a civilized discussion when half the posts are misleading.
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On July 22 2011 12:03 k!llua wrote:
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.
Where is Puma going to practice from now on? If anything, recent competitions have shown that you have to practice in a Korean pro house to get anywhere. I don't think this move is going to benefit him as a player at all.
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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
Why would you post something like this? Sponsors are paramount to growing a scene and sponsors are NOT EG(some sponsor more then one team). They are companies investing in advertisement to help sell their product, so by boycotting them you aren't hurting EG as much as you are hurting all teams from getting sponsors.
As to the topic, my thoughts on what AG meant was simply: think before you post. Most people just post anything under it being anonymous and don't care if its detrimental to anyone else and think that they are just "telling" someone else what they are posting, but that is entirely wrong. With how TL has blown up one must think when posting as if they are telling not just their friend, but a group the information. What most people tell their friends is much more private and opinionated then they would tell a group, as telling the group can affect not just the person telling, but others also. So if you find out Mike has an STD, you don't go broadcasting it to the world as it would be detrimental to Mike(unless of course you hate Mike, then its completely fine). Instead you tell your close friends that know Mike and don't broadcast it on a megaphone for all to hear.
Are most people going to think like the above when posting an OP or even a response? No, probably not, as that would be a moderators and PR representatives Utopia, but they can always dream.
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+ Show Spoiler +On July 23 2011 00:46 Shiori wrote:
Is it just me, or does Alex Garfield have absolutely no idea what defamation actually is in a legal context? I think it's very difficult for both sides of this conflict to understand each other primarily because of cultural leanings. Americans are, at least in the private sector, in love with lassaiz-faire capitalism, and have devised a hilarious field of 'business ethics' to justify things that, in the public sector, would be considered shady. Conversely, in Korea, there seems to be a lot more emphasis on familial relations. I notice this as a trend in Asian countries in general. A company is treated much like a family, even if there are contracts involved. This problem stems from the importance of the 'family business' in these countries.
Personally, I think EG is utterly in the wrong from any moral perspective imaginable (Alex probably thinks I'm defaming him, hah) but, from a legal point of view, they haven't really done anything wrong. I'm sort of sick of people trying to talk as if EG is immune to any sort of moral or honour code simply because "it's business' and businesses are expected to fuck with each other as much as possible. This is a fundamentally American idea, and it's hardly perfect. Just because businesses do fuck with each other doesn't mean we can't look down on them as being slaves to money and putting said money ahead of respect for their industry.
I'd invite all of you to consider why most leagues have governing bodies. It's because, deep down, everyone knows that the dealings of apathetic businesses aren't reflective of how people want the entertainment industry to play out on an everyday basis. Take a look at football. Everybody hates the Premier League's (e.g. MU) moneygrubbing, but at the very least there's measures in place to stop them from simply buying every player.
So yeah, you can harp on and on about how EG is doing what businesses do, but don't for a second pretend that a widespread extension of those sorts of actions would culminate in an enjoyable eSports experience. It would result in a monopoly of talent doled out to those who entered the game with the most money. And we certainly don't want that. Perhaps it took this event to get teams to realize that contracts are essential when dealing with American organizations (who thrive on capitalism, not respect--EG in particular is especially fond of this) which, by and large, have extremely humble origins (founded by kids with credit cards, essentially).
So, should we have any respect for EG's management? Honestly, not really. Perhaps you can commend them for their excellent business sense, in a coldly financial way, but nobody, I repeat, nobody, can pretend any longer that EG cares about the future of competitive Starcraft 2 except as a means to the end of making them money. Before I get lambasted for suggesting that businesses shouldn't care about money, let me state that my critique is a little different: EG ONLY cares about making money from SC2. They don't care about furthering the game for its own sake. It's possible to do both. I expect that every business wishes to keep itself afloat by bringing in money. That's not to say, however, that they can't at the same time care about the sport or enterprise itself.
You make a very good point. All the foreign team-Korean team relations were extremely good based out of friendly and mutual respect up to this point.
1.) oGs-TL
2.) TSL-Fnatic
3.) oGs (MC, Nada) - SK
4.) fOu - FXO
The foreign teams mentioned above ALL made "smart business decisions" in acquiring the players because of the mutual respect and agreements found from both parties.
It's one thing to make your decision based on "just business" but the moment you disregard the respect and agreement, you make your brand (EG in this case) untrustworthy to everyone.
The 4 teams above made great business decisions. EG tainted their brand and did not.
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First off dont sign your own post, its in the rules.
I have a statement that i take issue with.
Give some thought to the players who are on the B-teams, with no formal contracts and are struggling to get by. Eventually, one day, the team decides to cull them. That's it - you're off the team. You can't stay in our house anymore, you can't practice with us. It's just not worth it, you're not good enough.
Get out.
Not everyone gets to win Dreamhack. What happens to the hundreds of players that don't make it?
This situation is not unrealistic at all. Some of you might be saying that the "Korean culture" would prevent such an undesirable situation from occurring. But the reality is that should events line up in a fashion where this could happen: it will happen - because this is a business, a cut-throat, no-holds barred, sport.
First off you describe a theoretical situation without showing the entire situation. If a player gets let go in this way you have to look at why the team let them go, not just the fact that they did. They are a business, and like any business they must survive int he face of completion. A player may be let go because the team only has so many resources at their disposal, and in a world of competition they need to provide the best wages for their players and the best conditions for them, or else another team with a higher wage and better conditions will snatch them away. This is analogous to cars. If i make cars at 100$ a car, and another company can make the same car at 90$ a car, I am going to have to cut costs or go out of business, putting hundreds of workers out of work because I did not want to shut down 1 plant and move it somewhere cheaper.
What I am trying to say by this is that even know a player being let go is never a good thing, for e-sports as a whole, it increases conditions for players and players wages through competition. Some players and teams will fail but the e-sports scene will progress, continuing to improve and become better and better. So if you attempt to protect players or teams in any way you are hindering the expansion and growth of e-sports on the corporate level. This is because by protecting them you are eliminating the need for constant improvement through competition, because you are weakening the competitive environment.
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On July 23 2011 01:20 Silver777 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 Why would you post something like this? Sponsors are paramount to growing a scene and sponsors are NOT EG(some sponsor more then one team). They are companies investing in advertisement to help sell their product, so by boycotting them you aren't hurting EG as much as you are hurting all teams from getting sponsors. As to the topic, my thoughts on what AG meant was simply: think before you post. Most people just post anything under it being anonymous and don't care if its detrimental to anyone else and think that they are just "telling" someone else what they are posting, but that is entirely wrong. With how TL has blown up one must think when posting as if they are telling not just their friend, but a group the information. What most people tell their friends is much more private and opinionated then they would tell a group, as telling the group can affect not just the person telling, but others also. So if you find out Mike has an STD, you don't go broadcasting it to the world as it would be detrimental to Mike(unless of course you hate Mike, then its completely fine). Instead you tell your close friends that know Mike and don't broadcast it on a megaphone for all to hear. Are most people going to think like the above when posting an OP or even a response? No, probably not, as that would be a moderators and PR representatives Utopia, but they can always dream.
Actually, factuality and opinion are real defenses against defamation. If Mike really DOES have an STD, then you saying so isn't really defaming. If you say "I think Mike is a slut and I wouldn't be surprised if he has an STD" it's not defaming either, because it's an opinion.
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On July 23 2011 01:37 Shiori wrote:Show nested quote +On July 23 2011 01:20 Silver777 wrote: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 Why would you post something like this? Sponsors are paramount to growing a scene and sponsors are NOT EG(some sponsor more then one team). They are companies investing in advertisement to help sell their product, so by boycotting them you aren't hurting EG as much as you are hurting all teams from getting sponsors. As to the topic, my thoughts on what AG meant was simply: think before you post. Most people just post anything under it being anonymous and don't care if its detrimental to anyone else and think that they are just "telling" someone else what they are posting, but that is entirely wrong. With how TL has blown up one must think when posting as if they are telling not just their friend, but a group the information. What most people tell their friends is much more private and opinionated then they would tell a group, as telling the group can affect not just the person telling, but others also. So if you find out Mike has an STD, you don't go broadcasting it to the world as it would be detrimental to Mike(unless of course you hate Mike, then its completely fine). Instead you tell your close friends that know Mike and don't broadcast it on a megaphone for all to hear. Are most people going to think like the above when posting an OP or even a response? No, probably not, as that would be a moderators and PR representatives Utopia, but they can always dream. Actually, factuality and opinion are real defenses against defamation. If Mike really DOES have an STD, then you saying so isn't really defaming. If you say "I think Mike is a slut and I wouldn't be surprised if he has an STD" it's not defaming either, because it's an opinion.
What I am saying is not at all regarding a legal matter, its simply a level of politeness/respect(ethical).
In terms of legality ethics is pretty much null and void as you are now looking at objective statements that will have a clear yes or no(yes some are grey, but the end result is still a yes or no). Ethics and legality really don't go together that well, though laws are generally based on the populations general ethics and trials are likewise, but the law itself is set on paper, unlike ethics.
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+ Show Spoiler +On July 23 2011 01:20 Silver777 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 Why would you post something like this? Sponsors are paramount to growing a scene and sponsors are NOT EG(some sponsor more then one team). They are companies investing in advertisement to help sell their product, so by boycotting them you aren't hurting EG as much as you are hurting all teams from getting sponsors. As to the topic, my thoughts on what AG meant was simply: think before you post. Most people just post anything under it being anonymous and don't care if its detrimental to anyone else and think that they are just "telling" someone else what they are posting, but that is entirely wrong. With how TL has blown up one must think when posting as if they are telling not just their friend, but a group the information. What most people tell their friends is much more private and opinionated then they would tell a group, as telling the group can affect not just the person telling, but others also. So if you find out Mike has an STD, you don't go broadcasting it to the world as it would be detrimental to Mike(unless of course you hate Mike, then its completely fine). Instead you tell your close friends that know Mike and don't broadcast it on a megaphone for all to hear. Are most people going to think like the above when posting an OP or even a response? No, probably not, as that would be a moderators and PR representatives Utopia, but they can always dream.
Speaking of the OP:
"Sorry Garfield, but time waits for no man. If the internet isn't going to wait for major airlines to announce that a plane has been grounded, what on God's green earth makes you think it's going to wait for you?
This is just reality. The author published an article on PlayXP based on the information he had available. There's nothing wrong with him writing from just "one" side of the story, because it's a community contribution. They've done nothing more than write an article about comments from a key industry figure (one of the coaches of a pro-gaming team) about a situation that the community has massive interest in. EG didn't get time to publish their side of the story. That happens. "
The OP then goes into summary of how major businesses have a ways to disseminate information to the masses or the community with tools such as twitter in these situations. The problem is EG had 2 weeks to prepare for something like this and over 24 hours to make any sort of update on the situation. They chose to ignore. Milkis gave Scoots the opportunity via twitter. Scoots decided to make comments such as "umadbro?" to community members that were upset.
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On July 22 2011 20:56 jazzbassmatt wrote:
Ok uhh what is with the references to garfield
This is all really about esports lasagna.
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On July 23 2011 01:44 PHC wrote:+ Show Spoiler +On July 23 2011 01:20 Silver777 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 Why would you post something like this? Sponsors are paramount to growing a scene and sponsors are NOT EG(some sponsor more then one team). They are companies investing in advertisement to help sell their product, so by boycotting them you aren't hurting EG as much as you are hurting all teams from getting sponsors. As to the topic, my thoughts on what AG meant was simply: think before you post. Most people just post anything under it being anonymous and don't care if its detrimental to anyone else and think that they are just "telling" someone else what they are posting, but that is entirely wrong. With how TL has blown up one must think when posting as if they are telling not just their friend, but a group the information. What most people tell their friends is much more private and opinionated then they would tell a group, as telling the group can affect not just the person telling, but others also. So if you find out Mike has an STD, you don't go broadcasting it to the world as it would be detrimental to Mike(unless of course you hate Mike, then its completely fine). Instead you tell your close friends that know Mike and don't broadcast it on a megaphone for all to hear. Are most people going to think like the above when posting an OP or even a response? No, probably not, as that would be a moderators and PR representatives Utopia, but they can always dream. Speaking of the OP: "Sorry Garfield, but time waits for no man. If the internet isn't going to wait for major airlines to announce that a plane has been grounded, what on God's green earth makes you think it's going to wait for you? This is just reality. The author published an article on PlayXP based on the information he had available. There's nothing wrong with him writing from just "one" side of the story, because it's a community contribution. They've done nothing more than write an article about comments from a key industry figure (one of the coaches of a pro-gaming team) about a situation that the community has massive interest in. EG didn't get time to publish their side of the story. That happens. " The OP then goes into summary of how major businesses have a ways to disseminate information to the masses or the community with tools such as twitter in these situations. The problem is EG had 2 weeks to prepare for something like this and over 24 hours to make any sort of update on the situation. They chose to ignore. Milkis gave Scoots the opportunity via twitter. Scoots decided to make comments such as "umadbro?" to community members that were upset.
I agree. I simply meant posts that involve other parties need to be more objective and tread a finer line in wording(assuming you aren't blatantly supporting one side/trolling and not the other then you should make it obvious). Better wording or disclaimers when dealing with multiple parties(businesses) should be at the forethought of ones mind when posting something that could affect said business. If you don't care about offending a business I think that's fine also, but for those that aren't clarity is necessary.
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On July 23 2011 00:50 Grimsong wrote:Show nested quote +On July 23 2011 00:37 PHC wrote:
I think a big argument that's been beaten to death is the status of contracted vs. uncontracted players in Korean SC2.
If they wanted to stay contracted they could have stuck with their status as B-team practice partners in BW and never switched to SC2 in the first place.
Coach Lee lashing out was the worst thing that could have happened for international esports. Korean-foreign relations for SC2 were extremely good up to this point, and now 95% of the Korean community is wary and it may trigger the end of competitive SC2 as we know it.
If Korea closes their doors to the world in regards to SC2, they're dooming the game in their market. Korea alone in it's current system cannot survive with only itself. Instead of this crazy Korea vs. The World madness that seems to be accepted, they should also consider globalizing (like the rest of the world). SC2 will exist competively with or without Korea's hostility towards the global scene. The competitive scene would be better with Korea, obviously. Just as Korea's scene is stronger with foreign interest also driving it. Ending the competitive SC2 as we know it, may be a good thing if you consider the progress that could be made if it progresses.
Globalization is definitely a smart way to go. I almost think Koreans were headed that way (with cooperation with FXO being a prime example) until what happened recently. I guess only time will tell in what they decide now.
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After reading the translated interviews, listening to Weapon of Choice, and reading this thread, I've got to say that I really dislike Alex Garfield.
I can't believe that he attacked Milkis for not getting EG's side of the story -- he's a translator, a darn good one, and one of the few who go out of their way to bring us info from the other side. It seemed like a petty attempt on EG's part to shift bad PR onto other people.
Instead of communicating with and trying to collaborate and work alongside/with the Korean scene, EG seems content to criticize it and exploit it.
In complimenting TL he called it "the website with the greatest value in all of esports" or something along those lines. That's a major red flag. You don't appreciate TL by saying it's worth a lot of money.
In the end, I guess I just feel like what EG did makes sense and stuff, but they're not in esports to work with the scene and help the scene. They're here to get what they can get from the scene, which is understandable, but definitely puts me (and a lot of others) off.
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while the whole think with milkis on the show wasnt exactly handled great, he absolutely has a responsibility as a writer of Teamliquid--which has starcraft progamming news very clearly under the banner--to reach out to EG for an official comment. Just because there's no official release doesn't mean you just drop one side of the story and let it be without any fact checking, even if you're a translator. Shit, even fucking deadspin adheres to the very basic news rule of reaching out for comment by the party that's about to be a subject in a big controversy
People keep on bringing up shit like ESPN reporting on rumors and saying this is one in the same. it's not. That happens because they at least reach out to the team or player in question for their side of the story. If the team denies it, you report that. If the team does not respond, or tells you to fuck off, you report that. As far as I know, and it's starting to get quite difficult to follow this whole thing, this did not happen.
Milkis is not just another forum member. he is representing TL, which is an ESPORTS news site. As such, he absolutely has an obligation to do that ground work, and in the event that he can't get any info, it is clearly explained as such. While the attack wasn't exactly the greatest thing, EG absolutely has a damn good reason to be pissed that one side of the story was reported on without even being contacted. It would have helped if they released a presser right after it broke, but they're not obligated to do so, and they did it within 24 hours which is quite standard in the world of sport.
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On July 23 2011 00:16 IslandLife wrote:Show nested quote +On July 22 2011 22:44 VGhost wrote: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. Consider: 1) In the NFL, MLB, etc. we routinely get media drama when another team's management has allegedly been talking to a player without anybody telling his current team. So even going by the standards of (American) pro sports, EG was out of line here (assuming for the sake of argument that everything went down as TSL alleges). 2) From what I know of Korean culture, the "community" reigns supreme, whether that "community" is the country, the business you work for, your school, church, etc. - and especially given the esports model Korea is used to TSL clearly would have expected any negotiations to go through them even if Puma wasn't under a formal contract. So the long and the short of it is that EG screwed up on a politeness/PR standpoint, even though they didn't do anything illegal or even underhanded (from what I know now). On the other hand, TSL has been repeatedly in the news do to player dissatisfaction, leading several times to players leaving, so I'm inclined to doubt that the screw-ups are all on EG's side. 1) Well yeah, that's because those players are under contract. This is like a team complaining that someone "stole" the water boy who happened to get in the fourth quarter after a bunch of injuries and throw a winning touchdown pass. Just doesn't add up. 2) Yes, you are absolutely correct that there is a large emphasis on the "community", but it doesn't apply in this case. There is no such thing as talking with a potential employee's boss/manager when hiring in Korea. The potential employee doesn't have to say anything, and could put in their notice for any reason (scary thing is it's very common for Korean bosses to immediately fire people who give notice). If you have good rapport with your boss, though, he/she is very likely to beat the offer of the other company if they wish to keep you. It isn't seen as a betrayal or insult. If you really want to run with the "community" thing, why in the world would that coach say anything before that poor kid signed with EG? Can you even imagine what Puma is going through in his head? Listen, I've dealt with enough Korean bosses to see this as a guy who was angry with himself for not having money to sign Puma, and he lashed out without considering Puma's feelings or future for even a second. Doubt Puma has even gone through mandatory military service yet. With all that in my mind at that age I would crack! I mentioned this in a post in another thread, but it's applicable here, too. Go look up the history of iPhone releases in Korea and I think you'll see the general Korean response to foreign competition.
Both you and Grimsong replied to (1) and (2) as though they were separate points, while they were intended as premises leading up to my conclusion of, "So the long and the short of it is that EG screwed up on a politeness/PR standpoint, even though they didn't do anything illegal or even underhanded (from what I know now)." I'm sorry if that was unclear, so let me restate my argument in shorter terms:
- It's generally accepted in (established) sports that the team has some say in player negotiations
- This has applied in Korean esports as well even though contracts aren't as prevalent (or mandated)
- Therefore, EG/Puma, based on available information did cross a line with regards to "politeness" or "business culture", even though what they did was apparently perfectly legal and had no bad intent.
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On July 23 2011 02:12 VGhost wrote:Show nested quote +On July 23 2011 00:16 IslandLife wrote:On July 22 2011 22:44 VGhost wrote: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. Consider: 1) In the NFL, MLB, etc. we routinely get media drama when another team's management has allegedly been talking to a player without anybody telling his current team. So even going by the standards of (American) pro sports, EG was out of line here (assuming for the sake of argument that everything went down as TSL alleges). 2) From what I know of Korean culture, the "community" reigns supreme, whether that "community" is the country, the business you work for, your school, church, etc. - and especially given the esports model Korea is used to TSL clearly would have expected any negotiations to go through them even if Puma wasn't under a formal contract. So the long and the short of it is that EG screwed up on a politeness/PR standpoint, even though they didn't do anything illegal or even underhanded (from what I know now). On the other hand, TSL has been repeatedly in the news do to player dissatisfaction, leading several times to players leaving, so I'm inclined to doubt that the screw-ups are all on EG's side. 1) Well yeah, that's because those players are under contract. This is like a team complaining that someone "stole" the water boy who happened to get in the fourth quarter after a bunch of injuries and throw a winning touchdown pass. Just doesn't add up. 2) Yes, you are absolutely correct that there is a large emphasis on the "community", but it doesn't apply in this case. There is no such thing as talking with a potential employee's boss/manager when hiring in Korea. The potential employee doesn't have to say anything, and could put in their notice for any reason (scary thing is it's very common for Korean bosses to immediately fire people who give notice). If you have good rapport with your boss, though, he/she is very likely to beat the offer of the other company if they wish to keep you. It isn't seen as a betrayal or insult. If you really want to run with the "community" thing, why in the world would that coach say anything before that poor kid signed with EG? Can you even imagine what Puma is going through in his head? Listen, I've dealt with enough Korean bosses to see this as a guy who was angry with himself for not having money to sign Puma, and he lashed out without considering Puma's feelings or future for even a second. Doubt Puma has even gone through mandatory military service yet. With all that in my mind at that age I would crack! I mentioned this in a post in another thread, but it's applicable here, too. Go look up the history of iPhone releases in Korea and I think you'll see the general Korean response to foreign competition. Both you and Grimsong replied to (1) and (2) as though they were separate points, while they were intended as premises leading up to my conclusion of, "So the long and the short of it is that EG screwed up on a politeness/PR standpoint, even though they didn't do anything illegal or even underhanded (from what I know now)." I'm sorry if that was unclear, so let me restate my argument in shorter terms: - It's generally accepted in (established) sports that the team has some say in player negotiations - This has applied in Korean esports as well even though contracts aren't as prevalent (or mandated) - Therefore, EG/Puma, based on available information did cross a line with regards to "politeness" or "business culture", even though what they did was apparently perfectly legal and had no bad intent.
While you're correct in feeling EG could have handled this all better, the point isn't sticking with me right now mainly because everything in this thread is bigger than this smaller incident that keeps getting beat. I'm not here to be pro eg or korea.
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On July 23 2011 01:17 Grimsong wrote:Show nested quote +On July 23 2011 01:08 Zocat wrote:But the ball is currently in the hands of the Korean teams. Emergency SC2 Association meeting. Everyone agrees to have their players signed immediately ("or find your own EG right now!" - which might play into EG's hands, since the doubting players might switch to EG then). Team transfers to other members of the SC2 Association or "allowed" teams is ok. Transfers to teams outside of that circle is prohibited by contract aka: it's the team's decision (with player consent & a transfer sum). "Loaning" players, like MC / Nada to foreign teams still allowed (aka team decision). Then we have a mini Kespa. They could even force GOM to exclude players "marked" from their association ("or we will all pull our teams out") for example denying Puma a GSL entry. That's how I would do it Why would you do it that way? Why would you promote restrictions in a market that wants to mix and match everyone on a global level? Korea creating a system to protect Korea? It seems to be stunting the growth/health of pushing E-Sports to the next level. As a whole, it would be best bi-passing this whole Korean BW mindset. It's not 2000 anymore, and SC2 isn't a booming product in Korea. Time to move on.
Of course Korean teams would create a system to protect themselves. Stuff like the oGs-TL or oGs-SK partnerships would still be possible. Managers of teams talking to other managers. Making deals which benefit all sides.
Look at football (soccer) - there are multiple teams which basically recruit young not well known players and train them. Those teams of course arent playing for the championship. But when a player shows potential the big clubs knock at the door and are willing to pay large sums. So the training club gets something out from it (transfer sums). Sure sometimes contracts end and a player switches a team, bad luck. But that's not really the case for upcoming promising superstars since multiple big teams are interested in those (and approach the "selling" team prior to the end of the contract)
Do you believe the oGs team isnt getting anything from the SK deal? That it's only benefitting the players & SK?
Also sometimes players just arent for sale. i.e. the 1billion€ buyout clause for Ronaldo. So if Startale says "Bomber isnt for sale" and Bomber is ok with that (remember those contracts require the ok from the player) - then he just cannot be aquired.
Do I fault EG? No, hell no. They saw an opportunity to aquire a top, trained, experienced player basically for free. And they probably (since he hasnt signed the contract yet) took that opportunity.
But thinking that the Korean teams are okay with that and will not trying to protect their own interests is just stupid. Alex even said on WoC that their players have a "dont talk to other teams" clause in the contract (that they dont punish/fine the players if they reject those offers is fairly obvious).
Protecting their own interests & have the ability to enforce them via contracts with "harsh" terms is actually "pushing E-Sports to the next level".
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On July 23 2011 02:46 Zocat wrote:Show nested quote +On July 23 2011 01:17 Grimsong wrote:On July 23 2011 01:08 Zocat wrote:But the ball is currently in the hands of the Korean teams. Emergency SC2 Association meeting. Everyone agrees to have their players signed immediately ("or find your own EG right now!" - which might play into EG's hands, since the doubting players might switch to EG then). Team transfers to other members of the SC2 Association or "allowed" teams is ok. Transfers to teams outside of that circle is prohibited by contract aka: it's the team's decision (with player consent & a transfer sum). "Loaning" players, like MC / Nada to foreign teams still allowed (aka team decision). Then we have a mini Kespa. They could even force GOM to exclude players "marked" from their association ("or we will all pull our teams out") for example denying Puma a GSL entry. That's how I would do it Why would you do it that way? Why would you promote restrictions in a market that wants to mix and match everyone on a global level? Korea creating a system to protect Korea? It seoems to be stunting the growth/health of pushing E-Sports to the next level. As a whole, it would be best bi-passing this whole Korean BW mindset. It's not 2000 anymore, and SC2 isn't a booming product in Korea. Time to move on. Of course Korean teams would create a system to protect themselves. Stuff like the oGs-TL or oGs-SK partnerships would still be possible. Managers of teams talking to other managers. Making deals which benefit all sides. Look at football (soccer) - there are multiple teams which basically recruit young not well known players and train them. Those teams of course arent playing for the championship. But when a player shows potential the big clubs knock at the door and are willing to pay large sums. So the training club gets something out from it (transfer sums). Sure sometimes contracts end and a player switches a team, bad luck. But that's not really the case for upcoming promising superstars since multiple big teams are interested in those (and approach the "selling" team prior to the end of the contract) Do you believe the oGs team isnt getting anything from the SK deal? That it's only benefitting the players & SK? Also sometimes players just arent for sale. i.e. the 1billion€ buyout clause for Ronaldo. So if Startale says "Bomber isnt for sale" and Bomber is ok with that (remember those contracts require the ok from the player) - then he just cannot be aquired. Do I fault EG? No, hell no. They saw an opportunity to aquire a top, trained, experienced player basically for free. And they probably (since he hasnt signed the contract yet) took that opportunity. But thinking that the Korean teams are okay with that and will not trying to protect their own interests is just stupid. Alex even said on WoC that their players have a "dont talk to other teams" clause in the contract (that they dont punish/fine the players if they reject those offers is fairly obvious). Protecting their own interests & have the ability to enforce them via contracts with "harsh" terms is actually "pushing E-Sports to the next level".
No it isn't. That's going back to the old bw system that does NOT feasibly work on a global scale. That's pushing it back to the old, restrictive, rigid ways that alienated the bw crowd outside of Korea.
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On July 23 2011 02:12 Hawk wrote:
while the whole think with milkis on the show wasnt exactly handled great, he absolutely has a responsibility as a writer of Teamliquid--which has starcraft progamming news very clearly under the banner--to reach out to EG for an official comment. Just because there's no official release doesn't mean you just drop one side of the story and let it be without any fact checking, even if you're a translator. Shit, even fucking deadspin adheres to the very basic news rule of reaching out for comment by the party that's about to be a subject in a big controversy
People keep on bringing up shit like ESPN reporting on rumors and saying this is one in the same. it's not. That happens because they at least reach out to the team or player in question for their side of the story. If the team denies it, you report that. If the team does not respond, or tells you to fuck off, you report that. As far as I know, and it's starting to get quite difficult to follow this whole thing, this did not happen.
Milkis is not just another forum member. he is representing TL, which is an ESPORTS news site. As such, he absolutely has an obligation to do that ground work, and in the event that he can't get any info, it is clearly explained as such. While the attack wasn't exactly the greatest thing, EG absolutely has a damn good reason to be pissed that one side of the story was reported on without even being contacted. It would have helped if they released a presser right after it broke, but they're not obligated to do so, and they did it within 24 hours which is quite standard in the world of sport.
Is it defamation like Alex Garfield is claiming? No. Is it rude? Not really. Milkis was acting in his capacity as a translator, and he operated under the idea of breaking news being released as it happens. Quite frankly, I see no reason to allow time for damage control when I'm sure EG frequents these forums and could easily have given Milkis a statement, since this debacle has been going on for DAYS, not hours.
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On July 23 2011 02:12 Hawk wrote:
while the whole think with milkis on the show wasnt exactly handled great, he absolutely has a responsibility as a writer of Teamliquid--which has starcraft progamming news very clearly under the banner--to reach out to EG for an official comment. Just because there's no official release doesn't mean you just drop one side of the story and let it be without any fact checking, even if you're a translator. Shit, even fucking deadspin adheres to the very basic news rule of reaching out for comment by the party that's about to be a subject in a big controversy
People keep on bringing up shit like ESPN reporting on rumors and saying this is one in the same. it's not. That happens because they at least reach out to the team or player in question for their side of the story. If the team denies it, you report that. If the team does not respond, or tells you to fuck off, you report that. As far as I know, and it's starting to get quite difficult to follow this whole thing, this did not happen.
Milkis is not just another forum member. he is representing TL, which is an ESPORTS news site. As such, he absolutely has an obligation to do that ground work, and in the event that he can't get any info, it is clearly explained as such. While the attack wasn't exactly the greatest thing, EG absolutely has a damn good reason to be pissed that one side of the story was reported on without even being contacted. It would have helped if they released a presser right after it broke, but they're not obligated to do so, and they did it within 24 hours which is quite standard in the world of sport.
I think he is not a Tl writer.... he didn´t even write the article, he just translated it.
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On July 23 2011 03:26 Shiori wrote:Show nested quote +On July 23 2011 02:12 Hawk wrote:
while the whole think with milkis on the show wasnt exactly handled great, he absolutely has a responsibility as a writer of Teamliquid--which has starcraft progamming news very clearly under the banner--to reach out to EG for an official comment. Just because there's no official release doesn't mean you just drop one side of the story and let it be without any fact checking, even if you're a translator. Shit, even fucking deadspin adheres to the very basic news rule of reaching out for comment by the party that's about to be a subject in a big controversy
People keep on bringing up shit like ESPN reporting on rumors and saying this is one in the same. it's not. That happens because they at least reach out to the team or player in question for their side of the story. If the team denies it, you report that. If the team does not respond, or tells you to fuck off, you report that. As far as I know, and it's starting to get quite difficult to follow this whole thing, this did not happen.
Milkis is not just another forum member. he is representing TL, which is an ESPORTS news site. As such, he absolutely has an obligation to do that ground work, and in the event that he can't get any info, it is clearly explained as such. While the attack wasn't exactly the greatest thing, EG absolutely has a damn good reason to be pissed that one side of the story was reported on without even being contacted. It would have helped if they released a presser right after it broke, but they're not obligated to do so, and they did it within 24 hours which is quite standard in the world of sport. Is it defamation like Alex Garfield is claiming? No. Is it rude? Not really. Milkis was acting in his capacity as a translator, and he operated under the idea of breaking news being released as it happens. Quite frankly, I see no reason to allow time for damage control when I'm sure EG frequents these forums and could easily have given Milkis a statement, since this debacle has been going on for DAYS, not hours.
No, defamation means the claim has to be bogus. It's shitty reporting to not seek out the other side of the story, or at least note that the source you are translating from did not do this and you are not capable of doing so.
and just because EG people frequent the site doesnt mean you drop something like that and wait for them to see it. Good lord. I'm sure incontrol is within arms reach of a computer most of the day, and if you pm him saying this guy is saying this and we want a response, you'd get it or get someone who does. That's how it works.
Just because the source he lifted it from was lazy in not getting the other side of the story doesnt mean that he should just parrot the information without making note of the lack of response, or seeking it out himself.
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9070 Posts
I cant understand your point Hawk. Milkis did a translation, it was purely a report of another article and not a piece of journalism in its own right. AG's point is completely nonsensical in every possible way.
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On July 23 2011 01:36 Silent331 wrote:First off dont sign your own post, its in the rules. I have a statement that i take issue with. Show nested quote +Give some thought to the players who are on the B-teams, with no formal contracts and are struggling to get by. Eventually, one day, the team decides to cull them. That's it - you're off the team. You can't stay in our house anymore, you can't practice with us. It's just not worth it, you're not good enough.
Get out.
Not everyone gets to win Dreamhack. What happens to the hundreds of players that don't make it?
This situation is not unrealistic at all. Some of you might be saying that the "Korean culture" would prevent such an undesirable situation from occurring. But the reality is that should events line up in a fashion where this could happen: it will happen - because this is a business, a cut-throat, no-holds barred, sport. First off you describe a theoretical situation without showing the entire situation. If a player gets let go in this way you have to look at why the team let them go, not just the fact that they did. They are a business, and like any business they must survive int he face of completion. A player may be let go because the team only has so many resources at their disposal, and in a world of competition they need to provide the best wages for their players and the best conditions for them, or else another team with a higher wage and better conditions will snatch them away. This is analogous to cars. If i make cars at 100$ a car, and another company can make the same car at 90$ a car, I am going to have to cut costs or go out of business, putting hundreds of workers out of work because I did not want to shut down 1 plant and move it somewhere cheaper. What I am trying to say by this is that even know a player being let go is never a good thing, for e-sports as a whole, it increases conditions for players and players wages through competition. Some players and teams will fail but the e-sports scene will progress, continuing to improve and become better and better. So if you attempt to protect players or teams in any way you are hindering the expansion and growth of e-sports on the corporate level. This is because by protecting them you are eliminating the need for constant improvement through competition, because you are weakening the competitive environment.
The OP is not claiming that contracted players never leave their team, even if they play badly. Just that for the length of their contract they have security. When their contract is expiring they can make plans for then, instead of 1 day being told that they're not on the team and have to move out.
I like the idea of a democratic global body to regulate ESports, but there also needs to be a players association so they can protect themselves.
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On July 22 2011 13:03 Krehlmar wrote:
Explain it as whatever you want.
It was still subvert and wrong morally, "business", "Dog eat dog" and "Survival of the fittest" can go fuck itself, I don't like it and I don't care what explanation you'd give us.
If that is what you'd like eSports to become I don't want any part of it, nor do I want to spend any money on that.
Yes there needs to be a better standard, yes there needs to be contracts.
But I will never think what EG did was anything but sneaky and underhanded.
Posts like this are so embarrassing it's hard for me to tell if they are trolls or really just that ignorant.
Great OP. It think it is all very serious and important stuff, even if I think that people are blowing this whole Puma/TSL/EG matter WAAAAAAAAY out of proportion, because TL is just like every other internet community and loves stupid drama.
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On July 23 2011 03:42 Hawk wrote:Show nested quote +On July 23 2011 03:26 Shiori wrote:On July 23 2011 02:12 Hawk wrote:
while the whole think with milkis on the show wasnt exactly handled great, he absolutely has a responsibility as a writer of Teamliquid--which has starcraft progamming news very clearly under the banner--to reach out to EG for an official comment. Just because there's no official release doesn't mean you just drop one side of the story and let it be without any fact checking, even if you're a translator. Shit, even fucking deadspin adheres to the very basic news rule of reaching out for comment by the party that's about to be a subject in a big controversy
People keep on bringing up shit like ESPN reporting on rumors and saying this is one in the same. it's not. That happens because they at least reach out to the team or player in question for their side of the story. If the team denies it, you report that. If the team does not respond, or tells you to fuck off, you report that. As far as I know, and it's starting to get quite difficult to follow this whole thing, this did not happen.
Milkis is not just another forum member. he is representing TL, which is an ESPORTS news site. As such, he absolutely has an obligation to do that ground work, and in the event that he can't get any info, it is clearly explained as such. While the attack wasn't exactly the greatest thing, EG absolutely has a damn good reason to be pissed that one side of the story was reported on without even being contacted. It would have helped if they released a presser right after it broke, but they're not obligated to do so, and they did it within 24 hours which is quite standard in the world of sport. Is it defamation like Alex Garfield is claiming? No. Is it rude? Not really. Milkis was acting in his capacity as a translator, and he operated under the idea of breaking news being released as it happens. Quite frankly, I see no reason to allow time for damage control when I'm sure EG frequents these forums and could easily have given Milkis a statement, since this debacle has been going on for DAYS, not hours. No, defamation means the claim has to be bogus. It's shitty reporting to not seek out the other side of the story, or at least note that the source you are translating from did not do this and you are not capable of doing so. and just because EG people frequent the site doesnt mean you drop something like that and wait for them to see it. Good lord. I'm sure incontrol is within arms reach of a computer most of the day, and if you pm him saying this guy is saying this and we want a response, you'd get it or get someone who does. That's how it works. Just because the source he lifted it from was lazy in not getting the other side of the story doesnt mean that he should just parrot the information without making note of the lack of response, or seeking it out himself.
Do you think EG was in the right with their acquisition of Puma?
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On July 23 2011 05:53 Sideburn wrote:Show nested quote +On July 22 2011 13:03 Krehlmar wrote:
Explain it as whatever you want.
It was still subvert and wrong morally, "business", "Dog eat dog" and "Survival of the fittest" can go fuck itself, I don't like it and I don't care what explanation you'd give us.
If that is what you'd like eSports to become I don't want any part of it, nor do I want to spend any money on that.
Yes there needs to be a better standard, yes there needs to be contracts.
But I will never think what EG did was anything but sneaky and underhanded. Posts like this are so embarrassing it's hard for me to tell if they are trolls or really just that ignorant. Great OP. It think it is all very serious and important stuff, even if I think that people are blowing this whole Puma/TSL/EG matter WAAAAAAAAY out of proportion, because TL is just like every other internet community and loves stupid drama.
Exactly. People need to detach themselves from Puma/EG/TSL and realize this is MUCH bigger, broader, and more important than that.
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just should clear something up: EG's Garfield never used the word defamation, not once.
i'm just implying that his "open question" and his follow-up reasoning (particularly the part about causing damage to the EG brand) is insinuating that.
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On July 23 2011 02:50 Grimsong wrote:Show nested quote +On July 23 2011 02:46 Zocat wrote:On July 23 2011 01:17 Grimsong wrote:On July 23 2011 01:08 Zocat wrote:But the ball is currently in the hands of the Korean teams. Emergency SC2 Association meeting. Everyone agrees to have their players signed immediately ("or find your own EG right now!" - which might play into EG's hands, since the doubting players might switch to EG then). Team transfers to other members of the SC2 Association or "allowed" teams is ok. Transfers to teams outside of that circle is prohibited by contract aka: it's the team's decision (with player consent & a transfer sum). "Loaning" players, like MC / Nada to foreign teams still allowed (aka team decision). Then we have a mini Kespa. They could even force GOM to exclude players "marked" from their association ("or we will all pull our teams out") for example denying Puma a GSL entry. That's how I would do it Why would you do it that way? Why would you promote restrictions in a market that wants to mix and match everyone on a global level? Korea creating a system to protect Korea? It seoems to be stunting the growth/health of pushing E-Sports to the next level. As a whole, it would be best bi-passing this whole Korean BW mindset. It's not 2000 anymore, and SC2 isn't a booming product in Korea. Time to move on. Of course Korean teams would create a system to protect themselves. Stuff like the oGs-TL or oGs-SK partnerships would still be possible. Managers of teams talking to other managers. Making deals which benefit all sides. Look at football (soccer) - there are multiple teams which basically recruit young not well known players and train them. Those teams of course arent playing for the championship. But when a player shows potential the big clubs knock at the door and are willing to pay large sums. So the training club gets something out from it (transfer sums). Sure sometimes contracts end and a player switches a team, bad luck. But that's not really the case for upcoming promising superstars since multiple big teams are interested in those (and approach the "selling" team prior to the end of the contract) Do you believe the oGs team isnt getting anything from the SK deal? That it's only benefitting the players & SK? Also sometimes players just arent for sale. i.e. the 1billion€ buyout clause for Ronaldo. So if Startale says "Bomber isnt for sale" and Bomber is ok with that (remember those contracts require the ok from the player) - then he just cannot be aquired. Do I fault EG? No, hell no. They saw an opportunity to aquire a top, trained, experienced player basically for free. And they probably (since he hasnt signed the contract yet) took that opportunity. But thinking that the Korean teams are okay with that and will not trying to protect their own interests is just stupid. Alex even said on WoC that their players have a "dont talk to other teams" clause in the contract (that they dont punish/fine the players if they reject those offers is fairly obvious). Protecting their own interests & have the ability to enforce them via contracts with "harsh" terms is actually "pushing E-Sports to the next level". No it isn't. That's going back to the old bw system that does NOT feasibly work on a global scale. That's pushing it back to the old, restrictive, rigid ways that alienated the bw crowd outside of Korea.
Please attack my proposed system - or the arguments / examples I bring. Dont just use a broadside argument "It's not feasable that this works" plz.
Especially since I basically described a system how global football works. Which clearly shows it DOES work on a global scale.
Korean teams have and foster talents. They want a compensation if those players switch teams. Contracts & transfer fees are a system to enforce those compensations. case in point: football.
It's retarded to think that Korean teams should just let their players (who they spent money on to train) switch to a team which is just able to offer more money without gaining anything from it.
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On July 23 2011 01:08 Zocat wrote:But the ball is currently in the hands of the Korean teams. Emergency SC2 Association meeting. Everyone agrees to have their players signed immediately ("or find your own EG right now!" - which might play into EG's hands, since the doubting players might switch to EG then). Team transfers to other members of the SC2 Association or "allowed" teams is ok. Transfers to teams outside of that circle is prohibited by contract aka: it's the team's decision (with player consent & a transfer sum). "Loaning" players, like MC / Nada to foreign teams still allowed (aka team decision). Then we have a mini Kespa. They could even force GOM to exclude players "marked" from their association ("or we will all pull our teams out") for example denying Puma a GSL entry. That's how I would do it
On July 23 2011 10:35 Waxangel wrote:DRG FIGHTING!!!!!! Oh, here's a semi article I had written up before I stopped trying to make it any good: Did the EG's pursuit of TSL's Puma close the gates for many Koreans? As much as EG's Alex Garfield espoused the the need for Korea to open itself up to the international way of ESPORTS business, he may very well have become a detriment to his own cause. Following the the news of Puma's enticement by a foreign team, Korea's two major SC II media sites PlayXP and ThisIsGame wasted no time publishing editorials calling for the hasty implementation of protectionary measures from the Starcraft II Conference (S2Con) of Korea. In fact, ThisIsGame reported that GomTV and S2Con had already felt the need the create protectionary measures before the EG-TSL ordeal went down. If that were not enough, S2Con's own columnist also chipped in with his opinion, brutally criticizing his own organization for their failure to protect the interests of Korean teams and players in this regard. That's not to say that we won't see more deals like that between MVP and Complexity or oGs and SK. In those deals, the original Korean team retains effective 'ownership' of the player while the foreign company is merely subsidizing his overseas activities. But the line seems to be drawn at Korean players making complete moves to foreign teams, and it may soon become a very difficult one to cross. Sources: Starcraft II Conference: http://s2con.com/xe/column/8373ThisIsGame: http://www.thisisgame.com/board/view.php?id=710199&board=&category=13439&subcategory=&page=1&best=&searchmode=&search=&orderby=&token=PlayXP: http://www.playxp.com/sc2/news/view.php?article_id=3209931Weapon of Choice: http://www.onemoregame.tv/index.php/shows/weapon-of-choice.html
Are you a prophet? KeSPA 2 set in motion already
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so apt using the photo of Tevez..The man is money grabbing Cunt.
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I think what people forget is Esports is about gaming! At the core and heart of our community is a game. Sure there needs to be more regulations and such, but i can rapidly see Esports becoming al about the $$$. Where nobody random public players can no longer try to qualify into major tournaments. The last thing we want is to see Esports become the NFL, with a CBA. While growing esports is the #1 goal for gamers, we must always remember that we play GAMES!
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On July 22 2011 12:34 Milkis wrote:
I think one of the points I really failed to bring out was that it *is* unprofessional for SC2 in Korea to not have contracts. I just wanted to provide the background on why that was the case, and I guess it didn't go through very well. In no way does the Koreans do not want contracts -- this is what they want to aim for as the SC2 scene grows.
So I do apologize for butchering that. Very, Very, badly.
Edit this into the OP Please.
Great read, well researched and documented. Amazing similarities between Puma and the English cricket captain. Well written.
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I think that teams should contract their players, but that some organization (like a union) should set some frame conditions on those contracts. Contracts with Kespa stated that you are not allowed to participate in other tournaments, that surely is not very nice. :-/
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Great post, well though out
I think I probably agree with you on most points once you sit down and start arguing it out and I think what you are describing is somewhat inevitable.
the real problem is the cross country borders and the fact that contracts in one country will not be valid in another.
Then you ahve to consider that contracts really do not benefit employees all that much because there are already a lot of laws in place (in uk anyway) that you simply cannot sign away.
The key thing is having a notice period and terms of severance ... a months notice + or some kind of financial consideration
the key thing though is to avoid what i hear about in the sc1 world ... people are free to do what they want and a contract that prohibits a player leaving for another team is not in the interests of everyone.
the point is that a pro gamers profession is to play games for money - the systems you want are already in place, its just a case of formaliising the employer - employee relationship.
However it shoudl be noted that there is no way id agree to standard terms of employment in america. Those guys are insane ... i imagine most non-european countries would inspire the same thought in me tbh  Yanks are worked to the bone (whether they know it or not)
By the way i carry out a lot of business on the basis of handshakes and verbal agreements ... there is nothing wrong with them. they are legally binding, just make sure you have witnesses. The problem with written contracts is that lawyers have to get involved and then costs soar - adn the contracts still wont be water tight because ... well lawyers are bastards
the problem with setting unions up istha t they need to be paid ... they will end up essentially serving the people that pay them ... which will be the teams and so you will not achieve what you are intending. There is not enough money in epsorts yet to have unions imo ... much better to use existing systems in various countries.
The problem with a lot of business - which is not true with work over the internet - is that it is centralised and most laws reflect this. Right now things are beginning to be distributed to a much greater degree. What i am trying to say is that a lot of the struvtures and systems are in place but for them to work with international teams each team needs to respect the local laws and rights of its players - which may vary accross players. Its about being open, reasonable and honest with each other.
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My main problem with all that is going on around professionnalism and contract is that, eventually, if the players are contracted in a way that prevent them from playing in particular foreign event whenever they want (even if it mean, for exemple, not going to GSL), then all the idea around making the scene more professionnal will in fact result in the same situation than BW: a korean pro SC2 scene who behave like a micro environment, closed in itself, and with no or almost no link with the foreign scene except the few foreigners who will try to go for the korean dream.
From this point of view, EG's move will have one and one only result : making the korean scene withdraw in itself.
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My computer lagged and for some unknown reason, I posted the same thing two times...
Sorry, can someone just delete this ?
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Honestly, e-sports is too small to apply cut-throat business guidelines like these.
No one seems to be arguing that EG's methods helped grow e-sports. The best argument put forth seems to be that if e-sports want to be big, then it needs to start acting big.
This is reminding me of a band thinking they become famous by trashing hotel rooms. You got it the other way around.
This is trying to put the bull before the horn.
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There only seems to be one thing missing from the argument at hand, and that is the differences among cultures. I don't know what the standards are for things like this in Korea, but in the U.S. it is cut and dry. Contract, or no contract? No contract, do whatever the fuck you want. I'm currently living in China, and little things that are cut and dry in the states are a handful here, and vice versa. It's something to take into consideration. It's not always about laws, but about the general practices of people.
Sorry if someone already brought this up.
To summarize:
As players of Starcraft who love the community, the game, the mechanics, the units, the lore, and the players; it's easy to forget that maybe we're talking about rooted differences based on culture that have led to a misunderstanding.
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It seems like a lot of people (not saying op... at all) are confusing "it was inevitable, this marks a point in esports, it's good for the growth of starcraft" as EG having acceptable behavior.
Yes, EG taught a lesson to esports that would inevitably happen if players were continually not on contracts. It was completely within legal bounds and as competition it is a logical move to make. It's still unethical. Really, the only thing EG sacrificed here, IMO, is respect. I will respect them much less as a company now, other companies will respect them less, and i'm sure a lot of other TL posters and the SC community will agree.
If they're out to make money and do it legally, i guess that shouldn't matter to them but there are other teams and organizations that wouldn't do this, and those teams have a much bigger place in meh heart. <3 TL!
On July 22 2011 12:49 ComusLoM wrote:
1. Buy Player disregarding the players native culture
2. Either leave him in Korea or bring him to an incomplete team house without coaching or suitably skilled practice partners (eg says they have something planned not sure what)
3. Have player represent you either in Korea (good luck) or foreign events where he will be beaten by Koreans on real teams.
I just don't understand what EG is thinking with this kind of move Puma will be terrible in 3 months if he stays outside of the Korean practice ethos with coach and partners. And they'll be left where they started.
I was wondering the same thing. Although more than this being a stupid move by EG, it seems like a stupid move by puma.
EG wants a player with fame, check.
A player that can help their players play well, check.
Lastly a player that is better than the ones they have recruited, check.
Puma doesn't have to keep winning tournaments, cause the players they have now aren't winning any as it is, but if he helps the team get better, bulks up their lineup and brings them attention, and even if he happens to drop in skill level, he can still maintain being better than a lot of the EG guys, and is all-in-all a great deal for EG.
Alex did say that he wouldn't sign him if he didn't believe that he could support and nurture his talent as well. I think the best option would be for him to stay in korea honestly, and that would still be worse than being in a house full of korean players... So ultimately, it would seem the SK deal is much more reasonable. I will be waiting to see what mystical practice plans they have lined up for Puma though.
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This is a very well thought-out post and is very interesting. I agree with most of what you say. It is time for the eSports scene to get professional. And I mean real professional, not just acting professional but the way teams and players are run/managed needs to be professional. As you said this is no longer kids stuff, this is serious shit.
Now to all those who are saying, "well we didn't have this problem with Brood War so why are we worrying about this now?", I say the following. The way that SC2 has exploded in the foreigner scene has caused it to already be bigger than Brood War ever was in the foreigner scene. Look at all the tournaments and sponsors and foreign SC2 teams. Like holy shit, MLG Columbus had 22.5 million stream views in 3 days, when did Brood War ever come close to that? It didn't.
I'm excited for eSports and where it is going. I really want to see this be successful and I will personally do what I can to support the scene.
eSports FIGHTING!
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On July 24 2011 15:12 OPL3SA2 wrote:
Honestly, e-sports is too small to apply cut-throat business guidelines like these.
No one seems to be arguing that EG's methods helped grow e-sports. The best argument put forth seems to be that if e-sports want to be big, then it needs to start acting big.
This is reminding me of a band thinking they become famous by trashing hotel rooms. You got it the other way around.
This is trying to put the bull before the horn.
I'm not so sure it is. Look at how many new people SC2 has introduced into the eSports scene in a year since it was released. Look at the viewer counts that the big tournaments get. Look at the big time sponsors coming into the scene that weren't here a year ago. This is serious shit.
I do keep in mind, however, that it is very possible for things to start going backwards if things are not handled right. These big tournaments need to continue to grow in quality and entertainment value. teams need to handle themselves professionally, as do players. And this is where the OP's post comes into play.
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On July 23 2011 05:53 Sideburn wrote:Show nested quote +On July 22 2011 13:03 Krehlmar wrote:
Explain it as whatever you want.
It was still subvert and wrong morally, "business", "Dog eat dog" and "Survival of the fittest" can go fuck itself, I don't like it and I don't care what explanation you'd give us.
If that is what you'd like eSports to become I don't want any part of it, nor do I want to spend any money on that.
Yes there needs to be a better standard, yes there needs to be contracts.
But I will never think what EG did was anything but sneaky and underhanded. Posts like this are so embarrassing it's hard for me to tell if they are trolls or really just that ignorant. Great OP. It think it is all very serious and important stuff, even if I think that people are blowing this whole Puma/TSL/EG matter WAAAAAAAAY out of proportion, because TL is just like every other internet community and loves stupid drama.
They're a combination of Trolls and Idiots, so Troldiots. Since, obviously, they can't read but what they do read they don't understand.
Good OP, btw, but I did want to point out two things:
- SC2con won't become KeSPA 2.0.
SC2con is more like a player's union than KeSPA, which is the body making up the sponsors. That's going to be a big difference between SC:BW and SC2.
- You can get in legal trouble for statements you make in the Western world. It just depends on the jurisdiction.
As an American that keeps tabs on the UK, I know well enough that the UK doesn't have First Amendment protections and media outlets are constantly be hit up for Libel & Slander. And, the proof requirements are pretty low. The USA is generally the leader in the regard of making anyone posting on the Internet have the privileges of a Journalist, so there's no "fine line" between them anymore.
So, while Alex had a point, of which he probably didn't need to bring up with Milkis around (as it was going to come off as an attack, either way), he had a very legitimate point, one which could eventually come back to bite someone in the ass on one of these forums. As the "business" of Esports gets bigger, it'll eventually hit a point of being a big problem in some instance.
Still, EG really needs a community relationships "person". Doesn't even need to be a full-time person. They could probably pay a fan in Tshirts to keep a handle on the community.
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On July 24 2011 15:18 SxYSpAz wrote:It seems like a lot of people (not saying op... at all) are confusing "it was inevitable, this marks a point in esports, it's good for the growth of starcraft" as EG having acceptable behavior. Yes, EG taught a lesson to esports that would inevitably happen if players were continually not on contracts. It was completely within legal bounds and as competition it is a logical move to make. It's still unethical. Really, the only thing EG sacrificed here, IMO, is respect. I will respect them much less as a company now, other companies will respect them less, and i'm sure a lot of other TL posters and the SC community will agree. If they're out to make money and do it legally, i guess that shouldn't matter to them but there are other teams and organizations that wouldn't do this, and those teams have a much bigger place in meh heart. <3 TL! Show nested quote +On July 22 2011 12:49 ComusLoM wrote:
1. Buy Player disregarding the players native culture
2. Either leave him in Korea or bring him to an incomplete team house without coaching or suitably skilled practice partners (eg says they have something planned not sure what)
3. Have player represent you either in Korea (good luck) or foreign events where he will be beaten by Koreans on real teams.
I just don't understand what EG is thinking with this kind of move Puma will be terrible in 3 months if he stays outside of the Korean practice ethos with coach and partners. And they'll be left where they started. I was wondering the same thing. Although more than this being a stupid move by EG, it seems like a stupid move by puma. EG wants a player with fame, check. A player that can help their players play well, check. Lastly a player that is better than the ones they have recruited, check. Puma doesn't have to keep winning tournaments, cause the players they have now aren't winning any as it is, but if he helps the team get better, bulks up their lineup and brings them attention, and even if he happens to drop in skill level, he can still maintain being better than a lot of the EG guys, and is all-in-all a great deal for EG. Alex did say that he wouldn't sign him if he didn't believe that he could support and nurture his talent as well. I think the best option would be for him to stay in korea honestly, and that would still be worse than being in a house full of korean players... So ultimately, it would seem the SK deal is much more reasonable. I will be waiting to see what mystical practice plans they have lined up for Puma though.
The only actual lessons to take from this whole situation is these two:
- Follow up the discussion the player & coach has. EG took Puma at his word, which apparently was accurate, but the Coach wasn't happy after the fact.
- Coach Lee pulled a completely bush-league move whining to the public. At this point, it was just whining. And, while I'd wouldn't be too happy, you don't go whining to the media. You call up and yell at EG.
The truth is that EG was approaching players, they find out that a guy in Ro4 @ NASL, who 3-killed Prime the week before (including Polt & MKP), was under no form of contract. They talk more, map out what they can do for Puma, and agree he should talk to his Coach about the offer. This, in every facet of life, is good business practice. The problem is the Coach took it well, then didn't take it well.
The real big problem was that Coach Lee went to the media, rather than calling up Alex and yelling at him. Airing a grievance in public, especially since the main issue is your own short-sightedness, just isn't good business or a good move, period. If he hadn't caught EG flatfooted (which they definitely were, same with the SOTG situation), most here would be raging hard at TSL. Coach Lee told Puma he was okay with him going to EG, throws a "going away" party for Puma, then goes crying to the Korean SC2 sites, complaining about the mean-old foreign company buying up a player he didn't have under contract. While he may be an emotional guy and a solid player coach (from all accounts), his business sense is really, really bad. TSL simply won't survive much longer, more than likely, if he likes to back-stab people like that.
So, this actually will, in the end, be a good thing for the scene. SC2con has to start acting smarter and the Korean teams will have to step up their business side of things.
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On July 23 2011 02:12 VGhost wrote:Show nested quote +On July 23 2011 00:16 IslandLife wrote:On July 22 2011 22:44 VGhost wrote: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. Consider: 1) In the NFL, MLB, etc. we routinely get media drama when another team's management has allegedly been talking to a player without anybody telling his current team. So even going by the standards of (American) pro sports, EG was out of line here (assuming for the sake of argument that everything went down as TSL alleges). 2) From what I know of Korean culture, the "community" reigns supreme, whether that "community" is the country, the business you work for, your school, church, etc. - and especially given the esports model Korea is used to TSL clearly would have expected any negotiations to go through them even if Puma wasn't under a formal contract. So the long and the short of it is that EG screwed up on a politeness/PR standpoint, even though they didn't do anything illegal or even underhanded (from what I know now). On the other hand, TSL has been repeatedly in the news do to player dissatisfaction, leading several times to players leaving, so I'm inclined to doubt that the screw-ups are all on EG's side. 1) Well yeah, that's because those players are under contract. This is like a team complaining that someone "stole" the water boy who happened to get in the fourth quarter after a bunch of injuries and throw a winning touchdown pass. Just doesn't add up. 2) Yes, you are absolutely correct that there is a large emphasis on the "community", but it doesn't apply in this case. There is no such thing as talking with a potential employee's boss/manager when hiring in Korea. The potential employee doesn't have to say anything, and could put in their notice for any reason (scary thing is it's very common for Korean bosses to immediately fire people who give notice). If you have good rapport with your boss, though, he/she is very likely to beat the offer of the other company if they wish to keep you. It isn't seen as a betrayal or insult. If you really want to run with the "community" thing, why in the world would that coach say anything before that poor kid signed with EG? Can you even imagine what Puma is going through in his head? Listen, I've dealt with enough Korean bosses to see this as a guy who was angry with himself for not having money to sign Puma, and he lashed out without considering Puma's feelings or future for even a second. Doubt Puma has even gone through mandatory military service yet. With all that in my mind at that age I would crack! I mentioned this in a post in another thread, but it's applicable here, too. Go look up the history of iPhone releases in Korea and I think you'll see the general Korean response to foreign competition. Both you and Grimsong replied to (1) and (2) as though they were separate points, while they were intended as premises leading up to my conclusion of, "So the long and the short of it is that EG screwed up on a politeness/PR standpoint, even though they didn't do anything illegal or even underhanded (from what I know now)." I'm sorry if that was unclear, so let me restate my argument in shorter terms: - It's generally accepted in (established) sports that the team has some say in player negotiations - This has applied in Korean esports as well even though contracts aren't as prevalent (or mandated) - Therefore, EG/Puma, based on available information did cross a line with regards to "politeness" or "business culture", even though what they did was apparently perfectly legal and had no bad intent.
Well I've been trying to be delicate but I'll just try to sum up what I've been trying to say in multiple threads. TSL cannot simultaneously have kids on their team without a contract and claim they have a right to be contacted about transfers.
If you would like a terribly in-depth explanation PM me and I'd be happy to send you one, but absolutely no Korean businesses work like that. I completely understand your reasoning, but it only works with a contract. There are no cultural grounds or precedence for claiming you have a say in an employee's decisions if they are not under contract. Because they are not an employee! And I will blatantly say that I think most Korean teams would not have reacted the way coach Lee did.
His team is failing, he did not act like an adult, and quite frankly he is bending the truth to put it nicely. Take a second and put yourself in his shoes. Would you spoil a kid's chance to make a living doing what he loves, spoil a kid's chance to broaden his cultural horizons, and injure a kid's image in the eyes of the SC2 community? I think a responsible adult would keep his mouth shut and be happy that a young kid has an opportunity that you couldn't provide him.
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Really great article. I agree with almost 99% in the article. Good work
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Just because it's legal doesn't mean we can't say it was still a dick move.
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On July 23 2011 02:12 Hawk wrote:
while the whole think with milkis on the show wasnt exactly handled great, he absolutely has a responsibility as a writer of Teamliquid--which has starcraft progamming news very clearly under the banner--to reach out to EG for an official comment. Just because there's no official release doesn't mean you just drop one side of the story and let it be without any fact checking, even if you're a translator. Shit, even fucking deadspin adheres to the very basic news rule of reaching out for comment by the party that's about to be a subject in a big controversy
This is wrong in just about every sense. The story is that Puma left TSL for EG. There is no opinion or spin necessary. All issues of motivation are background that are always released after the news breaks. That's the reality of modern news.
What's more, the news was not broken by Milkis, but by the Korean sites he translated and summarized for this community. His role is entirely removed from that of reporting, his responsibility is to be accurate in his translation, nothing more.
And, as if that wasn't enough, Milkis asked SirScoots to say something about it on twitter, fulfilling the role that EG has improperly assigned to him. But all we got for the many hours between OP and WoC was trolling from scoots and incontrol on twitter, and complete silence. Not the actions you can take on your way to claiming victim status.
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On July 24 2011 17:16 Taf the Ghost wrote:Show nested quote +On July 24 2011 15:18 SxYSpAz wrote:It seems like a lot of people (not saying op... at all) are confusing "it was inevitable, this marks a point in esports, it's good for the growth of starcraft" as EG having acceptable behavior. Yes, EG taught a lesson to esports that would inevitably happen if players were continually not on contracts. It was completely within legal bounds and as competition it is a logical move to make. It's still unethical. Really, the only thing EG sacrificed here, IMO, is respect. I will respect them much less as a company now, other companies will respect them less, and i'm sure a lot of other TL posters and the SC community will agree. If they're out to make money and do it legally, i guess that shouldn't matter to them but there are other teams and organizations that wouldn't do this, and those teams have a much bigger place in meh heart. <3 TL! On July 22 2011 12:49 ComusLoM wrote:
1. Buy Player disregarding the players native culture
2. Either leave him in Korea or bring him to an incomplete team house without coaching or suitably skilled practice partners (eg says they have something planned not sure what)
3. Have player represent you either in Korea (good luck) or foreign events where he will be beaten by Koreans on real teams.
I just don't understand what EG is thinking with this kind of move Puma will be terrible in 3 months if he stays outside of the Korean practice ethos with coach and partners. And they'll be left where they started. I was wondering the same thing. Although more than this being a stupid move by EG, it seems like a stupid move by puma. EG wants a player with fame, check. A player that can help their players play well, check. Lastly a player that is better than the ones they have recruited, check. Puma doesn't have to keep winning tournaments, cause the players they have now aren't winning any as it is, but if he helps the team get better, bulks up their lineup and brings them attention, and even if he happens to drop in skill level, he can still maintain being better than a lot of the EG guys, and is all-in-all a great deal for EG. Alex did say that he wouldn't sign him if he didn't believe that he could support and nurture his talent as well. I think the best option would be for him to stay in korea honestly, and that would still be worse than being in a house full of korean players... So ultimately, it would seem the SK deal is much more reasonable. I will be waiting to see what mystical practice plans they have lined up for Puma though. The only actual lessons to take from this whole situation is these two: - Follow up the discussion the player & coach has. EG took Puma at his word, which apparently was accurate, but the Coach wasn't happy after the fact. - Coach Lee pulled a completely bush-league move whining to the public. At this point, it was just whining. And, while I'd wouldn't be too happy, you don't go whining to the media. You call up and yell at EG. The truth is that EG was approaching players, they find out that a guy in Ro4 @ NASL, who 3-killed Prime the week before (including Polt & MKP), was under no form of contract. They talk more, map out what they can do for Puma, and agree he should talk to his Coach about the offer. This, in every facet of life, is good business practice. The problem is the Coach took it well, then didn't take it well. The real big problem was that Coach Lee went to the media, rather than calling up Alex and yelling at him. Airing a grievance in public, especially since the main issue is your own short-sightedness, just isn't good business or a good move, period. If he hadn't caught EG flatfooted (which they definitely were, same with the SOTG situation), most here would be raging hard at TSL. Coach Lee told Puma he was okay with him going to EG, throws a "going away" party for Puma, then goes crying to the Korean SC2 sites, complaining about the mean-old foreign company buying up a player he didn't have under contract. While he may be an emotional guy and a solid player coach (from all accounts), his business sense is really, really bad. TSL simply won't survive much longer, more than likely, if he likes to back-stab people like that. So, this actually will, in the end, be a good thing for the scene. SC2con has to start acting smarter and the Korean teams will have to step up their business side of things.
I dont get how people claim that coach Lee's "whining" was a bad move. It was an excellent move. According to Americans, its all business, ethics has no place in today's society. If we take that stance Coach Lee definitely won with his "whining". I can guarantee you a lot more people will be supporting TSL now, including myself. I used to see them as a failing team but now I want them to be the underdog and prove themselves.
In terms of EG, sure they poached an A-class player by abusing the Korean trust system but they sure as hell didn't get him for free. Coach Lee literally destroyed them. Most koreans hate them. Most Foreigners (according to polls) also seem to have an unfavorable view of EG and their conduct. Puma will have a hard time developing due to Language barrier/different skill levels, if anything he will go back a few steps in terms of development. Puma's relationship with Koreans is forever tarnished aka less practice partners, even FD who also ditched TSL (in a more manly manner) had stuff to say to him.
If anything Coach Lee's "whining" was a definite win for TSL and a major blow to EG given the circumstances. They also deserve it. If anything, its EG that has a poor/short-sighted business approach. Lets poach a player from the center of Sc2 talent and make them hate us. Then we blame them for destroying e-sports. I'm sure that's good business for the future. Then again, not surprised since its Alex Garfield who has continuously done this without remorse time and time again from game to game.
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-Let's call it for example International ESports Federation
-IEF sanctioned tournaments would be the best tournaments with the biggest prize money because of benefits/prestige to tournament organizer (what exactly, i do not know)
-All pro players and teams that want to be part of IEF tournaments must join IEF. There would be some nominal yearly fee, nothing big.
-IEF can ban, warn players or teams (puma controversy)
-IEF can set rules that players and teams must obey (contact coach lee first
-If you don't like how IEF handle things, you can put up your own association to compete against it. Extreme example of this is boxing with multiple competing associations.
This is a system most sports use. And some other poster said korea has an association like this but it is not global.
Can this be supported right now? I dunno, eSports is still really small.
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On July 22 2011 12:07 57 Corvette wrote:
I don't see why things are so different with Starcraft 2 teams compared to teams from Brood war. Was there many/any conflicts like this in the past?
Why all of a sudden is this all important to people?
Because eSports wasn't quite as popular in the BW high, Now that it's gaining interest, it will be more corporatized, like an actual physical sport.
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On July 25 2011 07:38 FluffyBinLaden wrote:Show nested quote +On July 22 2011 12:07 57 Corvette wrote:
I don't see why things are so different with Starcraft 2 teams compared to teams from Brood war. Was there many/any conflicts like this in the past?
Why all of a sudden is this all important to people? Because eSports wasn't quite as popular in the BW high, Now that it's gaining interest, it will be more corporatized, like an actual physical sport.
I would argue that BW is and has been MORE formalized and corporate for quite some time. Teams can't just have players stick around with no contract or license - if you thought KESPA-run B-teamers had the short end of the stick, it's arguable that young SC2 B-teamers are even worse off if they don't have contracts or salaries AT ALL.
Personally, I'm really happy to see this article - I was worried that I was the only one who saw the EG-TSL-Puma incident play out and was wondering some of the things that this article points out - that the lack of contracts sucks for both the players AND the teams. Puma's no newbie to formal team contracts with a background as a pretty strong BW B-teamer - he's experienced enough to make this decision, even though it apparently frustrated and saddened him. If this is what it takes for TSL to realize that verbal promises and agreements don't give their players the same security as a contract, so be it. It's not pretty, but it is what it is - a business, a formal sport with professional players on formalized teams. Hopefully TSL's realization will carry over to the rest of the Korean SC2 teams.
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I think that in a roundabout way AG does have a point, he's just not phrasing it particularly well. The OP is correct in that Journalists "get things wrong" all the time, but you the article do not always gets laughed away and updated with a factually correct version.
If a newspaper publishes a factually incorrect article which cause damage to an organization or an individual then that newspaper is liable for defamation. If an organization suffers financial loss (or perceived financial loss) due to the error then they are within their rights to try to claim back these losses from the publication (although in the US, the first amendment offers some weighty protection to publishers).
The article printed on TL did contain errors that misrepresented AG's company. If this article directly - or indirectly - results in Puma pulling out of the deal then this would have a direct impact on EG's business, and there could be perceived financial loss.
I think the mistake AG made was attacking Milkis, who had no culpability whatsoever and was in no way at fault. If anyone is "to blame" it is TeamLiqiuid as in this scenario they are the publishers and are responsible for the factual content of what they publish. But then of course you get into this whole minefield of "what is news and what is the forum?" and the argument descends into mudslinging.
I would agree with AG that TL does need to show a degree of responsibility when publishing articles, even if said articles were originally from the forum or blogsphere. However I think that with TL's heritage as a community portal and with the open nature of the internet that there is always going to be close-to-the-knuckle journalism and you would be naive to think otherwise.
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What errors did TL publish?
They simply published a translation of a report from Korea which was predominately quotes from Coach Lee. If Coach Lee is wrong, then he'd be liable for defamation (or libel, depending on your region) since, should EG be able to prove damage in court that their brand has been damaged, truth is not a defense to defamation in South Korea.
TL hasn't done anything wrong by publishing the comments of a coach, even if the coach's assertions are incorrect. You would have a hard time proving that what the coach says is wrong, especially since he has information inaccessible to anyone that wasn't directly involved. Furthermore, in some countries, you would also have difficulty proving that Coach Lee knew what he said was wrong, as opposed to expressing his opinion on the matter (First Amendment people?).
Think about the reverse of what you're saying: does TL mine through every article to see if the comments within are factually incorrect AND damaging to somebody's reputation?
It's unrealistic, unethical (because it makes TL a shell for the whim of companies who want to abuse community websites for their own PR purposes) and simply does not reflect how business, or journalism, is conducted on the internet.
I've already mentioned before that an article can go up and then be edited later to reflect both sides of the story. This is already done by most major news corporations. Look at the coverage of the Norway bombings, for example. News.com.au, a company under the wing of News Ltd, the Australian operations of News Corp, updated their coverage with timestamps.
In short: the article wasn't wrong, because the article didn't make any factual errors. It simply reposted the comments of someone who was wrong in his assertions. Blaming TL is nothing more than a cop-out and brings it into an area on conflict that should be squarely between EG and TSL.
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Truthfully I think we could have gone without lumping in the journalism issue into this particular thread, but it was stated in the OP so it has grounds for discussion here, definitely. I think, however, that's a much smaller facet to really debate about as opposed to taking a look at the scale of the SC2 Scene and realizing that there is a huge reservoir of untapped potential primed for picking.
We also need to stop continually debating the EG/TSL issue here. This isn't the venue - there are two other massive threads that detail every little possible perspective on it. This isn't the place for it.
As a whole, this thread has alot of strong input that I think if looked and, you could definitely make a case for the need for there to be some type of committee or group that is a kind of guiding hand for the direction fo E-Sports. in particular SC2 on an international level. Just yesterday I was watching the Shoutcraft invitational which featured NA and EU. It's a huge step in the right direction.
It is short sighted to say that E-Sports is better off without Koreas involvement, and vice versa. As strong as Korea has always been in the SC scene, that has all gone out the window with SC2, essentially. The rest of the world took to it quicker than Korea did, and that is in no small part because of the presence of Kespa and BW. It would be best for the rest of the SC2 community to work with Korea, as opposed to working as two separate entities, but it seems the cultural gap is so huge that it would be impossible. Whether right or wrong, it is unfortunate for the E-Sport of SC2.
Truthfully, I think there definitely needs to be a comittee to oversee the sport as a whole. One that represents the players best interest, the teams best interests, the fans best interests, and above all else the game at a competitive level's best interest. A committee to drive progress as opposed to accepting complacency. The E-Sports world is evolving rapidly, remaining stagnant in such a fresh and interesting market is detrimental. There is, for the most part, an audience waiting for the SC2 scene to feed them content. It's high in demand.
High quality competition and content is a high demand in the SC2 community.
I believe there are a ton of fresh ideas yet to be expanded on within the professional community, and some ideas that have been touched on that have yet to realize their full potential. A huge step in the right direction is to add Koreas involvement in the open market, as opposed to solely theirs.
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On July 25 2011 17:00 supeROLL wrote:
I think that in a roundabout way AG does have a point, he's just not phrasing it particularly well. The OP is correct in that Journalists "get things wrong" all the time, but you the article do not always gets laughed away and updated with a factually correct version.
If a newspaper publishes a factually incorrect article which cause damage to an organization or an individual then that newspaper is liable for defamation. If an organization suffers financial loss (or perceived financial loss) due to the error then they are within their rights to try to claim back these losses from the publication (although in the US, the first amendment offers some weighty protection to publishers).
The article printed on TL did contain errors that misrepresented AG's company. If this article directly - or indirectly - results in Puma pulling out of the deal then this would have a direct impact on EG's business, and there could be perceived financial loss.
I think the mistake AG made was attacking Milkis, who had no culpability whatsoever and was in no way at fault. If anyone is "to blame" it is TeamLiqiuid as in this scenario they are the publishers and are responsible for the factual content of what they publish. But then of course you get into this whole minefield of "what is news and what is the forum?" and the argument descends into mudslinging.
I would agree with AG that TL does need to show a degree of responsibility when publishing articles, even if said articles were originally from the forum or blogsphere. However I think that with TL's heritage as a community portal and with the open nature of the internet that there is always going to be close-to-the-knuckle journalism and you would be naive to think otherwise.
except 'making someone look bad' is not defamation unless it's false. nothing stated here was false, ergo it's not defamation. you are allowed to publicly say 'i think alex garfield is a disgusting piece of shit' (for example) but that's not defamation. if you were to say that alex garfield is a rapist, that would be defamation, because it's not a matter of opinion.
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Very good read. I'd have to agree with pretty much everything you brought up. Fact is most of the budding player pool at the moment is a bunch of kids who just wanna play video games, rules and protocols need to be put in place legally to protect all parties involved and allow the industry to continue growth.
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You're right, in this case the article was just a translation of a coach, and I couldn't say whether it was factually incorrect or not (although AG claimed that there were errors on WoC). Either way, TL couldn't be held liable for quoting someone else, nor is coach lee at fault for voicing an opinion.
But the argument wasn't strictly about this particular incident, it was about the culpability of journalists in general, even when those journalists are operating over the internet or in a "voluntary" capability. My point is that AG was incorrect, the journalist would never be liable regardless of the story, because - as you and many others have pointed out - this makes no sense.
The publisher though is a different story. I'm not a solicitor, so I couldn't tell you how (or if) these laws apply to the internet, when an article is considered "news" and when it isn't, or the how the rules change between each region. But just imagine for one moment if TL published a factually incorrect article on the home page under a big banner that says "Intel processors cause house fires". Maybe TL would have nothing worry about when Intel's legal team came knocking - "it's a community site" - or maybe they would. Personally, I wouldn't want to be the one to find out.
Now fast forward 12, 24, 36 months and replace the Intel story with a large e-sports team who have just lost a $1,000,000 valued deal due to an incorrect or poorly timed article. TL is not just a forum any more, that's the point, and whether they like it or not they have to accept the responsibility that the headlines they stick on the front page have a direct effect on people's business and people's livelihoods. You say that "regular newspapers don't give a shit" but I don't agree that this is entirely correct, and unless you have any factual insight into the real workings of a major news publisher then I think we might just have to agree to disagree.
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On July 26 2011 01:08 Shiori wrote:
except 'making someone look bad' is not defamation unless it's false. nothing stated here was false, ergo it's not defamation. you are allowed to publicly say 'i think alex garfield is a disgusting piece of shit' (for example) but that's not defamation. if you were to say that alex garfield is a rapist, that would be defamation, because it's not a matter of opinion.
that's not the case in south korea; truth is not a defense against defamation/libel.
Republic of Korea
Korea is interesting as truth is not important with defamation; any words harming another can be considered illegal and may be punishable with fines and imprisonment. “Defamation” is covered by several laws in Korea, civil law, traditional criminal law & modern internet criminal law-under the 'Act on Promotion of Information and Communications Network Utilization and Data Protection, etc.' (internet and email related laws) – 2005 CHAPTER IX Article 61 (Penal Provisions) This shows defamation varies significantly from North American laws and in general by country and by case. As image and 'public face' is very important in East Asia, it is incredibly easy to sue for 'loss of face' (defamation) in Korea. Even middle school students are active with cases (Little Suzie said my son was 'stupid', etc.).
taken from: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Defamation#Republic_of_Korea
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How can Milkis be at fault for EG not making a statement in a timely fashion? Coach Lee made a statement, Milkis translated it for us all out of his own generosity, and EG says Milkis is guilty of defamation. I would think it's EG's responsibility to provide us with EG's statement and facts.
I dont' think you can really say "I wasn't ready". If you're EG in this situation, and everyone is waiting to hear your side, you had better hop to it and release something--and not flame TL Journalism.
Edit: Listening to Weapon of choice now. I don't think the Journalistic Integrity is the problem in the first place. Using the Puma events as an example, I don't think the issue is weather or not Milkis would have done well to reach out to EG, I think it's that EG hadn't came out with anything themselves. If you've got something on this level brewing, you'd better be prepared to speak about it. From what I know, I would agree that everything happened very quickly... you wake up and there's postings and tweets everywhere.... EG can't control that, but it's not the translators job to put anything on hold to check here and there and see if there's anyone in the world that would like to add a statement. EG MUST be the ones who respond, and they need to do it quickly. I know Garfield wasn't accusatory, it's just the example at hand.
If an natural gas line bursts, ignites, and burns down 10 city blocks in a fiery inferno, they gas company can't be upset that they didn't know it was going to happen... They should have worked to prevent it in the first place, and in the event it does happen, because shit does happen, they'd better have a good PR Department to smooth it over. In the Puma incident, shit happened, EG can't ask anyone to be accountable (not that they did), nobody's journalistic integrity can be questioned (because there isn't any to be expected at a forum, this isn't the New Your Times), and EG had better work quickly and display some finesse to smooth things over (Which I think they are doing).
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Russian Federation1893 Posts
Only when players will become strong enough to contribute real deal to e-sports it will be established.
It is like you are cool businessman and you make football donations.
Future businessmen of us may find it rather "cool and funny" to donate in e-sports.
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EPT![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/vtxHW.jpg)
