EG signs PuMa, responds to criticism - Page 48

On July 26 2011 18:53 Talin wrote:


I think your perception of the real world is somewhat warped by the media. You choose to accept the things that are sly and borderline nefarious because you're convinced that it's somehow "normal" and that it's pointless to expect the scene to grow in another direction. But this quite simply isn't true - it's just that people making money off of it would want you to believe it is and to meekly accept it as a part of the sport you follow as either "something that's perfectly normal" or "something that's ugly, but ultimately still normal".

I think it's important that the people who are in the position to do so (which is to say the fans who aren't financially or otherwise tied to any of the organizations) realize that "business" is NOT something that should have free reign over Starcraft and to keep overly "ambitious" organizations in check by dishing out criticism that stings (and stings very very hard) every time they make a move that compromises the fairness, integrity, manners and standards of good behaviour that we have and that we expect. In all honesty, this whole issue with Puma in itself isn't that all big or that horrible, but it's as good place to make a stand and a point as any. And moreover, EG's reputation had already been damaged (in SC2 too, let alone other games) - with Puma, they've overstepped their bounds one too many times.

Comparing Starcraft to professional sports is a case of apples and oranges if there's ever been one. Arguments based on analogies between professional sports and e-sports are by default very weak and very wrong - because there quite simply isn't all that much that football and Starcraft have in common. That's an understatement - there's almost NOTHING that they have in common. The only thing they have in common are common descriptors like "sport", "game" and "competition" - which just isn't enough to back up any of the arguments that usually rest on these analogies.

If you want to look at the "real world", look at the actual e-sports and all the attempts to grow an e-sports scene in the west, because for us, that is the real world. Football and basketball with the ridiculous amounts of money going around everywhere, billions of followers and hundreds of years of history are actually NOT the real world relative to what we're talking about. It's as far from the real world as anything could conceivably be. In some ways this is unfortunate, because we would want Starcraft to grow to that point, even though it won't go anywhere close in the conceivable future. In some ways it is very fortunate because we get to lay the foundations and do things differently and do things better.

Going back to the real world of e-sports, if you look at every serious western attempt at turning a competitive game scene into a "professional" (and I use the term loosely) sport, you'll see a pattern emerging. In each case, someone at some point was willing to dump money in it. Maybe even too much money for the time. In each case, the fledgling scene turned into a predatory business environment. Two to five years later, what was built initially imploded to the point of no recovery, bridges were burned, and many of the "businesses" were left scraping for money to pay for the contracts - yes, the same contracts that so many people seem to think are the solutions to everything. "What's the problem TSL, just give them contracts" has been nonchalantly posted so many times so far.

The real problem is that this predatory, competitive environment that so many people are so willing to welcome to Starcraft is actually killing e-sports (yep, there I've said it). It has killed before. It will kill again. If Starcraft too goes in the direction EG would have it, the instant gratification direction, the "WE have the money NOW and FUCK YOU" direction, the direction where one team or organization causes harm to another outside the real playing ground (the game) for profit or to "get ahead" - it's going to happen again. It just will.

This isn't the kind of game where you play survival of the fittest and win - when you do that, everyone loses. And I understand (reading through a lot of General forum threads as well) that this is an ideological, borderline religious issue for some people, but for once realize that Starcraft isn't a "market". It just can't sustain competition of that sort, there's nothing here that can feed the petty business greed and ambition of organizations like EG in the long run. The only competition that can go on in Stracraft is competition in the actual game. Teams and organizations aren't really supposed to be competitors at this point, but allies - in nourishing and growing Starcraft. If you screw them over, you screw over your own future.

And see this is the big problem with EG - they just don't care, and unfortunately they can afford to not care. Because they have this whole "e-sport organization" infrastructure, they have Justin Wong on the side and in a year or two or five they can just jump ship to the next hit e-sport title or whatever they smell as a perspective one. The point is that their fate isn't tied to the fate of SC2 (like TSL's is), and they behave accordingly. This is why every time I see EG, Fnatic, SK and Complexity involved in something, there's this big alarm bell going off in my head. I didn't really want to drag down the names of the other 3, because to my knowledge they've done nothing wrong in SC2 yet, but they all function on the same principle. EG is here because SC2 is the next big thing, not because Alex Garfield is so passionate and cares about the game or the community or the scene. In a way, they're only here to leech - as AG said himself, he's running a business. Business is essentially all about leeching while giving as little as possible.

On the other hand, a team like TSL is made up entirely from people who are passionate and care about Starcraft (including coach Lee). Teams like TSL create and build what SC2 is as a competitive game, getting almost nothing in return at this point in time. That's why a team like TSL is ten times more valuable to SC2 than a business organization like EG.

And indeed, before we've had SK Telecom and Samsung in Brood War, Brood War was the same - it was a bunch of guys giving out of their own pockets and scraping for small sponsorships to live, sleep, eat and train together so that they can compete in the game that they love. Just read up a bit on the 4U part of history of a team now known as SKT1. Big corporations moved in and established their own teams when the time was right and when investing so much into BW was justified - and once again, they didn't create a predatory business environment where everything goes, but they decided to operate as allies (KeSPA) to regulate and grow the sport together.

So instead of comparing SC2 to football and basketball, why not look up to the ONLY working electronic sport in human history that has long-term popularity and success? As far as applicable knowledge goes, I think we can learn much more from KeSPA and Brood War than we can from what goes on in the business world of football and basketball.

As far as business in e-sports goes, I would also like to point the difference between a petty business that runs on sponsorships and thin air (EG) to a real company that supports not only their own Starcraft team, but actively supports the scene as well. I'm talking about FXOpen - FXOpen is big enough that they don't have to be sly and underhanded in their workings to make their presence known, and they're big enough that they can contribute to the scene beyond what benefits them and their team. I don't think that there's a doubt in anyone's mind that FXOpen could have the SC2 dream team before tomorrow if they wanted to - but there's no reason for them to want that. They want their involvement with Starcraft to pay off in the long run, and that can only happen if Starcraft itself grows.

With EG it's the opposite. They technically bought Puma, a player they neither really need nor can really support. If they keep him in Korea, he's isolated from the rest of his "team", as well as isolated from a good practice environment. If they keep him in the US, his skill will plummet down faster than EG's reputation these past few days. The only reason they actually got Puma was for the sake of getting a top player alone (they've done the same with Idra and Demuslim before). They only care about the image of Puma parading in an EG shirt as a top Korean player. If he even happens to win a foreign tournament or two on top of that before his skill and career goes downhill (much like Idra's and Demuslim's, funny that), that's just a nice bonus feat.

Why do you think they got Grubby of all people? To support his growth as an SC2 player or to leech off of his WC3/e-sport legend image?

Yeah.

PS. See I can write longer posts than Alex Garfield.

On July 26 2011 18:36 AmericanUmlaut wrote:
This thread is filling up with exactly the same arguments that the other thread filled up with. I don't think most people that post in these kinds of conversations are actually interested in the argument for the sake of finding the truth, just in the feeling of smug superiority that comes with saying something you're totally convinced is true in a very angry tone.

Thanks, Alex, for posting your side of the story. I feel like I have a reasonable understanding now of how this went down from both sides' perspective, and I can see how both sides could be pretty pissed off at how this went down.

On July 26 2011 18:58 Angelbelow wrote:


Wanted to avoid reading these threads because there a lot of subjective bias either for or against EG. But this ones gotta be one of the best in this thread. Granted, I havent read that many posts but this one was pretty LOL.

How unreasonably mad are you going to get when emotions blow over and all this is all forgotten in a few weeks, their players continue to grow, their team adds more exciting additions to their team?

So do you automatically reject all apologies made by businessmen as insincere and fake? Or just this one cause its threading on TL right now?

On July 26 2011 18:53 Executor1 wrote:

After reading a biased statement from someone who hasnt even spoken to MR. Lee/ doesnt speak the language and doesnt really know whats going on in korea.

If he had just contacted MR Lee to begin with , wich even he admits is the normal thing to do, he could have avoided this whole situation. Yea what a douche Mr. Lee is........

On July 26 2011 19:06 Tryxtira wrote:
It's great to hear EG's side of things, I do believe that as a company, you need to take greater care of your brand. This response, or any response like this, should have been immediately posted in order for everyone to get your side of the story. It shouldn't take 3 days to get even a response at all.

On July 26 2011 18:53 Talin wrote:


I think your perception of the real world is somewhat warped by the media. You choose to accept the things that are sly and borderline nefarious because you're convinced that it's somehow "normal" and that it's pointless to expect the scene to grow in another direction. But this quite simply isn't true - it's just that people making money off of it would want you to believe it is and to meekly accept it as a part of the sport you follow as either "something that's perfectly normal" or "something that's ugly, but ultimately still normal".

I think it's important that the people who are in the position to do so (which is to say the fans who aren't financially or otherwise tied to any of the organizations) realize that "business" is NOT something that should have free reign over Starcraft and to keep overly "ambitious" organizations in check by dishing out criticism that stings (and stings very very hard) every time they make a move that compromises the fairness, integrity, manners and standards of good behaviour that we have and that we expect. In all honesty, this whole issue with Puma in itself isn't that all big or that horrible, but it's as good place to make a stand and a point as any. And moreover, EG's reputation had already been damaged (in SC2 too, let alone other games) - with Puma, they've overstepped their bounds one too many times.

Comparing Starcraft to professional sports is a case of apples and oranges if there's ever been one. Arguments based on analogies between professional sports and e-sports are by default very weak and very wrong - because there quite simply isn't all that much that football and Starcraft have in common. That's an understatement - there's almost NOTHING that they have in common. The only thing they have in common are common descriptors like "sport", "game" and "competition" - which just isn't enough to back up any of the arguments that usually rest on these analogies.

If you want to look at the "real world", look at the actual e-sports and all the attempts to grow an e-sports scene in the west, because for us, that is the real world. Football and basketball with the ridiculous amounts of money going around everywhere, billions of followers and hundreds of years of history are actually NOT the real world relative to what we're talking about. It's as far from the real world as anything could conceivably be. In some ways this is unfortunate, because we would want Starcraft to grow to that point, even though it won't go anywhere close in the conceivable future. In some ways it is very fortunate because we get to lay the foundations and do things differently and do things better.

Going back to the real world of e-sports, if you look at every serious western attempt at turning a competitive game scene into a "professional" (and I use the term loosely) sport, you'll see a pattern emerging. In each case, someone at some point was willing to dump money in it. Maybe even too much money for the time. In each case, the fledgling scene turned into a predatory business environment. Two to five years later, what was built initially imploded to the point of no recovery, bridges were burned, and many of the "businesses" were left scraping for money to pay for the contracts - yes, the same contracts that so many people seem to think are the solutions to everything. "What's the problem TSL, just give them contracts" has been nonchalantly posted so many times so far.

The real problem is that this predatory, competitive environment that so many people are so willing to welcome to Starcraft is actually killing e-sports (yep, there I've said it). It has killed before. It will kill again. If Starcraft too goes in the direction EG would have it, the instant gratification direction, the "WE have the money NOW and FUCK YOU" direction, the direction where one team or organization causes harm to another outside the real playing ground (the game) for profit or to "get ahead" - it's going to happen again. It just will.

This isn't the kind of game where you play survival of the fittest and win - when you do that, everyone loses. And I understand (reading through a lot of General forum threads as well) that this is an ideological, borderline religious issue for some people, but for once realize that Starcraft isn't a "market". It just can't sustain competition of that sort, there's nothing here that can feed the petty business greed and ambition of organizations like EG in the long run. The only competition that can go on in Stracraft is competition in the actual game. Teams and organizations aren't really supposed to be competitors at this point, but allies - in nourishing and growing Starcraft. If you screw them over, you screw over your own future.

And see this is the big problem with EG - they just don't care, and unfortunately they can afford to not care. Because they have this whole "e-sport organization" infrastructure, they have Justin Wong on the side and in a year or two or five they can just jump ship to the next hit e-sport title or whatever they smell as a perspective one. The point is that their fate isn't tied to the fate of SC2 (like TSL's is), and they behave accordingly. This is why every time I see EG, Fnatic, SK and Complexity involved in something, there's this big alarm bell going off in my head. I didn't really want to drag down the names of the other 3, because to my knowledge they've done nothing wrong in SC2 yet, but they all function on the same principle. EG is here because SC2 is the next big thing, not because Alex Garfield is so passionate and cares about the game or the community or the scene. In a way, they're only here to leech - as AG said himself, he's running a business. Business is essentially all about leeching while giving as little as possible.

On the other hand, a team like TSL is made up entirely from people who are passionate and care about Starcraft (including coach Lee). Teams like TSL create and build what SC2 is as a competitive game, getting almost nothing in return at this point in time. That's why a team like TSL is ten times more valuable to SC2 than a business organization like EG.

And indeed, before we've had SK Telecom and Samsung in Brood War, Brood War was the same - it was a bunch of guys giving out of their own pockets and scraping for small sponsorships to live, sleep, eat and train together so that they can compete in the game that they love. Just read up a bit on the 4U part of history of a team now known as SKT1. Big corporations moved in and established their own teams when the time was right and when investing so much into BW was justified - and once again, they didn't create a predatory business environment where everything goes, but they decided to operate as allies (KeSPA) to regulate and grow the sport together.

So instead of comparing SC2 to football and basketball, why not look up to the ONLY working electronic sport in human history that has long-term popularity and success? As far as applicable knowledge goes, I think we can learn much more from KeSPA and Brood War than we can from what goes on in the business world of football and basketball.

As far as business in e-sports goes, I would also like to point the difference between a petty business that runs on sponsorships and thin air (EG) to a real company that supports not only their own Starcraft team, but actively supports the scene as well. I'm talking about FXOpen - FXOpen is big enough that they don't have to be sly and underhanded in their workings to make their presence known, and they're big enough that they can contribute to the scene beyond what benefits them and their team. I don't think that there's a doubt in anyone's mind that FXOpen could have the SC2 dream team before tomorrow if they wanted to - but there's no reason for them to want that. They want their involvement with Starcraft to pay off in the long run, and that can only happen if Starcraft itself grows.

With EG it's the opposite. They technically bought Puma, a player they neither really need nor can really support. If they keep him in Korea, he's isolated from the rest of his "team", as well as isolated from a good practice environment. If they keep him in the US, his skill will plummet down faster than EG's reputation these past few days. The only reason they actually got Puma was for the sake of getting a top player alone (they've done the same with Idra and Demuslim before). They only care about the image of Puma parading in an EG shirt as a top Korean player. If he even happens to win a foreign tournament or two on top of that before his skill and career goes downhill (much like Idra's and Demuslim's, funny that), that's just a nice bonus feat.

Why do you think they got Grubby of all people? To support his growth as an SC2 player or to leech off of his WC3/e-sport legend image?

Yeah.

PS. See I can write longer posts than Alex Garfield.

As of last Wednesday, there was very serious mutual interest in having PuMa on EG; serious enough that he brought the issue up to Mr. Lee, the coach of TSL, as EG and PuMa had agreed would happen.

On July 26 2011 19:31 Alexj wrote:
All right, how can you not see what is wrong with this approach?

Why should PuMa speak with his coach on your behalf? He wasn't in any way connected to EG before that, and now you forced him to represent EG to his own coach! That conversation would be hard enough even without PuMa already speaking with his coach on behalf of another organisation. Of couse his coach was shocked, and of course it took 3 days for PuMa to even prepare for this conversation

On July 26 2011 18:53 Talin wrote:


I think your perception of the real world is somewhat warped by the media. You choose to accept the things that are sly and borderline nefarious because you're convinced that it's somehow "normal" and that it's pointless to expect the scene to grow in another direction. But this quite simply isn't true - it's just that people making money off of it would want you to believe it is and to meekly accept it as a part of the sport you follow as either "something that's perfectly normal" or "something that's ugly, but ultimately still normal".

I think it's important that the people who are in the position to do so (which is to say the fans who aren't financially or otherwise tied to any of the organizations) realize that "business" is NOT something that should have free reign over Starcraft and to keep overly "ambitious" organizations in check by dishing out criticism that stings (and stings very very hard) every time they make a move that compromises the fairness, integrity, manners and standards of good behaviour that we have and that we expect. In all honesty, this whole issue with Puma in itself isn't that all big or that horrible, but it's as good place to make a stand and a point as any. And moreover, EG's reputation had already been damaged (in SC2 too, let alone other games) - with Puma, they've overstepped their bounds one too many times.

Comparing Starcraft to professional sports is a case of apples and oranges if there's ever been one. Arguments based on analogies between professional sports and e-sports are by default very weak and very wrong - because there quite simply isn't all that much that football and Starcraft have in common. That's an understatement - there's almost NOTHING that they have in common. The only thing they have in common are common descriptors like "sport", "game" and "competition" - which just isn't enough to back up any of the arguments that usually rest on these analogies.

If you want to look at the "real world", look at the actual e-sports and all the attempts to grow an e-sports scene in the west, because for us, that is the real world. Football and basketball with the ridiculous amounts of money going around everywhere, billions of followers and hundreds of years of history are actually NOT the real world relative to what we're talking about. It's as far from the real world as anything could conceivably be. In some ways this is unfortunate, because we would want Starcraft to grow to that point, even though it won't go anywhere close in the conceivable future. In some ways it is very fortunate because we get to lay the foundations and do things differently and do things better.

Going back to the real world of e-sports, if you look at every serious western attempt at turning a competitive game scene into a "professional" (and I use the term loosely) sport, you'll see a pattern emerging. In each case, someone at some point was willing to dump money in it. Maybe even too much money for the time. In each case, the fledgling scene turned into a predatory business environment. Two to five years later, what was built initially imploded to the point of no recovery, bridges were burned, and many of the "businesses" were left scraping for money to pay for the contracts - yes, the same contracts that so many people seem to think are the solutions to everything. "What's the problem TSL, just give them contracts" has been nonchalantly posted so many times so far.

The real problem is that this predatory, competitive environment that so many people are so willing to welcome to Starcraft is actually killing e-sports (yep, there I've said it). It has killed before. It will kill again. If Starcraft too goes in the direction EG would have it, the instant gratification direction, the "WE have the money NOW and FUCK YOU" direction, the direction where one team or organization causes harm to another outside the real playing ground (the game) for profit or to "get ahead" - it's going to happen again. It just will.

This isn't the kind of game where you play survival of the fittest and win - when you do that, everyone loses. And I understand (reading through a lot of General forum threads as well) that this is an ideological, borderline religious issue for some people, but for once realize that Starcraft isn't a "market". It just can't sustain competition of that sort, there's nothing here that can feed the petty business greed and ambition of organizations like EG in the long run. The only competition that can go on in Stracraft is competition in the actual game. Teams and organizations aren't really supposed to be competitors at this point, but allies - in nourishing and growing Starcraft. If you screw them over, you screw over your own future.

And see this is the big problem with EG - they just don't care, and unfortunately they can afford to not care. Because they have this whole "e-sport organization" infrastructure, they have Justin Wong on the side and in a year or two or five they can just jump ship to the next hit e-sport title or whatever they smell as a perspective one. The point is that their fate isn't tied to the fate of SC2 (like TSL's is), and they behave accordingly. This is why every time I see EG, Fnatic, SK and Complexity involved in something, there's this big alarm bell going off in my head. I didn't really want to drag down the names of the other 3, because to my knowledge they've done nothing wrong in SC2 yet, but they all function on the same principle. EG is here because SC2 is the next big thing, not because Alex Garfield is so passionate and cares about the game or the community or the scene. In a way, they're only here to leech - as AG said himself, he's running a business. Business is essentially all about leeching while giving as little as possible.

On the other hand, a team like TSL is made up entirely from people who are passionate and care about Starcraft (including coach Lee). Teams like TSL create and build what SC2 is as a competitive game, getting almost nothing in return at this point in time. That's why a team like TSL is ten times more valuable to SC2 than a business organization like EG.

And indeed, before we've had SK Telecom and Samsung in Brood War, Brood War was the same - it was a bunch of guys giving out of their own pockets and scraping for small sponsorships to live, sleep, eat and train together so that they can compete in the game that they love. Just read up a bit on the 4U part of history of a team now known as SKT1. Big corporations moved in and established their own teams when the time was right and when investing so much into BW was justified - and once again, they didn't create a predatory business environment where everything goes, but they decided to operate as allies (KeSPA) to regulate and grow the sport together.

So instead of comparing SC2 to football and basketball, why not look up to the ONLY working electronic sport in human history that has long-term popularity and success? As far as applicable knowledge goes, I think we can learn much more from KeSPA and Brood War than we can from what goes on in the business world of football and basketball.

As far as business in e-sports goes, I would also like to point the difference between a petty business that runs on sponsorships and thin air (EG) to a real company that supports not only their own Starcraft team, but actively supports the scene as well. I'm talking about FXOpen - FXOpen is big enough that they don't have to be sly and underhanded in their workings to make their presence known, and they're big enough that they can contribute to the scene beyond what benefits them and their team. I don't think that there's a doubt in anyone's mind that FXOpen could have the SC2 dream team before tomorrow if they wanted to - but there's no reason for them to want that. They want their involvement with Starcraft to pay off in the long run, and that can only happen if Starcraft itself grows.

With EG it's the opposite. They technically bought Puma, a player they neither really need nor can really support. If they keep him in Korea, he's isolated from the rest of his "team", as well as isolated from a good practice environment. If they keep him in the US, his skill will plummet down faster than EG's reputation these past few days. The only reason they actually got Puma was for the sake of getting a top player alone (they've done the same with Idra and Demuslim before). They only care about the image of Puma parading in an EG shirt as a top Korean player. If he even happens to win a foreign tournament or two on top of that before his skill and career goes downhill (much like Idra's and Demuslim's, funny that), that's just a nice bonus feat.

Why do you think they got Grubby of all people? To support his growth as an SC2 player or to leech off of his WC3/e-sport legend image?

Yeah.

PS. See I can write longer posts than Alex Garfield.

On July 26 2011 19:07 Docmedical wrote:


Very good post. I wish there was a way to get this post highlighted or something. I never noticed the trend of EG purchasing the flavour of the month player. Could the same be said of EGAxslav and EGStrifco? Weren't they one of the best BW 2v2ers?