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Criticism is allowed. Undue flaming is not. Take a second to think your post through before you submit.
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Should go without saying, but don't link restreams here either. |
I took a bit of time skimming through this thread, weighing my own opinions, and looking at Sundance's twitter.
I think that MLG is almost making the right choice, here. Having additional events that are PPV makes sense -- you can fund them and thus have more stuff going on behind the big brand name of MLG. However, I think they're going to alienate viewers rather than encourage them with this specific plan.
Charging a smaller amount, like $5-10 would bring in more customers and thus generate more ad revenue in the long run for their major events.
Having live events at cheaper locales would enable them to rake in large amounts of profit that could then be re-injected into their other projects. Setting up such an expensive tournament in NY when there are cheaper options as well as charging a higher amount if going to give them less potential revenue (I think) and in the long run hurt their viewership numbers.
I might be wrong about this, but my gut is saying that what they're doing is an inefficient way of tackling new PPV content. Too much cost, not enough potential revenue, too high a buy-in.
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On February 14 2012 12:40 Bippzy wrote:
Alright. Pretty much, I'm sorry for those that have terrible living conditions(yes, I am a spoiled american to the point that not having 20$ to spare for entertainment is terrible living conditions). I think it's worth it, it's sad that they don't have a free stream but I suppose they are kinda like GOM in this facet. They do so many things right, they make themselves worth it.
The contrast must be made that GOM just has great production quality and player quality.
MLG has payed for trips from all around the world, plus open bracket. Their production quality has proved to not suck as bad as that philipines tournament and is probably around the level of a dreamhack. The casters, are everywhere and very good. The games and storylines give more andrenaline rush then GOM can at most points.
If you can afford it, it's worth it.
If you can't afford it, hitch a ride to a barcraft, or scavenger off a friend. If you can do neither, my condolescenses. Or however you spell that.
You're comparing the GSL and MLG? You pay 20$ for a three day event for MLG. You pay 20$ for a TWO MONTH long event for one season for the GSL. Tell me which one has more value.
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If official stream numbers are made public, and this thing gets more then 1k unique viewers ,i will eat my shorts and post photos on TL.
Their player lineup looks very good, but if US residents are not willing to pay for this i dont think viewers from other countries will flock to watch .
P.S- if they have some sort of facebook contest where passes are handed for free the shorts thing drops 
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10-15 bucks would have been better. 20 seems to "be that number" that ppl get worked up about. But this is also due to the comparisons to Gom. I honestly hope everything works out for MLG...
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Sitting here thinking about this more.... I think we are just "negotiating" with MLG.
They have thrown out this $20 price, but THEY WILL LOWER IT before the event now that the community has responded so strongly..... now the question remains.... will the audience bite at the lower price point?
My suggestion would be that you shouldn't. MLG has a good track record in being responsive to the community (which is why they'll lower the price), but they have a bad record in terms of being consistent with their offerings and their production levels.
If the community rewards MLG after this, then we're just setting ourselves up for others to use this model as well. Before you know it the GSL will be PPV only and not offer a free stream. Maybe IEM, Assembly will do that same.
If people overpay, because they "love esports" your only setting up more SC2 tournements and organizers to try this as well.
If this works, before you know it they'll be PPV showmatches and PPV talk shows.
Why would people still give away free content, if the "community" is willing to prostrate themselves to pay for it despite not having too?
So think.... your purchasing actions have meaning. If you want to give $20 to esports, think about what the best way to do it is? How much of that $20 goes to the players and teams that you really care about? Someone ask Sundance what percentage of revenue goes to the players!
I think this could be an inflection point in the history of SC2... what happens next is going to say dictate much of the business future of SC2.
Imagine a world where SC2 on PPV is the standard.... this is the path MLG is taking us down.
Reward them at your peril.
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I won't pay because I probably wont have time to watch it all to make it worth while, but if i did have the time i would pay for sure lol. They have like the best lineup ever, and mlg is just awesome.
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On February 14 2012 12:45 Bippzy wrote:Show nested quote +On February 14 2012 12:39 lottopk wrote:
For what this feels now, organizers are trying to abuse the "pay or your killing e-sports" phrase. If they want money, up the quality. This is not 20 dollar product sorry. I think Sundance is smart enough to fix this if it doesn't work. It seems to be more of a "I'm bringing it hard I'm badass MLG guy" statement. If it promotes barcrafts then :D. The tournament is designed to get the best competition and if the money thing works then :D. If it doesn't work, recede, Rethink. Continue.
I think it's more an issue of MLG trying to directly put their own profit above actual growth of esports, or equating the two to be the same thing.
Initiating a PPV model does not and will not bring NEW people to the scene and will alienate current fans. And unfortunately, you can lose a TON of fans and still make a profit over what they're making now.
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Lol it seems young people really don't spend their money.
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On February 14 2012 12:42 goswser wrote:
5 streams with an event with 32 players? Won't they be going through games rather quickly....
Interviews, backstage fooling around, random stuff. I'm fairly sure streams will still have ads. I'm guessing only 2 streams show games constantly.
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On February 14 2012 12:48 Alpino wrote:
Lol it seems young people really don't spend their money.
Nah we just prioritize it.
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United States22883 Posts
On February 14 2012 12:41 Keyboard Warrior wrote:Show nested quote +On February 14 2012 11:50 Jibba wrote:On February 14 2012 11:38 iky43210 wrote:On February 14 2012 11:35 Jibba wrote:On February 14 2012 11:31 iky43210 wrote:On February 14 2012 11:23 Jibba wrote:On February 14 2012 11:12 dsousa wrote:
You know who survives on ads.... Google, Facebook, Zynga, Yahoo, 500 television channels, Football, basketball, baseball, tennis, and every other SC2 tournament out there.
So don't cry that the ad model is broken.... maybe your cost structure is broken! Youtube lost billions of dollars for years and has only relatively recently begun to make money for Google. Most football, basketball and baseball teams are losing money, which is why they have revenue sharing from the giants. Television is dying with advertising, media is dying with advertising. And the actual truth is that SC2 is dying with advertising. People have been fed a vision of mainstream ESPORTS for too long, and they don't realize people are just taking loss leaders on a hope that's never going to happen. Even the giants in BW have been falling for years. It's a bubble and a niche, and there will never be a viewership that can sustain an advertising based/free system. Never. Alot of what you said isn't true. Youtube isn't losing money because of its ad based model, but rather its poor business management and plan. TV and Media isn't dying because of advertisement. Its the decline of viewership that is killing them, ever heard of internet? Also I don't think you understand what "bubble" means. Are you trying to claim that 10+ years of BW competitive gaming is just a "bubble"? I guess google must just be a bubble too then Youtube lost money because streaming videos is extremely expensive. It's incomparable to Facebook and Google because they don't do that. The streaming services are reliant on their investors right now. The viewership model IS the advertising model. SC2 has yet to break 100,000 unique viewers, and somehow an advertising/viewership model is sustainable here? Yes, it is a bubble. MBC is dead and the OSL/PL have been losing viewership for 5 years now. You can't have 10 years of bubble, that is just a plain silly claim. This is simply not true. 5-10 years is a short term outlook. All of the recent housing bubbles happened within that timeframe. Fatal Error. Did you just compare Esports to housing? Aside from the all the banking, lending, subprimeship, legal, and quasi-legal complications, the very nature of the two could not be more far apart. Esports is a digital commodity, while housing is basic. Besides, the US bubble burst was specific to its own fundamental greedy design, and not to housing in general. Other countries don't have US housing-based economic meltdown. Australia did, actually.
Simple context, which other game from the 90s is still alive and well today? 10 years is an eternity for a computer game played by kids to survive. The fact that it developed an architecture - prime corporate sponsors, team, professional players, events, and even at its waning days is still getting the support of the core corpotions, businesses, players and community, is BEYOND CONCRETE proof that it is not a bubble, and it may have far outlived its shelflife. It may not last long, it may even end today, but surely it went farther that it was supposed to.
Sorry but I think you got this bit wrong. The problem is that people make up front contributions on the hope that it actually is a long term product, the way normal sports are. No one is going into ESPORTS with the budget for a 5 year shelf life, and I don't think they ever have. I don't think MBCG would have started if they thought it'd be out of commission in less than 10 years. I think most of the "bases" of ESPORTS have huge investments that are hoping for much greater return than over 5 or 10 years, and they're not going to get it. It's not about being "good for a game", unless you have an extremely homegrown scene (this might represent the fighting games), it's about being good for the money invested.
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I barely make 20 bucks at the end of the week.
really gonna take my gas money from me MLG?
edit: words of advice mlg. what's the point of the MLG memberships ???? lmao
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jesus christ, people are bitching that someone is charging 1 dollar an hour for the top pros from NA/EU/KR over a weekend, with a 5th dr. pepper stream giving us interviews, original content, and other stuff?
I'm going to put this as civilly as possible:
This community has an entitlement problem. The idea that you cant pay 20 bucks(again this is one dollar an hour) every few months for top level gameplay(no sorry this isnt noobs cannonrushing as much as people keep saying this) is absurd. The fact of the matter is you all just want the content producers to do everything and you get it for free. This generation thinks that everything online should be free for them and they should be able to torrent it. Stop stuffing your face with burger king and stretch that oz. of weed another week and pay up or this is all gonna disappear(yes, there are consequences for things, i know this is hard for all the 13-21 year old demographic to consider). The excuses in this thread are disgusting considering how much everyone pretends they "support" esports. Cant wait for the arena's stream chats to be tolerable.
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On February 14 2012 12:42 goswser wrote:
5 streams with an event with 32 players? Won't they be going through games rather quickly....
32 players in double elim = 63 games matches. With an average of 2.5 games per match (since MLG continues to insist upon nothing but Bo3s), and 20 minutes per game (including downtime), we are looking at 3150 minutes of total content, or 52 hours. If you split that into two streams you'd have 6/10/10 hour days fri/sat/sunday, which works out pretty well. With 5 streams running through the first two days and two streams on the last day, it'll be more like 3/4/5 hours of content, which is not even close to enough. Much like a golf tournament, the play really needs to run allll weekend for optimal viewer experience.
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On February 14 2012 12:30 gladsheim wrote:
Not sure if people are cheap or are just poor, but spending $20 for a whole weekends worth of non-stop entertainment is pretty much a bargin. So i personally don't see what the problem here is. Do you want e-sports to grow at all? Sports don't grow unless viewers pay, whether it be attending or watching it from home on your tv with foxtel (or whatever American/European pay-tv is called).
After bills, rent and all other payments I have to do I will have about 150 euros to spend per month. MLG will be on at pretty bad times, there's basically no way I can watch the finals live for example because they will air at like 3 AM on Monday for me and I will have to wake up early the next day. Even though they advertise they will have 20 hours of content there's no way I will be watching all of that: I'm not gonna sit all weekend long infront of my computer watching SC2 games, especially if I have to pay for that. On top of that, there will be a free-to-watch tournament held in Europe (Assembly) which is on a much better time zone and has far more interesting player for me atleast. I have always watched MLG atleast to some extent but I'm just not willing to pay for this. And there won't be a an option to go to a barcraft either because as I said the finals will be on at 3 in the morning on Sunday. I just really hoped that there was an alternative, cheaper cheaper service. For example I could pay $5 for only being able to watch the championship Sunday, even though I wouldn't be able to watch the finals, because the ASUS ROG won't be on and all the matches at MLG will have a meaning and the matches should be great.
edit. Also, MLG really needs to step up their production for these arena events if they keep wanting people to pay them $20 to be able to watch them. The downtimes and technical problems (streams working like crap, etc) of the previous MLGs should NOT happen. I hope they do great though.
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On February 14 2012 12:44 bovineblitz wrote:
$20 is a lot for a 20 hour tournament, no?
It's true that they have a lot of content but there's no way that I'll be watching the whole thing. There's a chance that most of the games won't be a gg. I don't think it's worth it.
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I could probably figure this out with some brief investigation, but do people know who's casting this? This has a better player line-up than Assembly, and as long as they have a solid caster line-up too, I think I may get the pass.
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So just to get this clear, I should buy this MLG PPV for $20 because it will help ESports and thus this will be money well spent? Well if you put it that way...
I guess I'm not very into ESports then.
I have other FAR more important priorities in life besides SC2.
Besides, it's not like SC2 is the only ESport out there.
And at the end of the day, as Kennigit once told me, it is still a video game.
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On February 14 2012 12:48 Alpino wrote:
Lol it seems young people really don't spend their money.
Could you make a more shallow, uninformed, and ignorant post?
You're worse than the people mailing skull fucking threats to Sundance if you're going to come in here with that kind of attitude. A majority of the viewer base for SC2 simply CANNOT spend this kind of money, not without considering the ramifications involved first. You may be some rich brazillian millionaire, but not everyone treats 20 dollars like its nothing at all.
To some people, 20 dollars is a big fucking deal. You have college loans, living by yourself / with roomates, living on a small paycheck in a part time job while you have classes Monday through Friday. You tell me you wouldn't think twice about shovelling out 20 dollars for an SC2 event. Jesus christ, its like people these days just don't understand the value of money anymore. You think you can throw it at anything because you have a lot of it, well GOOD FOR YOU. Not everyone is in that position.
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On February 14 2012 11:23 Jibba wrote:Show nested quote +On February 14 2012 11:12 dsousa wrote:
You know who survives on ads.... Google, Facebook, Zynga, Yahoo, 500 television channels, Football, basketball, baseball, tennis, and every other SC2 tournament out there.
So don't cry that the ad model is broken.... maybe your cost structure is broken! Youtube lost billions of dollars for years and has only relatively recently begun to make money for Google. Most football, basketball and baseball teams are losing money, which is why they have revenue sharing from the giants. Television is dying with advertising, media is dying with advertising. And the actual truth is that SC2 is dying with advertising. People have been fed a vision of mainstream ESPORTS for too long, and they don't realize people are just taking loss leaders on a hope that's never going to happen. Even the giants in BW have been falling for years. It's a bubble and a niche, and there will never be a viewership that can sustain an advertising based/free system. Never. The entire system is currently reliant on investors, and you can't keep that up.
That doesn't sound true at all considering all the leagues that have sustained theirselves over the past year or so on Free streams.
If they were losing more money than making wouldn't they just close up shop? Because they'd be bankrupt?
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