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I don't see how 'interacting with the community' and 'use terms/behavior that could impact sponsors' are the same? There are lots of members of this community who interact with their fans, and don't have to resort to 'just being who they are' as an excuse to say things inappropriate. Hell you can even be angry, or outlandish and create tons of fans (see 1a2a3a4a5a) but you don't have to resort to vitriol in doing it. angry you lost? rage! sure! cuss even, but you don't have to use racial or homophobic terms to get it across.
In real life, if you work for a 'service industry', and you do something that reflects poorly on your employer in a public way, angry letters and phone calls get written. Hell, in larger corporations, you get sued for millions of dollars, often times winning, and hurting plenty of company's bottom line. But you know what the corporations do? They don't try to tell people 'don't contact us', they realize that as a service industry provider, they need to please their consumers, and if that means being politically correct, then you hold your employees responsible, you conduct training, you make sure people understand the corporations ethics code of conduct, and you enforce it. I don't think anyone on the teams involved, WANTED to end up in the situations they were in, but they HAVE to take responsibility for it, and react, and they did so in ways that would be accepted as professional.
Emailing sponsors, doesn't HURT esports, it shows we are not only passionate about what we do, but that we are conscious consumers, who know how to both appreciate good sponsors, and boycott bad ones. This is the real world now, we're entering a new state of our beloved gaming culture, and you can grow with it, and move forward, or you can cling onto your childish ideals and internet hate speech, and claim 'that's just how we are', and be left in the dust.
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On May 08 2012 01:18 ScienceRob wrote:
Some of you are indeed out of touch with reality. In the real world when a public figure does something the public disagrees with they often will go directly to their sponsors as they know that is where their power lies (purchasing power). They have no other influence. A lot of people don't like this but all I can say in response is grow up. It's the way the world works. E-sports is no different.
E-sports IS different because it's an infant industry. It doesn't have the deep rooted powerful sponsorships and contracts that the NFL, NBA etc have. If you kill the already small numbers of e-sports sponsors, you kill e-sports. What part of that is difficult to understand?
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On May 08 2012 01:17 crocodile wrote:Show nested quote +On May 08 2012 00:00 sick_transit wrote:
It never ceases to amaze me the amount of time and energy people spend on this site defending and/or debating what is obviously bad behavior. If you want to play custom games with your friends, by all means call them all the names you want. If you want to be a professional--i.e., get paid--then prepare to be held to ordinary standards of professional conduct. This goes for players, casters, managers, teams, and anyone else. In the modern world, in which we happen to live, this is not just true for all professional sports, it is true for all jobs. I think most of the actual professionals in this industry get this because they are grown-ups and live in the grown-up world. Many people on this site appear to still be figuring it out. That's not what this is discussion is about. For someone who appears to think they're a grown-up, you sure don't do a good job of finding out what the fuck is going on around you. The issue is whether or not you contact sponsors, not whether the player's actions are justifiable. I'll make it easier for you: from here on, assume we all equally disapprove of Destiny/Orb/Naniwa's behavior; the debate is whether or not we should go to sponsors first or go to Quantic/EG. I have not heard a good argument for the former, because everyone arguing the former simply argues that the rest of us are supporting racism.
Firstly that's not the case - some people are rationalizing it's okay to use the language because it's a private stream or that because it wasn't really meant to be racist.
But even still, there are strong arguments for the former.
1) Quantic picked up Destiny knowing that there were issues (hence why he wasn't on Complexity)
2) Quantic did not release a statement. Sure the community's response was instantaneous but we still had not heard anything until Quantic and Destiny parted ways.
3) Not e-mailing sponsors is essentially attempting to hide the information from them - as someone mentioned, if sponsors were to find out indirectly about the racism I'm sure they'd be just as unimpressed. Sweeping issues under the rug isn't a long-term solution
Show nested quote +On May 07 2012 23:52 kuroshiro wrote:
You don't need to treat sponsors like glass chandeliers. They are by-and-large astute business men with enough worldly experience to understand these situations. They're not gonna pull sponsorship from an entire team because of the actions of one member if they can just deal with the one member instead (ring any bells?). This is because the sponsorship is a business transaction that benefits them as well as the team.
If teams are struggling to find sponsors it's not because of standard "dirty-laundry" stuff like this, it's because esports is a business model that's untested. You most likely have never worked with e-sports sponsors or teams, and you therefore have no idea what you're talking about. Incontrol, who does work with sponsors and teams REGULARLY and knows how this shit works, has urged the community on numerous occasions not to bring sponsors into issues like this, but rather to contact the team. Do you have some knowledge of the workings of the e-sports business model that someone like Incontrol does not?
InControl may have more knowledge, but he also has a significant bias - he is a direct beneficiary of the current sponsorship so he doesn't want to risk anything. But if you're looking at long-term growth issues like this need to be weeded out, not hidden.
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On May 08 2012 00:04 Insurrectionist wrote:Show nested quote +On May 07 2012 23:43 crocodile wrote:
The point is NOT that what Destiny did is wrong. The point is that it's NOT okay to fucking email sponsors about it. There are other ways of dealing with this that don't involve potentially cutting off funding for a team that supports players other than Destiny.
Of course it's okay. It's not like the Orb situation where the relevant team might not have known that such language has been thrown around by the player in question (and indeed was used again). Some people care more about the use of slurs and casual racism than they do about e-sports, and for them the fact that Quantic signed Destiny at all after his previous controversies as well as refusing to distance himself from such language would be more than enough to lose faith in and goodwill towards Quantic. The team reaped what they sowed, it's all well and good to say they wanted the player not the personality, but at the end of the day this is simply semantics - they were still supporting Destiny while knowing all about the language he has been comfortable using. Supporting him at all indicates they don't particularly care about his language/slurs only what it might do to their image - and so when a situation such as this arises, you cannot blame people for bypassing Quantic and going straight to the sponsors. Indeed I personally think it's a very effective strategy - it sends a message out to teams that if they're willing to take on players who uses such language and is not apologetic about it, they're taking a big risk. For comparison, I'd say Orb's use of language was fairly obscure prior to it blowing up, so EG being ignorant about it (especially since they had a less close relationship) would be understandable and they should IMO have the opportunity to react before sponsors were contacted. Quantic relinquished this opportunity when they signed someone with Destiny's reputation.
And since you and like-minded posters were so morally outraged when Quantic signed such a player, you emailed Razer right when they signed him, right? After all you knew at that point that Quantic knew about Destiny's behavior but signed him anyway. What's that, you waited until some drama got stirred up on the forum to email Razer? You let the incredible injustice of Quantic signing destiny go unpunished for months? Why weren't you watching Destiny's stream months ago and take screenshots and audio clips in order to fight for racial equality?
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On May 08 2012 01:20 Kazeyonoma wrote:
Emailing sponsors, doesn't HURT esports, it shows we are not only passionate about what we do, but that we are conscious consumers, who know how to both appreciate good sponsors, and boycott bad ones. This is the real world now, we're entering a new state of our beloved gaming culture, and you can grow with it, and move forward, or you can cling onto your childish ideals and internet hate speech, and claim 'that's just how we are', and be left in the dust.
Emailing sponsors hurts e-sports because people are not INFORMING the sponsors about what is happening. They're THREATENING them, saying I will not buy a Razer product if you continue to sponsor Destiny, who is a member of Team Quantic.
The issue of whether or not racist behavior is tolerable can come up AFTER we've decided that it's not a good idea to contact sponsors when something like this happens.
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On May 08 2012 01:22 crocodile wrote:Show nested quote +On May 08 2012 01:20 Kazeyonoma wrote:
Emailing sponsors, doesn't HURT esports, it shows we are not only passionate about what we do, but that we are conscious consumers, who know how to both appreciate good sponsors, and boycott bad ones. This is the real world now, we're entering a new state of our beloved gaming culture, and you can grow with it, and move forward, or you can cling onto your childish ideals and internet hate speech, and claim 'that's just how we are', and be left in the dust. Emailing sponsors hurts e-sports because people are not INFORMING the sponsors about what is happening. They're THREATENING them, saying I will not buy a Razer product if you continue to sponsor Destiny, who is a member of Team Quantic. The issue of whether or not racist behavior is tolerable can come up AFTER we've decided that it's not a good idea to contact sponsors when something like this happens.
Well if it's true that the person who contacted the sponsor will no longer buy a Razer product, shouldn't the sponsor be informed of this? What's wrong with that?
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On May 08 2012 01:19 crocodile wrote:
You guys didn't give Quantic one fucking day to react before you started contacting sponsors. Don't come here saying that the team would have done nothing if it wasn't for you crusaders of racial justice riding your high horses to the sponsors. You're basing YOUR argument off of a false premise, which is that Quantic did nothing and so people were forced to go to sponsors, which is absolute utter bullshit and you know it.
Implying I actually contacted anyone, which I didn't because I genuinely don't give a crap. But I flat out cannot believe the people white-knighting Destiny here as if he's some innocent to be defended and acting like hiding away racism is somehow a GOOD thing for gaining sponsorship with the logic seemingly being "what they don't know can't hurt them, right?"
Quantic hired Destiny in the full knowledge of what he's like. Therefore regardless of their own reasons for doing so they were publicly showing approval of his attitude. Public relations 101.
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On May 08 2012 01:21 Doodsmack wrote:Show nested quote +On May 08 2012 00:04 Insurrectionist wrote:On May 07 2012 23:43 crocodile wrote:
The point is NOT that what Destiny did is wrong. The point is that it's NOT okay to fucking email sponsors about it. There are other ways of dealing with this that don't involve potentially cutting off funding for a team that supports players other than Destiny.
Of course it's okay. It's not like the Orb situation where the relevant team might not have known that such language has been thrown around by the player in question (and indeed was used again). Some people care more about the use of slurs and casual racism than they do about e-sports, and for them the fact that Quantic signed Destiny at all after his previous controversies as well as refusing to distance himself from such language would be more than enough to lose faith in and goodwill towards Quantic. The team reaped what they sowed, it's all well and good to say they wanted the player not the personality, but at the end of the day this is simply semantics - they were still supporting Destiny while knowing all about the language he has been comfortable using. Supporting him at all indicates they don't particularly care about his language/slurs only what it might do to their image - and so when a situation such as this arises, you cannot blame people for bypassing Quantic and going straight to the sponsors. Indeed I personally think it's a very effective strategy - it sends a message out to teams that if they're willing to take on players who uses such language and is not apologetic about it, they're taking a big risk. For comparison, I'd say Orb's use of language was fairly obscure prior to it blowing up, so EG being ignorant about it (especially since they had a less close relationship) would be understandable and they should IMO have the opportunity to react before sponsors were contacted. Quantic relinquished this opportunity when they signed someone with Destiny's reputation. And since you and like-minded posters were so morally outraged when Quantic signed such a player, you emailed Razer right when they signed him, right? After all you knew at that point that Quantic knew about Destiny's behavior but signed him anyway. What's that, you waited until some drama got stirred up on the forum to email Razer? You let the incredible injustice of Quantic signing destiny go unpunished for months? Why weren't you watching Destiny's stream months ago and take screenshots and audio clips in order to fight for racial equality?
this is exactly right and proves that most of the complainers are bandwagoning, mob-mentality witch hunters with nothing better to do than gain a small taste of power by complaining to a sponsor
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On May 08 2012 00:04 Insurrectionist wrote:Show nested quote +On May 07 2012 23:43 crocodile wrote:
The point is NOT that what Destiny did is wrong. The point is that it's NOT okay to fucking email sponsors about it. There are other ways of dealing with this that don't involve potentially cutting off funding for a team that supports players other than Destiny.
Of course it's okay. It's not like the Orb situation where the relevant team might not have known that such language has been thrown around by the player in question (and indeed was used again). Some people care more about the use of slurs and casual racism than they do about e-sports, and for them the fact that Quantic signed Destiny at all after his previous controversies as well as refusing to distance himself from such language would be more than enough to lose faith in and goodwill towards Quantic. The team reaped what they sowed, it's all well and good to say they wanted the player not the personality, but at the end of the day this is simply semantics - they were still supporting Destiny while knowing all about the language he has been comfortable using. Supporting him at all indicates they don't particularly care about his language/slurs only what it might do to their image - and so when a situation such as this arises, you cannot blame people for bypassing Quantic and going straight to the sponsors. Indeed I personally think it's a very effective strategy - it sends a message out to teams that if they're willing to take on players who uses such language and is not apologetic about it, they're taking a big risk. For comparison, I'd say Orb's use of language was fairly obscure prior to it blowing up, so EG being ignorant about it (especially since they had a less close relationship) would be understandable and they should IMO have the opportunity to react before sponsors were contacted. Quantic relinquished this opportunity when they signed someone with Destiny's reputation.
What about this makes it okay to contact sponsors? Contact the team first. If they don't respond after a week, maybe you should consider that getting some justice for a victimless crime is not something that you're capable of doing without blowing the issue out of proportion and hurting the livelihoods of people other than the one you're trying to punish.
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I find characterizing all 3 of your examples as "witch hunts" laughable. A witch hunt is something without basis, where all 3 of these cases had a very legitimate complaint at their core.
Now, I'm willing to accept that the community took things too far too quickly. But at that point it stops being a "witch hunt" and is just being overzealous.
Also, I'm really concerned that this community considers being racist or an asshole to be "showing personality" and "being honest." I mean, I guess technically it is, but being an asshole honestly isn't really admirable. You know who shows personality and is honest? Day9. Ever heard him call someone a nigger? Fuck no. Just because someone is a nice guy doesn't mean that they're hiding an raging 12 year old inside. It's like we've all been on the internet so long that we've forgotten that it's possible for some people to just be nice, so we assume that nice people are just full of shit and would treat everyone terribly if they could get away with it. There's plenty of room for personality in SC2, what there isn't room for is certain kinds of behavior. I think we've done a good job of drawing boundries for what those behaviors are, and hopefully we won't have any more issues in the future.
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On May 08 2012 01:20 crocodile wrote:Show nested quote +On May 08 2012 01:18 ScienceRob wrote:
Some of you are indeed out of touch with reality. In the real world when a public figure does something the public disagrees with they often will go directly to their sponsors as they know that is where their power lies (purchasing power). They have no other influence. A lot of people don't like this but all I can say in response is grow up. It's the way the world works. E-sports is no different. E-sports IS different because it's an infant industry. It doesn't have the deep rooted powerful sponsorships and contracts that the NFL, NBA etc have. If you kill the already small numbers of e-sports sponsors, you kill e-sports. What part of that is difficult to understand?
Large part of community that is responsible for eSports growth doesn't want people like Destiny. Same part of community thinks it shouldn't be quiet about players/public figures using ethnic, racial and homophobic slurs so few thousands of Destiny's fans could enjoy his "amusing tantrum". That community also thinks long-term growth of eSports won't be as fast with public figures who freely act like Destiny. Same wise if fighting against ethic, racial and homophobic slurs would kill eSports, eSports as industriy is doomed from the beginning. What part of that is difficult to understand?
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On May 08 2012 01:27 Lightspeaker wrote:Show nested quote +On May 08 2012 01:19 crocodile wrote:
You guys didn't give Quantic one fucking day to react before you started contacting sponsors. Don't come here saying that the team would have done nothing if it wasn't for you crusaders of racial justice riding your high horses to the sponsors. You're basing YOUR argument off of a false premise, which is that Quantic did nothing and so people were forced to go to sponsors, which is absolute utter bullshit and you know it. Implying I actually contacted anyone, which I didn't because I genuinely don't give a crap. But I flat out cannot believe the people white-knighting Destiny here as if he's some innocent to be defended and acting like hiding away racism is somehow a GOOD thing for gaining sponsorship with the logic seemingly being "what they don't know can't hurt them, right?" Quantic hired Destiny in the full knowledge of what he's like. Therefore regardless of their own reasons for doing so they were publicly showing approval of his attitude. Public relations 101.
My god. I can't believe that you just willingly choose to ignore logic and spout your useless retarded biased shit.
IT'S NOT ABOUT HIDING RACISM. It's about dealing with racism WITHOUT contacting the sponsors because that hurts the livelihoods of EVERYONE ON QUANTIC when contacting Quantic alone would have the same effect. By contacting sponsors you potentially hurt the livelihoods of all of Quantic's SC2 roster, BUT YOU DON'T HURT DESTINY BECAUSE HIS INCOME IS FROM STREAMING.
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On May 08 2012 01:18 ScienceRob wrote:
Some of you are indeed out of touch with reality. In the real world when a public figure does something the public disagrees with they often will go directly to their sponsors as they know that is where their power lies (purchasing power). They have no other influence. A lot of people don't like this but all I can say in response is grow up. It's the way the world works. E-sports is no different.
If the real world when the public actively hunts for things to pull out on 'public figures', then we laugh at the stupidity of modern media. This wasn't a public occurrence, it was only big because people exposed it to as many people as possible. Slight difference.
If these were events from a casted tournament, it'd be pretty much unanimous that it was beyond unacceptable. Though ironically, people seem relatively forgiving of rule violations by comparison, which just makes this sillier.
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Despite what the destiny fans want to say, it was a long time comming for destiny to have some sort of accountability for his actions.
If you want to be a public figure, then you gotta have accountability for what you say/do.
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The problem with emailing sponsors is that it puts the whole game/scene in bad light, not just the player who broke the rules of polite society.
If people would send angry emails to the sponsors everytime a pro player misbehavied, im pretty sure the sponsors would soon abandon SC2 in fear of getting bad publicity.
So please, if you catch a pro player using racist terms or behaiving outrageously bad, contact the team and let them handle the situation. Emailing the sponsors will just make the SC2 scene in general look like a bunch of immature kids.
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On May 08 2012 01:20 crocodile wrote:Show nested quote +On May 08 2012 01:18 ScienceRob wrote:
Some of you are indeed out of touch with reality. In the real world when a public figure does something the public disagrees with they often will go directly to their sponsors as they know that is where their power lies (purchasing power). They have no other influence. A lot of people don't like this but all I can say in response is grow up. It's the way the world works. E-sports is no different. E-sports IS different because it's an infant industry. It doesn't have the deep rooted powerful sponsorships and contracts that the NFL, NBA etc have. If you kill the already small numbers of e-sports sponsors, you kill e-sports. What part of that is difficult to understand?
I'll try this again. It doesn't matter if you are trying to be the white knight for e-sports and which its survival by making these posts. Your input is irrelevant becuase people who will talk with their purchasing power (far more people than you would expect really) don't care about this fact. They care about what they deem as acceptable, and to be quite frank, they have this right.
Furthermore, there were many other infant industries born (even the NFL had to start somewhere) Looking at history, many industries started small, had similar issues and are still around.
To be quite frank, if organizations are not willing to police their players and ensure some level of professionalism (how hard is it to not use racist language?) and e-sports dies because people email sponsors, then I personally believe it should hurry up and die. Outrage people will act outrage and talk with their money, if e-sports is so fragile that it might die then nothing we ca do will stop it.
I doubt it will and I don't think you can post any data with statistical signifigance that would argue that: Emailing sponsors equates to killing e-sports.
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I literally cannot believe how many people in this thread actually believe going straight to sponsors first is a good idea. I have the exact same opinion as the OP. And this isn't the place to talk details of Destiny's case, it has like 3 other threads elsewhere.
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On May 08 2012 01:29 zergmacro34 wrote:Show nested quote +On May 08 2012 01:21 Doodsmack wrote:On May 08 2012 00:04 Insurrectionist wrote:On May 07 2012 23:43 crocodile wrote:
The point is NOT that what Destiny did is wrong. The point is that it's NOT okay to fucking email sponsors about it. There are other ways of dealing with this that don't involve potentially cutting off funding for a team that supports players other than Destiny.
Of course it's okay. It's not like the Orb situation where the relevant team might not have known that such language has been thrown around by the player in question (and indeed was used again). Some people care more about the use of slurs and casual racism than they do about e-sports, and for them the fact that Quantic signed Destiny at all after his previous controversies as well as refusing to distance himself from such language would be more than enough to lose faith in and goodwill towards Quantic. The team reaped what they sowed, it's all well and good to say they wanted the player not the personality, but at the end of the day this is simply semantics - they were still supporting Destiny while knowing all about the language he has been comfortable using. Supporting him at all indicates they don't particularly care about his language/slurs only what it might do to their image - and so when a situation such as this arises, you cannot blame people for bypassing Quantic and going straight to the sponsors. Indeed I personally think it's a very effective strategy - it sends a message out to teams that if they're willing to take on players who uses such language and is not apologetic about it, they're taking a big risk. For comparison, I'd say Orb's use of language was fairly obscure prior to it blowing up, so EG being ignorant about it (especially since they had a less close relationship) would be understandable and they should IMO have the opportunity to react before sponsors were contacted. Quantic relinquished this opportunity when they signed someone with Destiny's reputation. And since you and like-minded posters were so morally outraged when Quantic signed such a player, you emailed Razer right when they signed him, right? After all you knew at that point that Quantic knew about Destiny's behavior but signed him anyway. What's that, you waited until some drama got stirred up on the forum to email Razer? You let the incredible injustice of Quantic signing destiny go unpunished for months? Why weren't you watching Destiny's stream months ago and take screenshots and audio clips in order to fight for racial equality? this is exactly right and proves that most of the complainers are bandwagoning, mob-mentality witch hunters with nothing better to do than gain a small taste of power by complaining to a sponsor
Maybe they decided to give him a second chance, to see whether he can pull his act together now that he is on a respectable team?
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On May 08 2012 01:20 crocodile wrote:Show nested quote +On May 08 2012 01:18 ScienceRob wrote:
Some of you are indeed out of touch with reality. In the real world when a public figure does something the public disagrees with they often will go directly to their sponsors as they know that is where their power lies (purchasing power). They have no other influence. A lot of people don't like this but all I can say in response is grow up. It's the way the world works. E-sports is no different. E-sports IS different because it's an infant industry. It doesn't have the deep rooted powerful sponsorships and contracts that the NFL, NBA etc have. If you kill the already small numbers of e-sports sponsors, you kill e-sports. What part of that is difficult to understand?
you are so wrong on so many level.
please give me one example where sponsor totally decided not to sponsor a company because of this.
and do you know what the ramification will be if words got out to the main stream media that in E sports casual racial slurs are tolerated?
E sports may never recover.
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Why are people quick to assume that careers were "ruined" because of the community actions/reactions? None of the three mentioned in the OP has been physically or legally forbidden from playing SC2 or casting. I saw a plenty of supportive comments in the threads, indicating that the audience is still there for those players.
A single sponsor/team decision doesn't permanently ruin a career. It may be a temporary setback, but if the fans truly want their idols back in the business, other sponsors and teams will recognize that and act accordingly. Even when Razer received hundreds of emails recently, they could have shrugged it off if that was the better decision.
I wouldn't call it witch hunting - the term reflects a very dark period in history when a certain group of individuals (women) were accused (without "sufficient" proof) of criminal/heretic act(s) that they never committed. In each of the example cases given in the OP, there was sufficient proof that the individuals committed acts that they were accused of. It may be incorrect to label Destiny or Orb as a racist, but it's absolutely true that they made personally directed remarks based on racism.
Naniwa had a good run in Code S. Orb and Destiny will most likely continue to play and stream. I don't see any careers ruined. The true fans will stay with them and support them. Employees don't get paid if the employer says no (for whatever reason), dead simple. There's nothing stopping individuals with unique personalities being themselves on public games and streams, but if that certain personality doesn't go well with the employer, don't expect to be handed money from them.
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EPT
