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Over the last week since MLG Anaheim, a lot has come out about the player area at MLG and treatment from the MLG staff at the last event.
Bottom line is this: I love MLG and want to see it continue to get better. What can MLG do to improve this situation? What should be done? Hopefully if we can get some quality feedback around this subject we can see a change before MLG Raleigh.
Does MLG need to revise their rules? Is more training needed? I'd love to hear your thoughts.
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This isn't really a matter of rules. It's a company trying to make money vs the little insignificant guys. Sure, you paid to compete and whatever, but they took your money knowing you'd never make it anyway, unless you were good/known/pro, etc. They want people to see Boxer, and spend more $$, not a random unknown dude.
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I don't know, I think MLG is just growing too quickly to really keep up.
There's exponentially more people, more games, more players, more coaches, more importance to the matches. So everyone wants to have the best performance possible, which includes coaching and teammates and stuff.
It's something that needs to be talked about.
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MLG's 'intimate access to players' is a win-win for them because they're the biggest show in NA, and it requires very little effort on their part. But, like these guys have said, it is very far from ideal.
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On June 16 2012 01:08 vnlegend wrote:
This isn't really a matter of rules. It's a company trying to make money vs the little insignificant guys. Sure, you paid to compete and whatever, but they took your money knowing you'd never make it anyway, unless you were good/known/pro, etc. They want people to see Boxer, and spend more $$, not a random unknown dude.
It's /at least/ a matter of rules, as well as floor plan layout, scheduling, and a number of other event operation issues. So let's think about potential solutions instead of theorycrafting about MLG's possible motivations.
- Extend roped off area behind player stations outward and add chairs for teammates/coaches/etc (so they can watch w/o completely restricting the view from outside the rope). Should be enough room for refs to traverse from station to station w/o interfering with teammate/coach spectating.
- Personally, I'd like to see a larger percentage of player stations - perhaps all of them at some point - have decently-sized LCD screens (42"?) mirroring player cams which are elevated above each respective player station. Think a "light" version of the feature stations in which the LCD screens are elevated but the player stations are still ground-level as they are now. If there's more space behind the player stations, then this would help ameliorate spectating issues from outside the rope. I know this would be expensive, but I think it'd be worth it in the long run.
- With extended area behind the player stations, more latitude could be given in terms of accommodating additional folks in the player area, so MLG could then grant additional "coach" badges and perhaps allow eliminated players the opportunity to stay in the player area as well.
Just my two cents.
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The players' experience should trump ALL other event concerns. If you can't take care of the players at your event, some other event will. If that means less chairs for the spectators to make the player area bigger, then so be it. Players > EVERYTHING ELSE.
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Interesting that all of these complains (which sound really awful tbh) come up now and not a few MLG's ago?
I would really like to hear a statement from an MLG official (Adam I'm looking at you!)
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On June 16 2012 02:25 Pimpmuckl wrote:
Interesting that all of these complains (which sound really awful tbh) come up now and not a few MLG's ago?
I would really like to hear a statement from an MLG official (Adam I'm looking at you!)
Previously there were other glaring concerns that were more visible. These and related space issues were brought up several times in the past though, in threads, blogs, and on itg/sotg etc. Hopefully it's loud enough this time, since they are really pretty major areas for improvement.
Sometimes I wonder if MLG is gradually becoming less receptive with success, it's almost inevitable-- it's definitely the trend with most similar things, but theres no evidence yet that this is true.
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Clearly MLG needs to get their shit straight. Letting competitors have more privileges would be a nice start. I hope they fix this. But I don't doubt it, in the past MLG has definitely been known to straighten out problems. It was probably a good idea to let this be known to everyone.
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On June 16 2012 02:25 Pimpmuckl wrote:
Interesting that all of these complains (which sound really awful tbh) come up now and not a few MLG's ago?
There's always issues - MLG has just fixed enough now that this is high on minds.
I can speculate two main reasons why players would want to hang around the players area
1) Privacy from the public
2) Supporting team mates
1) Can be fixed with a players lounge / warm up area.
2) Can be managed by allowing a limited number of people to sit behind stations.
If there's no player's lounge, it's no wonder that those seeking respite would want to stay in the pit as long as possible. Genuine team mates watching on a couple chairs, fine. But it's not fair on those still playing to have to deal with the area being used as a social lounge as well.
Here's the lounge from last year's Dreamhack Winter
![[image loading]](http://farm8.staticflickr.com/7155/6545073441_ebe5bd6f04_n.jpg)
Players Lounge by andytb, on Flickr
It was non discriminatory - if you were a registered player in any of the non-BYOC tournaments, you were allowed access to seating, snacks, drinks, a limited amount of warm up PCs and massage. I'd actually say it wasn't private enough, as the public could still look in, but hey. It meant that those who hung around the players area, which they were allowed to do, were those observing matches and not for a chat.
![[image loading]](http://farm8.staticflickr.com/7145/6545102935_0bbb90c318_n.jpg)
dreamhack-060 by andytb, on Flickr
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Probably be easiest just to have a much bigger private players only lounge/area/practice room and make it so the only people allowed into the actual playing area are those that have been called up to set up for and play their match.
By 'easiest' I mean most straightforward for admins/officials to enforce to take away the ambiguousness of letting koreans stay but kicking out other players, who have paid the same entry fee, out.
As it stands now I do however agree with MLG admins kicking out players of the playing area who have already been knocked out of the tournament, as long as they enforce that rule for everybody no matter who they are.
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I think there are some reasons why the players are so exposed:
Showing all games to spectators: Not every game goes on the big screen, but we would like the option to watch them if we attend an MLG. However, to do so, MGL needs to mirror the view of the players on another screen. There are hard limits to how far they can put the spectators away from the players due to this. You can only lay down so much cable before you became a fire/tripping/code violation hazzard and this leads to liability and insurance. Every major event of this nature deals with this issue and there is only so much that can be done. This limits MGLs ability to seperate the players from the sepectators.
But, to be frank, who cares. MGL should double down and get staff to deal with the issue. A seperate room is not need, only 10 feet and a couple of staff members willing to be the bad guy. When someone starts yelling to Idra or Incontrol, these MLG staff just need to go up and ask them to not bother the players and let them do their thing. People may be upset, but only the unreasonable ones and there was no helping them. This is good for everyone because after one or two event, it will become standard. The players don't need to feel like jerks for turning down an hug or autograph. And the poor staff members who signed up for one of the worst jobs possible, well they get the gratitude of a bunch of professional players.
Players need their space. It doesn't need to be a lot, about just the distance from the the seats to the sidelines on a basket ball court. That is not a huge distance at all.
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Don't forget idra's take on it, he is talking more of MLG and WCS at same time but it falls in the same treating players like crap.
http://evilgeniuses.net/idras-thoughts-on-mlg-wcs/
After all without the players there would be no spectators and if big name players eventually stop going that will hurt MLG.
If this was still the beginning of starcraft 2 it wouldnt be such a big deal because most were unkown players but now there
are a lot of people that fans want to see and wont pay the money to watch the event stream or show up if they arent going
to be there.
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Guys please note that Blizzard also has responsibility for the way the situation was handled not all MLG's fault. IMO just create two playing area's for WCS and MLG. Increase the number of computers, more admins/staff, and just better planning.
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I think there should be a small(like 2 person wide) lane roped off surrounding the playing area in addition to the one that is already there. People using this lane MUST have a player pass or manager badge. This would move fans about 5 feet back from the playing area but would allow teammates and managers to have priority viewing and close proximity to players for support without clogging the actual player area.
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sometimes bigger isn't necessarily better... i think in the case of this MLG (I happen to attend both this and last year's Anaheim tournaments) they were simply overwhelmed by all that was going on over the three days. more people, more tournaments, more games compared to last year, I'm not quite sure they staffed accordingly.
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while i think it's important to understand play concerns... i feel like mlg is the best event because of the fans. to me, it's more important to think about how to make the event better for fans both attendee and viewers. money comes from the later (via advertising and fees).
players lounges seem like a good idea except that that means less player interaction for fans. of course players need their space, but what i'd be worried about with lounges is that players go there for the majority of the time and never "hangs out" among the fans.
one of my favorite experiences at mlg raleigh is where HerO was playing against DRG (i think) and the entire liquid team was sitting behind them among a ton of fans watching the games progress. few people bothered the liquid players at this time. they might chat with fans about the game/strategy. i think the best improvement might be to have more of these stands where people can gather around to watch their favorites play right in front of them.
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On June 16 2012 02:25 Pimpmuckl wrote:
Interesting that all of these complains (which sound really awful tbh) come up now and not a few MLG's ago?
I would really like to hear a statement from an MLG official (Adam I'm looking at you!)
Complains like these have been there since they started broadcasting sc2.. It's just that there were other much bigger problems they had to fix but now they fixed a lot of those these come up again.
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Allow players to stay in the playing area a maximum of X rounds after the player was eliminated. As a concrete example, consider a player eliminated in the Ro128. Then, he should be allowed to stay within the playing area until Ro32 matches end or Ro16 begins (I used 2 rounds after elimination for this example, Ro128 -> Ro64 -> Ro32). I know that MLG uses Winners/Losers bracket system so it might be a little different, but if I recall correctly the Loser's Bracket isn't even played until Saturday, when all of the Winner's Bracket is already over.
Since Pros tend to stay in the tournament longer. People who wanted to compete for fun tend to get eliminated earlier. The later rounds should be observable by more pros than casuals, but casuals still have the opportunity to observe. And as the matches get more and more intense, the players have more space around them.
An easy way to implement this is to give different colored wristbands for when a player was eliminated.
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EPT
