On October 13 2012 13:52 Torte de Lini wrote: LuckyFool is a pretty gullible for not thinking winners definitely get a longer leash/leniency than someone like, say, orb who's up and coming.
Is it right to give a longer leash when it goes against the very morals you preach as an organization? Has Stephano earned the right to belittle the community and act completely irresponsible and unprofessional? And more importantly is this someone we want as a face of the community as we try to bring esports into the mainstream?
I think that Torte de Lini is merely acknowledging that in any organisation different people are valued differently. This is usually reflected by position in the hierarchy and/or wages and status. It is all very well talking about morals but EG is a business and so also has to take decisions that are pragmatic too. SC2 will never go mainstream unless it increases it's popularity and the reality is that Stephano is very popular.
Stephano is so popular he transcends even SC2 in popularity? You know, that mainstream audience we're targeting. Not even IdrA is that popular.
Of course Stephano's popularity does not transcend SC2 in popularity. I am not sure why you would think my post implied anything like that at all. The point is that there is a reason why tournaments keep inviting him to participate and why teams like EG are willing him to pay him such a large salary. Tournaments die if no-one watches them and thrive if people watch them. Stephano will be streaming from Korea soon and will get larger views than many SC2 tournaments. All the evidence seems to point to the fact that Stephano participating in a tournament brings in more viewers.
And the amount of viewers that will specifically tune out an event because Stephano got invited after this ordeal? None.
On October 13 2012 14:02 SHODAN wrote: I wish Stephano and his legion of fanboys would just go away
Goes both ways. I wish the drama queen community made up by gossip women would just go away. But hey I guess since most of you don't watch starcraft you have to rely on soap opera to satisfy you entertainment addictions no matter who gets hurt or how silly it is.
Welcome to the starcraft community where drama and gossip rules. Hell remind me to sign up my girlfriend she and her friends would be perfect for this community
The gossip and drama are easy to ignore. It's impossible to ignore Stephano fanboys sucking his dick every chance they get.
Aww how cute you are. Better go post on Reddit buddy you don't want to miss the latest drama
I have 26 posts on TL, 4 on reddit, should give you an idea of how often I comment on drama like this. Don't get me wrong, the TL admins are just as bad for making this shit front page news. It's irrelevant to competitive SCII
On October 13 2012 14:50 Urth wrote: I can understand sponsors being upset, but I'm surprised by how many people in this thread are taking this so seriously.
I think you used a bad choice of words. This is a serious issue, not an April fools day joke. This guy actually got punished for saying a few words — why would it not be serious?
What I'm inferring from what you said is that "[you] don't think people should consider what Stephano did to be such a big problem"; that's right?
On October 13 2012 14:50 Urth wrote: I can understand sponsors being upset, but I'm surprised by how many people in this thread are taking this so seriously.
People trying to hide there bullshit under a morally offended disguise. The sad reality no one gives a shit but for the usual haters and drama queens its its a perfect opportunity to jump on the bandwagon.
This is what the community has become and like I said before next week is some one else. The only problem I got with this is EG just empowered these individuals. They actually took them serious to please the sponsors. The problem is they gave these sad people a free card to do it again. And they will keep emailing sponsors because they can and because its fun it creates drama and entertainment.
Just look at how many pages this thread got and look at the Reddit thread.
I dont care what I would of done if a gaming team suspended me for talking out of turn I would never have anything to do with that team again, especially as its EG and stephano is the only good player on the team anyway, especially as what he said was a joke
On October 13 2012 13:52 Torte de Lini wrote: LuckyFool is a pretty gullible for not thinking winners definitely get a longer leash/leniency than someone like, say, orb who's up and coming.
Is it right to give a longer leash when it goes against the very morals you preach as an organization? Has Stephano earned the right to belittle the community and act completely irresponsible and unprofessional? And more importantly is this someone we want as a face of the community as we try to bring esports into the mainstream?
If mainstream esports is your business goal, then I wish you the best of luck achieving it. But in the meantime, while the rest of us are trying to watch Starcraft, what's the usefulness of randomly grounding a player - let alone a star player?
So you would prefer the scene not to grow and expand and become bigger? You would rather watch Stephano today and have the scene die tomorrow? That's the impression I get from reading this.
The scene has not gotten to where it is by being something it isn't. It's not going to die because Stephano said some words on battle.net. Look at the calendar. The scene isn't going anywhere. But it's not going to grow any faster if you sift through everything going "We don't want anything that exceeds x threshhold of offensiveness" and cut out all the players, content, and followers that entails.
It's similar if you were an executive at NBC and you wanted to abolish HBO with the reasoning "all of those people saying the fuck word, that just doesn't appeal to a mainstream audience. Television will never be mainstream until channels like HBO are shown the door."
What has happened with Stephano - as has happened before - is people from outside the scene went "nananananana" because they don't like one guy. Now, it's fine not to like someone. But normal people who follow the game just ignore the parts of it they don't like. As I said, look at the calendar and list of streams. There's a wide selection of flavors. SRS isn't really the target demographic people think of when they sponsor something in e-sports. So when sponsors get a flood of righteous email from them, it doesn't actually matter - they weren't watching to begin with, and they don't qualify as rational consumers. Further, in about a week they will have moved on to some other cause and forgotten that they were boycotting Intel, and they'll probably go out and get that new Macbook anyways. It's all bullshit.
What I mean is when people turn on the GSL stream they don't find Ilyes Satouri's Certifiably Crude Comedy Club, they find Tasteless and Artosis saying moderate things and a bunch of people playing Starcraft very well. Something Stephano said on battle.net just isn't relevant. In fact, if it were up to me, I would put a moratorium on all of these threads. They have nothing to do with anything and they serve no purpose.
People who preach the mainstream e-sports platform are actually just themselves jockeying for market share. Cashing in on controversy is unfortunately an easy way to get people watching, even if, as I said before, people wouldn't normally bat an eyelash about something so trivial. Or even if they found Stephano reprehensible, they would just turn off Bling's stream or something, not marshal redditers over a vendetta.
Stupid shit. "Professionalism" is just a bullshit word people throw around for "you should be better than I am and here is how I am going to judge you". No one could ever live up to a moving standard like the one placed on professional athletes (or professional gamers). Sorry Stephano for making a joke but some people were offended by it. What do you mean this type of humor and authenticity is what made you popular? We don't understand that, we demand "professionalism".
You work harder at being good at a game than most people work at succeeding at anything in life? To fucking bad. We, the moral exemplars who take money from sponsors in return for publicity, determine that your joke was in poor taste and you are now punished for it. Geoff has made worse jokes with 2GD on stream sponsored by ASUS? Well, we determine that this joke was worse. By what standard? Our standard of course. No you cannot see what our rules for appropriateness are and fuck you for asking.
On October 13 2012 15:06 Connor987 wrote: I dont care what I would of done if a gaming team suspended me for talking out of turn I would never have anything to do with that team again, especially as its EG and stephano is the only good player on the team anyway, especially as what he said was a joke
The only good player on EG? Have you been living under a rock for the last year?
What I mean is when people turn on the GSL stream they don't find Ilyes Satouri's Certifiably Crude Comedy Club, they find Tasteless and Artosis saying moderate things and a bunch of people playing Starcraft very well. Something Stephano said on battle.net just isn't relevant. In fact, if it were up to me, I would put a moratorium on all of these threads. They have nothing to do with anything and they serve no purpose.
On October 13 2012 13:52 Torte de Lini wrote: LuckyFool is a pretty gullible for not thinking winners definitely get a longer leash/leniency than someone like, say, orb who's up and coming.
Is it right to give a longer leash when it goes against the very morals you preach as an organization? Has Stephano earned the right to belittle the community and act completely irresponsible and unprofessional? And more importantly is this someone we want as a face of the community as we try to bring esports into the mainstream?
I think that Torte de Lini is merely acknowledging that in any organisation different people are valued differently. This is usually reflected by position in the hierarchy and/or wages and status. It is all very well talking about morals but EG is a business and so also has to take decisions that are pragmatic too. SC2 will never go mainstream unless it increases it's popularity and the reality is that Stephano is very popular.
Totally agreed. I just want consistency, if you're going to preach you run your organization behind morals and community commitments I would like to think you would uphold those statements.
Of course at the end of the day a business is all about money, always is always will be.
For SC2 to become mainstream, it needs to grow it's popularity. It needs more people to watch SC2 tournaments, and Stephano brings in a crowd and I am not sure how it is a good thing for the scene if the biggest draws are taken out of the scene. I understand your points about professional and responsibility and Stephano certainly should improve these aspects of his behaviour. With regards to this particular issue, I am not happy with EG's decision, but I understand why they did it and do not blame them for it.
Well it is about money. Stephano is a big asset to EG, hence they pay him big bucks and he wins SC2 games for them wearing his EG apprarel and brings attention to EG and their sponsors. Similarly EG rely on their money from their sponsors in order to pay him the big bucks. And the sponsors need to show concern when a player associated with their brand causes controversy and negative headlines. The sponsors don't want either controversy or negative headlines attached to them, they want advertising and enhanced sales through the association with the player. So EG are only punishing Stephano because of sponsorship and community pressure because their income from sponsors and the community is at stake. And the sponsors are only responding to negative headlines and emails because they fear bad publicicity for their brand and a loss of sales due to their association with the drama. Stephano gets paid and invited to tournaments because he is popular and helps tournaments bring in viewers and please their own sponsors. Stephano plays in SC2 tournaments because he get paid in prize money and wages. So it IS all about business really.
EG are extremely good at attracting and keeping sponsors, so their actions in suspending Stephano are in line with their disciplinary policies, which is an example of why they are so good at attracting sponsorships. Stephano did something that caused controversy, and had to be disciplined once the sponsors got involved. I hope Stephano can learn from this experience and will not repeat this drama.
When you ask for the scene to go more mainstream, you are essentially asking for more money to come in because of increased popularity. Stephano causing bad drama via ill-advised comments is bad for the scene, Stephano winning high profile SC2 tournaments and helping to bring in 100,000 viewers is good for the scene. So Stephano needs to do more of the latter and less of the former. Sponsors like the latter and not the former.
Being a professional Starcraft player doesn't just mean playing Starcraft for money, it extends beyond that, conducting yourself in the proper manner and always thinking before you say or do anything which could harm you,your team or E-Sports.. Especially when you are in a big team with many big-name sponsors.
On October 13 2012 15:16 eXeElNino wrote: Being a professional Starcraft player doesn't just mean playing Starcraft for money, it extends beyond that, conducting yourself in the proper manner and always thinking before you say or do anything which could harm you,your team or E-Sports.. Especially when you are in a big team with many big-name sponsors.
sure, but does that mean the player should get punished when a private message is accidently broadcast to multiple other people? Also, what is the line for proper behavior? Not everyone has the same opinion; You could get 100 angry devout religious people (be it Christians, Muslims, or whatever) who are terribly offended at some ridiculous things sending complaint letters to someone, when really the majority of viewers don't care about what the player said/did.
On October 13 2012 15:17 ShakkaFL wrote: I just find it hilarious that people defend a guy who said he abused a minor, be it joke or not.
Would you defend a guy who said that he murdered someone as a joke?
I would. Unless there's some form of sincerity and details and admittance/confession, and/or proof that it happened, there's no major problem with the statement — there was no threat or hateful or abusive communication directed towards anyone. Police/justice don't even accept generic confessions — to ensure that they have the right person a complete and detailed description of the event by the confessor is mandated.
So you think someone should be punished for saying online in a private conversation as a potential joke that they killed someone? It seems to be what you're implying. What if they said they robbed a bank? what about having sex with a dog? what about having sex with [your] mom? They're all just unsubstantiated statements said under and assumption of privacy, non-criminal, non-threatening, non-hateful/abusive, and potentially joking.
that's just retarded, why cant he make a joke to another fellow player that is so unbelievably obvious to anyone. if i were stephano i would just quit the team an go make the money myself he doesn't need a team saying what he can an cant do an say taking away his basic rights as a human. lol ridiculous
EPT
