On October 18 2012 01:18 Kompicek wrote: There is no problem with oversaturation, this will get sorted out automatically by the market. BUT! That doesnt mean, that we cant do nothing. I believe, to grow the scene, there must be much bigger focus on local tournaments, barcrafts etc.. This is what makes new gamers that will last decades, those emotions and friends that are made through the love of the game. New blizzard games feel lonely and that is big problem! (also Lan missing is a problem ) edit: Also we need people in esports like you Grubby - that have personality and can create those emotions to the game!
How does the market fix the problem. If games are not entertaining because there are too many of them, viewership goes down, and the scene fades. Is the scene going to magically revive once tournaments die out and say OSL is the only one left? Of course not, it will just be a small scene at that point.
You have it the wrong way, oversaturation is actually good for the market. The weak ones will die, the strong ones will survive stronger. The scene stays the same, but with more stability. What you are saying is a paradox. I dont want to go over the details with this anymore. This is a typical problem that economists, financial analysts etc. go over on a daily basis. This has already been solved by Adam Smith in his famous book - The wealth of nations in 1776.
On October 18 2012 01:18 Kompicek wrote: There is no problem with oversaturation, this will get sorted out automatically by the market. BUT! That doesnt mean, that we cant do nothing. I believe, to grow the scene, there must be much bigger focus on local tournaments, barcrafts etc.. This is what makes new gamers that will last decades, those emotions and friends that are made through the love of the game. New blizzard games feel lonely and that is big problem! (also Lan missing is a problem ) edit: Also we need people in esports like you Grubby - that have personality and can create those emotions to the game!
How does the market fix the problem. If games are not entertaining because there are too many of them, viewership goes down, and the scene fades. Is the scene going to magically revive once tournaments die out and say OSL is the only one left? Of course not, it will just be a small scene at that point.
You have it the wrong way, oversaturation is actually good for the market. The weak ones will die, the strong ones will survive stronger. The scene stays the same, but with more stability. What you are saying is a paradox. I dont want to go over the details with this anymore. This is a typical problem that economists, financial analysts etc. go over on a daily basis. This has already been solved by Adam Smith in his famous book - The wealth of nations in 1776.
That's a bit of a one-sided argument. If the classic economics problems had been solved, we wouldn't still be having these arguments over such basic economic theories (that's why Keynesian vs Austrian/Supply-side/Chicago school/etc arguments still take place). You can't just declare these problems solved.
From my perspective it seems that demand is not constant (even if price is). By letting the market sort it out does not mean that the weak will die and the strong will thrive. It can very well be the case that in this market that such massive oversaturation will kill the weak and strong alike. The demand for goods will then move over to something else (perhaps another e-sport). The SC2 tournament market isn't a closed system with constant demand. Oversupply can drive the demand down, possibly even permanently. This isn't the same as talking about supply and demand for a necessary good like food, clothes, housing, and gasoline where supply and demand are only really related through price. Not all markets and goods are alike.
Hi guys and gals! Thanks everyone for the amazing and massive response! I'd just like to ask people not to email anymore! :D I'm afraid I can't read any more new emails. I had about 200 email responses, a massive response and I have been sifting through them for days, trying to give everyone the attention they deserve. I still have about 90 new emails. I hope no one will be too upset if no personal response will be forthcoming, I have some important matches to play the coming weeks which I need to focus on. Still, this is an important issue and I'm compiling all the date I have into a huge sheet of information. Hopefully I can make good things come out of it, as I said before, behind the scenes or with a second public manifesto. Thanks again everyone.
On October 18 2012 01:18 Kompicek wrote: There is no problem with oversaturation, this will get sorted out automatically by the market. BUT! That doesnt mean, that we cant do nothing. I believe, to grow the scene, there must be much bigger focus on local tournaments, barcrafts etc.. This is what makes new gamers that will last decades, those emotions and friends that are made through the love of the game. New blizzard games feel lonely and that is big problem! (also Lan missing is a problem ) edit: Also we need people in esports like you Grubby - that have personality and can create those emotions to the game!
How does the market fix the problem. If games are not entertaining because there are too many of them, viewership goes down, and the scene fades. Is the scene going to magically revive once tournaments die out and say OSL is the only one left? Of course not, it will just be a small scene at that point.
You have it the wrong way, oversaturation is actually good for the market. The weak ones will die, the strong ones will survive stronger. The scene stays the same, but with more stability. What you are saying is a paradox. I dont want to go over the details with this anymore. This is a typical problem that economists, financial analysts etc. go over on a daily basis. This has already been solved by Adam Smith in his famous book - The wealth of nations in 1776.
That's a bit of a one-sided argument. If the classic economics problems had been solved, we wouldn't still be having these arguments over such basic economic theories (that's why Keynesian vs Austrian/Supply-side/Chicago school/etc arguments still take place). You can't just declare these problems solved.
From my perspective it seems that demand is not constant (even if price is). By letting the market sort it out does not mean that the weak will die and the strong will thrive. It can very well be the case that in this market that such massive oversaturation will kill the weak and strong alike. The demand for goods will then move over to something else (perhaps another e-sport). The SC2 tournament market isn't a closed system with constant demand. Oversupply can drive the demand down, possibly even permanently. This isn't the same as talking about supply and demand for a necessary good like food, clothes, housing, and gasoline where supply and demand are only really related through price. Not all markets and goods are alike.
I sort of disagree. I do believe that "over-saturation" of tournaments can lead to players passing on some, meaning you may only have a couple REALLY good players in one tournament and a couple REALLY good players in another. Obviously, for the best matches, you'd need to have all of the REALLY good players in the same tournament. I think that's what the purpose of premier leagues and tournaments are. GSL/OSL/even NASL. NASL has a pretty dang good player lineup for it currently, and it has enough game frequency that you are able to see a lot of good matches, though I do believe it has a sort of "lesser" atmosphere to it than the other two premiers. I think the number of walkovers reflects this.
The advantages of many tournaments is that you will be able to see many more matches with pro players. I don't care if a game is played live or online, it's not like the latency changes. So long as a game is really good and has a lot of intelligent plays in it, I will want to watch it.
OTHER weekend tournaments need to evolve into leagues and seasons, like the GSL, NASL, and IPL. And these leagues need to have variety in format, spacing between games, and such. As much as I enjoy the MLG open tournament format, having weekend heroes does not compare to following a specific player or team through a league.
Keep live events for Finals, possibly even ro16 but not anything more. As a human being, its unrealistic for me to watch a giant tournament spanning 2-3 days. There is just no way i will see all the games, and that sucks because i get to the finals and i dont know the story of how those players made their way through the tournament.
ctrl+Fing through the thread I see that many others have mentioned tennis. I would like a system like that, with clear tiers.
Have a few top tier (grand slam) tournaments that are must watch for any serious follower, and then clearly defined tiers under that. I think that would help:
1) The viewers get a better overview. They don't have to know the name of each tourney, and if they need to care about it or not. You will just go "oh, it's a tier 2 tournament going on, have to watch!" or "meh, tier 4 tourney, no big deal that ret lost." That is, you don't need to know the name and details of every tournament to understand if it's a big one or not. Also easier scheduling. Rather than having a calendar with several entries every day, and you have no clue which are worth watching, you can press "filter tier 2 and higher" and you will get the biggest ones.
2) Tournaments can more easily define themselves, get a good idea of what are reasonable price money, what are expected of them for production quality, etc. A top tier tourney is probably expected to be offline for example, while a lower tier will be entirely online I'd guess. Maybe even have a set of requirement on the tourney hit qualify for a tier, in terms of price money and other measurable production qualities. Also well defined way to grow a tournament, to move it up from tier 4 to tier 3 if you feel confident with how you run it. The fact that you can easily make a ranking for seeds and hype is just a nice by-product.
3) Players? I guess it is easier for them to choose were to participate, and they will have clearly defined goals like "I want to place top 4 in a tier 2 tournament" or so. I'm not sure if much will change in practice for players though, as I would assume they already have a pretty good idea of what tourneys are around for them. (or do they??) They would getg a much clearer CV though. "2 tier 2 wins, 1 top 4 grand slam, 13 tier 3 wins." easy.
But what about the players? If players arent getting reasonable salaries then they have to win prizemoney to make some income. If there are too many tournaments then its better for the players cos they have more opportunities to make money. Having one multimilliondollar tournament a year is terrible for the players.
I disagree with the "less tournaments". We need to have more curcuit and/or drawn out tournaments. There needs to be constant coverage and watchable content both from shows and tournaments, so that people can start picking and choosing what to watch as if TV shows. Every so often, you miss a random TV show in order to go out for a movie (major tournament). Having things like NASL, IPTL, and I would prefer a much more spread out MLG would be awesome. Having huge MLG's is much less beneficial imo. Having MLG's everywhere will make tournaments much more to players and teams, and really take the importance off of every MLG, but at the same time put a lot more emphasis on BIG MLG's. Having big differences in the prize pools of the regular season and the final tournament makes things more exciting, and having people rank up more often and having a lot more people playing, more people earning, and less spending will really benefit the scene. It'll also put more emphasis on the NA scene and help build it (it needs help!!). Give NA players more competition and more opportunity to play at a higher level.
Having things like that for European tournaments will be beneficial too. Things like TeSL and GSL, where events are constant is very beneficial. Focus on the community and massive content. You'll take some viewers from some programs, but you'll add to the overall viewership of eSports.
Could ramble on more about how it's important, but I'll stop here for now ;D
Less tournaments, but have these be BIGGER and BETTER tournaments.
No, more small tournaments, less bigger tournaments. You want to lower the amount of opporunity? That doesn't help eSports grow, all it does is help less people make more money. Less people become motivated to play at a higher level, because the same people are going to take all them money. Build careers.... We are through with the huge prize pool tournaments. GSL 1 had over $80k to first place and what, $23k for 2nd place? They did that because they needed people to gain an immediate interest in the game. That phase is over. Prize pools need to be lessened and spread to a much broader public in order for the game to become sustainable. We need more sponsors being represented more often, more money going into eSports and more people earning that money. More events, more coverage, more shows, more sc2, less glamore, less BS, less monopolizing. eSports ftw
A bit of the 3) for sure (NASL sound, lags on the OSL ...) but 6) too.
For me, we need a real major offline globalized championship. The problem is simple, we have way too many major actors in the world of sc2 esprt tournaments and they don't work on the same direction. I'm very shocked by the lack of coordination of Dreamhack Opens, MLG, NASL, Iron Squid. We just have more and more events by we don't have a true World Championship with a coordination of Players vs Players and Teams vs Teams organised by a big structure. WCS are great but it's just an annual group of events, not a real championship. The next big thing of esport is, i hope, the creation of a Great Super league with the majority of the professional teams and players.
Perhaps it's the bw and team sports influence, but I incredibly dislike the weekend tournament where you have like a hundred games crammed into a weekend. I love the whole pro league/osl matches where there is preparation for matches from players and anticipation from fans. I understand the logistics problems involved, but it's still crappy as a fan.
Secondly, in today's world where team sports is king, I dislike the lack of team emphasis. Following a team is much more fun. Again, I realize the issues involved, but still.
Basically I've stopped watching almost all tournaments other than gsl and osl, snd I will still follow the proleague. But foreign scene like DH or MLG I eoud never watch live, and maybe watch some voids if I have time
On October 18 2012 04:42 Blargh wrote: I sort of disagree. I do believe that "over-saturation" of tournaments can lead to players passing on some, meaning you may only have a couple REALLY good players in one tournament and a couple REALLY good players in another. Obviously, for the best matches, you'd need to have all of the REALLY good players in the same tournament. I think that's what the purpose of premier leagues and tournaments are. GSL/OSL/even NASL. NASL has a pretty dang good player lineup for it currently, and it has enough game frequency that you are able to see a lot of good matches, though I do believe it has a sort of "lesser" atmosphere to it than the other two premiers. I think the number of walkovers reflects this.
The advantages of many tournaments is that you will be able to see many more matches with pro players. I don't care if a game is played live or online, it's not like the latency changes. So long as a game is really good and has a lot of intelligent plays in it, I will want to watch it.
Good point. This is where player treatment comes in though. Some tournaments treat players "decently". A rare few treat them horribly. Some tournaments treat players fabulously. If a player is forced to pick between two clashing events, sponsor interests aside - he would pick the better event. So treating players better is a way for one tournament to win out over another, in terms of getting the most of the REALLY good players at their event.
As a beneficial side-effect, players would get treated better. I can't say I don't care about that.
I sort of see the over saturation like NFL football.
You used to have all 15 NFL games for the week played on Sunday all day and Monday Night. If you wanted to watch it was all there in 2 days. 3 Games Sunday (noon, 3pm, Sunday night at 730pm) then 1 game on Monday night. Then they decided to add Thursday night football. So now there's an extra evening thrown in, IMO it's sort of assuming a lot to think I want to now dedicate 3 nights to watching football. I love football and I do want to watch the games, but I also need and want to do other stuff.
With SC2 tourneys there's stuff going on 24/7. There's just too much going on and TBH many of those tournaments I don't really care about at all. I'm just being asked to try and consume too much crap so something's got to give. I want to play other games, watch streams, watch DotA 2 tourneys, watch SC2 tourneys, eat, sleep, poop, live life.
Having a ton of tournaments is nice for up and comer players I guess and you always need new faces to come onto the scene. But having SOOOOOO many tournaments tends to cheapen the feel of them all. If something is a dime a dozen who cares, you know? I'll try and watch MLG because I'll see a lot of big time players and you'll get some of the little guy melting face in the open brackets. But I can't be asked to watch the NASL for instance, I just can't justify spending time watching it or tracking the results, I've got other stuff I'd like to do.
I don't know, that's just my take on it. I'm sure there will be a shake down eventually where some tournaments go away and only a few remain. While that does suck for the little guy, it's sort of nice for narrowing the field of what to watch.
Hi Grubby, I do not have this problem because I pick what I watch. When I'm free and bored I'll watch whatever tournament that is on, otherwise I only follow the GSL and other prestigious tournaments like WCS. I also follow OSL to some extent, but haven't gotten into it as much as I have with GSL.
To me quality is important, but I also appreciate having a tournament on that I can tune into anytime and appreciate some of the lesser known and less skilled players.
"Viewership tournament fatigue" is precisely the term which describes one of the predicaments of SC2. You can only improve the QUALITY of your life, but never the QUANTITY of it (you will always have 24 hours each day and 7 days a week). Thus MORE =/= BETTER! Organizers are trying to push SC2 into becoming an eSport big time, but thats not how it works.
Two major issues that caused me to just stop watching tournaments:
1) Too much waiting around for the next match, too much downtime. I am sure everyone has experienced watching a tournament and then the stream puts on some add while some generic k pop music is playing and it says "be back in a hour"
WHAT THE FUCK are you doing in that whole hour? MLG usually does this, but to be honest most tournaments except the GSL do it, it saps any energy out of the viewer and you just dont give a shit anymore. Why hire 4-6 casters and then have absolute droughts of no games for hours? I understand they need a break but why no shuffle them around?
Be on time, do not advertize your games/tournament and then be late 50 minutes and not even mention why you were so much late. MLG Dallas was legendary for all the wrong reasons
I am sure there is a good reason for this downtime, but here is the catch: I dont give a shit. You cannot ask people to wait a whole hour before the next match
2) Games are usually not all that entertaining. I dont blame the players for this, nor the casters, nor Sundance, nor MLG. But you usually wait a hour to start a match, BO3, 2 of the game usually end very fast with some kind of 2 base push that you have seen a million times.
It is very common to spend half a day (5-6) hours watching a tournament, and spending 2 of those hours just waiting around, for maybe 1 or 2 good games at best. Thus the time investment to entertainment ratio is very low.
In a UFC PPV that lasts around 90-100 minutes with maybe 6-8 fights i know i will get at least 2-4 great fights, while the others are a borefest. That is much value than watching SC2.
Those are the big issues with watching, you invest a ton of time and maybe even money (MLG Arena) on very little entertainment, tons of waiting around, matches that you feel like you have seen about a hundred times before (oh look the Terran player is going MM, he is going to push as soon as his Stim is done or Zerg player is going for 200/200 before pushing out, right now he is droning he is at 90 drones) etc etc etc.
After a tournament you feel like you wasted your time staying up late, you saw maybe a few decent matches, and the guy who won it all...yay? He won some money and the whole thing is forgotten the next day, there is no real triumph except that the winner won some cash, there is no prestige, there is no major big league "OMG IDRA WON MLG NOW HE MOVES UP SOME RANKS TO NR. 8 IN THE WORLD!", instead he just wins money so he can buy some Levis jeans maybe and that is about.
In a UFC ppv you know that there is fallout from the show, who will get title shots, who will get fired, who challenged who. In SC2 there is no fallout, its like last nights big hyped up tournament never even happened.
EPT
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I'd just like to ask people not to email anymore! :D I'm afraid I can't read any more new emails. I had about 200 email responses, a massive response and I have been sifting through them for days, trying to give everyone the attention they deserve. I still have about 90 new emails. I hope no one will be too upset if no personal response will be forthcoming, I have some important matches to play the coming weeks which I need to focus on. Still, this is an important issue and I'm compiling all the date I have into a huge sheet of information. Hopefully I can make good things come out of it, as I said before, behind the scenes or with a second public manifesto. Thanks again everyone.
