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On October 15 2012 20:10 Grubby wrote:
(2) We need to have less tournaments around. Delayed gratification will make the next tournament that much better. With too many tournaments around, I don't know what to follow anymore.
(3) tournaments need to become more well rounded; the time that *just* providing a proving grounds for top players for 1-4 days was enough, is over. The responsibility lies not with independent coverage, but in the production value, post-production value and pre-hype and side shows that tournaments themselves deliver. I will watch a lot more tournaments and streams if only every tournament had the production, self-generated hype or 'feel' of (for instance WCS EU).
(5) There is no problem of oversaturation. The market of supply & demand will sort itself out eventually. Tournaments that don't provide enough quality or have enough improvements will concludingly have low viewership, therefore die off and make room for the new. The same with players who don't perform; they, too, will be replaced by the new. The circle of life will naturally work itself out, as will the circle of eSports life. No amount of theorizing is going to change anything about the direction that eSports is going to be taking, whatever that may be.
2. A definite YES from me, although this isnt meant for the weekly small 100$/€ tournaments. It is not really easy to feel the hype for a daily GSL tournament for me anymore and MLG has become so big that it is hard to follow it. A complete coverage of MLG is impossible and the big waiting periods during the last one are not really adding up to "a good tournament". So its not really the numbers of tournaments but rather the size and organization of some. So it would be a nice thing to have a break between the seasons of the GSL.
3. Apart from the GSTL there have been no "live LAN team competitions" and it might be a nice thing to have smaller tournaments (meaning "not a lot of teams") over the course of a week or maybe 4 days. LoL tournaments dont have that many teams usually either and go on for longer.
There has been no "2v2" or "3v3" tournament anywhere and this will offer a different form of excitement for the viewers due to the different tactics involved.
5. The market wont sort itself out, because oversaturation will make the viewers become bored with it eventually and ALL tournaments will die off at the same time. Oversaturation will also reduce the quality of the events, because "cost" is usually the first thing that is cut when a company is fighting against other companies for market shares. "Live and let live" should be the motto instead of the capitalist propaganda and the cooperation between the tournament organizations shows that they understand this. They need to ALL survive, because one of them going bankrupt is a bad sign for the whole "SC2 as eSport" business and its sponsors.
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I wonder if players feel that there are too many tournaments going on too with Rain ditching the GSL to go to MLG, for example. It's not the first time that it has happened, and I doubt it will be the last. Or when Blizzard and MLG tried to run simultaneous tourneys on the same weekend at the same place, which I'm sure everyone felt was a bit of a disaster from what I read. Then you had really hot players like Huk back in the day, Life now and many others, who have to travel ridiculous amounts to keep the cash flowing in and their personal rep up.
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Chaos if it were I,
I'd rework the whole model.
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I truly believe that the free market will fix the problem. We, as consumers, will choose the events that separate themselves from the crowd and the weaker events will be forced to step up, die off, or downsize/consolidate.
My only concern is for the players at this point. A lot are living solely off of stream revenue and prize money. Less events means less prize money, unless tournaments settle into a tiered system.
It's possible that, as unfortunate as this may be, there are too many players that are considered "pro" that both split the salary pool and require more events to exist to sustain them.
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On November 13 2012 01:57 TrippSC2 wrote:
It's possible that, as unfortunate as this may be, there are too many players that are considered "pro" that both split the salary pool and require more events to exist to sustain them.
Amen.
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On November 13 2012 01:57 TrippSC2 wrote:
I truly believe that the free market will fix the problem. We, as consumers, will choose the events that separate themselves from the crowd and the weaker events will be forced to step up, die off, or downsize/consolidate.
My only concern is for the players at this point. A lot are living solely off of stream revenue and prize money. Less events means less prize money, unless tournaments settle into a tiered system.
It's possible that, as unfortunate as this may be, there are too many players that are considered "pro" that both split the salary pool and require more events to exist to sustain them.
Free market fails reality but it's a nice ideology i guess.
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The nature of the competitive scene in SC2, where there isn't one major league that dominates all the others like we have in every other sport in the world: What's happening is leagues are cannibalizing each other unwittingly, and it makes e-sports seem like a smaller thing than it is.
No one really has time to follow all the starcraft content out there right now. Most of us pick a thing, every now and then, whatever is the big thing at the moment when we have free time. And that results in views being split between a lot of different places.
What this means is that no tournament can afford to be "that" tournament. The one where a player is set for the next year if he wins the prize. The fans attention is split all over the place, and therefore the money is split all over the place, and therefore players have to go everywhere and play all kinds of things.
It's a pretty good situation for the fans, they get the pick of the litter when it comes to content, and we get to see players run ragged dancing for us. I mean, I'll snark a little bit if I don't get to see the match I wanted because I watched one tournament over another... but it's far from a serious complaint.
The Leagues are also pretty happy about this. The market is only so big, and right now no one really has to lose big. Everyone is making a fair ammount of money. Sure, any given league would really like to be the dominant league and have the other guys shrink away, but they're also all worried that if a "main" league is chosen, that it isn't them that takes the top spot, and then they start losing money. In business people are pretty used to not screwing with the status quot, and staying safe in that regard. None of the leagues are immediately interested in throwing the gauntlet down to roll the dice here.
The ones really getting screwed over is the players. They are getting pulled all over the place, they are competing for tonnes of small payouts rather than ever one big one. They have to play a lot more to keep the money flowing in the current system. The number of fans is reasonably fixed, the potential earnings for all the leagues combined is about a certain size, and players playing 50 tournaments a year doesn't MASSIVELY increase that market compared to players playing 15 tournaments a year. There is a little more viewership hours created by increasing the total amount of content out there, but not a huge amount. As a fan, if dreamhack and GSL isn't available, I just watch MLG instead. Making me choose between 3 competing streams of content at any given time won't increase the total amount I watch very much. It will just make me pick one at that time.
This actually is a real problem, and the real solution isn't very pleasant, but unfortunately what needs to happen here, is that the players need to group up and "fight back". It's REALLY shitty to say it that way, because it's REALLY not like the fans are trying to hurt the players by not watching more, and it's not like the tournaments are trying to hurt the players by offering them more opportunity to compete, It's really not like MLG and DreamHack, and NASL, and GOM and OGN are trying to hurt anyone by taking a slice of the pie. And we all love every one of those tournaments for many different reasons, they all offer something unique to players and fans alike. But the pie is only so big, and someone IS getting hurt here. Ultimately, what would fix the problem is if the players were to unionize, and basically just start screwing some leagues over in favor of others.
We don't need all these leagues to go out of business, that's not what I'm saying here, but it would be much nicer for the players if there could be 1 major league, and the rest of the leagues are minor leagues. It would be best for the players if they could compete at their best inside their actual skill level, and payouts would match their ranking. It would be really nice for players if, I'm not a top level pro, but at least I can compete at my own level for a modest payout without having to fear that I go to a local tournament and some top Korean shows up and of course dominates because he has WAY more money and time put into his training and preparation. We need a UFC of star craft. We need a league, where if you play for that league you're making the most money in all of SC2, but you're also not allowed to play for the small leagues any more. (contracts will vary actually, but the big stars will be exclusive, the top skill will be widely known to be at this one specific place).
The UFC wants every Anderson Silva to show his best ability every time they bring him into the ring. They also want the exclusive rights to show off Anderson Silva's skill. They pay Anderson a bunch of extra money to put him in the situation where he does not perform for anyone else, his performance is property of the UFC. This is good for the UFC, it's arguably bad for the fans, and it's certainly bad for the other leagues that would like to compete for the UFC, but the important thing we're discussing here is whether or not it's good for Anderson Silva. I think pretty clearly it's very good for him. He only has to worry about 1 employer, he doesn't have to worry very much about being overworked. He has time to take care of his health and put his best into his training, and he gets to look better in the eyes of the fans because when we see him, he's never having a horrible day because he was up all night the day before fighting for some minor league. His life situation is always serving to allow him to be the best he can be at any given time.
The situation is, either a League just makes the decision to make the jump, do a major power play, and do exactly this (which would suck because it takes a lot of control away from the players), or the players unionize and choose to do this exact thing their own way (this is closer to the model SC2 is following right now, but the player unions are too nice and too weak)
At the end of the day, if the players want to play less without taking a real financial hit themselves, someone in the leagues has to get hurt. It doesn't really have to hurt the fans too much, but someone needs to be screwed. The questions is do the leagues start making some really aggressive competitive moves against each other, or do the players start taking more control over their own destiny first? One way or another, it's gonna be a dramatic ride.
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EPT
