(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.
I believe there is currently too many tournaments for the viewer base to support all of them. Though, even if each tournament doesn't get as much views, it doesn't mean that it is a bad thing for the players. The competitiors still get recognition and cash prizes for their accomplishments. If the only goal is to increase viewer count for "X" tournaments, well the logic reasoning would be to reduce the amount of tournaments other than those "X" ones. The few remaining tournaments could then be considered like occasional "big" events which would attract more viewers than having a ton of tournaments every few weeks.
Though, I believe that the "fatigue" doesn't only come from the amount of tournaments. The way I see it, Starcraft is currently losing players and audience to other games for severals reasons. First of all, I would like to say that Blizzard's customers service is not what should be expected from such a well-established company and which surely doesn't help keeping their "new" customers (people who have bought every Blizzard's game will be harder to lose as customer due to the customers "fidelity"). Trying to fix your problem while having to deal with a poor customers service can be frustrating and defenetly a bad experience.
Another problem which can demotivate a lot of players would be the amount of hackers (sorry that I've got to plug this here but it is my main combat for the community afterall). For the casual players which mainly play ladders, encountering severals hackers and losing to them can also be frustrating. Knowing that Blizzard isn't really efficient at dealing with those, it can discourage a lot of people to play the game. This can result in completly losing those players - some will find a new game and become active in that community to the detriment of the Starcraft community.
The players and viewers base has decreased for a reason, Starcraft is not attractive as it used to be . Something has to be done to retain/gain players and viewers.
option 2. part of what made the korean bw scene so amazing to watch was that there was really only like 4 to 6 individual tournaments every YEAR (msl/osl combined). and the fact that each tournament was spread out over a period of several months made everything much more important and you kinda just HAD to watch it.
this will never happen, but if imagine if MLG were the ONLY starcraft 2 tournaments in the entire foreigner scene. there would be like three times the amount of hype and viewers
O one more thing, stop suggesting that its a fan's responsibility to tell people about event's/sc2. It's not our responsibility. If you want your damn numbers higher than you go tell someone. Don't ever, EVER, try to tell someone what their responsibility is when you are not their parent/boss/employer. Who do you think you are? You are crossing the line. WE DON"T HAVE TO DO SHIT. We aren't responsible for selling someone's business or esports or sc2 for that matter.
Reachforthesky,
I think you have failed to see the point of Grubby’s open letter. He is asking the community to voluntarily input into what he perceives to be an upcoming problem that could cause instability in the scene. He is open to all ideas and provides some suggestions, including change nothing. He is not mandating that any of us do anything beyond what we are willing to do.
In short, I agree with the poster above, please do not tell us what to do or attempt instigate an argument about mandates, jurisdiction or whatever you are talking about above. You have made your point clear that you do not think that fans should not be asked to do anything. There are some of us who do not agree with you, but that is not what this thread is about.
Its one thing to ask, its another to command what someone else's responsibility is. There is a huge difference.
On October 15 2012 20:10 Grubby wrote:
And if it is, and should be done about it, if anything? If you care about the eSports scene, or care to add your voice, I'd love to read your opinion (point 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 or 6: other).
…
For this item, public discussion is allowed, even encouraged - hell, you're a free (wo)man - but for the purposes of this I'd like to request an answer to my email address contact@followgrubby.com so I can keep the discussion pure and without input or fear of judgment from 3rd parties. So if you want me to reply - though a reply is not guaranteed; I can't predict the response size from the community - I will only do so by email. Looking forward to your reply!
These are the two parts of the OP where Grubby requests a response. Requests. There is no demand in the OP. The word “responsibility” is only used in two possible responses to his request that could be submitted by the person responding and is only used in reference to the community in one of those. It is one of six possible options.
At no point does Grubby state that he feels the community is responsible for anything. He demands nothing of anyone and does not command you do to anything. In fact, your response to his request is far more demanding and commanding that his ever was.
First off I never used to the word demand. Secondly, I'll bold the very specifics because apparently bolding did not make it clear enough for you.
4) The same points as in point 3, but adding the following: Every party has a responsibility to improve the viewership experience for the audience. This means a fan needs to tell his friends about SC2/tourneys/eSports; a tournament organization needs to raise her own production value; a player needs to go above and beyond "just playing" by becoming actually involved; would-be writers, people from the community with passion need to start covering tourneys; etc; basically anyone who can do anything needs to start doing it. The theme of point 4 is: "We dont have time to let the hype and growth of (SC2) eSports die off or decline before *maybe* it gets super big in the year 2030 after our own active followership."
There you go, plain and simple. Filled with commands.
If grubby didn't feel like the community should be responsible for anything it would have never been brought up.
Just because it is "listed like an option" does not negate the fact that he is stating/commanding that we need to be doing such n such.
Yes grubby asked/requested for a response to his questions. What I highlighted/originally posted is not about him asking for a response of opinions on what the issue might be, but of the ACTUAL BOLDED PARTS.
You are clearly misunderstanding what I wrote.
It's hard to understand what you actually mean under all this passive-aggressiveness. Also, way to cherry pick quotes that don't mean what you imply them to mean. Commands? Everything you bolded was part of a potentially common answer to his questions. He's listing a couple of the most likely responses for us to think about and/or pick. This way we have a nice idea of what logical responses we might have. If we disagree with all of them we input our own thoughts, or simply expand on one of his, or we just don't reply.
I don't agree, viewer fatigue on SC2 is because it isn't easy enough to tell pro players from amature players. I can watch day9, idra, anyone's stream, and go 'lol, nub' because it is no more creative than the people I find on the ladder. Sure, I know that they'll have better macro, perfect forcefields, more perfect timing: and if I played them, they'd beat me every time. But its the same strategies, because being more skilled does not open new avenues of play in sc2 if they want to win - it reduces it and makes it more coinflippy.
Too many tournaments isn't a problem, it is a blessing, because it allows more people to play in tournaments. Why do so many tournaments cater to the absolute top of the list? Is what I wonder. Yes, you have korean and 'foreigner' tournaments, but people always seem to try and mix koreans into their tournaments to give them unneeded legitimacy. There is a completely unwatchable number of football, baseball, whatever games in America, soccer the world over, and the reason why this works is because they all play in separate leagues and they're not allowed to be on multiple teams. But Starcraft 2 tries to have everyone be in one league, which doesn't work. GSL can have their B/A/S ranked players, but it shouldn't attempt to apply that ranking to everyone. And this makes every tournament worse when they try and have the best foreigners and best koreans in every tournament, instead of just having an annual world cup or something. But instead have convoluted systems to try and make things interesting.
Finally the design of SC2 is just bad, and doesn't allow for enough variety in maps, meaning not enough variety in valid strategies. In SC1 island maps were uncompetitive, but in SC2, even in bronze they are clearly broken. I'm not saying we need islands, but the imbalance of different parts of the units means you can't have maps on which those units are favored, because there isn't a way to challenge them with another race. This needs to be fixed if SC2 is to have any lasting appeal.
(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).
I feel like that a lot of tournaments aren't worth watching, mostly due to lack of quality and player representation. The number of tournaments is staggering, really, to the point where both players and viewers are stretched. Less tournaments, better quality.
On October 16 2012 10:03 OblivionMage wrote: 6. a game that people actually play. clans and a custom game system that isn't totally crap would be a good starting point.
sc2 esports isn't going to work if people don't play sc2 (or at least play customs on sc2).
agreed. i would actually like to see sc2 go with the free to play model like dota 2/LoL. this would definitely get more people playing and interested
Its come to the point where im only interested in the big offline events: DH/WCS/MLG/IGN/GSL/OGN/NASL...
I may forgot someone, but those are the events I will watch if they have something going on.
Close to everything that is done online, from replaysor whatever, im not going to watch. Its just too much shit I dont have the time to get excited about.
What I enjoy the most is games between the top foreigners and koreans. Seems to allways get me excited, where I dont really give a shit about random korean vs random korean, even if they are better then 90% of foreigners
Big tournaments are very long. As they should be, but if they are going to take up a whole weekend they can't be every weekend. Because of the way the tournaments work, it's hard to come and go and only watch part of a tournament. When they try to rigidly schedule it (to enable coming and going) it inevitably makes it longer and draggier.
On the flip side of the coin, short tournaments (or matches or events) generally don't have the same kind of high quality that we expect from the big tournaments.
I think that more events need to be more impactful.
I feel like WCS is a great example of this. While this year the early quals didn't get the best treatment (piggybacking off other events) I feel like WCS is where the future lies. If events provided points to qualify for WCS or something along those lines, all the other tournaments start to have weight to them. Smaller Region specific tournaments will push each scene forward individually to improve.
Why should NA players who are so behind the koreans put hours into this game? Why not play casually and do some streaming at prime hours. They can make some money, they can enjoy the game. But they have no real drive to improve as much as possible to do well in major tournaments.
I love the NASL and its format of practice and specific matches and groups. I follow a couple players, so I watch those groups when I am not at work. I don't have time to watch all the vods or all the games but I follow the players I like and support a tournament that supports a LOT of players at once.
I don't have time or energy to live my life and watch SC2 all day every day. But I can watch the GSL finals live, I can watch vods of matches I want to see, and I can follow particular players.
I think if the regions had fewer tournaments but more impactful ones and one International Major a month we could get the following:
-- One HYPED UP tournament everyone watches -- regionals that people follow and watch for certain players -- improvement amongst the not as strong countries because the players can improve together.
I'm still pretty new to the community but I would personally like to see less tournaments. However, with that being said, I would like to see maybe like one large tourney (among the usual ones of course) to make up for these 'lost' tournaments and set them up either quarterly through the year or even half way through the year with all the big names WITH an open registration for said tournament so people in masters or grandmasters could make a name for themselves in these large tournaments. (#6) One solution I'd love to see is that instead of eSports and SC2 being an internet phenomena in the U.S. is rather to put this on TV somehow in the Americas and make it so that a large range of the public can view these tournaments and get into the awesomeness that is SC2 and maybe turn this into a household type of deal in the U.S., like maybe baseball or football are. I've never played DotA 2 or LoL so I'm not sure what their models look like but I think it's possible for a large tournament like the one I mentioned could possibly be a great idea for eSports, with SC2 being the first one to test these new waters.
On October 16 2012 09:11 ZweiGaming wrote: Another problem which can demotivate a lot of players would be the amount of hackers (sorry that I've got to plug this here but it is my main combat for the community afterall). For the casual players which mainly play ladders, encountering severals hackers and losing to them can also be frustrating. Knowing that Blizzard isn't really efficient at dealing with those, it can discourage a lot of people to play the game. This can result in completly losing those players - some will find a new game and become active in that community to the detriment of the Starcraft community.
This isn't fixable. Most people who quit because of "too many hackers" have never actually played a hacker. I've made multiple people tell me that I cheated. I never have.
On October 16 2012 09:11 ZweiGaming wrote: Another problem which can demotivate a lot of players would be the amount of hackers (sorry that I've got to plug this here but it is my main combat for the community afterall). For the casual players which mainly play ladders, encountering severals hackers and losing to them can also be frustrating. Knowing that Blizzard isn't really efficient at dealing with those, it can discourage a lot of people to play the game. This can result in completly losing those players - some will find a new game and become active in that community to the detriment of the Starcraft community.
This isn't fixable. Most people who quit because of "too many hackers" have never actually played a hacker. I've made multiple people tell me that I cheated. I never have.
I agree. the mindset that everyone is a hacker is a pretty ridiculous one and is just another excuse for people to bitch at you on the ladder.
a combination of 1, 3, 5 if thats possible. 1)I believe that an events success in part is linked to how much hype and coverage it gets on TL/Reddit/Esfi/onegamenet ect so increasing coverage to lesser events creates niches in the market for people's specific likes. For exmaple, 2v2, King of the Hill, Arcade games should be covered if you want to broaden the base from 1v1 competetive starcraft. 3. Too much down time in SC. Production in-game is at a nice level, but the amount of wasted air time is ridiculous. NASL is pretty good, and GSL too, but for all these 5 minute breaks, i really hope for something more than a still-shot with a soundtrack. Maybe player interviews, previews, recaps. Something please! 5. This kinda goes with the 1, 3 in that competition will weed out any inferior products. but that is only within the SC community itself. For best rates of growth, you have to be getting new people interested in the game. With the except of F2p, better production and coverage should expand SC to not only other gamers, but to non gamers as well. SC should be the springboard for people to delve into the competitive esports
1. Create Superleague where only best of the best can qualify. Let say 16, 24 or 32 players qualifies. 2. Spots are given through winning premier events only (perhaps top3 gets spot), plus highest ranked players gets spot from premier events too. No other way to enter. 3. 4 Premier events yearly 4. Qualified players gets monthly salary for playing this Superleague 5. Qualified players can't play other 1v1 events other than premier events while attending Superleague (salary+premier cashes helps). If they do then sanctions/penalties. 6. 6-8 broadcast a month (if premier event coming up then only 6)
etc.. so many things to make it more amazing
This is only for 1v1 and not team league though. So for team league games there should be some ruling
Offtopic but reply to some posts, Browder did hint at giving free to play a shot, in a race by week format (somewhat similar to lol, different heros every week)! Blizzard is all about selling copies of their game, but I truly think they are now well aware of esports, before sc2 they never believed in it, they were in a bubble and now they are sending browder everywhere to gain knowledge on how to further expose their product~ SC2 is now 10$ lol, less then most subscriptions to leagues online, plus the fact they are listening to the community; give blizzard SC2 some credit, they have to report to higher departments, keep that in mind~
I think the problem is (6) other. The issue in hand is not the quantity of tournaments, but the quality and coherence between them. Every tournament is the same. There's too much redundancy in the scene. Local scenes/tournaments get no love. Most tournaments follows the same format/philosophy.
In other words, the people who build the SC2 scene should do it having the Occam razor in mind. If we are to have multiple tournaments, they should be different enough to justify their existence. There should be a feeling of coherence and continuity between tournaments. It's the lack of continuity, the redundancy and the fragmentation of the scene that creates this feeling of oversaturation, "too-much-tournaments-to-watch".
The only tournaments I watch or follow are IEM, MLG and Dreamhack, mainly because they're broadcast during weekends. I don't have time to watch the rest, and even if I did, I probably wouldn't bother. There's just no hype anymore. You can basically watch the best of the best duke it out every few days.
I'll go with (5). Yeah, there is plenty of tournaments to follow and right now the spectators have to choose. They may be a bit tough to rank but we need to do it anyway. This is how it goes for me:
offline live > online live > online replay-casted eu-friendly scheduling > trying to stay awake at 03:00 AM (and failing) good hosting and reasonable downtime > bad hosting and tons of downtime
This leaves me with GSL (im fine with finals on weekend morning), European events run by DH/IEM and IronSquid. I will watch a couple of games from some other events too but I will not follow them on regular basis. Just like a football fan wouldn't watch all the league games from 20 different countries.
EPT
