First of all.. a huge thanks to everyone for the overwhelming and passionate response that I have received! I have combined the accumulated knowledge from the 200 posts I've received in response to my recent 'fatigue thread' on TL. I'd like to write my opinions on the various hotly debated issues.
1. Tournaments » Tournaments need to develop their own identity, so that people may begin to discern between them. What is the meaning of winning Tournament A? Tournament B? It makes you the best player of what region, what category? » Tournament organizers do not benefit from schedule clashes. Viewers who have decided they want to follow both events, suffer. They are not able to and feel stressed out, fatigued or troubled. » Some sub-top players do occasionally benefit, since they get to be at an event where the best players aren't necessarily present. » When the time zones differ greatly, occasionally some viewers do benefit, because they get a massive SC2 weekend with anywhere from 2 to 6 events running simultaneously. Some family neglecting may be the case here, but the SC2 satisfaction is guaranteed. These two groups are the only ones that benefit, I think. » Tournament organizers don't like to roll over for another organization. Announcing your early is one way of staking your claim, but there are particularly juicy dates that everyone wants to have. » Without a governing body, there can be bullying, or senseless competition over a date which ends up hurting both tournaments. » A governing body would require authoritative power over all tournament organizers in order to work. They would also need financial stability (to pay out the people who have the hard work of keeping tournaments in line, and for other reasons), and all this body must be kept objective & fair, mediating and reaching compromises which everyone can be equally unhappy with (the golden rule of compromise). I think I don't need to tell you how hard it would to found an organization that has all these attributes, no matter how much we seem to want one - and therefore how long it'll probably still take for one to appear. » It follows, therefore, that we can only work things out naturally for now. Step (1) Announce your tournament as soon as possible. Step (2) Communicate behind the scenes to inform other tournament organizers of your intentions - cross your fingers that they are honourable. Skip step 2 if you're unable to ascertain that. » A note on prize money. Broad prize pool distributions help the eSports scene. Top-heavy prize pool distributions help a rare few champions. Top-heavy prize pools also occasionally help with hype towards the community. However, the community usually also instinctively feels that it's not that cool to have $50k for first, and $8k for second, for example. More and more, I think people are starting to appreciate a relatively well spread out prize pool, and this benefits the scene the most in many, many ways. WCS Europe is a great example of a relatively well spread out prize pool which gives every player some pay-off for their thousands of hours of hard work: 2012 StarCraft II World Championship Series/Europe/Finals » I alluded to artificially reducing the amount of tournaments in the scene to help with viewer fatigue. Point 2 was the one that dealt with that, from my original post. After having considered all the responses, I believe that this is impractical, or even impossible. First of all because there is no governing body, secondly because it's basically a free market. I will explain the way to avoid Viewer Fatigue in the third paragraph.
2. Tournament identity » From what I've gathered from the emails, people generally seem to feel that tournaments should either be The Entertaining Type, which I'll call Type A - or The Professional Type, which I'll call Type B. HSC and ASUS ROG would fall under Type A, and GSL, IPL, MLG, DH and Iron Squid would fall under Type B. In fact, I'd go so far as to say that GSL Code S is probably Type A & B combined, since Tasteless cracks jokes and Artosis knows his shit. DreamHack's production of WCS Europe probably also fell under A+B. Forgive me for not evaluating the other tournaments thoroughly, it's not really the point right now. » Without going into too much detail, people seem to have no limits on how much they think Type B tournaments should improve their quality. I think DreamHack's work on WCS Europe was a great example of ever-expanding production quality, and that's probably part of the reason why it had ~120,000 concurrent viewers. (It certainly can't hurt?) » The Entertaining Type has an easier time in terms of how critical people are of its production, but I'm sure if the production wasn't good it'd annoy anyone, like disconnects, audio cutting out, or lags. The serious atmosphere is less important here, and people enjoy the camaraderie / social aspect of these events. » Epic games from the players make any tournament more successful. More on this in point 4.
3. Avoiding viewer fatigue / viewer responsibilities » Limit your own viewing to those that you truly enjoy. By selectively consuming, you can reduce the amount of SC2 you consume and add your View to the events that really matter to you. A lot of the people who emailed me are already employing a system where they only watch League X or Tournament Y. » Fighting for the viewership will force tournaments to improve production quality and their shape own identity. » The better players are treated, the better they usually play. If tournaments improve player conditions, they are also more likely to create a situation where outstanding plays from players becomes more commonplace. This will make it more interesting for the viewer. » Contribute. I've found that people who contribute in some way besides just watching gain a personal kind of satisfaction. If you like a certain tournament, see what you can do to help them. It may be that you purchase some of their product like subscription or tangibles, but it can also just be to update the Liquipedia page that pertains to that tournament. I get a sense that the Liquipedia people are a great team of enthusiasts who provide a spectacular service to everyone. Liquipedia can still improve, though! - more on this in point 5. » Give a tournament you've never watched or stopped watchinga chance now and then. They may have improved, and may pleasantly surprise you.
» Oh, and lastly, on the topic of emailing sponsors... Emailing sponsors with positive feedback, especially those who sponsor your favorite players & teams, IS useful, if for the only reason that they also receive negative feedback from a very small witchhunting minority. I'm not saying these witch hunter people are necessarily wrong in every (extreme) case; sometimes a player does push it too far, and I think players have been getting away with too much outrageous stuff without punishment for too long. However, it does not create a positive atmosphere for sponsorship/eSports for "us" to focus on the shortcomings of players/teams only - and to email the sponsors straight away without first seeing if the team itself will take punitive action. For the positive-minded people: you can't stop those emails from being sent, but you canbalance it out by showing that there is also appreciation and maturity. (of course, sponsors do care about sales and conversion, but my above point is very valid)
4. Player responsibilities » Honestly, a lot of email responses just lamented the fact that the various regions over the world are not proportionately represented. By each country's playing population, we should have more stars from USA, Germany, France, Russia, etc. Players who are consistent and confident, and beat Korean top gamers consistently and consecutively. There is no one way to force this to happen, but it's good to remember that the fans simply want someone to step up and perform. To give them someone to believe in.
5. Encyclopedia Galactica: Liquipedia » Isaac Asimov himself would be proud indeed: the Encyclopedia Galactica for SC2 eSports is being developed, anthologised and treasured by the population itself. » There is nothing like Liquipedia around as far as a collection of coverage of tournaments goes. The only thing that could make Liquipedia better, is by being even better and more well rounded than it already is. It almost seems too much to ask, but I think it's only a matter of time that this will happen. What am I getting at? » For example: interaction to be possible on Liquipedia items (comments). » For Liquipedia to get "Liquipedia TV" which is a show that would combine all the results of the past week into a nice consumable TV show » For Liquipedia to start listing all of the replays & VOD's for all the events consistently. » The entire community wants a one-stop place for finding everything about every tournament. » For Television, we've got the TV guide. For internet, we have Google. For eSports, there is Liquipedia. I used to think that it would be enough if Tournament X or Organization Y had a personal TV guide/schedule for their own programs, but this isn't enough. There would still be 10 different TV guides to keep up with - an impossible feat for your average Joe. » The more people contribute to Liquipedia, the better. It requires passion and hard work, but it will be much appreciated. If it requires funds, I'm sure TV guides also earn money from the TV channels eventually for helping consumers consume the products(their channels). » Alternatively, I'm sure many people would feel grateful enough to Liquipedia to donate. I just looked for a donate button myself. » NOTE: It is possible that we might other objective media besides TL/Liquipedia; in fact, it is likely. I don't see it happening yet, though, because there are no financial incentives to do so yet. If running a team is a hard way to earn money, then imagine running an active, comprehensive, independent news / coverage website. Our scene is growing, but it is still kinda small in the sense that we need a lot of volunteer work. ESFI seems to do decent enough work, but I don't know how many people visit them. » Media should refrain from functioning like TMZ. If there is a story, or a rumour, check sources. Ask all involved parties their story. Never write about just one side of the story. Integrity is the longest path, but ultimately the most rewarding.
6. Blizzard's responsibilities » PART ONE: Keeping the game competitive for hardcore gamers. The authenticity of a game as an eSports is derived from four basic elements: FAIRNESS. DIFFICULTY. LOGIC. MASTERY.
» Fairness: the game must be relatively balanced, and the design philosophy must be sound enough for both players AND fans to feel that everything a player does is significant in terms of influencing the outcome. The races must feel equally strong, and the game mechanics should feel exciting and have enough variance. » Difficulty: If the game is not difficult enough, the fans will not respect the players' skill. I have respect for a piano player (One-handed Pirate of the Carribean - By Wibi Soerjadi) because I admire what I cannot do. Blizzard does not need to dumb down the game, because that won't get the casuals back. Improving the Used Map Settings / Arcade will get casuals. They just like to play Tower Defense, DotA, Footmen frenzy and so forth - and in between look at Tournament streams on the BNet 3.0 in-game client. » Logic: There needs to be logic in the gameplay and application of units. 2 years ago, I logically suspected that Forcefields could become problematic because you can lock off the opponent's ramps with it. I also knew that Protoss' defensive strength will be balanced around FF, which meant that Protoss would be doomed never to be able to take a secret expansion. 1 year ago, I deduced that Infestors logically should be the single strongest unit in the game. Yet, it wasn't seen as such yet. Why was that? Because players' skill hadn't caught up yet. People were still attack-moving Infestors into the opponent like so much disposable tissues, after dispensing with their energy. However, we still logically should have known that the Infestor could cover all angles for a Zerg player. That of course creates the problem that Zerg without the Infestor would be doomed to suck, since Zerg would eventually be balanced around it (see recent Fungal buffs and how this is true). » Mastery: When superior and ever increasing skill leads to increasingly impressive results, we are speaking of reaching 'mastery'. It is normal that this level skill is unattainable for 99.99% of the scene's playing population. That is why we watch the pros at work. "Mastery" is said to be failing when, after 4 years, the top professionals are still losing repeatedly to easily executable strategies. I don't have much to add here, because I don't think the game has run for long enough yet to say that we have already reached Mastery. IMMVP, SKT1Rain and Stephano are showing some strong evidence of achieving certain kinds of Mastery that currently are difficult to replicate by other players.
PART TWO: Make the game fun to be involved in for the casual gamers. » When making the game more accessible, why do we only consider 1v1? Most casual people will have ladder fear no matter what. No matter how simple it is, or how many workers are shown to be working on a Nexus, or whether the workers start automatically or not. » The WarCraft 3 pro scene was partly successful because of DotA 1 being popular. While never having played 1v1 or competitive WC3 players, DotA 1 players could still enjoy WC3 pro games because the game play is similar enough for them to understand it. » Blizzard needs to clean up the custom games section, or "The Arcade". Joyfully, they announced something to that effect for HotS & WoL: UI Updates » Blizzard has done so well in the past by taking the community's ideas and making it their own. "Top vs Bottom" from Brood War is a term coined by the community; they proceeded to make it into a game mode. People wanted in-battle.net tournaments; Blizzard created regularly scheduled Ladder tournaments. People like DotA 1; Blizzard at least tries to make their own versions of DotA. » We need casuals playing games we (the hardcore players) don't necessarily care about, so that they can watch us now & then and enjoy themselves. » Conclusion: Blizzard is not perfect, but in the long run, they have never disappointed. Every expansion in each of their franchises has always made the game better. Brood War made SC1 playable, War3: The Frozen Throne made War3: Reign of Chaos playable. Do not lose faith now, ye of little hope! Of course we are worried, and we're right to be so. We criticize because we care. But we need to give credit where it is due. It's not easy being Blizzard, but they did go ahead and give us some of the best years of our lives. Let's continue to keep faith.
Tl;dr: watch what you like, and no more. Be mature. Give positive feedback to Blizzard and Tournament Organizers. Give teams a chance to punish players' inappropriate behaviours before calling up a mob. eSports media should find out all sides of a story before publishing. Tournament organizers should continue to improve player treatment and production value. Supply & demand will sort itself out accordingly; good quality will be rewarded with good viewership, and poor quality will be rewarded with poor viewership.
» Email sponsors with positivity and real feelings about why you appreciate what they do, this may help offset the witch hunters. Here are my sponsors:
Omg, i cant wait to read your post -- will edit with praise, im sure! *edit* I agree with all your points, it's just really hard to get some people who are dead set on their ways to be more open and nice. However, maybe just rallying a few people to act this way might help mitigate the damage when people email sponsors.
Sorry for not reading the OP and posting! User was warned for posting before reading the op.
I read Sase's piece, not this one yet, but it reminds me very much of a very long post you had on wcreplays forum where you showed the same mastery of the English language.
Really great post Grubby! I really agree with all the points you've touched on, especially prize pool distribution. Everything outside of WCS still seems extremely top heavy (the worst offender being the recent MvP Invitational) and I really think it stagnates growth when it's impossible for anyone but the top ~5% of progamers to be able to win any money.
vert nice post~! and thnx for the Liquipedia stuff I takes a lot of time and volunteers to get to the point which you are saying, but I admit it would be better if it were so
» Without a governing body, there can be bullying, or senseless competition over a date which ends up hurting both tournaments.
Isolating the free market as a problem is pretty hilarious. If companies cannot survive, they have an inferior product and deserve to get bounced out of the scene. Keeping them around through the establishment of a cartel creates a disincentive to innovate.
» A governing body would require authoritative power over all tournament organizers in order to work. They would also need financial stability (to pay out the people who have the hard work of keeping tournaments in line, and for other reasons), and all this body must be kept objective & fair, mediating and reaching compromises which everyone can be equally unhappy with (the golden rule of compromise). I think I don't need to tell you how hard it would to found an organization that has all these attributes, no matter how much we seem to want one - and therefore how long it'll probably still take for one to appear.
This is illegal in multiple jurisdictions, such as the United States and the European Union. And before you say that real sports organizations exist, you have to understand that they receive statutory exemptions to antitrust law through years of lobbying and billions of dollars of marketing that ESPORTS can't match.
» Without a governing body, there can be bullying, or senseless competition over a date which ends up hurting both tournaments.
Isolating the free market as a problem is pretty hilarious. If companies cannot survive, they have an inferior product and deserve to get bounced out of the scene. Keeping them around through the establishment of a cartel creates a disincentive to innovate.
» A governing body would require authoritative power over all tournament organizers in order to work. They would also need financial stability (to pay out the people who have the hard work of keeping tournaments in line, and for other reasons), and all this body must be kept objective & fair, mediating and reaching compromises which everyone can be equally unhappy with (the golden rule of compromise). I think I don't need to tell you how hard it would to found an organization that has all these attributes, no matter how much we seem to want one - and therefore how long it'll probably still take for one to appear.
This is illegal in multiple jurisdictions, such as the United States and the European Union. And before you say that real sports organizations exist, you have to understand that they receive statutory exemptions to antitrust law through years of lobbying and billions of dollars of marketing that ESPORTS can't match.
Which is why I said finances are important. As I think shone through, I consider it unlikely that this would happen. I didn't know about the illegal/exemption thing though, that's interesting. Though I have to say, that eSports doesn't necessarily go by the same laws that we recognize in the Real World.
Stop writing manifestos.. this isn't Russia circa 1917...but I'm still glad the pros are getting involved with the community and supporting community views... I totally agree that pvt, pvz, and pvp results in viewer fatigue... also anything involving bl and infestors.. Thanks for writing this, Grubbo Nice to hear from you always.....
Only thing i could disagreed with is the conclusion which is to have faith in Blizzard. I have lost faith in Blizzard already. When SC1 was released and BW was released, Blizzard was still a indie company. Even when WC3/Frozen Throne released,Blizzard actually wanted to make good games for the community.
Those were their best games.
But now times has changed.Developer of SC1/BW,WC3/Frozen Throne have long left the company. Blizzard got acquired by Activision. The Blizzard right now is only looking for profit and not actually wanting to make the game better for e-sports.
» Without a governing body, there can be bullying, or senseless competition over a date which ends up hurting both tournaments.
Isolating the free market as a problem is pretty hilarious. If companies cannot survive, they have an inferior product and deserve to get bounced out of the scene. Keeping them around through the establishment of a cartel creates a disincentive to innovate.
» A governing body would require authoritative power over all tournament organizers in order to work. They would also need financial stability (to pay out the people who have the hard work of keeping tournaments in line, and for other reasons), and all this body must be kept objective & fair, mediating and reaching compromises which everyone can be equally unhappy with (the golden rule of compromise). I think I don't need to tell you how hard it would to found an organization that has all these attributes, no matter how much we seem to want one - and therefore how long it'll probably still take for one to appear.
This is illegal in multiple jurisdictions, such as the United States and the European Union. And before you say that real sports organizations exist, you have to understand that they receive statutory exemptions to antitrust law through years of lobbying and billions of dollars of marketing that ESPORTS can't match.
Which is why I said finances are important. As I think shone through, I consider it unlikely that this would happen. I didn't know about the illegal/exemption thing though, that's interesting. Though I have to say, that eSports doesn't necessarily go by the same laws that we recognize in the Real World.
I understand your passion about this, but the companies in our scene still have to abide by the laws and regulations of the jurisdictions in which they operate or they will get hit with massive fines and risk criminal sanction.
As for exemptions to antitrust law, a common example made by people who have similarly called for the creation of an organization has been the National Football League. The Sports Broadcasting Act of 1961 gives them statutory exemption from the antitrust law in the United States, because they had been found in violation of it by our court system, and the legislature wanted it rectified. Organizations like FIFA are limited to governing only the Olympic expression of the sport.
I can't help but commend OP by being so positive about everything that written here. This is the bottom line in everything, just thinking and acting positive.
I'm not losing my faith, I'm sure blizzard will hear us. I still enjoy playing sc2, (playing BL/infestor deathballs haha) But I'm sure blizzard will do something to make casual players pour in.
Bbout E-Sports media, I don't know, these are all different people with different agenda, good or bad. As a positive thinker, I think we can only ask them nicely to give players a chance when they do/say something questionable... really, media is a double edged sword.
I like your post, but honestly this is a bit wierd, in 2 days we have 5 different pro-gramers all posting about the games problems . We all know of the problems, but something is a bit fishy when we have 5 of them post in 2 days.
On October 19 2012 15:47 Vermiiifuuge wrote: There is something very rotten in the state of esports when a top foreigner has time to write this instead of practicing. + Show Spoiler +
<3, nice post, although you're giving people in giving people in general too much credit as far as being reasonable and able to use common sense goes.
Sometimes you have to get something off your chest and weigh in on issues which concern the thing you love, eSports. Whether it will make a difference, I can't predict. But I can't just stand on the sideline. I will go back to practicing now, thank you for your concern. May I go have lunch first?
On October 19 2012 15:48 XXXSmOke wrote: I like your post, but honestly this is a bit wierd, in 2 days we have 5 different pro-gramers all posting about the games problems . We all know of the problems, but something is a bit fishy when we have 5 of them post in 2 days.
Well it's a bit of a chain reaction. If you think it's weird, that probably makes it weird. Imagine if you didn't think it's weird, then it wouldn't be weird. It's just logical. We all start a-thinking and the post keep a-coming.
Really appreciate the post Grubby! I hear CatZ is putting together an elite group of SC2 personalities to hold a conversation regarding HOTS and SC2's future with blizzard; you should be apart of it!
I couldn't agree more with everything you've said. (i also read it in your voice <3).
In particular, I LOVE the idea of a Liquipedia show. I imagine it in the same vein as ESPN but not daily. I would suggest a once a week show linked on Liquipedia and TL and streamed through twitch (support those who support us). Create a series of highlights (top 10 plays) while going through each MAJOR match of the past week (I imagine, GSL's and there Could be longer specials covering MLGs and DHs). What I've noticed alot in "hightlight" videos in eSports is that they use the original commentary. but the reason ESPN works SO well is because they have their anchors give the context for the situation. That way you know how important the plays they're showing are (even if the play they show is a giant mistake). And obviously, the Commentary from the game is just as important in a LOT of cases. (it would also be cool, if the actual video they show is directly recorded from a replay, that way if there was an Observer mistake or a building being made ends up being a focal point of the game, you can show the players building that particular building)
All of the Above, would require immense amount of work and talent from both the Community, and from the people who end up doing it. I believe though, if a highlight show was aired once a week, it could have a MASSIVE viewership each week. (imagine every unique viewer for Day9 dailies throughout the week all watching the ONE highlight show on like a saturday at a time that is Good for both NA and EU) There is some SERIOUS potential for that.
Maybe Blizzard should look into changing how they earn money with Starcraft 2 HOTS and beyond.
If they went the free to play route and charging for: - Custom portraits - Decals - Campaign - Name Change - Clans
They could potentially earn more money than charging a one time fee of 40 USD.
By doing this, Blizzard would also be forced to maintain a certain quality to the game and be more open to consumer feedback if their income was proportional to how good the game is.
Look at Valve and Dota 2 - a good model that Blizzard can implement. If Blizzard wants to have a sustainable scene for SC2, it's something they can't ignore.
I'm pretty certain that I'm not alone in feeling that SC2 hasn't lived up to the quality that WC3 TFT had in terms of features and capturing a life-long fan. The game just does not have the same immersion factor that both Starcraft and WC3 had.
Granted, I only got SC2 just for the multiplayer but for every gamer who wants to go and train hardcore, there are a lot more people who get a game just for the story / campaign. I played other RTS but they were just for fun - I always found myself returning to SC:BW up until Warcraft 3 DotA.
Hopefully, Blizzard does good in the expansion - seeing how both TFT and BW improved the base game.
If it does not. Well... it isn't 1998 anymore - there are a whole lot more good PC games to play nowadays.
Grubby's Manifesto on SC… SaSes 99 cents about the… The "Do your part for SC… Slayers to disband The Starcraft Crisis Ryung to Axiom & MMA dec
What is going on with the sc2 community lately, every seems to think the world is falling apart. But yea i do agree with pretty much everything i see, we dont need auto mine blizzard.
Great post. I really like the ideas behind it. And I agree that we should keep faith in Blizzard because they are still the company that makes the greatest games. Of course we shouldn't agree blindly with everything Blizzard does but in the last few days the complaints were a little bit too much I think. A lot of people seem to think that SC2 is going down and is almost hopelessly lost. On the other hand we just had WCS Europe with more viewers then any other non-Korean SC2 event ever before (I think, not quite sure about this). We also have Blizzard giving proof that they are actively listening to the community. I think SC2 is still growing. Not as fast as before but we didn't reach our peak yet and in my opinion there is no reason for the extreme end-of-the-world-atmosphere we have at the moment.
On October 19 2012 15:53 EnderCraft wrote: Really appreciate the post Grubby! I hear CatZ is putting together an elite group of SC2 personalities to hold a conversation regarding HOTS and SC2's future with blizzard; you should be apart of it!
On October 19 2012 15:26 Grubby wrote: WCS Europe is a great example of a relatively well spread out prize pool which gives every player some pay-off for their thousands of hours of hard work: 2012 StarCraft II World Championship Series/Europe/Finals
you link formatting doesn't match your skill ingame see how i fixed and then edit your post
» Email sponsors with positivity and real feelings about why you appreciate what they do, this may help offset the witch hunters. Here are my sponsors:
i'm not sure how good twitter can be to show our support, but i did and will continue to tell good about you to sponsors, as i do with others chosen ones
Lol all of this reminds me of the Halo community and pros all coming together to try to save Halo after the terrible travesty of a game that was Halo:Reach.
Woahhhh. Excellent write up and I agree with what you have to say! Especially that "Blizzard Never Disappoints". They may be a tad bit slow, but that's only to perfect the final content.
On October 19 2012 16:31 Trasko wrote: Woahhhh. Excellent write up and I agree with what you have to say! Especially that "Blizzard Never Disappoints". They may be a tad bit slow, but that's only to perfect the final content.
Ummm ... I really have to disagree here, because Blizzard knew A LOT of the issues with their Battlenet right from the start of WoL beta and failed to act. The game of WoL isnt perfect either and they didnt really learn or try hard enough to improve it either.
The problem is the usual "mouse in a running wheel" problem. They are soo stuck inside the process of working on new stuff that they dont take the time to pause and look at their current state and if their running wheel might be missing a few drops of oil. They instead try to run with more force to keep it running and the design of many of the super-funky (speak: exptreme) units for HotS shows that. They really need to do some basic QUALITY CONTROL on their previous work and try to OBJECTIVELY think if they really did the right thing. The mistakes are so blatantly obvious to many people outside of their development team that it shouldnt be really that hard to find them and correct them ... even if it includes them admitting mistakes.
Lol, from the first side replies 5 or more just compared this post to SaSe's, flaming and insulting sase... i dont know whats wrong with these guys, but i lose faith in this immature, rude and disrespectful community.
The game needs casual modes such as arcade, big game hunters, fastest money maps, race wars etc.... This is what will bring in casuals.
At the same time the competitive aspect needs to be harder, this helps the casual player base as well because they will admire the pros and be more into spectating games.
» Without a governing body, there can be bullying, or senseless competition over a date which ends up hurting both tournaments.
Isolating the free market as a problem is pretty hilarious. If companies cannot survive, they have an inferior product and deserve to get bounced out of the scene. Keeping them around through the establishment of a cartel creates a disincentive to innovate.
» A governing body would require authoritative power over all tournament organizers in order to work. They would also need financial stability (to pay out the people who have the hard work of keeping tournaments in line, and for other reasons), and all this body must be kept objective & fair, mediating and reaching compromises which everyone can be equally unhappy with (the golden rule of compromise). I think I don't need to tell you how hard it would to found an organization that has all these attributes, no matter how much we seem to want one - and therefore how long it'll probably still take for one to appear.
This is illegal in multiple jurisdictions, such as the United States and the European Union. And before you say that real sports organizations exist, you have to understand that they receive statutory exemptions to antitrust law through years of lobbying and billions of dollars of marketing that ESPORTS can't match.
Which is why I said finances are important. As I think shone through, I consider it unlikely that this would happen. I didn't know about the illegal/exemption thing though, that's interesting. Though I have to say, that eSports doesn't necessarily go by the same laws that we recognize in the Real World.
It's not illegal if that governing organization is Blizzard itself, using it's intellectual property rights to use of its game as leverage to force organizers to cooperate.
There is something I have been thinking about and considering lately, and the more I think about it, the more certain I am that this could possibly be THE solution to the problems people are seeing with the SC2 scene and tournament saturation. Imagine if a central competition governing body was able to coordinate with all of the major tournament organizations worldwide, convince them to adopt a single ruleset and mappool, and further, organize all of these tournaments into a weighted world-championship style points system, in which placings at each event (GSL, Dreamhack, MLG, IPL, IEM, etc.) are worth a certain amount of points for certain placings, and periodically as determined by Blizzard, the current champion must face the current #2 in points standings for the title.
Because think about one simple question that can differentiate SC2 from some other popular sports; "who is the champion?" How do you answer that? "Well, Mvp won GSL, Taeja won Dreamhack, HerO won MLG event x, etc. etc. etc.", it's too much, and none of these events have an effect on one another. It's a hodge-podge clusterfuck in which viewers watch events only based on who is playing in them, not because of some larger importance they hold. What if, as a fan of a Protoss player (for argument's sake, let's say Rain) is the current "champion" under this format. Ordinarily, I have no reason to watch the GSL finals, as all Protoss involvement is gone, and my favorite player is out. The tournament has reset for me. But what if Mvp and Life were #2 and #3 on the contender's list? I would watch to see who would win to challenge my favorite player for the unified championship in x amount of time.
This would not only provide incentive for viewers to watch tournaments they ordinarily wouldn't because a unification would add importance to inter-tournament happenings, but furthermore, it would give incentive to PLAYERS to travel to and participate in tournaments they otherwise wouldn't for exactly the same reason, making ALL involved tournaments better due to higher quality players, and BENEFITING all involved tournaments by allowing them to share viewers.
On October 19 2012 15:57 conut wrote: Grubby's Manifesto on SC… SaSes 99 cents about the… The "Do your part for SC… Slayers to disband The Starcraft Crisis Ryung to Axiom & MMA dec
What is going on with the sc2 community lately, every seems to think the world is falling apart. But yea i do agree with pretty much everything i see, we dont need auto mine blizzard.
It's more like this is the best time possible to affect real change. We've finally got an open beta and a Blizzard that's actively listening and improving the game week by week, and a direct line to both the eSports department through Cloaken and the devs through Rock and Dayvie. If we don't act now, we'll be settling for less than what it could be. So now's the best time there is to try and make sure we don't get left behind by LoL and Dota 2.
On October 19 2012 15:35 Talack wrote: Ranked... Fastest Map Possible and BGH
Savior of SC2
Start rebalancing the melee aspect around pros and start catering to the casual with actual fun content!
Yep... I bought Sc2 on day of release and never looked back for a second.. know why? Because original BW nexus wars, strip maze (lol), evolves, tank defence, turret defence, that one map where you make a wall then break it to release units, etc, were all so fucking fun that it made me play some melee games and kept me playing a mix of UMS (which still uses the same basic UI and mechanics as melee... so you feel like your improving overall when you play them) and melees until this day (where I've dropped UMS because of how bad battle.net 2.0 is)
Battle.net 2.0 being as good as battle.net 1 is the key to success.
This post is very well done, i've found new respect for Grubby. Many great points, and I can't really find much bias within his reasoning. Love this and want to see more!!
I would be extremely interested in hosting a weekly tournament results show. That idea clicks with me and I have all the necessary components to produce said show. Just PM me on TL, anyone who is possibly interested in this, as I tend to never miss GSL matches and I could always try to even get the small zotac cups and playhems
Just a though and a valid idea, but if anyone is interested, please do contact me!
The class shown by a world class progamer. Honestly you are the golden torch for foreign esports along with white-ra and artosis. (WHY MUST YOU ALL BE PROTOSS)
Thank you for not being a pessimist about this matter like destiny was. I feel you have the right outlook and attitude towards the matter. I really appreciate the professionalism involved in this post. great post grubby
This post represents a great holistic approach, as opposed to many of the others ideas for eSports to evolve presented in the last few days. I like how you focus on both the competitive and casual aspects needed for a modern game to exist as opposed to 'we need more retarded achievements and customs skins'. If I were to pick one community feedback front, that would be presented to Blizzard, this would definitely be the Grubby Front.
The hardest part of your Manifesto is 'have trust in Blizzard'. Diablo 3 was a failure. Dragonsoul was a failure (to a degree that prevented me from buying MoP). Starcraft 2 is the only good title still going on for them...
On October 19 2012 19:12 crow_mw wrote: This post represents a great holistic approach, as opposed to many of the others ideas for eSports to evolve presented in the last few days. I like how you focus on both the competitive and casual aspects needed for a modern game to exist as opposed to 'we need more retarded achievements and customs skins'. If I were to pick one community feedback front, that would be presented to Blizzard, this would definitely be the Grubby Front.
The hardest part of your Manifesto is 'have trust in Blizzard'. Diablo 3 was a failure. Dragonsoul was a failure (to a degree that prevented me from buying MoP). Starcraft 2 is the only good title still going on for them...
Actually MoP is considered by a lot of people (including hardcore raiders) as the best extension for WoW, after BC.
They can make mistake (ie: Catacrap), but they also learn from them.
Can't agree on everything, but those points are more personal preference. But most is really the undeniable truth. And the format makes it so easy to read. I envy your skill of bringing your thoughts out so clearly in any form and of course those of others. Thanks for the writeup, I started to feel that all this negativity going was starting to affect me.
I'm glad you actually added that a governing body with the aforementioned attributes seems to be implausible - that was the point which made me perplex at first. Otherwise I totally agree with the points you (and the contributors - they deserve some credit as well it seems) made, they are valid and well-explained. I hope this gets spotlighted asap and read by as many people as possible.
E-sports needs time and dedication to grow properly, and by people like Grubby constantly contributing to its development, e-sports might have a bright future ahead of it. Thank you!
I do not care enough about the community and the pro scene so most points are irrelevant for me.
I don't think the game being fun is just a combination of difficulty and mastery though. There are tons of games which are difficult and can be mastered yet not interesting to watch, it's really difficult to explain but I think the game being playable on a lower level yet be amazed by the pro's do with the same game is essential. Something like soccer has this. SC2 needs to be more difficult and interesting but the pro's need not simply be better at it than the average joe, they need to be able to do moves simple guys simply can;t do, like hard combo's to pull off etc. I'm afraid HOTS is not really going in that direction with the current development it's at. I don't trust blizzard just because BW and TFT vastly improved upon the originals. Those originals were also unplayable. SC2 was way more complete at start and far more difficult to improve on I think, yet it also has some serious flaws which seem so hard to solve, like protoss reliability on FF and deathball syndrome.
I can relate to W3 bnet. I basically played there for 5 years and I almost havent touched the 1v1 or ladder. All I did was customs, chatting and just hanging around. So far no game ever has been able to replicate so much fun and socialness(?) for me. I played WoW for some time and it has been nice aswell (even though ppl can be really bitches there).
Nice to see a lot what i mailed got into the manifesto. I probably won't be the only one though ot submit them though.
Agree with almost everything that's said here. I only strongly disagree with the need of a governing body. It has some pros, but there also are cons, and i'm not convinced that having it has more pros than not having it. In the near future at least, i'd rather see the free market develop.
I'm proud of being the dutchman with grubby around :D (or am i baiting swedes then )
Point 4 seems weird to me. Players should catch the attention by winning online cups, beasting it up on the ladder, performing well on local lan, ... before getting the 'chance' to get invited to a major lan. There is no point in inviting a player who's performing awfully just to represent his country. And yes, this still happens.
On October 19 2012 19:12 crow_mw wrote: This post represents a great holistic approach, as opposed to many of the others ideas for eSports to evolve presented in the last few days. I like how you focus on both the competitive and casual aspects needed for a modern game to exist as opposed to 'we need more retarded achievements and customs skins'. If I were to pick one community feedback front, that would be presented to Blizzard, this would definitely be the Grubby Front.
The hardest part of your Manifesto is 'have trust in Blizzard'. Diablo 3 was a failure. Dragonsoul was a failure (to a degree that prevented me from buying MoP). Starcraft 2 is the only good title still going on for them...
Actually MoP is considered by a lot of people (including hardcore raiders) as the best extension for WoW, after BC.
They can make mistake (ie: Catacrap), but they also learn from them.
And patch 1.0.5 for D3 is finally making the game feel like Diablo. I've been having more fun the last couple days with it than I have since the game released lol.
Blizzard DOES listen, and get shit right....it just takes a lot longer these days than we would like. Though I suppose that's the price you pay when you become as huge as they have; nothing gets done quickly.
I'm glad some pro-gamers take their time to clearly state what they think are priorities in eSports. Without guidelines and a clear goal forward, development could take ages!
Excellent Post! While i dont agree on all points (well mostly only on the cartel/boss org idea) I think Grubby really makes a important and valid point with this.
I especially think he is right when he says we should still have faith in Blizzard for a while! I mean yeah, look at SC1 before broodwar, D2 before LoD, D3 before 1.5(lol this is a clear one) or W3 before FT
I still have faith and hope the rest of the community will too!
I know there are some people who are worried and don't like the pros speaking out. Me personally as someone who recently lost my SC2 watching passion takes these recent "manifestos" or "blogs" very encouraging. If Blizzard finally reacts and attends as best they could the game could truly become great and I'll definately come back!
On October 19 2012 15:45 FakeDeath wrote: Very good post and really well-thought out.XD
Only thing i could disagreed with is the conclusion which is to have faith in Blizzard. I have lost faith in Blizzard already. When SC1 was released and BW was released, Blizzard was still a indie company. Even when WC3/Frozen Throne released,Blizzard actually wanted to make good games for the community.
Those were their best games.
But now times has changed.Developer of SC1/BW,WC3/Frozen Throne have long left the company. Blizzard got acquired by Activision. The Blizzard right now is only looking for profit and not actually wanting to make the game better for e-sports.
Well, just want to state the fact that Blizzard has never been indie company and Rob Pardo who was Lead designer of BW and many RTS developers are still working at Blizzard so what you said are mostly wrong.
Tournaments. -Make better stream -Make less tournaments -Give money to bad players aswell. -Use more money on players luxuries
Players -Play better (exept koreans)
Blizzard -Make game better
Viewers -Use more personal time to help the charity that is sc2 -Use more money to help the charity that is sc2 -Tell grubbys sponsor how cool grubby is.
Grubby hits the right note for what is wrong in e-sports atm. I really loved to read the whole post. normally i skip though thing but this was just really interesting to read. I say Grubby for e-sport president!
On October 19 2012 22:10 Sea_Food wrote: So basically
Tournaments. -Make better stream -Make less tournaments -Give money to bad players aswell. -Use more money on players luxuries
Players -Play better (exept koreans)
Blizzard -Make game better
Viewers -Use more personal time to help the charity that is sc2 -Use more money to help the charity that is sc2 -Tell grubbys sponsor how cool grubby is.
Well i know for myself, I only watch tournaments that have players i am interested in. Sure I wish i could watch everything, but I don't have the time, and I will get worn out. As for blizzard, I do believe they make good games and HOTS will be a good game. I just wish blizzard would be more open to ideas from the coumunity. At the very list hire a guy to read a coummunity forum and if that guy thinks something is worth DB's time he can bring it up too him. Blizzard did let me down with D3, but companies don't make every game amazing, its just how it goes.
I really agree with the blizzard responsabilities point, and being a competitive player, I'm so frustrated by the goal of blizzard to make the game as easy as possible !! I'm so worried about this at this time.
Anyways its a very good and positive post, depsite it shows e-sport weakness, it is also very exciting to see how much e-sport can improve !
I'll definetly try to balance my complaints with good feedback aswell. gj grubby
I'm loving all of these informative posts from pro-gamers about their opinions on the state of Starcraft. Hopefully Blizzard and tournament owners really start listening to what the actual community wants because of this. It can only benefit everyone involved.
On October 19 2012 15:57 conut wrote: Grubby's Manifesto on SC… SaSes 99 cents about the… The "Do your part for SC… Slayers to disband The Starcraft Crisis Ryung to Axiom & MMA dec
What is going on with the sc2 community lately, every seems to think the world is falling apart. But yea i do agree with pretty much everything i see, we dont need auto mine blizzard.
nothing is falling apart. People have simply said "enough is enough" and are letting out what they've been repressing for years. It's time blizzard learns.
On October 19 2012 15:57 conut wrote: Grubby's Manifesto on SC… SaSes 99 cents about the… The "Do your part for SC… Slayers to disband The Starcraft Crisis Ryung to Axiom & MMA dec
What is going on with the sc2 community lately, every seems to think the world is falling apart. But yea i do agree with pretty much everything i see, we dont need auto mine blizzard.
nothing is falling apart. People have simply said "enough is enough" and are letting out what they've been repressing for years. It's time blizzard learns.
probably everyone saw/heard about lol s2 finals and freaked the fuck out that their esport was losing.
On October 19 2012 15:57 conut wrote: Grubby's Manifesto on SC… SaSes 99 cents about the… The "Do your part for SC… Slayers to disband The Starcraft Crisis Ryung to Axiom & MMA dec
What is going on with the sc2 community lately, every seems to think the world is falling apart. But yea i do agree with pretty much everything i see, we dont need auto mine blizzard.
nothing is falling apart. People have simply said "enough is enough" and are letting out what they've been repressing for years. It's time blizzard learns.
probably everyone saw/heard about lol s2 finals and freaked the fuck out that their esport was losing.
I don't think many people cared about the lol s2 finals. The only effect it had might be pushing destiny to make his post which alongside the slayers drama is creating the panic-frenzy which is a good thing. Some people are saying these type of threads are becoming a self-fulfilling prophecy but honestly this is exactly what Sc2 needs. Its a do or die type moment because there is a lot of issues with sc2 and if the red alarm sirens are not ringing in the blizzard offices after this fiasco, blizzard and its games deserve to die off.
Grubby laid everything out in such a nice and comprehensive way. He is so dreamy and smart. I like the notion that tournaments need to develop distinct identities, so you can follow the storylines that you want as a fan.
» Without a governing body, there can be bullying, or senseless competition over a date which ends up hurting both tournaments.
Isolating the free market as a problem is pretty hilarious. If companies cannot survive, they have an inferior product and deserve to get bounced out of the scene. Keeping them around through the establishment of a cartel creates a disincentive to innovate.
» A governing body would require authoritative power over all tournament organizers in order to work. They would also need financial stability (to pay out the people who have the hard work of keeping tournaments in line, and for other reasons), and all this body must be kept objective & fair, mediating and reaching compromises which everyone can be equally unhappy with (the golden rule of compromise). I think I don't need to tell you how hard it would to found an organization that has all these attributes, no matter how much we seem to want one - and therefore how long it'll probably still take for one to appear.
This is illegal in multiple jurisdictions, such as the United States and the European Union. And before you say that real sports organizations exist, you have to understand that they receive statutory exemptions to antitrust law through years of lobbying and billions of dollars of marketing that ESPORTS can't match.
Which is why I said finances are important. As I think shone through, I consider it unlikely that this would happen. I didn't know about the illegal/exemption thing though, that's interesting. Though I have to say, that eSports doesn't necessarily go by the same laws that we recognize in the Real World.
It's not illegal if that governing organization is Blizzard itself, using it's intellectual property rights to use of its game as leverage to force organizers to cooperate.
There is something I have been thinking about and considering lately, and the more I think about it, the more certain I am that this could possibly be THE solution to the problems people are seeing with the SC2 scene and tournament saturation.
While interesting, Blizzard cannot regulate much more than giving companies the license to operate the game. If they become overbearing in their requirements and restrictions, these organizations will simply drop StarCraft competition and move to a non-Blizzard game.
It's interesting to see how many of the issues that Grubby identifies are echoed in Gretorp and Filter's posts. Really interesting read, and I agree that we should keep hoping. I mean, Blizzard did get rid of the warhound and reintroduce the carrier, two moves for which I had very little hope.
just in reference to what grubby said on liquipedia, i think he is completely wrong. the people who contribute a lot to that page are the unthanked heroes of esports. they put in tons of work for no reward, asking them to do anymore is really unfair.
most tourneys these days (the mediocre ones anyway) really fail to hype themselves up. they spend thousands flying out players or producing a stage or hiring a venue, but they dont hype themselves at all. every league seems to complacent that if they make 1 TL thread, the community will do the rest of the work. Leagues need to start hiring coverage coordinators to hype the event, produce youtube videos, update with no info and work on the liquipedia page. asking for volunteers to fix your event for you when you are trying to turn a profit is bullshit.
people already do more for free in this community than any other, asking them to do more is really not what needs to be done. if leagues want to be professional, and to stand out above the rest i agree with grubbys spirit, but i believe they need to shoulder the responsibility to hype themselves and promote themselves, not to pass it down to the viewer.
On October 20 2012 00:20 turdburgler wrote: just in reference to what grubby said on liquipedia, i think he is completely wrong. the people who contribute a lot to that page are the unthanked heroes of esports. they put in tons of work for no reward, asking them to do anymore is really unfair.
most tourneys these days (the mediocre ones anyway) really fail to hype themselves up. they spend thousands flying out players or producing a stage or hiring a venue, but they dont hype themselves at all. every league seems to complacent that if they make 1 TL thread, the community will do the rest of the work. Leagues need to start hiring coverage coordinators to hype the event, produce youtube videos, update with no info and work on the liquipedia page. asking for volunteers to fix your event for you when you are trying to turn a profit is bullshit.
people already do more for free in this community than any other, asking them to do more is really not what needs to be done. if leagues want to be professional, and to stand out above the rest i agree with grubbys spirit, but i believe they need to shoulder the responsibility to hype themselves and promote themselves, not to pass it down to the viewer.
^
I really don't want to be giving this thread anymore attention. The other thread was more than enough and now look at the general section.
It's flooded with people thinking the sky is falling. Not to say there isn't good criticism, but in reality when you see a guy like Dustin Browder at an event or someone else in high place. You really should ask to take them aside for a moment Grubby to talk to them about your concerns because stuff like this is nothing more than fluff considering lots of the core issues rests with Blizzard.
The doom and gloom is depressing. eSports is stronger than it's ever been, SC2 is still very strong, and the ARTS games are just bringing the whole scene up with them. Why so serious everyone? It's a good time for eSports, and with a major expansion coming for SC2 to inject some life back in to it, it's a good time for SC2. For a game that is supposedly dying, it's funny that I can turn on Twitch any night of the week and see tournament grade content, even if it's just another IPL qualifier.
Grubby makes some amazing points, and every scene/game has points it could improve on...but some of the other doom/gloom hyperbolic crazy talk in this thread is just silly. People need to be less emotional and actually analyze the situation logically and realize that SC2 isn't falling apart. One team, that we've known for months was on shaky ground, disbanded. We just had two huge ARTS tournaments, which are putting the eSports focus on them right now.
I think some of your heads would explode if you were big Dota 2 fans and saw what that scene goes through every year after The International. If you think SC2 is falling apart, you'd think that scene was going supernova. SC2 is the model of stability in eSports right now, and nothing on the immediate horizon is threatening that.
» Without a governing body, there can be bullying, or senseless competition over a date which ends up hurting both tournaments.
Isolating the free market as a problem is pretty hilarious. If companies cannot survive, they have an inferior product and deserve to get bounced out of the scene. Keeping them around through the establishment of a cartel creates a disincentive to innovate.
» A governing body would require authoritative power over all tournament organizers in order to work. They would also need financial stability (to pay out the people who have the hard work of keeping tournaments in line, and for other reasons), and all this body must be kept objective & fair, mediating and reaching compromises which everyone can be equally unhappy with (the golden rule of compromise). I think I don't need to tell you how hard it would to found an organization that has all these attributes, no matter how much we seem to want one - and therefore how long it'll probably still take for one to appear.
This is illegal in multiple jurisdictions, such as the United States and the European Union. And before you say that real sports organizations exist, you have to understand that they receive statutory exemptions to antitrust law through years of lobbying and billions of dollars of marketing that ESPORTS can't match.
Which is why I said finances are important. As I think shone through, I consider it unlikely that this would happen. I didn't know about the illegal/exemption thing though, that's interesting. Though I have to say, that eSports doesn't necessarily go by the same laws that we recognize in the Real World.
I am not sure, but as far as I know, each tournament with a prizepool bigger than a certain amount has to apply for a license to hold this tournament, at Blizzard. This would mean that if Blizzard would set up an organisation to regulate fair competition, that they would be in their right. After all, you have to have a license from them to get 'permission' to hold a tournament. Then there's lot of sub-conditions to it. Wouldn't this mean that Blizzard would have the ability to be that neutral party in the world, due to their IP rights and contracts with all parties together?
» Without a governing body, there can be bullying, or senseless competition over a date which ends up hurting both tournaments.
Isolating the free market as a problem is pretty hilarious. If companies cannot survive, they have an inferior product and deserve to get bounced out of the scene. Keeping them around through the establishment of a cartel creates a disincentive to innovate.
» A governing body would require authoritative power over all tournament organizers in order to work. They would also need financial stability (to pay out the people who have the hard work of keeping tournaments in line, and for other reasons), and all this body must be kept objective & fair, mediating and reaching compromises which everyone can be equally unhappy with (the golden rule of compromise). I think I don't need to tell you how hard it would to found an organization that has all these attributes, no matter how much we seem to want one - and therefore how long it'll probably still take for one to appear.
This is illegal in multiple jurisdictions, such as the United States and the European Union. And before you say that real sports organizations exist, you have to understand that they receive statutory exemptions to antitrust law through years of lobbying and billions of dollars of marketing that ESPORTS can't match.
Which is why I said finances are important. As I think shone through, I consider it unlikely that this would happen. I didn't know about the illegal/exemption thing though, that's interesting. Though I have to say, that eSports doesn't necessarily go by the same laws that we recognize in the Real World.
I am not sure, but as far as I know, each tournament with a prizepool bigger than a certain amount has to apply for a license to hold this tournament, at Blizzard. This would mean that if Blizzard would set up an organisation to regulate fair competition, that they would be in their right. After all, you have to have a license from them to get 'permission' to hold a tournament. Then there's lot of sub-conditions to it. Wouldn't this mean that Blizzard would have the ability to be that neutral party in the world, due to their IP rights and contracts with all parties together?
Theoretically of course.
The problem with this is the "Riot Effect", something most eSports fans loath. That is, Riot is the sole arbiter of their own game. That causes the tournament structure to completely rotate around Riot's center of orbit. If Riot ever back out, or lowers support, the whole scene gets the rug pulled out from under it.
I'm not explaining it as well as Tobi Wan did, but if you watch the Real Talk with Tobi Wan, he explains it very well. Not saying Blizzard couldn't do it, but they'd need to do it more like Valve and less like Riot. Stewardship, not control. There's a difference.
» Without a governing body, there can be bullying, or senseless competition over a date which ends up hurting both tournaments.
Isolating the free market as a problem is pretty hilarious. If companies cannot survive, they have an inferior product and deserve to get bounced out of the scene. Keeping them around through the establishment of a cartel creates a disincentive to innovate.
» A governing body would require authoritative power over all tournament organizers in order to work. They would also need financial stability (to pay out the people who have the hard work of keeping tournaments in line, and for other reasons), and all this body must be kept objective & fair, mediating and reaching compromises which everyone can be equally unhappy with (the golden rule of compromise). I think I don't need to tell you how hard it would to found an organization that has all these attributes, no matter how much we seem to want one - and therefore how long it'll probably still take for one to appear.
This is illegal in multiple jurisdictions, such as the United States and the European Union. And before you say that real sports organizations exist, you have to understand that they receive statutory exemptions to antitrust law through years of lobbying and billions of dollars of marketing that ESPORTS can't match.
Which is why I said finances are important. As I think shone through, I consider it unlikely that this would happen. I didn't know about the illegal/exemption thing though, that's interesting. Though I have to say, that eSports doesn't necessarily go by the same laws that we recognize in the Real World.
I am not sure, but as far as I know, each tournament with a prizepool bigger than a certain amount has to apply for a license to hold this tournament, at Blizzard. This would mean that if Blizzard would set up an organisation to regulate fair competition, that they would be in their right. After all, you have to have a license from them to get 'permission' to hold a tournament. Then there's lot of sub-conditions to it. Wouldn't this mean that Blizzard would have the ability to be that neutral party in the world, due to their IP rights and contracts with all parties together?
Theoretically of course.
The problem with this is the "Riot Effect", something most eSports fans loath. That is, Riot is the sole arbiter of their own game. That causes the tournament structure to completely rotate around Riot's center of orbit. If Riot ever back out, or lowers support, the whole scene gets the rug pulled out from under it.
I'm not explaining it as well as Tobi Wan did, but if you watch the Real Talk with Tobi Wan, he explains it very well. Not saying Blizzard couldn't do it, but they'd need to do it more like Valve and less like Riot. Stewardship, not control. There's a difference.
A fair point. The reason I mentioned is that a governing body initiated by the creator of the licensed property, would legally be acceptable if I read it correctly. It may not have to be Blizzard themselves, but a partner that can do this separately from the producer. I feel it might help the scene be more organised and less overly filled with major events for schedule clashes.
I feel that we'd benefit from a central organ which structurizes the tournaments into time-brackets, so that we won't get scheduling conflicts.
The reason I think League of Legends keeps players playing: because every 2-3 weeks something new is released such as a new Champion. Also, every 2-3 weeks there is a balance patch, fixing and making the game more balanced (or completely fucking up a viability of a champion)
People want new things constantly, and it's going to be hard to keep a player base without patches every so often and new units/features every so often. I mean from the Starcraft 2 standpoint we can say new strategies come out, but for a player like me who cannot execute a strategy perfectly, it just does not appeal. Like how damn long does it take to fix a simple unit (carrier?). I mean people can say it took a few years to get the Champion Evelynn to be viable, but at least Riot got around to fixing this champion instead of leaving it in the dust like Blizzard did to the Carrier. (Why even transfer the unit from SC1 then?)
I think Starcraft 2 would be more interesting if they had objectives in the game, such as if you capture a Generator Field, it increases the income you get from minerals. Leading people to fight over the Generator Field instead of first to destroy each others buildings, I mean that is still the main goal of the game, but have other goals of the game as well.
In League of Legends people can turtle all day to protect their base, or people can force team fights over objectives such as Dragon, Baron and even Turrets. I just think it would be interesting to have other things to fight over, I know there is Xel'Naga watch towers to fight over, but adding even more would bring interesting concepts and strategies to the game.
This is an amazing post. I have always been a fan ever since hearing about you, sir. GL and although I am generally a Kespa fan, I wouldn't mind seeing you kick their asses consistently.
In relation to the actual content, I think these are great ideas. I especially like the ideas on getting casual gamers to play the game. I think strong points were made there, the game itself doesn't need to be dumbed down, just create a lot of mini-games that are basically just fun to play without need for ceaseless and competitive practice.
Also, I love how positive this is. You raise a good point on Blizzard delivering with their expansions. And I remember BW had to reach a certain patch before people thought it was totally balanced. With so much negativity in these forums, a little faith is what we need around here. This would also prevent otherwise constructive suggestions for Blizzard from turning into whines and rants.
» Difficulty: If the game is not difficult enough, the fans will not respect the players' skill. I have respect for a piano player (One-handed Pirate of the Carribean - By Wibi Soerjadi) because I admire what I cannot do. Blizzard does not need to dumb down the game, because that won't get the casuals back. Improving the Used Map Settings / Arcade will get casuals. They just like to play Tower Defense, DotA, Footmen frenzy and so forth - and in between look at Tournament streams on the BNet 3.0 in-game client.
AND
» Difficulty: If the game is not difficult enough, the fans will not respect the players' skill. I have respect for a piano player (One-handed Pirate of the Carribean - By Wibi Soerjadi) because I admire what I cannot do. Blizzard does not need to dumb down the game, because that won't get the casuals back. Improving the Used Map Settings / Arcade will get casuals. They just like to play Tower Defense, DotA, Footmen frenzy and so forth - and in between look at Tournament streams on the BNet 3.0 in-game client.
I cannot agree more. I've managed to scalp a few GMs here and there with a simple straightforward build that they must have seen many times already I'm sure, and yet they couldn't stop it. I can't stress enough that I would never have pulled this off in Brood War. Watching SC2 is not as impressive as it should be and would benefit from a drastic increase in skill ceiling (which brings us back to the same old topic of bad race design blablabla...)
» Without a governing body, there can be bullying, or senseless competition over a date which ends up hurting both tournaments.
Isolating the free market as a problem is pretty hilarious. If companies cannot survive, they have an inferior product and deserve to get bounced out of the scene. Keeping them around through the establishment of a cartel creates a disincentive to innovate.
» A governing body would require authoritative power over all tournament organizers in order to work. They would also need financial stability (to pay out the people who have the hard work of keeping tournaments in line, and for other reasons), and all this body must be kept objective & fair, mediating and reaching compromises which everyone can be equally unhappy with (the golden rule of compromise). I think I don't need to tell you how hard it would to found an organization that has all these attributes, no matter how much we seem to want one - and therefore how long it'll probably still take for one to appear.
This is illegal in multiple jurisdictions, such as the United States and the European Union. And before you say that real sports organizations exist, you have to understand that they receive statutory exemptions to antitrust law through years of lobbying and billions of dollars of marketing that ESPORTS can't match.
Which is why I said finances are important. As I think shone through, I consider it unlikely that this would happen. I didn't know about the illegal/exemption thing though, that's interesting. Though I have to say, that eSports doesn't necessarily go by the same laws that we recognize in the Real World.
It's not illegal if that governing organization is Blizzard itself, using it's intellectual property rights to use of its game as leverage to force organizers to cooperate.
There is something I have been thinking about and considering lately, and the more I think about it, the more certain I am that this could possibly be THE solution to the problems people are seeing with the SC2 scene and tournament saturation.
While interesting, Blizzard cannot regulate much more than giving companies the license to operate the game. If they become overbearing in their requirements and restrictions, these organizations will simply drop StarCraft competition and move to a non-Blizzard game.
Same difference. If someone pulls out of running tournaments, Blizzard can allow more from someone else.
I don't think Blizzard could feasibly do this at this point in the development of the tournament scene. This would have worked if they had a clear vision from the start and maintained strong, transparent control.
Nice to take the time to write, not sure what good it will do... seems like pissing in the wind to me as more people latch onto LoL and Dota 2 and abandon SC2. I don't know what good it will do to plead with sponsors to stay in sc2 with promises that we will buy their products as the viewer count diminishes. Perhaps it will just level out at some point and some of the suggests may cushon the decline, time will tell. Thanks grubby anyway.
This was an awesome article and I'm glad you wrote it in the midst of all this negativity! I'm still very excited about the future and what it could bring and I believe things will get better and better!
Grubby for President of ESPORTS 2012. Seriously though, you are a champion Grubby, in every sense of the word. Love to see someone with your clout really trying to make the scene better for everyone.
To bring a little something more to his discussion than just singing praises: The one section that seemed perhaps a little lacking was Player Responsibility. I don't think anyone would disagree that a player's job first and foremost is to be the best at the game they can be, and to play the highest level games possible. Players want to play the best and spectators want to watch the best games.
However, the real stars of eSports are the ones that play high level Starcraft AND bring something to the scene beyond just their games. They do things like give good interviews, make interesting posts on TL, appear on the various eSports talk shows, commentate during downtime at tournaments, run an entertaining stream... any number of small and large things that both promote themselves as interesting personalities as well as add value to the community. This does not mean that everyone has to dance around in a murloc suit like MC or stir up controversy like Idra (though those things certainly have their place). It just means that these players understand the value of presenting themselves well and contributing as much as they can.
Few players have results that truly speak for themselves (your MVPs, Flashes, etc.), and even picking up a championship doesn't guarantee that you'll be remembered for long. Again, I'm not saying that players should focus primarily on being entertainers instead of competitors, but it is the reality that the big names out there understand that success usually means more than just winning.
Stars generate excitement about tournaments, they generate interest from sponsors, they have more personal clout when it comes to finding teams/tournaments/opportunities, and they make participation in the scene from fans that much more fun. I don't think it's my place to claim that it is a "player's responsibility" to try to become this type of star, but it certainly benefits everyone when they do.
Been too caught up reading all the drama thats happened lately, and you don't know how happy it makes me to know that I can still read a quality post on SC2 General. Thank you Grubby
On October 19 2012 15:50 Grubby wrote: Well it's a bit of a chain reaction. If you think it's weird, that probably makes it weird. Imagine if you didn't think it's weird, then it wouldn't be weird. It's just logical. We all start a-thinking and the post keep a-coming.
Hah! This is why Grubby is my favorite caster, and the first person I followed when I finally joined twitter last week.
I like that you're approaching a different angle of things that "need" to change or at least could be improved, Grubby. I especially liked the idea of the weekly recap show. I know live viewership is probably preferred, but having a Digest version of the last week's tourneys/matches would give people a way to know what they may have missed and should go back for.
Small side note that I wish I'd sent to you while you were requesting input: going back for VODs might not be ideal for the tournament bodies, since they seem to all be moving to a sub-only business model instead of advertisements. It seems like I can't even go back and watch MLG/NASL VODs at all without subscribing... My own tourney viewership is down because I don't like being forced to pay. Back when I was paying for a better quality stream and the 2 bonus feeds, I was happy to pay a subscription fee to MLG. Now that 80% of their content is pay-only... I just wait for the VODs or skip it entirely and watch youtube casters like Husky instead. And on top of that, what VODs they do post are interspersed with LOUD and randomly-timed ads right in the middle of matches... makes me even less willing to support them now.
Great post. Your hard work is certainly appreciated. I loved the part about blizzard eventually sorting things out in BW and WC3 with the expansions. We'll have to wait and see where hots goes and try to care a little less
I proposed the idea of a "governing body" almost exactly one year ago and most people, even progamers (Hawk), were fiercely against it. Times have changed ! =D
On October 19 2012 15:26 Grubby wrote: 5. Encyclopedia Galactica: Liquipedia
Isaac Asimov himself would be proud indeed: the Encyclopedia Galactica for SC2 eSports is being developed, anthologised and treasured by the population itself.
There is nothing like Liquipedia around as far as a collection of coverage of tournaments goes. The only thing that could make Liquipedia better, is by being even better and more well rounded than it already is. It almost seems too much to ask, but I think it's only a matter of time that this will happen. What am I getting at?
For example: interaction to be possible on Liquipedia items (comments).
For Liquipedia to get "Liquipedia TV" which is a show that would combine all the results of the past week into a nice consumable TV show
For Liquipedia to start listing all of the replays & VOD's for all the events consistently.
The entire community wants a one-stop place for finding everything about every tournament.
For Television, we've got the TV guide. For internet, we have Google. For eSports, there is Liquipedia. I used to think that it would be enough if Tournament X or Organization Y had a personal TV guide/schedule for their own programs, but this isn't enough. There would still be 10 different TV guides to keep up with - an impossible feat for your average Joe.
The more people contribute to Liquipedia, the better. It requires passion and hard work, but it will be much appreciated. If it requires funds, I'm sure TV guides also earn money from the TV channels eventually for helping consumers consume the products(their channels).
Alternatively, I'm sure many people would feel grateful enough to Liquipedia to donate. I just looked for a donate button myself.
NOTE: It is possible that we might other objective media besides TL/Liquipedia; in fact, it is likely. I don't see it happening yet, though, because there are no financial incentives to do so yet. If running a team is a hard way to earn money, then imagine running an active, comprehensive, independent news / coverage website. Our scene is growing, but it is still kinda small in the sense that we need a lot of volunteer work. ESFI seems to do decent enough work, but I don't know how many people visit them. [...]
Warning: contributing may lead to satisfaction.
So many ideas, I'll tackle them from top to bottom in order.
Thank you. (I think, I've not read enough Asimov, sadly)
I too agree that Liquipedia is great but that it has the potential for so much much more.
We do have comments but they're a bit hidden as in so much they're called "discussion" or "talk-pages" you can find them in the top bar of tabs next to "page" where you can leave comments about specific pages, or to specific contributors. However Wikipedia has recently started doing a feedback thing where anyone can - without logging in - write a (feedback) comment about the page and rate it etc. I've been starting to look in to that already and think having something like that could be rather beneficial. There's another thing where you can make the contributors' talk pages look and work more like the wall on facebook.
We'll put that into consideration but ideally we'd need some people with experience from production to step up and help out and do the lion's share. We do wikis well (if I may say so myself), but we don't have much experience with doing weekly shows of any kind really.
Replays are not something as many people consume but if there are people willing to help with putting in replays, we'll help out with teaching how and even make some changes to the structures to make it simpler than it is currently. For VODs all the stuff is in place as far as I'm aware, it's just about people contributing. More on this further down.
I think we're pretty much that already, very little information is readily available and not on Liquipedia.
We have a huge advantage over all the individual tournament organizers' own pages, because we have 1 interface for people to learn, instead of having to learn a new one for each organizer. We also provide much more readily accessible information about the players histories, teams and previous tournaments not from the same organizer. I think this is why Liquipedia will be the best alternative, the scope is just bigger.
As far as I've been able to tell about 0.3% of people who use Liquipedia to look up information actually edit Liquipedia, that is about 3 people in a thousand. Sure there's about 200 000 who use Liquipedia per month giving us 600 or so people who contribute, which is great. But I sometimes imagine what would happen if 1% would contribute and we'd have 2 000 editors active in a month:
Increased depth for every kind of article.
More research done on the past of people and organizations.
Better writing over all with more people fixing errors and making the grammar easy to grasp and hard to misinterpret.
Better strategy sections with more guides and build orders.
Better help pages so that the threshold to start contributing to that which you would like to is as low as it can be.
Better connections between different articles.
Better use of the category pages making it a viable option if you want to find out more about all Swedish Terrans (for example).
More up to date recent tournament result page.
Improved layout on all the articles, more images (used correctly, where we have the right to use the image (Not just random pictures found on the internet that you don't know the source or haven't gotten permission for Liquipedia to use).
Adding well thought out additions to the javascript to make the site even easier to use and less cluttered.
Redo templates and css structures to make the wikis work as well as they can on mobile devices.
I can just keep going, there are so many aspects in which Liquipedia has not reached it's full potential. And due to the way a wiki works the best/simplest solution is usually to throw more man power on it to increase the value.
Liquipedia is part of TeamLiquid.net and as such we follow the basic principles of TL, such as no donation button. If you want to support Liquipedia but you don't want to help out with editing, then turning off any ad block program is one way to do it. Another is potentially for Liquipedia to get items in the TL store. But seriously the best way to donate, is to donate a little bit of time and effort.
Liquipedia tries to have some of the same ideas about being an encyclopaedia that say Wikipedia has, in that we want things to be sourced to some external source of Liquipedia, something that has gone through an editorial process ideally, so we like more good objective media to write about things because then we can use that to create even better content on Liquipedia.
So true. Feels really good to just help out and support something you enjoy and get a lot of positive feedback back.
whats with people talking about them in 3rd person? first i read that thread by sase now grubby. you guys do realize that the author of a post is displayed, right?
As far as I've been able to tell about 0.3% of people who use Liquipedia to look up information actually edit Liquipedia, that is about 3 people in a thousand. Sure there's about 200 000 who use Liquipedia per month giving us 600 or so people who contribute, which is great. But I sometimes imagine what would happen if 1% would contribute and we'd have 2000 editors active in a month
Sometimes I get the feeling that people genuinely don't understand that they can edit Liquipedia, which is kinda funny (and kinda unfortunate!). I periodically see comments like, "Man, someone should really update x" or something--I'm sure that sometimes they just want someone else to do the work, but other times I get the sense that they just honestly don't know they could change it themselves.
On October 20 2012 19:21 summerloud wrote: summerloud's response to this post:
whats with people talking about them in 3rd person? first i read that thread by sase now grubby. you guys do realize that the author of a post is displayed, right?
typical case of USI (unwarranted self-importance)
I don't know man, I'm usually not looking at the poster's name when I scroll through the topic list, and if the topic is appearing in the sidebar then there's no way to see who wrote it (and most likely I'm not going to click on or read a random forum goers manifesto). Seems like you're reaching a little for something to complain about.
Is it possible, in order to increase liquipedia's popularity, to ask to esport community/team website if they can add a link or a page who drive people to liquidpedia as the official data base of all informations about Starcraft 2 ?
This idea may looks too simple for being viable, but I'm sure there is little things to do who can change the relationship between casual gamer and e-sport! Most of them just doesn't know what it is or how it works.
It's always nice to read a text like this, where the bold parts line up beautifully and make sense even if you only read them, where the presentation follows a logic from introduction and body to conclusion. Where the tone of the text is one of constructive criticism rather than bashing.
Thanks, Grubby, for that beautifully written post.
Way to go Grubby! I really enjoyed reading your post and I absolutely agree! Awesome structure, you are really showing how to organize your thoughts in a post, a lot of boons like me will profit from pro-gamer posts like these. Everyone involved into making E-sports better, should really consider your suggestions! <3 to you and all people @ TL moe
edit: lets all donate to liquipedia, as soon as a donate button appears!
As far as I've been able to tell about 0.3% of people who use Liquipedia to look up information actually edit Liquipedia, that is about 3 people in a thousand. Sure there's about 200 000 who use Liquipedia per month giving us 600 or so people who contribute, which is great. But I sometimes imagine what would happen if 1% would contribute and we'd have 2000 editors active in a month
Sometimes I get the feeling that people genuinely don't understand that they can edit Liquipedia, which is kinda funny (and kinda unfortunate!). I periodically see comments like, "Man, someone should really update x" or something--I'm sure that sometimes they just want someone else to do the work, but other times I get the sense that they just honestly don't know they could change it themselves.
On October 20 2012 19:21 summerloud wrote: summerloud's response to this post:
whats with people talking about them in 3rd person? first i read that thread by sase now grubby. you guys do realize that the author of a post is displayed, right?
typical case of USI (unwarranted self-importance)
I don't know man, I'm usually not looking at the poster's name when I scroll through the topic list, and if the topic is appearing in the sidebar then there's no way to see who wrote it (and most likely I'm not going to click on or read a random forum goers manifesto). Seems like you're reaching a little for something to complain about.
AFAIK I've only edited it once EVER because someone messaged me to help with the Shield Battery thing. You see personally I don't actually WANT to edit it, not when someone else typically does it better than I do for one, and for another, generally other people who write it regularly have better writing and are more coherent in fewer words.
As far as I've been able to tell about 0.3% of people who use Liquipedia to look up information actually edit Liquipedia, that is about 3 people in a thousand. Sure there's about 200 000 who use Liquipedia per month giving us 600 or so people who contribute, which is great. But I sometimes imagine what would happen if 1% would contribute and we'd have 2000 editors active in a month
Sometimes I get the feeling that people genuinely don't understand that they can edit Liquipedia, which is kinda funny (and kinda unfortunate!). I periodically see comments like, "Man, someone should really update x" or something--I'm sure that sometimes they just want someone else to do the work, but other times I get the sense that they just honestly don't know they could change it themselves.
I would be one of these people...but now I know! I've never actually done any sort of wiki editing before, I didn't know that literally anyone could contribute. Do I even have to log in to anything?
This is the best, most concise, and most accurate post I have seen in a long time.. I hope to see this all over reddit, battle.net forums, and twitter. Grubby clearly knows what he is talking about and was able to articulate it in a way that was tactful, intelligent, and practical. <3 Grubby!
On October 19 2012 15:26 Grubby wrote: » For Liquipedia to start listing all of the replays & VOD's for all the events consistently.
I don't know if you or many other people here on TeamLiquid know about it, but there's a section on reddit, where you can look up and watch all the VOD's from recent (big) events. They do a really good job (like you would expect from reddit), so maybe there is a possibility to combine this work with Liquipedia!? here's what I'm talking about, it's really awesome for anyone out there to find all the VOD's you've been looking for! (I haven't read through this thread, so I hope I'm not posting the same stuff as someone before me)
EPT
2012 StarCraft II World Championship Series/Europe/Finals
I totally read it in your voice btw ^^
I takes a lot of time and volunteers to get to the point which you are saying, but I admit it would be better if it were so
