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On May 02 2013 10:44 Heartscry wrote:Show nested quote +On May 02 2013 10:27 Defacer wrote:On May 02 2013 10:10 Heartscry wrote:On May 02 2013 09:58 Cele wrote:
actually i think he is quite right about some aspects of e-sports business going wrong. It`s a generell tendancy and it occurs also with many other teams and community sites. People are made to donate for nothing or a gimmick, people agree to put up huge work schedules as an author for a for-profit organisation and get nothing in return. We are supposed to by products to support "e-sports". Im sick of that. Get your finances straight and find a way to be profitable or leave it. But stop exploiting the lack of maturity of 15 yo's for pumping up your business by exploiting their passion. I'm in full agreement with you here. Surely the core issue here is that Root doesn't appear to have a functioning business model or any real way of generating the funds to rent a gaming house. Doesnt crowd sourcing in this way simply create a large scale financial dependence? Esports as an industry is crying out for a regulatory body. I think that's blowing it out of proportion. More like, "Root Gaming is crying out for a full-time business development manager." Is this the wrong thread to ask how they would pay for a "full-time business development manager"?  I just think the core problem here is not that people are willing to donate, nor that Root have chosen to crowd source - rather that they seem to lack the means / expertise to fund it themselves. Would a gamer house massively increase revenue? How long would they rely on donations?
The problem with Root has always been that it has been comprised almost entirely of loose cohort of essentially independent players that what to do whatever they want, whenever they want.
Honestly, they need someone to sacrifice their own career as a player, step up and handle business development full time.
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On May 02 2013 11:13 Wombat_NI wrote:
Out of interest, genuinely curious. How many of you actually read the article in its entirety?
Anyway, I like the idea of crowdsourced funding, and I believe wholeheartedly that Catz is genuine in his desire to make the NA scene more competitive. I still don't think a Root house is the optimal way to go about this, why not pool resources with other NA organisations and get a sick teamhouse where people from various NA teams can stay full-time, with space for others to come in and ramp up the level?
I think Catz actually did say that they were looking into sharing a house with another team, although not necessarily sc2.
not 100% sure on that.
sort of like he said that the fundraiser was for set up costs, and that they have enough income to sustain the house.
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On May 02 2013 10:57 Waxangel wrote:Show nested quote +On May 02 2013 09:32 Joedaddy wrote:On May 02 2013 07:24 Waxangel wrote:On May 02 2013 06:16 cybertopo wrote:On May 02 2013 03:58 TotalBiscuit wrote:
Richard Lewis likes to create controversy. He does write legit pieces from time to time but he stoops to Kotaku levels of nerd-baiting a little bit too much for my liking. OH THE IRONY Even if your assumption that TotalBiscuit does similar things to Richard Lewis is true, wouldn't that technically be hypocracy, and not irony? English majors help me out here. Wax I love you, but have you ever missed an opportunity to defend biscut? I can't remember a negative post about TB where your name didn't show up to defense the guy. I don't understand why this guy has such a problem with ROOT asking for donations. People like to support things they care about, and that's ok. http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/viewmessage.php?topic_id=388131¤tpage=44#874in general I'm very entertained by khaldor and totalbiscuit and their TL posting habits they would make very poor horror movie villains, because just appear instantly when mentioned without allowing suspense to build all the main characters would be dead in in the first 20 mins of the movie
Awww we're all friends again!
<3
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On May 02 2013 04:20 edlover420 wrote:
People who are so retarded that they donate thousands of dollars for some gaming house, rather than to charity/kids who are starving in Africa, don't deserve to have money anyway.
People have the right to do with their money what they dam well please and you have absolutely no right to tell them otherwise.
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Personally I find the rise of Kickstarter Culture laughably ridiculous and I do agree that this is harmful in the long term. A year from now when Root is in the same position they are in today (or worse?), are people going to be pissed off about the $25k pissed down the drain?
The campaign is "buy catz a year worth of groceries" with a masked name.
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On May 02 2013 11:47 Gescom wrote:
Personally I find the rise of Kickstarter Culture laughably ridiculous and I do agree that this is harmful in the long term. A year from now when Root is in the same position they are in today (or worse?), are people going to be pissed off about the $25k pissed down the drain?
Well kickstarter (originally) was to get back stuff people were willing to pay for that are gone. Tell me, how many rpg's like those in the infinity engine (Baldur's gate/Icewind dale/Planescape) have you seen in the last 10 years?
When project Eternity was put on i jumped on it because i want more of those kind of games.
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I'm not saying Kickstarter is useless by any means, I used the term Kickstarter Culture very specifically. People seem to be willing to spend money on the stupidest shit possible.
200k for Penny Arcade to disable ads...?
3k for MKP to go to an MLG...?
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United States23455 Posts
Meh, I'm not going to donate, but who cares if fans of Catz and the team want to fund a house? As long as Catz shows that the money goes to the right place and that their team is taking things seriously with the help of the community getting them a team house, I don't really see the problem.
The funniest thing is Absolute Legends trying the same thing and asking for $35,000 and only having $400 so far.
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Northern Ireland27125 Posts
Kickstarters are awesome for certain things, the kind of niche things that people enjoy but perhaps won't exist without some kind of initial funding. Especially in the case of indie games and indie music they seem a pretty sensible way to go, provided there is some kind of initial material to base the fundraising off of.
I love the rise of this culture personally, well, they're sure as hell my only chance to ever get funding to record progressive jazz-fusion metal anytime shortly 
They aren't a charity gig all the time, often it's simply to raise a cashflow to create something that you can't get off the ground otherwise. In the case of music for example, it's difficult to obtain 100% creative control if you're signed to a label, but equally it is tough to get a really good, polished product with all the expenses that entails. If you raise the funds yourself, you can go to a studio, hire the engineers you want or whatever, and create a product free of any interference that comes with a label funding it.
If any team was to do this, Root is that team anyway, given how it was started in the beginning essentially as a clan that became a pro team, with a lot of personalities that the NA scene in particular really took a shine to.
As Fionn says others attempts to fundraise haven't done so well. Personally as long as Catz lays out a clear framework for what the money is for etc, I have no issue with it. I just don't want to see another Project Dark Horse. As much as I love Puzzle and enjoyed seeing him at Dreamhack, the impression that was made was that the funding was to go for unheralded/unknown players.
Every time something that is potentially good gets misused, it makes future attempts more problematic, so I hope this goes smoothly for Root, and for the scene as a whole.
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On May 02 2013 12:02 Fionn wrote:
As long as Catz shows that the money goes to the right place and that their team is taking things seriously with the help of the community getting them a team house, I don't really see the problem.
Do you expect this to happen? I guess you can't call someone guilty in advance, but the esports community is like 2/200 on these sorts of initiatives.
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Seems like he has it out for ROOT for what ever reason. I never read cadred bar the odd article here and there linked from reddit but I won't ever given the quality of journalism shown right here.
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On May 02 2013 12:03 Gescom wrote:Show nested quote +On May 02 2013 12:02 Fionn wrote:
As long as Catz shows that the money goes to the right place and that their team is taking things seriously with the help of the community getting them a team house, I don't really see the problem. Do you expect this to happen? I guess you can't call someone guilty in advance, but the esports community is like 2/200 on these sorts of initiatives.
I do. CatZ has generally proven himself to be a trustworthy person in the scene. I've also never seen him more serious about anything.
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Braavos36401 Posts
The problem with asking for donations is that you can only go into the well so many times. A team can only ask for your support, your tweets, your emails, your money, your eyeballs, etc so many times before it becomes tiresome and spammy. Only certain teams can even get away with doing this once, and ROOT is one of them. If they do this every year I assume the results will be diminished each time. Obviously this is something they considered and I doubt they'll be doing this very often. So while there really is nothing inherently wrong or immoral with a team asking for donations from fans, it may not be the best long term strategy. ROOT might be better off trying to find more sustainable ways to make money while not exhausting their fan support so quickly, as straight up asking for money directly tends to do. There is a cost to this and it's ROOT's goodwill with their fans, which isn't an infinite resource.
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Kidneys don't buy themselves, every ad impression helps!
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On May 02 2013 12:11 KrazyTrumpet wrote:Show nested quote +On May 02 2013 12:03 Gescom wrote:On May 02 2013 12:02 Fionn wrote:
As long as Catz shows that the money goes to the right place and that their team is taking things seriously with the help of the community getting them a team house, I don't really see the problem. Do you expect this to happen? I guess you can't call someone guilty in advance, but the esports community is like 2/200 on these sorts of initiatives. I do. CatZ has generally proven himself to be a trustworthy person in the scene. I've also never seen him more serious about anything.
And that is all fair enough and likely 100% true. But even with the best will in the world, does Catz have any previous project management experience? Or experience providing transparency for the spending of such a large some of money on behalf of an organisation? Should he be held accountable if something goes wrong or worse, some of the money goes missing ?
Catz is a great community figure, certainly. But what this project clearly needs is a full time business or project manager, salaried and accountable, and how is this going to be paid for? Certainly not out of the $75k.
A worrying line is that they are hoping to get some sponsors in the future to cover certain expenses. It's a "jam tomorrow" approach that really isn't a viable way to proceed.
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Can I get a link to some of his other articles? I want to read them and have an excuse to hate him even more.
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So, let me get this straight. Root is asking for money, saying what they want to use it for...
...and this is unethical somehow?
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also people really didn't read the kickstarter.... They wanted to fund their set-up costs. Their goal was $25,000 to allow them to pay the large upfront costs of setting up a house, deposits, etc.
I believe Catz has stated they have the revenue to be able to sustain it after that. People saying that "ROOT IS GONNA FUCK THIS UP CAUSE THEY OBVIOUSLY AIN"T GOT NO MONEY!" is an exaggeration.
Read the fundraiser before making these statements that kickstarting is suddenly their main source of revenue.......
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On May 02 2013 12:55 Ravensong170 wrote:
also people really didn't read the kickstarter.... They wanted to fund their set-up costs. Their goal was $25,000 to allow them to pay the large upfront costs of setting up a house, deposits, etc.
I believe Catz has stated they have the revenue to be able to sustain it after that. People saying that "ROOT IS GONNA FUCK THIS UP CAUSE THEY OBVIOUSLY AIN"T GOT NO MONEY!" is an exaggeration.
Read the fundraiser before making these statements that kickstarting is suddenly their main source of revenue.......
With all due respect many of us have read both the Kickstarter and the article. It has simply been suggested that if they couldn't raise the finance for initial deposits, it ostensibly doesn't bode well for them being financially self sufficient in the future.
Further to your suggestion that " Catz has stated they have the revenue to be able to sustain it after that", it rather raises the question that if they are in rude financial health and could, possibly, raise the $25k themselves, is it sound business ethics to ask for donations?
Future revenue, if it is consistent and evidenced, can be borrowed against to raise lump sum finance. In british football clubs regularly borrow against future season ticket revenue, tv money, etc. Has this option been explored? If so, why was it ruled out?
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I don't think the name calling is really necessary, I think its a good point, even if made obnoxiously. I seriously imagine next year McDonalds starts a kickstarter... or Kobe Bryant. I remember when people asked for donations to help hurricane victims, not create companies. If ROOT becomes a multi-million business I hope they give back their money at least.
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EPT
