Koreans vs. Foreigners - Discussion with PiG - Page 3

On July 11 2013 09:49 Khaldor wrote:
Thanks PiG is pretty easy to talk to though, very good interview-partner

On July 11 2013 22:35 shmget wrote:


Should Swiss player be allowed to play in the US-Open at Flushing Meadows ?
or do you think that 'US'-open means that only US player should be allow to compete at this tournament?

On July 11 2013 13:23 ForcesEqualZero wrote:

He didn't say Koreans can't play in the tournament, he said they have to move to the place where the tournament is taking place in order to play. It makes sense to do this from a marketing point of view. In case you haven't seen the numbers, the qualifiers have struggled to reach 10k viewers on twitch. Frankly, not too many people seem to care. Is this good for the scene? Wcs am is going to have a bunch of Korean players, and oh, by the way, kespa is starting a LoL league. Do you see where this is going for SC2?

OK, so back on the topic. Foreigner wise, wcs am has 2 american hopefulls left in the final qualifier: Shew and Elige, both from clarity gaming. Now, cg does have a team house, and I know elige is there, and shew may be as well, and so perhaps we are seeing the benefit from that. Not knowing the specifics of cg's financials, I do not think CG pays much, if at all, please say so if I'm wrong. So here is what we are talking about: how do we expect players who are paid very little to compete against full time, paid professionals? If cg gets a house and benefits from it, what of the other teams (complexity, quantic, etc etc) that do not? How do we expect their players to ever come close to competing with korean pros?

Let's tie this all together. Let's say I am running Complexity gaming. I have some good talent, like qxc, hendralisk, and sasquatch. They certainly can compete amongst foreigners, but if they want to play in wcs, they'll need lots of support. A team house, maybe some money so they can make ends meet to train, etc. And they'll participate in this tournament that gets 9k viewers and gives virtually zero exposure to our sponsors, and they will still be an underdog to qualify. If I am running complexity, how do I justify supporting these players, particularly when I can support a LoL scene that has more viewers and a huge upside if we get into LCS. Which is region locked, I might add, in case you want to get all offended and tell riot that they are discriminating against Koreans.

The story ends like this: complexity has a house for their american LoL players, who get to scrim together while they try to get a spot in next season's LCS. American SC2 players get very little support comparatively because it is a very risky proposition to try to get them in to wcs, and even if they get into challenger, just wait until they see the groups.

Who benefits? Koreans teams, apparently, although I have no clue what they plan to do from here. Their fans and sponsors are mostly Korean. They probably don't care, frankly, if anyone watches the wcs, they just want wcs points. Sc2 viewership in america will stay the same or decrease, while LoL's popularity continues to increase. And did I mention kespa is starting a pro league for LoL? Don't pretend that the decline of sc2 in america will not affect korea...

On July 11 2013 22:44 shmget wrote:


You're not familiar with your country immigration policy are you ?
For all intent and purpose, requiring 'residency' is the same as banning them... beside it is WCS-AM not WCS-US... so the specific 'country' where the tournament takes place is irrelevant...

On July 11 2013 23:01 ForcesEqualZero wrote:

For starters, Polt and Violet are what I would term as US residents. I'm not interested in defending US immigration policy, that is not my intention, but I am observing that it is not impossible. Also, when I say "the place where the tournament is taking place", I meant that as in the region.

On July 11 2013 13:23 ForcesEqualZero wrote:
It makes sense to do this from a marketing point of view.

On July 11 2013 23:16 Talin wrote:


This argumentation has been the one singular bane of western esports for the last 10 years, no matter the game.

You either get a sport, or you get a show. You don't get both (not by design at least).

If you want to watch a sport, the scene and audience needs to get over their obession with faux hype, fake rivalries, scripted storylines, and "marketable" personalities - and only take note of them when and IF they occur naturally as a product of the competition itself.

If you want a show, just put 15 foreigners in a team house and make reality TV from it. Way better ROI than a foreigner WCS with half the players playing at a semi-pro level at best.

On July 11 2013 23:16 Talin wrote:


This argumentation has been the one singular bane of western esports for the last 10 years, no matter the game.

You either get a sport, or you get a show. You don't get both (not by design at least).

If you want to watch a sport, the scene and audience needs to get over their obession with faux hype, fake rivalries, scripted storylines, and "marketable" personalities - and only take note of them when and IF they occur naturally as a product of the competition itself.

If you want a show, just put 15 foreigners in a team house and make reality TV from it. Way better ROI than a foreigner WCS with half the players playing at a semi-pro level at best.

On July 11 2013 23:24 Plansix wrote:

They are not exclusive. They can have hype and also be a sport. Most US sports are able to do both. Marketability is a broad term and shouldn't just be applied to reality TV shows.

On July 11 2013 23:28 theking1 wrote:
Can Romanian football teams play in the MOntenegro football championship?After all the tema that wants to compete in the champions league sould be the best in Europe..

On July 11 2013 23:22 theking1 wrote:
To start off with I think it is relatively funny that people form countries such as USA,Germany,Netherlands,France,Sweden,Norway who have very strict immigration and even strict employment laws for foreigners are so supportive of koreans playing in wcs na and taking na players jobs.I wonder how many of you would have a job tomorow if an Indian or Chinesse or Romanian could be hired as easily as an american citizen in the US.A lot of you would remain unemployed simply because all the top level chinesse and indian workers would come and take a lot of the jobs held by unqualified americans.THat is why protectionist laws are in place:to protect your own citizens regardless if they are worse than citizens of other countries.
Which brings me to the next point:MONEY MONEY MONEY

See the big issue is right now that the wcs is sort of not very profitable in the na region simply because people from the na region do not want to see asians who do not even speak english take the place of americans,canadians etc.And that is not my oppinion it is reflected by the extremly low viewership number for na which has an averahe viewership of 10k.10k viewers for a game that brags itself as the best esport in the world is sort of pathetic.Demuslim pulls that alone on his stream not to mention the fact that lcs na can go anywhere form 100kto 200k viewers.
The C level koreans who come to na are not the best like other people here are trying to claim but are the ones who can not compete in korea.That and the fact they are boring and do not speak English make them extremly unappealing to the great majority of na audience as reflected in the viewership count.
What you na korean appologetics also seem to forget is that a business such as SC2 and implicitly wcs runs on MONEY which the american audience isnt spending on WCS NA.WCS NA is not something that blizzard is oblidged to give you.From an economical perspective if wcs gets low viewership number it is utterly useless since not only does it not promote their product it just wastes money into a void.
If you wanna take it simply by skill wcs should look like this:
1.a korean wcs with 4 leagues A,B,C,D cause even D levle koreans are better than most foreigners
2.wcs europe-although even that is debatable cuase eventually in the wcs finals they will be slaughtered by top level koreans

Like it or not if blizzard does not pull in some protectionist measures to protect the na scene as a whole sc2 will return to its bw state where the only place in the world where sc2 wouldbe played competitively would be south korea.
You can not have it both ways:koreans benefit from much better trainers,training facilities,practice partners etc.Foreigners do not have any of this stuff.

Luckyly blizzard will introduce lan only play next season so the actual na people might have a chance.But even then I am not very sure considering that most na teams are already half korean.Perosnally if I wore blizzard I would just take th emoney form the na scene and invest it in a third korean league since the na scene is just korean right now.

On July 11 2013 23:30 SupLilSon wrote:

I literally have no idea what you are talking about. There are loads of foreigners going to school and working the United States. In fact, most of my professors at University are from other countries... Most of the graduate students are foreign...
the guys doing work on my house are Mexican and the head contractor is Indian... Am I missing something?

On July 11 2013 23:28 Talin wrote:


You can have hype, but not artificially build it up.

For example, commentators saying "I'm so pumped for this matchup between two of the best players in the world" during the intro for a match between two mid-tier foreigners - no serious sports commentator does that.

If the competition isn't at the foundation and you have to make compromises to be able to sell the show to viewers, then the whole concept is rotten at its very core.

On July 11 2013 23:28 Talin wrote:


You can have hype, but not artificially build it up.

For example, commentators saying "I'm so pumped for this matchup between two of the best players in the world" during the intro for a match between two mid-tier foreigners - no serious sports commentator does that.

If the competition isn't at the foundation and you have to make compromises to be able to sell the show to viewers, then the whole concept is rotten at its very core.



Can football be played online regardless of location?

We're not talking about football or [insert random sport here], so it doesn't matter.

There are no limitations to video games being a global competition between the best players - other than latency, but that's actually working against the Koreans in our case.

On July 11 2013 23:36 theking1 wrote:


Football is also a global competition between players.it is fairly easy to put 15 football players in a bus and camp them somewhere in Montenegro so they can go to champions league form the Montenegro league.Btw why doesn't the premier league or the spanish first leagues allow the same thing?Because they wanna protect their own football scene.The same as na people wanna prtect the na scene

On July 11 2013 23:37 Talin wrote:


Why are you talking about football?

On July 11 2013 23:39 theking1 wrote:


because footblall and sc2 are both competitions aka sports and in principle they follow the same rules....Now stop dodging the question

On July 11 2013 23:45 Talin wrote:


Doesn't mean you can draw direct analogy between them, no matter how much you insist on it.

Starcraft is a video game. That can be played online between people anywhere in the world. It doesn't have the physical limitations of football (a sport where players kick the ball around that was growing in the 19th freaking century). The competition structures are not comparable or analogous in the slightest.

I don't want to follow up on incorrect analogies you made up to satisfy your position. If that's dodging to you, then I can't help you with that.

On July 11 2013 23:49 theking1 wrote:


ok no football.Then why does GSL,OSL the most prestigious sc2 competitions do not have global online qualifiers???And why does the LCS the most watched esports league do not have online qualifiers and require teams to be present oin the studio?

To make it clear offline studio play is a politically correct form of region lock,I just wanna know your oppinion about it.Cause by your logic the gsl and osl are ba dcompetitions since they do not allow the best form around the Earth to compete