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Canada13389 Posts
On March 10 2014 04:32 Xiphos wrote:Show nested quote +On March 09 2014 23:31 TotalBiscuit wrote:On March 09 2014 23:26 LA_Morello wrote:
I see so many people blaming organizations and the community. Am I the only one who feels that SC2 is the problem?
If the game was as interesting to watch as it was years ago, the number of viewers wouldn't drastically drop in mid 2012~2013. Imo, HotS isn't so fun to play. Playing vs Terran in Lost Temple years ago was imbalanced, but holy shit that was so fun.
I migrate from SC2 to Dota 2 mostly because the game isn't as fun as it was anymore. Bollocks frankly. Early GSL was shit, early tournaments in general were shit. The meta was underdeveloped, things were imbalanced as hell, far more so than they are now, there were fewer viable options, the maps sucked, PvP was an utter joke. Who can forget of course the 6+ months of ZvZ finals resulting from Broodlord/Infestor being monumentally broken. A huge part of why viewers would want to stay up to watch the game is BECAUSE of the things you've enumerated above. Its the excitement of figuring shit out that attracted many people. And now that the metagame and utilities have settled, the gameplay stagnated.
I think a big part of it is the fact people like to complain a lot and its not a very inviting atmosphere to new watchers to go to R/SC for example (reddit is way easier to find than TL) and see all the hate and vitriol there.
Also, the depth of the current strategies is much much better than ever and even though the meta is "figured out" the depth of the games is fantastic. Its very rare that a snore fest Firecake Swarmhost game happens and while they happen, its still not as bad to watch as the WoL games.
Another issue is that SC2 is hard, people don't start playing it because its hard, and the fact everyone has been getting better over time, it makes entering the game even harder.
Though I do wish they would fix the league percentages on the lower end of the scale, the quicker someone can get out of bronze the more motivating it is to keep playing.
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Poland3748 Posts
It's interesting - in 2011 & 2012 european tours - DreamHack and IEM - felt like poorer siblings of MLG, IPL and NASL. Then MLG received WCS AM and run away from SC2 (although they are coming back), IPL was shut down by IGN and now NASL is leaving SC2. At the same time DH and IEM is growing and improving. Can't help but notice that it looks like DH and IEM took much more reasonable approach to SC2 tournament organizing.
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On March 10 2014 11:51 WolfintheSheep wrote:Show nested quote +On March 10 2014 11:44 Xiphos wrote:On March 10 2014 11:11 opisska wrote:
I remember at the beginning of NASL, InControl would infintely repeat how the league is financially set for some time ahead and how everything is gonna be great and funded, but always refused to comment on whose money that acutally is ... and then the league itself turned to be somewhat terrible, so I stopped following it. But that I was reminede of it, I really want to now: was it ever revelaed, who payed for the whole thing? People usually make up lies about state of things and disguise it up when things are going sour. For example: STX president said that they'll keep sponsoring the team but it end up being the total opposite. NASL ran for two years on its own funding. I know people on TL have a bloated sense of scale, but that definitely qualifies as "financially set for some time ahead".
Maybe I am dumb, but I still don't understand, what is "own funding". Where did the money come from? It was just put together by people who ran/own the thing from their pockets? If yes, that's kind of impressive comitment!
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On March 10 2014 20:15 opisska wrote:Show nested quote +On March 10 2014 11:51 WolfintheSheep wrote:On March 10 2014 11:44 Xiphos wrote:On March 10 2014 11:11 opisska wrote:
I remember at the beginning of NASL, InControl would infintely repeat how the league is financially set for some time ahead and how everything is gonna be great and funded, but always refused to comment on whose money that acutally is ... and then the league itself turned to be somewhat terrible, so I stopped following it. But that I was reminede of it, I really want to now: was it ever revelaed, who payed for the whole thing? People usually make up lies about state of things and disguise it up when things are going sour. For example: STX president said that they'll keep sponsoring the team but it end up being the total opposite. NASL ran for two years on its own funding. I know people on TL have a bloated sense of scale, but that definitely qualifies as "financially set for some time ahead". Maybe I am dumb, but I still don't understand, what is "own funding". Where did the money come from? It was just put together by people who ran/own the thing from their pockets? If yes, that's kind of impressive comitment!
Afaik there is/was a private investor behind it. I think people still overestimate how "profitable" esports is. Because it's not at all. Riot isn't making money from it, Valve isn't, Blizzard isn't and there are practically no tournament organizers who do. Esports has always been about attracting enough sponsors to be able to continue to run these events, never about actually making a fortune from this. Game developers obviously mainly see it as a marketing investment and those are never really meant to be profitable anyway. Tournament organizers simply try to attract enough sponsor cash to be able to continue to run this. There is a reason why MLG needs a shit ton of investment cash, why ESL needs that Intel paycheck, why Dreamhack has very few full time employees and makes most of their money from being a giant LAN and why GOM was probably more than happy to let Blizzard pay for GSL. OGN may be the one exception here, but as they are a real TV channel they do have way more ways to actually make cash and use that to pay for their eSports events.
This industry was build by people who love the games and the competition enough to run tournaments, often while loosing tons of cash and that hasn't really fundamentally changed. I guess the guy behind NASL just ran out of cash, though I'd much rather have someone like Thorin dig up the hole story and write us a nice article about it.
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Well written. Quite a sad turn of events
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On March 10 2014 23:13 Lorch wrote:Show nested quote +On March 10 2014 20:15 opisska wrote:On March 10 2014 11:51 WolfintheSheep wrote:On March 10 2014 11:44 Xiphos wrote:On March 10 2014 11:11 opisska wrote:
I remember at the beginning of NASL, InControl would infintely repeat how the league is financially set for some time ahead and how everything is gonna be great and funded, but always refused to comment on whose money that acutally is ... and then the league itself turned to be somewhat terrible, so I stopped following it. But that I was reminede of it, I really want to now: was it ever revelaed, who payed for the whole thing? People usually make up lies about state of things and disguise it up when things are going sour. For example: STX president said that they'll keep sponsoring the team but it end up being the total opposite. NASL ran for two years on its own funding. I know people on TL have a bloated sense of scale, but that definitely qualifies as "financially set for some time ahead". Maybe I am dumb, but I still don't understand, what is "own funding". Where did the money come from? It was just put together by people who ran/own the thing from their pockets? If yes, that's kind of impressive comitment! Afaik there is/was a private investor behind it. I think people still overestimate how "profitable" esports is. Because it's not at all. Riot isn't making money from it, Valve isn't, Blizzard isn't and there are practically no tournament organizers who do. Esports has always been about attracting enough sponsors to be able to continue to run these events, never about actually making a fortune from this. Game developers obviously mainly see it as a marketing investment and those are never really meant to be profitable anyway. Tournament organizers simply try to attract enough sponsor cash to be able to continue to run this. There is a reason why MLG needs a shit ton of investment cash, why ESL needs that Intel paycheck, why Dreamhack has very few full time employees and makes most of their money from being a giant LAN and why GOM was probably more than happy to let Blizzard pay for GSL. OGN may be the one exception here, but as they are a real TV channel they do have way more ways to actually make cash and use that to pay for their eSports events. This industry was build by people who love the games and the competition enough to run tournaments, often while loosing tons of cash and that hasn't really fundamentally changed. I guess the guy behind NASL just ran out of cash, though I'd much rather have someone like Thorin dig up the hole story and write us a nice article about it.
If it's just a guy, why does he hide? I mean, if he really funded it with his own money, with such an uncertain return, evryone should love him to death, right?
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On March 10 2014 18:05 nimdil wrote:
It's interesting - in 2011 & 2012 european tours - DreamHack and IEM - felt like poorer siblings of MLG, IPL and NASL. Then MLG received WCS AM and run away from SC2 (although they are coming back), IPL was shut down by IGN and now NASL is leaving SC2. At the same time DH and IEM is growing and improving. Can't help but notice that it looks like DH and IEM took much more reasonable approach to SC2 tournament organizing.
mlg always had the smallest prize pools, but they always flew in the big name koreans. (i guess they realized its too expensive)
ipl shut themselves down, ign bought the scraps. ign didn't even pay the winners of their last tournament until ppl started calling them out. I personally, was blasting their twitter and message boards, the vestibule, about them not paying their tournaments.
fuck it, it is what it is. esports just have a harder time in NA. maybe its due to the social climate. teams have to pay for healthcare, college education is more expensive here. most promising progamers want to travel, so they ditch NA teams for Eu ones (just look at roots former roster). NA just sucks for esports.
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On March 11 2014 03:58 JimSocks wrote:Show nested quote +On March 10 2014 18:05 nimdil wrote:
It's interesting - in 2011 & 2012 european tours - DreamHack and IEM - felt like poorer siblings of MLG, IPL and NASL. Then MLG received WCS AM and run away from SC2 (although they are coming back), IPL was shut down by IGN and now NASL is leaving SC2. At the same time DH and IEM is growing and improving. Can't help but notice that it looks like DH and IEM took much more reasonable approach to SC2 tournament organizing. mlg always had the smallest prize pools, but they always flew in the big name koreans. (i guess they realized its too expensive) ipl shut themselves down, ign bought the scraps. ign didn't even pay the winners of their last tournament until ppl started calling them out. I personally, was blasting their twitter and message boards, the vestibule, about them not paying their tournaments. fuck it, it is what it is. esports just have a harder time in NA. maybe its due to the social climate. teams have to pay for healthcare, college education is more expensive here. most promising progamers want to travel, so they ditch NA teams for Eu ones (just look at roots former roster). NA just sucks for esports.
I doubt there is a single NA team that offers healthcare for its players. I imagine every NA team has their players as independent contractors and as a result is not required to pay for any of that stuff. I'd love to be proven wrong on that one though.
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On March 10 2014 11:11 opisska wrote:
I remember at the beginning of NASL, InControl would infintely repeat how the league is financially set for some time ahead and how everything is gonna be great and funded, but always refused to comment on whose money that acutally is ... and then the league itself turned to be somewhat terrible, so I stopped following it. But that I was reminede of it, I really want to now: was it ever revelaed, who payed for the whole thing?
they don't really owe it to us.. to tell us where the money is coming from.
now with all the data in...
ironically,
NASL had a better track record of paying its prize money than every "big league" except MLG and GSL.
at times NASL seemed so disorganized on the surface that i thought payment would be a big issue. many people agreed with me. we were all dead wrong. NASL always paid its bills.
NASL had its ups and downs... its pretty clear it never made a profit... its also clear a lot of good people worked very hard to entertain us all.
NASL was liek 50s live TV.. in the 21st century.
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Love your creative use of the enter key, punctuation, and spelling.
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Whoa... Where i can find that photo on first page with stephano on some guys back. Seems very powerful ... good old sc2 days.
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EPT
