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Canada1169 Posts
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/Fgk7kju.png)
In our newest article, Jonathan "Ace" Greenstein explains the current state of North American StarCraft 2.
Some Excerpts
European StarCraft Scene (in comparison)
While European tournaments, such as DreamHack, WCS EU, and Asus RoG are typically dominated by Koreans, their proximity to European players allows them to attend the tournament en masse and make a breakout run, even if they do not end up with the gold. Europeans have the depth of devoted players as well, not being pushovers in its tournaments.
Feardragon Speaking about Breaking Out
“Breaking Out is a tournament about North American players that tries to give up & comers a chance to "break out" into the higher echelons of pro-gaming. The show and tournament give players a chance to comprehensively showcase their personality as well as their playstyle to build up their image.” - Feardragon
Hendralisk Speaking About Blizzard's Involvement
“I think if Blizzard does a good job with LotV to rejuvenate the fans, then the tournaments like those will continue on and do well. It seems like Blizzard doesn't care much about SC2 and eSports together due to multiple reasons, so hopefully that can change in the future. I cannot say for sure, but I hope things pick up again!”
- Hendralisk
You can read the full article on our website.
You can follow the writer Jonathan Greenstein on Twitter
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I really like the questions asked in the last paragraph. What can be done about the situation by viewers? There's clearly a potential being shown by players to compete, but NA players still have a lot of difficulty.
Maybe community run tournaments for NA would be good. If you give players a reason to train, you give them an incentive to train. There's a lot of downtime between WCS matches for players in WCS, and even more for players who don't.
Sometimes just being willing to give existing tournaments a chance is good. You may surprise yourself by actually enjoying it. I love Starcraft, and while one of the biggest outcry's is, "I only want to watch the best of the best," there's some great stories being told here. There's more to stories than "korean vs foreigner." There's rivalries between teams and individual players, heartfelt stories that will actually make you feel for the player, and even cool and unique gameplay that isn't quite refined enough to win a GSL finals (yet), but is still incredibly fun and enjoyable to watch. This extends to player streams as well.
There's a lot more that can be done by any viewers who are interested. It's not necessarily about doing "charity" for NA players. It's an investment in Starcraft as a whole. It's fun to watch good players rise up. Heck, it's just fun to watch good players. Imagine if NA had more players able to show closer series against the beastly Koreans in WCS Premier and challenger.
Players don't just go into a Dragon Ball Z hyperbolic time chamber and magically step out able to compete with the best. There's a process of growth that requires resources at each step. Imagine you have to climb 100 steps that are 1 foot tall each. It's probably pretty hard but it's doable. Now imagine you have the climb 25 steps that are 4 feet tall. It's the same height, but it's a hell of a lot harder because you have to make a big jump between each step. 10 steps that are 10 feet tall? This starts feeling nigh impossible. Without these intermediate steps and resources, this is what it feels like for players trying to raise their skill level to compete with the best.
Really nice article. It brings up some solid topics that are worth discussing.
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really nice article 
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While I admire the effort you put into thinking about these things and writing an article about it, to be honest, I thought we were already past this phase.
I'm getting a bit tired of this whole mentality that "something MUST be done!!" Why can't we just accept that SC2 is an eSport with a limited appeal to the broader audience and that it has already found its main player base, and isn't going to get much bigger than it currently is.
I agree that the SC community has been in a bit of a decline, but I doubt that it has much to do with the fact of foreigners underperforming (which, let's face it, has always been the case), and more with people getting bored of the game or its meta/balance. I also doubt that the nationalistic views you and many others seem to have will change much about the situation.
I only care about the game: I want to play it myself, and I want to see the best of the best duke it out. And it just happens that those players are Korean. I couldn't care less about what country they are from.
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as much people life in the usa ... its not rly "much" compared to the size of the country ... its realtive low
the country is huge and an us east player cant come easy to a westcoast tournament in just driving 3 hours or something, not even speaking from canadians or mexicans ...
if you have a tournament in europe the density of people around it ... the possibility for a player to be the BEST in his country and for that have a bit of fame, thats not possible for a big country as usa ...
its just that countrys like koreaetc where all people life at the same place or close, or a central europe gives a boost the usa cant come by when it comes to offline tournaments ... and sadly to say NEVER WILL.
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Canada1169 Posts
On June 05 2014 21:03 GunLove wrote:
While I admire the effort you put into thinking about these things and writing an article about it, to be honest, I thought we were already past this phase.
I'm getting a bit tired of this whole mentality that "something MUST be done!!" Why can't we just accept that SC2 is an eSport with a limited appeal to the broader audience and that it has already found its main player base, and isn't going to get much bigger than it currently is.
I agree that the SC community has been in a bit of a decline, but I doubt that it has much to do with the fact of foreigners underperforming (which, let's face it, has always been the case), and more with people getting bored of the game or its meta/balance. I also doubt that the nationalistic views you and many others seem to have will change much about the situation.
I only care about the game: I want to play it myself, and I want to see the best of the best duke it out. And it just happens that those players are Korean. I couldn't care less about what country they are from.
The reason we chose this topic was less as a plea for help and more as an article to inform those about the scene. A lot of people who do't follow it often question the lack of skill/results etc. and we tried to use this article to show what exactly is going on and how things can get better. Hopefully the article didn't resonate too much as a cry for help as it was not the original intentions. Your opinion however is completely justifiable, and I see where you are coming from.
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I respect feardragon and Breaking Out a lot, but unfortunately I struggle to keep interest when I watch, and I sincerely mean no offense. As the article pointed out, even when a North American get's into WCS, they have to play GSL champs/top level players. Masa, wow I felt sorry for him, facing bomber THEN nestea!
A lot of people view the NA scene as an untapped natural resource for the global scene. I tend to disagree, the infrastructure and sheer size of North America makes it very difficult for any grass-roots, face to face marketing. I held a Logical Gaming tournament some time ago that included two tournaments, one for lower and one for higher leagues. The overwhelming conclusion was that despite efforts to make an NA only tournament, once money is brought into the fold, European and Korean stalwarts will come and dominate.
The counter-argument to segregating NA from the global scene is pretty simple. The best player should win, and after all, money is on the line. The system in place makes it really hard, not to mention the infrastructure woes.
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EPT
