WCS 2016: The Life and Death of the Foreigner Narrative -…

On December 23 2015 06:14 Pwny_Danza wrote:
I rarely post on here, but this is my TL;DR 2 cents. Now, this is from a middle aged lawyer who grew up playing this game back in 1998 (and Warcraft 2 before that), a true OG if you will. Let me make one thing clear before I start: I'm not telling anyone to "get off my lawn." It is not my lawn anymore and you can do with it what you want as I have kids and only get to see this stuff from the sidelines anyway. That being said, I will attempt to give you my explanation for why this system is bad for the game, given almost 20 years of playing and watching Blizzard games.

It saddens me so much to see Blizzard throw the professional scene of this game into the toilet by tossing money at players who don't have the mindset or preparation to be professionals. They have mistakenly come to believe that the difference between professionals and amateurs is money. It is not.

The primary difference between Koreans and non-Koreans at this stage in the game is this: While there are exceptions on both sides, the Koreans contain the only true professional Starcraft players in the world who prepare like professionals and treat playing the game as a profession. We watch the Korean leagues because the level of skill is simply unmatched. Proleague is so fun because you get to watch back benchers spend inordinate amounts of time practicing one build, for one specific match to knock out a giant (and they succeed with surprising frequency!). Think about that kind of dedication. Most of those B teamers aren't paid, yet they sometimes spend an entire week (or more!) to prepare for a single map, a single opponent. The game in their hands becomes sublime, a testament to the saying that "every calling is great when greatly pursued."

Now you are asking yourself, what the hell is this old fuck talking about, why isn't someone who gets paid to do something a professional at it? Good question, dear reader. The difference between a professional and an amateur has nothing to do with pay or skill or results, it is, as I mentioned earlier, a mindset. In my industry (law), this means a few things. It means being borderline psychotic about how much I know about what I do (e.g. I am always looking to learn more about what I do and how to do it better). I constantly read trade publications, law review articles, decisions from higher courts, etc. so that my clients are never represented by a lawyer who does not know the law. It means I am available at all times to serve my clients. My clients can expect that I will pick up the phone at 3 am if they call me and are in trouble. It means there is no problem I will not figure out how to handle for them. If they call me and need a solution to a legal issue I've never dealt with, I will either (1) assemble a team in my firm who are experts in that area or (2) I will become an expert myself, regardless of how many sleepless nights that takes or (3) if 1 and 2 are impossible, find someone who will be able to serve my client at the level they are accustomed to. It means that I will work over Christmas on a motion to be filed the Monday after one of their employees steals company secrets to make sure that their competitors never obtain a key market advantage. It means I identify with my client completely. What is in their interest is in my interest, by definition. It means I will never embarrass my client with my actions. E.g., they will never see me in front of a judge saying that I failed to prepare for a hearing or that I do not know which judge dissented on an obscure case that I cite in my brief. This is not because I am being paid to do this. I did this long before clients ever paid me a premium to do these things and, instead, it is THE CAUSE of my success. I prepare obsessively while other people hope for the best. Intelligently designed practice, repeatable processes for betterment, and HARD WORK are the primary things that separate us from greatness.

Applying this to SC2 players, what would a true SC2 pro look like? Well, I can give you a pretty good example of what this wouldn't look like -- Lilbow. Lilbow went into the biggest match of his life and admitted he did not prepare for it. This is akin to me getting in front of a judge and blaming a blown hearing on a lack of preparation. That is the best the foreign SC2 scene has to offer, apparently. In my industry, I would be fired on the spot and possibly disbarred (e.g. prevented from ever practicing law again). Here, the foreigner scene largely came out in support of him (most shocking to me was Catz) and there wasn't so much as a peep from Blizzard when he impugned the integrity of their biggest event. Now, while it is going too far to say that he's a bad person or should be reviled, what it does say about him is that he is not a professional and shouldn't be allowed to masquerade as such. A professional puts his best preparation, his best effort, into every single job not because there is some expectation of winning or getting paid, but because to fail to do so would be a black mark on his character. How could my clients ever trust me to do my best again if, even once, I did not give them everything I had? Again, if people do not want SC2 to be a truly professional scene, that is fine play on this beautiful lawn that was once mine, but stop pretending that behavior like Lilbow's is compatible with professionalism. The NFL/MLB/NBA would suspend any player who told the media he didn't prepare before a playoff match because he wanted to avoid injury and rest up before his big contract signing in the off season. If we want to be taken seriously like those other professional sports, the players have to act in a similar fashion. And that brings me to my final point -- the only place where a majority of "pros" behave in that fashion is Korea, though my guess is that this system will lead to the slow demise of that scene.

So, contrast Lilbow with someone like, say, ForGG. Name the last day you can remember ForGG not streaming and grinding away at this game. When was the last stream you didn't see him trying out new ideas, tweaking builds, etc.? I can't even fathom a guess. And I would bet you that isn't the totality of the time he spends practicing the game. This is because for him the game is a vocation, a profession. To fail to prepare is not just losing a tournament or some money, it would be failing himself and his entire vocation. Contrast this with EU/NA "pros" who are constantly taking breaks for school or because they are burned out. Good for them, enjoy that work life balance. But do not tell me that you are a professional if grinding at your job 24/7/365 isn't what you want to do.

Now you may be, though probably aren't, wondering what my solution would be since I've bitched so much. The best solution I can think of would be for Blizzard to straight up bankroll 2-3 foreign teams. Pay for salaries, team houses, and most importantly, Korean coaches with high level local language proficiency. Maybe 1 in the EU, 1 in NA, and 1 in China. I will be honest that I do not know much about coaches these days, so I don't know who would even fit the bill, but Coach Park comes to mind. If translators are needed, pay for that too. Require in their contracts that the players live at the team houses 24-7 with specified breaks for vacation and strict policies regarding failure to practice. Regulate everything from practice to food to exercise and see if EU/NA pros can't be better than KR. Regardless, that would do more to address the fundamental problem than this poorly thought out gutting of Korean Starcraft, the best part of the pro scene as it exists today. The problem is a lack of preparation and professional work ethic on the part of EU/NA pros, not prize money.

TL;DR: Money does not make someone a professional. You either behave like one, prepare like one, or you do not. EU/NA pros, with a few notable exceptions, are amateurs. Throwing money at them will not make them professionals unless their underlying ethic is altered fundamentally. The average anonymous, unpaid B-teamer on a KESPA team prepares and behaves more like a professional than most top foreigners. The solution is to institute training solutions like those in Korea. Good life advice: if you are not the best at something, find what the best do and copy it shamelessly.

The biggest reason why I as a spectator stopped following SC2 in HOTS was the fact that usually you could look at the first round of a tournament and pick out the final 4 players due to the huge skill disparity

On December 29 2015 16:31 WrathSCII wrote:


So the solution is that we lower the skill in the Korean region to maintain it in par with the foreigner region?

On December 29 2015 15:58 HiTeK532 wrote:
What I don't get about all the commentary on the tournaments is that most foreign tournaments would only get a few elite Koreans it was never foreigners playing against the best it was a few elite Koreans trying to survive a gauntlet of lesser talent then everyone sits around and hopes for an upset to make things interesting.

Just look at the last dreamhack sure Bomber played poorly but, the other 2 code S players parting and solar were by far the two best players there even before the tournament started anyone could have looked at and said one combination of those three would be in the finals and what happens they go a combined 32-6 vs the rest of the tournament and stories like this have been common place for sometime.

The biggest reason why I as a spectator stopped following SC2 in HOTS was the fact that usually you could look at the first round of a tournament and pick out the final 4 players due to the huge skill disparity yeah occasionally there would be an upset here or there or someone unexpected would go on a run but, for the most part you knew exactly how the tournament would end up. I didn't want to sit through 5-6 rounds of what essentially amounted to walkovers to see the final result. imo parity is what makes for entertaining leagues not how good the best player is and while this system doesn't quite fix it I feel it is a significant step towards creating that parity.