The SC2 Community's Identity Crisis - Page 5

On February 02 2016 03:52 lohdon wrote:
I think there are a lot of people who like both things: entertainment and competition. If anything those things don't just exist as polar opposites but on a spectrum and everybody who watches sc2 falls somewhere in between. This means that the best tournaments need to find the right amount of both.

On February 02 2016 02:39 DarkLordOlli wrote:


Oh well.

On February 02 2016 05:50 Myt wrote:


I'm sorry but have to agree with him, at least to me your categories translated to clownery aka foreigner SC2 vs. honest competition aka Korean SC2 and that is condescending.

Anyways, I think I understand where you like to go with this article but I also think you are missing a few very important points. For me casual viewers are casuals because they don't follow always the best possible player/competition, they like the SC2 and watch what is on when they have time to watch some games regardless of the quality and the players they see then are the players they like the most.
I like watching Korean SC2 but mostly I don't have time to watch it live due to time zones and I'm not interested enough to watch the VOD's. I watch much more Foreigners, therefore I'm more interested in them doing well in Tournaments too. This has nothing to do with “funny interviews” or “flashy production” and I hate awkward trashtalk..

Regarding the show-aspect of casting or player personalities, I don't think you can apply your categories casual/hardcore to draw a line for that, in my opinion this comes much more down to personal preferences on both sides of the fence. I see myself as a casual but I don't like overhyped cast at all, same applies for wannabe “super professional” casts where casters have to check every word spoken – my preference is a mainly analytical but relaxed style where casters are allowed to state their own preferences/bias like Narruto or Apollo in earlier years but that is of course just my opinion. On the other side, I think it was today's SPL- LR where some people praised the Korean cast for constantly shouting...

But now to the main point – in your outlook you write the differences between hardcore and casual are the reason for recent conflicts and understanding them would maybe the key for solving them. And you write the goal now should be to find a way to accommodate both.

In my opinion these conflicts are just the fallout and not the reason for a much deeper problem – there are not enough viewers and therefore money in the scene. The hole welfare-system vs. increasing foreigner skill-discussion is IMO totally beside the point.

For me Blizzard reasoning behind these changes had nothing to do with quality of skill/competition or the Foreigner/Korean Scene, they try desperately to increase the overall viewership to attract more Sponsors and Tournaments. We all have seen the size of the SC2-Stage at Dreamhack. Add to that the roomers that ESL declined to continue producing WCS and today's letter from the former Kespa-President stating how hard it was to get Sponsors for this years SPL. At the moment both scenes pretty much depend on Blizzard-Money.
I also liked the 2015 WCS-System more but viewership got down even more so I can fully understand why Blizzard had to pull the plug and try something different. They can't justify to pump even more money in a system where they have no chance for any revenue out of their investment – most of the existing fan base already bought the game or decided not to – either way there is nothing in for Blizzard.

Of course increasing the viewership is a much bigger discussion as just the WCS-System (Gameplay, RTS vs. other E-Sports and so on), but I think we should stop fighting the other half of the community, casters or Blizzard/other Organisations and instead think about growing the hole scene, regardless of individual preferences, else there won't be much competitive SC2 in 2017 for all of us.

PS: I know my english is pretty bad but I hope you can understand my thoughts anyways

On February 02 2016 01:14 NonY wrote:
Just following the example of sports media in the US, that WCS cast is the kind of vibe you'd get from a radio show or podcast the day after, or from the live call of local radio guys or whatever. For the main standard live call of the game, they would not go with something so polarizing.

I think that the producers of SC2 broadcasts are eager to find anything that will pull more people in and hook them. When you do something like that, you see a ton of extremely positive feedback and evidence that many people got hooked. But how many did you repel? And how many of the people that you "hooked" were already fans who just enjoyed this broadcast more than usual? Is the call of the game a variable that you want to be tweaking that much?

I think the goal should be finding the atmosphere that best suits SC2. American football and soccer and tennis and golf have all settled on different styles of calling the game. There is far less variety between all the announcers calling the same sport as there is variety between different sports. SC2, however, has a ton of variety within itself. I think the WCS producers need to take a good look at all the different ways our great variety of announcers, commentators and analysts have called the games and decide on the best style. And all the guys calling the games for the main live broadcasts of the major tournaments need to homogenize to that style. If they don't want to do that, or can't, then they can make a career in some other corner of the scene, like with a podcast or with their own alternate casts of the games or streaming or whatever.

On February 02 2016 04:36 Makro wrote:
people are too fragmented nowadays, as for me i enjoy both foreigncraft and koreancraft and i know what i'm looking for when i'm watching both of them

On February 02 2016 07:19 stuchiu wrote:


This is the way I'd like things to go too.