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Hi all, to celebrate 50 posts, today I wish to raise a topic that has had a significant impact on the state of professional Starcraft in Korea: the fall of teamhouses.
As many will be aware, in the early 2000s Starcraft Broodwar took off in South Korea in a way never before seen in the gaming world. Although many games had grown popular in the past such as Street Fighter 2 and Tekkan, Starcraft marked the first time a computer game became part of the culture of the nation. To date it is hard to pinpoint the exact reason for this - certainly we here would argue it is because the game was so fantastic, but really it was probably the culmination of a number of reasons - right time, right place, right people.
For the first time, gaming was becoming a legitimate career choice. The game went big fast - and the best players began to become household names, much like in traditional sports. When Big Korea realised that this was a new avenue to tap into the younger generation, companies quickly paired up with famous players. But to gain the most traction they needed those players to remain at the forefront of the scene. To do this, they took many tips from traditional sports: hiring a coach, building a team, and eventually funding a team house to centralise their players lives.
The teamhouse environment borne in Starcraft Broodwar is commonly regarded as the primary driver for Korean excellence in the game. Players had ample time to discuss strategies, receive coaching on their weaknesses, and practice with other teammates suitably skilled to push them further. A rank and file within the houses soon became apparent - the A Teamers with most fame and fortune would effectively be waited upon by their lesser teammates. In this environment, players could reach much higher skill levels than before.
When Starcraft 2 arrived in 2010, Broodwar was still thriving in Korea. Flash and Jaedong were battling to be known as the best player in the world, while others such as Fantasy also looked very strong. These famous players didn't immediately leave Broodwar - they had a cash cow to milk. But many lesser or younger players knew that the new game was an opportunity to start fresh - and if they followed the teamhouse teachings they could quickly reach the heights of the world. IMMVP, MC, Nestea - all nobodies in Broodwar quickly rose to stardom in the new era.
When the Kespa teams finally moved into Starcraft 2 in 2012, many predicted that they would come with a bang and quickly redesign the meta. Truth be told, many players weren't able to reach the same peaks - even Flash, the undisputed best player on Earth struggled to adapt quickly. Nevertheless, by 2013 he was the champion of Proleague and he, as did many other players, far outstripped foreign Starcraft players who had a 2 year headstart. It began the era of Korea's greatest dominance in Starcraft 2, and many would agree that until 2016 the gap between foreigners and Koreans was at its greatest point.
Then came the fall.
Hot on the matchfixing scandals plaguing Prime and top players such as Life, and coupled with new games such as League of Legends taking over Starcrafts spotlight in Korea, the big Korean companies began to realise that their money would be better spent elsewhere. Make no mistake - continued matchfixing controversies were a significant factor in the fall of the teamhouses. Only one Kespa team remained: Jin-Air Greenwings.
Jin-Air at the time had probably the third strongest lineup. Their Maru-sOs-Rogue Trinity was certainly one of the most formidable lineups, with plucky Cure and Trap also providing wins in proleague. But these players had not shown the individual league prowess of players from KT-Rolster or SKTelecom T1. The team certainly played beyond expectations in proleague however.
Suddenly they were not the 3rd-string team in Korea: they were the ONLY team in Korea.
Many wondered why Jin Air didn't leave like all of the other teams. But in hindsight we can see the brilliance of their strategy - their players now had an extreme advantage over the rest of the scene.
2017 rolled around and Koreans began to realise that the once great gap between Foreigners and Koreans was beginning to close. New talents were rising: where Korea had previously won every premier tournament from 2012 to 2016, suddenly Scarlett* and others were winning tournaments. Then came the biggest shaming of all: Neeb taking a KESPA CUP* on home turf.
But while the rest of the scene fell, Jin Air players had been hiding their time to become the face of Korean Starcraft 2. By the second half of 2017, Rogue put his hand up as the first to hit his straps - and showed one of the highest peak levels of Starcraft 2 play ever seen. But we didn't know then that it was in fact his teammate Maru who would take 2018 by storm.
Everything had aligned perfectly.
Maru had years of experience - playing since 2010 at the age of 12 - but was still a young player at the peak of physical abilities. He had tasted victory before, and wouldn't fall to the same finals curse that plagued players like soO and Dark.
His team nurtured him. With his meals provided to him, his teammates prepared to strategise and help practice, and a coach who could refine his play in all areas, Maru now had the tools that none other in the league had available.
3 GSLs was outstanding, and he now stands equalled only by Serral left in the Starcraft world. But one must ask, how much of Maru's success can be attributed to these circumstances? We're it not for the fall of teamhouses, would he still be head and shoulders above the pack, or just another faceless Terran?
And most importantly, would we still be arguing who the best player in the world is, if Jin Air had decided to close its doors in 2016 as well?
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equalled only by Serral
no
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The teamhouse advantage is not the only advantage Maru has. He's also the youngest player in the korean scene which gives him a significant advantage because most koreans are already hitting an age where their mechanics evaporate.
Considering the other Jin Air players don't really perform that well except Rogue for a short period I'd argue the age advantage is even the bigger factor for his dominance.
Not to take away from his achievements, apparently he's also practicing harder than before but I don't think he'd be able to dominate like this in 2013-2015.
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On September 23 2018 23:13 Charoisaur wrote:no - The teamhouse advantage is not the only advantage Maru has. He's also the youngest player in the korean scene which gives him a significant advantage because most koreans are already hitting an age where their mechanics evaporate. Considering the other Jin Air players don't really perform that well except Rogue for a short period I'd argue the age advantage is even the bigger factor for his dominance. Not to take away from his achievements, apparently he's also practicing harder than before but I don't think he'd be able to dominate like this in 2013-2015.
Definitely age is in his favour, truly perhaps now the stage is set for a new era of young guns like Reynor, Maru, Serral etc.
Respectfully disagree re Maru and rogue being only ones currently performing better than expected from JAGW though.
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This is and only can be purely speculative, we don't even know how the jinair teamhouse operates these days when there is no teamleague anymore. In theory it should be an advantage to still live with progamers together in a house and have the possibility of coaching though, sure. I question the impact it really has though, it's not like the whole team performs better than the rest of the field.
It is certainly true that teams disbanding and thus players retiring had a negative impact on the korean scene, less talent and thus less possible competition. We mostly have the top players still playing though, the players who had peaks before and showed they could be champions in the kespa era, so i wouldn't look at it too negatively. If anything the lack of new blood is something one should be concerned with, but that was also the case during the kespa time.
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On September 24 2018 00:43 The_Red_Viper wrote:
This is and only can be purely speculative, we don't even know how the jinair teamhouse operates these days when there is no teamleague anymore. In theory it should be an advantage to still live with progamers together in a house and have the possibility of coaching though, sure. I question the impact it really has though, it's not like the whole team performs better than the rest of the field.
It is certainly true that teams disbanding and thus players retiring had a negative impact on the korean scene, less talent and thus less possible competition. We mostly have the top players still playing though, the players who had peaks before and showed they could be champions in the kespa era, so i wouldn't look at it too negatively. If anything the lack of new blood is something one should be concerned with, but that was also the case during the kespa time.
It's an interesting point you raise, but we speculate on many things in Starcraft 2. What if Life was still playing? What if Flash had switched in 2010? What if MVPs wrists didn't give out?
All I'm saying is that the cards have all fallen in Maru's favour, which isn't to say he isn't playing great, but it's not really fair for the community to discard all of Serrals achievements while not acknowledging these aspects of Maru's.
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Good that you finally admitted this thread isn't about teamhouses, but about your Serral vs Maru crusade
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Good read!
On September 23 2018 22:40 Dave4 wrote:
2017 rolled around and Koreans began to realise that the once great gap between Foreigners and Koreans was beginning to close. New talents were rising: where Korea had previously won every premier tournament from 2012 to 2016, suddenly Scarlett, Sen and others were winning tournaments. Then came the biggest shaming of all: Neeb taking a GSL vs the World on home turf.
Sen won his only Premier in 2014 and it was a KeSPA Cup that Neeb won.
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One has just to take into consideration that Maru's first peak was achieved under the possibly worst circumstances in the prime teamhouse. While living in JAGW-teamhouse definitely helped Maru in getting so dominant, I doubt that he would be lacking behind if he was on his own.
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I appreciate the article, solid effort on journalism. But be careful, when you confuse facts (such as Sen winning tournaments in 2017 or Neeb winning GSL vs The World) you discredit yourself and your work almost irrecoverably.
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On September 23 2018 22:40 Dave4 wrote:
... equalled only by Serral left in the Starcraft world.
I would love to know how you come to that conlusion. Serral has shown dominance in the foreign scene, but has not shown anything of significance in the non region locked scene. Granted, he won a premier tournament with koreans involved, but so did others like Scarlett for example and I don't see you elevating her to the same heights as Serral.
If you compare Serral and Maru directly, both in their matches against each other (Only one bo3+ so far, WESG 2017, 3-0 for Maru involving Nukes, BCs and a 24 minute Bio switch) and in their tournaments won (OSL, SSL, WESG, 3x GSL Code S vs. GSL vs the World, 4x WCS) Maru completely outclasses Serral.
Back to the real topic: Do teamhouses grant significant advantages to players?
If they do, then where are the dominating performances from the likes of sOs, Trap, even Rogue? all of their 2018s have looked rather unspectacular apart from Rogues IEM World Championship. As Maru and Rogue have stated, the reason that Maru now is the force he is, is that Rogues Blizzcon win motivated him to start practicing seriously resulting in him being able to play like this. We also see with the Super Tournaments and GSL vs the world what happens when Maru doesn't take the event serious (I don't think Maru will be anywhere close to winning ST2, especially given how his side of the bracket looks).
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Well there are a lot of stuff we don't know here, do you know the teamhouse is cooking Marus meals and preparing his strategies? Feels like you are pushing extreme speculation as facts. Also, you know of the foreigner teamhouse right? Teamhouse can surely help but there is so much more to take into consideration, how does the teamhouse operate and so on. Lastly Serral can't hold a candle to Maru when comparing achivements this year and personally I don't believe he can win a series either but hopefully we will see come Blizzcon.
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I doubt it really has much of an impact (at least in the way you try to portray it). Maru is just Maru. Stats, TY, Serral and many others are not living in teamhouses and still perform pretty well. If you take a look at a WCS rankings, there are only two players from JinAir there. I'd say that since Kespa abondoned SC2, things didn't change much in korea in terms of JinAir performance in comparison to teamless players. They all stayed on their levels, more or less. But foreigners capitalized on that and catched up significantly.
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On September 25 2018 17:29 fLyiNgDroNe wrote:
I appreciate the article, solid effort on journalism. But be careful, when you confuse facts (such as Sen winning tournaments in 2017 or Neeb winning GSL vs The World) you discredit yourself and your work almost irrecoverably.
Thanks I am still learning but I appreciate your support and corrections.
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On September 25 2018 19:32 TrashPanda wrote:Show nested quote +On September 23 2018 22:40 Dave4 wrote:
... equalled only by Serral left in the Starcraft world.
I would love to know how you come to that conlusion. Serral has shown dominance in the foreign scene, but has not shown anything of significance in the non region locked scene. Granted, he won a premier tournament with koreans involved, but so did others like Scarlett for example and I don't see you elevating her to the same heights as Serral. If you compare Serral and Maru directly, both in their matches against each other (Only one bo3+ so far, WESG 2017, 3-0 for Maru involving Nukes, BCs and a 24 minute Bio switch) and in their tournaments won (OSL, SSL, WESG, 3x GSL Code S vs. GSL vs the World, 4x WCS) Maru completely outclasses Serral. Back to the real topic: Do teamhouses grant significant advantages to players? If they do, then where are the dominating performances from the likes of sOs, Trap, even Rogue? all of their 2018s have looked rather unspectacular apart from Rogues IEM World Championship. As Maru and Rogue have stated, the reason that Maru now is the force he is, is that Rogues Blizzcon win motivated him to start practicing seriously resulting in him being able to play like this. We also see with the Super Tournaments and GSL vs the world what happens when Maru doesn't take the event serious (I don't think Maru will be anywhere close to winning ST2, especially given how his side of the bracket looks).
Hello, in fact without the teamhouse coaching Maru's drive to succeed would not have been as great - he required the love, support and meals creation of his allow him to focus solely on his objectives, and discipline him where he faltered. That 'young brat' personality required the direction that could only be offered by a coach and it is part of how he has become so successful now.
Maru will do well in ST2 because of this , he would not be allowed to slack off at such an important juncture.
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Hello, that's a lot of asumptions 
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On September 25 2018 19:45 Shuffleblade wrote:
Well there are a lot of stuff we don't know here, do you know the teamhouse is cooking Marus meals and preparing his strategies? Feels like you are pushing extreme speculation as facts. Also,
Yes this is common knowledge about team house environment, large meals are prepared to ensure all players have minimal downtime. Also many are unable to cook themselves.
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On September 25 2018 14:35 Dave4 wrote:Show nested quote +On September 24 2018 00:43 The_Red_Viper wrote:
This is and only can be purely speculative, we don't even know how the jinair teamhouse operates these days when there is no teamleague anymore. In theory it should be an advantage to still live with progamers together in a house and have the possibility of coaching though, sure. I question the impact it really has though, it's not like the whole team performs better than the rest of the field.
It is certainly true that teams disbanding and thus players retiring had a negative impact on the korean scene, less talent and thus less possible competition. We mostly have the top players still playing though, the players who had peaks before and showed they could be champions in the kespa era, so i wouldn't look at it too negatively. If anything the lack of new blood is something one should be concerned with, but that was also the case during the kespa time.
It's an interesting point you raise, but we speculate on many things in Starcraft 2. What if Life was still playing? What if Flash had switched in 2010? What if MVPs wrists didn't give out? All I'm saying is that the cards have all fallen in Maru's favour, which isn't to say he isn't playing great, but it's not really fair for the community to discard all of Serrals achievements while not acknowledging these aspects of Maru's.
The problem with speculation is that it tries to predict things which cannot be proven (unless we find a way to look into these other universes where it went the path we speculated on :>)
I agree that in theory it should be an advantage for maru, i just question how big the impact really is these day.
I also tend to think that looking at people's "advantage" doesn't do a lot, it might be true or it might not be that it has a big impact, the world isn't totally fair and everyone has different starting siutations to achieve a certain goal. Serral achieved his without a teamhouse but region lock, living at his parent's house where he also doesn't have to cook and care for anything but playing sc2. Other foreigners don't have that advantage. I don't see you complain about that  (and you shouldn't)
With that being said, i also don't see too many people "discard all of serral's achievements" , you mainly get in arguments with people who think that maru's top serral's, that's not the same 
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On September 25 2018 21:37 Dave4 wrote:Show nested quote +On September 25 2018 19:32 TrashPanda wrote:On September 23 2018 22:40 Dave4 wrote:
... equalled only by Serral left in the Starcraft world.
I would love to know how you come to that conlusion. Serral has shown dominance in the foreign scene, but has not shown anything of significance in the non region locked scene. Granted, he won a premier tournament with koreans involved, but so did others like Scarlett for example and I don't see you elevating her to the same heights as Serral. If you compare Serral and Maru directly, both in their matches against each other (Only one bo3+ so far, WESG 2017, 3-0 for Maru involving Nukes, BCs and a 24 minute Bio switch) and in their tournaments won (OSL, SSL, WESG, 3x GSL Code S vs. GSL vs the World, 4x WCS) Maru completely outclasses Serral. Back to the real topic: Do teamhouses grant significant advantages to players? If they do, then where are the dominating performances from the likes of sOs, Trap, even Rogue? all of their 2018s have looked rather unspectacular apart from Rogues IEM World Championship. As Maru and Rogue have stated, the reason that Maru now is the force he is, is that Rogues Blizzcon win motivated him to start practicing seriously resulting in him being able to play like this. We also see with the Super Tournaments and GSL vs the world what happens when Maru doesn't take the event serious (I don't think Maru will be anywhere close to winning ST2, especially given how his side of the bracket looks). Hello, in fact without the teamhouse coaching Maru's drive to succeed would not have been as great - he required the love, support and meals creation of his allow him to focus solely on his objectives, and discipline him where he faltered. That 'young brat' personality required the direction that could only be offered by a coach and it is part of how he has become so successful now. Maru will do well in ST2 because of this , he would not be allowed to slack off at such an important juncture.
When you phrase such wild speculation and subjective opinions as facts you lose any credibility you previously had.
-Maru would not have been as great without teamhouse is a fact? Prove it.
-That the jin air greenwings teamhouse gave love, homemade food and disciple. Prove it, also prove that it actually helped in his improvement, the above situation could actually have limited him. Maybe he would be even greater today if a teamhouse didn't limit is own personal drive.
- The "young brat" personalities actually normally don't flourish in the above mentioned environments at all, they commonly rebel and need freedom. My opinion as written here is just as valid as your opinion you wrote above, they are both speculation.
Actually Maru himself said that he got this good because Rogues win at Blizzcon motivated him to train harder, obviously his own motivation was not something that a coach or a teamhouse controlled but rather something that came from himself. That is my opinion, what you write is your opinion but you'd do well to remember that your guesses are just guesses nothing else.
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On September 25 2018 23:38 Shuffleblade wrote:Show nested quote +On September 25 2018 21:37 Dave4 wrote:On September 25 2018 19:32 TrashPanda wrote:On September 23 2018 22:40 Dave4 wrote:
... equalled only by Serral left in the Starcraft world.
I would love to know how you come to that conlusion. Serral has shown dominance in the foreign scene, but has not shown anything of significance in the non region locked scene. Granted, he won a premier tournament with koreans involved, but so did others like Scarlett for example and I don't see you elevating her to the same heights as Serral. If you compare Serral and Maru directly, both in their matches against each other (Only one bo3+ so far, WESG 2017, 3-0 for Maru involving Nukes, BCs and a 24 minute Bio switch) and in their tournaments won (OSL, SSL, WESG, 3x GSL Code S vs. GSL vs the World, 4x WCS) Maru completely outclasses Serral. Back to the real topic: Do teamhouses grant significant advantages to players? If they do, then where are the dominating performances from the likes of sOs, Trap, even Rogue? all of their 2018s have looked rather unspectacular apart from Rogues IEM World Championship. As Maru and Rogue have stated, the reason that Maru now is the force he is, is that Rogues Blizzcon win motivated him to start practicing seriously resulting in him being able to play like this. We also see with the Super Tournaments and GSL vs the world what happens when Maru doesn't take the event serious (I don't think Maru will be anywhere close to winning ST2, especially given how his side of the bracket looks). Hello, in fact without the teamhouse coaching Maru's drive to succeed would not have been as great - he required the love, support and meals creation of his allow him to focus solely on his objectives, and discipline him where he faltered. That 'young brat' personality required the direction that could only be offered by a coach and it is part of how he has become so successful now. Maru will do well in ST2 because of this , he would not be allowed to slack off at such an important juncture. When you phrase such wild speculation and subjective opinions as facts you lose any credibility you previously had. -Maru would not have been as great without teamhouse is a fact? Prove it. -That the jin air greenwings teamhouse gave love, homemade food and disciple. Prove it, also prove that it actually helped in his improvement, the above situation could actually have limited him. Maybe he would be even greater today if a teamhouse didn't limit is own personal drive. - The "young brat" personalities actually normally don't flourish in the above mentioned environments at all, they commonly rebel and need freedom. My opinion as written here is just as valid as your opinion you wrote above, they are both speculation. Actually Maru himself said that he got this good because Rogues win at Blizzcon motivated him to train harder, obviously his own motivation was not something that a coach or a teamhouse controlled but rather something that came from himself. That is my opinion, what you write is your opinion but you'd do well to remember that your guesses are just guesses nothing else.
Hello, as you can see in the thread we are discussing that this is speculation only but it is a fact that the two biggest peaking Korean players since the fall of the team houses has been Rogue and then Maru, both left from the only team house in Korea. In fact the skill gap between foreigners and other Koreans has reduced significantly since the fall of the team houses, and only JAGW players have remained unimpacted. They maintain the love,food, coaching and support from the house.
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Ignoring the fact that this is just more of Dave4's Serral propaganda, it's actually an interesting topic.
The fact that all the other Jin Air players (other than maybe Rogue) have fallen off would indicate that teamhouses are not as important as once thought. Or at least, it depends on the player.
Zest said he lost a lot of discipline after KT disbanded (and it showed). soO however said that being in a teamhouse made in complacent, and his sudden return of form in 2017 was seemingly because of SKT's closure. INno also proved that you can live in a teamhouse and still waste your time playing other games instead of practicing hard.
As for Maru, he was in the same house for all of last year, yet was nowhere near as good as he is now. According to him, it's because he started practicing hard after Rogue's blizzcon win. Actual dedication is what matters. For some players, teamhouses help bring that. I would say it's more important for new/up and coming players than veterans though.
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EPT
