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The Armchair Athleticism critical series is an opinion-base article series regarding the issues and sociocultural deficiencies of the E-Sports and StarCraft scene. All articles are perceptive-base and revolving around my own experiences and understanding of the subculture.
+ Show Spoiler [summary introduction] +The Solo Trail – Unbeaten - Posted on October 20th, 2012Short version of credentials: - Manager of 5 progaming teams (50+ professional players)
- Writer for 9 E-sports websites (5 team sites + 4 organizations: 150+ docs/articles)
- Organizer or Contributor of 11 community events (74,000 viewers/attendants)
- Some video-editing for one or two organizations, nothing big, just twitch.tv highlight-editing, presentational writing, etc.
Why are you starting your own space? I was listening to the suggestions of several friends and I finally started this space after I hit a dead-end in my endeavours in E-Sports. I’m at a point where I am not really affiliated with anyone and now’s a better time than ever to do some opinion topics. Doing my own content meant I would be alone and would work around my own initiative, drive and interest. However, it also meant that I may do something that requires more work than I thought and I would be on my own. It meant that the community reception can be more direct and harsh towards me personally and my views as I would not be backed by some credible organization as when I was writer for some. In the end, this series that took me about a month of writing, editing, verification and re-writing will really be everything I’ve learned, observed and felt throughout my time. I started out with three pieces and ended up going to ten. All of them delve into inspecting the five perspectives of the scene: teams, tournaments, players, spectators and contributors. Ultimately, it aims to really take a strong look into the many issues that inhibit the StarCraft community and E-Sports culture.
Passionate Progamers - Posted on November 6th, 2012
If you thought self-promoting yourself as a content-creator was difficult, imagine trying to stand-out as a top foreign player amongst a sea of other players with all the same capabilities as you and with near identical quality of material offered to their viewers. For many current top foreigners, aspiring teams and their players, there is a struggle to maintain both interest and motivation to play the game with the starvation of real achievements in their careers. This absence leads players to alternative measures to earn both finances to continue their profession and assume other roles that aren't of the competitive nature (entertaining, marketing).
When I was managing for many teams like Team Dynamic or Quantic (among many other teams), my biggest challenge was motivation - getting and keeping my players morally and emotionally compelled to keep practicing. I always told myself: "You can't force them to play, you can only give reasons to play" and even then; it was nearly impossible to get someone to want to practice at a game that emotionally beats and breaks them down. Couple that with the lack of recognition for their achievements and you get a very emotionally-exhausted and frustrated player. Motivation is strongly pushed by the interest of the game, the thrill of succeeding and the rewards from achieving in events. As we’ll see with my example and explanation, maintaining a willingness to improve is not that easy when you don't see the perks of it all.
Meet my friend Andrew ‘Attero’ Golec, this progamer was a prime example of a passionate player who gave it his all, remained almost consistent in skill and never received any real opportunities minus a few mentions and showmatches. Attero’s history is short: started with VT Gaming, went on to join Team Dynamic and continued to be amongst the top North-American/SEA and Europe players in the scene. His minor achievements include qualifying for HomeStory Cup IV (2011 – winning over MajOr & KawaiiRice), reaching MLG’s championship bracket in Anaheim (2011 – winning over LastShadow, Jinro and Complexity’s RSVP). Attero is a player who streamed constantly and talked throughout his games for six to eight hours a day, every day. All this work and attention towards his game, his small following and dedication for nearly a year lead to a couple of interviews, guest on OneMoreGame.tv’s Kings of Tin and ChanManV’s Pro Corner webshow. After managing more than 50 players in my time, Attero is amongst my top 6 recommended players. Attero’s story is not uncommon; in fact, it’s too common and too unfortunate. The story of how foreigners cannot achieve and become recognized due to the scene’s over-extension to reach an international audience is becoming popular. What this means is that with the rise of big-league teams stepping up their weaponry from prominent foreigner semi-automatics to Korean automatics, you leave a huge gap of aspiring players with no room to excel or shine at all.
With Koreans found in nearly all channels of competition: weekly tournaments, North-American/European qualifiers and national and international main events, areas where are foreigners meant to earn a reputation and a financial buffer to support their goals? A core passion that most gamers, like Attero, rely on to dedicate themselves begins to dwindle when the chain-of-effects comes into play: - Lack of success creates an absence of media exposure
- No public recognition creates an unlikelihood of invitationals or major team contracts
- The player thus begins to lack of finances leads to needing a part-time job.
- This part-time job takes away from practice and weakens his ability to play
- Trailing behind in competition, the progamer eventually falls off the competitive curve and fades.
*To note that Korean progamers also face their own problems within the scene.
It is certainly not the Koreans’ fault that they just play better and practice more diligently, you can’t blame someone for doing something better, and it should be a force of motivation. But at the same time,there is definitely a lack of outlets for foreign players to shine and rank themselves amongst one another with a monetary prize-finish at the end. The suggestion of regional-prized tournaments ranging from different levels helps alleviate the frustrations for many players and connect them back with challengers they can build off from one another. The upsides to these competitions would be:
- Viewers and prosperous team owners (who cannot necessarily afford a Korean or are looking for more fan-favourite/relatable players) can easily determine who is the best of the best within their region/country/continent and offer them a suitable contract.
- Players who are the best in their region have something to put on their list of achievements. This also widens the amount of “valuable” free agents for showmatch organizers and smaller tournaments to invite as well as create more pride in more local/country talent than international (something I think Europeans are quite closer to than the Americas).
Indeed, if we point to Blizzard’s World Championship Series; it helped create national recognition for players like JonnyREcco, put more emphasis on Scarlett’s ability to compete and helped put ViBe back on the map (who has been pretty quiet and undistinguished since It’s Gosu). Blizzard’s WCS gives promise to the American scene [and Terran] with MajOr and helps distinguish other great talents of Europe and South America.
The downside to all of this is that, presumably: no one will watch. The general public’s assessment of North-American talent is low [I disagree] and Europeans are just below the Koreans. With that common notion in most people’s minds, who would watch tournaments of only national players when we wouldn’t be necessarily watching “the cream of talent and build-execution“? Blizzard’s World Championship Series does hint at how this may not be entirely true. Unfortunately, there are no popular continental leagues to further test this issue.
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/gUwzV.jpg) Blizzard’s Battle.net World Championships is a segmented display of offering opportunity to upcoming foreigners with geographically-near goal achievements.
With region-based leagues, this could incite national companies to be more interested in sponsoring local teams as well as regional tournaments. For some companies, they only make sales within their nation, thus this could be both more financially supportive of them to sponsor and more worthwhile as their core consumer group is directly involved and centered towards. Affordable costs for companies to be supportive also generates local understanding and interest in a layered, prominent subculture.
In another area, regional tournaments would hasten the amount of cycling through current foreign professionals. This is to say that players who were renowned back in 2010 and 2011 would not have as strong as an impact on the scene as they did before due to prominence of newly-succeeding players. At the moment, the perceived importance of some foreign players right now remains both due to their reputable team or by the fact that they remain relevant through other means of content (see: The Thin Corridors of New Content). If the scene is able to show who is currently at the peak of competitiveness on various scales, then established pros can be re-ignited with the desire to improve and retake their position rather than rely on past outdated successes. On the flipside, upcoming professionals will also have a more immediate goal of beating out those who are within reach (in terms of skill level).
A good mix of region-based leagues and international tournaments creates a balanced and constant cycling of both aspiring professional players and levels of champions from local to national to international. With a more gradual spread of tournaments, there should be a result of less emphasis on having a Korean (currently the best players) on your team and more demand for foreigners to improve instead of becoming the marketing extremity. This will also add more stable grounds for smaller teams to compete rather than rely on mercenaries to compensate (Team Legion, Check-Six, Alt-Tab) for roster inadequacies.
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This informed series of written pieces could not have been achieved without the help and opinions of my peers and friends. Below are the people I wish to thank for their insight, accuracy/consistency check or expert opinion on the numerous topics: thank you
- Brad Carney (Lefty)
- Chris Chan (Founder of ChanManV's Production)
- Eric Grady (Cyber-Sports Network's Director of Events - Usurp)
- Flo Yao (Quantic Gaming’s Progamer - Flo)
- Jacqueline Geller (eSports Network Coordinator of Blizzard)
- John Clark (Cyber-Sports Network Executive Director of Operations)
- Josh Dentrinos (FXOpen’s Director - Boss)
- Marc McEntegart (Team Liquid Writer - SirJolt)
- Matt Weber (Team Liquid Administrator - Heyoka)
- Payam Toghyan (ROOT Gaming Progamer - TT1)
- Shawn Simon (Team Liquid Progamer - Sheth)
- Steven Bonnell II (Progamer/Entertainer - Destiny)
- Thomas Shifrer (ESFI World Senior Journalist)
If you'd like more information about the series (more pieces about different aspects of the scene will be released periodically), to contact me privately or to generously give me some siteviews on my website, you can follow the following link:
You can also follow me on Twitter where I tweet public news and information about the scene including roster changes, controversy and/or overall E-Sports news: @TorteDeLini
Thank you very much and I appreciate all feedback or corrections.
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Thanks Brad for supporting me.
I'm really hoping this time that I get some more chatter about my topics of discussion.
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Attero's story is unfortunate, hes such a hard worker and has a great personality in my opinion
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Interesting read but I think at this point it's going to be increasingly difficult to cultivate the regional scenes. The gap between foreigner and Korean is glaring and ever increasing. In SC2 entire tournaments can be played and broadcasted over the internet. It's much easier for tournament organizers to get those geographically separated Koreans into their events and still reach a world wide audience. There just isn't any reason for people to watch or care about the local scenes. CSL does a decent job promoting the local scenes as it gets gamers in touch with others from their area. But I don't feel any impetus to root for Maryland SC2 players, even if there were some at the pro level.
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Let me begin my post with the notion, that I'm only a lurker and by far not as connected to the scene as you are. Therefore this is only an opinion from a random TL-viewer which may very well be completely wrong.
My take is that the main problem in NA isn't the tournaments, it's the sc2 “media-coverage”. It seems to me, NA is dominated by a view shows, all hosted and produced by the same circle of guys who understandably promote mainly there own interests/teams/friends.
The scene in Europe and therefore the coverage is much more diverse. IMO mainly this diverse coverage creates the interest for all the small regional tournaments which allows the lesser known players to develop and maybe become bigger in a international scale and also create enough income for the players to peruse their careers. Look for example to the German scene. There are enough websites and shows who cover mainly the German scene and therefore tournaments like ESL and other smaller tournament can provide enough structure for the German players, even if the most of them are not quite good enough in an international view.
Another reason seems to be the language barrier. Look for example on TAKE's stream-numbers, he has always 3000 to 4000 viewers, mainly because he streams mostly in German.
The same reasons seems to apply or other European country’s like for example France, Sweden or Russia/Ukraine.
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interesting take, i do agree that having some region tournaments could be good, as we saw with the WCS, the problem is finding sponsors and organizers who would be willing to do something homegrown like this, and not have them just offer a slightly higher prize pool and get a few koreans involved, and get higher overall viewership.
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On November 07 2012 04:39 Myt wrote:
Let me begin my post with the notion, that I'm only a lurker and by far not as connected to the scene as you are. Therefore this is only an opinion from a random TL-viewer which may very well be completely wrong.
My take is that the main problem in NA isn't the tournaments, it's the sc2 “media-coverage”. It seems to me, NA is dominated by a view shows, all hosted and produced by the same circle of guys who understandably promote mainly there own interests/teams/friends.
The scene in Europe and therefore the coverage is much more diverse. IMO mainly this diverse coverage creates the interest for all the small regional tournaments which allows the lesser known players to develop and maybe become bigger in a international scale and also create enough income for the players to peruse their careers. Look for example to the German scene. There are enough websites and shows who cover mainly the German scene and therefore tournaments like ESL and other smaller tournament can provide enough structure for the German players, even if the most of them are not quite good enough in an international view.
Another reason seems to be the language barrier. Look for example on TAKE's stream-numbers, he has always 3000 to 4000 viewers, mainly because he streams mostly in German.
The same reasons seems to apply or other European country’s like for example France, Sweden or Russia/Ukraine.
This is a very strong point and I may reference it in a future article! (with credit to you!)
Thanks a lot, great argument!
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I kind of agree at your point. Who would watch?
However, I don't know that attempting to go into that route is a good idea in general yet, for the same reason I don't think it would work. I do think it is a necessity for the foreign scene eventually though and eventually, if it can be put together, would be beneficial in the long-term if we don't want the foreign scene to just die off, or become the "minors", as it very would could.
I think foreigners really need to solve a lot of the issues they have that keep them from performing well. It's intertwined; with such a massive gap and so many competitors ahead of you it's nearly impossible to stay motivated. Part of that comes I think from naturally feeling like you have a leg 'down' and that Korea has so many advantages; it's mental, but another huge part of it, and most of it I think, is that foreigners genuinely don't know how to practice and aren't willing to do what they need to (though again, I think a lot of it is just not knowing WHAT to do). There are certainly a lot of other things: saturation of the foreign scene, depth of players, proper attention and coverage, sponsorship, environment, standards of living and expecatation (we're supposed to go to get a degree and stuff), but when it comes down to it I think foreigners just don't know what to do or how to do it and frankly, just aren't as willing.
TLDR: I think that having those tournaments would help, but I think we can't have those tournaments until the foreign scene helps itself better in other ways, or they just won't get watched, and that will demotivate them and the foreign scene even more.
srry for many edits.
also also, I genuinely thought this was going to be a proper tirade on "armchair quarterback-ing" in the community and the complete lack of understanding of what a professional scene is and needs and how ridiculous people are ^_^
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That's the thing, they aren't supposed to.
Either you have the talent or you don't. There have only been a handful of NA players who have been on my radar ever.
REcco was on my radar way before that regional. The guy's been getting results for a long time before that.
Scarlett demonstrates the finesse of a player and it was IPL that really put her on my map. I might not like her method of practice, but it works for her. I don't think she's anywhere close to peaking yet at WoL under this patch.
ViBE never lost relevance for me when it came to the NA scene.
I'm sorry to say but only a few players will ever make it and only a handful of Koreans and people really don't want to see that regional crap.
They want to see the best of the best, so if you do want to become the best of the best you have to tough it out and have the skill to do it.
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Good read cheers Torte, I'm mulling over things now
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On November 07 2012 05:45 StarStruck wrote:
That's the thing, they aren't supposed to.
Either you have the talent or you don't. There have only been a handful of NA players who have been on my radar ever.
REcco was on my radar way before that regional. The guy's been getting results for a long time before that.
Scarlett demonstrates the finesse of a player and it was IPL that really put her on my map. I might not like her method of practice, but it works for her. I don't think she's anywhere close to peaking yet at WoL under this patch.
ViBE never lost relevance for me when it came to the NA scene.
I'm sorry to say but only a few players will ever make it and only a handful of Koreans and people really don't want to see that regional crap.
They want to see the best of the best, so if you do want to become the best of the best you have to tough it out and have the skill to do it.
I have to disagree with you that people don't want to see "regional crap" - WCS Europe got near 100k viewers, I don't think many tournaments this year can compete with this numbers.
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On November 07 2012 06:02 Myt wrote:Show nested quote +On November 07 2012 05:45 StarStruck wrote:
That's the thing, they aren't supposed to.
Either you have the talent or you don't. There have only been a handful of NA players who have been on my radar ever.
REcco was on my radar way before that regional. The guy's been getting results for a long time before that.
Scarlett demonstrates the finesse of a player and it was IPL that really put her on my map. I might not like her method of practice, but it works for her. I don't think she's anywhere close to peaking yet at WoL under this patch.
ViBE never lost relevance for me when it came to the NA scene.
I'm sorry to say but only a few players will ever make it and only a handful of Koreans and people really don't want to see that regional crap.
They want to see the best of the best, so if you do want to become the best of the best you have to tough it out and have the skill to do it. I have to disagree with you that people don't want to see "regional crap" - WCS Europe got near 100k viewers, I don't think many tournaments this year can compete with this numbers.
But there is competition in Europe. Something that NA does not have. You have about 5 players who are competitive, and 20 who are one step lower, and another 200 semipro clans to fill the gaps.
Why would I want to watch something that is guaranteed to be won by Violet or Scarlett? Its like watching NBA with heat, thunder, and 200 bobcats.
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Good read! I agree with pretty much all the points made in your post Torte.
On top of regional competitions, I also think that people across the board need to do more to promote individual players as personalities, especially the lesser-known players like Attero. And by across the board, I really do mean across the board - the player should put him/herself out there as a personality, as a face, as a person with history, interests, unique quirks, the team should try to promote the player in this way, and even tournament organizations should produce content that promotes characters and figures. Now, I'd even err on the side of shifting focus from the player to teams and tournaments - after all, players have to dedicate themselves to the game since skill is a huge factor in their attractiveness as players, leaving them with little time/energy to devote to marketing, and they do much as it is to interact with their followers on stream or twitter.
And this does not just mean interviews. I don't know about others, but I get really bored by interviews. There's kind of a double-bind when it comes to interviews. Either I don't really know that player in the first place, so I'm not interested in hearing from them, or I am already a fan of them, so I probably wouldn't learn anything new from the interview. I probably wouldn't watch any standalone interview except for maybe my single most favorite player (TLO), and even then, I do it for the sake of soaking in more of that awesomeness that is Dario and less for the actual content of the interview. And even if I'm interested in hearing from someone I don't know that much, the content of both questions and answers are usually really bland. It's all telling and no showing, by the very nature of the interview format. It's part of why Liquid Rising felt disappointing for so many fans, because it offered almost solely a series of interviews. That's not to say that interviews should not or cannot work - other documentaries often employ them effectively (for example, StarNation's teaser/previews). It's all about using them effectively to show a richer picture and narrative. Interviews with Naniwa about his ambitions, for example, are juxtaposed with his award ceremony.
So what can teams or organizations do to promote players as personalities? We need to know each player as a story. This follows along with some of the typical stuff that we usually hype, such as the reigning champion (MVP), the fearsome legend (Flash), the underdog (usually the foreigner remaining). But don't just have the casters tell us these things while waiting for the game to start - show us these things! I think a particularly effective way of doing this is some sort of video-vignette. Think of the Olympics, and how they manage to communicate the story of US Olympians who, to be honest, most of us have not heard of outside of the Olympic context, or sometimes, have not heard of at all prior to that very Olympics. They combine elements of brief statements from the person, brief facts about the person, and importantly, brief images and videos of the person or the person in action in their competitive venue.
Also, showing players sitting in front of a computer clicking a lot is not that interesting (another criticism of Liquid Rising, because much of the video footage that was not a person sitting in front of the camera answering interview questions was instead players sitting in front of a computer clicking a lot). SC2 is a level of abstraction different from sports - the basic physicality of it is not that amazing. Sure, you can show us the keyboard and how fast their fingers move (like the famous Nada apm clip for the National Geographic documentary), but don't just show them staring at the screen. For one, APM is so much more visually powerful when you see those clicks translated into actions, into a dizzyingly fast blur of screen to screen action and movement. And players each have unique playstyles that can be documented through specific clips that are exemplify their unique styles.
If this person is a college student (Suppy), show a clip of them in class as a regular kid like a lot of us, then juxtapose that with him on a huge stage with hundreds of fans! If it's someone with a particular playstyle, like Ret, show us some brief clips zooming in on the worker count with him at like 90 or 100 drones. If it's TLO, show us clips of his games with nydus worms and drop playing occurring all over the place. If it's Vibe or someone with insanely high apm, even for a pro, show us a brief FPV clip! If it's grandpa Whitera, show us a clip of some tournament he competed in BW years ago. If it's Naniwa, show those reactions after his wins in the GSL, in contrast to his reaction after getting knocked out early in Dreamhack to show the huge range of his passion in winning and losing, and his dedication towards becoming the very best.
This is occasionally done, and in a number of forms. TeamLiquidPro, for instance, has really detailed player biographies, which are cool, and GSL occasionally does mini-docs that cover specific players, like MMA or MKP. But there needs to be more. When and where can it be done? For one, showmatches. Showmatches in particular have never captured my attention, because I really just feel that there's nothing huge "at stake." Yet when I think of boxing or MMA (the sport, not the player), I think of big matches over titles, with underdogs and champions, with a whole lot of hype dedicated to each and every showmatch. If organizations (for example, IPL's Fightclub) added in such a thing to their showmatches, I feel like they would vastly increase the value of that very event. Other organizations, like NASL, could use player spotlight vignettes to enhance season/league based content. While I do believe I've seen an NASL day or two where they mentioned a particular video, the spotlight amounted to the casters simply talking about the player and offering some brief facts, instead of really digging in and offering a cool story to attract interest towards the player.
Of course, such efforts take time and money. But I think that these are investments worth making.
[Edit] This got longer than I thought it would be...
TLDR: organizations need to showcase/highlight player stories more, and need to show personality instead of merely telling. In the status quo, organizations try to tell player stories via pre and post-game chats or interviews, which are boring - instead, they show show via brief video clips and vignettes that tell a player's story much like the athlete vignettes seem in the Olympics.
[Edit2]: Also just now found this great blog post that Suppy made, which has some overlap with the stuff that I talked about. He also has some other really great ideas for specific scenarios like MLG/IPL - the huge bracket tournaments that can't stream everything - have an open bracket reporter, and if possible showcase highlights/awesome moments of open bracket games (directly from replays) that were not streamed!
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So many amazing opinions! I will definitely respond and look into all of them in a second :D
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On November 07 2012 06:29 Jombozeus wrote:Show nested quote +On November 07 2012 06:02 Myt wrote:On November 07 2012 05:45 StarStruck wrote:
That's the thing, they aren't supposed to.
Either you have the talent or you don't. There have only been a handful of NA players who have been on my radar ever.
REcco was on my radar way before that regional. The guy's been getting results for a long time before that.
Scarlett demonstrates the finesse of a player and it was IPL that really put her on my map. I might not like her method of practice, but it works for her. I don't think she's anywhere close to peaking yet at WoL under this patch.
ViBE never lost relevance for me when it came to the NA scene.
I'm sorry to say but only a few players will ever make it and only a handful of Koreans and people really don't want to see that regional crap.
They want to see the best of the best, so if you do want to become the best of the best you have to tough it out and have the skill to do it. I have to disagree with you that people don't want to see "regional crap" - WCS Europe got near 100k viewers, I don't think many tournaments this year can compete with this numbers. But there is competition in Europe. Something that NA does not have. You have about 5 players who are competitive, and 20 who are one step lower, and another 200 semipro clans to fill the gaps. Why would I want to watch something that is guaranteed to be won by Violet or Scarlett? Its like watching NBA with heat, thunder, and 200 bobcats.
Part of the reason that there is competition in Europe is the fact that they already had regional competitions prior to the WCS, in things like the EPS and ESL which held regular competitions. I can't think of any North American regional competitions besides WCS and the very first IPL1.
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wow, what an incredible read.
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On November 07 2012 06:54 Torte de Lini wrote:
So many amazing opinions! I will definitely respond and look into all of them in a second :D
Gonna take longer than a second!  Specially that one above it. Long read. Great read.
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EPT![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/kwkQa.png)
