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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 11 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.
Once Upon an E-Sport - Posted on December 4th, 2012
Within this month, there are currently four major tournament organizations showing content (if we exclude Evil Geniuses MCSL): GSL, IPL, MLG and NASL (as well as Iron Squid and KeSPA’s Proleague). They are all viewed as equally important with large prize-pools, top-tier talent and prestige. In the past, we mentioned how the community, players and scene is overstocked with tournaments, all similar in content, prestige and value (both production-wise and in prizes). With these similarities, the feeling of saturation becomes emphasized within the community’s thoughts. This similarity is a core problem because so many tournaments fail to distinguish themselves when their participants, maps and match-ups aren’t varied. This need for distinctiveness is also known as creating relevance. Relevance for these tournaments is outwardly assumed through their name and history. But with so many tournaments equal in qualities, how is one to differentiate which competitions to follow? This is where the role of story-telling becomes important for organizers. Story-telling solves the feeling of overflowing content by creating features and dimensions between major tournaments. Think of these tournaments like mountains: all mountains have their peak, history of climbers (players) and status around the scene/world. How would you, the organizer, set your mountain apart from the others? You would create context, weave a story, detail the results of past matches of the participating players and how each match is applicable to one another within your event (context).
Drama is the side-effect of an untold scene. My viewpoint on drama is that it is a byproduct of a bored environment. A boring scene is a culture without meaning in its crowning events or overall performance in entertainment. In my opinion, drama, rivalries, hype, nicknames and announcements are shapes and offshoots of story-telling for E-Sports. Why is story-telling so important?
- While prizes, competition and a livestreamed event may entice and attract competitors, it doesn’t necessarily hold the same weight and worth for spectators. No doubt that players fighting for 1 million dollars is pretty cool. But what more could we say about the players and the prize?
- Not all spectators of an event quite know the history of your previous events or even the height of a certain match-up. While I understand that the entertainment of the games have their own attraction, contextually adding a backstory to a certain match-up can bring people in to watch the match. Story-telling helps formulate justifications for the spectator to watch an event over another while the match keeps them watching.
The problem with most tournaments is that they all follow similar formulas to advertise: “here is the player list, here is the grand prize of our tournament and here are the amazing matches from the past”. Because of this, tournaments start to run into redundancies with other events, creating a repetitive feeling to the community. During events, you have commentators to describe, analyze and inject excitement in a game. After the tournament, you have video-editors highlighting the best matches and recaps both in written and video form. But what about before the whole event, who is writing a story, creating importance of each tournament during the year?
Thankfully, websites like Team Liquid does a great job recapping, doing power rankings and creating pertinence to a tournament that may get washed up against the bigger dogs. But it shouldn’t be done by external organizations, it should be a part of a tournament’s marketing team; hyping their service or product. To be frank, it doesn’t take much marketing to be both excited in what you’re featuring and writing 200 words on the tournament overall or of specific players.
Here’s an example of a tournament that had some great players, decent prize-pool and no other tournament was happening at the same time (nothing major), but failed to promote themselves: Campus Party (EU), Campus Party (Official Topic). Look at the qualities of this event: 25,000$ prize-pool, great player line-up; Snute, Socke, Strelok, Elfi, ForGG, NightEnD, HasuObs, Supernova, Ret, Naama and this comment sums up exactly my thoughts:
“$25,000 and i’ve never heard of it lolol. What?! Come on now tournaments! It’s not that hard to throw up a post on TL and/or reddit!” is what a user said about the event. It’s definitely a common thought amongst many users. MLG, IPL; they all post hubs for their upcoming matches or tournaments, but it’s just an information center. Very rarely do any of them take advantage of a central community lobby to produce some more hits on their website with a hype article or to portray a particular strong component of story-telling: Stakes.
What is at stake for these players? If you’re looking for how to start your article on your tournament: ask the question; What is at stake? Stakes is everything in a sport and it’s almost implicit through the nature of watching two players duke it out:
- The stake of winning it all: becoming the best. Earning the money and credibility that you are a real competitor.
- Emotional stakes: Pride. Some examples of dilemmas you’ve probably imagined or read:
- Bouncing back after the community doubts your return.
- The pressure of being the few foreigners to beat a Korean.
- Once supported by a team, you’re now flying solo with your sponsor.
- Rivalries: Rivalries are a relationship of stakes. Someone has to lose for the other to win and while that’s obvious in each and every match,if there’s a history of winning and losing between the two players, that’s a story. Rivalries matter; no matter if they’re true or just fabrications of the community, rivalries amp up the imaginative stakes. Anyone remember Idra’s rivals (Cruncher, HuK, MC)? How about NaNiwa’s (NesTea)? These add some flair and interest in matches and also put give reasons for someone to watch a match (in addition to their initial interest in the two players’ ability independently)
The point being, drama is a branch of what the community wants, but not in the form they prefer. With a circulation of tournaments, qualifiers, LANs, weekly/daily competition, it would help if someone stringed all these tournaments with some sequencings. This piece isn’t only for tournament organizers, players and personality go hand-in-hand with the desire to color the scene with shades of uniqueness. But even without personality, your player can stand out with written context about who they are, where they are in the brackets, etc. Interviews also help players shine and these small touches really create a blend of iconicism. In a crowded scene trying to appeal to a small market of viewers, adding a written background can help justify your presence and mark throughout the years.
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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
- Alex Shieferdecker (Team Liquid Progaming Team Content Manager - tree.hugger)
- Brad Carney (Lefty)
- Chris Chan (Founder of ChanManV 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 Director of Operations - 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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I really like what I've read so far, especially regarding tournaments marketing their own events. It's not TL's job to hype and market for every tournament. How a $25,000 tournament goes unnoticed is beyond me, especially with that kind of player pool. Really good stuff man. I can't wait to read the rest once I'm done studying for finals!
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Brunei Darussalam566 Posts
On December 11 2012 03:41 Torte de Lini wrote:
With a circulation of tournaments, qualifiers, LANs, weekly/daily competition, it would help if someone stringed all these tournaments with some sequencings.
Tournament organizers should surrender their canibalistic stance toward competitors and simply work together in order to strengthen the scene as a whole. A simple yet effective way to do so would be to string all the major E-sports events --- regardless of who's running them --- into a global point-based system such as the ATP World Tour or the Formula One World Championship. This change would not only raise the stakes for all major tourneys, but would also help to create the storylines you mention in your article (rivalries, underdogs, the year-long struggle for first place, and so on).
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Great stuff as usual. Stories are hugely important, it's a shame some people neglect them, I really think it leads to all sorts of issues, including people not being familiar with many Koreans who don't have the English to explain their own character to viewers.
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Thank you all for the feedback and comments!
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Katowice25012 Posts
I think a lot of organizers just kind of expect TL to do this or it to happen naturally. For TSL3 we didn't do that much of our own hyping of the event because the storylines just kind of happened and the community picked up on them, this will probably never be the case in the future because there are so many events that people won't naturally notice the things happening in all of them. In the other case (TL shouldering it) it obviously can't happen all the time because there is a limited amount of events we can cover.
The other side of it is that it's hard and takes a lot of effort. Running a big event is already a huge undertaking and finding the extra manpower to not only do the standard press things but write above-and-beyond content is extremely difficult because it's time consuming and hard to write well. This is one arena in which teams can actually go out of their way to help out with, guys like Thorin do a great job helping to pimp tournaments while also writing about the Acer players.
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Once I saw the title I knew exactly what this one was going to be about and I couldn't agree more especially with heyoka's thoughts lmao.
Yeah, we'll just let the volunteer writers do their thing with the write-ups. -_-
You don't just need tournament directors. You could use actual directors who can help cut the promos.
It's the same with Boxing atm and in fact 50 Cent just commented on the Boxing Promotions not to long ago saying they really ought to borrow Wrestling devices when it comes to packaging fights.
Was it IPL that flew players down to their studio to do sit down interviews before? That was a nice touch but you really need to get them to comment on every player so if they ever meet up. You have that tape to fall back on.
heyoka I think you mean Thorin.
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On December 11 2012 04:35 heyoka wrote:
I think a lot of organizers just kind of expect TL to do this or it to happen naturally. For TSL3 we didn't do that much of our own hyping of the event because the storylines just kind of happened and the community picked up on them, this will probably never be the case in the future because there are so many events that people won't naturally notice the things happening in all of them. In the other case (TL shouldering it) it obviously can't happen all the time because there is a limited amount of events we can cover.
The other side of it is that it's hard and takes a lot of effort. Running a big event is already a huge undertaking and finding the extra manpower to not only do the standard press things but write above-and-beyond content is extremely difficult because it's time consuming and hard to write well. This is one arena in which teams can actually go out of their way to help out with, guys like Thoren do a great job helping to pimp tournaments while also writing about the Acer players.
Yeah, I think it's a bit of a lazy thing. This shoving off is a bit weak because the perspectives won't necessarily be what the event organizer wants to shine.
Yeah, with more and more events coming, there will be a need to showcase and better present your events. You can step it up with on-site production, but that ceiling will eventually be hit. You need to really weave storylines to your players, that matters.
Typo there *Thorin and I disagree here. I think even the most minimal amount of effort to write a blurb or piece about your event is all that matters. A commercial/hype video of your coming event would be pretty cool, but just gushing out some articles about the players individually or paying by commission a couple of people to really make your event stand out is barely a shave of costs.
But that's my opinion.
On December 11 2012 04:46 StarStruck wrote:
Once I saw the title I knew exactly what this one was going to be about and I couldn't agree more especially with heyoka's thoughts lmao.
Yeah, we'll just let the volunteer writers do their thing with the write-ups. -_-
You don't just need tournament directors. You could use actual directors who can help cut the promos.
It's the same with Boxing atm and in fact 50 Cent just commented on the Boxing Promotions not to long ago saying they really ought to borrow Wrestling devices when it comes to packaging fights.
Was it IPL that flew players down to their studio to do sit down interviews before? That was a nice touch but you really need to get them to comment on every player so if they ever meet up. You have that tape to fall back on.
heyoka I think you mean Thorin.
Welcome frequent reader :D <3
Yes, promotion. Yes and we can see what stands out for the community when they don't get much story.
Yes, IPL did that I believe. IT's just small touches that really benefit everyone.
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I read practically everything on the forums and it is a shame that your viewership on these forums for these articles is close to non-existent when your content is of high quality.
It's really not that complicated when it comes to packaging it altogether. It really isn't.
You want some examples of extremely cheap labor? Hold contests for freelancers/community because when I look at their work compared to the work I see the other production teams come up with. The community does come up with good stuff from time to time.
There are several guys I know who are fantastic at making hype videos and post frequently on these forums.
Contests are a great way to get the community involved and they can help with the hype. The same way TSL cheerfuls help generate hype:
![[image loading]](http://img126.imageshack.us/img126/8438/mondiecheersbg3.jpg)
Compliments of Rus_Brain and I think it's fitting considering HerO just smashed Violet.
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I definitely like where your head is at. Streamlining the tournaments would be amazing. "The tournament league" or some such idea. I'm curious to see if you have any ideas about how a points system would work? Would it be based on the prize pool of the tournament? More money=more points? Or would it be based on # of participants, quality of participants....I could see it being hard to get so many tournaments on board when it's hard to objectively judge the various tournaments.... It would probably be heavily subjective to start, but I'm really curious to hear the specifics.
Cheers,
Ramone
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On December 11 2012 05:42 StarStruck wrote:I read practically everything on the forums and it is a shame that your viewership on these forums for these articles is close to non-existent when your content is of high quality.
It's really not that complicated when it comes to packaging it altogether. It really isn't. You want some examples of extremely cheap labor? Hold contests for freelancers/community because when I look at their work compared to the work I see the other production teams come up with. The community does come up with good stuff from time to time. There are several guys I know who are fantastic at making hype videos and post frequently on these forums. Contests are a great way to get the community involved and they can help with the hype. The same way TSL cheerfuls help generate hype: Compliments of Rus_Brain and I think it's fitting considering HerO just smashed Violet.
http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/viewmessage.php?topic_id=379416
Already wrote a topic about this. I use it as an excuse to why I don't get much public chatter ): (Though Heyoka has been insightful about this many times). So if you want to be ironic, post in there haha!
Yes I didn't even think about contests and freelancers! Great idea!
On December 11 2012 05:56 Ramone wrote:
I definitely like where your head is at. Streamlining the tournaments would be amazing. "The tournament league" or some such idea. I'm curious to see if you have any ideas about how a points system would work? Would it be based on the prize pool of the tournament? More money=more points? Or would it be based on # of participants, quality of participants....I could see it being hard to get so many tournaments on board when it's hard to objectively judge the various tournaments.... It would probably be heavily subjective to start, but I'm really curious to hear the specifics.
Cheers,
Ramone
I actually just thought up of a small idea for Blizzard about utilizing the ladder to create small 16-man tounraments to help brand the regional champions as well as establish a foundation for my next idea!
EVO uses a point system I believe for their qualifiers and tournaments. Another tournament also did that for SC2, but they've fallen off the map recently.
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On December 11 2012 05:59 Torte de Lini wrote:Show nested quote +On December 11 2012 05:42 StarStruck wrote:I read practically everything on the forums and it is a shame that your viewership on these forums for these articles is close to non-existent when your content is of high quality.
It's really not that complicated when it comes to packaging it altogether. It really isn't. You want some examples of extremely cheap labor? Hold contests for freelancers/community because when I look at their work compared to the work I see the other production teams come up with. The community does come up with good stuff from time to time. There are several guys I know who are fantastic at making hype videos and post frequently on these forums. Contests are a great way to get the community involved and they can help with the hype. The same way TSL cheerfuls help generate hype: Compliments of Rus_Brain and I think it's fitting considering HerO just smashed Violet. http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/viewmessage.php?topic_id=379416Already wrote a topic about this. I use it as an excuse to why I don't get much public chatter ): (Though Heyoka has been insightful about this many times). So if you want to be ironic, post in there haha! Yes I didn't even think about contests and freelancers! Great idea! Show nested quote +On December 11 2012 05:56 Ramone wrote:
I definitely like where your head is at. Streamlining the tournaments would be amazing. "The tournament league" or some such idea. I'm curious to see if you have any ideas about how a points system would work? Would it be based on the prize pool of the tournament? More money=more points? Or would it be based on # of participants, quality of participants....I could see it being hard to get so many tournaments on board when it's hard to objectively judge the various tournaments.... It would probably be heavily subjective to start, but I'm really curious to hear the specifics.
Cheers,
Ramone I actually just thought up of a small idea for Blizzard about utilizing the ladder to create small 16-man tounraments to help brand the regional champions as well as establish a foundation for my next idea! EVO uses a point system I believe for their qualifiers and tournaments. Another tournament also did that for SC2, but they've fallen off the map recently.
I already wrote you a response to that one as well! 
On November 04 2012 15:08 StarStruck wrote:Torte this is almost ironic. O_O The amount of views your new column is generating is underwhelming! ;o Anyway, I'm glad you used JOJO as an example. He's one of the few guys I've been giving advice because I think he did a good job from what I've seen. Now with regards to your JP's; your Husky's; your Day[9]'s; your Totalbiscuit's etc. Definitely agree. It's always best to jump in right away; but, this doesn't mean you cannot excel if you're slow out of the gate. I'll leave this message here. If anyone wants to build new content try to think outside of the box and find your niche; don't use the same molds. There's way too much imitation out there when it comes to casting, podcasts and the whole shebang. Look at JP for instance. Remember SC Center with Chobopean & JP? Well, I got word that he was doing a similar project but by himself and the views were lousy from what I saw from Youtube. Concept was too similar and there's just too much of it. Good thing it was only a test. It's a tricky business but it doesn't mean new guys cannot enter the market and still pull their weight like the CarbotAnimations youtube channel.
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Yeah I know, won't bother me to see it back on the top of the forums ;D bwahahaha
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I stopped caring about most SC2 tournaments because I don't feel any hype, personally. Big money prizes don't even make me flinch anymore. That $25k tournament that was mentioned means nothing to me and I wouldn't bother to watch it if it was $50k or more. Why? There is no fucking hype at all. It's not really about the tournament, but the players. That leads into the point you make about rivalries and how little they matter in SC2 to me. If some random zerg and terran like SortOf and Lucifron played for $50k, I still wouldn't care. The purse doesn't matter to me, only the players.
I've been following SC2 since the beta and I still can't really name one guy that I truly want to win. If I had to pick it would be Mvp. Take that pick and I really don't even know who I would say Mvps rival is. Does he even have one? In any case, rivalries in SC2 are so incredibly mild, be it with team v. team or player v. player.
This is in stark contrast to another genre I love in fighting games. Rivalries are intense between players and tournaments don't really have to do shit to promote it. Hell, even stupid "show matches" (as rare as they are) garner intense interest when the right people are playing.
Maybe they don't have to promote as much, like boxing or MMA. People seem to love their favorite fighting game player much more than SC2 guys love their player. Also, they don't have tournament after tournament conflicting with other tournaments.
Whatever though. Maybe I'm not the demographic that SC2 teams, players, and sponsors want to grab. Then again, maybe I am.
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Many have tried to do similar content as Teamliquid, previews hypeups etc. through different media, but I think the average viewer cannot be bothered to go anywhere else; if it's worth watching, you read about it on Teamliquid. So basicly, it's a situation where tournaments and teams want better exposure, there are people who are prepared to provide that exposure but it's extremely hard for them to find traction in the community. The amount of eyeballs on the scene are most probably enough to saturate more outlets, but we have become so comfortable with Teamliquid being the go-to place that we really have no real reason to go to this new site that you made for covering tournaments.
In regards to your point about tournaments providing this content themselves, Im not sure I agree. Surely, the time and effort they would spend on creating this content (which is alot more demanding than most people think!) is better spent on improving their core product, which is their tournament?
For the most part, normal sports tournaments/teams do not provide this sort of content, do they? Apart from press releases and a few oppinion pieces that are really just intended for other media to interpret - Am I wrong in that understanding?
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On December 11 2012 06:41 ELA wrote:
Many have tried to do similar content as Teamliquid, previews hypeups etc. through different media, but I think the average viewer cannot be bothered to go anywhere else; if it's worth watching, you read about it on Teamliquid. So basicly, it's a situation where tournaments and teams want better exposure, there are people who are prepared to provide that exposure but it's extremely hard for them to find traction in the community. The amount of eyeballs on the scene are most probably enough to saturate more outlets, but we have become so comfortable with Teamliquid being the go-to place that we really have no real reason to go to this new site that you made for covering tournaments.
In regards to your point about tournaments providing this content themselves, Im not sure I agree. Surely, the time and effort they would spend on creating this content (which is alot more demanding than most people think!) is better spent on improving their core product, which is their tournament?
For the most part, normal sports tournaments/teams do not provide this sort of content, do they? Apart from press releases and a few oppinion pieces that are really just intended for other media to interpret - Am I wrong in that understanding?
This is a traditional method that will fail in the long-run as more and more organizations and events prop up (and as we saw in our last article, more events are taking up the year, meaning more clotting of prestige).
there are people who are prepared to provide that exposure but it's extremely hard for them to find traction in the community.
There two areas where the masses are grouped to read content: Team Liquid and Reddit and they both prove to give a lot of hits and viewability regardless of the length of the viewer's ability to do more. If you name the namesake of a tournament as well as finesse in their marketing and production, you get more than you skeptically believe. I'm not doubting the difficulty, but you are dismissing a lot of what MLG, GSL and DH behold.
Surely, the time and effort they would spend on creating this content (which is alot more demanding than most people think!) is better spent on improving their core product, which is their tournament?
This is not how companies work and improving the core product needs to be publicized in advance before you can truly take advantage of it. In addition, it's not a numbers games. People working on the core product are employed for simply that, you can hire additional names by contract or commission to spearhead another department.
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On December 11 2012 07:04 Torte de Lini wrote:Show nested quote +On December 11 2012 06:41 ELA wrote:
Many have tried to do similar content as Teamliquid, previews hypeups etc. through different media, but I think the average viewer cannot be bothered to go anywhere else; if it's worth watching, you read about it on Teamliquid. So basicly, it's a situation where tournaments and teams want better exposure, there are people who are prepared to provide that exposure but it's extremely hard for them to find traction in the community. The amount of eyeballs on the scene are most probably enough to saturate more outlets, but we have become so comfortable with Teamliquid being the go-to place that we really have no real reason to go to this new site that you made for covering tournaments.
In regards to your point about tournaments providing this content themselves, Im not sure I agree. Surely, the time and effort they would spend on creating this content (which is alot more demanding than most people think!) is better spent on improving their core product, which is their tournament?
For the most part, normal sports tournaments/teams do not provide this sort of content, do they? Apart from press releases and a few oppinion pieces that are really just intended for other media to interpret - Am I wrong in that understanding? This is a traditional method that will fail in the long-run as more and more organizations and events prop up (and as we saw in our last article, more events are taking up the year, meaning more clotting of prestige). Show nested quote + there are people who are prepared to provide that exposure but it's extremely hard for them to find traction in the community. There two areas where the masses are grouped to read content: Team Liquid and Reddit and they both prove to give a lot of hits and viewability regardless of the length of the viewer's ability to do more. If you name the namesake of a tournament as well as finesse in their marketing and production, you get more than you skeptically believe. I'm not doubting the difficulty, but you are dismissing a lot of what MLG, GSL and DH behold. Show nested quote + Surely, the time and effort they would spend on creating this content (which is alot more demanding than most people think!) is better spent on improving their core product, which is their tournament?
This is not how companies work and improving the core product needs to be publicized in advance before you can truly take advantage of it. In addition, it's not a numbers games. People working on the core product are employed for simply that, you can hire additional names by contract or commission to spearhead another department.
Do you think that the way forward, is the organizer creating and publishing their stories? If so, on what platform? Their own website, or? If that's the case, surely the viewers best interests are not represented.
I know this is a tired old analogy, but to bring up sports again; can you think of any organizers of sports events that makes content like this? Im not talking about free boomsticks and banners here, but quality articles previewing their own events, as you described it "their stories", which I completely agree btw, are lost for far too many people. I would also agree that events could do better in highlighting these stories both before and during their events, but what platform do you suppose they use to get just a margin of the trafic and hype that a well-written TL writer team article can achieve? Lets be real, Teamliquid is not just the center of Starcraft (Reddit also, but Reddit is more of a portal to excisting content, no?) not because it just always was so, but because they are the best at what they do in this business.
I wouldn't go to FIFA's website if I wanted to know about whats going on in Champions League, just as I wouldn't go to the NHL-homepage to know about hockey. I would go to a sports website that I know have quality articles and cool content - Is this what you describe as the traditional model the interdependency between sports and individual press?
Sorry for asking so many questions, I just want to be perfectly clear what you suggest the organizations do in practice.
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ELA that isn't true at all. We're only a small piece of the puzzle. Torte that's only for the avid followers of the sport.
Most people don't know where to look and that's why people like to bring up League of Legends. Why? Because they bring it to the forefront as you log-in to the actual game.
I keep track of the other websites and it's true that their traffic especially for the team websites is pretty pitiful in comparison. Its very true, but you have to provide the avenues to get there and that's what LoL does well. They have more focus on the actual players and it's just more user friendly.
People know where to go and look.
What Blizzard needs to do is focus more on a "Community Spotlight."
They should have their own writing staff & coverage as well that is more streamlined to everyone. There has to be better focus.
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Their own website, or? If that's the case, surely the viewers best interests are not represented. Why would the viewers best interest matter whatsoever? The organizers are using stories to both hype and weave relevance into their event. This is for their own self-interest as well as inform the public, giving them reason to watch. If they choose not to, then that's their choice.
Your analogy of sports is terrible because it isn't the same circumstances. There aren't 2-3 day tournaments competing with simultaneous or similar 2-3 day tournaments happening at the same time. These are events, not necessarily full-leagues or associations. What we're asking here is for organizers to highlight past events and their winners and put stakes into their marketing pot to deliver to the reader or viewer. This is informing your public as I stated above and it's pretty much needed when you're competing with other events hosting similar competitions with the same players (creating a feeling of repetition).
but what platform do you suppose they use to get just a margin of the traffic and hype that a well-written TL writer team article can achieve?
Reddit, TL. You use those to draw in interests for your site and that would be ok within the forum rules because it is set on advertising your competition in an informal way. It serves to help create interest in the scene and in turn, your event. If TL wants to write their own article about an event, then they can and that works for both parties. If one draws more interest than another, that doesn't sound bad either because the same two people win (thus, the more, the merrier). If more people are talking about an event, it is going to be seen more often and net more interests. If not, the exposure is good regardless. If TL volunteers can write thousands of words of the players in an upcoming event alone, I'm pretty sure 2-3 paid commissioned writers can do it without a problem.
I wouldn't go to FIFA's website if I wanted to know about whats going on in Champions League, just as I wouldn't go to the NHL-homepage to know about hockey. I would go to a sports website that I know have quality articles and cool content - Is this what you describe as the traditional model the interdependency between sports and individual press
http://www.nhl.com/
http://www.fifa.com/
They all have their own articles, highlights and content. I'm not sure what you're talking about.
Like I said, the circumstances are different. There isn't an importance for NHL to produce content because they don't have any competition for their, pun intended, hockey players and competition.
MLG is not on the same level of comfortability. If TL is writing articles about all the events and all the players, the article on your event may get just as many views as another article of say, IPL. So should MLG not write about their own events because someone can do it better or because the obvious choice to content is TeamLiquid? Is smart to limit choice because preferences are made?
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EPT![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/kwkQa.png)
