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Professional players do not have a direct contractual responsibility to entertain the way that an actor/actress/circus clown does, but ultimately, with respect to an ad-based revenue stream, that is the reason for their existence.
Under the currently popular business model found in most major league sports, the underlining assumption is that the player will give a reasonable effort on the court/field of competition. It's not written in stone, but its assumed. Furthermore, professional sports leagues in general are not the Olympics, the competitor is not just a talented "amateur" who competes only for the spirit of competition, for pride, and for the sport, etc., Professional players in a televised league have a list of fiduciary duties to their sponsors who are trying to sell/promote content. That list of fiduciary duties includes underlining assumptions about the reasonable effort made by each player to fulfill his or her obligations - in this case, it can be strongly argued that among the obligations of Naniwa is one to play out his televised games.
I see a lot of posters on this forum talking about written rules, direct responsibility and contracts. I am not familiar with Naniwa's employment/sponsorship contract with Quantic, but i can tell you that in service contracts between players and sponsors, there is an underlining assumption (even if unwritten) that the player will make a reasonable effort to provide what is expected of him based on the nature of the agreement. As stated above, it is not difficult to see why Naniwa is expected, or rather his contract assumes that he should put forth his best effort even when the game is meaningless. This is because the revenue stream, the value generated from the service agreement does not stem for the actual winning of any tournaments, it does not even stem from a win loss record, it stems from the players attempts to win - his struggles and the fan following of this struggle is what generates viewership and ad revenue. Winning may cause a larger fan following, but lack of winning does not preclude the other methods of generating said following (close losses generate fan followings, so do grudge matches), his game vs. Nestea has great potential for generating viewership and revenue, deprivation of said revenue is against the spirit of his contract, one might argue.
There is a major difference between a competitor - such as a collegiate or olympic athlete, and a professional - a sponsored athlete with endorsement contracts and expectations (both contractual and social) as to everything from their practice habits and performance to their interactions with fans and behavior as role models.
To the people saying that "probe rushing is entertaining," that is not the good/service promised by GOM or MLG to its paying viewership - they promised competitive Starcraft, and their obligation is to tear down heaven and earth to provide said content. I posted about this concept earlier in a blog (http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/viewmessage.php?topic_id=294923), but it was closed, I am glad that the same concept is so well articulated here.
I am starting to see the same sense of entitlement in SC2 players that I see in football/basketball players. And that's great, and one day hopefully there will be plenty of SC2 players who can afford to think in whichever way they want and get paid tons of money because the industry is that big; but it doesn't make it right or conducive to the growth of e-sports.
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+ Show Spoiler +On December 15 2011 23:13 Remb wrote:
When I saw 7 probes rushing a hatchery, I knew that Naniwa (foolishly) chose to act honestly instead of doing what so many other pro gamers have done before. The esports world should not be parallel with athletic sports for many reasons, one being the seasonal and physical aspects of athletic sports, and I do believe his actions were unacceptable
But I think that a player can never play his best games when he knows there is nothing at stake, and it is the responsibility of the tournaments to host formats that create meaningful games.
Too often I see players feign motivation when they are put into those situations you described, and those games truly anger me. Watching a player perform a game where it is apparent he is not motivated to play his best is insulting to my intelligence. I am paying for honest competition, not a fake and empty showmatch that is supposed to entertain me. I pay these companies to create a tournament where the players are motivated because the games are important to them. The situation does occur quite often, but they are rarely ever pointed out.
It's quite laughable how you parallel these situations to athletic sports to justify their existence. Nobody cares about the last two teams playing their final match of the season, and the turnouts for those games are always abysmal. Because the fans are not stupid.
The fans know when a game is meaningless. They know when the players don't give a damn, but the players slug on and half-ass it because "it's their job". Well you are selling the fans short. Naniwa's game angered me. But if Naniwa chose the politically correct strategy of 2 base all in or 4 gate, I would have been equally angered. Both strategies are equally meaningless to me, because the situation itself was meaningless.
You have obviously never played sports at a competitive level. It's called Pride. There is a reason no one ever wants to go out of anything with winning one game, one series, ect. It's because they will be viewed as a joke. There is a huge parallel between Real Sports and eSports. If there wasn't, why are people like Sundance pushing to get eSports syndicated on major networks, say ESPN? It's comments like the above that kill the scene.
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Thanks for the write-up, very insightful.
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On December 15 2011 23:30 EGalex wrote:
TL;DR if there's no entertainment within a pro player's job, then there are no pro players.
I have to disagree, the entertainment ARE the pro players, they dont make entertainment they ARE entertainment, just by playing the game they are entertaining, there is no need for them to "train" entertaining. because they already are entertaining.
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If Naniwa was fined with the 850$ he would receive for participating nobody would care that much, but the community blowout is directly proportionate to the punishment GOM gave but you took that out of your context like it doesn't matter. We all agree that playing a fake match is better than probe rushing. What we don't agree is with the hard punishment and the way Koreans exaggerated.
MKP wished he could be in Naniwas place (from his tweeter)? What does that even have to do with the event? Naniwa did 100% in his first 3 games. He didn't mock the event or insult the koreans. He just didn't see the point of a match between two unmotivated players that have nothing to gain. There is no grudge match if it's nothing at stake, it's just ladder game.
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Initially I was very skeptical as to if your point would actually hold, but seeing as you point out the "putting on a show" part as the important aspect, there's really nothing to argue over there and I even agree.
So while my view on the situation doesn't necessarily invalidate yours, I think I have a few interesting, albeit philosophical considerations.
You mention other sports as a precedence, and your main point is that they still put on a show, which Naniwa didn't (though I suppose the aftermath is quite a show). Like I said: that's a fool-proof argument, but besides that I would not as most others say there's much of a difference between what Naniwa did and what teams do as in your examples. And actually it seems we agree there, but unlike you I would argue that it's not any more subjective whether or not the team is throwing the match away or not compared to what Naniwa did (well, that's not entirely true but I'll get to that). Consider the coach who decides who are allowed to play and who are benched. His position isn't much unlike Naniwa's position. It is they, not the coach's players nor Naniwa's units that set the stage for what is going to unfold. It's irrelevant that the players have their own free will whereas the units are under Naniwa's complete control (besides the targetting-AI and such). They set the stage, and everything that unfolds is a direct consequence of that. Also, there's hardly any difference between selecting players that have virtually no chance of winning and probe rushing. What if the enemy does a 6-pool? Then you've got a chance, though even at that point you would have to utterly out-micro your opponent who has to make some sort of mistake, so the chance of winning is extremely small. However, that doesn't apply to Naniwa's probe rush because from what I heard he didn't even micro his probes. He obviously just forfeited, but I would still argue that the coach forfeits the match whether or not his mediocre players try to win or not. If they somehow win it's just a fluke, while the coach's intentions were pretty clear all along.
To give some perspective on your view that Naniwa's mental state or his reasoning after the three first games was irrelevant, picture Naniwa as a professional athlete that has to exert himself physically in whatever sport he's competing in. He's just finished three extremely tough matches, and he can barely stand, let alone compete in a fourth match. To have the referee force him to play his fourth match is not the same as GOM expecting Naniwa to play his match against Nestea, simply because unlike with the physical sports situation no one knows how broken Naniwa is. We still can't say how broken he was, and obviously GOM can't just let it slide just because Naniwa says he was mentally broken. They can't rely on such uncertainties that may later be used as excuses by other players, and that would be disastrous for their credibility. But the community has the freedom to accept Naniwa's reasons for what he did, and still be able to tell him that he made the wrong decision and now that he knows he better not do it again. In fact, even GOM has the freedom to accept his explanation, but kindly inform him that he still has to be punished to make sure this doesn't happen again, even though I completely understand that GOM as an entity lacks the wisdom and composure required.
So to end my post similarly to yours:
Against Nestea, Naniwa didn't do his part. But as a community, understand his situation and don't belittle his struggle. Tell him very firmly that he better not do that again, that you expect better from him, but that you can forgive him this time. For all the honesty and regret that he exudes in his voice (at Live On 3), he deserves as much.
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On December 15 2011 23:40 raheelp wrote:
who knew egs ceo was an idiot
Er what?
You gonna back that up, son?
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On December 15 2011 23:39 HyperLethality wrote:
I don't know if you're ever going to see this Alex, but I just want to let you know that I have new-found respect for you. This is an absolutely necessary write-up for everyone within the e-Sports community. To be frank, I've been very irritated by the amount of people who have spoken of boycotting Gom and attempting to justify NaNiwa's actions. I feel that once you reach a certain level of maturity, you must realize that just because the rules don't say not to do it, doesn't mean it's okay to do it. Anyway, I want to keep this short, so all I will say is that I absolutely agree with everything you've said within this write-up. And also hats off to you for doing this, despite not being directly involved in any way. Community figures stepping up is an admirable and necessary step for e-Sports. Thank you.
Why? because they took naniwa's code S spot with rules that barely even apply? because they denie awarding him a code S spot even tho MLG confirmed it on over 10 occasions? People are all jumping on the naniwa thing, but there are more things than the naniwa thing that made people boycot Gom. I suggest you educate yourself with peoples thoughts and don't write thing that you don't have a clue of.
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On December 15 2011 23:24 Nikerym wrote:
Naniwa did 2 things wrong. \
1. he made it completely obvious that he was throwing the game,
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I completely disagree with this. I'd rather know that a player was throwing the game/wanted to forfeit. I don't want to watch a game thinking that both players are giving 100% when one player isn't really trying that hard. Then the viewers are just getting tricked into thinking they are watching a real game.
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Excellent article, I agree with all of your points, the distinctions you make are also helping to gain common ground for proper discussion on the matter. Ty.
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Beautiful post, people like raheelp calling you and idiot, are well, Naniwa Zealots...
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I can agree with most of what you wrote concerning the Naniwa case. As far as Idra is concerned, I don't think your right. The fact that a game isn't streamed makes forfeiting the game less bad, but it's still a bad thing. For me it's disrespectful towards his opponents and the tournament organisers.
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My thoughts exactly.
Thank you for putting a perfect point up.
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On December 15 2011 23:40 raheelp wrote:
who knew egs ceo was an idiot
He is certainly not an idiot, on the contrary he is very intelligent. I do not always agree with him or cheer for his team but to say he is an idiot is a gross error in judgement.
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your point is retardedly black and white as well as unnuanced.
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Switzerland2892 Posts
Why do so many people want to compare esports with other sports to make a point?
Can you compare soccer, pool and chess?
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This is all quite ironic coming from IdrA's manger but I guess you already made that perfectly clear in your post... anyways
It really bothers me that no one sees the thought process that "Naniwa owes it to his fans to undermine them and deceive GOMtv with a fake game" as a completely poisonous way of thinking. Its going to be interesting to see the next time this happens on a level that isn't the absolute extreme with this as the standard by which people accept it.
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On December 15 2011 17:51 EGalex wrote:
I myself find NaNi's actions completely unacceptable, but for a very different reason than I believe has been popularly expressed. I also find GOM's decision to punish NaNi to be completely reasonable
So what punishment did you give Idra when he bailed out on those Dreamhack and IPL matches because he didn't care about them?
As you found it "completely unacceptable", why did you, obviously, accept it when Idra did it and has done it multiple times?
Hypocrisy at its best.
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EPT
