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Aotearoa39261 Posts
IPL4 was one of the largest tournaments we’ve seen in SC2 to date, and the largest outside of Korea. Going into the tournament there was a ton of hype around how awesome it was going to be and how it was the hardest tournament in the world. And indeed with the players that attended it probably was the hardest tournament to date. But when the tournament had come to its conclusion I couldn’t help but feel let down.
I’m sure a lot of you felt it too. Despite the enormously high skill level present in the tournament, the finals just didn’t live up to the hype. And it wasn’t because the games weren’t good enough, it’s because we just didn’t care about who was in the finals.
The final between Alive and Squirtle epitomises the ‘faceless Korean invasion’ phenomenon. Let me explain what I mean by ‘faceless Korean invasion’. In Korea there are a boatload of incredibly skilled progamers who have no reputation in the scene. This is because unless you are in Code S and placing highly on a regular basis (or a GSTL beast), you are an unknown in the scene. When these Koreans participate in foreign tournaments, and in particular IPL4 which facilitated the travel of a number of Koreans who would have otherwise not been there, they are able to illustrate that they are skill and generally knock out a ton of foreigners on the way to the group stage/championship bracket/whatever. This is hugely anticlimactic for the foreign audience (and probably the Korean one as well) as the lack of history surrounding these players just makes them... boring.
Moreover the fact that these ‘faceless Koreans’ have irregular attendance at foreign events and there is the expectation for them to do well simply because they are Korean actually amplifies the foreign audiences dissatisfaction with the tournament. This is because seeing their tournament favourites being knocked out by the ‘faceless Koreans’ instantly makes the tournament less interesting for them. Look at Sounds performance at HSC4 or squirtles run in IPL4; people could honestly care less than those players were in attendance let alone did well in the tournament. Once the favourites are gone, the tournament is boring.
“Oh, but Plexa! I’m a fan of Starcraft and so I really enjoy seeing high level games regardless of who the players are!!” Great! Good for you. In fact, I wouldn’t be surprised if the majority of people who read this feel the same way (I’m with you guys, for the record). But the reality of the situation is that the casual fan of Starcraft isn’t like this. In fact, casual fans are the people who visit TL only when there is (major) a tournament on!! And unfortunately for us, without the support of the casual viewerbase the growth of SC is severely restricted.
So what do casuals want to see? Obviously their favourites winning everything (which as we know isn’t a reality that is going to happen anytime soon, and I’ll go into that in a moment). But they aren’t just limited to that, fortunately. Because the ‘faceless Koreans’ are essentially seen as the enemy any foreigner who does well against them will instantly become the topic of discussion of the community. For instance, the biggest story which came out of IPL wasn’t Alive winning, it wasn’t Nestea’s ballsy run – it was Scarlet making a deep run in the tournament – a previously unknown player; and a female player to boot. In fact we see this time and time again, like the performance of Gatored in IEM NYC where he beat DRG.
The fact is, the “West vs East” story (with the West winning) is a story the casual viewer longs to see. Most of them will tune into MLG this weekend with a hope/expectation that Huk is going to come out and do really well, if not, MarineKing (and DRG as a distant third). And watch this GSL become the most viewed GSL in god knows when because of Naniwa and Liquid, particularly if either party is in the finals. But as it stands, tournaments are becoming more and more Korean dominated and the chances of West vs East clash are rapidly diminishing. And with it, the interest of the casual viewerbase.
Indeed, in my opinion, one of the reasons that League of Legends is maintaining popularity (notice I said maintaining and not gaining) is because you can tune in and see your West vs East clash; and the West isn’t a complete pushover. In fact, LoL combines everything that the casual viewer wants to see. Big multigaming teams which have established a fan following through other games are well represented in LoL (i.e. fnatic, Dignitas, sk) which automatically means people have fan favourites to support. And those teams actually perform on a reliable basis and don’t lose to ‘faceless’ teams. Thus people have their interest in LoL maintained. I dare say the situation will be similar with DOTA.
So why is the foreign community putting up such a poor fight against Koreans at the moment? My theory is this: in the beginning of SC2’s lifespan a number of progamers established a well defined identity – moreso outside of Korea than in. Now as the game evolved many of the first generation Koreans couldn’t keep up with the ever increasing level of play, and we had a second generation of players come through (no thanks to the poor format of early GSLs). The Korean scene continues to weed out weak players through the new and brutal Code S format; this keeps the best at the top regardless of their fanbase.
Now let’s cross over to what happened outside of Korea. Once a number of personalities were established tournaments sought to milk them for all they were worth – in order to attract the highest number of viewers possible. This is particularly true in events which cost a lot to get to, as only people with financial backing are able to get to these events as others are unlikely to attend because they won’t likely see a return on their investment. As such the non-Korean scene has had a very stagnant set of players at the top which don’t necessarily represent those with the best abilities. To date, TSL3 has been the only true open tournament which showcased the best the non-Korean community had to offer (and indeed, Thorzain was born).
It is very difficult for new players to break into the scene as the ‘faceless Korean’ invasion into foreign tournaments creates an enormous barrier to entry for them. Even if they enter, it is highly likely they won’t make it far because they will run into a Korean and lose. As such, the ‘second generation’ of foreign progamers never came about and all the fame, glory and money is tied up with the first generation. Indeed, some of these first generation pros are no longer remotely good at this game. Use your imagination as to whom I’m talking about. So as the 'faceless Koreans' are proving to be a barrier to entry for the second generation of foreign progamers, and thus stunting the growth of SC2, you could actually say that Koreans are killing esports.
Now I’m not someone who believes that foreigners by default are worse than Koreans – despite what they latest tournament results may tell you. I actually believe that the talent is out there in the ladders, but isn’t showing its face in tournaments because of the reasons I’ve stated. As long as the money is tied up in hopeless first generation progamers foreigners will always appear to be inferior to Koreans. This puts tournaments in a weird spot as they need to find a sweet spot between inviting enough Koreans to make their tournament legitimate, but still having enough chances for foreigners to make a splash (many of which are second rate).
Why there is such a lack of openness in the foreign scene (in comparison to Korea) baffles me. When Thorzain broke out onto the scene he trashed some seriously skilled Koreans along the way. Illusion is silently making his mark on the scene through solid play. Scarlet certainly has made a hugeee splash.
Given the huge amount of success these breakout players have had, and the fact that it doesn’t look like the current pool of ‘competitive’ foreigners will be beating Koreans any time in the near future, why aren’t tournaments investing in more open qualifiers? The talent is out there, as Scarlet illustrates, all that is required is for some tournament to get the balls to start offering a (large) number of free trips to their tournament through a set of open qualifiers with participation limited to non-Koreans. Koreans are only killing ESPORTS because we are letting them, because we having focused too much on making Starcraft 2 an ESPORT before we had the suitable skill level to do so.
Is this a huge risk? Sure. But it’s this kind of move that needs to be undertaken if the foreign scene is to revitalise itself and become more attractive to your average joe.
That, or TLO winning MLG.
EDIT: Will the Blizzard World Champs change anything? Maybe. But as with all Blizzard events I'll wait until it is over before I pass judgement, wouldn't want it to turn out like WCG now would we?
EDIT: IEM does a reasonable job of doing this btw, that is why players like gatored, illusion, phoenix etc have all been able to break into the scene in a respectable way. The issue with IEM is the limited number of seeds available and the unfortunate timing of many of their events. These are completely understandable limitations, by the way.
DISCLAIMER: These are my own thoughts and so not reflect the position of TeamLiquid.net!
NOTE: There are a handful of Koreans with personalities who prove to be big draws - in particular Marineking, MC, Nestea, MVP, Boxer, Nada, Puma and Hero. But on the whole the rest of the Korean scene is severely lacking in the PR department which means people don't get excited about them. Despite the fact that they are legitimately good players.
NOTE2: There are a handful of foreigners who rightfully deserve the money, fame and spotlight. In particular EG.Huk, Quantic.Naniwa and Mill.Stephano deserve all the praise and more that they receive for their runs in various tournaments.
 
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I cared. The wife and I were pulling for squirtle bigtime. Broke my heart to see him run out of has when he was playing so well. Parting thing for gstl was a shame. Really ruined a lot of the tourney for me. We like the Koreans. Its cute how they constantly groom themselves.
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I agree with this article very much so.
When I went to MLG anaheim and huk was the last foreigner knocked out of the tournament, things got a lot quieter and less exciting. Fortunately there were a lot of well known koreans like boxer and drg, but otherwise, a lot of people want to see their favorites doing well.
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Aotearoa39261 Posts
On April 21 2012 03:08 mewo wrote:
I cared. The wife and I were pulling for squirtle bigtime. Broke my heart to see him run out of has when he was playing so well. Parting thing for gstl was a shame. Really ruined a lot of the tourney for me. We like the Koreans. Its cute how they constantly groom themselves.
That's the problem with speaking in generalities, they are exactly that - generalities. 
Oh and a tldr; for those who can't be bothered reading it. I think there is a legitimate need for tournaments to start assisting the best foreign players to tournaments (by best I mean those who are able to illustrate it in some kind of qualifier setting) so that we are always sending the best foreigners to every event and not those who live near by or have the support/backing to make it to every event.
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I only care about foreigners.
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I read the whole thing! Where is my cookie!?
Part of me wants to agree with this, and part me wants to disagree... it's weird.
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On April 21 2012 03:11 Plexa wrote:Show nested quote +On April 21 2012 03:08 mewo wrote:
I cared. The wife and I were pulling for squirtle bigtime. Broke my heart to see him run out of has when he was playing so well. Parting thing for gstl was a shame. Really ruined a lot of the tourney for me. We like the Koreans. Its cute how they constantly groom themselves. That's the problem with speaking in generalities, they are exactly that - generalities. Oh and a tldr; for those who can't be bothered reading it. I think there is a legitimate need for tournaments to start assisting the best foreign players to tournaments (by best I mean those who are able to illustrate it in some kind of qualifier setting) so that we are always sending the best foreigners to every event and not those who live near by or have the support/backing to make it to every event.
Maybe I can say more.
I cared because I was watching some tense and interesting starcraft. Because of that, I want tournament entry to be as merit based as possible.
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Aotearoa39261 Posts
On April 21 2012 03:18 mewo wrote:Show nested quote +On April 21 2012 03:11 Plexa wrote:On April 21 2012 03:08 mewo wrote:
I cared. The wife and I were pulling for squirtle bigtime. Broke my heart to see him run out of has when he was playing so well. Parting thing for gstl was a shame. Really ruined a lot of the tourney for me. We like the Koreans. Its cute how they constantly groom themselves. That's the problem with speaking in generalities, they are exactly that - generalities. Oh and a tldr; for those who can't be bothered reading it. I think there is a legitimate need for tournaments to start assisting the best foreign players to tournaments (by best I mean those who are able to illustrate it in some kind of qualifier setting) so that we are always sending the best foreigners to every event and not those who live near by or have the support/backing to make it to every event. Maybe I can say more. I cared because I was watching some tense and interesting starcraft. Because of that, I want tournament entry to be as merit based as possible.
Good point, but a good question to ask is whether or not IPL4 was as merit based as possible (or any tournament for that matter) when the 'qualifiers' for the 'main tournament' are held on site limiting the access to those who have the financial backing to attend?
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Alot of people are going to take different things from this post - for me, it's a good reasoning on why the skillgap between koreans and foreigners are increasing.
I leave this point - imagine if FruitDealer, Tester, Cliiiiiidddddeee and Ensnare were still playing - instead of talking about the gulf between koreans and foreigners, we would instead be talking about how foreigners have closed the skill gap.
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United States32929 Posts
It didn't even occur to me that I could scroll down and one-star without reading, thanks for reminding me so courteously on the first line ^_^
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completely agree, how can I not? It is, of course, easier said than done.
Like you said, big tournaments need to have long qualification process, where just about anyone can take part of similar to TSL3 and not limit it to an invite of top 32 names or something. This is of course much more work for the people organising it, and keeping it interesting is harder. However, it truly lets us bring out a whole new level of talent out of the foreign community and help the foreign community gain way more skill.
Of course, it's 'easier' to just invite some random top players, get 20-30k stream viewers and conclude that we had gg's. At the end of the day, nobody got better and no new talent emerged.
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I very much agree, whenever a "faceless korean" wins a tournament its cool because of the high skilled involved and all but you have no connection to them like you do with a foreign player such a HuK.
They don't speak our language and they're not involved in our community like the "foreign" players are so its alot harder to get cheer for something that you just don't anything about other than whats in the TLPD.
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Aotearoa39261 Posts
On April 21 2012 03:23 Waxangel wrote:
It didn't even occur to me that I could scroll down and one-star without reading, thanks for reminding me so courteously on the first line ^_^
anytime wax,
anytime
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Plexa hits the nail on the head. Development of a foreign scene exclusively is not a bad thing. Think of it as timbering out old growth so that the new growth doesn't get choked out.
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On April 21 2012 03:19 Plexa wrote:Show nested quote +On April 21 2012 03:18 mewo wrote:On April 21 2012 03:11 Plexa wrote:On April 21 2012 03:08 mewo wrote:
I cared. The wife and I were pulling for squirtle bigtime. Broke my heart to see him run out of has when he was playing so well. Parting thing for gstl was a shame. Really ruined a lot of the tourney for me. We like the Koreans. Its cute how they constantly groom themselves. That's the problem with speaking in generalities, they are exactly that - generalities. Oh and a tldr; for those who can't be bothered reading it. I think there is a legitimate need for tournaments to start assisting the best foreign players to tournaments (by best I mean those who are able to illustrate it in some kind of qualifier setting) so that we are always sending the best foreigners to every event and not those who live near by or have the support/backing to make it to every event. Maybe I can say more. I cared because I was watching some tense and interesting starcraft. Because of that, I want tournament entry to be as merit based as possible. Good point, but a good question to ask is whether or not IPL4 was as merit based as possible (or any tournament for that matter) when the 'qualifiers' for the 'main tournament' are held on site limiting the access to those who have the financial backing to attend?
I'd rather have that money put towards players that will play some amazing starcraft. I think it isn't so much a lack of upward mobility for players as it is an incredibly large skill gap between lower level and higher level pros. And I see no problem with paying more attention to a korean who is more skilled than a foreigner. Just look at Jinroh. He was a superstar during his ro4 gsl run and now he is quickly falling off the map.
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Agreed, not because I care about casuals but because there is top talent going to waste in the foreign scene.
I want more open qualifiers, and better coverage of those making name for themselves.
Have someone taking out well-knowns? Put them on stream ASAP.
Do I have to rate this 1-star because of the martyr?
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*My comment is a bit off topic but i just wana add this in*
you might wana check out the current growth of dota2... its 5 times faster than sc2 and once the game is merged into the gigantic chinese market, i dont think sc2 will remains the king of esports like what it is today.
Blizzard has done nothing good for esports. SC2 is a game we are forced to play in 2009 as a starcraft community but it has never been the game we deserved to have after spending more than a decades supporting BW, a game which the whole world except south korea thought was dead. Riot, Valve are doing the right things: LAN support, Free to Play, Gigantic prize pool and a none stop improving, listening their games based on the community feed back. Remember it took blizzard 1 years to implement the chat channel system which existed in 1998? The phoenix lifting bug inside sc2 for 3-4 patches for a period of 4 months? Well it tooks valve 2 weeks to change their entire shop UI in dota2 after beta officially launched.
Blizzard today, is not the blizzard we knew in 1998. With the incoming of some strong titles such as DotA2, CS:go, LoL... it would be a miracle if blizzard could fix their mistakes with the upcoming HoTS. The BNet 0.2 is now officially implemented in Diablo 3 and most likely will stay for HoTS and it is a virus that is killing esports.
Have a great summer plexa,
Love you!
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I'm confused, there was no foreigner competition at all in BW for the past 10 years, yet we care about Korean Proleague, Starleagues, teams and players and their storylines.
So I would argue that the "foreigner" aspect isn't all there is in terms of emotional connection. I feel the foreign side of ESPORTS coverage has gotten extremely self-absorbed with the notion of "OMG, maybe we can compete". Every article is about what foreigners might or might not accomplish whereas the storylines around Koreans in context with the Korean scene is extremely lackluster to non-existant.
Flash, Bisu, Jaedong, Stork, we don't care they're Korean because we've been reading translated articles concerning their lives and gaming for years. We've gotten the chance to identify with them as people, rather than it being another faceless Korean. We need a more in-depth view of the Korean scene and it's personalities so we can pick someone to cheer for, even when the games suck or there are no foreigners.
For instance, I'd love to know the man behind Squirtle. Where was he born, what kind of person does he see himself as, how was his youth, what hobby's does he have, what games does he play, how did he get on Startale, gossip concerning teammates etc etc.
You won in an exciting game 3:
The games went as planned for me, so i was able to win. I want to thank teammates for practice and my fans for cheering, kthx bye.
That's not enough o_O
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LoL is heading in the same direction of Korean control. With how popular the game is there and how relentlessly the Koreans train.. in a few months they will probably be the top teams in the world for sure.
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I started watching IPL4 (business as usual), but I just had to stop. The reason for it does not lie with IPL and its staff, but within myself. The non-modded TL Live report Thread almost made me angry. I was literally shocked how people behaved on tl and that this had no consequenses. LRs shouldn`t be moderated as harsh as other threads because there are so many spontanious emotions. BUT the IPL4 LR was unbearable for me. So I decided to leave TL for the day after all the posts by people who wanted the people to act sane again, were simply ignored.
I watched the ongoing game and followed twitter for a while, but it wasn`t the same. I missed the older LRs. I missed the positive comments. I missed the caring mods. It ended very surprising for me. I just stops watching after that game was over and never tuned in again for the whole tournament.
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EPT
