5/5 would read again.
I hate esports. - Page 7
Blogs > Gheed |
atombombforpeace
United States408 Posts
5/5 would read again. | ||
Gonff
United States686 Posts
That still doesn't mean we can't yearn for more people to enjoy the game with us. You said: On May 02 2012 10:20 Gheed wrote: Maybe some Koreans would start playing our game, and we could watch them on a stream. It might not be in English, but everything sounds better with Korean commentary, anyway. And then when someone sees the Korean scene, gets wide-eyed and has some stupid pipe dream about western players being as good as the Koreans, or having a gaming scene as developed as theirs, we could promptly tell them to shut the fuck up, never speak of it again, and continue with our fun. Isn't that proverbial fork in the road where teamliquid (and foreign Starcraft in general) was a few years ago? I'm guessing more than a few community members at that time wanted to see "esports" grow, and they had no problem continuing to have fun with the game while it did in fact grow. Jinro's analogy is right on point I think. Skateboarding is on ESPN several times a year, commentated by well-dressed broadcasters who aren't allowed to use profanity. Did the fact that many skateboarders desired this state of affairs kill their own enjoyment of the sport? Ultimately, I don't see any reason why we can't have it both ways. A few forum threads bemoaning racism or urging better dress are not enough to disenfranchise me from the game I enjoy and they shouldn't do that to you either. I play SC2 because I enjoy it, and I want professional starcraft to grow bigger and better because I enjoy watching it. + Show Spoiler + This post immediately came to mind not because of what it says about TL user conduct, but because of what it says about being a Starcraft fan historically. For a long time and for many people, Starcraft has involved both enjoying the game on a personal level and fostering its growth as a legitimate spectator esport. On May 08 2011 10:23 mahnini wrote: what people are forgetting is that TL has high standards for the conduct of their users. due to the explosion of new users and lack of sufficient manpower to moderate a lot of people think TL is just some forum where you can post whatever you feel like with no repercussions. that couldn't be anywhere further from the truth. this is going to sound super elitist but i don't care because it's the truth. TL is one of the foundations for why sc2 is the way it is today. TL is one of the reasons western esports even stands a chance. for 10 years through thick and thin our little community kept cranking out coverage of a video game from across the world that many have heard of but few truly understood. all the mods and staff you see aren't here doing it for the money or power, they do it because they love the game and the community. hot_bid, chill, kennigit? they all started as regular users who browsed the forum and loved the game. through contributions to the site and dedication they were selected to be among the proud few who could call themselves TL staff. think about how easy it is today for you to get a stream to watch sc2 and remember that back in 2005 TL members would stay up till 2am on irc hoping that one of our members MAYBE could get their hands on a korean stream. remember that when WCG had no idea what TL was or how to get a proper caster TL's support and encouragement helped propel tasteless to caster fame. TLPD? possibly the most comprehensive starcraft database in existence? made from the ground up by TL staff and volunteers. our strategy forums are probably the most informative english resources in the world, they have to be moderated and still we don't consider them to be perfect. articles, fpvods, commentaries? our users put their heart and soul into churning these out because they knew somewhere out there in our community there was someone who would appreciate it. people need to stop considering TL a separate entity or some conglomerate of egotistic admins. TL is YOU. every single poster, viewer, or reader is part of TL. everything on this site is user generated by people who care and it's a damn shame when one of only sites that will literally take a stand for the community and uphold it's integrity is seen as some overzealous, overmoderated, egotistic, site for elitists. if that's elitist then i'm an elitist and that's just how it is. http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/viewmessage.php?topic_id=220441¤tpage=48#952 | ||
Telcontar
United Kingdom16710 Posts
Fuck esports. | ||
beatitudes
United States167 Posts
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Dodgin
Canada39254 Posts
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konadora
Singapore66063 Posts
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Grovbolle
Denmark3804 Posts
Now I don't really feel like playing anymore, the game feels dull for me, I have no desire to "become better", and my friends seldomly play the game anymore. So now I watch SC2 tournaments, not "FOR ESPORTS", but for me, for my own entertainment. Will I be sad if MLG, GSL, IPL etc. dies because I didn't support esports, probably not. I respect the players who are trying to make a living from this. But I don't feel like they should be entitled to our "FOR ESPORTS"-support. Just my 2 cents, D3 will be my next love. Luckily that isn't made with esports in mind.... | ||
]343[
United States10328 Posts
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Air2gear
177 Posts
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Talin
Montenegro10532 Posts
I love you. | ||
breakingties
United Kingdom72 Posts
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echO [W]
United States1495 Posts
On May 02 2012 12:18 Liquid`Jinro wrote: What a retarded thread lol It's like whining about professional soccer destroying your ability to kick a ball around with your friends. Esports evangelicism can be annoying as fuck, I dont disagree, but your post is silly. Totally agree with Jinro here. Also, I don't know about you, but even with this growth/clean cut/"mainstreaming" of eSports, I'm having just as much fun as before. | ||
[N3O]r3d33m3r
Germany673 Posts
... more professionalism and accomodation which leads to higher skilled players ... the mroe mainstream it is, the more accepting it will be ... and last but not least things like barcraft open up a whole new experience you can have with this game | ||
Taku
Canada2036 Posts
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Badinoff
15 Posts
Reddit, by the nature of how it is organized, is highly prone to creating echo chambers. It isn't an entirely fatal flaw, as long as the users are aware of it. The danger comes when users get all of their information on a given topic from a subreddit. It gets really bad when this is true for most of the users in the subreddit, especially with subreddits about niche topics. The voting system enforces a tyranny of the majority that effectively silences dissenting opinions. This creates a positive feedback loop that continually reinforces the prevailing opinion. From the inside, it is easy to mistake this groupthink for gospel truth. Any threat (real or imagined) to the groupthink status quo whips the users into a frenzy in defense of their viewpoint. The eSports movement is not the only manifestation of this phenomenon, and is certainly not the worst by a long shot. Truly reprehensible things have come out of this, especially when the greater Reddit community is either unaware of it or defends it under their interpretation of "free speech" (which is another example in itself, to a degree). Please do not take my choice of examples below as any sort of direct comparison to r/starcraft, but instead simply recognize the parallels in group behavior. Look at r/MensRights. There is such a thing as legitimate men's rights issues. I don't know if the subreddit was created to discuss them, but it's a niche issue that's a good fit for something like a subreddit or Usenet group. Sadly, you will not find anything of the sort in r/MensRights. It's a deplorable circlejerk of misogynists paranoid about women falsely accusing them of rape at every turn, and then in the same breath blaming rape victims for what was done to them. If you dig around a bit, you can find people that think women are trying to steal their seed to get pregnant as some sort of convoluted plot to exploit them for child support money. These attitudes would never be acceptable under any sort of social norms, but if you try to call them out on their home turf they all gang up and downvote you into oblivion. Of course, the title of worst of the horrific subreddits goes to the only one to be shut down: r/jailbait and its offshoots. The purpose of these subreddits was for pedophiles (ephebophiles if you want to be pendantic) to exchange pictures of teenage girls. They toed a fine line of legality in that the girls in the pictures were clothed, but usually just barely (swimsuits, etc). Most of the pictures came from hacked facebook accounts and the like. Long story short, it was a bunch of creepy dudes jerking off to stolen vacation pictures of teenage girls. Oh, and the owner of these "communities" was colluding with the site admins behind the scenes to keep them open, further reinforcing the idea in the minds of the users that this was acceptable behavior. When r/jailbait became the subject of a segment by CNN's Anderson Cooper, the creeper community banded together in solidarity against this threat. In their minds, what they were doing was OK because other people in the subreddit thought it was OK, and the bad man on the news was out to get them. They then proceded to paste Anderson Cooper's head onto the body of teenage girls in mspaint as some sort of creepy retaliation. The original r/jailbait was finally shut down after it was found that posters were using the subreddit as a meeting place to send each other actual child porn in private messages. The subreddit was recreated under several different names and was allowed to continue oporating for quite some time. This paragraph is already far longer than I planned, so you can find a summary of how it finally ended here. Suffice to say that normal people were shocked and appalled that this existed, and the pedophiles tried to play the persecuted victim to the bitter end. Again, I am NOT in any way implying that eSports evangelists are pedophiles or anything like that. However, the communications medium has the same effect on the community. In this case, it has taken the simple well-intentioned idea of being supportive of competitive gaming and built it up into some kind of fucked up manifest destiny that ends in SC2 on ESPN. Everyone involved gets held to this unrealistic E-bushido ideal of conduct that assumes they have to be on their best behavior because that shit won't fly when they're on TV. When someone is found to be in violation of E-bushido, it isn't enough to tell them to not act like a douche in the future because their personal offense is some kind of blight on the image of the community. By harming the image of competitive gaming as a whole, they are obstructing manifest destiny and therefore are KILLING ESPORTS. Gheed's blog killing eSports, really? You might as well go on Fox News and accuse him of hating America. Now, the best way to combat this is for a subreddit to be one of several places to discuss a topic so that there is enough outside input to break the positive feedback loop. A little perspective goes a long way, and the sooner the better. This is a rather difficult proposition with TL being the only other big (English language) SC2 site I know of. The best we can do is to cultivate realistic viewpoints about competitive gaming and call out the zealots where we can. That being said, here's my bit of perspective:
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Jayme
United States5866 Posts
I remember some quote from an SC2 developer where he said something along the lines of "we had fun ideas to use but we kicked those ideas out in favor of competitive play." I kinda miss the days where people made games to be fun first and the community is the one that fostered the competitiveness after that. I can't count the number of times people will pay for a subscription they say is SUBPAR on twitch and do it "for esports." What incentive do these people have to make things better when you throw your money at an inferior product? Your money is your voice when things go industrial, remember that. | ||
d9mmdi
Germany179 Posts
on the topic: i totally agree except that i want sc2 to grow just so that i can enjoy it more. In line with what your saying i dont play i just enjoy watching but i dont care about "eSports". I just want to watch the best sc2 that there can be. I understand when people like Dj Wheat fight for the groth of all of competitive games given his background. But he and others shouldnt require all sc2 fans to think in the same way. I for one, only want to enjoy sc2, not eSports. doing something as long as its genuinely fun and not a crusade good way to stay grounded | ||
sheaRZerg
United States613 Posts
I guess I have always held a sort of a negative view of the commercialism in professional sports in this country as well. I followed soccer (mostly European teams) all through high school. I am not convinced that the commercialism was any less extreme over there, but I was at least distanced from it, and it didn't bug me as much. | ||
tomatriedes
New Zealand5356 Posts
+ Show Spoiler + And the spoiler section was a little boring and unnecessary to be honest. | ||
ShadowDrgn
United States2497 Posts
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