[Code S] Grand Finals 2013 GSL Season 1 - Page 93

On March 11 2013 06:35 VManOfMana wrote:


Your analogy falls down because you assume X and Y are unrelated groups, and being "the best" is a deliberate call.

Generally speaking, the CS and Halo scenes, the Smash and Street Fighter scenes, and other "similar" scenes developed in parallel. This is not the case with the BW and SCII scenes, where one of them pretty much branched off the other from the bottom of the ranks.

It was well stablished that the Korean Brood War was the single most skillfull and competitive RTS scene in the world. Thats what made them "the best", rather than a deliberate call between game fanboys.

It was also well stablished that within the Korean RTS scene, KeSPA teams had the best players. Either because of talent, hard work, or both.

WCG was a yearly reminder of how far Korea was compared to the rest of the world. The Courage tournament was proof that KeSPA had the best players within Korea.

At the time the Elephant article was written, the Starcraft II eSports scene was mainly made out of former BW players: the foreigners who were crushed in WCG, and the Koreans who struggled to stay competitive.

If you know where a lot of these players came from, and saw them compete prior to SCII, you don't need to be a genius to deduce that moving to the new game while you can is the smartest move. Because learning from history, its also only a matter of time before the foreigner scene becomes competitively irrelevant (this is what I consider the other Elephant in the Room).

The elephant article also explains why KeSPa players are the best: hard work and dedication. There is a whole section explaining this, but it gets lost with the constant bickering on specific players and counting months. The article singles out S-class players, but not because they will magically transition into SCII S-class. Flash and Jaedong were the epitome the epitome of KeSPA work ethic. Fantasy was the best example of a team working together to dissect an opponent.

If anything, Roro winning GSL is a great example of how a player can reach the top with both hard work and help from his coaches, team, and other team's players. From the interview, you can see there was a lot of preparation.

The Elephant article was brutally written, but it was honest and based on facts. It was incendiary because it revealed an inconvenient truth to the hordes of new TL posters who were oblivious or simply refused to acknowledge eSports were a reality before and without Starcraft II and Blizzard's intervention.

On the other hand, the article did not consider other factors. KeSPAs delayed adoption of SCII too much, first by Blizzard and then hybrid Proleague. There is also a new generational transition that brought extremely talented players like Life. I wouldn't be surprised if under the right circumstances, Life would make it to be a top BW player.

On March 11 2013 06:48 Emzeeshady wrote:

It is wrong that you are assuming something that is still in contention. I think players like Stephano have already proven that natural talent can make up for practice differences. Look at his run in HOTS. He beat 3 players that had been practicing HOTS for months when he just less then a week ago. His only loses were to Terran players and Parting and considering the state of the game that is very impressive.

Anyway the point is that practicing the most will not make you the best. Perhaps the reason there are still so few Kespa players in Code S is because spending every moment practicing is not optimal.

On March 11 2013 06:48 Emzeeshady wrote:

It is wrong that you are assuming something that is still in contention. I think players like Stephano have already proven that natural talent can make up for practice differences. Look at his run in HOTS. He beat 3 players that had been practicing HOTS for months when he just less then a week ago. His only loses were to Terran players and Parting and considering the state of the game that is very impressive.

Anyway the point is that practicing the most will not make you the best. Perhaps the reason there are still so few Kespa players in Code S is because spending every moment practicing is not optimal.

[Like, think about it; if it were easy to go from 0 to top level in only a few months just because someone else created the meta-game, then why do we all think of foreigners, besides Stephano, as auto-wins for Koreans? Surely foreigners would have some level of competence when they've already figured out the meta-game? They move that fast because they practice more.

On March 11 2013 07:34 Vesky wrote:
The BW players basically had to learn a slightly different game, and the current metagame. They did so in a few months. I'm not going to try to analyze the exact difference between top ESF and kespa players regarding practice, but I think that plenty of ESF players will still be able to compete. Something around a 50/50 split in the future seems reasonable.

On March 11 2013 07:50 Talin wrote:


Pretty convenient to say that in the situation when the split is currently around 50/50.

However, if you observe the trend since the switch, it's not very likely to stay 50/50 in the future. Besides, there's also the possibility of players following Parting's decision to switch to a Proleague team or signing their first contract with them.

I don't see many players that will be willing to sign/stay with Prime, MVP or NSHS (if they even exist) over the Telecoms and Samsung Khan in the future. At least not those that are willing to 100% commit to a progaming career and have made enough of a splash to warrant a place on the A team.

On March 11 2013 07:56 Maghetti wrote:
My persona view of the elephant in the room article is that you have to look at it in a sort of neo elephant way. At the time the article was written the level of competition in sc2 was much lower than it is now so it is not unreasonable to say the kespa players maybe would have quickly dominated at the time, but since the switch came much later we have to make adjustments for the article. The time frame and level of competition means expectations for the idea behind the article to be right has to be greatly extended. Another thing the article didn't account for is players who do not like the game as much, are more distracted by things in their lives, and other similar issues that pop up. Bisu or Stork may just be past their prime, distracted, etc. Therefore, to me, for the elephant in the room article to be applied to what is happening in the sc2 scene today we must look at what eventually happens rather than focusing on the articles time lines. If kespa ultimately dominates the scene I will consider the article correct, even if not all kespa players dominate as expected.

With a kespa player winning the gsl and more and more kespa players making it to code a and code s I consider the correctness of the article still up in the air.

On March 11 2013 08:02 Thrillz wrote:


But the article is wrong, it made bold predictions that didn't come true. What you are basically doing is editing the article so it makes more reasonable predictions that are likely to come true. If it made reasonable predictions that accounted for everything you have stated in the first place then it could be correct. At this moment it not unreasonable that eventually Kespa will get the upper hand, hell everyone believes that it will eventually happen.

On March 11 2013 07:16 HolyArrow wrote:


I assume X and Y are unrelated groups? What exactly is your definition of "related"? Lol. I explicitly use terms like "similar activities" and "different game of the same genre", and for the purposes of the analogy, that's related enough. You're trying to discredit my analogy by conveniently nitpicking a very specific point about how the scenes developed (developed in parallel vs. branched off), but the main point is that figq's logic can basically be distilled down to what I summarized it to be. The only difference between scenes developing in parallel vs. branching off is that you can observe that the players who branched off into SC2 were the ones who weren't doing well in BW so they had to switch, so you have a tangible skill comparison somewhere down the line. However, that doesn't change the fact that my analogy involves groups doing similar activities and hence will have roughly similar abilities, similar enough to transfer from one activity to the other. And just having one tangible skill comparison in Starcraft's case hardly even matters at this point because it's already been seen that skill in BW doesn't perfectly correlate at all to skill in SC2.

You claim that the elephant article was based on facts, but that's only a half-truth. It certainly did USE facts, but just because someone uses facts in their argument doesn't make the argument itself valid. One can use facts and then jump to a nonsensical conclusion by using those facts, giving the conclusion a false aura of legitimacy.

On March 11 2013 08:14 Maghetti wrote:

Incorrect. The article does not apply to the here and now. It simply doesn't. Had the kespa players switched the day of this article and kespa players improved over time like they are now, only then would it be incorrect. So we can either say it was never tested, or we can try to adjust it to a new time frame. This is how you have to handle anything that is from a different time line. Constitions and laws have to be adjusted to new conditions appear. All modern day supporters of the elephant concept are neo elephanters because there is no other way to look at that article.

On March 11 2013 08:23 Thrillz wrote:


This isn't constitutional law though, (even if it was, laws are adjusted and changed because the original was insufficient/not good enough/wrong in some areas.) It was a bold-prediction that gave zero shits for possible failure, they knew Kespa wouldn't switch at the time of the article, they gave zero shits about timeframe. They just outright predicted dominance when the switch happened and says so right there. Predicting that Kespa will over a long period of time eventually be the major force isn't anything that the Elephant article predicted at all (as they predicted "CRUSH" when they do switch).......it's a reasonable prediction that almost everyone would make (and did make to counter the Elephant article).

On March 11 2013 08:37 Maghetti wrote:

Sorry but the specifics only apply to that time frame. Sure you can say they were "wrong" but the only people who cares about that are people who were against the article to begin with. The only thing that should matter is that they get to the point of dominance in a reasonable time frame. That is the heart of the article, that the kespa players are better and the elite of the kespa players are even better than that. This is still up in the air and undecided, but if you want to argue specifics by all means, it wont matter to anyone you are trying to convince.

On March 11 2013 08:45 Thrillz wrote:


Saying kespas betters will eventually be better is perfectly reasonable and not something any denies. If that was only it's point no one would be slamming it. Read the article thoroughly once again if you want to see why people are slamming it because they threw caution out of the air. It states right there that they will dominate within a few months, and that didn't happen. People were against it because it made a lot of assumptions, and threw caution out of the air. Had they been more caution and reasonable, no one would be slamming it. Most people already believe the Elephant articles specific predictions are wrong....anyways...it's slowly dying. But it's still a fun little trash talk thing between kespa and esf.

On March 11 2013 08:42 Die4Ever wrote:
The elephant in the room wasn't even about Kespa, it was about the top Kespa players. If Kespa buys top ESF pros then they do not count as elephants, if Kespa recruits new players then they do not count as elephants, if Roro becomes the best SC2 player in the world and dominates everyone then he is still not an elephant because it would prove that BW skill does not directly translate to SC2 skill.

It seems to be a matter of effort - not only is Jaedong talented, but he puts in the work. Former BW pros in SC2 have the mechanics and game sense that they gained through practice, and this is their advantage. But unless they can keep it up in the less structured environment of SC2 houses, they will certainly fall behind when high-level BW pros bring over their work ethic and determination.

On March 11 2013 09:30 VManOfMana wrote:


The elephant in the room article was about KeSPA players in general. That is why in the conclusion, the article says "300 pros and semi-pros".

The elephant article is *NOT* about the translation of BW skills into SC2. The S-class players are used to illustrate the reason why KeSPA players will dominate: practice, as explained in "Why do these specific players do so well?"

From the article:



The article doesn't say that SC2 pros are bad, or not talented.

If anything, Roro is a vindication of KeSPA's system: he overcame the weak points of his game thru practice, as he explained in the winner interview.