My probably terrible league idea

This is a probably terrible idea but I've been thinking about this for almost ever.

Here’s the skinny of it:
12 teams - either 2 6 team groups of 1 large table.
Each team plays each other twice(unless there is division, then they play each other 3 or 4 times)
4 team playoff or 6 team playoff
promotion and relegation - Botton 4 goes to relegation where they play qualifying team for their spot in the overall league.
“but var1ables, where do you get the teams?”
This might be kinda weird but I'm guessing that it’s going to go two way, Either through  selecting the best teams from the best leagues of each nation(EPS or whatever each country uses).  Those guys get an autoberth. If not invite or tournament to decide the participants.

After the first season the teams still there then it’ll go something like this:
all the winners of the national tournaments go to a tournament. THe people who win then go on to play the bottom for of this league.

This allows for the national leagues to stay that - national - as well as give them some importance to the overall scene.

For CS it’d be something like this(bold go to playoffs):
IDEA A:
Group a
SK
mTw
winfakt
mouz
Lions
alternate

Group  B
fnatic
navi
Again
ESC
anexis
Moscow 5 

IDEA B:

SK
mTw
winfakt
navi
fnatic
mouz
anexis
Lions
alternate
Moscow 5
Again
ESC

Going backwards

eSports has been around for about 15 years now. For about 10 of those years we’ve had “major leagues” and “Olympic of eSports” but we’ve done nothing to deserve those things. Why? because we’re imitating the real world sports - and doing it poorly.

 You see the things people at MLG(them especially because they took the first two words of the MOST BELOVED SPORT IN THE THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA), IEM, WCG, and ESWC don’t do when imitating the sports is do research. You know why these major leagues formed - MLB, NHL, NBA and the like - formed was because the teams which were already around decided to make their own league instead of having some sort of ridiculous independent system which ranks teams on some sort of formula or polls(See NCAA). It also made it much easier to schedule and make rankings that could be considered official.

 They also were made to fuck over the players and try to keep the salaries and costs low. But that’s another topic entirely.

 So basically the pro teams existed long before the league. MLB, NHL, NFL, NBA all had professional teams which made up their league - not the league which made the teams. Or the leagues that gave the teams validity(ie places to compete with the best). The teams were already competing with other teams - and the best ones floated to the top, got managers and formed their own league.

 I’m not sure about all of soccer(futbol for your damned euro’s) but i know that the EPL was formed only 20 years ago - from the teams which were the best in England and had nowhere to play.

 I think more then anything the teams need to actually work together - and then form their own rankings and actually hold each other accountable and enforce their damn contracts. And the leagues are doing it totally backwards: they've got the "major league" feel without doing what was done in order to do what traditional sports did to get there.

 And none of the teams invest into development - which means that we're hoping that we get lucky when somebody gets called up into the majors or we have to pay/buyout another organization to get the talent need to get better results. The only one i can think of is a call back to 2004 when complexity sponsored forsaken - a team which once held coL’s place as America's second team. It’s also ironic that they are the only team which has ever even tried to hold “academies” or sponsorship tournaments.

 This will serve 2 purposes: you’ll be able to ACTUALLY HAVE PEOPLE THERE TO CALL UP WHEN SOMEBODY RETIRES. And unlike starcraft - which no matter how close knit a team is it’s still an individual game - having a player retire/be traded/get bought out in a game like counter-strike, TF2, Halo or the like really can hinder team performance, especially if your in a country like America where talent is few and far between for CS and is equally hard to hold onto. The second reason why this is important is it gives you leverage against both the current players(who could be replaced easily by the up and comers) and against your rivals for those players(as you have both young talent and you can sell them such talent for a profit by the sales of such talents).

 And instead of getting TV/radio/streaming rights for their matches(read, revenue) they're doing it all out of pocket meaning that most of the stress is on them. Especially when organizations are finally becoming big enough to to demand such things and streamers are getting the revenue needed to actually purchase such rights. But this’ll be talked about much later down the road.

TL;DR - nobody's doing anything right, and nobody bothered to open up a damn book and do some research.

eSports history time

You expected me to write all this shit down? WHO THE FUCK DO YOU THINK I AM....I'll do that later. Right now is recommendation time - and this stuff is important. Well not really(in the grand scheme of things) but at least you'll be better educated by watching/reading most of them.

Videos:
Watch all of thorins interviews. ALL OF THEM. Seriously. THEY'RE AMAZING:

Watch compLexity redemption, the story of compLexity's second major and first top8 placing at winter CPL 2004. In the next year they'd become the best team in competitive counter-strike after winning ESWC 2005.

Watch Team3D at WSVG louisville, like coL redemption documents 3D's win at the first WSVG event.

Watch E-Athletes, the story of the rivalry between coL and 3D. It's basically the TL;DR version of Gameboys but it's good never the less.

Watch FRAG Pro Gaming Documentary the downer of the group is probably the most negative one of the bunch. It deals with how shittily regulated the current scene is and how the CPL are/were total dicks to both their players and their winners. Also documents how a great player couldn't get a sponsor despite being awesome(and is stated that he couldn't get it because he's black).


Books:
As a massive counter-strike fan i can't help but say that Game Boys: Triumph, Heartbreak, and the Quest for Cash in the Battleground of Competitive Videogaming is a great book that documents the rivalry that took place from 2004-2009 between compLexity gaming and Team3D.I've even done a poorly written review.


Next is Korea's Online Gaming Empire. It's more of a statistical analysis of how fucking big the korean gaming business is but the last 2/3 of the book are dedicated to the korean pro gaming scene. It's actually an incredible read and where i learned the most about how shittly the starcraft players are treated in korea.(i'll write a review of this book....eventually)

This is the only book, The StarCraft Bible 2nd Edition: Who knew that explosions of pixels could inspire? i've not read but from what i have read(from the free stuff chobopeon has posted on teamliquid and the short audio version) it's fucking incredible. Someday i'm going to do this for counter-strike, although i really hope that somebody else does who can do the game justice. This is probably going to blow my mind while reading it, but idk yeat.

Good and the bad, and the growth of eSports

GOOD:

People are actually watching

people are watching gaming - a concept that didn’t seem possible even 3 years ago at the level it is right now. Even people who have never really competed in some of the games, nor do they ever plan to, will watch just to be amazed by the genius of some of the players. Perfect example of this is cross pollination of some of the CS crowd to the SC2 scene, where some of the older players who have grown tired of CS have started to watch SC2.

People are starting to make a profit

And I'm not talking shady profiteering profit. I’m talking actually covering operating cost and making more than that. MLG’s CEO, Sundance Digiovanni, has state numerous times that he fully expects that this year they will be profitable - heavy of the coat tails of SC2 and also trying to shift focus from the sale of the MLG brand to having a sustainable business model. Fnatic, in an article with wired, are also(finally) profitable after many years of hard work. And ESEA’s Craig Levine, who hasn’t stated that they are actually profitable, sure seems to be from the growth of both the league itself and the services they’ve been providing for years. And the best part is that they are actually paying out their contracts - to competitors and to players. Those two things - paying out and actually being profitable - seemed to be mutually exclusively 2 years ago. Now it’s becoming an occurrence which is becoming increasingly consistent.

New people have come to the sport

SC2, as much as i’ve been resistant to it being the sole eSport, ha helped this a lot as it brought a lot of people and really, really, really grew the fanbase of not just it, but eSports in general. That and the Fighting Game Community(FGC) move to streaming has made them open up their eyes to whats out there(they didn't’ consider themselves a member of the eSports community even a year ago). The console community, through SC2, has started to not only learn how to stream their games on their own, but also what games like CS, quake, and LoL - which helped not only them learn about these older and much more structured gaming communities, but also allowed them to move into a space and help extend their brand outside their world.

People are having babies

Watching Djwheat teach miniwheat how to play starcraft 2 made me realize amazing for someone like me. People who i grew up looking up to in gaming are having kids. And they’re teaching them how awesome gaming is. Why is this good? People are old enough to be parents, AND THEY ARE TEACHING THEM HOW TO LOVE GAMING. We’ll have SECOND GENERATION players in 5 to 10 years. And they’ll be better. And they’ll be smarter. Pretty amazing if you ask me.

THE BAD:

People are stupid and ignorant

and no that’s not redundant. Everytime i read teamliquid, SRK, HLTV etc i always have to cringe. These people like not having events streamed(SRK) for some reason I've yet to understand. These people like how KeSPA managed players(TL). People actually think sirscoots founded lead and made Evil Geniuses what they are today(FUCKING EVERYBODY NEW). It feels like i have to yell at them or be condescending(which i do anyways because i’m a dick). Especially the last one. It seems no matter how many interviews happen, no matter how many streams are done, no many how much information is out there for the taking people are still stupid and still don’t take the knowledge they are given to them

Journalism Sucks

Straight up. Journalism in eSports is only one step above general gaming - which the people who are supposed to be critiquing and covering organizations are sponsored either directly or indirectly by the same people they are trying to critique. The opposite is also true, as i have experienced at insider eSports - that despite having good content and great coverage of games we couldn’t get a single sponsor because we were on some body's shit list or the people who were supposed to be helping us with the sponsor situation would either a) leave and take the sponsors with them b) go to a bigger organization or finally c) go work for the people who are supposed to be giving us money. Not exactly a conducive situation to finding funding. ANd it gets worst when the web 2.0er’s, especially in TL, don’t ever seem to realize that by posting news they are journalists - whether they like it or not - and therefore must do the due diligence that any journalist would, and it’s simple common courtesy to approach people for statements when you KNOW A SHIT STORM WILL HAPPEN IF YOU POST YOUR THREAD.

Players are either jaded or stupid

players seem to fear big organizations or seem to not get what they can do for them. Look at the root-gaming buy out for example: you have a group of guys in jax, jlake and jbass who have invest heavily into the sport, and in the case of jlake almost bankrupted himself for it, and the SC players didn’t want to join them. Even with the star studded roster they couldn’t get any sponsors on their own, so why did they split off to try to get them now? And coL HAS sponsors. And HAS had a history of providing for players. With the exception of some of the gaffs(releasing a team for roster moves, then picking up a game which is known for roster moves: contracting players then releasing them immediately) i don’t think coL is that bad of an organization. As i’ve said before - what were they afraid of by joining a big organization? That they wouldn’t have to eat top ramen every day to save in hopes of going to events? Or that they’d have time to practice instead of worrying about travel expenses? I seriously just don’t get why there’s some hostility to the bigger organizations. Now i'm not saying not to read all the contracts or sign immediately but they really need to think of the reputation each has - and certainly coL carries more than almost any other organization out there.


Contracts don’t mean shit

Every couple of weeks i see either a contract dispute or a player being in trouble because of a clause in a contract they weren’t aware of which led to all sorts of problems for them. But rest easy as these contracts don’t mean anything - as is demonstrated by the hatred SKgaming has for Fnatic and vice versa. If they’re willing to steal each others players - GUX for fnatic and Delpand in Sk’s case - without any real problem we have a big problem. If they were legit one would take the other to court - and win big. If the biggest organizations in the west contracts don’t mean shit god help us for this sport to ever be important. So break them as you please, nobody seems to care.

Maybe i'm hearing this wrong...

But is Milkis saying that KeSpa worked? What the fuck world is he living in. You think 14 hours a day of practice - MANDATORY. SEVEN DAYS A WEEK. FOR MINIMUM WAGE. As GOOD? You think doing that, and NEVER getting a shot at competing in a major because you're on the managers shit list, or even more heinous - being foreign - as GOOD. Or never being able to have a girlfriend or friends outside of the organization as GOOD. Or the possibility of being forced around to different teams - for no fault of your own. Or banning players for chatting - EVEN ACCIDENTALLY - or wanting to change their settings mid game is GOOD?

And KeSpa(the Korean eSports players association) was actually an owners association, run by the sponsors and never actually took the players perspective into their discussion. Or that the financial backing - from company like Hite, OGN, pantech, stx, eStro - isn't necessarily as sturdy as they thought, leading to sudden shifts in sponsorship, forcing sales and movements of players from location to another. And sometimes even forcing players to lose what few intimate connections they have through trades or through dispersal drafts.

Maybe he's been living in a box, but those conditions are not what i consider GOOD.

Quick snippets of my thoughts

Being on a TV show does not make you relevant
Being on a TV show does not make qualified to interview people
Learn about who you are interviewing before you start the interview.
Try to look stuff up before you open your mouth
Sirscoots did not found EG
Owning stock in a company makes you responsible for what happens in your god damn company
Most of the major players in starcraft are ignorant douchebags
Don't talk about what you don't fucking know
Try to stick to things. Arguments happen, don't be a bitch.
You can't kill an idea
Starcraft is not eSports
EG, mouz, alternate, dignitas, SK, fnatic, mTw, coL and many more existed before starcraft
EG, mouz, alternate, dignitas, SK, fnatic, mTw, coL and many more are houses that CS built
Having 5,000+ followers/subscribers doesn't make you important
People need to remember that this is a hobby
Don't be a douchebag, it doesn't help anyone.

The greatest(gaming) misnomer of all time

I’ve been reading this for a long time on twitter, facebook, and (mainly) the MLG forums. This idea of “competitive” merit and this idea that there is such thing as a “competitive game” archetype. Now I've always considered it to be a minor problem - focusing mainly in the console community - but I've been hearing it from some people i respect now.

I’d like to say this: all games are competitive. Inherently. If score is being kept and theres a winner and a loser, the game is competitive. Don’t believe me? Ask the Donkey Kong players. Or DDR players. Hell even the cooperative play of some games could be considered competitive due to scoring, leveling and other aspect which have become common place in today's games.

So why do people consistently bring this point up? Mainly because they are misunderstanding what they are actually talking about. instead of using the word “competitive” which doesn’t make any sense in the context as I've provided they should be using “good” games. Something that has seriously been lacking modern games. In terms of pure gameplay mechanics(small bodies and crosshairs, autoaim etc) and measurements of raw skill(aim/accuracy for FPS and APM in RTS) most modern games do not compare to games like CS, quake, and SC:BW. Anyone who has played both will tell you that.

Why is this important? Basically because when the people who are complaining the loudest about the games are being ignored - simply because they are not approaching the developors correctly. For example the MLG community always talks about making games competitive/designing for them to be competitive - like HaloCE, CS, Quake and starcraft(all being accidentally competitive mind you) - missing the fact that if they simplay saying that are average instead of saying they are competitive(IE ~>5% of the average gaming population) just add the critique as if they are an average fan.

Greatest hits of eSports shit talk: first 2 weeks of June edition

Well I've not written in a while for a number of reason: i spent about a week walking around a meadow(which turned into a dust bowl) in Tennessee watching some best damn bands in of the world and then i just didn’t write for a while out of sheer laziness and apathy. And i caught up on my sleep and television.

But i missed some of the juiciest bits in eSports during that time span. And i just can’t resist all the pent of shit I've yet to spew out onto the page. So here’s my take of some of this stuff

SK steals Delpan from fnatic

If you are unfamiliar with the topic here’s the down low: Delpan, who is signed with fnatic’s prestigious counter-strike division, was signed to the biggest eSports organization in the world, Sk-gaming, who just happens to be the long time rival of that organization. Oh yeah, and the same fucking thing happened this time last year when GuX went to fnatic from Sk.

So what’s my take? Fuck both of them. SK-gaming should’ve had the moral high ground and been legit, buy out delpan’s contract and show fnatic how to run a god damn eSports organization. But they didn’t and decided to to take the low road and do the same thing they bitched about last year.

Fnatic’s a little bitch who got what was coming to them for stealing GuX last year:it’s karma, turnabout is fair play. You can’t just be a dick to people(laughing off sk-gaming and the G7’s negotiations to try to get them to pay SK for gux) and not expect for someone to to punch you in the face eventually. But it’s even worse because they had the nerve to complain about it.

To be honest i wanted this shit to go to court more than anything. So that this shit can never happen again. But fnatic is to much of a pussy to take Sk to court and SK would probably just end up paying fnatic off anyways.

Well at least we know that the contracts in eSports are still shitty.

Root Gaming is bought by compLexity: stars make team reign

Root Gaming finally decided enough was enough and saw that players can’t really manage themselves and compete at the highest level and get sponsors at the same time so they decided to close up shop and go to the second biggest organization in North American eSports - compLexity.

Is this a good idea? Part of me says yes. CompLexity gets the top tier talent they need to bolster their - quite frankly - shit tier starcraft lineup and root gets the sponsorships and time they need in order to properly compete as players.

What really confuses me is why would some of the stars - kiwikaki and slush - would look a gift horse in the mouth and decide to continue wondering if they can get to events by forming a new team, tewam reign. Frankly their ‘sponsor’ VT-gaming is a joke in comparison to compLexity. I was hoping that EG, fnatic, or Sk would approach these guys and sign them with a big ass deal that keep them set for life. But no. They decide to continue to eat top ramen and freak out every time they have to get to a LAN event.

Why? Worrying about whether you can travel sure must be fun. Or maybe they just don’t like money. What ever the reason they’re fucking stupid. What’re they worried about - coL abusing them and not sending them to events? When has that ever happened? Shit they’ve DROPPED teams for not wanting to go to events. Worried they’d go under? Jason lake’s got a law degree and is working for a law firm(and has almost bankrupted himself flying the former coL.cs team around the world) and he’s got two guys behind him who aren’t exactly broke - one who ran a pro CS team out of his own pocket and the other knows how to manage and run a business - i seriously doubt they’ll ever go under with these owners. And that doesn’t even look at their sponsors(who are apparently godlike).

Seriously, why? I still don’t know what they’re thinking.

It’s the same ol’ rodeo

I’ve seen this movie, I'm been to that ballpark, I've danced with that lady. More cliches about knowing how something plays out.

Now what am i talking about: not understanding the danger of having a lot of capital pushed into a game doesn’t make the game sustainable or long lasting. It only means that the first line of ‘professional’ players will get more money than the subsequent players will.

Time to stop being abstract. Time to be factual. Lets look at the history of games, or leagues for that matter, and see what they do with a massive cash infusions. How many have developed local scenes? Zero. How many have developed a tiered hierarchy which allows for promotion and relegation? Zero. How many farm systems exist for developing talent? Zero. How many from the beginning of the last decade still exist today? one. WCG. That’s it. Gaming has a pretty shitty track record, if you put a shit ton of money in it, of developing games or scenes which consistently grown talent and allow for the trickling up of the talent and the trickling down of prize money.

And that idea that rising tides float all boats. Unless that tide is a tsunami, and then smaller boats sink and the bigger boats just barely survive. What do i mean? Lets take starcraft II for example. As a recent Lo3 has stated(get the link eventually) if i was a venture capitalist or a sponsor,

Now lets compare this to the developments in both Europe and American in the last few years in specifically counter-strike, just by itself. In Europe ESL has been on the forefront of developing their talent through tournaments like the Inferno Online League and DreamHack in Sweden and the EPS/EAS throughout the whole continent. The latter, most notably, really does allow for a trickle up of talent, and then the trickle down of prize money. Other events, like the ASUS cups, and the now dead Arbalet cup series, proved to essentially revive counter-strike in Eastern Europe. In north America it took us much longer to do this. CEVO provided the initial “bail out” for CS, as it kept NA cs alive through the CGS years, but now ESEA has pretty much single handedily(yes i know that word sounds weird but i can’t think of anything better to put in) put CS back to what it was in 2004/2005, but this time we are now able to provide these players a consistent prize pot, provided mostly by the organization’s own revenue stream rather than clinging the sponsorship model which has failed us horribly.

Now why is this bad? The CS scene is essentially on life support and isn’t getting the viewers/advertisers that the SC2, LoL, Halo, etc games do. Let them have the smaller prize pots and smaller events and our massive community will continue to draw sponsors and everything will be great.

I’ve heard the same thing - shit I've used that same argument when the quake scene slowed down - and I'll tell you one thing. That doesn’t last. If you don’t grow the bottom , and give people a way up you’ll have the same 12 people playing at the top level and nobody will ever make it past them unless somebody retires and forces a call up.

“but starcraft is an individual game, so everyone should be able to compete”

That’d be true if we didn’t already know all the faces currently in the scene. Anyone who has even a rudimentary knowledge of the brood war competitive scene knows all the currently top players - and even the not so top ones - and anyone who know a handful of Warcraft III players knows knows even more of them. THe only real surprises in the currently state of starcraft 2 have been TLO - one of the strongest foreigners in the world - and Select - who played dawn of war, and made it into the WCG hall of fame for winning that game twice. Huk and torch are the only newcomers who really made it into the top tier of competition, and only one of them is still playing at the top level.

Basically the top level of play are dominated by the same 20 players who have dominated the last group of RTS games. And from the current formats of most events - with the exception of the GSL(whose conditions are less than admirable to foreigners) and MLG(which has and open bracket) - all major events are essentially invite tournaments. Some may have a play in spot, but those are junk in terms of real growth of a scene. You’ll never really get the next generation’s talent into the scene if only one of those players can make it in, and will probably lose their first game and be out.

So what if whitera retires? Or tyler? Or incontrol? Or ? Who is able to replace him? Is there such a player available? And if so who will make the choice? The scene is currently structured very oddly - with all the top tier talent at the top making it into every tournament and everybody else just trying to get some name recognition to even be considered for an event. So if your joe blow whose first competitive RTS is starcraft you’ll probably be out of luck, unless you show some prodigious talent and understanding for the game which has never been seen before.

Now I'm not saying that we should just let everyone into the NASL or the GSL. That'd be counter productive to the growth of the casual userbase: you’d have thousands of throw away matches which shouldn't have been played in the first place because of open brackets, leading to quick matches and boring games. At the same time this focus on top tier invite level tournaments, which don’t offer any real way of entering a tournament outside of dumb luck or some sort of voting process - which can and will be hacked by the voters. I’d like for some sort of layered structure, like the minor leagues in baseball or a pyramid in soccer, which would allow for the cream to rise to the top, and allow for a real shot at the top for the basic user. THe only example i can point to in the west is the now defunct CAL and both the ESL and the ESEA league’s structure. Open(and amatuer) at the bottom, Invite(and professional) at the top. Without such a structure the current leagues will become stale by the constant repeats of the games you’ve seen 10 thousand times. And who really wants to watch kiwikaki play spanishiwa every day?

Basically my complaints are two fold: The current model they are using, the CPL/WSVG/MLG model, is unsustainable and can’t last for long. The only one of those that is still around is MLG - who is basically surviving on venture capital. Second the lack of a pyramidal system like that in soccer, or a minor league system like that which is in baseball or hockey, which allows for both the development of new talent as well as giving older, waining players a place to play in their twilight years. Without these things you will see a stagnation in the scene as well as an eventual downturn which occurs when the sponsors and leave the scene like they eventually will.

Time to beat a dead horse

Well i never really talked about why i thought the CGS failed - so 3 years have passed i think this a good time to talk mad shit on something i was never in. I’m not going to blame the game selection, or the fact that they killed CSS and 1.6 in America, but I'm going to actually criticize a few things that i really think were major problems.

First, and foremost, i feel like NewsCorp failed miserably when they picked people to run the league. From my understanding from those involved is that they got former record execs, MTV execs and other entertainment people and thought they’d know how to run a 50 million dollar league. They had a total of two guys - the former head of fox sports and the former CEO of a beach volley ball league - from sports and gave the people in gaming - namely Jason bass, Alex Conroy, Jason lake(who now own compLexity), Mark Dolven(former owner of pandemic), Emil Christensen and Jonas Vikan(prestigious CS guys who built up their own brands) - menial positions within the league. The one guy who really understood gaming they gave a position was more like a guy who sent invoices and ran the actually league and it’s season - Craig Levine, former owner of 3D and owner of ESEA - had little input into the running of the upper levels of the league.

This lack of input by people who actually knew gaming, and how to run successful gaming organizations, weren’t even allowed to go out and do what general managers do in sports leagues. FIND SPONSORS AND ADVERTISERS. They were basically player managers and figure heads which were animated behind their players during the season.

Second, if these people raised any criticism they were crushed almost immediately. From listening to Jason Lake, Djwheat, Mark Dolven, and Jason Bass talk about their experience within the league - and from my interactions with them while being in the league - it seemed to be two different experiences: 1) they would tell me that i was crazy for questioning the idea that a gaming league with only three sponsors could pay over 100 people anywhere from 15-20K salaries and pay the executives much more(reportedly the GMS got 50k a person, i can only imagine how much Scott Valencia and the CEO were making) while they were 2) saying the same fucking thing their higher ups about the game selection, prize money, ownership etc. Jason bass, i read somewhere, was so pissed off at the website managers hiring excessive amounts of programmers and designers - which he would’ve done for much cheaper - and just quit because he was sick of it all.

Third they upper management didn’t actually understand how important it was for the former 1.6 players to play 1.6 in the off season. This was just short sighted - they didn’t get that if compLexity walked up(like they did near the end of the CGS) and just rolled all scrubs playing 1.6 that it’s basically saying “hey, all our players are the not just good, they are the best in both versions of the game” and instead basically gave them a false dilemma, either play source in the CGS or don’t play in the CGS at all. And that was only in the case of CS, the players of DoA could play in other DoA events, the PGR/Forza players could play in WCG/other events and etc. But they wouldn’t let the game with their players play in the game with the most money where they could still compete. It's not like fRoD stopped being fRoD just because he played source. It’s not like Method and Rambo were bad after only a few years in source. And they proved it when the came back, all the best players in 1.6 continued to be the best players in both source and 1.6.

The reason this is important is three way:It’s basically free marketing. If they roll up to WCG or CEVO, or IEM and play 1.6 against the American and European teams, and not just win but win big, what does that say about the CGS’s players. IT would prove that these players weren’t just the best in source but it would also prove they were the Best in 1.6 as well. Next is the fact that they could probably take a small percentage of the prize money won and use that as revenue.

My fourth problem is the fact they never localized the teams to their regions. And I'm not even talking investing into the LAN centers in the localities which would enable the creation of esports arenas. I’m talking simply having more than one area for the games to be played. Like lets say have the eastern and western conferences...ACTUALLY PLAY IN THE EASTERN AND WESTERN UNITED STATES. They made these arbitrary distinctions but never had any real reason - like those which were in the NBA and the NHL, where those things mean something.

And it’s not like this was not possible at the time. The Kiev Cybersport arena had already been there for a while, long enough for the CGS to use it for it’s events. And it’s not like the Germans don’t rent out theaters and other areas for EPS games - because they do. And it’s not like the Chengdu eSports arena and the studios in Korea aren’t available. Because they are. They could’ve really had something, and generated revenue with it, but decided to not do anything.

My final problem is the fact they never tried to sell off the franchises in order to make up the 50 million dollars that they put into the league’s North American setup and the international franchises. It’s not like there wouldn’t be potential buyers: as we have seen with the South Korean teams pro teams, people will pay big money to own a gaming franchise. This could also help the localization process: if they sell the teams to investors, have the investors front the cost of the gaming arena and the travel expenses. And you could also begin the syndication of the broadcasts, the specialization of teams when it comes to sponsors and finally the reduction of costs to the league as the owners would be signing the checks rather than the league.

Why can’t we all just get along

So i’ve been reading, and reading and reading and hearing about this false dichtomy - that either we need to all get along and be friends in order to attract the average gamer or we shoudl just give up on ever being mainstream and trolling each other is simply just one thing we have to deal with?

Why can’t it be both ways; for example i try to tell people to watch CS streams(what littler there are) and pay attention to games that aren’t sequels to the best RTS ever made - and i don’t know if i’ve gone anywhere on either front - but at the same time i troll the shit out of slasher, fishstix, vvv and the “big” names in eSports - some times i don’t know if they realize when I'm being purposely ridiculous.

And while i agree with both, keekerdc’s point that the “kindness” of the community has never been related to the size of the viewership(going along Nixon's silent majority idea that most people who watch don’t say anything) and vVv/toptiergaming’s idea that we need to slow our rolls on the newbies a few questions kept creeping into my skull: why can’t we be talking about the finer points of strategy in CS and how WSVG/CGS/etc or SK-gaming/coL/etc aren’t sustainable as well as teaching an intro course on how gaming organizations, tournaments, lan centers etc work? Why can’t we coddle the young and be cynics at the same time?

To tell you the truth part of my ability to toughen up and talk mad shit on people who have done much more for the growth of eSports than i ever will in my short lifespan has come from this ability to filter out the stupid shit 90% of the community spews. Survival of the fittest if you will, those who want to see this thing grow and realize that most of the people out there are trolls who just talk shit.

Basically all this boils down to is something I learned a long time ago when gotfrag was still alive(thank you MLG for that, i love you for it) is that you have to be able to filter comments/posts on a forum. Start looking at the length of posts - if it’s a line long it’s useless 2 - 3 you might have some content, more than that and it’s definitely worth the read. You might end up getting trolled from time to time but it will definately increase the likely hood of legit stuff you read.

The Good the Bad the stupid

MLG’s announcement that GSL’s player would be shipped into MLG columbus and the top 4 foreigners would be sent to the GSL’s Code A there was a resounding F- YEAHHHHHHHHH! in the community. However, it’s not all good in this equation.

First lets look at the deal itself:
- GSL sends over 4 players to play in MLG’s tournament
- GSL’s players get seeded directly into the championship groups
- MLG’s top will be given code S status, unless they already have it
- MLG’s next 2 will be given Code A status
- the GSL’s players all get the Code S status, the top foreigners will get code A status
- More koreans can be invited to the tournament, but must compete through the open bracket

So it sounds good - koreans go to MLG, competing with out best. If the foreigners do well they’ll get code S status, or code A status. Sounds great right? MLG - the only big US tournament left - will get some of the best players in the world to play in their tournament.

However the bad seems to be far worse. First they decide now, not the last 3 years when europeans had to pay out of pocket or have sponsors pay to come over, to subsidize international players. They also suddenly decided to let other leagues point system, which they didn’t in Halo or GoW with the ECL or the i-Series points, be valid in their own.

But the worse, and the dumbest by far, is the fact that the 4 invited players won’t have to fight through the open bracket seems ridiculous to me. If i decided to get zyos, hp darkman, ogre 1 and ghandi together to play in Columbus - four legitimate halo legends - they’d have to fight through the open bracket. If i decided to get the old SK-halo team together you know what they’d have to do? Go through the open bracket. If i sponsored an European CoD team to come out you know what they’d have to do? FIGHT THROUGH THE OPEN BRACKET.

What makes these Koreans so special? The fact that their league has more money is broadcasted for far longer? If this is the case why didn’t they use the WoW points from WSVG or IEM when they were supported WoW? Why don’t they use WSVG, ECL, iSeries points for halo and and GoW?

And the even bigger question is - if they are giving these players stipends to come out, like i think they are - why aren’t they doing this for the European players? It’s not like the travel costs are that much worse for the players and the organizations - which can barely stay afloat as it is - which send the European players out. It’s not like certain players - ret, TLO, morrow and a few other - aren’t at the same level at the Koreans, because they almost all are.

And then there's all the other tournaments - Road to code A, the foreigner house and a few others - which all allow you to go out and play in Korea if you want, it's not like there is some sort of color barrier for the players. It's simply lack of reason - more tournaments, more money, easier money etc in foreign events - that foreigners don't choose to go out to these tournaments.

Three up, many to go

It was announced Thursday that the the Inferno Online Stockholm LAN center had expanded - becoming the biggest LAN Center in the world and putting in an eSports Arena .

This means that in the western world there are now two eSports arena in the western world, the famous one in Kiev which has been talked about in a previous blog and this new one in Stockholm Sweden(which i was surprised didn’t already have one). As well as the third one overall - with the one in Chengdu which was built in the middle of the CGS years. And this isn’t counting the arenas which are retrofitted for Starcraft events in Korea, or the sound stages which MSL/OSL/GSL use during their big pro events. This means that PC events will finally get the proper support they deserve without having to haul out cranes, scaffolding and bleachers every event.

However there’s still work to be done. If these business venture continue to be as successful as they have been in the past and attract major events like IEM, WCG forcing other countries and their entrepreneurs to build more in order to continue to host these events.

This will also allow for some validity in the moves of teams to localize to a city or region, if their practice facility also is where they play events, and finally may be a "home field" in an eventual international league which will be written about later.

It sure is ad hominem in here

So in between writing my final essays for the semester I checked my twitter and noticed some comments from Jeff “smeagol” dickinson talking mad shit on my shitty blog that keekerdc re-posted on his own. And while I value the opinions of more veteran members of the community - especially those which left the scene after everyone said how much they fucking hated the guy - it’s kinda ironic that he didn’t even bother to read the “about me” section of this blog. Or even the subtext of the title of it - I'm a nobody. A wannabe journalist. Someone who hasn’t been inside the major organizations and haven’t been around for their founding(although i did watch some of them rise and fall as well as read books about them). If i left the scene tomorrow nothing of value would be lost. I'm surprised anyone even reads this blog. I'm even more surprised that Keekerdc does.

So it’s ironic really - me, the nobody who is trying to do something for the scene - is getting criticised by somebody who was important at one time that hasn’t really done shit for the last 4 years since he didn’t join the CGS(which was a good call all things considered) with djWHEAT.

I’d like him to write comprehensive history of these scenes if he can - because i have on hand is old gotfrag/hltv/sk-gaming articles and interviews along with the extremely bias gameboys (that barely covers compLexity and 3D factually) as sources i can cite.

So basically this is my final statement: I’m a nobody who is trying to do some objective “journalism”(if you can call it that), while I'm getting criticised by some guy that hasn’t done anything....for trying to do something.

Esports Book review 1:GameBoys

Game Boys: Professional Videogaming's Rise from the Basement to the Big Time by Michael Kane covers the rivalry between the two biggest organizations in North American eSports history: compLexity gaming syndicate's vs Team3D. The book details the event directly after 3D's second win at the World Cyber Games and compLexity's win at ESWC - during that winter during the CPL.

However if you are looking at this book at a detailed breakdown of strategy or games, look elsewhere. This book is primarily a look at the two organizations and the drama between them. Team3D's status at the time as possibly the second biggest organization in terms of money in the western world - only trailing behind Sk-gaming - competing against the poor house compLexity gaming. Think Brooklyn Dodgers vs. New York Yankees - except instead of baseball they played counter-strike.

The book describes the characters and the storyline quite well. The loud, boisterous managerial style of Jason lake, owner of compLexity, versus the calm cool and collected Craig Levine, owner of Team3D. These caveats towards developing a feel for the characters, however, does not stop the overall progress of the narrative. The writer even goes into player transactions, sponsor deals and player salaries while still pushing the story forward in a good, tangible narrative. The book even mentions the dollar amount that was given Team3D and to the then startup Evil Geniuses, even giving out the player salaries which is generally a no-no in eSports journalism.

Some of the stories, about the founding of CAL i was not even aware of until the reading of the book. Others, like why and how Dave "Moto" Geffon and Sean "bullseye" Morgan were forced out of retirement, are a well told tales but still does bring some of the drama to the book and really does push the plot along.

Although the author does show that he is not of the gaming world - describing compLexity as a team that could never do it on LAN and was more of an online team when they won the biggest event in CS(ESWC) and did quite well, placing top 10 at CPL winter 2004. Furthermore when describing Team3D as the "best CS team in the world" may be a good narrative device, it was far from truthful. At the time of the book compLexity was force on the field - 3D had the best sponsors - and they weren't even the biggest organization in terms of dollar amount in eSports - that was, and is, SK-gaming.

Then you go into his descriptions of the action, it's clear his understanding of the game is not at the level required to really be giving a blow by blow, let alone go for a strategic breakdown of the events which are happening in the games themselves.

Overall i'd recommend this book to those which are not very well acquainted with counter-strike, and it's long storied history, but for those who already know it in depth, it leaves much to be desired.

FPS’s struggle

A recent discussion sparked by everyone’s favorite marketing guy @fishstix that the FPS scene has fallen behind or died off completely in terms of the scale of eSports. Now I’m here to tell you why that’s totally fucking wrong.

First, while FPS’s don’t have the most streaming content out there, it still is out there. For CS ESL.tv and some German, Russian and Japanese casters still stream this stuff consistently. Furthermore fishstix’s former company Quakelive.tv streams stuff on a consistent basis.

Now this is FAR, FAR from ideal. We have almost no amateur casters for CS and quake. And we have almost no English casters for CS and quake. Until recently - with the ESEA stream which did fairly well for their first foray into the streaming game - you had to hope that sirscoots, djwheat(which would never happen), or rivington the third would find interest in a match and stream it. And when they did they never really bothered to do commentate in a manner which would be conducive to new players. This seriously hinders the next part of the problem: eSports Efficacy.

Most, not all but most, new people to eSports don’t know a damn thing about the history of it. Shit most people don’t even know how big Starcraft: Brood War was. Whenever i tweet about Team Evil Geniuses - ANY of their branches - people automatically assume I'm talking about their starcraft team. Even prominent moderators(@zlasher) don’t realize that I'm talking about Evil Geniuses’ prestigious Counter-strike team.

This leads to some confusion when the teams and players aren’t properly prefaced with the necessary information to show why this match is important. It doesn’t help much when some streamers - specifically the LiveonThree crew - turn their backs on the game that brought them there and the premier eSports news site - Gotfrag - gets killed by Major league gaming.

The third and most crucial point of the three is the fragmentation of the communities - specifically the CS scene. For the majority of CS’s lifetime there was only one place to go for news, HLTV info, interviews, match reviews and just casual talking - Gotfrag.com. It was the ESPN of eSports, if it was big news - regardless of what game it was - it was on Gotfrag. This allowed for easy access to all games - Quake, DoD, coutner-strike(1.6 and source), Call of Duty, America’s Army, even starcraft and warcraft three had good coverage at gotfrag.

With it’s death the scene fragmented about 5 ways. CS went to HLTV.org and ESEA, Quake went to ESReality, Starcraft went(inb4 it was always there) to gosugamers and team liquid, call of duty went to tek-9 and i have no clue where America's army DoD and warcraft III went.

Now for the first two i see solutions forming. cArn from fnatic and n0thing from EG are both doing demo reviews - their youtube channels can be found in an early blog - and both are really trying to get more people into counter-strike. Every ESL even seems to have higher and higher quality in terms of broadcaster’s knowledge of the game and their ability to get into the game emotionally. Corey Dunn and jesuit jumped back into the broadcasting scene with ESEA and they attracted a decent crowd in terms of viewers(~6000) for their first time around. The second one seems to be getting better with time, as people watch starcraft they will naturally become interested in the history of the game and the organizations which are supporting it.

However, unless someone wants to offer Sundance a boat load of money for Gotfrag.com or major league gaming actually decides to move out of their comfortable little console world and allow coverage of other games on gotfrag - or even simply funding the coverage in the slightest - I'm almost certain that people will come back and they will get the community’s love again.

However moving to a new game is NOT the solution to any of these problems. It only makes these problems worse. Suggesting that moving to a game - which has no leagues, no sponsors and no long term stability - will actually hinder other things which have separated and made the games themselves interesting.

A prime example of this is the game i come from. Counter-Strike’s 10 year lifespan has allowed a full metagame, styles, and overarching strategy to develop which would not have if it had only been around for 3-4 years. We didn’t even know all the things about a map - like de_nuke - and the gameplay - like crouch hopping - until the middle of 2007.

If we were to adopt every new game that came along - like halo has - we’d have: 1) worse content because the level of strategy and understanding of the game will not be there 2) worse player careers as some players will be force out before their prime 3) an underdeveloped metagame which would hinder the game from being competitive 4) a lack of proper development in terms of player skill as just as the people becoming comfortable and competent with the mechanics of the game they will be force to adapt to the new game which may not play the same as the old one.

However not moving on will also hinder a scene. For example, if the broodwar scene never moved over, we may never have had explosion we are currently experiencing. If the skillset and the feeling for the game can transfer over with minimal interference in terms of changes in maps and gameplay than it should played rather than the old one. The reason source was never really adopted wasn’t because it’s graphics weren’t good, but instead that the gameplay and maps weren’t as fluid and instead of a mere facelife they models and maps were changed to the point which strategies and thought of the original could not change over.

Therefore we SHOULD adopt a new game IF a successor allows for the talents inherent in original game can transfer over, allowing for a smooth transition of talent and metagame from one to the other. New maps, new strategies etc. should come from the community instead of the from it being forced down their throats.

Rivalries in eSports

I was on twitter and i noticed something on Geoff “incontrol” Robinson’s twitter. My response may have flown over his head. And that got me thinking: do people who aren’t aware of what happened in 2008(when Evil Geniuses took compLexity’s renowned CS team after the CGS’s fall) still take sides? And if so, why? Furthermore does the relationship in one game influence another?

I know that my opinion of organizations - particularly the two in question - changed greatly in how they handled the rivalry. The moment Evil Geniuses took fRoD storm and warden i lost all respect for that organization and pulled for compLexity the entire time. That did not change until they left the American CS scene out to dry in order to sign a Brazilian counter-strike team.(much like how many fans don’t care about the team once they leave their market).

Now this leads back to the original question. Does the rivalry which started in counter-strike continue on into the other games? I know the Boston Red Sox don’t hate the Los Angeles Dodgers for what happen in the latest Lakers/Celtics series. But FC Barcelona's Basketball team still does have a rivalry with Real Madrid's over similar reasons.

I don’t know if this is the case for most people, but as a compLexity fan during the 3D and reconstruction(of NA CS) eras i would watch every 3D/EG series and mark the calendar in advance for the games. This even occured when 3D and coL moved to source for the CGS. This also occurred when EG played compLexity.br later. And i know HLTV.org blows up everytime SK-gaming plays Fnatic and Mousesports plays Alternate.

Does this happen in the starcraft II scene - do these rivalries among organizations have the same kick to them in team leagues as they do in a 1v1 setting as they did in the CS scene in a purely team setting?

I’m hoping to get some feedback on this topic from all the (twenty) people who read this blog.

Loyalty in eSports

In my two years in the eSports journalism world I've noticed one thing about the people in it: they don’t care about growing an organization, and they have no sense of loyalty. I spent my entire “career” at Insideresports.com and I'd still be in it if school didn’t start to actually be difficult. I liked the idea - bring back objectivity back to eSports journalism and try not to kiss the ass of the established organizations. That and the marketing BS “CONNECTING ALL GAMERS.” However my fellow journalists didn’t seem to have the same connect to the idea.

For example within the first two months one of the major founders left the organizations to a rival organizations FOR THE EXACT SAME POSITION. And then of the original staff of about 20 we decreased to about 5 within the same period. Most of the staffers left to join compLexity, Evil Geniuses, Fnatic, Sk-gaming and all equally had about the same tenure with those organizations - about 2 maybe 3 months.

And it’s not like i don’t know the deals they were given - i had be approached by the same organizations to cover their respective teams but the contract they offered me were effectively the same as one i had with Insider eSports except they had the words “Evil Geniuses” or “Fnatic” on them.

But the biggest blow to the simple growth of the org was how bad the “marketing” and “streaming” people were in terms of ethics. Every time we signed a marketing person to the organization - and I'm almost certain that some these people were paid out of Peawok’s pocket -
would take the credibility we had to sponsors, have the sponsors sign deals with themselves and then go off and form their own companies and basically leech off our limited success. This happened numerous times over the course of the two years. The streaming people would do the same things, except i know they took seed money from Peawok for their equipment.

So you might ask “why are you complaining about this now when you have left the organization and effectively left the scene all together?” Well first i had a contract that i couldn't talk about the inner workings of IE until after about a year since i left the organization. Second it’s been bothering me for a long time. I’ve grown up in and around tech start ups my entire life. They always talked about “developing a culture” and “trying to provide the best product for the consumer.” And those things don't’ seem to be in the eSports world. The culture in eSports is “me first, fuck objectivity, fuck developing anything” and the product is an article which is not then not doing anything for the next few months until you are finished finalizing your contract with the next organization. And then the cycle repeats itself.

Furthermore it seems like some of the people who are in eSports don’t actually care about eSports or developing it but instead they seem much more interested in simply using it to move up the corporate ladder. They start organizations, build connections with sponsors and once they are big enough - and instead of moving the organization to profitability - they simply jump ship to the corporate sponsor. Or Stream service they were using. Or work in some other tech company.

And because of this we have a very unstable scene, where we don’t know which organizations are legitimate and which are simple cash grabs which are created to stroke the founders ego before he jumps off with a golden parachute to a comfy seat in an office building somewhere.

Developing local scenes

I was listening to Chris Schetter’s fourth Keekercast where he was interviewing chobopeon the original anchor of SCcenter and they started talking about starcraft and localization of the scene to cities and nations.

I’ll give you my personal opinion on this. While i think it’s good, especially since the scene can grow and prosper without needing the internationals to survive. However from personal experience i seem to have mixed opinions on it.

I grow up in a growing city in southern California. Together with a neighboring city there is a total population of 203,000 people in this city, most of them young. And by young i mean middle school-high school-college age. Some of my fondest memories in middle and high school was going to local LAN centers and playing counter-strike with my friends. Playing tournaments, and just pug a lugging was great fun.

But the major problem with this is the simple fact that these LAN centers either moved or went out of business, or made the cost to play at them so high which a person of the gaming age range simply can’t afford it.

I also nerded out with some of those same guys in LAN parties which we organized ourselves. However it became quickly evident that we could not do this all the time - people would move away, graduate and go to college, join the military, or simply not being able to show up to the LAN parties.

But no matter how hard i tried i couldn’t get them to continue playing a single game - whether it be Super Smash Brothers, Halo, Counter-strike or any other game i tried to get them into - for more than a few weeks. Maybe a few months if there was a local tournament coming up.

And if you’re like me - where i live is 2 hours away from San Diego and 3 hours away from Los Angeles - having a local scene dedicated to a single game is nearly impossible to create. It’s like the CGS - a single league that pays it’s players a respectable salary and a defined format that is good for all games? AND IT’S ON TV? SIGN ME UP. But when you get down to brass tacks you couldn’t possibly keep it up.

However national leagues with regional teams in each league seems completely feasible. Now that the average game of a gamer is in the 30’s and from the look of the average pro gamer is about 18 the ability for the people to get up and move. Gaming mobility if you will.

This move, towards localizing teams for practicing and matches to areas, has happened in the past - fatal1ty would hold bootcamps at his house all the time, korea has always had their starcraft teams live in one house, and finally the coL house proved to be successful during coL’s glory days of 4 undefeated seasons in 1.6 and source - however now it seems like every team is doing it. Almost every Starcraft 2 team is starting to localize to practice. Some major CS teams have houses they practice in. Hell even Ultimax’s american CS team has their own house for Christs sakes.

Hopefully this move will also facilitate something that I think will definitely is necessary. A season which home and away games ACTUALLY MEAN SOMETHING. Where teams actually TRAVEL and PLAY GAMES at LAN CENTERS or ESPORTS STADIUMS. Maybe then the organizations can actually have a revenue stream outside of taking money way from their players and advertising.

A positive step

Well back to tooting the counter-strike horn. I’ve started to notice a good thing is starting up(again).Every body's favorite North American counter-strike player Jordan “n0thing” Gilbert has started streaming(occasionally) and made his own vlog/demo reviewing YouTube channel...although outside of a single vlog, not much has been made.


However, across the pond in Europe we have possibly the smartest player in counter-strike Patrik “cArn” Sättermon has started his theory of counter-strike which can be found on the fnatic website as well as a private youtube channel. He’s already released four episodes, all four being demo reviews.

Both of these players also have twitter pages, n0things being @jgilbertoh and cArn’s being @Sattermon. Both seems to be tweeting very regularly, and from what I've experienced they’ve been very responsive to both critique, questions, and do actually answer back to tweets sent their way.

Hopefully these start a trend towards More counter-strike pros doing the day9 thing and start doing commentary over demos and review them which may lead to better counter-strike understanding and maybe attract new people.

Now back to ignoring this paper which is due tomorrow.

All talk

I’ve had an epiphany recently. It involves every one's darling. Starcraft 2. Sure it’s done alot to combine communities and bring people into the scene which were not active followers - or not even aware the the eSports scene existed prior to it’s launch. By i have one major complaint: What has Starcraft 2 done for the other communities?

For all their talk about how great and open minded their community is, i haven’t seen any cross community tournaments which are coming out of the Starcraft community. I see CS leagues, like ESL’s IEM and the ESEA league, sponsoring Starcraft events, quake events like ESWC stepping in an providing support. Hell even the close minded monstrosity MLG has stepped out of their comfortable little console world and started sponsoring SC2 events. Can anyone name a league - outside of Korea with eStars - which started in SC2 and moved out to other games?

And it’s not just the leagues which are helping out. All the G7 teams have Starcraft II teams, but not a single Starcraft II team has a CS, Quake, team fortress or other games in their lineup. I understand that their teams have been historically small and have lacked sponsored, but theirs no excuse when even a 2 bit 32 man bronze league tournament sponsors can find sponsors for their tournaments outside of lack of trying and lack of caring on the part of the teams.

It seems like the starcraft scene only takes care of its own. It’s like 2001 all over again - except instead of the quake scene extending an olive branch in sponsors and leagues to the new comers in CS while the SC scene sits back and watches we have a game that’s exploding but doesn’t give a shit about anyone else.

Well at least we’re closer

On the most recent state of the game( http://itmejp.blip.tv/file/4802601/ ) Tyler "NonY" Wasieleski raised some issues with the North American Star League’s rule preventing teams from having more than five players in the tournament at a time - stating that this would effectively punish bigger teams, like Wasieleski’s own Team Liquid, for having more players. He goes on to state that most teams, the vast majority of them, have well over the 5 player cap and there would be no benefits to being on this team whose spots would be given to the more veteran team.

Well i can think of one; it’s a pretty obvious one too. Development. Something like a farm system in baseball. Asking this question - why recruit more than 9 players(10 with a closer) for a baseball team? Because some of those players - the younger ones - will take the spots of those who are aging, and whose talent may be better because they were allowed to play with the older, more experienced players.

Furthermore this will be somewhat of an informal salary cap for teams - if you can only field five players per tournament, having 10 or 15 players is pretty extravagant. This will allow teams - which sponsor more than one game like compLexity, Evil Geniuses, and MouseSports - to push their traveling costs and the “pure” gaming organizations like Team Liquid and Root Gaming may be able to really compete with the bigger organizations - who like big market teams in sports - have bigger pay rolls. With this come s the creation of “farm teams” so to speak as the big teams will send there less experienced players to another team - while still being owned by the bigger organization.

This will also allow for inter-team competition, like those in the professional starcraft in korea, which breeds talent and pushes people, who all want to compete, to do their best in practice to compete for the big dough in the NASL.

If You Build It, They Will Come

I’m sure you’ve heard of the eSports stadiums in the far east - in places like Chengdu which holds mostly Warcraft III events and South Korea holding Starcraft events - and in eastern Europe - Kiev Cybersports Arena, which was the home of Arbalet Best of 4 and more recently the IEM European Championship. These arenas could host so many events its not even funny and appear to be drawing good attendance during the events.

Why can’t we have one in the west? The idea that people won’t go to eSports events seems to be a myth, and I've seen hundreds, if not thousands of people just sit down and watch  from the few events I've gone to. People love to watch people compete, no matter what it is. If the content is good, as can be seen by Arbalet Best of Four and IEM European Championship,  people will come. Furthermore - despite poor attendance by WCG Grand Finals in Asian by comparison - the crowd at the WCG grand finals in 2010 was quite good.  If you look at the attendance at MLG Dallas for SC2 and the draw for all the events at NYC you can definitely tell people will show up if the competition is good enough.

(from HLTV.org)

The revenue and the capital seems to be the main problem. If we take the example of Asian and Eastern European we could provide a good source of revenue by doing what they do in the mean time - function as an Internet cafe and simply have a stage attached to it. Both the eSports arena in Chengdu and Kiev have a store, a LAN center, and then a stage which they use for the events they host. This allows the proprietors of the arena to stay afloat between tournaments/bigger events which may only come along every so often.

Basically you only need to get a LAN center which is large enough that you can have a LAN center in one room - which will serve as the major place for most of your business - and have a theater setup off to the side.

Hopefully the example of the east Asian/eastern Europe PC cafe/eSports arena will catch on in the western world because - to be perfectly honest - we have few good venues in north america or western Europe. Almost every event there are technical problems that could be sorted out by having a dedicated venue instead of jerry-rigging an event onto a convention center/hotel ballroom. These range from lack of proper proper power sources - causing power outages - lack of proper bandwidth for games like Counter-Strike, Starcraft 2 or World of Warcraft and the stream setup, to the simple problems with having to make a makeshift theater setup in an extremely short amount of time only to tear it down after the event is over. Furthermore the cost to transporting the goods -PC's, consoles, streaming equipment, projectors, bleachers and other paraphernalia - only add another cost to an already high one of simply running the event and renting out a facility. 

(from IEM)

Now people might say that because of the size of these facilities - the cyber sports arena(pictured above) is to small to host an MLG event let alone the finals of QuakeCon or the sheer amount of people which watch the DreamHack finals each year. And you may be correct. But I've been to an MLG event, their main stage has about the same amount of fixed seats - albeit less comfortable ones - as the Cybersports arena. Furthermore the arenas in South Korea - the MBCgame one for example - generally come in to sizes, one for the bracket matches which would be big enough to host a smaller event like a IEM global challenge before heading to a larger facility, like a conventional hall or a real sports arena, which would host the finals. Add to this that almost all the "big events" are split into areas, usually half of them are simply empty space, sponsor booths(most of which are small at best and have excess room between them for no reason) or LAN party setups(in the case of gamegune or dream hack), which would not be taking place in an arena in the first place.

Also, from my experience, the Kiev sports arena would be plenty comfortable for most of the events I've gone to. Some times, when these events are attached to larger gaming or tech conventions, it might be a bit packed, but generally you could breath well at the few major events I've gone to. From the walkthrough provided by ESL (CLICK HERE) it appears that all the events i've gone to could fit inside it easily. MLG San Diego and Anaheim could've been done in it - without an open bracket of course - IEM LA could've been done in it and the WCG grand finals of 2010 could've been done in it, unless there was a massive amounts of people for the first two days of the competition which disappear in the finals day. Simply put, without the convention hall you could've fit all 3 of the major international events into this arena. Now it does appear that they need more seating, but that's simply a a footnote in an overall proof of concept.


Now my unprofessional business model diagram which is a major oversimplification of all the necessary areas to generate profit:

Gaming Organizations: How they work

I’ve been reading gaming blogs/websites, for example ESFIworld.com, MLGpro.com and HLTV.org as well as other, and seeing comments on their recent articles with comments showing lack of comprehension in the field of gaming organization, so I decided to write a rough draft of how they work.

Step 1: Organizations sponsor teams/players

Organizations, like SK-gaming, Fnatic and Evil Geniuses, sponsor players and teams to represent their brand and compensate them with salaries, products and travel expenses. This is a new way deal, the organizations give these players a lot of money to support their brand and their sponsors. They hope by sending the teams to events that they will having a better chance to sell their brand to major multinational corporations like Intel, nVidia, Dr.Pepper, etc. which will provide the monetary support that they need to continue to support the players to go to more events which will then again attract more sponsors.

Advertising

The sponsors, seeing this as a valuable place to get advertising in on the 18-35 market, hope that they will being gaining a youth oriented brand identity as well as getting a word in to a market which is heavily advertised to, by attaching their name to a organization. This is why almost all organizations have various sponsors all over their shirts - ranging from energy drinks to high end computer components. Generally though they are gaming related, such as gaming peripherals like Steel-Series and Razer which hold the larger share of the advertising market.

Step 2: Events

At events the players will be representing their sponsors. The better they play, the better they make the organizations and sponsors look. It also makes monetary sense - they want their players to make the most of the large amount of money they spent on getting them to the event, grow the brand image of their organization and increase the amount of camera time they show their sponsor’s logos.

Step 3: ??????

This is an undefined place. Changes from org to org but usually it involves a method of generating revenue whether that be through the sale of shirts with their sponsors logo as well as their own on them or they send their players all over the place to work at conventions for their sponsors, or hold sponsors with the name of the organization and sponsor on it’s name.

They also do something which many would see as a bad thing. They take a percentage of the prize money from the players winnings. It’s a necessary part of the business. When they are putting out hundreds, if not thousands, of dollars to transport the teams around the world, the least the players can do is pay back a small percentage to the guys who are paying their paychecks.

Step 4: Profit!

If all goes well the organizations now has a stable line of revenue and is a valuable advertising partner to a major corporation. However few organizations ever reach this level.  Evil Geniuses, SK-gaming, etc have reach this level, but even they have a hard time producing a constant level of revenue.

Most never get to this level, as getting enough money from sponsors, ads and sales are exceptionally hard. Most run at a constant red and never make it to profitability.