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.
Wednesday, June 29, 2011
Tuesday, June 21, 2011
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.
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.
Tuesday, June 7, 2011
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.
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
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.
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