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.