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.
Thursday, May 5, 2011
Sunday, May 1, 2011
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.
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.
Friday, April 29, 2011
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.
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.
Wednesday, April 27, 2011
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.
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.
Wednesday, April 20, 2011
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.
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.
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