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.