QFT

I don't usually do this kinda thing, but:

breathless, rambling, exhibiting a sharp fear of silences, one that would rather fill space where nothing is really happening with complete bullshit than nothing, one where words-per-minute is a valuable metric, one where it’s not customary but obligatory to choke yourself with excitement when anything remotely interesting happens, to throw diction out the window; the more incomprehensible you are, the better.

QFT: http://keekerdc.com/2011/08/you-are-not-the-show/

#hypewatch becomes #credibilitywatch

The EG announcement will be so good. Is the best thing to happen in competitive #SC2 thus far. Outside of MLG of course!
-Slasher, via Twitter.

To be fair, he could have been trolling, but EG have done way too much of this shit now.  Hopefully this latest in a long line of #hypewatch suspects will make esports fans wake the fuck up.  EG will hype ANYTHING to the moon and back, and it will never, ever live up to the bullshit.  Yes, Huk is the best non-Korean in the current SC2 scene, but the amount of buzz that EG manufactured would make you think that they would be buying the entire roster of GSL with funding from some kind of Middle East Sheikh, Man City style.

I can only pray that TL-goers and other community members treat future EG hype and announcements with the utter disdain that they deserve.  It's definitely come to something when I find myself agreeing with Totalbiscuit:

"Nonplussed by the HuK thing. I don't have time to care about anything other than awesome SC2 games. Doesn't matter which team they come from"

Wait a second, i just remembered something!

It's a busy day at the Zechs Files office (which consists of my desk, which is missing two of its three drawers and has two empty ale bottles - yes, ale*).  We've published some softcore porn, and wrote an actual column for ESFI at last!

But while watching GSL VODs, a thought just struck me about an argument that happened two or three months ago.  That's the Zechs Files; always at the cutting edge of esports news!

You may remember the furore revolving around an article published on Team Liquid called The Elephant in the Room.  The basic, misguided premise of the article was that SC2 competition will never be valid until the Bonjwa's and their ilk move over Brood War.  There are obvious flaws with this argument, which i won't go into again, but one skipped my mind at the time.

The idea of the article was that MC dominating the game (as he was at the time) is laughable, because he had an awful record in professional BW.  Well, that kind of stands to reason at first glance.  Except... BW is a game with 10 years of knowledge, with a genuinely professional scene and players who have years of experience and practice.  The fact that MC even made it to the best-of-the best league means that he was one of the best players in the world.  So what if his record was 1-15 or something and his nickname was Suicide Toss (which doesn't technically make sense, by the way, but a nickname is a nickname)?

Losing every game in the best league in the world is still better than not making it there in the first place.  MC and the other SC2 heroes might not have been world-beaters in Brood War, but they were reasonably close.

Gaming and tits... again

MMO Champion posted some interesting statistics about character gender.  You can find the full data here.  The gist of it is that every playable race has more male characters than female - you probably expected that, right?  Well, there is one exception, and, somewhat surprinsingly, it's not Bloodelves.  They come 2nd, with 44.95% female characters.  No, number one, and the only race with over 50% representation for females is Draenei.  For those that don't play WoW, here's a clue as to why that might be the case:

I could be your hero, baby!

Before I get into today's rant, i want to make clear that as a commentator, i have a lot of respect for djWHEAT.  If you've read my blogs about commentators in the past, you'll know that's high praise indeed.  However, as a self-professed knight in shining armor here to save esports, presumably via talking a lot, he is sorely lacking.


Esports history became, if not a hot topic this weekend, then at least a lukewarm one.  An excellent, if narrow in perspective, thread popped up on TL, giving a brief rundown of some of the salient points in the story of our fledgling sport.  One comment particularly piqued my interest:


On August 01 2011 18:27 djWHEAT wrote:
This is great. I would love to work with the OP to add some awesome detail to this.

It's a great start but even as I read it I realise so much is missing (not necessarily absolute have to have facts, but interesting things fans would lobe to know!!)


Now, lets be clear: djWHEAT has been around for an awfully long time.  I don't doubt the fact that he could contribute useful insight to this kind of thread.  But the question is, where to begin?  Maybe he could contribute some of his righteous fury about the CGS.  You know, the league he worked for and was handsomely paid by?  CGS is a very important lesson, and who better to tell us about it than one of its most important broadcasters?  He could tell us how awful it was getting paid tidy sums to talk about computer games.


Of course, the most important thing about history is to learn the lessons from it for the future.  Again, djWHEAT's esports crusade comes to the fore:


@djWHEAT
Throwing money at something does not yield guarantee success. This Valve DotA2 thing is marketing. Don't call it anything else.


Fellow historians and oldskoolers will remember some league or other a few years ago that tried to throw money at games to guarantee success.  In fact, those games were far less popular than DoTA.  What was it called?  Oh, yes... CGS.  And who was their main commentator?  It couldn't be djWHEAT could it?  It could!  Who better to lead us into the battle against throwing money at a problem than the public face of the biggest waste of money in esports history?


Now, lets just hire Fatal1ty to tirade against over-exposure and we're set.

Facts? Bah, i run a team, who needs facts?

Strap yourselves in kids, this is a long ride.  I make no promises about the quality or coherence of this, since i wrote it in about an hour this morning.  Still, i think the points are valid, and there is even more to criticise from the mentioned article but it was getting a bit long, even for my own self-indulgence.

It’s not often that I get annoyed about esports media but… okay, that’s a lie, but the latest piece from IGN’s esports division would make a saint swear.  At least, a saint who knew about esports.  So let’s break it down, quote by uninformed quote.

What prevents the publication of eSports contracts is the lack of collective bargaining between players unions, ownership and the leagues in which players play.

What is this collective bargaining supposed to be; a bunch of players going with their friend to the contract negotiations?  A player’s union would be great, but is probably a long way away and the leagues have no say in this whatsoever.  The likes of GSL and IPL could ban players or teams who renege on their contractual responsibilities, but the chances of that are slime.  Imagine if IPL were put in a position where Idra was breaking the terms of his contract with EG.  Can you really imagine IGN removing one of their star names from the league?  Ideally: yes, realistically: no.

There are many positives to publicizing team contracts. The greatest benefit is the resultant transparency. If the salary and duration of player contracts become public knowledge, it would change the landscape of competitive gaming completely.

This kind of happened in WC3, and basically caused the death of MYM and the shrinking of SK because players felt they deserved higher wages.  There isn’t enough money to go around to pay every half-decent player while the elite would be able to demand far more.  Of course, people so embedded in the SC2 bubble can’t be expected to know that things happen in other esports games, right?

Players violate the terms of their contract all the time, and the general public has no idea.

Yep, fine.  This is a reason for more transparency but lets not forget that teams do the same thing.  There is a noticeable bias in this article, ignoring the fact that teams are also culpable when they enter into a contract.  I suppose this is understandable coming from a team owner but it is important to remember the numerous historical examples of players complaining about not being paid or not receiving prize money.

The biggest benefit of publically accessible contracts would be a universal free agency period. If StarCraft II had a free agency period between December and January when contracts were set to expire and there were not many tournaments, it would be a great opportunity for new teams to form super teams and become power players in the scene. Currently, major paradigm shifts are not possible as teams have to wait throughout the year for numerous player contracts to expire and sign players one at a time.

Holy long sentence, Batman!

Firstly, “super teams” are notoriously bad for competition, as anyone who actually knows about sports would be able to tell you.  Look at Man United’s domination of the Premier League, or Barca and Real’s lockdown on the Spanish league.

Even more ignorance: players can be bought out of a contract.  I’m fairly sure this is true in any line of employment, but it is definitely true in sports and esports (SK bought Delpan’s contract from Fnatic, for example).  This is where transfer fees come from in the first place!  I can’t even believe this mind-boggling lack of knowledge was allowed past the editors: a little knowledge is a dangerous thing.

To clarify: “major paradigm shifts” are perfectly possible now.  It simply requires a new team with deep pockets to come along and buy the contracts of a bunch of star players – like MYM did in WC3.  The fact that a team owner isn’t aware of this is, frankly, baffling.

Now, granted, the idea of artificially levelling the playing field via a draft period is very American.  I can understand why a baseball fan would support the idea.  But putting every player’s contract up for bidding at an arbitrary point in time (esports leagues run year round, so there is no real “off season” like in traditional sports) would not solve the super team problem.  It would merely create a cycle where the most successful team would be able to outbid other teams for the best players, therefore becoming the most successful team for the new season, therefore having the most money by next season.

The issue of contracts has literally nothing to do with whether or not they are public.  It has everything to do with the ability to enforce them.  Sure, the more vain players might feel bad if his fans know he isn’t honouring his contract, but most players won’t give a shit.  I feel like the author is being unbelievably naïve if he thinks that players will fulfil their stipulated roles just because a bunch of nerds know about them.

Realistically, the problem is a lack of a central governing body.  The reason “free agency” wouldn’t work is because leagues view each other as competitors and there is no unified off-season.  Who is going to organise this draft, for starters?  It works in Baseball because of the MLB.  Similarly, the lack of a governing body means that contracts are very difficult to enforce.  Sure, a legally binding contract can be taken to court but it is usually only beneficial for a player who is seeking unpaid wages.  A team who take a player to court are unlikely to come out ahead unless they have been caused loss of earnings by a player – a pretty unlikely scenario.

Again, this ties into the lack of unification.  Imagine the hypothetical Idra/EG scenario from earlier.  Lets say that IPL does ban Idra from the current season for failing to fulfil his contracts.  NASL now sees a chance to one-up their competitor in terms of star power and allows him to continue playing.  Now IPL have taken the moral high ground but realistically they have just hurt themselves by losing one of their most famous players.

Only under a unified governing body can contracts really mean anything in sport.  The real reason contracts work in other sports is because player punishments are handed out by a body which controls every competition in that country, or even the world, in extreme cases.

Ironically, IGN staff should be well aware of a third option: leagues tying players into contracts directly.  Since CGS was basically a failed precursor to IPL, run by the same media empire, surely they should know about this alternative.  Of course, that league failed miserably, and when a couple of Brazilian players got banned for attending a CS 1.6 LAN that wasn’t run by CGS they simply returned to playing 1.6 in the multitude of other leagues.

This time around, IPL has tried to integrate itself into the community, rather than assimilate the community like CGS did.  But the fact that people who apparently have no idea about esports’ history are allowed to write articles like this for their website is deeply ironic.  Contracts are part of the “legitimizing esports” pie, but a larger part of it is hiring people who can actually do their job.  Or, at least, hiring people who have some idea what they’re talking about.

This was posted on TL? REALLY?!

"Maybe there is a lesson to be learned here, now that we are facing ESPORTS growth in the west. Maybe. It is, at the very least, a good reminder of how fragile these scenes are. All of these men dreamed of making video games their career and none of them were able to do it, all becoming the boring kinds of middle aged men their teenage selves hated and feared."

Not only is this a fairly entertaining (if lengthy) read, but it's nice to see something other than blind, mindless optimism on Team Liquid for a change.  However, i'm fairly sure that's one of the harbingers of the apocolypse.

Source: http://www.teamliquid.net/blogs/viewblog.php?topic_id=247767