Esports issue's

[fehue]

The last week and a half or more have been really crappy for me. I live in Vegas, and its damn hot here. We left a couple of computer’s on when we left the house Monday before last. The A/C went down, then my daughter’s PC and mine over heated and burnt out some components. It took most of 4 days to get the A/C back and another 3 to get the parts to fix both my daughters PC and Mine. I’ve been busy with college classes since then, and I thought my troubles were behind me.

 

Then the **** hit the fan. Specifically, Esports ****.

 

It had in fact been hitting the fan during the entire time I was offline. It probably started just before I went offline, and I was blissfully unaware.

 

My main concern is competitive gaming, Esports (even though I hate to call it that), and a lot of bad things have been happening in Esports lately. I decided to run through these things even if they’re a couple of weeks old, because it touches on some arguments I have had in the past regarding competition and competitive players intolerance for noob and casual players. It’s not a one sided argument either.

 

The link below is the first part. It’s a video of supposedly “professional gamers,” team impact, at a supposedly “professional event,” going off on their opponents and the crowd of spectators and fans. Without those same spectators and fans they wouldn’t be where they are to talk the trash that they are. Their Sponsors were NOT pleased, and it looks like they’re going to lose one of their team members if it hasn’t happened already. The worst thing is that the event organizers didn’t step in to stop them, even when they started trash talking the crowd. These guys are basically cutting off their nose to spite their face. It’s not exactly E for everyone, so if that bothers you don’t watch.

 

http://www.charlieintel.com/2013/08/12/team-epsilon-takes-trash-talking-to-a-new-level-at-umg-atlanta/

 

Update: End of story, Epsilon dropped the entire team, and two members have left the team. Here’s an article about it.

 

http://www.charlieintel.com/2013/08/12/team-epsilon-takes-trash-talking-to-a-new-level-at-umg-atlanta/

 

In 2007 WSVG’s season opener in Wuhan China had 100,000 live spectators, that’s 100,000 people actually attended the tournament. By august that same year WSVG was burnt toast. In their last tournament they had technical problems, and the tournament was delayed for most of a day. They finished but they lost their sponsors and that was it. WSVG never recovered. I never found out if they managed to pay off the prize money, but people were complaining about that for months afterward. Sponsors have ditched their obligations for less, and organizers have screwed the pouch on that a time or two themselves. That first video in this post is an illustration of how the players themselves can screw these things up for a lot of others besides themselves.

 

The quote below is from a Starcraft2 write-up on reddit, it’s 10 months old. I’ve included a link in the quote. If you’re reading this entire post, and going thru the links, you’ll find out why this write-up turns out to be nearly prophetic. They’re having some problems, and they’re not the only ones.

 

People, ESPECIALLY people in this community seem to fail to realize that a game's competitive success lives or dies by its casual accessibility. Yeah, in a dream world we all want this ULTRA CUT-THROAT COMPETITIVE F*** YOUR FACE game where OH MY F***ING GOD SKILL CEILING SO HIGH NO MULTIPLE BILDING SIELECT F** AUTO-MICRO OH MY GOD SO COMPETITIVEEE!1111...But in the real world, no one wants to play that game except competitive people.

 

 

 

Present day… MLG has no fall season. There is an invitational tournament for BOPS2 and Dota2 at Winter Park, Florida. That’s it. The prize purses are smaller than usual and the dates were conflicting with a UMG tournament schedule, no one was happy about that. The invitational will also have an impact on seeding for the next season. MLG has dropped SC2, (See the prophetic write-up above) and the rumor is that “riot games” has pulled LoL out of MLG. I haven’t seen confirmation of that yet, regardless, they still don’t have a fall season, and LoL is conspicuously absent from the invitational. I’m virtually certain that MLG is also experiencing issues with their sponsors over this.

 

I’m coming from the Xbox community and I haven’t got a PlayStation yet. Anyone here that can tell me what games on PlayStation now, or planned for future release, have the potential for serious professional competition? I’d appreciate any comments, or explanation/discussion about it, and If I could trouble you for any links for supporting articles or video’s, that would be even better.

Edited October 5, 2013 by fehue

[Outlaw__Rebel]

Ummm my I'm just wondering how or why that many people are into that damn game.

[fehue]

I have to assume your talking about CoD. If so, why don't you tell me why you refer to it as, "that damn game?" What game do you prefer?

[Outlaw__Rebel]

I'm thinking esports is a game. Maybe I'm wrong.

[Germanator]

Can't make a living off playing games, that's why they are called games

[Awtrace]

Optic makes a living

[fehue]

LOL... Esports is Professional competitive play, professional gaming. And people do make a living at it. In fact some people make a living with it by combining other gaming activities such as live streaming, commentaries and/or montages on YouTube and promotional work for various organizations including sponsors. If your team is solid, and you've won, or placed in tournaments, you'll eventually end up with sponsors. What you get from sponsors depends on how good your team is, whether or not you've placed, or won a pro level tournamnt, how long your team has been together, or kept it's name, and how many fans or spectators you'll draw during both live, and online play. If your team is cream of the crop as in the case of Optic Gaming, (mentioned above by Awtrace) your sponsors will be paying you to play, over and above little things like free equipment, free food, travel, and lodging, for tournaments your team is competing in.

 

Competitive gaming has been around as long as games have, video games are just the relatively new kids on the block, but video games have been a competitive endeavor much longer than most people are aware of. The first time I ever heard of it was when I was working at the Sands Hotel. I was on break outside smoking a cigarette and struck up a conversation with a tourist waiting for his ride. Turns out he wasn't in Las Vegas to gamble, or watch shows. he was in Vegas for an Arcade video game contest/tournament. He explained how he goes from state to state to compete in Arcades contests and tournaments. That was in 1995.

 

I kept running into things like that, about competitive gaming without even looking for it. finally in 1996 I decided to keep track of it and as you can imagine I found tons of stuff. I've probably thrown tons more away than I've kept, but here's a little more on the Arcade thing. I found out quite a few years later, that it was on TV as far back as the early 80”s, and even syndicated. Here’s what I’m talking about: Starcade 1982-1984, hosted by Alex Trebek (Jeopardy anyone). It didn’t have anything to do with PC’s or consoles, it was about arcade games then. There's a wiki on it somewhere, I pulled this from some research on game culture by "T.L. Taylor".

 

I hope this answers your questions/comments without having to write the book.

 

Just wanted to add, this is the short version of the summary. Almost the equivalent of a tag line.

Edited August 30, 2013 by fehue

[Germanator]

Better off getting an education and getting a job out in the world. Yes optic make a living off of it but that is hardly from earnings based on payouts at tournaments. (Assuming the tournament actually pays out).

 

Sponsors are tell help you get to events man. And combining it with YouTube and other media means your living off Adsense. I'm not sure about you but I wouldn't want to have my living based on varying Internet demographics when a good chunk of your earnings is automatically Killed due to mobile consumption and ad block.

 

Sure gaming has been around for a long time and sure there are teams that can make a living but please tell me when new teams are making a living in there sport? Unless you started early you will not reap the benefits. All top 8 teams for call of duty can make a living when's the last time you've seen a new team break into the top 8.

[Germanator]

And I'm sorry but Wikipedia is not a valid source.

[fehue]

@Germinator... There are some people paying their way thru college doing this. A guy called IDanishFreak was making enough with video commentaries to pay his way through medical school, and yes he also has sponsors. Have you heard of him? How about Whiteboy7th st? Whiteboy never played any pro tournaments and IDanishFreak hasn't in a long time. No one said it was easy, if that's what you're looking for you're in the wrong place, and I never said, or even thought anything different. Sponsors do more than help you get to events, I mentioned that in my last post.

 

The pro tournaments and championship series always pay out now. That was not always true in the past, but it's hard to nail down things like that. WSVG is more than likely the one that would have had the most trouble with it. It is also a problem with a lot of smaller operator's for various reasons.

 

Very few people ever heard of Fariko or Faze before they won large prize purses either, maybe that doesn't qualify because that's to old, like last year. But they broke in. Unite is also one of the newer teams coming up. So, is it easy? no it isn't? but it is being done. I might mention if your looking for security Esports is probably not the thing to pin your hopes on. But it's here, it's probably not going away, and people are going to try it regardless.

 

By the way, the mention of the wiki, was to give someone a starting point if they were interested in finding out more. The thing about Wiki's, is that any decent one is going to have references/links for where the info comes from, and I like checking those more than reading the Wiki's themselves. Since it doesn't look like you were paying attention, I also mentioned someone named T. L. Taylor and she is a valid source.

 

It looks to me like you've picked through my post to see what it is you can challenge me on, took what you wanted, and dismissed the rest. I'm not here to argue with you, or to try and change your mind, it seems to be made up already anyway. If you'd like to contribute something other than the same type of negative lines I can get a thousand other places, please do post more. Other than that though, I been there, done that, seen it, heard it, and fought it before, and I really hate repeating things.

Edited September 1, 2013 by fehue

[Germanator]

Isn't that the whole point of debating things?

[fehue]

You're not looking for a debate. If you were you'd be sticking to the subject, and have a little substance, a well defined position. Instead your trying to marginalize, or belittle the subject. I don't think you've been able to do that to your satisfaction, and neither do you, so you've moved to trying to do the same thing to me that you couldn't do to the subject at hand. None of that has anything to do with a debate, and I doubt seriously that these tactics would be included in an updated version of "How to win friends and influence people." What you've got, are a couple of homilies you're trying to pass off as common sense, and an inclination to take the path of least resistance. The Wiki page was all for you.

 

I want to speak to, and about, issue's in Esports that can be resolved. You want to argue about issue's that will very likely never be resolved, opinions.

 

Edit: If you still want to pursue this argument, start a different thread, and we'll joust.

Edited August 31, 2013 by fehue